The Masque of Blackness was an early Jacobean era masque, first performed at the Stuart Court in the Banqueting Hall of Whitehall Palace on Twelfth Night, 6 January 1605. It was written by Ben Jonson at the request of Anne of Denmark, the queen consort of King James I, who wished the masquers to be disguised as Black Africans. Anne was one of the performers in the masque along with her court ladies, all of whom appeared in blackface makeup.Sara B. Thiel, "Performing Blackface Pregnancy at the Stuart Court: The Masque of Blackness and Love's Mistress, or the Queen's Masque", Renaissance Drama, 45:2 (Fall 2017), p. 221. In a ceremony earlier on the day, Prince Charles, Anne's second son (who was still in Scotland at Dunfermline Palace) was given the title of Duke of York.Edmund Sawyer, Memorials of Affairs of State, vol. 2 (London, 1725), pp. 43-4.
Plot and themes The plot of the masque follows the ladies arriving at the royal court to be "cleansed" of their blackness by King James; a stage direction that was impossible to fulfill on stage. They had been instructed by a riddle to seek the land "Britannia". The theme of the masque was a commentary on political union and the disparate identities of the peoples of Britain.Martin Butler, The Stuart Court Masque and Political Culture (Cambridge, 2008), p. 111. The Masque of Beauty was written as a sequel to The Masque of Blackness, and originally intended for the following holiday season. It was displaced by Hymenaei, the masque for the wedding of the Earl of Essex and Frances Howard and Beauty was finally performed in 1608.Leapman, p. 94.
Jonson credited the central themes of the masque to Anne of Denmark.Jemma Field, "Anna of Denmark: Daughter, Wife, Sister, and Mother of Kings", Aidan Norrie, Carolyn Harris, J. L. Laynesmith, Danna R. Messer, Elena Woodacre, Tudor and Stuart Consorts (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), p. 226. The idea of disguising as sub-Saharan African performers may have been suggested to her by reports of a masque at the coronation of her brother Christian IV of Denmark in 1596. Courtiers, and possibly the king himself, took part in a dance as Roman heroes and Moors.Mara R. Wade, 'Anna of Denmark and her Royal Sisters', Clare McManus, Women and Culture at the Courts of the Stuart Queens (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp. 60–61. African actors or actors representing Africans had featured in Scottish court entertainments in the previous century.Anita Raychawdhuri, "Visions of Queer Pregnancy and the Making of Whiteness in Ben Jonson's The Masque of Blackness", Mira' Assaf and Urvashi Chakravarty (eds.), Race / Queer / Queens (ACMRS, 2026), pp. 1–23. "Moor" was a term used for African people and others who were imagined as exotic peoples at this time.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. One revels account calls the performance "The Queen's Majesties Maske of Moures".Peter Cunningham, Extracts from the accounts of the Revels at court (London, 1842), p. 204
The performers may have represented Scots in England at the Union of Crowns and the formation of a new British state.Martin Butler, The Stuart Court Masque and Political Culture (Cambridge, 2008), pp. 112–15. The appearance of Anne of Denmark and her ladies as African people could satisfy both Scottish and English courtiers, seen as a commentary on the relative civility of both nations.Matthieu A. Chapman, "The Appearance of Blacks on the Early Modern Stage: "Love's Labour's Lost's" African Connections to Court", Early Theatre, 17:2 (2014), pp. 90–91. Jonson, familiar with the works of the historians William Camden and Claudian on Stilicho, may have adapted Roman descriptions of painted and scarified Pictish people, and a conception of blackness, to form a new idea of British sovereignty and empire.Lorna Hutson, England's Insular Imagining: The Elizabethan Erasure of Scotland (Cambridge, 2023), pp. 240–244: Lesley Mickel, 'Our Hielandmen: Scots in Court Entertainments at Home and Abroad 1507–1616', Renaissance Studies, 33:2 (April 2019), 191.
Design The sets, costumes, and stage effects were designed by Inigo Jones; Blackness was the first of many masques for the Stuart Court on which Jonson and Jones would collaborate.Giles Worsley, Inigo Jones and the European Classical Tradition (Yale, 2007), p. 6. Inigo Jones worked up his drawings for costumes with Anne of Denmark, who would have been consulted on the colours.Stephen Orgel, "Marginal Jonson", David Bevington and Peter Holbrook, The Politics of the Stuart Court Masque (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 151–153.Mia L. Bagneris, "Painting the Queen Black: Paint, Portraiture, and Seeing Queen Anna as a Daughter of Niger", British Art Studies 29: Reframing King James VI and I, 2025. The music for Blackness was composed by Alfonso Ferrabosco.
Jones designed a raised and mobile stage on wheels for the masque, forty feet square and four feet off the floor; this was employed for many subsequent masques.Howard Colvin, History of the King's Works, 4:2 (London: HMSO, 1982), p. 339. The stage contained inner space for the machines that produced stage effects and the technicians who operated them. The King was often stilling on a stool, resembling the sun. Blackness introduced effects that Jones would repeat with variation throughout his career as a stage designer: it opened with a tempestuous seascape, simulated by flowing and billowing cloths.
