 The text of the masque was first published in the second folio collection of Jonson's works in 1641.The masque refers to the discoveries of features on the Moon made by contemporaneous astronomers — Galileo Galilei most famous among them — using the earliest telescopes.Their observations of mountain ranges and other geographic and geological features on the Moon's surface was interpreted as equivalent to the discovery of a "new world" — as in two later works by John Wilkins, "The Discovery of a World in the Moon" (1638) and "A Discourse Concerning a New Planet" (1640).