Masks, Theatrical

Masks, Theatrical. The wearing of masks in the theatre derives from the use of animal skins and heads in primitive religious rituals. In the Greek theatre, masks served, in an all-male company, to distinguish between the male and female characters and to show the age and chief characteristic of each—hate, anger, fear, cunning, stupidity. In tragedy the mask gave dignity and a certain remoteness to demi-gods and heroes, and also enabled one actor to play several parts by changing his mask. In comedy the mask helped to unify the chorus (which, as can be seen in the plays of Aristophanes, wore identical masks of such creatures as frogs, birds, and horses) and served as an additional source of humour, particularly with the comic masks of slaves. The Roman theatre took over the use of masks from the Greeks, adopting for tragedy the later exaggerated form with a high peak (onkos) over the forehead. Many fine copies of classical masks, in marble, still survive and can be seen in museums. They are also shown in several wall-paintings and bas-reliefs. The golden masks worn by God and the archangels in some versions of the medieval mystery play may have been a survival of the Greek tragic mask or an independent discovery of the new European theatre, but the devils' masks, though often comic in intention, seem nevertheless by their horrific animal forms to be linked to early primitive religious usage. They were usually made of painted leather, and many excellent specimens can be seen in European museums, particularly in Germany. The comic actors of the later commedia dell'arte companies always wore masks, usually a small black ‘cat-mask’ which left the lower part of the face bare. Otherwise masks, which continued to be an essential factor in the Japanese nō play and other Far Eastern theatres, were discarded in Europe, and they are seldom seen on stage, though they were sometimes used for special effects by such writers as Yeats and O'Neill, and later by John Arden in The Happy Haven (1960); by Peter Shaffer in The Royal Hunt of the Sun (1964) and Equus (1973); and in the National Theatre production of Aeschylus' Oresteia (1981). Apart from such isolated examples, the main use of masks at present is in the training of drama students, on whom they seem to have a liberating effect, particularly in improvisation. The making of masks has also provided a useful subject for handicraft in schools and elsewhere. The old English name for the black mask used by the early Tudor actor or ‘guizard’ in the Court masque was ‘visor’.

The Latin word persona, meaning mask, was used by Terence in the sense of ‘character’, whence our expression dramatis personae, ‘the characters in the play’. In the commedia dell'arte the word was used of the mask and of the person wearing it. Masks were originally made of carved wood or painted linen, later of painted cork, leather, or canvas, and later still of papier mâché or lightweight plastics.