Product Code Database
Ellen or Elen More () was an African servant at the Scottish royal court. She probably arrived in Scotland in the company of a Portuguese man with imported animals.Imtiaz Habib, Black Lives in the English Archives, 1500–1677: Imprints of the Invisible (Routledge, 2008), pp. 30-34, 291-4. There are records of clothing and gifts given to her, although her roles and status are unclear. Some recent scholarship suggests she was enslaved, and her arrival in Scotland can be linked indirectly with the slave trade.Louise Olga Fradenburg, City, Marriage, Tournament: Arts of Rule in Late Medieval Scotland (University of Wisconsin Press, 1991), p. 250. She is associated with a racist poem by William Dunbar, and may have performed in Edinburgh as the "Black Lady" at royal tournaments in 1507 and 1508.Bernadette Andrea, 'The Presences of Women from the Islamic World', Merry Wiesner-Hanks (ed), Mapping Gendered Routes and Spaces in the Early Modern World (Routledge, 2016), p. 295: Carole Levin, 'Women in the Renaissance', Renate Bridenthal, Susan Stuard, Merry Wiesner (eds), Becoming Visible: Women in European History (Houghton Mifflin: Boston, 1998), pp. 152-173 at 161-4.
She was first mentioned by name, "Elen More", in the royal accounts in December 1511. Possibly remaining in the household of the young James V, she was last mentioned in the accounts in August 1527, as "Helenor the blak moir".Imtiaz Habib, Black Lives in the English Archives, 1500–1677: Imprints of the Invisible (Routledge, 2008), pp. 291-2, 294. The name "More" recorded in the Scottish accounts seems to be from the word "moor", meaning, in the Scots Language, an African person. A number of individuals are identified as "moors" in the records of the Scottish royal court, and other people of African origin living in Scottish communities are not conspicuous in the records. "Mor", Dictionary of the Older Scottish TongueNubia, O., (2019, October 10), 'Africans in England and Scotland (1485–1625)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.Nandini Das, João Vicente Melo, Haig Z. Smith, Lauren Working, Blackamoor/Moor, Keywords of Identity, Race, and Human Mobility in Early Modern England (Amsterdam, 2021), pp. 40-50
In the same years in England, African servants were recorded in the household of the Spanish princess Catherine of Aragon, the wife of Prince Arthur and Henry VIII, including the trumpeters John Blanke and Alonso de Valdenebro, and a groom Francis Negro.Nadia T. van Pelt, Intercultural Explorations and the Court of Henry VIII (Oxford, 2024), p. 9: Imtiaz Habib, Black Lives in the English Archives (London, 2008), pp. 37-8, 45, 47, 50. The lawyer Thomas More was surprised by the appearance of Africans in Catherine of Aragon's entourage in procession during her Royal Entry to London in November 1501. He wrote about them in racist terms to John Holt.Matthieu Chapman, Anti-Black Racism in Early Modern English Drama (Taylor & Francis, 2016), pp. 48-50.Sydney Anglo, 'The London Pageants for the Reception of Katherine of Aragon: November 1501', Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, XXVI (1963), pp. 53-89.Maria Teresa Micaela Prendergast, "Black Stitch, Dark Skin, and English Ale: Catherine of Aragon as the First Foreign Tudor Princess", in Elizabeth Hodgson and Sarah Crover, Nationalism and Royal Women in Early Modern England (Palgrave Macmillan, 2026), pp. 18–20: Nadia T. van Pelt, Intercultural Explorations and the Court of Henry VIII (Oxford, 2024), p. 154. Catherine of Aragon also had a bed chamber servant of Muslim origin, Catalina of Motril who may have joined her retinue as a slave. In 1501 Juan Davalos of Granada had been paid for a slave for the Princess of Wales, as Catherine was then known.Nadia T. van Pelt, Intercultural Explorations and the Court of Henry VIII (Oxford, 2024), pp. 37–38. The English and Scottish courts in the 16th century included black people in spectacle and drama.Lorna Hutson, England's Insular Imagining: The Elizabethan Erasure of Scotland (Cambridge, 2023), pp. 221–222.
