Masques were then the order of the day, especially after the splendid exhibition of the Inns of Court in honour of the King and Queen, February, 1634. Lawes, as a Court musician, took a leading part in this representation, and became in request on similar occasions. The person intended to be honoured by the "Arcades" was the dowager Countess of Derby, mother-in-law of the Earl of Bridgewater, whose father, Lord Keeper Egerton, she had married in 1600. The aged lady, to whom more than forty years before Spenser had dedicated his "Teares of the Muses," and who had ever since been an object of poetic flattery and homage, lived at Harefield, about four miles from Uxbridge; and there the "Arcades" were exhibited, probably in 1634. Milton's melodious verses were only one feature in a more ample entertainment. That they pleased we may be sure, for we find him shortly afterwards engaged on a similar undertaking of much greater importance, commissioned by the Bridgewater family. In those days Milton had no more of the Puritanic aversion to the theatre-- "Then to the well-trod stage anon, If Jonson's learned sock be on, Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child, Warble his native wood-notes wild," than to the pomps and solemnities of cathedral ritual:-- "But let my due feet never fail To walk the studious cloisters pale, And love the high-embowed roof, With antique pillars massy proof, And storied windows richly dight, Casting a dim religious light: There let the pealing organ blow, To the full-voic'd quire below, In service high and anthems clear, As may with sweetness through mine ear Dissolve me into ecstacies, And bring all heaven before mine eyes."