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The masque was a form of festive Noble court entertainment that flourished in 16th- and early 17th-century Europe, though it was developed earlier in Italy, in forms including the intermedio (a public version of the masque was the medieval pageant). A masque involved music, dancing, singing and acting, within an elaborate stage design, in which the architectural framing and costumes might be designed by a renowned architect, to present a deferential allegory flattering to the patron. Professional actors and musicians were hired for the speaking and singing parts. Masquers who did not speak or sing were often courtiers: the English queen Anne of Denmark frequently danced with her ladies in masques between 1603 and 1611, and Henry VIII and Charles I of England performed in the masques at their courts. In the tradition of masque, Louis XIV of France danced in at Versailles with music by Jean-Baptiste Lully. 'History of the Masque Genre'
Masque imagery tended to be drawn from Classical rather than Christian sources, and the artifice was part of the Grand dance. Masque thus lent itself to Mannerist treatment in the hands of master designers like Giulio Romano or Inigo Jones.
The New Criticism, in works like the essays of Bevington and Holbrook's The Politics of the Stuart Court Masque (1998),David Bevington and Peter Holbrook, editors, The Politics of the Stuart Court Masque 1998 ). have pointed out the political subtext of masques. At times, the political subtext was not far to seek: The Triumph of Peace, put on with a large amount of parliament-raised money by Charles I, caused great offence to the . Catherine de' Medici's court festivals, often even more overtly political, were among the most spectacular entertainments of her day, although the "intermedio" of the Medici court in Florence could rival them.
Dumbshows were a medieval element that continued to be popular in early Elizabethan drama, but by the time Pericles (c. 1607–08) or Hamlet (c. 1600–02) were staged, they were perhaps quaintly old-fashioned: "What means this, my lord?" is Ophelia's reaction. In English masques, purely musical interludes might be accompanied by a dumbshow.
Edward Hall explained the new fashion of Italian-style masque at the English court in 1512.Skiles Howard, "Henrician Masque", Peter C. Herman, Rethinking the Henrician Era: Essays on Early Tudor Texts and Contexts (University of Illinois, 1994), p. 24: Sydney Anglo, Spectacle Pageantry and Early Tudor Policy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), p. 117. The essential feature was the entry of disguised dancers and musicians to a banquet. They would appear in character and perform, and then dance with the guests, and then leave the venue. Hall's chronicle: containing the history of England (London, 1809), p. 526 At the meeting at Lille in October 1513, when the ladies were dancing after a banquet, Henry VIII and eleven other dancers entered "richely appareled with bonettes of gold". At the conclusion of their performance they gave their masque costumes to the audience.John Gough Nichols, Chronicle of Calais (London: Camden Society, 1846), p. 70.
On 1 May 1515, Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon rode from Greenwich Palace to have breakfast in an arbour constructed in a wood at Shooter's Hill. Catherine and her ladies were dressed in Spanish-style riding gear, Henry was in green velvet. The royal guard appeared in disguise as Robin Hood and his men. There was a pageant chariot or car with Lady May and Lady Flora, followed by a masque and dancing.Rawdon Brown, Four years at the court of Henry VIII, 1 (London, Smith, Elder, & Co, 1854), p. 90–93.
According to George Cavendish, in January 1527 Henry VIII came to Thomas Wolsey Hampton Court or York Place, by boat "in a masque with a dozen of other maskers all in garments like shepherds made of fine cloth of gold and fine crimson satin paned, and caps of the same with visors", wearing false beards, accompanied with torch bearers and drummers. Their arrival at the palace water gate was announced by cannon fire. The King's part of the entertainment was organised by William Sandys and Henry Guildford. The masquers played a dice game called mumchance before dancing.Richard P. Sylvester and Davis P. Harding, Two Earl Tudor Lives: Life and Death of Cardinal Wolsey (Yale, 1962), pp. 27–28.Meg Twycross and Sarah Carpenter, Masks and Masking in Medieval and Early Tudor England (Ashgate, 2002), pp. 166–168. Edward Hall described similar masques involving the king's disguised appearance.Janette Dillon, 'Shakespeare and the Masque', Shakespeare Survey, 60: Theatres for Shakespeare (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 68–70.
