The New International Encyclopædia/Masque

MASQUE (Fr., mask), or MASK. A species of dramatic entertainment much in vogue in England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, so named from the masks (q.v.) which were originally worn in it. It was introduced during the reign of Henry VIII. in imitation of some of the Italian allegorical pageants of the period, and was at the same time a development of the festive processions of the city of London and of the royal progresses. Around the acted pageantry of the mythological and allegorical personages in these there grew up regular dramatic performances in which music and dancing were prominent and which were comparable to the ballets of the French Court. (See Ballet.) Masques were in their time the favorite form of private theatricals, though the elaborate and expensive style in which they were usually given limited them for the most part to the homes of the nobility and the Court. They were at their best in James I.'s day. Ben Jonson, above all, made the masque a thing of literary beauty, in which his classic learning and graceful fancy united to furnish royal amusement. As spectacles, masques were largely an affair of costume and of scenic design, to which the architect Inigo Jones lent his aid. The taste for this style of entertainment died away under Charles I.; yet to his time belongs Milton's Comus. In this, however, though it was made to be acted, the masque has become a literary form practically independent of actual presentation, and as such it has survived to our day. Consult: Evans, English Masques (London, 1897); Greg, A List of Masques, Pageants, etc., supplementary to a list of English Plays (London, 1902); Soergel, Die englischen Maskenspiele (Halle, 1882); Brotanek, Die englischen Maskenspiele (Vienna and Leipzig, 1902); Symonds, Shakespere's Predecessors in the English Drama (London, 1884); Ward, English Dramatic Literature (London, 1875).