A pet monkey at the Scottish court was recorded as the "Marmoset of Kozhikode", reflecting Portuguese activity both on the Malabar Coast and on the coast of Brazil.Cecilia Veracini, 'Non Human Primate Trade in the Age of Discoveries', Cristina Joanaz de Melo, Estelita Vaz, Lígia M. Costa Pinto, Environmental History in the Making, II: Acting (Springer, 2017), pp. 147-172: Kathleen Walker-Meikle, Medieval Pets (Boydell, 2012), p. 83: Accounts of the Treasurer, vol. 4 (Edinburgh, 1902), pp. lxxxiii, 117.
A letter from a Southampton customs official describes a merchant's plan to present 2 musk cats, 3 little monkeys, a marmoset, and other exotic goods to Henry VIII.Henry Ellis, Original Letters, 3rd series vol. 2 (London, 1846), pp. 239-243. A portrait of Margaret Tudor includes a common marmoset, and may be a copy of a picture once in the collection of Henry VIII, described in his inventory as a "woman having a monkey on her hand".Lorne Campbell, 'Scottish Patrons and Netherlandish Painters', Grant G. Simpson, Scotland and the Low Countries 1124–1994 (Tuckwell, 1996): David Starkey (ed), Inventory of Henry VIII (London, 1998), p. 237 no. 10594. A monkey in a portrait of Catherine of Aragon, painted around 1531, appears to be a pet Blond capuchin, a type brought from Brazil by Portuguese traders. Catharine's portrait may follow an allegory of Christian faith.Karen Coke, 'Lambert Barnard, Bishop Shirborn's paynter', Andrew Hadfield, Matthew Dimmock, Paul Quinn, Art, Literature and Religion in Early Modern Sussex (Ashgate, 2014), p. 90.Brett Dolman, "Reading the Portraits of Henry VIII's Queens", Thomas Betteridge and Suzannah Lipscomb, Henry VIII and the Court: Arts, Politics and Performance (Ashgate, 2013), p. 117. Gifts of monkeys or marmosets were made at the English court in 1534 and 1535, but it was said that Anne Boleyn did not care for "such beasts".Eric Ives, The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), p. 213: Maria Hayward, "Gift Giving at the Court of Henry VIII", The Antiquaries Journal, 85 (2005), p. 140.
Primary source to the "More lasses", a Portuguese man, and exotic animals were re-discovered in the early 19th century by William MacGregor Stirling (1771-1833) and others. A privateer connection between the "More lasses" and the Barton family was suggested by Patrick Fraser Tytler. He conjectured that the African presence at the Scottish court was due to "the success of the Scottish privateers".Patrick Fraser Tytler, History of Scotland, vol. 5 (Edinburgh, 1834), pp. 43-4, and see P. F. Tytler, Lives of Scottish Worthies, vol. 3 (London, 1833), p. 331 MacGregor's publications include Notes, Historical and Descriptive, on the Priory of Inchmahome (Edinburgh, 1815). His son Robert MacGregor Stirling emigrated to Jamaica.
James IV had other connections to Portuguese shipping and exploration and maintained trading links. He employed Portuguese craftsmen in his shipyards, Accounts of the Treasurer, vol. 4 (Edinburgh, 1902), p. 368. and was a patron of an Italian merchant and financier in Bruges Jerome Frescobaldi, whose company funded voyages.Richard A. Goldthwaite, The Economy of Renaissance Florence (Johns Hopkins, 2009), p. 159: Nunziatella Alessandrini, 'The Far East in the Early 16th Century: Giovanni da Empoli's Travels', Mary N. Harris, Global Encounters European Identities (Pisa, 2010), p. 218. Frescobaldi sold James IV spices obtained by Portuguese merchant ships.Henry de Vocht, 'Jerome De Busleyden', Humanistica Lovaniensia (Brepols, 1950), p. 345: National Records of Scotland E32/1. James IV bought wax, wine, and a Ship grounding on the west coast from a Portuguese merchant, John Farnhae, in April 1498. Accounts of Treasurer, vol. 1 (Edinburgh, 1877) pp. 388, 391-2.
These African people have been described as "human booty" in terms of their relationship with the Portuguese Empire.Imtiaz Habib, Black Lives in the English Archives, 1500-1677 (London, 2008), p. 28: Bernadette Andrea, The Lives of Girls and Women from the Islamic World in Early Modern British (Toronto, 2017), p. 23. While details of their journeys and arrival in Scotland remain obscure, the accounts of the treasurer and comptroller of Scotland record the employment of African people at the court of James IV.Mairi Cowan & Laura Walkling, 'Growing up with the court of James IV', Janay Nugent & Elizabeth Ewan, Children and Youth in Premodern Scotland (Boydell, 2015), pp. 24-6: George Burnett, Exchequer Rolls: 1502-1507, vol. 12 (Edinburgh, 1889), pp. 374-5 (Latin) The Scottish royal household included "Peter the More" and the "More taubronar", a drummer who travelled around Scotland in the king's retinue.Miranda Kaufmann, Black Tudors (London, 2017), p. 11.
