The Masque of Blackness

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Costume design by Inigo Jones forThe Masque of Blackness

The Masque of Blackness was an early Jacobean era masque, first performed at the Stuart Court
in the Banqueting Hall of Whitehall Palace on Twelfth Night, 6 January 1605. The masque was
written by Ben Jonson at the request of Anne of Denmark, the queen consort of King James I, who
wished the masquers to be disguised as Africans. Anne was one of the performers in the masque
along with her court ladies, and appeared in blackface makeup.
The plot of the masque follows the ladies arriving at the English Court to be "cleansed" of their
blackness by King James; a stage direction that was impossible to fulfill on stage. As a result, The
Masque of Beauty was written as a sequel to The Masque of Blackness. (The Masque of
Beauty, originally intended for the following holiday season, was displaced by Hymenaei, the
masque for the wedding of the Earl of Essexand Frances Howard. Beauty was finally performed in
1608.)[1]
Contents
[hide]

1 Design

2 Cast

3 Response

4 Notes

5 References

6 External links

Design[edit]
The sets, costumes, and stage effects were designed by Inigo Jones; Blackness was the first of
many masques for the Stuart Court on which Jonson and Jones would collaborate. The music
for Blackness was composed by Alfonso Ferrabosco.
Jones designed a raised and mobile stage for the masque, forty feet square and four feet off the
floor; this was employed for many subsequent masques. The stage contained inner space for the
machines that produced stage effects and the technicians who operated them. Blackness introduced
effects that Jones would repeat with variation throughout his career as a stage designer: it opened
with a tempestuous seascape, simulated by flowing and billowing cloths.
The opening stormy sea was populated with six blue-haired merman-like tritons. The
gods Oceanus ("blue") and Niger (black) entered, mounted upon giant seahorses. The twelve
daughters of Niger, played by the Queen and her ladies in waiting, entered in the company of a
dozen nymphs of Oceanus as torchbearers; the ladies of the Court were dressed in silver and azure,
with pearls and feathers in their hair, while the torchbearers, in green doublets with gold puffed
sleeves, had their faces, hands, and hair dyed blue. The ladies rode in a great hollow seashell,
which seemed to float upon and move with the waves, and was accompanied by six large sea
monsters carrying more torchbearers.[2] (With Blackness as with many subsequent masques
designed by Jones, one of the aspects of the show most commented upon by witnesses was the
dazzling intensity of light involved...which inevitably says something about the normal conditions of
life in the Jacobean era.)

Cast[edit]
The principal cast of the masque:

Queen Anne................Euphoris

Lady Bevill.............

Countess of Bedford........Aglaia

Lady Effingham......

Lady Herbert...............Diaphane

Lady Elizabeth How

Countess of Derby.....Eucampse

Lady Susan Vere.....

Lady Rich........................Ocyte

Lady Mary Wroth...

Countess of Suffolk.......Kathare

Lady Walsingham...

Response[edit]
The masque was controversial in its day, in part for the production's use of body paint instead of
masks to simulate dark skin. One observer, Sir Dudley Carleton, expressed a view tinged with the
prevailing social biases of the era:
...instead of Vizzards, their Faces and Arms up to the Elbows, were painted black, which was a
Disguise sufficient, for they were hard to be known...and you cannot imagine a more ugly sight....

The masque was expensive, costing 3000, and caused consternation amongst some English
observers due to the perceived impropriety of the performance.
The texts of The Masque of Blackness and The Masque of Beauty were published together
in quarto form in 1608, by the bookseller Thomas Thorpe; they were reprinted in the first folio
collection of Jonson's works in 1616.

Notes[edit]
1. Jump up^ Leapman, p. 94.
2. Jump up^ Leapman, pp. 73-7.

References[edit]

Gurr, Andrew. The Shakespearean Stage 15741642. Third edition, Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press, 1992.

Jonson, Ben. The Masque of Blackness. 1608. In Ben Jonson: Complete Masques. Ed.
Stephen Orgel. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1969. pp. 6174.

Leapman, Michael. Inigo: The Troubled Life of Inigo Jones, Architect of the English
Renaissance. London, Headline Book Publishing, 2003.

External links[edit]

The Masque of Blackness.

[hide]

V
T
E

Works by Ben Jonson

Plays

A Tale of a Tub
The Case is Altered
The Isle of Dogs
Every Man in His Humour
Every Man out of His Humour
Cynthia's Revels
The Poetaster
Sejanus His Fall
Eastward Ho
Volpone
Epicne, or The silent woman
The Alchemist
Catiline His Conspiracy
Bartholomew Fayre: A Comedy
The Devil is an Ass
The Staple of News

The New Inn

The Magnetic Lady
The Sad Shepherd
Mortimer His Fall (fragment)

Masque
s

Poems

The Coronation Triumph

A Private Entertainment of the King and Queen on May-Day
The Entertainment at Althorp
The Masque of Blackness
Hymenaei
The Entertainment of the Kings of Great Britain and Denmark
The Masque of Beauty
The Masque of Queens
The Hue and Cry after Cupid
The Entertainment at Britain's Burse
The Speeches at Prince Henry's Barriers
Oberon, the Faery Prince
Love Freed from Ignorance and Folly
Love Restored
A Challenge at Tilt, at a Marriage
The Irish Masque at Court
Mercury Vindicated from the Alchemists
The Golden Age Restored
Christmas, His Masque
The Vision of Delight
Lovers Made Men
Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue
For the Honour of Wales
News from the New World Discovered in the Moon
The Entertainment at Blackfriars
Pan's Anniversary
The Gypsies Metamorphosed
The Masque of Augurs
Time Vindicated to Himself and to His Honours
Neptune's Triumph for the Return of Albion
The Masque of Owls at Kenilworth
The Fortunate Isles and Their Union
Love's Triumph Through Callipolis
Chloridia
The King's Entertainment at Welbeck
Love's Welcome at Bolsover
On My First Sonne
To Celia
To Penshurst

