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IV.—Italian Prototypes of the Masque and Dumb Show

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

John W. Cunliffe
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Extract

As the Italian origin of the Masque has been questioned in the latest and most elaborate investigation of the subject (R. Brotanek, Die Englischen Maskenspiele, Wien und Leipzig, 1902), it seems worth while to examine the history of the word and the circumstances of its introduction into English. Brotanek thinks that it came from the French, but it is to be borne in mind in the first place that the form masque is not found in sixteenth century English; and in the second place, that the French masque has never meant the performance but always the performer or the domino worn. Cotgrave gives masque as the synonym for “a maske for a woman,” but for “maske” without this qualification “masquerade, masquerie, barboire,” just as he gives for “mummery or mumming” “mommerie, masquerade, barboire.” Littré cites only one example of the use in French of masque for a form of entertainment, and that is from a modern author, with special reference to the English masques, which are elaborately described.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 22 , Issue 1 , 1907 , pp. 140 - 156
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1907

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References

page 140 note 1 Letters and Papers Foreign and Domestic of the Reign of Henry VIII, arranged and catalogued by J. S. Brewer, vol. vii, p. 560.

page 140 note 2 Ibid., vol. ii, pt. ii, p. 1517.

page 140 note 3 Ibid., vol. iv, pt. ii, p. 1605.

page 140 note 4 Ibid., vol. ii, pt. ii, p. 1497.

page 140 note 5 Ibid., vol. iii, pt. i, p. 35.

page 140 note 6 i, 76, n.

page 140 note 7 Vol. i, p. 718; vol. iii, pt. ii, pp. 1550, 1552, 1556, 1557, 1558; vol. iv, p. 838.

page 140 note 1 Vol. ii, pt. ii, pp. 1496–7.

page 140 note 2 Ibid., vol. iii, pt. i, p. 35.

page 140 note 1 I am glad to be able to confirm this conclusion by the following extract from an unpublished doctoral thesis by John Chester Adams (May, 1904) in the Yale University Library, to which I had not access at the time the above paper was written:—“A scrupulously careful examination of all the existing evidence on the subject fails to reveal the slightest indication of any earlier masquerade at court in which the maskers, as on this occasion, in Hall's words, ‘desired the ladies to daunce,’ and ‘daunced and commoned together’ with them ‘as the fashion of the Maske is.’” Dr. Adams and I, on this and other points, have arrived independently at the same conclusions.

page 140 note 1 Letters and Papers, ed. Brewer, vol. i, p. 479.

page 140 note 2 Collier, i, 75, n.

page 140 note 3 Brewer, vol. ii, pt. ii, p. 1503.

page 140 note 1 D'Ancona, Origini (second edition), ii, 352, n.

page 140 note 2 Gregorovius, Lucrezia Borgia, pp. 207–8, and 416–7 (Italian edition).

page 140 note 3 Sanuto, Diarii, quoted by D'Ancona, ii, 73.

page 140 note 1 Sanuto, Diarii, quoted by D'Ancona, ii, 124, n.

page 140 note 2 Letter from Johannes de Gonzaga to Isabella d'Este, given in Torraca, Il teatro italiano dei secoli XIII, XIV, XV, pp. 326–7.

page 140 note 1 Le opere volgari di Sannazaro (1783), ii, pp. 112–121.

page 140 note 1 Nozze e comedie alla corte di Ferrara nel Febbraio 1491—Archivio storico lombardo, Serie seconda, vol. i, Anno xi, pp. 751–3.

page 140 note 2 Giornale Storico della Letteratura Italiana, xi, 177–189.

page 140 note 3 Archivio Storico Italiano, Appendice No. 11, Documenti lxvii-lxxiii.

page 140 note 4 L'ultimo intermedio fu la moresca, che si representò la Fabula de Gorgon, et fu assai bella; ma non in quella perfectione chio ho visto representare in sala de Vostra Signoria.—Notes to Supposes in Heath's Belles-Lettres Series, p. 108.

page 140 note 1 Introduction to Supposes and Jocasta u. s., p. xxviii. To the evidence there given it may be added that Gabriel Harvey had copies of Dolce's Medea and Thyestes in his Library. See Todd's Spenser, Introduction, p. xviii.

page 140 note 2 Ferdinando Neri, La tragedia italiana del Cinquecento, p. 94.

page 140 note 3 This again was not without exception. In Alamanni's Flora (1556), published in Teatro italiano antico, vol. iv, the intermedii by Andrea Lori precede the acts, and in this case, as in some others, they are connected with the plot of the play.