Shakespeare was now in the tomb; and Jonson, who “had hated and feared him through life,” was left without a rival to interfere with his triumph, or to commemorate the actions of the great. The death of Prince Henry had saddened the nation and obscured the gaiety of the Court for a season; but now, especially before the marriage of Villiers, whose settling in life was an event cordially desired by James, no revels were carried on without that most popular feature, a Masque; and no masque could gain applause unless Ben Jonson were the writer. A frequent visitor at Belvoir, at Burleigh on the Hill, and at Windsor, when the Court was at either of these places, Jonson never wrote a masque without exhibiting, in strong colours, qualities that astonished his acquaintance. He delighted in the composition of those productions, which, it has been truly said, were unrivalled except by Comus; of the masque, he was, as he himself remarked, “an artificer;” it began with him, and with him it ended. Pageants and masquerades had long been familiar to the English; and masques, improperly so called, had been carried to a great degree of splendour in the reign of Henry VIII., but neither then, as Gifford observes, nor in that of Elizabeth, did the masque acquire “that unity of design, that exclusive character, which it assumed on the reign of James.” That monarch had, in the opinion of the same admirable critic, more literature than taste or elegance. What was deficient in him was, however, apparent in the character of his Queen, Anne of Denmark, who delighted in show and gaiety, loved pomp, and understood it; as Sully expresses it, she “aspired to convert Whitehall into a temple of delight.” She assembled around her the most brilliant leaders of fashion among the nobility; and, not well comprehending our language, she delighted in masques and shows which addressed themselves to the senses. She had, however, sufficient discrimination to applaud the poetical talents of Ben Jonson, whose compositions had delighted her at Althorpe; and she called him to her Court, and engaged him “to embody her conceptions,” soon after her arrival in London.[217] Footnote 217: Gifford, p. 65.