STATELY DEVIC ES

English Masques. With an Introduction by H. A. Evans: (Mackie. 2s.)

Texan is nothing in this book on English Masques to warn the reader that it is not a new book, but a reprint of a vohune which, we believe, was first published nearly thirty years ago, The publishers might have spared an announcement to this effect without diminishing the usefulness of Mr. Evans's

volume.

The subject is attractive enough to warrant a reissue, or an entirely fresh volume. Mr. Evans presented sixteen

masques (ten of them by Jonson) with a long introduction explaining the origin and growth of the masque and defining its character. His definition is somewhat narrow, for while admitting that the masque developed in complexity, he refused to admit that Comets is a masque because Lawes's music is

Subordinate to Milton's verse, and there is no body of masquers with formal dances. His general definition of the masque is, however, met by most of the examples contained in his volume more completely than by Milton :-

" The masque, then, is a combination, in variable proportions of speech, dance, and song, but its essential and invariable feature is the presence of a group of dancers, varying in number, but com- monly eight, twelve, or sixteen; called Masquere. These masquers never take any part in the speaking or in the singing : all they have to do is to make an imposing show and to dance. The dances are of two kinds : (1) stately figure dances performed by the masquers alone, and carefully rehearsed beforehand, and commonly distin- guished as the Entry, the Main, and the Going-out ; (2) the Revels livelier dances, such as galliards, corantos, and levaltos, danced by the masquer with .partners of the opposite sex chosen from the audience. The Revels were regarded as extra*, and are not num- bered among the regular masque dances of the programme ; they took place after the Main, and were doubtless often kept up for a considerable time."

Professor Schelling, writing a good deal later than Mr. Evans, amplified this definition without destroying it, and made it clear that while the masque was an entertainment to which songs, dialogue, action, music, scenery and costume contributed, the nucleus was always a dance. Further, - the common development was in the direction of dancing—masque led to antimasque and the antimasque brought in the employ-

ment -ef iir-ofeisional dancers and the exhibition of skill and

dramatic invention, in careful opposition to the splendours of the royal and noble masquers. • It was to Jonson that the exaltation of the masque was largely due, but Jonson shared the honour with Inigo Joness

Contemporary accounts preserve the splendours of the pagean- try : the elaborate descriptions of the inventors and their minute stage-directions remain to show how the splendours were achieved. Even where the account of the author is brief and general, we get a glimpse of the magnificence:— " The attire of the masquers throughout was most graceful and noble ; partaking of the best, both ancient and later figure. The colours carnation and silver, enriched both with embroidery and lace. The dressing of their beads, feathers and jewels and so excellently ordered to the rest of the habit, as all would suffer under any description of the show. Their performance of all, so magnifi- cent and illustrious, that nothing can add to the seal of it, but the subscription of their names."

The twelve masquers were twelve great lords—conceive the splendour ! In Jonson's masque for the young Prince Henry, children danced as the " lesser faies " and " to the amazement- of all beholders . . . the little Duke was still found in the midst of these little dancers." Prodigality taxed itself to sustain the expense of the masque and increase its richness. The Masque of Flowers was presented at Whitehall in 1614 in honour of the marriage of Robert Carr, and cost Bacon over: £2,000. This was that Bacon who wrote of these things as but toys, yet since Princes would have them it was better they should be graced with elegancy than daubed with cost. But he goes on with a characteristic sense of the beauty of light, colour, movement and order :- " Let the scenes abound with light, especially coloured- and varied, and let the masquers or any other that are to come down from the scene, have some motions upon the scene itself before their coming down : for it draws the eye strangely and makes it with great pleasure to desire to see that it can not perfectly discern."

But above all splendours the splendour of verse! And it is in Jonson that the masque finds its accomplished beauty. Swin- burne, Jonson's chief panegyrist next to himself, half lamented this excellence in Jonson, since it distorted and absorbed his genius as a dramatist, and his talent as a poet ; but Swinburne chose to prefer what was difficult and harsh in his plays, to what was lofty and delightful in his masques. The pure lyricism, and the almost unique combination of weight with loftiness, which so enchant us in Jonson's poetry are chiefly found in his masques ; the lyrics set there as he placed them, rising one from another and culminating, for example, in the uplifted and uplifting verse of Heroic Virtue :- " So should at Fame's loud sound and Virtue's sight, All dark and envious witchcraft fly the Light . . . I was her parent, and I am her strength. Heroic Virtue sinks not under length Of years or ages ; but is still the same, While he preserves, as when he got Good Fame. My daughter then, whose gloriqus house you sec Built all of sounding brass, whose columns be Men-making poets, and those well-made men, Whose strife it was to have the happiest pen Renown them to an after-life, and not With pride to scorn the Muse, and die forgot. She, that enquireth into all the world,

And hath about her vaulted palace hurled All rumours and reports —"

Nor is it only in verse of this spacious and grave kind that Jonson indulged his genius. The lightness, simplicity and delicacy of imagination, for which so many saturnine passages in the plays might well be lost, are here exercised with native freedom. The famous Epithalamium, with its cunningly varied refrain, ending " Shine, Hesperus, shine- forth, thou wished star ! " gains from its setting in the masque at Lord Haddington's marriage, as does the scarcely less beautiful but less well-known song of the graces at the beginning of this stately device. It was in Jonson's masque that one tendency was clearly shown—the tendency to comedy and satire, as in Milton another was beginning when the masque died—the tendency to pastoral. It began with simple mumming and ended with royal sumptuousness ; it began with dumb show and ended or drew near its end in Milton's sublime verse.

Professor Schelling naturally contemplated the masque under a wider aspect than was adopted in this little volume of English Masques, and traced its influence upon the drama. Its swift decline he attributed to a partly exotic nature, a rigidity of form and a growing extravagance, against which the Puritan reaction was complete. Bleak and froward natures, haunted by sin, could not endure noble pageantry. Even lacking this uneompunctious opposition, the masque had another enemy, for it was choking with its material resources. Yet the form is delightful. With masque and antimasque, with music, with modern skill in ballet, and with the fantastic ingenuity of some of our recent poets, what might not have been done in a new masque ? What might not yet be done, after so long an interval, in succession to Jenson and Campion in the uttering of such praise in the sound of the trumpet, and upon the lute and harp, in the cymbals of dances and upon the strings and pipe, as the Psalmist demanded out of his apprehen- sion of the fullness of life ?