Black, White and Blue: Pregnancy and Unsettled Binaries in The Masque of Blackness (1605)

Authors

  • Pascale Aebischer University of Exeter
  • Victoria Sparey University of Exeter

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-8530.22.02

Keywords:

masque, blackface, body paint, performance, set design, Queen Anna of Denmark, Ben Jonson, Inigo Jones, pregnancy

Abstract

This article examines the construction of national and racial identities within Ben Jonson’s and Inigo Jones’s Masque of Blackness against the backdrop of King James’ investment in creating a ‘British’ union at the start of his reign. The article re-examines the blackface performance of the Queen and her ladies in the contexts of the Queen’s and Inigo Jones’ European connections, the Queen’s reputation as ‘wilful’, and her pregnant body’s ability to evoke widespread cultural beliefs about the maternal imagination’s power to determine a child’s racial make-up. We argue that the masque’s striking use of blue-face along with black and white-face reveals a deep investment in Britain’s ancient customs which stands in tension with Blackness’ showcasing of foreign bodies, technologies, and cultural reference points. By demonstrating the significance of understanding Queen Anna’s pregnancy and her ‘wilful’ personality within the context of early modern humoral theory, moreover, we develop existing discussions of the humoral theory that underpins the masque’s representation of racial identities. We suggest that the Queen’s pregnant performance in blackface, by reminding the viewer that her maternal mind could ‘will’ the racial identity of royal progeny into being, had the power to unsettle King James I’s white male nationalist supremacy in the very act of celebrating it before their new English court and its foreign guests.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biographies

Pascale Aebischer, University of Exeter

Pascale Aebischer is Professor of Shakespeare and Early Modern Performance Studies at the University of Exeter. She has a long-standing research and teaching interest in the theatrical cultures of early modern England. She is the author of Shakespeare’s Violated Bodies: Stage and Screen Performance (2004), Jacobean Drama (2010), Screening Early Modern Drama: Beyond Shakespeare (2013) and, most recently, Shakespeare, Spectatorship and the Technologies of Performance (2020). She has also co-edited several collections of essays, including Performing Early Modern Drama Today (with Kathryn Prince, 2012) and Shakespeare and the ‘Live’ Theatre Broadcast Experience (with Susanne Greenhalgh and Laurie Osborne, 2018).

Victoria Sparey, University of Exeter

Victoria Sparey is a lecturer at the University of Exeter. Her research and teaching focus upon sixteenth and seventeenth-century English literature, especially the drama of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Her work specializes in examining the ways contemporary ideas about the body informed the performance of age and gender within early modern writings and entertainments. She has had work published in Shakespeare Bulletin and Social History of Medicine and is currently writing a monograph entitled Performing Puberty: Representations of Adolescence in Shakespeare’s Plays.

References

Aasand, Hardin. “‘To Blanch and Ethiop, and Revive a Corse’: Queen Anne and The Masque of Blackness.” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 32.2 (1992): 271-285.
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/450736

Andrea, Bernadette. “Black Skin, The Queen’s Masques: Africanist Ambivalence and Feminine Author(ity) in the Masques of “Blackness” and “Beauty.”” English Literary Renaissance 29.2 (1999): 246-281.
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-6757.1999.tb01150.x

Anon. “Masque of Blackness 4: Pipe Office, Works: Declared Accounts of Andrew Kerwyn, Paymaster of the Works.” The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson Online. Ed. Martin Butler, David M. Bevington, Karen Britland, Ian Donaldson, David L. Gants, and Eugene Giddens. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. http://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/
Google Scholar

Barroll, Leeds. Anna of Denmark, Queen of England: A Cultural Biography. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001.
Google Scholar

Baugh, Christopher. “‘Devices of Wonder’: Globalizing Technologies in the Process of Scenography.” Scenography Expanded: An Introduction to Contemporary Performance Design. Ed. Joslin McKinney and Scott Palmer. London: Methuen, 2017. 23-38.
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.5040/9781474244428.ch-002

Berry, Philippa and Jayne Elisabeth Archer. “Reinventing the Matter of Britain: Undermining the State in Jacobean Masques.” British Identities and English Renaissance Literature. Ed. David J. Baker and Willy Maley. Cambridge: CUP, 2002. 119-134.
Google Scholar

Camden, William. Britannia (1607). Trans. Philemon Holland (1610). Ed. Dana F. Sutton. The University of California, Irvine, 2004. 3 March 2020. http://www.philological.bham.ac.uk/cambrit
Google Scholar