On 26 November, James IV gave the woman who had brought the "More lasses" from Fife 4 shillings. On 27 November James IV ordered that two suspected plague victims, who had been excluded from Dunfermline town, should have 14 shillings. Accounts of the Treasurer of Scotland, vol. 2 (Edinburgh, 1900), p. 468. W. J. MacLennan, 'The Eleven Plagues of Edinburgh', Proceedings of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, 31:3 (2001), p. 257, summary of the 1505 plague regulations for EdinburghJ. F. D. Shrewsbury, A History of Bubonic Plague in the British Isles (Cambridge, 1970), p. 165.Richard Oram, '"It cannot he decernit quha are clean and quha are foulle.": Responses to Epidemic Disease in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Scotland', Renaissance and Reformation, 30:4 (Fall / Automne 2006 / 2007), pp. 13-39, p. 16.
The four African people, recorded by a clerk as "Ethiopians", were first lodged in the house of James Hommyll, a wealthy Edinburgh merchant who bought tapestries for the king. Hommyll also hosted the Portuguese man who was escorting the African people and had brought them to Scotland with the two horses and other animals. They stayed with James Hommyll and his wife Helen for 40 days. The clerk recorded the payments as "extra domicilium", meaning the expenses of royal servants residing away from the royal household for a time.George Burnett, Exchequer Rolls of Scotland: 1502-1507, vol. 12 (Edinburgh, 1889), pp. 374-5 The phrase "extra domicilium" frequently occurs in this context in the unpublished royal household accounts, see Henry Ellis, 'Household Book of James V', Archaeologia, 22 (1829), p. 6. The Latin record may be translated:
Et pro expensis quatuor personarum Ethiopum remanentium extra domicilium de mandato regis, iij li.
Et per solutionem factam Jacobem Hommill pro expensis unius portingalie portantis quatuor personas Ethiopum, duos equos, et animalia, extranea domino regi remanentes apud Edinburgh per quadraginti dies in domicilio dicti Jacobi de mandato regis, xviij li iiij s.
And, for the expenses of four Ethiopian persons remaining outside the household, by the hand of the king, £4.
And to pay James Hommill for the Portuguese man bringing four Ethiopian people, two horses, and the animals, remaining outside the household in Edinburgh for forty days in the said James's house, by the hand of the king, £18 and 4 shillings.George Burnett, Exchequer Rolls of Scotland: 1502-1507, vol. 12 (Edinburgh, 1889), pp. 374–5.
Property records mention that James Hommyll's house or land was on the south side of the Royal Mile in the tenement of Lord Borthwick beyond the Over Bow, near to Edinburgh Castle. The street is now called Castlehill. Homyll's house was damaged by a fire in 1511 that started in a bakery.Marguerite Wood, Protocal Book of John Foular, 1503-1513, 1:2 (Scottish Records Society, 1941), nos. 370, 682, 736. The king had sent his brother, William Hommyll, on an errand to Portugal in December 1503, a connection to Portuguese trade and shipping. Accounts of the Treasurer, vol. 2 (Edinburgh, 1900), p. 409.
In 1506 Ellen and Margaret were both given gowns of russet cloth with velvet bands, with red skirts or kirtles. In 1507 they, and another girl in the castle, Marjory Lindsay, were given red skirts with green ribbons. Accounts of the Treasurer of Scotland: 1506-1507, vol. 3 (Edinburgh, 1901), lxxxv, 114, 155, 172, 175, 310-11, 321-2, 336, 361, 370-1, 387: Accounts of the Treasurer, vol. 4 (Edinburgh, 1902), pp. 51, 59, 61-2, 82, 100, 116.
