Chapter XIV: Book I: The Court (11)

The historical sketch given in the last chapter needs to be supplemented by some analysis of the stage of development which the mask had reached, in relation to its origins, by the Jacobean period. And first of all, on the side of scenic effect. Looking back over the reign of Henry VIII, in the light of what followed, we may discover two fairly distinct types of masks. There is the mask simple, in which the dancers, with their richly hued and sparkling costumes, their torch-bearers and their musicians, may be regarded as furnishing their own decoration. There is the mask spectacular, to which added éclat is given by the pageant, mobile, or towards the end of the reign stationary, with its additional lights, its carvings and mouldings, its gilt and colours, and the elements of illusion and surprise afforded by its facilities for the concealed entry of personages. Elizabeth, perhaps as has been hinted upon grounds of economy, perhaps from the more legitimate and attractive motive of a special interest in the dancer's art, used mainly the mask simple. But the pageant was not altogether forgotten, and recurs from time to time amongst the preparations for festivities on some exceptionally elaborate scale. The most notable example is perhaps to be found in the devices for the contemplated meeting with Mary of Scots in 1562, which involved the construction of a prison, a castle, and an orchard, and of which even Henry VIII would have had no reason to be ashamed. We hear also of a rock of fountain for the mask of Diana and Actaeon in 1560, of a castle and arbour at the visit of Artus de Cossé in 1564, of a rock with a veil of sarcenet for the mask of hunters in 1565, of a chariot and castle for the visit of the Duc de Montmorency in 1572, and of a mount, a castle, an orange tree, and a house for that of the Duc d'Anjou in 1581. The Gray's Inn maskers of 1595 had their Rock Adamantine, and those of the Middle Temple about 1598 sallied forth from a Heart.

I do not know that any special inferences need be drawn from the fact that on most of these occasions the English Court was putting its best foot foremost to entertain a visitor from France, for in fact during the greater part of Elizabeth's reign France was the only continental country of the first importance with which she maintained constant diplomatic relations.[582] Nor is enough known of the development of the French mask in the middle of the sixteenth century to make it possible to say how far, if at all, that country then gave the lead to England.[583] Brantôme reports how Catherine de Médicis would amuse herself by inventing 'quelques nouvelles danses ou quelques beaux ballets, quand il faisoit mauvais temps', and the writings of Clément Marot and Mellin de Saint-Gelais and of the Pléiade contain several sets of verses composed for the purposes of 'mommeries' and 'mascarades'.[584] I should suppose that the distinction drawn by M. de Beaumont in 1603 between a 'mascarade' and a 'ballet' corresponds pretty closely with that made above between the mask simple and the mask spectacular. The history of the 'ballet' proper in France seems to begin under Italian influences during the last quarter of the century. Its pioneer was one Baldassarino da Belgiojoso, a groom of the chamber to Catherine de Médicis and to her son Henri III, who came to France about 1555 and gallicized his name as Baltasar de Beaujoyeulx. When Henri, not yet King of France, left Paris to receive the crown of Poland in 1573, Baldassarino arranged the spectacle for his farewell. Sixteen nymphs issued from a movable rock, offered gifts, and danced in the hall. A printed description by Jean Dorat contains engravings of the rock and the dances, and verses in Latin and French, to which Ronsard and Amadis de Jamyn contributed.[585] This appears to have been a mask on lines already familiar in both France and England. But eight years later Baldassarino got an opportunity for a far more elaborate undertaking. His _Balet Comique de la Royne_ was devised for the wedding of the Queen's sister, Mlle de Vaudemont, to the Duc de Joyeuse on 15 October 1581.[586] His own share seems to have lain in the invention of the general scheme of the entertainment and in the dances; he had the assistance of M. de la Chesnaye for the verses, Lambert de Beaulieu for the music, and Jacques Patin for the painting. The Queen herself led the dancers. There was an intricate combination of choregraphy and mythological setting. The maskers proper were twelve Naiads in white and four Dryads in green; the presenters Circe, a Fugitive from her garden, Glaucus, Thetis, Mercury, Pan, Minerva, Jupiter; the musicians mermaids, tritons, satyrs, virtues, and others; the torch-bearers twelve pages. At the top of the hall was a daïs for the royal seats, and to the right and left in front places for ambassadors. Behind, and also lower down the hall, were tiers of seats, and above them two galleries; in all 9,000 or 10,000 spectators were present. On the left of the hall was a Gilded Vault for musicians, on the right the Grove of Pan, and at the foot the Garden of Circe, both veiled by curtains. In the roof, between the Vault and the Grove, hung a cloud. On each side of the Garden, trellises covered the entrance. After a preliminary episode between Circe and the Fugitive, the Naiads appeared on a movable fountain, and danced twelve geometrical figures as the 'première entrée du ballet'. They were then enchanted by Circe, and taken to her garden, with Mercury, who dropped from the cloud in a vain attempt at rescue. After two 'intermèdes' of music and song, during which the Dryads entered and the Grove of Pan was disclosed, came Minerva on a chariot, and called Jupiter from the cloud and Pan from the Grove for an assault on the Garden. Circe was captured, and her wand presented to the King. Then the Naiads and Dryads danced fifteen 'passages' as the 'entrée du grand ballet', and forty more of a geometrical character for the 'grand ballet' itself. Finally, they presented the King and gentlemen with 'choses de mer' and appropriate 'devises' or mottoes, and took them out for 'le grand bal' followed by 'bransles' and other dances.

