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BRITISH CULTURAL STUDIES M. A.

Module: Aspects of British Art
Daniela Davidescu Brown

UNIT 4: The Lavishness of Court Masques

Worksheet
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Masques to Court Masques- general information

The function of court masques
Makers: Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones
Addressees and/or players
Staging a court masque (team work): Barriers at a Marriage by Ben Jonson

1. Masques to Court Masques- general information

At the beginning, masque was a festival or entertainment in which disguised participants offered gifts
to their host and then joined together for a ceremonial dance.
Structure: A typical old masque consisted of a band of costumed and masked persons of the same sex
who, accompanied by torchbearers, arrived at a social gathering to dance and converse with the
guests. The masque could be simply a procession of such persons introduced by a presenter, or it
could be an elaborately staged show in which a brief lyrical drama heralded the appearance of
masquers, who, having descended from their pageant to perform figured dances, reveled with the
guests.
The theme of the drama presented during a masque was usually mythological, allegorical, or
symbolic and was designed to be complimentary to the noble or royal host of the social gathering.
Origin: most likely originating in primitive religious rites and folk ceremonies known as disguising,
or mummery ( a mummer is an actor in a traditional masked mime or folk play) , masques evolved
into elaborate court spectacles that, under various names, entertained royalty throughout Europe.
Italy: In Renaissance Italy, under the patronage of Lorenzo de Medici, the intermezzo became
known for its emphasis on song, dance, scenery, and stage machinery. No matter how literary, the
intermezzi invariably included a dance or masked ball where the guests mingled with the actors.
England: During the 16th century the European continental masque traveled to Tudor England, where
it became a court entertainment played before the king. At court the pastoral was finding new
popularity, partly because it provided opportunities for spectacular scenery, and with it came the
revival of the masque--an allegorical entertainment combining poetry, music, dance, scenery, and
extravagant costumes. During the reign of Elizabeth I the masque provided a vehicle for compliments
paid to the queen at her palace and during her summer tours through England. Under the Stuarts the
masque reached its zenith when Ben Jonson became court poet. He endowed the form with great
literary as well as social force. In 1605 Jonson and the scene designer Inigo Jones produced the first
of many excellent masques, which they continued to collaborate on until 1634. Masque entertainment
in England ceased with the beginning of the English Civil Wars, and later revivals never equaled the
originals. When the Civil War broke out in 1642, the Puritans closed all the theatres and forbade
dramatic performances of any kind. This created an almost complete break in the acting tradition for
18 years until the Restoration of Charles II, after which the theatre flourished once more, though on
quite different lines. (2000 Encyclopdia Britannica)

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2. The function of court masques
Mythology was also used in the court masques both for entertainment and for the creation of the
regal image. Masques became highly elaborate and richly decorated royal plays in which professional
artists (in the antimasques) and courtiers (sometimes the king and queen themselves) played, danced,
sang the glorification of monarchical virtues.
They were entertaining, relaxing, challenging, but they also had a political touch: through their
financial and artistic display of royal power, and through their uttered message about the divine right
of the king, transmitted to both courtiers and especially foreign diplomats. It was a political
instrument of both national and international importance.
3. Makers: Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones
The texts of the masques were short, arranged in an allegorical or mythological setting by poets and
playwrights like George Chapman, (1560-1634)i Francis Beaumont (1584-1616)ii, Thomas Campion
(1567-1620)iii, Thomas Middleton (1580-1627)iv and mainly by Ben Jonson who, between 1605-1640,
provided 21 out of 33 important masques played at the court of James I and of Charles II. v They were
for the court and their distinguished guests, ambassadors and were performed mainly by the court in
the Banqueting House at Whitehall.
Short digression: It is interesting to notice that a rather more personal display of monarchical feeling
of love and worship was expressed by what is known to have been the Cavalier poets ( among them,
Ben Jonson and some of his followers: Richard Lovelace, John Suckling and Thomas Carew, plus
most of the above playwrights ). During the reign of Charles I their lyric poetry flourished promoting
complementary themes of love to their beloved and themes of love and loyalty to the king. Their code
is based on the ideal of peoples having a good life which, according to their view, was possible by the
constancy of the existing monarchy. The ideal meant several things:
a./ a conservative look [monarchy]
b./ a response to a social threat [most of them fought in the Civil War on the kings side],
c./ classical recollections
d./ love of a very English way of life [good food, good drinking, ardent love for a lady]
e./ a new blending of old ideas [ a more pagan perspective upon life, I would rather say, a more
hedonistic one combined with Christian elements].
This sudden juxtaposition of hedonistic enjoyment of the senses and the Christian layer is
rather metaphysical since it communicates a religious feeling through the language of the senses. The
same as in heaven, the king represents the guarantor of human happiness in a harmonious society. It is
interesting to notice the supremacy of the social and of the political by the moral dimension and the
cautioning of kings to moderate tastes, virtue and honour. These qualities to be refined and then
praised in the king are assimilated by the individual so that everybody in a kingdom can have the
capacity and preparedness to moderately but hedonistically enjoy good life.
But the most important and prolific writer of court masques was Ben Jonson (1573-1637).
Antimasque: He invented the antimasque the false masque, and the antic masque--and produced the
first in 1609. It took place before the main masque and concentrated on grotesque elements, and
provided a direct contrast to the elegance of the masque that followed. In later years the masque
developed into opera, and the antimasque became primarily a farce or pantomime. After Jonson's
retirement, masques lost their literary value and became mainly vehicles for spectacle. They might
have been a reminiscence of the wagon pageants structure with the lower part of the cart standing for
the space populated by fiendish creatures from Hell: the devils and the damned. The antimasques
counterbalanced the play by creating the conflict between untamed wild nature and the brilliant
refined palace of the ruler. Chaos standing for evil, and order symbolising good represented the two
spaces in opposition. In his nobility and generosity of spirit, the king as god or as some other divine
being or the noble virtuous aristocrat had the role of taming, civilising and controlling the chaotic
space and finally harmonising it