The opening stormy sea was populated with six blue-haired merman-like tritons. The gods Oceanus ("blue") and Niger (black) entered, mounted upon giant seahorses. The twelve daughters of Niger, played by the Queen and her ladies in waiting, entered in the company of a dozen nymphs of Oceanus as torchbearers; the ladies of the Court were dressed in tones of silver and azure to contrast with the blackness of the makeup, with pearls and feathers in their hair and attires, and accessories of "orient pearl, best setting off from the black",Carol Mejia Laperle, "Race and Affect: Pleasurable Mixing in Ben Jonson's The Masque of Blackness", Ben Jonson Journal, 26:1 (May 2019), p. 5. while the torchbearers, in green doublets with gold puffed sleeves, had their faces, hands, and hair dyed blue.Lesley Mickel, 'Glorious Spangs and Rich Embroidery: Costume in The Masque of Blackness and Hymenaei', Studies in the Literary Imagination, 36:2 (2003). The ladies rode in a great hollow seashell, which seemed to float upon and move with the waves, and was accompanied by six large sea monsters carrying more torchbearers.Leapman, pp. 73–7.
Plot summary The text begins with Niger talking to his father Oceanus. Oceanus asks him why he has left his usual eastward course and flowed westward, into the Atlantic. Niger tells him that he has come to request help. Niger's daughters are upset because they thought themselves to be the most beautiful goddesses in the world, only to discover that paleness is thought more attractive – and so no longer feel beautiful.Sujata Iyengar, Shades of Difference: Mythologies of Skin Color in Early Modern England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), p. 84. The moon goddess, Aethiopia, tells the daughters that, if they can find a country whose name ends in "tannia", they will be beautiful once more.Carol Mejia Laperle, "Race and Affect: Pleasurable Mixing in Ben Jonson's The Masque of Blackness", Ben Jonson Journal, 26:1 (May 2019), p. 12.
The daughters try desperately to find the country whose name ends in "tannia", travelling as far as Mauritania (the coastal Mediterranean Maghreb), Lusitania (Portugal), and Aquitania (France) in their quest. Despondent at their lack of success they pray once more to Aethiopia, who tells them that the country is Britannia and that they should seek out its sun-like king, who has the power to bleach their black complexions white. In 1605, the nature of Britannia "whose new name makes all tongues sing" and a fuller union was in debate.Laura Schechter, "The blackest nation of the world: Female Authority and Patronage in The Masque of Blackness and Beauty", Elizabeth Hodgson and Sarah Crover, Nationalism and Royal Women in Early Modern England (Palgrave Macmillan, 2026), p. 69. : Martin Butler, The Stuart Court Masque and Political Culture (Cambridge, 2008), p. 110–113.
Aethiopia further advises the daughters that once a month for the next year, they should bathe in sea-dew called "Rosmarine" and "soft and gentler foam".Susan Dunn-Hensley, Anna of Denmark and Henrietta Maria: Virgins, Witches, and Catholic Queens (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), pp. 87–88. Thus prepared, at the same time next year, they should appear before the king again, whereupon his light will make them beautiful and white.
Cast The names of principal cast of twelve masquers were published.Sara B. Thiel, "Performing Blackface Pregnancy at the Stuart Court: The Masque of Blackness and Love's Mistress, or the Queen's Masque", Renaissance Drama, 45:2 (Fall 2017), p. 219: Kristen McDermott, Masques of Difference: Four Court Masques by Ben Jonson (Manchester University Press, 2007), pp. 205–207. They danced in pairs with fans which displayed their names and the emblem of the couple. The twelve names were devised from classical examples by Jonson to represent various qualities, in brackets below. Jonson called the six symbols "mute hieroglyphics".David Lindley, Court Masques (Oxford, 1995), pp. 7, 218.
Queen Anne................Euphoris (abundance) Countess of Bedford........Aglaia (splendour) Lady Herbert...............Diaphane (transparency) Countess of Derby.....Eucampse (flexibilty) Lady Rich........................Ocyte (swiftness) Countess of Suffolk.......Kathare (spotless)
Lady Bevill.........................Notis (moisture) Lady Effingham...........Psychrote (cold) Lady Elizabeth Howard....Glycyte (sweetness) Lady Susan Vere.............Malacia (delicacy) Lady Mary Wroth...............Baryte (weight) Lady Walsingham.........Periphere (circulation)
A newsletter from court described the cast of the "Queen's mask" in December 1604, noting that three women were excused because of illness, the Countess of Nottingham, the Countess of Richmond who had measles, and the Countess of Northumberland. Lady Hatton was not invited to perform and left court.Memorials of Affairs of State from the papers of Ralph Winwood, vol. 2 (London, 1725), pp. 39–40, John Packer to Winwood, 12 December 1604. "Lady Herbert" was Anne Herbert, a daughter of Henry Herbert, 2nd Earl of Pembroke and Mary Sidney.Leeds Barroll, Anna of Denmark, Queen of England: A Cultural Biography (Philadelphia, 2001), pp. 102, 200 fn.53.
Some of the jewels displayed on the masque costumes were borrowed from London merchants including John Spilman and Richard Hanbury. The loaned jewels were valued at £10,000, and Anne of Denmark's chamberlain, Robert Sidney, became liable for £40 for two lost diamonds. Sidney attended the masque, wearing a new suit of ash colour satin and peach colour taffeta which cost him £80.Barbara Ravelhofer, The Early Stuart Masque: Dance, Costume, and Music (Oxford, 2006), 130: Diana Scarisbrick, Jewellery in Britain, 1066-1837 (Norwich: Michael Russell, 1994), p. 73: Francis Grose, Antiquarian Repertory, 1 (London, 1807), 281.Millicent V. Hay, The life of Robert Sidney, Earl of Leicester (Washington: Folger Shakespeare Library, 1984), p. 216.
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