The Vision of Delight

The Vision of Delight has been regarded as almost a prototypical or quintessential example of the masque; it features the mythological figures and personifications of abstractions that are standard for the form. The work opens with personifications of Delight, Harmony, Grace, Love, Laughter, Revel, Sport, and Wonder; they are later joined by the ancient Greek deities Zephyrus and Aurora. Jonson's verse, heralding the coming of Spring, is lush and vibrant; the nineteenth-century critic and editor William Gifford called the masque "one of the most beautiful of Jonson's little pieces, light, airy, harmonious, and poetical in no common degree. It stands without parallel among performances of this kind...."^[10] Two anti-masques feature comical figures of "pantaloons" and "phantasms," followed by the more serious portion of the work in which the aristocratic masquers descend from a Bower of Spring to dance their dances. The effect is one of "glowing idealism."^[11]

Orazio Busino, chaplain of the Venetian ambassador Piero Contarini, gave a description of the jewels and costume of aristocratic women and ladies in waiting in the audience;

every box was filled notably with most noble and richly arrayed ladies, in number some 600 and more according to the general estimate; the dresses being of such variety in cut and colour as to be indescribable; the most delicate plumes over their heads, springing from their foreheads or in their hands serving as fans; strings of jewels on their necks and bosoms and in their girdles and apparel in such quantity that they looked like so many queens, so that at the beginning, with but little light, such as that of the dawn or of the evening twilight, the splendour of their diamonds and other jewels was so brilliant that they looked like so many stars ... The dress peculiar to these ladies is very handsome ... behind it hangs wellnigh from the neck down to the ground, with long, close sleeves and waist ... The farthingale also plays its part. The plump and buxom display their bosoms very liberally, and those who are lean go muffled up to the throat. All wear men's shoes or at least very low slippers. They consider the mask as indispensable for their face as bread at table, but they lay it aside willingly at these public entertainments".^[12]

One passage in Jonson's text has been cited by critics as influencing John Milton's poem Il Penseroso.^[13]

Despite its evanescent surface appearance (one commentator has called the work "a masque about masques"),^[14] Jonson's text is not without intellectual weight; Jonson based his masque on traditional dream theory, relying most likely on the Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis, Macrobius's study of the Dream of Scipio by Cicero. Jonson treats the audience of the performance as an assemblage of dreamers, and through his masque illustrates Macrobius's categories of dreams.^[15]