High creations, symbols and rotating machines in Samuel Daniel’s masque Tethys’ Festival

The masque Tethys’ Festival was commissioned by Anna of Denmark (1574–1619) to celebrate the Investiture (Creation) in June 1610 of her son Henry as Prince of Wales. Written by Samuel Daniel, with sets and designs by Inigo Jones, the masque was performed in the Banqueting Hall in Whitehall. Important aspects of it remain unexamined. Four of these are considered here: Camden’s authorship (so it is argued here) of the book in which Henry’s ‘Creation’ was described, which was published with Daniel’s text of the masque; the ways the symbol of a laurel tree was used to present Anna as founding mother of the Stuart dynasty, alongside contemporary iconography; the ways Charles (future Charles I) was presented in the masque; and how Jones’ stage machines – prisms known in antiquity as periaktoi, together with ceiling-high revolving circles of light – were designed to interact with performers and performance spaces in the Hall.