Introduction

This book focuses on the court masques of Ben Jonson, but the sheer number of these masques (there are twenty-eight) makes a selective discussion of them necessary, although I have tried to pick out those masques that seem to be particularly significant for a study of the genre’s development. My primary objective in this book is to chart the growth and demise of the antimasque in Jonson’s court entertainments, and to explore the way in which they respond to both his poetic aims and their historico-political conditions of production. I will suggest that the Jonsonian court entertainment develops into a dialectical investigation of contemporary affairs and is far more complex than the simple act of homage that it has sometimes been assumed to be. ¹ Two distinctive aspects of this book are its broadly chronological approach and an acute consciousness of the court entertainment as a fundamentally hybrid form. This diachronic emphasis is occasioned by my concern to explore the growth of the antimasque within the context of the masque entertainment as a whole. The generic melange that is the antimasque dictates a consideration of Jonson’s handling of other literary modes, and how the hybridisation of these contributed to the evolution of the antimasque. It will soon become apparent in the main body of this book that I am primarily interested in the antimasque/masque as a discursive form and I explore the ways in which it was shaped by contemporary cultural and socio-political practices. Thus, one of the most obvious facts about the masque that we should remember is that it was created for an aristocratic elite of courtiers who were directly involved with it, both as masquers and as participants in the revels at the end of the entertainment. The court masque was a symbolic form used by the aristocracy to represent themselves to themselves, and as such, it was a vital constituent in the social and personal formation of their identity. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the identity that such masquers sought to confirm was one at the top of the hierarchical ladder, surpassed only by the King himself, whom the masque figured as God’s representative on earth. Viewed in these terms, the court masque would seem to be little more than a propaganda exercise that sought to 2rehearse and consolidate the dominant ideology of an increasingly absolutist monarchy supported by a powerful aristocracy. However, this book is intended to demonstrate that Jonson’s version of the court masque is far more interesting and complex than such a description implies. This is chiefly because he was responsible for the creation of the antimasque, which introduced elements of dramatic dialogue and plot to the emblematic tableau that was the court masque. Moreover, much of this book rests on the central belief that the antimasque itself harnessed and evolved out of the subtle contradictions and ironic anomalies manifest in the early Jonsonian masques, and developed these into significant textual structures of dissent that go against the grain of the royalist masque. This dissent is both formal and ideological; in the antimasque formal dissonance manifests itself through the combination of inverted dance steps and ludicrous, nonsensical prose, producing a disruption of the ideals of harmony, unity and order that are eulogised in the masque proper. ² And because ideological values are asserted or challenged in and through language and gesture, this formal dissonance questions the motivating ideology of the following masque. Although the nonsensical, punning language and twisted movement of the antimasque are ultimately usurped by the orderly poetry and dance of the masque, the whiff of dissonance hangs in the air like smoke and remains as a set of implied values to counterbalance those voiced in the rest of the entertainment. ³ Even in early masques where the antimasque has not yet evolved into a separate structure, ironies and contradictions are embedded in the official discourse of panegyric and unbalance the confident assertions of monarchical rule. Furthermore, the topicality of the antimasque may be shown to reveal the historical and political contingency of the court entertainment, rather than sharing in the masque’s practice of obscuring its material base and motivation. Yet we should remember that the masque also addressed matters of political and social concern to the Crown, but unlike the antimasque, it did so in order to confirm the status quo and mystify the state as a universal and divine order.