In later years they joined the court of Margaret Tudor and were bought clothes, and given New Year's day gifts, comparable to those given to the queen's English lady in waiting, Mistress Musgrave. Ellen is known to have worked for the queen at Linlithgow Palace. Accounts of the Treasurer, vol. 4 (Edinburgh, 1902), pp. 339, 324, 401, 404. This is an example from the accounts of a New Year's Day gift of money, five French gold crowns worth £3-10s Pounds Scots, given to Ellen More on 1 January 1512 at Holyrood Palace; "Item, to Elene Moire, v Franch crounis, iij li x s." The same amount was given to two "maidens", servants of Elizabeth Barlay. Elizabeth Sinclair got 10 crowns. Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer of Scotland, vol. 4 (Edinburgh, 1902), p. 324
Ellen or Elen More was first mentioned by name in the royal account for December 1511. She was given her livery clothes, an allowance of clothing given to many royal servants in the days before Christmas, on 15 December 1511. Gifts of clothes and livery clothes were often more valuable than the fees or salaries given to servants, or the gifts of money received. Costume was a marker of membership of the court. The value and type of clothing received can be indication of relative status.William Hepburn, The Household and Court of James IV of Scotland (Boydell, 2023), pp. 100-1.
Ellen More's clothing included a gown made of "Rissillis broun" (russet cloth from Rijsel or Lille) trimmed with velvet, with yellow taffeta sleeves, a velvet hood, and skirt of English brown or russet woollen cloth with a crimson hem. Accounts of the Treasurer, vol. 4 (Edinburgh, 1902), p. 232. French russet cloth for a gown, Scottish black for a kirtle, and linen for "sarks" or smocks were bought for the Queen's "blak madin" in December 1512. Margaret More is mentioned less often in the accounts, but she was at Linlithgow Palace in April 1512, when James V of Scotland was born.Peter Fryer, Staying power: the history of black people in Britain (London, 1984), p. 4. The "two black ladies" were given 10 gold crowns on 1 January 1513. Accounts of the Treasurer of Scotland, vol. 4 (Edinburgh, 1902), pp. 339, 401, 428 The historian Imtiaz Habib connects this reference to Ellen and Margaret More as black ladies to the earlier Black Lady tournaments.Imtiaz Habib, Black Lives in the English Archives, 1500-1677 (London, 2008), p. 33.
The king's daughter, Lady Margaret Stewart married John Gordon, Lord Gordon and then Sir John Drummond of Innerpeffray.David Malcolm, Genealogical Memoir of the Most Noble and Ancient House of Drummond (Edinburgh, 1808), p. 78.
Ellen More was given 40 shillings in July 1527, recorded as a payment to "Helenor, the blak moir". Accounts of the Treasurer: 1515-1531, vol. 5 (Edinburgh, 1903), p. 328. No further details of the lives of Ellen and Margaret More are known for certain.Sue Niebrzydowski, 'The Sultana and her Sisters: Black Women in the British Isles before 1530', Women's History Review, 10:2 (2001), pp. 187-210.
James IV staged two elaborate tournaments called "The justing of the wyld knicht for the blak lady", held in June 1507 and again in May 1508.Andrea Thomas, Glory and Honour (Edinburgh, 2013), pp. 177-9.Marie W. Stuart, The Scot Who Was A Frenchman: The Life of John Stewart, Duke of Albany (William Hodge, 1940), pp. 19–20. The part of the "Black Lady" was played by a woman of the court. and James IV was the Wild or Black Knight, a character based on one of King Arthur's knights of the Round Table who had been brought up in a forest. E. G. Cody, Historie of Scotland by Jhone Leslie, vol. 2 (Edinburgh: STS, 1895), p. 128 A later 16th-century author, Robert Lindsay of Pitscottie, wrote, "The king iustit jousted him selff dissaguysed onknawin and he was callit the blak knicht".Aeneas James George Mackay, Historie and cronicles of Scotland, vol. 1 (Edinburgh: STS, 1899), p. 243
It is not clear if William Dunbar's poem was directly connected to these events, or that Ellen More played the part of the Black Lady in the tournaments.Louise Olga Fradenburg, City, Marriage, Tournament: Arts of Rule in Late Medieval Scotland (University of Wisconsin, 1991), pp. 256-7. The identity of Ellen, or Elen More, is discussed in scholarship as the subject of Dunbar's poem, the woman named in the accounts, and the actor in the tournaments.Joyce Green MacDonald, Women and Race in Early Modern Texts (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 1-7: Jane E. A. Dawson, Scotland Re-formed (Edinburgh, 2007), pp. 79-81: Bernadette Andrea, The Lives of Girls and Women from the Islamic World in Early Modern British Literature and Culture (Toronto, 2017), pp. 22-26: Bill Findlay, 'Blak Lady', Elizabeth L. Ewan, Sue Innes, Sian Reynolds, Rose Pipes, Biographical Dictionary of Scottish Women (Edinburgh, 2006), p. 39. Martin the Spaniard, who appears in the accounts linked with the "More lasses" in payments for their shoes, performed with the Black Lady at the tournament banquet. Accounts of the Treasurer, vol. 4 (Edinburgh, 1902), pp. 64, 129: Imtiaz Habib, Black Lives (Ashgate, 2008), pp. 33, 291 no. 84. The role of the Black Lady as a prize was perhaps not unusual in the conventions of medieval tournament, but seems also to emphasise a chattel status for an African performer.Bernadette Andrea, 'The "Presences of Women" from the Islamic World', Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks, Mapping Gendered Routes and Spaces in the Early Modern World (Routledge, 2016), pp. 294-8.