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As court poet, Ben Jonson collaborated with the architect and designer Inigo Jones (1573-1652) to
produce some of the finest examples of the masque. Having spent a few years in Italy, Jones was
greatly influenced by the Italian painted scenery and its use of machinery. On his return to England he
did much to bring scenic design up to date, introducing many innovations. Masques became even
more elaborate under Charles I, but in 1634 Jonson angrily withdrew his contribution when he saw
that the visual elements were completely overtaking the dramatic content.
Inigo Jones techniques:
a./ setting The picture below represents Inigo
Jones drawing of the stage setting for Oberon, the Fairy
Prince.vi
It is Oberons palace (in scene 2). It is interesting to
notice Inigo Jones creative tastes for stage settings: the
eclecticism of stylistic architectural details seems to build
up a rather Rococo spirit around this drawing one
hundred years earlier than its established appearance in
France. I am surprised by the combination of rockwork,
medieval castle ramparts and corner towers ending up in
baroque pinnacles, classical pediment above Roman arches, a Renaissance dome over the medieval
castle unit.
b./ costumes and figure drawings:

Inigo Jones- a creator of outward parts (the body) or of inward parts (the soul) ?

Vasaris influence on him: the concept of disegno: the tendency to assimilate the arts to each
other and to base them all on the discipline of figuration

Example: The figure below represents The Torchbearer: a Fiery Spirit and was conceived by
Inigo Jones for The Lords Masque. It is an example of costume drawings which combine imagination
with postures of other figures. In his article Inigo Jones as a Figurative Artist, John Peacock writes:
[it is ] Jones best known image, often reproduced, in the design for a Fiery
Spirit This is a composite of two figures from antique sculpture: one of two fauns
from a bas-relief and the Apollo Belvedere. The basic idea, with suggestions for the
costume, is provided by the faun, who is carrying a torch This figure is part of a
composition which represents a complex of interrelated movements, and it therefore
strains emphatically in one direction. Jones re-poses it with reference to the Apollo,
with its more moderate representation of movement, its stability as a free standing
figure and its authority as a classic masterpiece. The final form incorporates a conflict
between stability and motion This beautiful design demonstrates how Jones, along
the lines suggested by Vasari, cultivated maniera.vii

Costs: The complicated settings and machines devised by Inigo Jones (pulleys, cloud machines,
proscenium arches, perspective scenery) and the extraordinarily rich and extravagant costumes cost
immensely .
bills of 1000 to 3000 were common (Bacon is said to have paid 2000 from his own pocket)
enough money to buy a substantial country house. Specifications for individual costumes reveal a
lavishness of material and a care of design exceptional in every age. viii