So far as published documents go, the _Balet Comique_ is closely the prototype of the fully developed 'ballet' or court mask, as we find it both in France and in England.[587] The Gray's Inn mask of 1595, with its printed description and its theme of enchantment, confesses an influence; and there were only two directions in which the devisers of Henri IV and of James I were able to make any notable advance upon Baldassarino's model. One of these was the introduction of the antimask, to which it will be necessary to return; the other was the concentration of the scenic setting. The setting of the _Balet Comique_ is not concentrated but dispersed. It is not even all stationary. The interest of the spectators is not merely divided amongst the Garden of Circe at the foot of the hall, the Grove of Pan on the right, the musicians' vault on the left, and the cloud overhead. It is claimed at certain points by the movable fountain upon which the maskers enter and the chariot of Minerva. This dispersed setting recurs in the first of Queen Anne's great masks, Daniel's _Vision of the Twelve Goddesses_, in 1604. A mountain stood at the lower end of the hall in Hampton Court, and at the upper end a Cave of Sleep on one side and a Temple of Peace on the other. A contemporary observer notes an inconvenience of this arrangement. 'The Halle was so much lessened by the workes that were in it', writes Dudley Carleton, 'so as none could be admitted but men of apparance.' This difficulty proved fatal to the dispersed setting, and in all later Jacobean masks the setting was concentrated in a scene erected at the lower end of the hall, and ample space was thus left both for the evolutions of the dancers and for the seating of the spectators.[588]

This change at least synchronizes with the emergence of Inigo Jones and the beginning of the architectural domination which for nearly half a century he was destined to exercise over the mask. His is the first outstanding name which we can associate with the history of English scenic decoration. Under Elizabeth and her predecessors the apparel and pageantry of a mask were the care of the Revels officers, and they naturally called in such painters and other men of taste about the court as were likely to prove useful. These were often foreigners. Alfonso Ferrabosco, the musician, seems to have had the general oversight of an important mask in 1572, and amongst his collaborators was another Italian, Petruccio Ubaldini, while Hans Eottes drew the patterns. Eottes was similarly employed in 1573 and 1574, and Ubaldini was called upon again in 1579 to write out the speeches of a mask in his native Italian.[589] The responsibilities of Inigo Jones were much wider than those of any of these predecessors. His singular name has an Italian ring, but he was born of London parentage in 1573 and is said to have been apprenticed to a joiner.[590] Through the generosity of the third Earl of Pembroke he had opportunities of travel, and spent much of his early life in Italy and in the service of Christian IV of Denmark. He seems to have been back in England by 28 June 1603, when the accounts of the Earl of Rutland record a payment of £10 to 'Henygo Jones, a picture maker'. He is not known to have taken part in the masks of the following winter, but Jonson acknowledges that 'the bodily part' of the _Mask of Blackness_ on 6 January 1605 was his 'design and act', and in August of the same year he took charge of the plays given before James in the hall of Christ Church, Oxford, and contrived their changes of scene with the aid of revolving triangular screens of Italian design. His place as an architect of court masks was now assured, and even the poets, to whom the descriptions of the performances naturally fell, found it impossible to conceal the fact that his functions were at least as important as their own. Jonson in his earlier descriptions is punctilious in rendering due credit to his colleague.[591] So too are Daniel and Campion.[592]

It was not until Caroline days that the smouldering antagonism between Jonson and Jones broke out into open warfare, and stung Jonson to various indiscretions, amongst them the ironical outburst of the famous _Expostulation_--

Painting and carpentry are the soul of masque![593]

Of thirteen spectacular masks given at court from 1605 to 1613 nine were certainly contrived by Jones, and there is no positive evidence that the other four were not his.[594] He had also a share in the preparations for Prince Henry's barriers of 1610. When the prince set up his household in the following December Jones was appointed surveyor of his works. After Henry's death he obtained a reversion of a similar appointment in the royal Office of Works, but this reversion did not fall in until the death of Simon Basil on 1 October 1615, and after the marriage of the Princess Elizabeth in 1613 Jones paid a visit of some duration to Italy. He therefore took no part in the masks for the Somerset wedding during the following winter. For one at least of these, Campion's _Mask of Squires_, his substitute was Constantine de' Servi, a Florentine who had also been in the service of Henry as his architect; but Campion was not pleased with his coadjutor, and wrote that 'he being too much of himself, and no way to be drawn to impart his intentions, failed so far in the assurance he gave that the main invention, even at the last cast, was of force drawn into a far narrower compass than was from the beginning intended'. Jones was back in England by 29 January 1615, and was to plan many more masks before his death in 1652. But none can be definitely ascribed to him before Jonson's _Mask of Christmas_ in 1617. During the latter part of his career he was busy as an architect, and the present banqueting-house in Whitehall, built during 1619-22, represents a fragment of one of his grandiose schemes for the complete reconstruction of the old palace.

