The accession of James Stuart (1603-25) to the English throne in 1603 marked a significant upswing for court culture. The new king quickly established an expectation that winter; from Christmas to just before Lent should be a time of lavish celebration. Key to the festivities was the performance of at least one masque, several plays and much banqueting.
Masques were elaborate performances involving music, verse, a series of choreographed dances, luxurious costumes, spectacular scenery and special effects. At the end of the masque the performers would invite audience members to join in the dancing, which could last for several hours and often ended in scenes of outrageous drunken behaviour. Masques were staged in the banqueting halls of royal palaces and sometimes in the great halls of aristocratic households.
These court entertainments were typically presented on Twelfth Night, which was the culmination of the Christmas revels, but might also take place on New Year’s Day, Candlemas and Shrove Tuesday. The court masque was often used to celebrate royal occasions such as a birth or wedding. The sets and costumes were usually designed by Inigo Jones, the court architect. Under James I and Charles I (1625-49), Jones collaborated with the playwright Ben Jonson on a series of masques that were very grand and costly.
Although masques can be traced back through the Tudor courts to Henry VIII (1509-47), it is during James I’s reign that they really evolved as a form of performance. Whereas Elizabeth I’s entertainments were relatively modest, Stuart masques were very elaborate spectacles, involving sumptuous scenic display and glittering costumes, as well as music provided by consorts of lutes, viols, and wind instruments. Professional actors and singers were hired to perform the written text. These masques were high-profile events and it was considered an honour to be invited to perform in them. Members of the nobility could perform in the masques, disguised in fanciful costumes, and were expected to appear stately and elegant. Members of the royal family often danced in the masques too; although the King himself preferred to watch. His queen, Anne of Denmark (1574-1619), or Anna of Denmark, as she preferred to be known, appeared in many, as did their children, the future Charles I and his elder brother Henry (who died in 1612 aged 18).
Design and visual symbols played an important role in masques. Masque imagery tended to be drawn from classical sources, with nobles and royalty often playing mythological gods or historical figures. In Oberon, a masque written in 1611 by Ben Jonson for the 16-year-old Prince Henry, the first actors to appear were a group of satyrs representing the forces of disorder. They danced and leapt around a rocky landscape designed by Inigo Jones, until the rocks themselves parted to reveal the ‘bright and glorious’ palace of Oberon, king of the fairies, who went onto banish the threat to the realm and restore order.
Characters such as the satyrs were known as ‘anti-masquers’ and were played by professional actors – in this case, the King’s Men, William Shakespeare’s company. Prince Henry performed the part of Oberon, and he and his men were dressed in ‘short scarlet hose and white brodequins full of silver spangles coming half way to the calf’. The performance also featured female masquers who played the parts of fairies.
The fairy costume was fairly revealing, with the masquer’s breasts barely covered by gauzy material and only supported by a corset. This was not unusual in the Jacobean masque. While female performers were often limited to non-speaking parts, they often used costume and make-up as an alternative form of expression. In this way women could challenge accepted gender roles and hierarchies, and intervene in court politics.
Queen Anna herself used this form of expression in 1605 when she commissioned and performed in Jonson’s Masque of Blackness at Whitehall. This took place in the old banqueting house of Elizabeth I. An account of the event in a letter from courtier Sir Dudley Carleton describes Anna and her ladies as they danced in the masque: ‘Their Apparell was rich, but too light and Curtizan-like for such great ones’. He also explains that ‘their Faces, and Arms up to the Elbows, were painted black, which was Disguise sufficient, for they were hard to be known’. To our eyes, this ‘blacking up’ is offensive and unacceptable, but Anna was using costume and face-paint in this masque to oppose the requirements of court decorum and to highlight the ineffectual nature of female containment.
The silks and other rich fabrics worn by aristocratic masquers in the 17th century would have been regarded as luxury goods and inordinately expensive. In 1609 the silks for the garments used in the Masque of Queens cost the very considerable sum of £1,984. The total budget for a masque – to include costumes, set designs, performers and creators’ fees – was typically around £2,000. So the silk bill for this particular masque signals the use of some very decadent costumes indeed. The luxurious garments worn by aristocratic masquers were one way in which the court sought to display its wealth to foreign ambassadors and diplomats, as well as to celebrate the monarch’s magnificence and power.
There can be no doubt that the extravagant costumes that featured in these grand spectacles served an important role in celebrating the power of the monarch and nobility, and that the masques were closely aligned with royal policy. It is therefore not surprising that masques continued as a popular form of court revel during the subsequent reign of Charles I and Queen Henrietta Maria (1609-1669), both of whom are known to have enjoyed wearing the costumes of Chief Masquers, until the outbreak of the Civil War.
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