The Memorable Masque of the Middle Temple and Lincoln's Inn

It was performed in the Great Hall of Whitehall Palace[1] on 15 February 1613, as one item in the elaborate festivities surrounding the marriage of Princess Elizabeth, daughter of King James I, to Frederick V, Elector Palatine in the Rhineland.

The principal masquers were stylized as Native Americans, "Princes of Virginia" and "sun priests"," though without much representative accuracy: they were dressed in "cloth of silver embroidered with gold," with olive-colored masks, though they were also lavishly feathered and equipped with ornaments "imitating Indian work" — an attempt at an effect "altogether estrangeful and Indian-like."

The princes' costumes of "cloth of silver with a trail of gold" can be seen as a textile allegory of Britain's economic ventures in the New World that eventually led to transatlantic slavery.

These aspects refer to ventures in Guiana, and were based on Walter Ralegh's 1595 account of his voyages and description of El madre del oro, the mother of gold.

[5] The celebration began with a torchlit parade down Chancery Lane, headed by fifty gentlemen on horseback, followed by the figures of the anti-masque, boys dressed as baboons in "Neapolitan suits and great ruffs," and the musicians and masquers in chariots.

[8] The Venetian ambassador Antonio Foscarini wrote that there were 100 Africans, dressed in the blue and gold costume of Indian slaves.

The general reaction was highly positive, giving the masque a reputation as one of the best-received works of its type in the Stuart era.

[12] John Chamberlain wrote that Sir Edward Phelips, the Master of the Rolls, and Dick Martin, a supporter of the Virginia Company, were the "chief doers and undertakers".