Let
anti-masques not be long; they have been commonly of fools, satyrs, baboons, wild-men, antics, beasts, sprites, witches, Ethiops, pigmies, turquets, nymphs, rustics, Cupids, statuas moving, and the like.
In Ben Jonson's introduction to the 1609 Masque of Queenes, for example, he explains that it was Anna's suggestion to offer an
anti-masque, a contrasting theatrical piece, before the start of the entertainment: "And becauje her Maiftie (best knowing, that a principall part of life, in these Spectacles, lay in their variety) had comanded me to think on some Dance or shew, that might praecede hers, & haue the place of a foile or false masque." (16) While Jonson was already experimenting with the
anti-masque before this particular performance, the success of the
anti-masque in the The Masque of Queenes would eventually make such counterentertainments a standard element of court drama.
In consequence, this becomes a profound study of reception, which challenges many orthodox assumptions that tend by comparison to pursue (on Knowles's showing) rather simplistic oppositions and binaries, where authoritarian pronouncements are seen as suppressing dissent and radical questioning, as the masque-proper radiantly eclipses the darker elements of the
anti-masque.
If any masque tends to celebrate the rich and powerful, so too, Sorrentino suggests, might its "
anti-masque," its apparent radical opposite--which means that the satirist, seemingly pitched against the interests of power and money, might be fooling us, or even, unwittingly, himself as well.
Innovative ideas arise here, such as teaching Shoemaker's Holiday and Knight of the Burning Pestle as festivity, using Brueghel's Children's Games as a window into the atmosphere of Bartholomew Fair, and arranging a class around the principle of the masque followed by the
anti-masque, in which a teacher may "draw attention to [her] intervention as a part of a prescribed, formal performance" (183).
It also has been proved that Jonson's masques, especially their
anti-masque parts, carry the characteristics of popular entertainments.
In the opening flourish, following the prologue, for example, the stage direction indicates, "Then came in ye
Anti-masque being/six moores (mr moore himselfe being/one) having six blacke buckram/coats laced with yellow straw/each of them bearing a javlin in/his hand" (415).
Or an
anti-masque, parodying the events of the main drama that follows?
A century later, and certainly by the time Inigo Jones worked on his sketchbook of
anti-masque figures, images for the role of tinker included a woman (probably a transvestite) wearing a bellows on her head with the handle sticking up straight, as in fig.
Hugh Craig addresses another issue central to masque criticism, the relation of masque and
anti-masque. He finds the familiar containment model wanting.
As a perfect contrast to Orgel, Hugh Craig writes well on the
anti-masque (in the latter, disorderly and lumpish characters were dispelled from the stage as if by magic when the Olympian gods and goddesses arrived and the masque proper began).
After entreaty by Eunomia `the torchbearers descended and performed another
anti-masque, dancing with torches lighted at both ends', thus embodying the idea of James as heaven's true light.