The concentrated setting, as it took shape in the first period of Inigo Jones, appears to have been regularly designed on the principle of what is sometimes called the 'picture-stage'.[595] It was framed by a proscenium arch, from side to side of which stretched, at first view, a curtain. This arch was of a familiar Renaissance type. On either side were pilasters, or statuesquely modelled figures, or a combination of the two, which bore up a frieze. The decorations were in harmony with the theme of the mask and the frieze might contain a scroll or panel setting forth its title.[596] It cannot perhaps be demonstrated that Jones invariably used a proscenium from the beginning, but at any rate by 1608 (_Haddington Mask_) 'the arch' appears to have been a recognized element of a setting. The most elaborate description of a proscenium is that written by Jones himself for _Tethys' Festival_ in 1610. On this occasion the proscenium was itself covered by a curtain until the audience were seated. It is possible, however, that it sometimes framed a front curtain. The use of curtains was, of course, no innovation. They had served, when concealment and revelation were required, both in the mobile and in the fixed settings of earlier days. Thus for an Elizabethan mask of 1565, of which the pageant was 'a rock or hill for the ix musses to singe vppone', the Revels Office had provided 'a vayne of sarsnett drawen vpp and downe before them'.[597] The Jacobean curtain itself might form part of the setting. It was painted to represent a wooded 'landtschap' (_Blackness_), clouds (_Hay Mask_, _Tethys' Festival_), night (_Beauty_), a red cliff (_Haddington Mask_), a city wall and gate (_Flowers_). But at an early moment it was removed, to 'discover' a more solidly constructed scene within. Often it is called a 'traverse', and when it is 'drawne' it may either 'slide away', or 'sink down' (_Marston's Mask_).[598] I have not come across a certain case in which it was drawn up, either directly by a roller, or diagonally by cords towards the corners of the proscenium; but these methods may also have been employed. In some masks the drawing of the curtain 'discovered' the maskers on the scene; in others their entry was deferred and variously contrived. The maskers, and sometimes the presenters, had, before the actual dances began, to come forward through the proscenium arch to the dancing place, which was on the floor of the hall, or on a stage only slightly raised above it, and was regularly laid with green cloth by the official 'mattleyer' of the court.[599] This advance was managed in divers ways. The old device of a movable pageant might be revived, as an element subsidiary to the fixed scene, and the maskers brought in on a chariot (_Queens_, _Oberon_), or enthroned on a floating isle (_Beauty_). They might be let down by a cloud from the upper part of the scene (_Hymenaei_, _Lords' Mask_). For the _Mask of Blackness_ Jones made an artificial sea on a wheeled stage, which lifted them forwards in a concave shell. It was quite effective as a spectacle, if they stepped in their bravery down a slope (_Hay Mask_) or a double stairway (_Chapman's Mask_, _Squires_) leading from the scene to the lower level of the dancing place.

The adoption of the concentrated setting was a matter of convenience; it did not mean that the mask could dispense with the variety of interest which the multiplied scenes of the dispersed setting had afforded. Jones's chief problem as a producer was that of securing this variety of interest under new conditions, and if possible with some added sensation of curiosity or surprise. One device was to retain the multiplied scenes, and to juxtapose them, or to superimpose one upon another within the frame of the proscenium. It was easy enough to divide the curtain either vertically or horizontally and to 'draw' the sections separately. Thus in the _Hymenaei_, which was a double mask, the altar of Hymen and the globe containing the men maskers were first discovered below. Subsequently the 'upper part of the scene' opened, and the women maskers floated out on _nimbi_. In _Lord Hay's Mask_ there was a 'double veil' of which the lesser part covered a Bower of Flora on the right of the stage, and the greater part covered a House of Night on the left, and a grove and hill crowned by a Tree of Diana in the centre. This method paid homage to the tradition of the dispersed setting; another, which could be used in combination with the first, was capable of more intricate development. The manœuvre of the front curtain might be repeated. The whole, or a fragment, of the inner scene might be shifted, so as to discover a new vision which had at first been concealed. Often this was only a local and particular transformation. Thus it was in the two masks just cited, when the globe behind the altar of Hymen revolved and showed the maskers seated in a cave, or the trees in the grove of Diana were drawn into the ground, and the maskers appeared out of their cloven tops. Similarly the splitting of a rock, to let out personages concealed therein, is an incident which recurs in more than one mask (_Haddington Mask_, _Oberon_, _Chapman's Mask_). The development of the antimask, with the emphatic contrast between the grotesque and the magnificent which this implied, seems to have been the motive which led to the introduction of more wholesale changes of scene. In the _Mask of Queens_ the background for the antimask was a Hell, and when it was over 'the whole face of the scene altered, scarce suffering the memory of such a thing', and in place of the Hell appeared a House of Fame. In _Mercury Vindicated_, again, the Laboratory of the antimasks gave way to a Bower of Nature for the mask proper. In _Oberon_ the antimask was before a cliff with a rising moon, and thereafter the scene twice opened, to disclose, first the 'frontispiece' and then the interior of a palace of Fays. The art of transformation was perhaps carried to its greatest extent during this period in the _Lords' Mask_ for the Princess Elizabeth's wedding, of which the Venetian ambassador in his report to the Signory especially noted the three changes of scene as an outstanding feature. This elaborate spectacle affords examples of nearly all the devices of juxtaposition, superimposition, partial and complete transformation, by which a variety of scenic interest is reconciled with a concentrated setting. The original scene was horizontally divided. The lower half, which was first discovered, contained side by side a wood, a thicket of Orpheus, and a cave of Mania. Before this danced the antimask. Then a curtain fell from the upper part of the scene, and discovered amongst clouds Prometheus and eight Stars. The Stars were individually transformed to men maskers, and the clouds to the House of Prometheus. Beneath torch-bearers emerged and danced, still in front of the wood. The whole face of the scene was then overspread with a cloud on which the men maskers descended. The lower part of the scene was then changed from a wood to a façade of niches containing statues, which were individually transformed into women maskers. The mask proper followed, and when the dancing was over, there was a final change of the whole scene to a porticoed perspective, leading up to the obelisk of Sibylla. Even by 1613 the art of Jones had handsomely accomplished its task of ministering to the pride of the eyes. In his later or Caroline period he advanced to even greater triumphs, and did not shrink from the decorative and mechanical difficulties entailed by as many as five changes of scene.[600] The actual mechanism employed by Jones to obtain his effects is perhaps better known to us for this later period, in view of the numerous plans and designs preserved at Chatsworth and elsewhere, than for the earlier one. The action of a mask was in all cases 'continuous', and therefore he was happily debarred from the awkward modern convention of a drop-curtain. Jones ultimately worked out a system of back-cloths and shutters or flats, arranged and painted so as to produce a perspective and an illusion of solid scenery. These ran in horizontal grooves, so that those belonging to one scene could be placed close behind those belonging to another, and each set could be successively removed by lateral withdrawal. It was, in fact, a multiplied use of the primitive 'traverse' or sliding curtain. This system may have already been at his disposal in the Jacobean period; it was well adapted, in particular, for the splitting of a rock. But it is clear that he also used a device based upon a different principle, a _machina versatilis_, which by means of a circular motion was capable of displaying successively the different faces of a comparatively solid decorative structure placed upon it. Jonson applies the term _machina versatilis_ to the House of Fame in the _Mask of Queens_. Presumably the rotating globe in _Hymenaei_ and the rotating throne of Beauty in the _Mask of Beauty_ are other examples; and yet another is furnished by _Tethys' Festival_, where however the _truc_ was used, not to carry scenery, but to cover a change of scene by directing the attention of the spectators to three whirling circles of lights and glasses. It is hardly necessary to dwell upon such subsidiary devices as the trapdoors in the floor of the stage, or the pulleys by which floating clouds were let down from the heavens, for such obvious and primitive machinery had been familiar, long before the advent of Jones, as an element in the rudimentary technique of the popular theatre.[601]