The opening lines of Dunbar's poem refer to the arrival of the woman in Scotland on a ship, which may suggest that such arrivals were not uncommon. Dunbar explains that he writes in contrast to his previous poems describing white women of the court. The poem "creates a very unfavourable contrast between black female physiology and that of white ladies at court";Sue Niebrzydowski, 'The Sultana and her Sisters: Black Women in the British Isles before 1530', Women's History Review, 10:2 (2001), p. 202
The Black Lady's gown was made from Flanders damask figured with gold flowers, bordered with yellow and green taffeta, with outer sleeves of black gauze called "plesance", inner sleeves, a drape of the same black gauze about her shoulders and arms, and she wore long gloves of black chamois leather or "semys" leather. She had two lady companions dressed in gowns of green Flanders taffeta edged with yellow.Louise Olga Fradenburg, City, Marriage, Tournament: Arts of Rule in Late Medieval Scotland (University of Wisconsin Press, 1991), pp. 254-5: Accounts of the Treasurer, vol. 3 (Edinburgh, 1901), pp. xlix, 259. 'Semys', Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue (up to 1700)
William Ogilvy and Alexander Elphinstone, probably Alexander Elphinstone, 1st Lord Elphinstone, dressed in English white damask as the "Squires of the Black Lady" and escorted her from Edinburgh Castle to the field of the tournament. She was carried in a "triumphal chair" draped with Flanders taffeta with appliqué flowers. Accounts of the Treasurer, vol. 3 (Edinburgh, 1901), pp. xlix, 258-260: Michelle Beer, Queenship at the Renaissance Courts of Britain (Woodbridge, 2018), p. 83: Michelle Beer, 'Practices and Performances of Queenship: Catherine of Aragon and Margaret Tudor', PhD 2014, p. 184. Antoine d'Arces was the "White Knight". James IV himself played the part of the Wild or Savage Knight.Katie Stevenson, Chivalry and Knighthood in Scotland, 1424-1513 (Boydell: Woodbridge, 2006), pp. 94-7.Norman Macdougall, James IV (Tuckwell: East Linton, 1997), pp. 294-5. The horses pulling the pageant carts and triumphal chairs were dressed with rich fabrics. One horse was disguised as a unicorn, with a caparison of black and white damask lined with canvas. Accounts of the Treasurer, vol. 3 (Edinburgh, 1901), p. 257. The Black Lady was carried (in her triumphal chair) by 12 men from Edinburgh Castle to the tournament ground beneath the castle and to Holyrood Palace.Imtiaz Habib, Black Lives in the English Archives, 1500-1677 (London, 2008), pp. 33, 291: John G. Dunbar, Scottish Royal Palaces (Tuckwell: East Linton, 1999), pp. 202-3 "Wild men" at the course or barriers were dressed in goat skins and wore hart horns from Tullibardine. Accounts of the Treasurer, vol. 3 (Edinburgh, 1901), pp. l, 358-9. In 1508 the Black Lady's costume was renewed with a green woollen skirt, and new black leather sleeves and gloves. Her two maidens wore Bruges satin. Accounts of the Treasurer, vol. 4 (Edinburgh, 1902), p. 64
On the first day of the first week of the five week-long event, challengers were to assemble at the "Tree of Esperance" at the tournament ground beneath the castle, where the Black Lady kept the week's white shield, accompanied by the wild men. Combats and jousts were scored by judges and the ladies, women of Margaret Tudor's household and the court.Louise Olga Fradenburg, City, Marriage, Tournament: Arts of Rule in Late Medieval Scotland (University of Wisconsin, 1991), pp. 227, 255: Marcus Vulson de la Colombière, La Science Heroique (Paris, 1644), pp. 453-457 or La science heroique (Paris, 1669), pp. 491-6 