masque

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Masque (originally Mask, the French spelling being first used by Ben Jonson), spectacular entertainment which combined music and poetry with scenery and elaborate costumes. It derived originally from a primitive folk ritual featuring the arrival of guests, usually in disguise, bearing gifts to a king or nobleman, who with his household then joined the visitors in a ceremonial dance. The presentation of the gifts soon became an excuse for flattering speeches, while the wearing of outlandish or beautiful costumes and masks, or visors, led to miming and dancing as a prelude to the final dance. The early, relatively simple, form of the masque was known as a disguising, and is part of the folk tradition that includes the mumming play. In Renaissance Italy, mainly under the influence of Lorenzo de' Medici, it became a vehicle for song, dance, scenery, and machinery, one of its non-dramatic offshoots being the elaborate Trionfo, or Triumph. At the French Court it gave rise to the simple ballet de cour and the more spectacular mascarade (from which is derived ‘masquerade’), and eventually the comédie-ballet. In the 16th century it came back under its new name to Tudor England, where maskers played before the king in elaborate dresses, with all the appurtenances of scenery, machinery, and rich allegorical speech. In Elizabethan times the formula proved useful for the entertainment of the Queen, either in her own palace or during her ‘progresses’ throughout the land. Shakespeare makes fun of a simple country masque in Love's Labour's Lost, and uses the form seriously for typical early ‘disguisings’ in Timon of Athens and The Tempest. This latter already shows some of the elaboration reached by the Court masques prepared for James I and Charles I by Ben Jonson (appointed Court Poet in 1603) and the scenic designer Inigo Jones. Their first joint work was the Twelfth Night masque of 1605, their best probably Oberon the Fairy Prince in 1611. One of Jonson's innovations was the anti-masque, known also as the ante-masque, because it preceded the main entertainment, or the antic masque, because it employed earlier elements of antic or grotesque dancing. First introduced in 1609, the anti-masque provided a violent contrast to the main theme, as Hell before Heaven, War before Peace, Storm before Calm. The simplicity of the early masque, in which the performers appeared in one guise only, later gave way to the double masque, in which they were seen in two different groups of characters—fishermen and market-women, for instance, or sailors and milkmaids. In time the literary content of the masque diminished, and the spectacular aspect, particularly the dancing, in which Charles I and Henrietta Maria became performers after the fashion of Louis XIV, became more important. This led Jonson, after constant altercations with Inigo Jones, to withdraw, his last masque being performed in 1634. The Civil War put an end to the masque, which was never revived; but it had provided the means of introducing into England the new Italian scenery, and the Restoration theatre was to take over many of its spectacular effects. The decorative frame set up for the masque in a ballroom became the proscenium arch, behind which Inigo Jones's movable shutters or wings, trebled or quadrupled, ran in grooves to open or close in front of a painted backcloth, or, less often, what Jones called a ‘sceane of releave’, consisting of cut-out pieces on various planes. As this had to be prepared in advance and shown to the audience by drawing back the shutters, it was termed a Set Scene, whence the modern use of the word set for the scenic components of a play.

Milton's Comus (1634), though entitled ‘a masque’, is in reality a pastoral, and was probably called a masque to distinguish it from the plays given in the public theatre.

masque (or mask or maske). An aristocratic ceremonial entertainment in the 17th cent., consisting of a combination of poetry, vocal and instr. mus., dancing, acting, costume, pageantry, and scenic decoration, applied to the representation of allegorical and mythological subjects. It was much cultivated in It., from which country Eng. seems to have learnt it, then carrying it to a very high pitch of artistic elaboration. It developed from the intermedii and from mystery plays. In Elizabethan times, among the authors employed was Ben Jonson, a supreme master of the Eng. masque; he sometimes enjoyed the collab. of Inigo Jones as designer of the decorations and machinery. Among composers of masque mus. were Campion, Coprario, Lanier, and the younger Ferrabosco. From a literary point of view the most famous masque is Milton's Comus (1634); for this the mus. was supplied by Henry Lawes, but the finest masques of this period had music by his brother William. Masques continued under the Puritan régime of the Commonwealth and Protectorate, some being arr., by authority, for entertainment of distinguished foreign visitors. After the Restoration, masque episodes were popular in plays, and music for them was composed by John Blow, Pelham Humfrey, Louis Grabu, and Henry Purcell. A late example is Arne's Alfred (1740), written for perf. in the Prince of Wales's garden: from it comes the song Rule, Britannia!

In the 20th cent. Vaughan Williams described his ballet Job as a ‘masque for dancing’, to indicate that 19th-cent. type of choreog. would not be appropriate. Lambert's Summer's Last Will and Testament is described as a masque.

masque courtly form of dramatic spectacle, popular in England in the first half of the 17th cent. The masque developed from the early 16th-century disguising, or mummery, in which disguised guests bearing presents would break into a festival and then join with their hosts in a ceremonial dance. As the form evolved, the important elements retained were the use of the mask and the mingling of actors and spectators. Reaching its height in the early 17th cent., the masque became a magnificent and colorful spectacle, presented in public theaters and, with more splendor, in the royal courts. The actors personified pastoral and mythological figures, with great emphasis placed on music and dance. The foremost writer of the masque was Ben Jonson . However, it was his collaborator Inigo Jones , the theatrical architect, famous for his elaborate costume designs, settings, and scenic effects, who gave the masque its greatest popularity. Some of their more successful masques include The Masque of Blackness (1605) and Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue (1618).

Bibliography: See A. Nicoll, Stuart Masques and the Renaissance Stage (1937); E. Welsford, The Court Masque (1927, repr. 1962); S. K. Orgel, The Jonsonian Masque (1965); S. Sutherland, Masques in Jacobean Tragedy (1984).

masque Dramatic presentation that originated in Italy but became popular in the English court and the great houses of the nobility during the late 16th and early 17th centuries. The masque consisted of verse, comedy and, as an essential feature, a dance for a group of masked revellers. The earliest masque text is Proteus and the Adamantine Rock, performed at Gray's Inn in 1594 in honour of Queen Elizabeth I.

masque / mask/ • n. 1. a form of amateur dramatic entertainment, popular among the nobility in 16th- and 17th-century England, which consisted of dancing and acting performed by masked players. ∎  a masked ball. 2. variant spelling of mask (sense 1). DERIVATIVES: mas·quer / ˈmaskər/ n.

masque a form of amateur dramatic entertainment, popular among the nobility in 16th- and 17th-century England, which consisted of dancing and acting performed by masked players, originally in dumbshow and later with metrical dialogue.

masque masked ball; histrionic entertainment consisting of dancing and dumb show XVI; dramatic composition for an entertainment of this kind XVII. var. of MASK, the F. sp. being now restricted to these senses.

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