The approximation of mask to drama entailed by the adoption of the concentrated setting was not the only point of interaction between these parallel forms of _mimesis_. In the first instance it was perhaps the drama, rather than the mask, which underwent an influence. The various forms of spectacular entertainment with which the mask became entangled during the fifteenth century might be introduced at more than one moment in the long story of a Renaissance festival. They were equally well adapted to enliven the intervals between the courses of a meal, and the intervals between the parts of an organized dramatic performance. The detached character of the Senecan chorus, and the Roman practice of dividing up tragedies and comedies into acts, which was itself a departure from the Greek principle of continuous action, facilitated this intrusive development; and in the history of the Italian stage, as it shaped itself at Ferrara and elsewhere from 1486 until the middle of the next century, nothing is more remarkable than the tendency to bury the actual play, tragedy or comedy, classical or modern, in a wilderness of decorative _intermedii_, ordinarily consisting of dances and song, framed in some ingenuity of allegorical, mythological, or other device.[602] It is, I think, a true affiliation which traces to the _intermedii_ the analogous dumb-shows of English usage.[603] These belong primarily to the learned court drama, with its admitted classical and Italian inspiration. To some extent they found their way also on to the popular stage, which had, moreover, its own simpler devices for the avoidance of monotony in the way of 'jigs' and 'themes'.[604] But the influence of the dumb-show upon the drama is not wholly to be measured by the extent to which it was adopted as a formal element in the structure of plays. It introduced a spectacular tendency, which continued to prevail long after the position of the dumb-show as an interact had been surrendered. Indeed, the extreme Italian development of the _intermedii_ constituted a danger against which the lovers of a purer dramatic art were soon in protest.[605] If tragedy and comedy had not succeeded in absorbing spectacle, they would have been overwhelmed by it. The first battle was won when it was admitted that the subjects of the _intermedii_ ought to be related to the theme of the drama, which was by no means always the case at Ferrara; the second when the spectacle was taken out of the intervals between the acts and treated as an integral part of the action. This is the normal, although not of course the invariable, Elizabethan practice. Elizabethan drama is abundantly spectacular, and often enough the spectacle is irrelevant or excessive, but as a rule it is, formally at least, within the plot. There are the drums and tramplings of battles and trials and funerals. There are the divine epiphanies in mythological pieces. There are the endless opportunities afforded for song and dance by banquets, weddings, and rustic merry-makings. And if all else fails, what more easy than to introduce a dumb-show in a dream or as a specimen of the magician's art?[606] A somewhat paradoxical type of incorporated spectacle is the play within the play, as we find it, for example, in _Hamlet_, where indeed the inner play has the further elaboration of its accompanying dumb-show.[607] And with the play within the play comes the mask within the play. In the _intermedii_ the mask, as already suggested, tended to lose its individuality. There were dancers, no doubt, and the dancers were disguised, and might be masked; and there are signs of an extended use of the term 'mask' to cover such an entertainment.[608] But the characteristic feature of the mask proper, the taking out of spectators to dances, did not lend itself to the conditions of performances given while the spectators sat at meat, or of performances on the raised and isolated stage of an interlude. When a mask proper was closely associated with an early Tudor play, it was as an afterpiece rather than as an inter-act. The dancers of the _intermedii_ kept to themselves, and if the sexes intermingled it was in a 'double' choir. But when the spectacles became episodes, instead of _intermedii_, the central incident of the mask could be restored. Dancers who were personages of a play could obviously 'take out' spectators who were also personages of the same play; and the introduction of a mask, generally as a revel in a royal feast or wedding banquet, becomes a regular dramatic device at least from the last decade of the sixteenth century onwards. Perhaps the first example is in an academic play, Gager's _Ulysses Redux_ of 1592, where at the beginning of Act II 'Proci larvati alicunde prodeunt, saltantque in scena', and as we learn from the criticism of Rainolds, some of Penelope's handmaids, seated amongst the audience, were 'entreated by the wooers to rise and danse upon the stage'.[609] Shakespeare has a mask in _Love's Labour's Lost_, and another in _Romeo and Juliet_, to which the episode is handed down from the ultimate source in Italian narrative.[610] Another early example is in _1 Richard II_ (iv. 2). Munday has a mask in his _Death of Robert Earl of Huntingdon_ (_1598_; ii. 2), Dekker (ii. 204) in his _Whore of Babylon_ (_c. 1607_) and his _Satiromastix_ (_1601_; l. 2302), and Tourneur, if it was Tourneur, in his _Revenger's Tragedy_ (_c. 1607_; v. 3). These are examples from the public theatres. When the boys' companies came into existence at the end of the century, dance and song proved well within their means; and their principal writers, Marston, Chapman, Middleton, Field, Jonson, all make use of the mask.[611] So do Beaumont and Fletcher, both in plays for boys and in plays for men.[612] But the enumeration of earlier names is of itself enough to dispose of the theory that to Beaumont and Fletcher is due, in some special way, the transference of the court mask to the popular stage, and in particular the introduction of Shakespeare to the supposed new idea. Doubtless the mask in _A Maid's Tragedy_ is set out with somewhat greater elaboration of presentment than was usual in earlier plays, and doubtless the antimask of Beaumont's contribution to the Princess Elizabeth's wedding was furbished up again for the delight of a popular audience in _The Two Noble Kinsmen_. But it hardly follows that Shakespeare, after using the mask in _Love's Labour's Lost_ and _Romeo and Juliet_, had anything to learn from his younger rivals before he used it in _The Tempest_, and a writer who can assert that Ben Jonson 'did not mix his masques and plays' must have simply forgotten _Cynthia's Revels_.[613] The mask in this play is of special interest, because it is Elizabethan and antedates by some four years the first of the long series of Jonson's Jacobean masks. It occupies, in the quarto version, the greater part of the last seven scenes of the play. In iv. 5 Arete, a principal lady at court, desires revels for Cynthia, and Amorphus proposes a 'masque'. Arete undertakes to send for Criticus, and get his advice.[614] In iv. 6 Criticus hesitates to write for such revellers as Amorphus and his crew. Arete encourages him. The presence will restrain them when they are masked, and Cynthia needs the opportunity to reform them. Criticus then invokes Apollo and Mercury. In v. 1 Cynthia, awaiting the mask, holds flattering discourse with Arete on its author. In v. 2 enters 'the first masque'. Cupid 'disguised like Anteros', presents four virgins from the palace of Perfection, Storge, Aglaia, Euphantaste, and Apheleia. He interprets their devices, and presents on their behalf a crystal, in which Cynthia sees her own image. In v. 3 Cynthia discusses the mask with Criticus and Arete. In v. 4 enters 'the second masque'. Mercury presents and interprets the four sons of Eutaxia, who are Eucosmos, Eupathes, Eutolmos, and Eucolos. In iv. 5 'the masques joyne'. They dance the first, second, and third 'straine', while Cupid and Mercury converse, outside the _cadre_ of the mask. The dancers do not proceed to 'take out' spectators, but that is presumably because they are interrupted by Cynthia, who bids them unmask and administers her reproof.