The tree of Esperance or Hope was decorated with artificial flowers, pears, and painted heraldic shields, moulded in leather by Simon Glasford, a buckler.Morvern French & Roger Mason, 'Art, Artefacts, Artillery', Alexander Fleming & Roger Mason, Scotland and the Flemish People (John Donald, 2019), pp. 108-9: Accounts of the Treasurer, vol. 4 (Edinburgh, 1902), pp. 120-1. In England, Margaret Tudor attended a Christmas 1516 banquet where a garden of Esperance or Hope was presented as a stage set for a masque inside the hall of Greenwich Palace.Charles Whibley, Henry VIII by Edward Hall, vol. 1 (London, 1904), p. 153
Events concluded with three days of banqueting at Holyroodhouse. There was a masque and a dance organised by Lady Musgrave, Mistress of the Queen's Wardrobe. Accounts of the Treasurer, vol. 4 (Edinburgh, 1902), pp. 64-5, 125: Michelle Beer, Queenship at the Renaissance Courts of Britain (Woodbridge, 2018), p. 84. The Black Lady came into the hall with Martin the Spaniard who was equipped with an archery bow and dressed in yellow.William Hepburn, The Household and Court of James IV of Scotland (Boydell, 2023), p. 100 & fn.102: Accounts of the Treasurer, vol. 4 (Edinburgh, 1902), pp. 64, 121, 129, they were buckled and grathed, in harness, the scene may evoke the abduction of Psyche by Cupid. A cloud descended from the roof and swept them both away.Frank Shuffelton, 'An Imperial Flower: Dunbar's "The Goldyn Targe" and the Court Life of James IV of Scotland', Studies in Philology, 72:2 (April 1975), pp. 193-207, p. 202.Lesley Mickel, 'Our Hielandmen': Scots in Court Entertainments at home and abroad 1507–1616', Renaissance Studies, 33:2 (April, 2019), pp. 185-203 at p. 202: Aeneas Mackay, Historie and Cronicles of Scotland, by Robert Lindesay of Pitscottie, vol. 1 (STS: Edinburgh, 1899), p. 244
Later Stewart court festivities and drama with African actors and actors portraying Africans, include; the Entry of Mary, Queen of Scots into Edinburgh in 1561, the wedding of Mary, Queen of Scots, and Henry, Lord Darnley in July 1565,Clare McManus, 'Marriage and the performance of the romance quest: Anne of Denmark and the Stirling baptismal celebrations for Prince Henry', L. A. J. R. Houwen, A. A. MacDonald, S. L. Mapstone (eds.), A Palace in the Wild: Essays on Vernacular Culture and Humanism in Late Medieval and Renaissance Scotland (Peeters, 2000), p. 189: Pompae Equestres, Dana F. Sutton, Philological Museum the baptism of James VI at Stirling in December 1566,Charles Thorpe McInnes, Accounts of the Treasurer of Scotland: 1566-1574, vol. 12 (Edinburgh, 1970), pp. 405-6. the Entry of Anne of Denmark to Edinburgh (1590), the baptism of Prince Henry (1594), and The Masque of Blackness (1605).Bernadette Andrea, The Lives of Girls and Women from the Islamic World in Early Modern British Literature and Culture (Toronto, 2017), pp. 106-12.Bernadette Andrea, 'Black Skin, The Queen's Masques: Africanist Ambivalence and Feminine Author(ity) in the Masques of "Blackness" and "Beauty"', English Literary Renaissance, 29:2 (Spring 1999), pp. 246-281. Clare McManus identifies "markers of difference, foreigness and liminality" and "compact symbols of blackness and femininity initially encapsulated in the body of the Black Lady" of James IV's tournaments which reappeared at the baptism of Prince Henry, and were suited to Scottish conventions of court theatre and performance. A "threat of diversity" was defused through theatrical representation.Clare McManus, Women on the Renaissance stage: Anna of Denmark and Female Masquing in the Stuart Court, 1590-1619 (Manchester, 2002), pp. 84-5.
