They were gathered at the old Banqueting House to witness a dramatic form with which conventional tragedies and comedies now struggled to compete: a court masque. This evening’s entertainment was more eagerly anticipated than any play. King James himself sat centrally on a raised platform of state facing the stage, surrounded by his closest entourage, his every gesture scrutinized, rivaling the performers for the crowd’s attention.

They took their places according to their status in the seats arranged on stepped scaffolds along three sides of the large hall, while the Lord Chamberlain, white staff in hand, ensured that no gate crashers were admitted nor anyone seated in an area above his or her proper station. Many had already visited Whitehall more than a half dozen times since Christmas, the third under King James, who had called for eighteen plays to be staged there this holiday season, ten of them by Shakespeare’s company.

James’s Park, was for most of them a familiar one. The route westward from the City, leading past Charing Cross and skirting St. On the evening of January 5, 1606, the first Sunday of the new year, six hundred or so of the nation’s elite made their way through London’s dark streets to the Banqueting House at Whitehall Palace.

1606 the year of lear