The masks inserted in plays are rarely described with anything like the fullness of _Cynthia's Revels_, although there is a fair amount of detail in _The Maid's Tragedy_ and a somewhat less amount in _Your Five Gallants_ and in _No Wit, no Help, like a Woman's_. It must be borne in mind that the main action of a mask was mute, and that the stage directions of the printed texts are not intended to be descriptive. Moreover, the structural place of the mask in a plot often leads, as in _Cynthia's Revels_, to its abrupt termination. The disguises cover an intrigue of murder (_2 Antonio and Mellida_, _Revenger's Tragedy_) or of robbery (_A Mad World, my Masters_), or of elopement (_A Woman is a Weathercock_). Or a quarrel breaks out (_Dutch Courtesan_), or a masker is discovered to be dead (_Satiromastix_). As a rule, too, the presenters' speeches are omitted or cut short, since it is spectacle, and not mere dialogue, that is required.[615] Nevertheless, in its main features, the dramatized mask confirms what we know of the mask from other sources. It has its dancers, its presenters, its torch-bearers, and its music.[616] _Your Five Gallants_ adds 'shield boys' to carry the 'devices'. When the performers have finished their measures, they generally take out the ladies. At the end they unmask, 'honour' the guests (_A Women is a Weathercock_), and depart, or proceed to a banquet. And in some interesting points the dramatized mask supplements other information. To begin with, it is a simpler type of mask than is represented by the full Jacobean descriptions. For obvious reasons architectural pageantry could hardly be introduced. In _The Maid's Tragedy_ there is a rock, in _Satiromastix_ a chair; in _May Day_ Cupid 'descends', a feat, as already noted, well within the compass of an ordinary theatre. And that is about all. You get the mask as it was practised at Elizabeth's court, rather than at that of James. Then there are sometimes subsidiary scenes, which throw light upon aspects of the mask, not much dwelt on in the Jacobean descriptions. Often there is a scene of preparation, when the 'maskery' is planned, and a 'device', 'imprezza', or 'mott' ordered of the painter, or 'a few tinsel coats' of the vizard-maker (_1 Antonio and Mellida_, _Insatiate Countess_, _A Mad World, my Masters_, _Your Five Gallants_, _A Woman is a Weathercock_). Or there is a scene of bustle, when a 'state' and canopy are set up in the 'presence' (_Satiromastix_) and room is made for the dancers, either by the cry of 'A hall, a hall!' (_Romeo and Juliet_, _May Day_) or by the more violent ministrations of the torch-bearers (_A Woman is a Weathercock_) or of court officials. Thus in _The Maid's Tragedy_ the mask is preluded by the activities of Calianax, the lord chamberlain, who 'would run raging among them, and break a dozen wiser heads than his own in the twinkling of an eye', and of Diagoras the gentleman usher, who is keeping the doors against the impatient crowd without, and placing the ladies, all except those who come in 'the king's troop', in a gallery 'above'. There is a similar scene in Beaumont and Fletcher's _Four Plays in One_, a piece which consists of three short playlets, divided by 'triumphs' or _intermedii_, and concluded by a mask. This may be regarded as an experiment, in which the influence of the mask-tradition has exceptionally modified the typical structure of the drama. Nor does it stand quite alone. Peele's _Arraignment of Paris_ is of course spectacular throughout, and the last scene, in which the golden apple is handed to Elizabeth, is clearly, in its recognition of the audience, a divergence from the normal detachment of the drama.[617] Perhaps the same may be said of the epithalamic end of _A Midsummer-Night's Dream_, but as a rule the element of mask remains an episode, and does not dominate the play which admits it.

