… and even the Jacobeans were at least pretending to be shocked, when Anne of Denmark, the Queen of James I, appeared as Pallas (Wisdom and Defence) in the first masque she arranged, Vision of Twelve Goddess, played at Hampton Court on January 8, 1604.
As was appropriate for a warrior, she was in a short skirt. That frequently prissy bachelor Dudley Carleton complained:
“Her clothes were not so much below the knee but that we might see a woman had both feet and legs, which I never knew before.”
He could have worked for the Daily Mail!
From: Writing Women in Jacobean England, B.K. Lewalski, Harvard Uni Press, 1993, p. 30.
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