But she was not to be deterred from her pleasures. She was always too careless of public opinion, and, as an acute and sympathetic observer remarked somewhat later, she was a true Bourbon in her love of amusement. To a lady whose dancing was something quite unusual, and whose sweet voice and skill in touching the lute testified to real musical taste, dramatic representations were naturally attractive. Her second English Christmas was enlivened by a masque, in which, as her French attendants were gone by this time, she had the assistance of her English friends. Her own band of players was always ready, and played for her amusement, now at Hampton Court, now at Somerset House, and it was owing to her influence and patronage that theatres increased to such an extent in the capital that the Puritan feeling of the City was aroused, which produced an order in Council "for the restraint of the inordinate use and company of playhouse and players." The playgoers were to content themselves with two theatres, of which one was to be in Middlesex and the other across the river in Surrey, while no plays were to be acted on Sunday, in Lent, or in times of common infection. But the merrymakings of the Court became more instead of less as the years went on. In 1631 the Queen was so taken up with her Shrovetide play that she had no thoughts to spare for important news which came from France, and the next year she took the principal part in an elaborate play, _The Shepherd's Paradise_, which was written for her by Walter Montagu, who added to his fine manners and diplomatic skill some pretensions (if nothing more) to literature. This play, which is of the allegorical type so dear to the heart of the seventeenth century, is indeed a very poor one, and hardly contains a line which rises above the level of an indifferent verse-maker. It is, moreover, fatiguingly long, and the Queen must have found her part a great labour to learn, specially as, notwithstanding her seven years' residence in England, she was not yet perfect in the English tongue, and indeed was acting partly in order to improve herself in this necessary accomplishment.[78] Her companions in the play were her ladies, for not a man was admitted even to take the male parts. But in spite of difficulties, when the night of the representation came, everything went off merrily at Somerset House; all acted with great spirit, and the Queen was able to speak with playful conviction the oath of the new queendom to which she had been elected:-- "By beauty, Innocence, and all that's faire I, Bellesa, as a Queen do sweare, To keep the honour and the regall due Without exacting anything that's new, And to assume no more to me than must Give me the meanes and power to be just, And but for charity and mercies cause Reserve no power to suspend the Lawes. This do I vow even as I hope to rise From this into another Paradise."[79]