The debt of the mask to the play may be traced in the increased skill in which the later masks are arranged around a 'device' or dramatic idea. The mask had had its presenters as far back as Lydgate. Even in a learned court, the more recondite forms of allegory or mythology sometimes require explanation. The maskers proper seem to have been traditionally mum and therefore unable to explain themselves. Let us remember that they were not professional actors, but English men and women of good birth and breeding, and that therefore their limbs could more easily be trained than their wits and voices. If explanation was required, it must be given in an introductory speech by a subsidiary performer. Such a spokesman seems to have been known to the Elizabethan Revels as a 'truchman' or interpreter.[618] In addition to his function of elucidation he became the natural vehicle of whatever compliment was to be paid by the mask, and when Arthur Throgmorton wished to turn the heart of Elizabeth in 1595, we find him undertaking the part himself. The Elizabethan truchmen do not seem to have got much beyond formal speeches, and the child dressed as Mercury or Cupid became rather _banal_ through much repetition. If anything more dramatic was attempted, either through the presenters, or by dividing the dancers into a double mask, it was apt to be based upon the mediaeval idea of an assault. In the device for the abortive masks of 1562 the presenters were to do most of the fighting. In 1559, on the other hand, it was successive bands of maskers that rifled and rescued the Queen's maids. How far the mask of Diana and Actaeon in the following winter took a dramatic form we do not know. The development of the mask on dramatic lines seems to have been a slow business. Even Jonson, in _Cynthia's Revels_, has not got beyond Cupid and Mercury and the formal speeches. On the other hand, the Gray's Inn mask, which preceded _Cynthia's Revels_ by some years, and nearly all the Jacobean masks, especially Jonson's, show a marked progress in this respect. A dramatic idea is nearly always dominant, and there is ingenuity in grouping the fixed elements of the mask about it. A comparison between Gascoigne's treatment of a wedding mask in 1572 and Jonson's in 1608 may serve to illustrate this. Gascoigne's maskers are Montagues of Italy, who have been driven by a storm to the shores of England, and take the opportunity to visit their English kinsmen, in whose house the wedding happens to be taking place. The idea is not without point, but it is all expounded in a single and inevitably tedious speech by the truchman, during which the dancers must remain motionless. When Jonson has to celebrate the wedding of James Ramsay and Elizabeth Radcliffe in 1608 he proceeds very differently. Even the curtain introduces the hymeneal theme with its graceful symbolism of a red cliff. From the top of this Venus descends with her Graces. She is in search of her son, and bids the Graces ask whether he is concealed in the eyes or between the swelling breasts of the ladies in the audience. The Graces sing their appeal for the discovery of 'Venus' runaway'. Cupid now emerges, with a train of Joci and Risus, each bearing two torches, who dance a dance of triumph. Venus captures Cupid, and demands the cause of his jubilation. He slips away, but the explanation is given by Hymen, in a speech of flattery to the King on the 'state', to the bridegroom who saved the King's life, and to the maid of the Red Cliff, who is the bride. Hymen is followed by Vulcan, who splits the cliff, and discloses a concave fashioned by his art, in which sit the maskers. They are the twelve Signs of the Zodiac, to each of whom is assigned some influence upon marriage. They advance and dance their measures, while Vulcan's attendants, the Cyclopes, Brontes and Steropes, beat time with their sledges, and in the pauses of the dancing the musicians, dressed as priests of Hymen, sing the verses of an epithalamion. How neatly it is all done! The maskers, the presenters, the torch-bearers, the musicians, all have their place in the scheme, and contribute towards the complimenting of the bridal pair.

It would perhaps be difficult to say how far the approximation to drama in the Jacobean masks was due to the subconscious mental processes of mask poets who were themselves playwrights, and how far to a deliberate intention to combine two arts.[619] As a rule it is safe to credit Jonson, at least, with fully conscious artistry. And here too the model set by Baldassarino's _Balet Comique_ must not be neglected. The printed description of this contains a preface, in which Baldassarino justifies his use of the term 'comique' on the ground that he has arranged his 'balet' in acts and scenes like a comedy, and claims to be an innovator in this interweaving of poetry with the dance, to which 'le premier tiltre et honneur' are still left. The Jacobean poets did not essay a treatment by acts and scenes, which indeed has no great significance even in the _Balet Comique_. But Baldassarino's main idea, of the inhibition of the dance by the magic of Circe until the gods come to the rescue, may fairly be regarded as responsible for the several episodes of disenchantment or transformation which recur in the work of his successors.[620]

