Italian Influence on the English Court Masque

Abstract

ITALIAN INFLUENCE ON THE ENGLISH COURT MASQUE. The subject of this paper requires a word of explanation. During the course of research into the history of the English Masque, I found it necessary to give some attention to contemporary ltalian festivities, which I believed had influenced our court masques even more deeply than was commonly supposed. My anxiety to discover the extent and character of this influence was increased by a study of the designs for masque scenery by Inigo Jones, which are collected at Chatsworth and which I was enabled to examine and trace by the kind permission of the Duke of Devonshire. Many of these designs are of real delicacy and beauty, and the question arose whether they were genuine products of the imagination of our English architect. The general influence of the art of the ltalian Renaissance was obvious enough; were they not actually borrowed from the work of ltalian artists? This suspicion proved to be correct. I found that several of the designs were taken? either whole or in part?from the work of the Florentine artist Giulio Parigi, the master of the famous French engraver, Jacques Callot. Further, I found that the designs and libretti of many English masques, were borrowed from certain ltalian festivities which took place in the year 1608. These facts, of which, as far as I know, historians of the masque have hitherto been unaware, are of more than mere antiquarian interest. They do, I believe, throw valuable light on the character and develop? ment of the English court masque. The masque is sometimes treated as a rather unimportant subdivision of the drama; but it may almost be said to have been less closely related to dramatic literature than to music, dancing, painting and architecture. The nucleus of the whole performance was the arrival of magnificently disguised masquers, who first appeared carefully grouped in some gorgeous machine, set against an elaborate background; and then descended into the hall to dance new figured dances and to join in ordinary ball-room dancing with the spectators. There was just enough dramatic dialogue (spoken or chanted by professionals) to fornish a [75] ENID WELSFORD 395 motive for the appearance of the noble and silent masquers1. Grand spectacular effects and transformation scenes were generally considered to be far more important than consistent plot or good poetry. This English masque was closely related to various types of entertainment which were popular at the same period in France, Italy and elsewhere. From the fifteenth century onwards the pastimes of European aristocracies were largely aesthetic in character; poets, painters, musicians were all required for their preparation. At the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century, there was a tendency to shape this inchoate mass of revellings into a definite genre, which was intended to be a harmony of all the arts. The result of this attempt was the Italian Opera, the French Ballet de Cour, and the English Court Masque. In France and Italy this development was the result of conscious thought and effort; in England there was, as usual, very little deliberation and theorizing and the aesthetic development of the masque was chiefly due to the fact that a favourite court amusement was taken in hand by two great artists: the architect Inigo Jones and the poet Ben Jonson. This happened at the beginning of the Stuart period. In 1605 King James was entertained at Oxford by the performance of a tragedy, Ajax Flagellifer. Hoping to make their play unusually splendid, the Oxford men c hired one Mr Jones, a great traveller, who undertook to further them much, and furnish them with rare devices, but performed very little to that which was expected2.' He did however arrange for three changes of scene, worked by a system of revolving pillars, a device which he had taken from the Italian stage8. For the moment Inigo Jones may have disappointed the expectations of his countrymen; but in a very few years he had acquired a great reputation as a designer of scenery for the English court masques, and, no doubt, he owed his initial success very largely to his association with Ben Jonson. From 1605 to...