At the court of Edward VI of England actors in masques were dressed as "Mores" with long black velvet gloves reaching above the elbow, with bells attached to costumes made from goat's skins.Virginia Mason Vaughan, Performing Blackness on English Stages, 1500-1800 (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 27-8: Alfred John Kempe, Loseley Manuscripts (London, 1836), p. 79-80 Such revels costumes at the English court were designed and made by an Italian artist, Niccolo da Modena. He made wigs or "perukes" of hair used by female actors disguised as "Mores".Ian Smith, 'White Skin, Black Masks', Jeffrey Masten & Wendy Wall, Renaissance Drama, 32 (Evanson, 2003), p. 44: Albert Feuillerat, Documents relating to the revels of Edward VI and Mary (Louvain, 1914), p. 31: David Starkey, Inventory of Henry VIII (London, 1998), p. 168 no. 8663. Edward VI dressed as a "Moor" at a Shrovetide masque in 1548.Sydney Anglo, Spectacle Pageantry, and Early Tudor Policy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), pp. 301–2. Black velvet was for costuming a "Maske of Moores" at the coronation of Elizabeth I, or in her first year of reign,Ian Smith, 'Othello's Black Handkerchief', Shakespeare Quarterly, 64:1 (Spring 2013), p. 11: Ian Smith, 'White Skin, Black Masks: Racial Cross-Dressing on the Early Modern Stage', Renaissance Drama 32 (2003), p. 63 fn.39: Albert Feuillerat, Documents Relating to the Office of Revels in the Time of Queen Elizabeth (Louvain, 1908), p. 24 and the painter William Lyzard worked on a "More's Masque" for Elizabeth I in 1579.Martin Wiggins & Catherine Richardson, British Drama 1533-1642: 1567-1589, vol. 2 (Oxford, 2012), p. 224: Albert Feuillerat, Documents Relating to the Office of the Revels in the Time of Queen Elizabeth (Louvain, 1908), p. 308 The use of black sleeves, gloves, and fabrics as part of the costume in Edinburgh at the tournaments of James IV has raised some doubt that the vanishing Black Lady was played by an African performer.Louise Olga Fradenburg, City, Marriage, Tournament: Arts of Rule in Late Medieval Scotland (University of Wisconsin, 1991), p. 256: Joyce Green MacDonald, Women and Race in Early Modern Texts (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 2-3: Michelle Beer, Queenship at the Renaissance Courts of Britain (Woodbridge, 2018), pp. 83-4 & fn. 69: Bernadette Andrea, 'Early Modern Women, Race, and Writing Revised', Elizabeth Scott-Bauman, Danielle Clarke, Sarah C. E. Ross, Oxford Handbook of Early Modern Women's Writing in English, 1540-1700 (Oxford, 2022), pp. 710, 713: Sarah Carpenter, 'Scottish drama until 1650', Ian Brown, Edinburgh Companion to Scottish Drama (Edinburgh, 2011), p. 13.
In Shakespeare's Othello, Desdemona recalls her mother's maidservant, a Moorish woman called "Barbary". Barbary had lost her love, a man who had lost his mind, and she sang a song of mourning and loss called "Willow".Iman Sheeha, 'A Maid Called Barbary: Othello, Moorish Maidservants And The Black Presence In Early Modern England', Shakespeare Survey 75 (Cambridge, 2022), pp. 89-102 The play was performed at Whitehall Palace on 1 November 1604. Anne of Denmark and her ladies performed in black face in the Masque of Blackness in the same space on 6 January 1605.Margaret P. Hannay, Mary Sidney, Lady Wroth (Ashgate, 2010). Kim F. Hall draws attention to The Masque of Blackness and the documented reactions of its audience, in the context of the "growth of actual contact with Africans, Native Americans, and other ethnically different foreigners" and a "collision of the dark lady tradition with the actual African difference encountered in the quest for empire".Kim F. Hall, Things of Darkness: Economies of Race and Gender in Early Modern England (Cornell University Press, 1996), p. 129.
The story of Ellen More forms the basis of a stageplay James IV: Queen of the Fight, written by Rona Munro for performance in 2022. 60 seconds with Danielle Jam: Capital Theatres Megan McEachern, 'James IV: New Rona Munro play to give black people their rightful but forgotten place in history of Scotland', Sunday Post, 20 June 2022
|
|