Jonson's mask for the Ramsay-Radcliffe wedding in 1608 represents a stage of importance in the evolution of the dramatic form. The entry of the maskers is preluded by a dance of the torch-bearing Joci and Risus. In describing his _Mask of Queens_ of the following year, Jonson says, 'And because her majesty (best knowing that a principal part of life in these spectacles lay in their variety) had commanded me to think on some dance, or shew, that might precede hers, and have the place of a foil, or false masque, I was careful to decline, not only from others, but mine own steps in that kind, since the last year, I had an antimasque of boys; and therefore now devised that twelve women, in the habit of hags or witches, sustaining the persons of Ignorance, Suspicion, Credulity, &c., the opposites to good Fame, should fill that part, not as a masque, but a spectacle of strangeness, producing multiplicity of gesture, and not unaptly sorting with the current and whole fall of the device'. I am not quite sure what Jonson intends by the distinction here drawn between a 'masque' and a 'spectacle', for in fact the Hags dance 'a magical dance full of preposterous change and gesticulation', which is interrupted by a burst of loud music and an alteration in the face of the scene, heralding the introduction of the Queens in the House of Fame. However this may be, Jonson's innovation, with its obvious advantages of added variety, must have been immediately successful, for in practically all subsequent examples of the period the antimask appears as a fixed element in the scheme, preceding and setting off what Beaumont calls the 'maine' mask, and usually divided from it by a change of scene.[621] There are some slight further elaborations to record. In _Oberon_, in the _Lords' Mask_, and in _Chapman's Mask_, the antimask is followed by a dance of torch-bearers, to which also Chapman gives the name of 'antimask'. _Beaumont's Mask_, the _Mask of Squires_, _Mercury Vindicated_, and _Browne's Mask_ have each two regular antimasks, and in the _Mask of Squires_ the second antimask is interpolated in the middle of the dances of the main mask. There is only one antimask in _The Twelve Months_, but two dances are assigned to it. The _Mask of Flowers_ has, besides the antimask 'of dances', a preliminary antimask 'of song'. The name 'antimask' has given some trouble. Jonson's references to 'a foil, or false masque' and to 'opposites' suggest clearly enough that he used the prefix 'anti' to indicate an antithesis or contrast. But in _Tethys' Festival_ Daniel uses the form 'antemasque', and this spelling, probably due to a misunderstanding by the worthy Daniel of the point of the innovation, recurs in _Chapman's Mask_ and in _The Twelve Months_.[622] The _Mask of Flowers_, again, affords a third variation, in 'anticke-maske', and this also, I think, _pace_ Dr. Brotanek, must have its origin in a misunderstanding.[623] An 'antic' dance is a grotesque dance, and this epithet is often applied to the personages of the antimasks and their evolutions, from the _Haddington Mask_ onwards, since the characteristic antithesis which the antimask renders possible is precisely the antithesis between the grotesque prelude and the splendour of the main mask that follows.[624] I want to emphasize the point that this element of contrast introduced by the juxtaposition of mask and antimask is analogous to what critics have always regarded as a special feature of the Elizabethan, and particularly the Shakespearian drama, the juxtaposition of comedy and tragedy, either in the form of what is called tragicomedy, or by the inclusion of scenes of 'comic relief' in tragedy proper. It is perhaps worth noting that in the French masks of 1610 and 1612 printed by Lacroix we find side by side with the 'grand ballet' elements variously described as the 'première et plaisante entrée' (1610) and 'la bouffonnerie' (1612), which appear to serve just the same purpose as the English antimask.[625] But, of course, I do not mean to suggest that either in France or in England the grotesque made its way into the mask for the first time during the seventeenth century. The clowns, mariners, 'wodwoses' and so forth of the earlier Elizabethan revels must have lent themselves to humorous treatment, and indeed mirth has at all times been of the essence of revels. There is some reason to think that a traditional form of grotesque mask at court was the morris. This is of course a familiar type of folk-dance, and may owe its Tudor name to the _moresche_, which were dances introduced as _intermedii_ into Italian plays.[626]

