In Italy the Masque entertainment long held sway, and was a light form of amusement, consisting of Pantomime, music, singing, and dancing, and an adaptation of the Fabulae Atellanae of ancient Italy.  The performers wore masks, also high-heeled shoes, fitted with brass or iron heels, which jingled as they danced.  This ancient custom to present-day stage dancers will doubtless be of interest.  Masks, like on the stages of the Greeks and the Romans, were used, hence the title Mask, or Masque, as it is sometimes written both ways.  In the days of Elizabeth the custom was also practised in the Elizabethean Masque.  The Masquerade and the Masked ball, or Bal-Masque, are survivals of this ancient custom.

Crossing the Alps, if the reader will accompany me, the Italian Masque Comedy we find was already known in France in the fifteenth century.  In the days of Mary de Medici ballets were introduced, and by the time of Louis XIV.  “Opera” (i.e., the Masque) was in full swing in the early part of this reign.  On the Spanish stage ballets, with allegorical characters, were known in the sixteenth century; and, in fact, throughout Europe about this age, and some time previously this improvised form of Italian Comedy, and the several characters in it, belonging to the family of Harlequin, had long been familiar subjects.

Returning to England after our little holiday, the Masque in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries had become very popular.  The architect, Inigo Jones, being frequently employed to furnish the decorations with all the magnificence of his invention.  At the Courts of Elizabeth, James I., Charles I., and up to the time when all plays were totally suppressed, was it the rage.  At the Restoration the Masque was revived again, and here, borrowing the name from the continent, it is called “Opera.”  In proof of this, in Dryden’s work, “Albion and Albanius,” 1685, “Opera” is defined as a “poetical tale or picture represented by vocal and instrumental music, and endowed with machines and dances.”

The dramatic poet and author, Ben Jonson, collaborated with Inigo Jones, the architect, in devising these Masque plays, Jonson supplying the words, and Jones the scenic effects, the latter being very gorgeous, consisting of “landscapes, mountains, and clouds, which opened to display heathen deities illuminated by variegated coloured lights.”  Over these Masques or “Operatic” entertainments Jonson and Jones quarrelled, as the former’s grievance was that he received no more for his librettos than Jones did for his scenic devices.  Ben Jonson thereupon wrote satires upon Inigo Jones, and in one of his squibs appears the satirical line, “Painting and Carpentry are the Soul of Masque.”  Is not this applicable to many of our present-day Pantomimes, which, as I have just stated in the previous chapter, the Masque was one of the original progenitors?

Inigo Jones and Jonson first collaborated in the “Masque of Blackness,” performed at Whitehall on Twelfth Night, 1603.  In our money this Masque cost some L10,000.  Jones and Jonson’s quarrel originated because the poet had, in the “Masque of Chloridia,” performed in 1630, prefixed his own name before that of Jones.  In consequence of this “rare old Ben” was deprived—­through Jones’ influence—­of employment at Court.