In her youthful days Queen Mary made her appearance at a pantomimic ballet, when she wore a black crape mask as an Ethiopian princess. In the year 1527 she exhibited herself before the French ambassadors at Greenwich Palace, with five of her ladies, dressed in Icelandic costume; and with six lords, in the costume of the same country, the party “daunced lustily about the hall.” At another masque, before the same ambassadors, in May of that year, the Princess Mary issued out of a cave with her seven ladies, dressed after the Roman fashion in rich cloth of gold and crimson tinsel, and they danced a ballet with eight lords. It is said that the young Princess soon became emboldened and at her ease when engaged in such royal pageantry; although, as it has been remarked, it seems strange to us nowadays that one so young should have been allowed or encouraged, so attired, to challenge the gaze and criticism of strangers. The only instance, says Payne Collier, in which Queen Mary called on the Master of the Revels to provide for entertainments at Court during her reign was in 1557. On St. Mark’s Day she commanded, for her “regal disport, recreation, and comfort,” a “notorious maske of Almaynes, Pilgrymes, and Irishemen.” A continual series of pageantry and masquing welcomed Queen Elizabeth’s reception at Kenilworth; and on Shrove Tuesday, 1594, the members of Gray’s Inn got up a burlesque masque for her amusement, with which she was so much pleased that the courtiers, fired with emulation, as soon as the masque was over began to dance a measure, which caused her Majesty to utter this reproof: “What, shall we have bread and cheese after a banquet?” The Earl of Essex, who took good care to propitiate his royal mistress by all sorts of flattery, on the 17th of November 1596--the anniversary of her accession to the throne--caused a sort of masque to be represented which was thus described by an eye-witness: “My lord of Essex’s device is much commended in these late triumphs. Some pretty while before he came in himself to the tilt, he sent his page with some speech to the Queen, who returned with her Majesty’s glove; and when he came himself, he was met by an old hermit, a secretary of state, a brave soldier, and an esquire. The first presented him with a book of meditations, the second with political discourses, the third with orations of brave-fought battles, the fourth was but his own follower, to whom the other three imparted much of their purpose before their coming in. Another devised with him, persuading him to this and that course of life, according to their own inclinations. Then comes into the tilt-yard, unthought upon, the ordinary post-boy of London, a ragged villain, all bemired, upon a poor lean jade, galloping and blowing for life, and delivered the secretary a packet of letters, which he presently offered to my lord of Essex; and with this dumb show our eyes were fed for that time.”