antimasks, and in the Mask of Squires the second antimask is interpolated in the middle of the dances of the main mask. There is only one antimask in The Twelve Months, but two dances are assigned to it. The Mask of Flowers has, besides the antimask 'of dances', a preliminary antimask 'of song'. The name 'antimask' has given some trouble. Jonson's references to 'a foil, or false masque' and to 'opposites' suggest clearly enough that he used the prefix 'anti' to indicate an antithesis or contrast. But in Tethys' Festival Daniel uses the form 'antemasque', and this spelling, probably due to a misunderstanding by the worthy Daniel of the point of the innovation, recurs in Chapman's Mask and in The Twelve Months.[1] The Mask of Flowers, again, affords a third variation, in 'anticke-maske', and this also, I think, pace Dr. Brotanek, must have its origin in a misunderstanding.[2] An 'antic' dance is a grotesque dance, and this epithet is often applied to the personages of the antimasks and their evolutions, from the Haddington Mask onwards, since the characteristic antithesis which the antimask renders possible is precisely the antithesis between the grotesque prelude and the splendour of the main mask that follows.[3] I want to emphasize the point that this element of contrast introduced by the juxtaposition of mask and antimask is analogous to what critics have always regarded as a special feature of the Elizabethan, and particularly the Shakespearian drama, the juxtaposition of comedy and tragedy, either in the form of what is called tragicomedy, or by the inclusion of scenes of 'comic relief' in tragedy proper. It is perhaps worth noting that in the French masks of 1610 and 1612 printed by Lacroix we find side by side with the 'grand ballet' elements variously described as the 'première et plaisante entrée' (1610) and 'la bouffonnerie' (1612), which appear to serve just the same purpose as the English antimask.[4] But, of course, I do not mean to suggest that either in France or in England the grotesque made its way into the mask for the first time during the seventeenth century. The clowns, mariners, 'wodwoses' and so forth of the earlier Elizabethan revels must have lent themselves to humorous treatment, and indeed mirth has at all times been of the essence of revels. There
- ↑ Chapman also uses the phrase 'mocke-maske', which is analogous to Jonson's 'antimasque'.
- ↑ Brotanek, 141. I find 'antick Maske' also in an Exchequer record (Reyher, 509) relating to the Lords' Mask of 1613.
- ↑ Cf. the opening stage-direction to James IV (1598), 'Enter after Oberon, King of Fayries, an Antique, who dance about a Tombe'.
- ↑ Lacroix, i. 241, 262, 291, 296.