Carleton, Dudley. “Masque of Blackness 6: Letter, Dudley Carleton to John Chamberlain, 7 Jan. 1605.” The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson Online. Ed. Martin Butler, David M. Bevington, Karen Britland, Ian Donaldson, David L. Gants, and Eugene Giddens. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. http://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/
Google Scholar

Carleton, Dudley. “Masque of Blackness 12: Letter from Sir Dudley Carleton to Ralph Winwood, January 1605.” The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson Online. Ed. Martin Butler, David M. Bevington, Karen Britland, Ian Donaldson, David L. Gants, and Eugene Giddens. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. http://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/
Google Scholar

Carr, Morwenna. “Material / Blackness: Race and Its Material Reconstructions on the Seventeenth-Century English Stage.” Early Theatre 20.1 (2017): 77-96.
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.12745/et.20.1.2848

Chamberlain, John. “Masque of Blackness 11: Letter from John Chamberlain to Ralph Winwood, 18 December 1604.” The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson Online. Ed. Martin Butler, David M. Bevington, Karen Britland, Ian Donaldson, David L. Gants, and Eugene Giddens. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. http://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/
Google Scholar

Culpeper, Nicholas. A Directory for Midvvives Or, a Guide for Women, in their Conception, Bearing, and Suckling their Children. London, Printed by Peter Cole, at the sign of the Printing-Press in Cornhil, near the Royal Exchange, 1651. ProQuest, https://search.proquest.com/docview/2264191396?accountid=10792
Google Scholar

Daye, Anne. “Torchbearers in the English Masque.” Early Music 26.2 (1997): 246-262.
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/em/26.2.246

Edmonds, Thomas. “Masque of Blackness 13: Letter from Sir Thomas Edmonds to the Earl of Shrewsbury, 5 Dec. 1604.” The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson Online. Ed. Martin Butler, David M. Bevington, Karen Britland, Ian Donaldson, David L. Gants, and Eugene Giddens. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. http://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/
Google Scholar

Fissell, Mary. Vernacular Bodies: The Politics of Reproduction in Early Modern England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Google Scholar

Floyd-Wilson, Mary. English Ethnicity in Early Modern Drama. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Google Scholar

Floyd-Wilson, Mary. “Temperature, Temperance, and Racial Difference in Ben Jonson’s ‘The Masque of Blackness’.” English Literary Renaissance 28.2 (1998): 183-209.
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-6757.1998.tb01126.x

Gordon, Donald James. “Poet and Architect: The Intellectual Setting of the Quarrel between Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones”. The Renaissance Imagination: Essays and Lectures by D. J. Gordon. Ed. Stephen Orgel. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980.
Google Scholar

Gowing, Laura. Common Bodies: Women, Touch and Power in Seventeenth-Century England. London: Yale University Press, 2003.
Google Scholar

Habib, Imtiaz. Shakespeare and Race: Postcolonial Praxis in the Early Modern Period. New York: University Press of America, 2000.
Google Scholar

Hall, Kim F. Things of Darkness: Economies of Race and Gender in Early Modern England. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1995.
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501725456

Huet, Marie-Hélène. Monstrous Imagination. London: Harvard University Press, 1993.
Google Scholar

Iyengar, Sujata. Shades of Difference: Mythologies of Skin Color in Early Modern England. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005.
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.9783/9780812202335

James I, King of England, Basilikon Dōron Devided into Three Bookes. Edinburgh, Printed by Robert Walde-graue printer to the Kings Maiestie, 1599. ProQuest, https://search.proquest.com/docview/2240861608?accountid=10792
Google Scholar

Jones, J. R. Britain and Europe in the Seventeenth Century. London: Edward Arnold, 1966.
Google Scholar

Jonson, Ben. “The Masque of Blackness (1608 quarto)”. The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson Online. Ed. Martin Butler, David M. Bevington, Karen Britland, Ian Donaldson, David L. Gants, and Eugene Giddens. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. http://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/
Google Scholar

Jonson, Ben. “On Lucy, Countess of Bedford”. Epigram 76 in Epigrams (1616). Ed. Colin Burrow. The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson Online. Ed. Martin Butler, David M. Bevington, Karen Britland, Ian Donaldson, David L. Gants, and Eugene Giddens. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. http://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/
Google Scholar

Karim-Cooper, Farah. “‘This Alters Not Thy Beauty’: Face-paint, Gender and Race in Richard Brome’s ‘The English Moor’.” Early Theatre 10.2 (2007), 140-149, p. 146.
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.12745/et.10.2.759

