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Programme Note

BRIEF PROGRAMME NOTE

Shadwell’s masque is inserted at a point in Act I Scene II of Shakespeare’s play (or Act II of Shadwell’s own re-writing of it) where the stage directions indicate it. The masque is a war of words between Cupid and Bacchus and their respective followers, on the question of whether the joys of love or of wine are superior. In the end they come to a truce:
‘Come, let us agree, there are pleasures divine, In wine and in love, in love and in wine.'