The spectacular and literary elaboration of the Jacobean mask must not be allowed to blind our eyes to the fact that after all it was not a dramatic illusion but a choregraphic compliment which remained the central purpose of the entertainment. Scenery and speech and song occupy perhaps a disproportionate share of the attention of the poets who, to their own glorification and that of the architects, wrote the descriptions; but the greater part of the considerable number of hours during which the mask lasted was devoted to the actual dancing. And the dancing involved an intimacy, and not a detachment, in the relation between performers and spectators. It is true that some of the traditional features which accompanied the mask, when court ceremonial first took it up from folk custom, tended under the new conditions to pass into the state of survivals. Thus the torch-bearers, whether or not their burning brands represent some original element of ritual in the folk festival, were certainly _de rigueur_ as a concomitant of the mask during the sixteenth century. They had two clear functions. They provided, in dim halls, the abundance of light which was so necessary to give full value to the bright stuffs and metallic spangles worn by the dancers. And their own costumes, harmonized or contrasting with those of the dancers, afforded the variety of interest which otherwise, while the presenters were still limited to one or two 'truchmen', might have been lacking. They were always kept in strict subordination to the maskers proper. They were their attendants; Hinds in a mask of Clowns, Almains in a mask of Swart Rutters, Moorish friars in a mask of Moors. Their garments were inferior, taffeta, as against satin or cloth of gold. When George Ferrers, as Lord of Misrule in 1552, had occasion to complain of the apparel furnished by the Master of the Revels for his councillors, he wrote that the gentlemen who were to take the parts 'wolde not be seen in London so torchebererlyke disgysed for asmoche as they ar worthe or hope to be worthe'.[627] And when the measures began, they had little to do, but to stand and look on.[628] In the seventeenth century they were not so indispensable, either for illumination, which could be better supplied by fixed lights upon the scene, or for variety.[629] And with the multiplication of other purposes the room which they took up could ill be spared. In _Tethys' Festival_, given exceptionally during the heat of summer, there were no torch-bearers, on the ground that 'they would have pestered the roome, which the season would not well permit'. And therewith begins a tendency either, as already indicated, to merge them in the antimask, or to omit them altogether.[630] The vizard again and the ceremonial unvizarding at the end of the performance, although usual, and of course essential parts of the tradition, do not appear to have been quite invariable under James I.[631] As early as the _Mask of Blackness_ in 1605, blackened faces and arms were substituted, which, says a contemporary writer, were 'disguise sufficient' and an 'ugly sight', and the experiment was not repeated. I do not know that for any historic period there is evidence that the maskers regularly brought gifts with them, although they sometimes did, and one may suspect that such gifts represented the 'luck' of the primitive custom. A jewel was all very well when Arthur Throgmorton wanted to use a mask as a medium for recovering the lost favour of Elizabeth.[632] But it may be assumed that Elizabeth would think it a useless expense, when a mask was only conventionally a surprise visit, and was really designed on her own instructions in her own Office of the Revels. And although James did on one occasion pay no less than £40,000 for the jewel used in the mask of Indian and Chinese Knights, this was in the first year of his reign, when his predecessor's hoarded wealth was still there for the lavishing, and the special purpose was to be served of impressing Henri IV through his diplomatic representative.[633] When there were gifts, they were as a rule trifling, and incidental to the 'device' of the mask. The abortive scheme of 1562 provides for a grandguard and a sword and girdle. Elizabeth got on one occasion flowers of silk and gold, signifying victory, peace, and plenty; on another snowballs of lamb's wool sweetened with rose-water in a mask of Janus; on a third looking-glasses with posies inscribed on them in a mask of Pedlars. In _The Twelve Goddesses_ the maskers presented their emblems, and Sibylla laid them in the temple. In the _Mask of Blackness_ the Daughters of Niger presented their fans. In _Tethys' Festival_ there were a trident for James and a sword, worth 20,000 crowns, and a scarf for Henry. In the _Mask of Squires_ Anne plucked a bough from a golden tree, wherewith to disenchant the Knights. Often the gifts were represented by the merely conventional offering of a copy of verses, or of shields bearing _imprese_ or painted allegorical devices, such as were also brought by the runners in tilts.[634] These sometimes required interpretation and led to some preliminary 'commoning' with the guests of honour. Interchanges of wit at this stage between Elizabeth and Mary Fitton in 1600 and James and Philip Herbert in 1604 are upon record. But of course the chief 'commoning' was when the maskers 'took out' the principal spectators of the opposite sex to dance. Whether the Jacobean maskers kissed the ladies whom they took out I do not know, but this was the earlier custom.[635] At any rate the 'taking out' is the critical moment of intimacy between performers and spectators in the mask, and serves, even more than the gifts and even more than the personal compliments in theme and speech, to distinguish it from the drama.[636] The period of 'intermixed' dancing (_Hymenaei_), which it introduced, served as a sequel to the greater part of the mask proper, and is sometimes described as 'the revels' (_Love Freed_; _Twelve Months_). More precisely, the order of the dancing, subject to minor variations, was as follows. After the dialogue of presentation and the antimask, the maskers entered and began a series of 'masque dances' (_Oberon_; _Love Freed_), 'changes' (_Malecontent_; _Insatiate Countess_), or 'strains' (_Hymenaei_; _Cynthia's Revels_; _A Woman is a Weathercock_). These are also called the 'single' dances, to distinguish them from the 'intermixed' dances (_Blackness_) or more usually and simply, the maskers 'own' dances or the 'new' dances. Sometimes the 'first' dance is distinguished from the 'main' dance (_Twelve Months_; _Lords' Mask_; _Mercury Vindicated_; _Golden Age_). After one, two, or three 'new' dances, the maskers 'dissolved' (_Hymenaei_) and 'took out' for the 'revels'. Finally they gathered again for their 'going off' (_Twelve Months_), the 'last', 'parting', 'departing' or 'retiring' dance, which sometimes took them 'into the work' (_Oberon_). If they did not dance back 'into the work', they probably unmasked at this stage, after a ceremonial reverence to the company, known as the 'honour' (_Hay Mask_; _Your Five Gallants_; _A Woman is a Weathercock_).[637] The revels consisted partly of the solemn figured dances known as 'measures', partly of 'lighter' dances (_Hay Mask_). Those most often mentioned are the galliard, coranto, and lavolta; others were the brawl (_Browne's Mask_), duretto (_Beaumont's Mask_; _Mask of Flowers_), and morasco (_Mask of Flowers_).[638] Of course, only 'ordinary' measures (_Indian and Chinese Knights_) and familiar court dances were available for the revels. The mask dances proper, on the other hand, as the epithet 'new' indicates, were specially designed and carefully learnt for each occasion. They appear to have always been 'measures'. Baldassarino regards 'meslanges geometriques' as being of the essence of the mask. The dances were a technical matter, with which the poets were not much concerned, and they do not as a rule attempt any notation, or even detailed description of the figures. An occasional literary touch was, however, to their fancy. In _Hymenaei_ some of the figures were 'formed into letters very signifying to the name of the bridegroom', and again in the _Mask of Queens_ one of the dances was 'graphically disposed into letters, and honouring the name of the most sweet and ingenious Prince, Charles, Duke of York'. These graphic dances, which Bacon deprecates, were also used in the French _Ballet de Monseigneur le Duc de Vandosme_ of 1610.[639]