Tethys' Festival was a masque produced on 5 June 1610 to celebrate the investiture of Prince Henry (1594–1612) as Prince of Wales.[1]
Prince Henry, the son of James VI and I and Anne of Denmark, was made Prince of Wales in June 1610. Among the formalities and festivities of the occasion, the masque Tethys' Festival was performed by courtiers at Whitehall Palace. The script was written by Samuel Daniel at the request of the queen, who appeared in person as Tethys, a goddess of the sea. Inigo Jones designed the staging and scenery. A narrative of the masque was printed and a courtier also wrote a description of the event.[2] The City of London had staged their pageant London's Love to Prince Henry on the Thames on 31 May.
During the performance Anne of Denmark gave Prince Henry an engraved sword, which may be the jewelled sword surviving in the Wallace Collection.[3] The sword, set with diamonds, was supplied by the goldsmiths George Heriot and John Spilman, and described in inventories of the prince's jewels.[4]
- ^ Graham Parry, 'The Politics of the Jacobean Masque', J. R. Mulryne & Margaret Shewring, Theatre and Government under the Early Stuarts (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 96–98.
- ^ Edmund Sawyer, Memorials of Affairs of State from the papers of Ralph Winwood, vol. 3 (London, 1725), p. 181: Roy Strong, Henry Prince of Wales (London, 1986), pp. 155–158.
- ^ Martin Butler, The Stuart Court Masque and Political Culture (Cambridge, 2008), p. 74.
- ^ John Brand, 'An Account of the Revenue, the Expences, the Jewels of Prince Henry', Archaeologia, XV (1806), p. 18: Mary Anne Everett Green, Calendar State Papers Domestic, 1611-1618 (London, 1858), p. 91.