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4. Addressees and players
Members of the court had thorough training in dancing, fencing, singing, instrumental music, and
courtly ceremonial. They were therefore well prepared to perform in the masques, even to take solo
parts and to appear in the chorus.
The new fashion of masque playing came from
abroad along with James Is wife, Ann of Denmark,
who enjoyed being the chief dancer in many of
them. She is responsible for the new immoderate
tastes of the English courtiers, for their love of
performances which somehow counterbalanced the
rigid ceremonies at the court.
Both Inigo Jones and Ben Jonson were
Platonists considering art as a mirror of the ideal
world, which, politically and artistically suited kings
James I and Charles I. Jones was the mechanic of
creating an illusionary realm on the stage, Jonson
provided the text which elevated the king to the
perfect status of all embodying virtues and
qualities.
He is the matter of virtue, and placd high.
His meditations, to his height, are even.
And all their issue is akin to heaven.
He is a god, oer kings; yet stoops he then
Nearest a man when he doth govern men.
Tis he that stays the time from turning old
And keeps the age up in a head of gold;
That in his own true circle still doth run
And hold his course, as certain as the sun.
(Ben Jonson, Oberon, the Fairy Prince)
The masque Oberon, the Fairy Prince was played at the Christmas festivities at Whitehall on 1
January 1611 for Prince Henry (the elder brother of Charles I who died young). Henry played the part
of Oberon before his father, king James I and Queen Anne. This masque holds onto the tradition of
medieval morality plays, on a different key and with a different message. It is an allegory debating on
the conflict between good and evil for mans soul which is saved in the end, but characters and
motivations are completely changed. Evil is not Satan or anything connected with him, evil is
anything and anybody who opposes the king or fails to understand his divine role and will not
aggrandise him. He is Gods representative on earth and is entitled to be honoured and worshipped.
Reaction: From a Protestant perspective, such means of entertainment must have looked like some
shameless immorality plays where the vanity of the king made him accept to mirror himself in such
heavenly characters.
5.Staging a court masque (team work) : Barriers at a Marriage by Ben Jonson
a./ costume designers ?
c./ setting?
d./ stage directors?
Glossary: proscenium or picture-frame stage is the most prevalent type of theater architecture in the
West. The word proscenium, used by the Romans, originally referred to the area in front of the stage.
Today, it refers to the wall with a large center opening that separates the audience from the stage. In

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the past the opening was called an arch or proscenium arch, but the shape of the opening is more
rectangular than oval. In this type of theater, the audience faces in the direction of the proscenium
opening and looks into the stage, which is framed by the opening. The auditorium floor slants
downward from the back toward the stage to provide greater visibility for the audience. Often at least
one balcony is above the auditorium floor, protruding about a quarter of the way over the main floor.
A curtain located just behind the proscenium opening hides or reveals the events taking place on
stage. The proscenium wall conceals the complicated stage machinery and lighting instruments
required by modern theater production.(Encarta 2000)

Ousby, Ian, ed. The Wordsworth Companion to English Literature. Ware: Wordsworth Editions Ltd. 1994, p.
166. To earn Jonsons commendation, Chapman probably wrote more masques than the single surviving Memorable
Masque of the Middle Temple and Lyncolnes Inn (1613)
ii

ibid., p. 68. Only seven or eight plays can be confidently attributed, in any significant part, to Beaumont. These

include Cupids Revenge (1611), The Scornful Lady (1613) and The Captain (1613).
iii

Ibid., p. 148. Thomas Campion was a poet and a musician and was educated at Cambridge. He was a writer of Latin

poetry and masques, but he is best known for his lute songs. Examples of masques: The Lord Hays Masque (1607), The
Lords Masque, The Somerset Masque (both performed in !613).
iv

ibid., 618. He published three volumes of verse by 1600 and wrote city comedies. His masterpiece is A Chaste Maid

in Cheapside (1611)
v

Rogers, Pat, ed. An Outline of English Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992, p. 155

vi

Ford, Boris, ed., op. cit., pp. 114-115

vii

Peacock, John. Inigo Jones as a Figurative Artist. Renaissance Bodies: the Human Figure in English Culture c.

1540-1660. Ed. Lucy Gent, Nigel Llewellyn. London: Reaktion Books, 1995, pp. 171-172
viii

Rogers, Pat, op. cit., p. 155