Karim-Cooper, Farah. Cosmetics in Shakespearean and Renaissance Drama. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2012.
Google Scholar

Lemnius, Levinus. The secret miracles of nature. London, Printed by Jo. Streater, 1658. Proquest, https://search.proquest.com/docview/2240954411?accountid=10792
Google Scholar

Lindley, David, ed. Court Masques: Jacobean and Caroline Entertainments, 1605-1640. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.
Google Scholar

Lotti, Ottaviano. “Masque of Blackness 21: Dispatch, 20 January 1604/05 (10 January o.s.).” The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson Online. Ed. Martin Butler, David M. Bevington, Karen Britland, Ian Donaldson, David L. Gants, and Eugene Giddens. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. http://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/
Google Scholar

McManus, Clare. Women on the Renaissance Stage: Anna of Denmark and Female Masquing in the Stuart Court (1590-1619). Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002.
Google Scholar

Molin, Nicolo. “Masque of Blackness 16: Dispatch, 2 January 1605 (12 January 1604 o.s.).” The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson Online. Ed. Martin Butler, David M. Bevington, Karen Britland, Ian Donaldson, David L. Gants, and Eugene Giddens. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. http://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/
Google Scholar

Müller-Wille, Staffan and Hans-Jörg Rheinberger. Heredity Produced: At the Crossroads of Biology, Politics and Culture, 1500-1870. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2007.
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/3482.001.0001

Orgel, Stephen and Roy Strong. Inigo Jones: The Theatre of the Stuart Court, vol. 1. London: Sotheby Parke Bernet, 1973.
Google Scholar

Orrell, John. “The London Stage in the Florentine Correspondence, 1604-1618.” Theatre Research International 3.3 (1978): 157-178.
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0307883300001279

Paré, Ambroise. The Works of the Famous Chirurgion Ambrose Parey. Trans. Thomas Johnson. London, printed by Thomas Cotes and R Young, 1634. ProQuest https://search.proquest.com/docview/2248535515?accountid=10792
Google Scholar

Pulver, Jeffrey. “The Dances of Shakespeare’s England.” Sammelbände der Internationalen Musikgesellschaft 15 (1913): 99-102.
Google Scholar

Read, Sara. “Pregnant Women Gaze at the Precious Thing Their Souls Are Set On,” Perceptions of Pregnancy from the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Century. Eds. Jennifer Evans and Ciara Meehan. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. 133-159.
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44168-9_7

Rüff, Jakob. The expert midwife, or An excellent and most necessary treatise of the generation and birth of man. London, Printed by E. G[riffin] for S. B[urton] and are to be sold by Thomas Alchorn at the signe of the Greene Dragon in Saint Pauls church-yard, 1637. ProQuest, https://search.proquest.com/docview/2240895481?accountid=10792
Google Scholar

Schmalenberger, Sarah. “Hearing the Other in The Masque of Blackness.” Blackness in Opera. Ed. Naomi André, Karen M. Bryan and Eric Saylor. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2012. 32-54.
Google Scholar

Sharp, Jane. The Midwives Book, or The Whole Art of Midwifry Discovered. London, printed for Simon Miller, at the Star at the Wet End of St Paul’s, 1671. ProQuest, https://search.proquest.com/docview/2240903191?accountid=10792
Google Scholar

Sullivan, Mary. Court Masques of James I: Their Influence on Shakespeare and the Public Theatres. PhD Thesis, University of Nebraska, 1913, chapter 1.
Google Scholar

Thiel, Sara B.T. “Performing Blackface Pregnancy at the Stuart Court: The Masque of Blackness and Love’s Mistress, or the Queen’s Masque.” Renaissance Drama 45.2 (2017): 211-236.
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.1086/694326

Vaughan, Virginia Mason. Performing Blackness on English Stages, 1500-1800. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
Google Scholar

Vincent, [no first name]. “Masque of Blackness 7: Letter, Vincent to Benson, 10 Jan. 1605.” The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson Online. Ed. Martin Butler, David M. Bevington, Karen Britland, Ian Donaldson, David L. Gants, and Eugene Giddens. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. http://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/
Google Scholar

Downloads

Published

2020-12-30

How to Cite

Aebischer, P., & Sparey, V. (2020). Black, White and Blue: Pregnancy and Unsettled Binaries in The Masque of Blackness (1605). Multicultural Shakespeare: Translation, Appropriation and Performance, 22(37), 15–36. https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-8530.22.02

Similar Articles

<< < 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 > >> 

You may also start an advanced similarity search for this article.