The Masque of Beauty

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Masque of Beauty was a courtly masque composed by Ben Jonson, and performed to
inaugurate the refurbished banqueting hall of Whitehall Palace on 10 January 1608. It was a sequel
to the preceding Masque of Blackness, which had been performed three years earlier, on 6
January 1605. In The Masque of Beauty, the "daughters of Niger" of the earlier piece were shown
cleansed of the black pigment they had worn on the prior occasion.
Contents
[hide]

1 The show

2 Costs

3 Publication

4 Notes

5 References

6 External links

The show[edit]
Like its earlier companion piece, The Masque of Beauty was performed by Queen Anne and ladies
of her court, and witnessed by King James. The number of court ladies included was increased from
the twelve in Blackness to sixteen. In addition to Queen Anne, the participants were the Countesses
of Arundel, Bedford, Derby, and Montgomery, and the Ladies Chichester, Walsingham,
Windsor, Anne Clifford, Elizabeth Girrard, Elizabeth Guilford, Elizabeth Hatton, Mary Neville,
Katherine Petre, Anne Winter, and Arbella Stuart. Gossip held that the women chosen were
largely Roman Catholic.
The masquers wore costumes of orange-tawny and silver or sea-green and silver; the torchbearers
were dressed as Cupids; the presenters of the masque were styled as Januarius,Boreas, Vulturnus,
and Thamesis, and the musicians as "echoes and shades of old poets."[1] A black curtain
representing Night was withdrawn to display the masquers, assembled on a "Throne of Beauty"
borne upon a floating island. The sixteen masquers executed two dances, which the King liked
enough to see repeated; then they danced with male courtiers, in "galliards and corantoes." The final
dances returned them to the Throne of Beauty. The choreography was by Thomas Giles, who also
played Thamesis.
A diplomatic controversy developed around the masque, as to which foreign ambassadors were or
were not invited to attend the performance. The French Ambassador was notably irate at being
omitted while the Spanish Ambassador was included.[2] The Venetian Ambassador, who was invited,
was among the spectators who left descriptions of the "great golden masque" they'd seen, the jewels
the ladies wore (estimated in one case at a value of 100,000 and that for a single woman), and
the marvels of the stage machinery employed.

Costs[edit]

The total cost of producing the masque was 4000.[3] The House of Stuart was running an annual
budget deficit of 140,000 in this era;[4] the cost of the masque represented about 3% of the annual
deficit, an enormous sum to spend on a single event.

Publication[edit]
The Masque of Beauty was entered into the Stationers' Register on 21 April 1608 and published later
that year by the bookseller Thomas Thorpe, in the same volume as The Masque of Blackness. Both
masques were reprinted in the first folio collection of Jonson's works in 1616.

Notes[edit]
1.

Jump up^ Chambers, Vol. 3, p. 379.

2.

Jump up^ Chambers, Vol. 3, pp. 380-1.

3.

Jump up^ Logan and Smith, p. 78.

4.

Jump up^ Aaron, p. 83.

References[edit]

Aaron, Melissa D. Global Economics. Newark, DE, University of Delaware Press, 2003.

Chambers, E. K. The Elizabethan Stage. 4 Volumes, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1923.

Logan, Terence P., and Denzell S. Smith, eds. The New Intellectuals: A Survey and
Bibliography of Recent Studies in English Renaissance Drama. Lincoln, NE, University of
Nebraska Press, 1977.

Orgel, Stephen. Ben Jonson: The Complete Masques. New haven, Yale University Press,
1969.

Sullivan, Mary. Court Masques of James I: Their Influence on Shakespeare and the Public
Theatres. New York, Putnam, 1913.

External links[edit]

The Masque of Beauty online.

[hide]

V
T
E

Works by Ben Jonson

Plays

Masque
s

A Tale of a Tub
The Case is Altered
The Isle of Dogs
Every Man in His Humour
Every Man out of His Humour
Cynthia's Revels
The Poetaster
Sejanus His Fall
Eastward Ho
Volpone
Epicne, or The silent woman
The Alchemist
Catiline His Conspiracy
Bartholomew Fayre: A Comedy
The Devil is an Ass
The Staple of News
The New Inn
The Magnetic Lady
The Sad Shepherd
Mortimer His Fall (fragment)
The Coronation Triumph
A Private Entertainment of the King and Queen on May-Day
The Entertainment at Althorp
The Masque of Blackness
Hymenaei
The Entertainment of the Kings of Great Britain and Denmark
The Masque of Beauty
The Masque of Queens
The Hue and Cry after Cupid
The Entertainment at Britain's Burse
The Speeches at Prince Henry's Barriers
Oberon, the Faery Prince
Love Freed from Ignorance and Folly
Love Restored
A Challenge at Tilt, at a Marriage
The Irish Masque at Court
Mercury Vindicated from the Alchemists
The Golden Age Restored
Christmas, His Masque
The Vision of Delight
Lovers Made Men
Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue
For the Honour of Wales
News from the New World Discovered in the Moon
The Entertainment at Blackfriars
Pan's Anniversary
The Gypsies Metamorphosed
The Masque of Augurs
Time Vindicated to Himself and to His Honours
Neptune's Triumph for the Return of Albion
The Masque of Owls at Kenilworth
The Fortunate Isles and Their Union
Love's Triumph Through Callipolis

Chloridia
The King's Entertainment at Welbeck
Love's Welcome at Bolsover

Poems

On My First Sonne
To Celia
To Penshurst