Sunday, August 26, 2018

Tara on Court Masques


The Seventeenth-Century Court Masque (Tara Olivero)



A masque is a tradition of court entertainment that became especially prominent during the reigns of the Tudors and Stuarts. It was performed either at court or at a royal or noble residence in order to either honor a particular noble or to glorify the court in general, and the audiences were elite and invitation-only. Action would take place in the middle of the floor of the residence’s main hall, with room for the stage, machinery for the set and special effects, space for the audience, and an elevated seat for the king directly across from the center of the stage. Masques were occasionally used to celebrate state occasions or marriages as well. Reliant on choreography by performers in masks, masques sometimes invited certain audience members to participate as well, especially near the end of the performance. This breaking of the fourth wall “blurs the line between performance and reality, making allegory and symbolism significantly more suggestive” as the audience members become directly involved in the exaltation of the court and monarchy (Hull et. al).

Under Elizabeth I, masques tended to focus on literary conventions of the time such as the inclusion of Petrarchan sonnets and classical references. Masques were also a staple of court entertainment under King James I, who didn’t participate in the masques but attended as an audience member. However, his wife, Anne, participated frequently and commissioned masques for political purposes, especially from Ben Jonson, the most popular court masque writer from 1605 to 1625. This was not only because of the quality of his masques but because of the new advancements he added to the art form.

Whereas masques previous to his time were generally either “wholly literary and dramatic or wholly choreographic and theatrical,” Ben Jonson advanced the masque tradition by combining these two options to create masques that were both spectacular and meaningful. The stage design of court masques played into this, especially once he collaborated with the neoclassical architect Inigo Jones in order to design the sets. The two men eventually disagreed on the importance of spectacle versus the poetry of the text and parted ways. When Charles I took the throne, Jonson’s masques dropped in popularity, most likely because “the Carolinian court seemed to prefer more elaborate masques than the Jacobean court,” although Jones remained popular as a masque designer (Hull et. al). Ben Jonson is also credited with developing the idea of the “anti-masque,” in which comic or grotesque characters are included in the drama as foils to the main characters. This added additional layers of meaning to the story and further elevated the literary art form.

At what is considered the height of the genre’s development, masques included a poetic prologue, one or more anti-masques, the main masque, revels (in which the audience participated in the dancing), and an epilogue, in addition to the costuming and sets. The actual script of the masque might only be a few pages, but the performance of the text plus choreography could take hours. They were also inordinately expensive because the performance of one masque would have to employ the writer, designer, music arranger, professional musicians, and dancing instructors. The lavish costumes were the bulk of the cost, however, as fabrics were disproportionately expensive at the time. The machinery of the sets were often elaborate as well, with revolving sets (called machina versatilis) or sliding sets (scena ductilis) that would move to seamlessly reveal entirely new scenery. Other interesting production elements could include a fly gallery (for aerial ballet and stunts), people who could descend from scenery above, masquers arriving in set pieces on wheels, and more. Lighting resources were also experimented with, with lighting coming from candles, torches, color projected through colored glass bottles, light created by burning camphor in water, light refracted by silver paint on the sets, and more. The budget for most masques in the Jacobean era was around £2,000, which would be the equivalent of roughly $800,000 today (assuming the conversion I used was even close to correct). Since masques were how the monarchy legitimized themselves and enforced their own importance, they had no problem spending the money.

Jonson is credited as the author of at least thirty court masques, most of which were only performed once. The Dyce Collection at the National Art Library (in conjunction with the Victoria and Albert Museum) houses many of his original texts. This is helpful for scholars because the texts of the masques often included the date of the performance, the reason for the masque commission (whether it be for a holiday like Christmas, a marriage, or otherwise), and a list of which aristocrats performed which parts. The texts, which were printed and sold as quartos and also reprinted in folio collections of Jonson’s works, often included detailed notes about the performance elements of the masque that were not evident in the text alone. For example, one note in Hymenai states: “The Song ended, they daunced forth in Paires, and each Paire with a varied and noble grace; to a rare and full Musique of twelve Lutes” (Sillitoe).

Jonson’s first masque performed at Whitehall, The Masque of Blackness, is regarded as being especially important, as is the masque that it was printed with, The Masque of Beauty. Queen Anne performed the main role in The Masque of Blackness, which involved black face on the part of the performers and aristocratic women playing even male roles. More information about his specific masques can be found through the links below.

Sources:
Butler, Martin. “The Court Masque.” The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson Online. http://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/essays/court_msq_essay/1/

Hull, Helen, with Meg Pearson and Erin Sadlack. “A Maske Project.” The Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities. https://mith.umd.edu/comus/final/cegenre.htm.

Sillitoe, Peter. “Ben Jonson and Masquing Culture at the Jacobean Court.” ShaLT Collection Enhancement Report No. 4, Victoria and Albert Museum, 2012.  http://shalt.dmu.ac.uk/media/uploads/documents/reports/cer-4.pdf

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