In the play Henry VIII, by Fletcher and Shakespeare, Wolsey's masques were recalled when Henry in shepherd's disguise meets Anne Boleyn.Kevin A. Quarmby, The Disguised Ruler in Shakespeare and his Contemporaries (Ashgate, 2012), p. 198: Richard S. Sylvester & Davis P. Harding, Two Early Tudor Lives (Yale, 1962), p. 27.Skiles Howard, "Henrician Masque", Peter C. Herman, Rethinking the Henrician Era: Essays on Early Tudor Texts and Contexts (University of Illinois, 1994), pp. 30–31.Skiles Howard, The Politics of Courtly Dancing in Early Modern England (Amherst, 1998), p. 41. Anne Boleyn and seven ladies in "maskyng apparel of straunge fashion" performed for Henry VIII and Francis I of France at Calais on 27 October 1532.Maria Hayward, Dress at the Court of Henry VIII (Maney, 2007), p. 181. Some of the costume, supplied by the yeoman of the revels Richard Gibson, was described as "masking gere".Sydney Anglo, Spectacle Pageantry and Early Tudor Policy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), p. 133: John Gough Nichols, Chronicle of Calais (London: Camden Society, 1846), p. 120.
Inventories of masque costume at the court of Henry VIII made when Catherine Howard was queen include lists of "maskyng garmentes" for men and for women. The women's costumes included coifs, , upper garments, , and a set of "high heads after Dutch fashion of striped lawn".Eleanor Lowe, Martin Wiggins, Janette Dillon, "Accounts and inventories of the Revels Office", Malone Society Collections, XVII (2016), pp. 12–16.
Masques at Elizabeth I's court emphasized the concord and unity between Queen and Kingdom. A descriptive narrative of a processional masque is the masque of the Seven Deadly Sins in Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene (Book i, Canto IV). A particularly elaborate masque, performed over the course of two weeks for Queen Elizabeth, is described in the 1821 novel Kenilworth, by Walter Scott. Queen Elizabeth was entertained at country houses during her progresses with performances like the Harefield Entertainment.Gabriel Heaton, 'Elizabethan Entertainments in Manuscript: The Harefield Festivities and the Dynamics of Exchange', in Jayne Elisabeth Archer, Elizabeth Goldring, Sarah Knight, Progresses, Pageants, and Entertainments of Queen Elizabeth (Oxford, 2007), pp. 227-244.
In Scotland, masques were performed at court, particularly at wedding celebrations, and the royal wardrobe provided costumes.Susan Doran, From Tudor to Stewart: the regime change from Elizabeth I to James I (Oxford, 2024), p. 67. At a banquet at the tournament of the Wild Knight and the Black Lady in 1507, the Ellen More came into the hall at Holyroodhouse with Martin the Spaniard who was equipped with an archery bow and dressed in yellow.Louise Olga Fradenburg, City, Marriage, Tournament: Arts of Rule in Late Medieval Scotland (University of Wisconsin, 1991), p. 255: Accounts of the Treasurer, vol. 4 (Edinburgh, 1902), pp. 64, 121, 129. 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
Performers at a wedding masque at Castle Campbell in 1562 dressed as shepherds.Michael Pearce, 'Maskerye Claythis for James VI and Anna of Denmark', Medieval English Theatre 43 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2022), pp. 108-123 Mary, Queen of Scots, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, and David Rizzio took part in a masque in February 1566.W. Park, 'Letter of Thomas Randolph to the Earl of Leicester, 14 February 1566', Scottish Historical Review, 34:118 Part 2 (October 1955), p. 138. Mary attended the wedding of her servant Bastian Pagez, and it was said she wore male costume for the masque, "which apparel she loved often times to be in, in dancings secretly with the King her husband, and going in masks by night through the streets".R. H. Mahon, Mary, Queen of Scots, a study of the Lennox Narrative (Cambridge, 1924), pp. 99, 130: Thomas Finlay Henderson, Mary, Queen of Scots, her environment and tragedy, a biography, 2 (London, 1905), p. 659 James VI and Anne of Denmark wore masque costumes to dance at weddings at Alloa Tower and Tullibardine Castle.Michael Pearce, 'Anna of Denmark: Fashioning a Danish Court in Scotland', The Court Historian, 24:2 (2019), pp. 146, 148-9 At Tullibardine, James VI and his valet, probably John Wemyss of Logie, wore taffeta costumes and Venetian masks.Michael Pearce, 'Maskerye Claythis for James VI and Anna of Denmark', Medieval English Theatre 43 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2022), pp. 116–118
After James and Anne became king and queen of England at the Union of the Crowns in 1603, narrative elements of the masque at their court became more significant. Plots were often on classical or allegorical themes, glorifying the royal or noble sponsor. At the end, the audience would join with the actors in a final dance. Ben Jonson wrote a number of masques with stage design by Inigo Jones. Their works are usually thought of as the most significant in the form. Samuel Daniel and Sir Philip Sidney also wrote masques. The court masque genre frequently introduced encounters with Indigenous peoples of America and new commodities.Lauren Working, "James VI and I’s Banqueting Houses: A Transatlantic Perspective", British Art Studies, 29 (December 2025).
