ABSTRACT
The Arts and Crafts background provides The Mask with the ideal aesthetic setting, placing it in the tradition of the Book Beautiful, the Commedia dellArte, possibly more than any other feature of the periodical, gives shape to its performative quality. Commedia notions of theatricality help the magazine to present itself, to act as a stage for the various Craigian masks. Dorothy Nevile Lees was Daniel Craig's chief collaborator on the whole of The Mask project, sharing many of Craig's pseudonyms. Dorothy Nevile Lees is the main translator of most of the original material. With a wealth of primary and secondary sources available to him, Craig set out to codify what was no less than a comprehensive study of the history of the Commedia dellArte. There Craig not only finds a metaphor for the staging of The Mask but, a paradigm which manages to three-dimensionalized the pages of his journal and almost literally transform it into a stage.
