Dugdale gives the order of the Christmas ceremonies in delightful detail: ‘At night, before supper, are revels and dancing, and so also after supper, during the twelve daies of Christmas. The antientest Master of the Revels is after dinner and supper to sing a carol or song, and command other gentlemen then there present to sing with him and the company.’ On Christmas Day ‘Service in the Church ended, the gentlemen presently repair into the Hall, to breakfast with Brawn, Mustard and Malmsey,’ and so forth. The good-fellowship and the long evenings of Christmastide had natural issue in the production of plays and masques in these Halls, by students who have always been in close touch with the drama. It is not surprising, therefore, that one of Shakespeare’s plays was written for Twelfth Night, and first produced by the students of Law, at the Temple, for this merry and convivial season (see Chapter IV.). On St. Stephen’s Day the Lord of Misrule was abroad, and at dinner and afterwards games and pageants were performed about the fire that burned in the centre of the Hall, and whence the smoke escaped through the open chimney in the roof. For instance: ‘Then cometh in the Master of the Game apparelled in green velvet, and the Ranger of the Forest also, in a green suit of satten, bearing in his hand a green bow and divers arrows, with either of them a hunting horn about their necks; blowing together three blasts of Venery, they pace round about the fire three times.’ They make obeisance to the Lord Chancellor, and then ‘a Huntsman cometh into the Hall, with a Fox and a Purse-net, with a Cat, both bound at the end of a staff, and with them nine or ten couple of Hounds. And the Fox and Cat are by the Hounds set upon, and killed beneath the fire’ (Dugdale). The Post Revels, we are told, were ‘performed by the better sort of the young gentlemen of the Societies, with Galliards, Corrantoes, or else with Stage-plays.’ Masques were frequently performed by the members of the Inns, and Sir Christopher Hatton first obtained Queen Elizabeth’s favour by his appearance in a masque prepared by the lawyers. Besides the solemnities of Christmas and Readers’ Feasts, the _Antique Masques and Revelries_, as Wynne in his ‘Eunomus’ observes (ii., p. 253), ‘introduced upon extraordinary occasions, as to the grandeur of the preparations, the dignity of the performers and of the spectators, at which our Kings and Queens have condescended to be so often present, seem to have exceeded every public exhibition of the kind.’ One famous masque was presented by the four Inns of Court to Charles I. and Henrietta (1633), which cost some £24,000. So pleased were the King and Queen with ‘the noble bravery of it,’ and the answer implied in it to Prynne’s ‘Histrio Mastix,’ that they returned the compliment by inviting 120 gentlemen of the Inns of Court to the masque at Whitehall on Shrove Tuesday.