Folk-Play Origins of the English Masque

IN setting before you these suggestions for the Folk-Play origins of the English Masque, I want first to speak of the term masque as it is commonly used, then, very briefly, of the two most accessible and authoritative books on the subjects of masque and folk-play, and of those limitations in them which must be taken into account in any further study now, twenty years after the later of them was written : then to recall to you the nature of the two subjects, and especially the wider connotation it is now possible to give to the term folk-play the nature of some of the evidence the last twenty years has provided; and finally to apply some of this evidence to the earlier, but indeed classical expositions. The word masque is variously spelled, and the term is often very loosely used. The spelling with a q is said to have no etymological origin so far as the English language is concerned, and may be no more than the similar spelling of such words as publique or Turque in the seventeenth century. Nevertheless, in referring to the Court Masque, the artistic achievement which reached its apogee at the hands of Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones under the patronage of James I's consort, Anne of Denmark, it has become customary to use the spelling with a q , and for the pastimes and dance-disguisings of a less exalted social sphere, where, as it happens, the ceremonial form may be simpler and less strictly definite, to be content with the simple k or ke termination. In its employment in many literary, historical and musical writings of the present day and the past, the term masque , usually spelled with q , too often betrays a lack of understanding of its limitations, of its essential element of impersonality and disguise, or of its essentially seasonal incidence, and it is held to indicate a more or less dramatic entertainment in which the characters are mythological, allegorical or otherwise symbolic, the action slight, the speeches complimentary, topical or homiletic, the performance amateurish, diversified with music, and, if not with dancing, with attitudinizing in robes of a vaguely classical or medieval character. The casual writer may define it as opera or ballet in embryo, a musical historian has defined it as an offshoot of the 74

Art · Connotation · Dance · Laughter · Linguistics · Literature · Spelling · Term (time · Folklore, Mythology, and Literature Studies · History · Philosophy · Theater, Performance, and Music History

• Alex Helm (1920–1970) and His Collection of Folk Performance Material

  Eddie Cass•Folklore•2011

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