chunk: Asotus, a foolish spendthrift who longs to become a courtier and a master of fashion and manners, also drinks from the spring; emboldened by vanity and self-love, he challenges all comers to a competition of "court compliment." The competition is held, in four phases, and the courtiers are beaten. Two symbolic masques are performed within the play for the assembled revelers. At their conclusion, Cynthia (representing Queen Elizabeth) has the dancers unmask and shows that vices have masqueraded as virtues. She sentences them to make reparation and to purify themselves by bathing in the spring at Mount Helicon.
  The figure of Actaeon in the play may represent Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, while Cynthia's lady in waiting Arete may be Lucy, Countess of Bedford, one of Elizabeth's ladies in waiting as well as Jonson's patroness.
  The play is notably rich in music, as is typical for the theatre of the boys' companies, which originated as church choirs.