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Dancing in the Masque

The English court masque evolved from entertainments including the mumming or momerie, a silent 'procession of masked persons, who paraded the streets and entered into their neighbours' houses to dance or play a game of dice called mumchance,'¹⁴ and the disguising, which consisted of 'the entry of one or more groups of disguised persons (usually of two groups, one of men and the other of women) who danced first alone, and then together.'¹⁵ Later disguisings (towards the end of Henry VIII's reign) added pageant floats for the dancers' entrance and exit, gifts for the host, and speeches to explain the disguisers' costumes and presence. The masque further developed these elements, standardising their structure, and unifying them with an overarching plot.

One of the defining characteristics of the court masque was its singularity. Each masque, created for a particular occasion, was only performed once. If the king or noble sponsor liked it tremendously, it might be requested again, but ordinarily a masque was a unique, onetime event.¹⁶ Another noteworthy aspect was its official audience. While many members of the court might attend a masque, the text and plot were specifically addressed to the monarch, royal family, or honoured guests.

The fully developed court masque had three parts: the antimasque, the main masque, and the Revels. In the antimasque, professional actors attired as witches, rustics, or objects like bottles or trees, portrayed negative abstractions like ignorance and gluttony through comic speeches and dances. A sudden event such as a loud burst of music interrupted their festivities, and dispelling them to make way for the main masque. Then elaborately costumed noble masquers entered in a procession of fanciful cars and floats. They danced several choreographed dances interspersed with songs and speeches by professional musicians and actors. Then the masquers descended from the stage and invited audience members to join in dancing the Revels. The Revels was comprised of a set of eight dances called the Measures or the Old Measures,¹⁷ which were followed by athletic, improvised dances such as galliards and corantos.¹⁸ After the Revels, a speech or song called the masquers back, they returned to their vehicles, and the procession passed offstage.¹⁹

Stephen Orgel's analysis of the Stuart masque in The Jonsonian Masque (1967) and The Illusion of Power: Political Theater in the English Renaissance (1975) remains the dominant interpretation of the court masque's significance. Orgel explores the power dynamics of the masque, the political implications of attendance and participation, and the allegorical significance of plots and texts. But as Inga-Stina Ewbank points out in 'A Retrospective View of Masque Criticism,' Orgel 'tends to make too rigid a separation of "drama" and "theater," implying that dramatic moments must be verbal.'²⁰ This tendency directs Orgel's attention away from the dancing in the masque and towards its text, despite the general recognition that to attendees at a court masque, the dancing was of greater interest and importance.²¹ It is also one of the reasons why the cultural significance of the dancers has gone unnoticed.

As mentioned above, there were three groups of dancers in the court masque: professional non-elite performers in the antimasque, noble masquers in the main masque, and a combination of noble masquers and noble spectators in the Revels. The professional performers often came from a group more commonly associated with the theatre, the players of the King's Men and other companies with royal or noble patronage. As E. K. Chambers quotes in The Elizabethan Stage, 'I herein imitate the most courtly revellings; for if Lords be in the grand masque, in the antimasque are players' (Dekker His Dream, 1620, in H & S, iii. 7)²² The dancing-masters paid for making dances for masques, probably also danced in them; 'the dance-masters Thomas Giles and Jerome Heron certainly played the Cyclopes in the Haddington Mask, and Giles also played Thamesis in the Mask of Beauty.'²³ In the main masque, not just nobles but often royalty danced; in 1611, Henry Prince of Wales starred in the mask Oberon, The Fairy Prince, while his mother, Queen Anne, danced with her ladies in Love Freed from Ignorance and Folly.²⁴ For the Revels, foreign ambassadors as well as important members of the court were often honoured by being asked to dance .²⁵

There was another group of performers in the masque, however, that rarely receive attention. The antimasque with its professional actor/dancers was officially introduced in 1609 by Ben Jonson in the Masque of Queens, but that was not the first time non-elites had danced in court masques. In 'Torchbearers in the English masque' Anne Daye points out that in Jonson's The Haddington Masque (1608), twelve presumably non-noble boys danced a 'subtle capricious dance to as odd a music, each of them bearing two torches, and nodding with their antic faces, with other variety of ridiculous gesture.'²⁶ This description sounds a good deal like the rustic and antic dancing of the antimasque although the boys escort Cupid and are costumes to represent 'the sports and pretty lightness that accompany Love.'²⁷ This would support the simple division of the antimasque as the realm of professional actor/dancers and the main masque and revels as the province of nobility.

However, Daye proposes that these young torchbearers may have included some of the boys who bore torches in Jonson's Masque of Beauty (1608), which featured an escort for the masquers of 'a multitude of Cupids (chosen out of the best and most ingenious youth of the kingdom, noble and others) that were the torch-bearers, and all armed with bows, quivers, wings and other ensigns of love.'²⁸ She hypothesizes that this mixing of nobles and non-nobles 'was perhaps acceptable because they were not adults.'²⁹ I would also add that this non-noble portrayal of noble, classical figures was also different than in later antimasques where professional actor/dancers represented ignoble characters like witches or raucous classical figures such as satyrs. In the Masque of Beauty, non-noble boys as well as noble could portray cupids.

Even if their youth enables them to interact more freely within the court hierarchy, these youthful torchbearers bridge the traditional boundaries between elite and non-elite participation in the masque. Moreover, if some of the same boys appeared as the dancing torchbearers in The Haddington Masque, it implies that they possessed both the noble demeanour and movements to blend in with the noble youths as well as the technical skills of the professional performer. (Two Italian torch dances published by Cesare Negri in Le gratie d'amore, for example, involve jumps, interweaving chains, and tight formations all holding at least one torch, sometimes burning at both ends.³⁰) This combination of courtly and professional aspects of dancing exemplifies the mixing of popular and elite cultural elements rampant in Early Modern England, even in an entertainment as closely associated with the court as the court masque.

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Footnotes

¹⁴ Welsford, The Court Masque: A Study in the Relationship between Poetry & The Revels (1962), p. 31.
ibid., p. 122.
¹⁵ Ibid., p. 122.
¹⁶ R. Adams, 'The Staging of Jonson's Plays and Masques' in R. Adams (ed.) Ben Jonson's Plays and Masques (1979), p. 315.
¹⁷ The Quadrian Pavin, Turkeyloney, The Earl of Essex Measure, Tinternell, The Old Almain, The Queens Almain, Madam Cicilia Almain, The Black Almain.
¹⁸ Wilson "Dancing in the Inns of Court", pp. 13-14.
¹⁹ Welsford, The Court Masque.
²⁰ I. Ewbank, '"The Eloquence of Masques" A Retrospective View of Masque Criticism' in S. Schoenbaum (ed.) Renaissance Drama: Essays Principally on Masques and Entertainments, New Series I (1968), p. 321.
²¹ ibid., p. 307.
²² Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, Vol. I (1923), p. 201.
²³ ibid., p. 200.
²⁴ M. S. Steele, Plays & Masques at Court During the Reigns of Elizabeth, James and Charles (1926, 1968), p. 181.
²⁵ Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, Vol. I (1923), p. 156.
²⁶ A. Daye, 'Torchbears in the English masque' in Early Music, Vol. 26, No. 2 (May 1998), p. 253.
²⁷ Ibid.
²⁸ Ibid.
²⁹ Ibid.
³⁰ Ibid., p. 260.

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