queen for the festive season. As Sillery de Puisieux wrote to Le Fèvre de la Boderie: “It appears from the discourses and conversation of the King of Great Britain, his Council and Treasurer, that there is at present no greater or more important affair on the table than this beautiful ballet that puts everyone in such discomfort.”67 The new Venetian ambassador, Marc’ Antonio Correr, described how each diplomat struggled to secure an invitation to the masque, and the implicit recognition that went along with it, in a January 9, 1609, dispatch to the doge and senate: “The Spanish and Flemish Ambassadors are now maneuvering to be invited to the Masque. They declare it would be a slight to the Embassy-Extraordinary if it is left out. On the other hand the French Ambassador, who was omitted last year, which produced some sharp words from his Most Christian Majesty, now declares that he will withdraw from Court if he is not invited.”68 The French ambassador objected to the requirement to play this game at all. As he reported to Secretary Villeroy in a January 1609 letter, he sent a message to James via Lord Salisbury to the effect that “the favors that ambassadors receive from the princes in whose courts they serve should be purely free, and received rather than requested.”69
To move beyond this diplomatic impasse, the French court stepped in with an appropriately theatrical gesture: they staged their own ballet, organized by the queen and hosted by finance minister Maximilien Béthune, duc de Sully, and his wife at their private dance hall in the Arsenal in Paris, and particularly invited the English ambassador George Carew, his wife, and the vice-count of Cranbourne to view it as honored guests.70 (Other ambassadors enjoyed a less prestigious, second performance of the ballet in Marguerite de Valois’s palace.)71 This invitation placed the English court in the French one’s debt, more or less forcing the royals to reciprocate by hosting Le Fèvre de la Boderie at the Masque of Queens a few weeks later.
The diplomatic exchange of entertainments between the French and English courts set in motion another frenzied exchange of correspondence. The discourse generated by this second phase of the “incident” shines a more focused light on issues of intimacy and publicity in relations between diplomats and sovereigns, due to the dynamics of reciprocity, the centrality of women as patrons and hosts, and the participation of the ambassadors’ families as honored guests. Although Le Fèvre de la Boderie previously dismissed the rhetoric of personal or “private” favor, this new wave of correspondence recuperated it and reconciled it to the public, theatrical orientation of the diplomatic struggle for prestige.
The queen’s ballet seems tailor-made to resolve Le Fèvre de la Boderie’s predicament. Very likely, though, the ballet would have taken place even if the French ambassador in London was not being threatened with exclusion from the masque there. Ballets regularly featured in Carnival festivities in Paris. Moreover, the French court, like the English one, habitually signaled favor to ambassadors by inviting them to ballets. Even if the court did not specifically plan the ballet to address the masque incident, however, its performance had a tangible effect on French diplomatic relations with Britain and transformed the language used to discuss and publicize that relationship.
In the days leading up to the ballet’s performance, Le Fèvre de la Boderie and his correspondents continued to discuss the event as an occasion for a highly public, formal, theatrical display of French favor toward the English. On January 23, Secretary Villeroy informed the ambassador about the queen’s preparations for her ballet at the Arsenal:
They have told me that the Queen had Madame de Sully ask Madame the English Ambassador’s wife to see the aforementioned ballet at the Arsenal, where one talks of inviting her husband also, and even the Venetian Ambassador. The King will be there. We hear tell that Queen Marguerite will ask the Nuncio, Don Pedro de Toledo, and the Flemish Ambassador with his wife, where his Majesty may also resolve himself to go, after he has been to the Arsenal. It is not their Majesties who issue this invitation, since there is no dancing at their palace. The English Ambassador, who will be accompanied by Viscount Cranborne, will have the first viewing in the presence of the king, while the others will have to wait to see it at Queen Marguerite’s…. I do not yet know whether the whole mystery will go as planned; but I wanted to forewarn you.72
Villeroy presents himself as a passive observer in the planning of the entertainment. He relays what “they have told me” and what “we hear tell.” He takes pains, though, to show the ambassador that the court is making every effort to single out the English ambassador for special attention. Not only will he see the ballet “in the presence of the king” before the other ambassadors, he will also view it in a more prestigious space, overseen by the real queen and not Marguerite, “another queen of lesser rank,” as Villeroy calls her.73 Finally, the secretary rhetorically distances himself from the arrangements by characterizing them, a bit flippantly, as “the whole mystery”—a choice of terms that simultaneously underscores their enigmatic quality and their theatrical nature (evoking a medieval mystery play).
By the time the French court reported back to Le Fèvre de la Boderie on the performance, the language used to discuss its diplomatic function had changed. In a letter dated February 6, Sillery de Puisieux wrote: “This message is merely … to give you word of the good time and contentment had by the English Ambassador at the ballet of our Queen, which was danced this past Sunday, and which he had been invited to attend by the King, and his wife by the Queen. They had their places and seats right behind their Majesties’ chairs. The King, beyond that, favored their presence with another special grace, which is the wearing of the Order of the Garter, about which the Ambassador felt very honored.”74 Whereas Villeroy’s earlier letter stressed the prestige of the invitation to the English in contrast to the less splendid entertainment offered to the other ambassadors, Puisieux here focuses on the ambassador’s personal satisfaction of the event, without regard to others’ experiences. An affective vocabulary prevails: he notes the visitors’ enjoyment of the occasion and the ambassador’s “feeling” of honor in being allowed to wear the very English courtly mark of distinction.75 In addition, he illustrates the intimate relation between the French royals and their English guests. He underlines, for example, the proximity of their seats in the dancing hall. He also indicates that the couple received their invitations directly from the king and queen. This contradicts Villeroy’s earlier assertion that the royals would not themselves extend invitations for an event taking place outside the Louvre but strengthens the portrayal of the ballet as a special treat offered personally by the monarchs to the ambassador and his party. Puisieux, in other words, portrays the ballet as an effective means of “stroking” the foreign diplomat, of assuring him of the desire to maintain friendly relations.
Although Puisieux’s emphasis on the power of intimate signs of favor rather than public displays of prestige represented a significant departure from Villeroy and Le Fèvre de la Boderie’s rhetoric, it reflected longstanding practices toward foreign representatives at the French court. As far back as the 1580s, for example, the secretary to Venetian delegate Girolamo Lippomano remarked on the court’s lovingly familiar treatment of the “dear ambassador.”76 More recently, Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, an unofficial English envoy who had just left Paris in January 1609, described the favors he received from Marguerite de Valois: “I went sometimes also to the court of Queen Margaret … and here I saw many balls or masks, in all which it pleased that Queen publicly to place me next to her chair, not without the wonder of some, and the envy of another, who were wont to have that favor.”77 Lord Herbert’s account hints at the way gestures of intimacy could also take on “public” importance when viewed by even a small group of envious onlookers. By reinserting the discourse of intimacy into the unfolding narrative of the affair of the queens’ entertainments, Puisieux opened up the possibility for such a recuperation of “private” displays of royal affection in the more publicity-oriented and theatricalized diplomatic culture of his day.
Puisieux’s emphasis on intimacy and personal favor echoes the content and arrangement of the ballet itself, which featured as its theme romantic love, particularly women’s power over their suitors. Composed by Chevalier78 with verses by François de Malherbe and de Lingendes,79
