A Dancing Princess

Abstract

It was spring 1610, and Princess Elizabeth Stuart was busy with preparations for Samuel Daniel’s Tethys’ Festival. She wrote to her brother, Prince Henry:¹

… the ballet is about to be enacted and … in an affair of such serious moment, your presence is absolutely indispensible. I entreat you, therefore, to quit, whatever it may cost you, without delay, to quit the country and all its allurements, and hasten to your sister Elizabeth.

Tethys’ Festival was performed for Prince Henry’s investiture as Prince of Wales on June 5, 1610. It featured their mother, Anne of Denmark, as Tethys, “Queen of the Ocean, and wife of Neptune.”² She was attended by thirteen nymphs who represented the rivers of England. The thirteen-year-old Princess Elizabeth (see Figure 5.1), known as “the Lady Elizabeth,” played the nymph of the Thames. Her little brother, ten-year-old Charles, Duke of York, played Zephirus, the west wind, and was accompanied by a group of twelve “little ladies near of his stature,” who represented naiads, “attired in light robes adorned with flowers, their hair hanging down and waving, with garlands of water ornaments on their heads” (57–60).