William Shakespeare included a masque-like interlude in The Tempest, understood by modern scholars to have been heavily influenced by the masques of Ben Jonson and the stagecraft of Inigo Jones. There is also a masque sequence in his Romeo and Juliet and Henry VIII. John Milton's Comus (with music by Henry Lawes) is described as a masque, though it is generally reckoned a Pastoral.
There is a detailed, humorous, and malicious (and possibly completely fictitious) account by Sir John Harington in 1606 of a masque of Solomon and Sheba at Theobalds House.Martin Butler, The Stuart Court Masque and Political Culture (Cambridge, 2008), pp. 125-7: Clare McManus, 'When is woman not a woman?', Modern Philology, 105 (2008), pp. 437-74. Harington was not so much concerned with the masque itself as with the notoriously heavy drinking at the Court of King James I; "the entertainment went forward, and most of the presenters went backward, or fell down, wine did so occupy their upper chambers". As far as we can ascertain the details of the masque, the Queen of Sheba was to bring gifts to the King, representing Solomon, and was to be followed by the spirits of Faith, Hope, Charity, Victory and Peace. Unfortunately, as Harington reported, the actress playing the Queen tripped over the steps of the throne, sending her gifts flying; Hope and Faith were too drunk to speak a word, while Peace, annoyed at finding her way to the throne blocked, made good use of her symbolic olive branches to slap anyone who was in her way. Henry Harington, Nugae Antiquae, vol. 1 (London, 1804), pp. 348-351
Francis Bacon paid for The Masque of Flowers to celebrate the marriage of Robert Carr, 1st Earl of Somerset and Frances Howard, Countess of Somerset.Martin Butler, The Stuart Court Masque and Political Culture (Cambridge, 2008), pp. 8, 77, 214. James Hay, 1st Earl of Carlisle, was a performer and sponsor of court masques. He wrote about the tight-fitting costumes, that it was the fashion "to appear very small in the waist, I remember was drawn up from the ground by both hands whilst the tailor with all his strength buttoned on my doublet".Lesley Lawson, Out of the Shadows: Lucy, Countess of Bedford (London, 2007), p. 55.
Masques were also performed as private entertainments in country houses. In February 1618, The Coleorton Masque was staged at Coleorton Hall in Leicestershire by Thomas Beaumont.Karen L. Middaugh, '"Virtues Sphear": Court vs. Country in the 1618 Masque at Coleorton", David Allen and Robert White, Subjects On The World's Stage: Essays on British Literature of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (University of Delaware, 1995), pp. 280–294. The 14 year old Rachel Fane wrote The May Masque for performance at her parents' mansion Apethorpe Palace in Northamptonshire.Marion O'Connor, "Entertainments and Poems by Lady Rachel Fane", Malone Society Collections, 17 (2016), pp. 151–196.
Reconstructions of Stuart masques have been few and far between. Part of the problem is that only texts survive complete; there is no complete music, only fragments, so no authoritative performance can be made without interpretive invention. By the time of the English Restoration in 1660, the masque was passé, but the English semi-opera which developed in the latter part of the 17th century, a form in which John Dryden and Henry Purcell collaborated, borrows some elements from the masque and further elements from the contemporary courtly Opera of Jean-Baptiste Lully.
In the 18th century, masques were even less frequently staged. "Rule, Britannia!" started out as part of Alfred, a masque about Alfred the Great co-written by James Thomson and David Mallet with music by Thomas Arne which was first performed at Cliveden, country house of Frederick, Prince of Wales. Performed to celebrate the third birthday of Frederick's daughter Augusta, it remains among the best-known British patriotic songs up to the present, while the masque of which it was originally part is remembered by only specialist historians.
In the 20th century, Ralph Vaughan Williams wrote several masques, including his masterpiece in the genre, Job, a masque for dancing which premiered in 1930, although the work is closer to a ballet than a masque as it was originally understood. His designating it a masque was to indicate that the modern choreography typical when he wrote the piece would not be suitable. Vaughan Williams' protégé Elizabeth Maconchy composed a masque, The Birds (1967–68), an "extravaganza" after Aristophanes.
Constant Lambert also wrote a piece he called a masque, Summer's Last Will and Testament, for orchestra, chorus and baritone. His title he took from Thomas Nashe, whose masqueIt was a "comedy" when it was printed, in 1600 as A Pleasant Comedie, call'd Summers Last will and Testament, but, as a character announces, "nay, 'tis no Play neither, but a show." With Nashe's stage direction "Enter Summer, leaning on Autumn's and Winter's shoulders, and attended on with a train of Satyrs and wood-Nymphs, singing: Vertumnus also following him" we are recognizably in the world of Masque. was probably first presented before the Archbishop of Canterbury, perhaps at his London seat, Lambeth Palace, in 1592.
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