Chapter 2 argues that 1594 was an extraordinary year in the history of Elizabeth I’s revels. According to William R. Streitberger, documentary evidence shows that in 1593 Master of the Revels Edmund Tilney attempted to impose a 'composition' signed by the Queen which made the Revels Office responsible for 'plays only' and reduced its budget both for the wages of the officers and production costs. The under officers of the Revels refused to accept this composition, making it impossible for Tilney to pay Revels Office bills until a settlement was reached five years later. In April 1594 the 5th Earl of Derby died, and many of Derby’s players later wound up in the Admiral’s and Chamberlain’s companies. The connection between the problems in the Revels Office between 1593 and 1598, the formation of these two companies, and the successful restart of the Queen’s revels in December 1594 can only be properly understood in the context of the efforts begun in 1573 by the Queen and a small group of her relatives and personal friends on the Privy Council to reform the Revels Office.

This chapter discusses the nature of court dancing in England, placing it in the context of European court culture and changes across time. The chapter focuses especially on the court masque, with an emphasis on continuity and change from Tudor to Jacobean practice. The court dancer was at the heart of the performance, as a masque transformed social dancing into a theatrical performance: in other words, a ballet de cour. Elizabeth maintained the practice of masquing for seasonal celebration and significant hospitality. However, James I enhanced the genre to underpin and consolidate the new Stuart dynasty. Investigation of the Jacobean masque from the perspective of a dance historian reveals the efforts to make the dance entries more histrionic, leading to the professional antimasque, in order to convey more vividly the central message or moral of the masque to an audience of diplomats. In developing a new mode of pantomimic dancing, a rich vein of invention in dance emerged. The new form of mute expression was swiftly adopted by Shakespeare into plays after 1609; as other playwrights followed his innovation, the dance content of drama expanded.