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Costume for a Knight, by Inigo Jones: the plumed helmet, the "heroic torso" in armour and other conventions were still employed for opera seria in the 18th century.

The masque was a form of festive courtly entertainment that flourished in 16th- and early 17th-century Europe, though it was developed earlier in Italy, in forms including the intermedio (a public version of the masque was the pageant). A masque involved music and dancing, singing and acting, within an elaborate stage design, in which the architectural framing and costumes might be designed by a renowned architect, to present a deferential allegory flattering to the patron. Professional actors and musicians were hired for the speaking and singing parts. Often, the masquers who did not speak or sing were courtiers: King James I's queen consort, Anne of Denmark, frequently danced with her ladies in masques between 1603 and 1611, and Henry VIII and Charles I performed in the masques at their courts. In the tradition of masque, Louis XIV danced in ballets at Versailles with music by Jean-Baptiste Lully.[1]








In England, Tudor court masques developed from earlier guisings, where a masked allegorical figure would appear and address the assembled company—providing a theme for the occasion—with musical accompaniment; masques at Elizabeth's court emphasized the concord and unity between Queen and Kingdom. A descriptive narrative of a processional masque is the masque of the Seven Deadly Sins in Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene (Book i, Canto IV). A particularly elaborate masque, performed over the course of two weeks for Queen Elizabeth, is described in the 1821 novel Kenilworth, by Sir Walter Scott. Later, in the court of James I, narrative elements of the masque became more significant. Plots were often on classical or allegorical themes, glorifying the royal or noble sponsor. At the end, the audience would join with the actors in a final dance. Ben Jonson wrote a number of masques with stage design by Inigo Jones. Their works are usually thought of as the most significant in the form. Sir Philip Sidney also wrote masques.



By the time of the English Restoration (1660), the masque was passé, but the English semi-opera which developed in the latter part of the 17th century, a form in which John Dryden and Henry Purcell collaborated, borrows some elements from the masque and further elements from the contemporary courtly French opera of Jean-Baptiste Lully.

in the 18th-century masques were even less frequently staged. "Rule, Britannia!" started out as part of Alfred, a masque about Alfred the Great co-written by James Thomson and David Mallet with music by Thomas Arne which was first performed at Cliveden, country house of Frederick, Prince of Wales. Performed to celebrate the third birthday of Frederick's daughter Augusta, it remains among the best-known British patriotic songs up to the present, while the masque of which it was originally part is only remembered by specialist historians.


Of all the arts of the Renaissance, the masque is the artistic form most alien to audiences today.[citation needed] The most outstanding humanists, poets and artists of the day, in the full intensity of their creative powers, devoted themselves to producing masques; and until the Puritans closed the English theatres in 1642, the masque was the highest artform in England. But because of its ephemeral nature, not a lot of documentation related to masques remains, and much of what is said about the production and enjoyment of masques is still part speculation.

Later Masques[edit]

While the masque was no longer as popular as it was at its height in the 17th Century, there are many later examples of the masque. During the late 17th century, English semi-operas by composers such as Henry Purcell had masque scenes inset between the acts of the play proper. In the 18th century, William Boyce and Thomas Arne, among other composers, continued to utilize the masque genre mostly as an occasional piece, and the genre became increasingly associated with patriotic topics. There are isolated examples throughout the first half of the 19th century.

With the renaissance of English musical composition during the late 19th and early 20th century (the so-called English Musical Renaissance), English composers turned to the masque as a way of connecting to a genuinely English musical-dramatic form in their attempts to build a historically-informed national musical style for England. Examples include those by Arthur Sullivan, George Macfarren, and even Edward Elgar, whose imperialistic Crown of India was the central feature at the London Coliseum in 1912. Masques also became common as scenes in operettas and musical theatre works set during the Elizabethan period.

In the 20th century, Ralph Vaughan Williams wrote several masques, including his masterpiece in the genre, Job, a masque for dancing which premiered in 1930, although the work is closer to a ballet than a masque as it was originally understood. His designating it a masque was to indicate that the modern choreography typical when he wrote the piece would not be suitable.

Constant Lambert also wrote a piece he called a masque, Summer's Last Will and Testament, for orchestra, chorus and baritone. His title he took from Thomas Nash, whose masque[3] was probably first presented before the Archbishop of Canterbury, perhaps at his London seat, Lambeth Palace, in 1592.

List of notable masques[edit]


  1. ^ 'History of the Masque Genre'
  2. ^ David Bevington and Peter Holbrook, editors, The Politics of the Stuart Court Masque 1998 ISBN 0-521-59436-7).
  3. ^ It was a "comedy" when it was printed, in 1600 as A Pleasant Comedie, call'd Summers Last will and Testament, but, as a character announces, "nay, 'tis no Play neither, but a show." With Nash's stage direction "Enter Summer, leaning on Autumn's and Winter's shoulders, and attended on with a train of Satyrs and wood-Nymphs, singing: Vertumnus also following him" we are recognizably in the world of Masque.



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