Women’s Work: Making Dance in Europe before 1800

3 At the Queen’s Command: Henrietta Maria and the Development of the English Masque

The Queen commanded Inigo Jones, surveyor of her majesty’s works, to make a new subject of a masque for herself, that with high and hearty invention might give occasion for a variety of scenes, strange apparitions , songs, music, and dancing of several kinds, from whence doth result the true pleasure peculiar to our English masques, which by strangers and travelers of judgement are held to be as noble and ingenious as those of any other nations.1 With these words, William Davenant prefaced the libretto of Luminalia, the queen’s masque of 1638, paying tribute for posterity to the French princess’s mastery of the English dance theater and her ambitions for it. This discussion will elucidate Davenant’s assertion through analysis of the queen’s early program for masques. Modern scholarship has privileged the art of the professionals, headed by Inigo Jones and Ben Jonson, so that the monarchs’ personal contributions to the masques they performed in has been neglected. However, investigations from the viewpoint of dance scholarship reveal a marked and intimate involvement by the royal protagonists. King Charles and Queen Henrietta Maria developed the masque form on the foundations laid by their predecessors, 71 3 At the Queen’s Command: Henrietta Maria and the Development of the English Masque A D James and Anne; the masque was an arena of equality for men and women, so a focus on Henrietta Maria’s policies sheds light on those of her husband, the king. When Henrietta Maria came to England in 1625 as the young bride of King Charles I, she brought a rich heritage of dancing from the French ballet de cour. Although similar to the masque in the broad sense of being a form of theater dance, it differed significantly from the English genre. As court theater dance was, at this time, an outgrowth of social dancing, it was shaped by the decorum prevalent in each country. The French court was habitually open and accessible and therefore saw nothing amiss in the mingling of noble and professional dancer in ballet entries. The English court was closed, maintaining a distinct separation between those of noble rank and the degrees below them.2 This produced the division of court performances into antimasque by professionals and the main masque by courtiers. The French were happy to see the king and his nobles take on comic and grotesque roles, as well as the heroic and divine. The English court abhorred the assumption of any expressive or histrionic mode by their nobility, hence the entrenchment of that aspect into the antimasque section. In France, dance expertise formed part of the professional profile of the court musical establishment , particularly the violinists, and from these emerged the baladins, the first dance professionals. In England, the court violinists choreographed dance entries and undertook the duties of dancing master, but there is little evidence of them as dance performers. The English dance profession was growing out of the acting profession at this time, and the term “antimasquer” began to denote a dance specialist. English professionals were exclusively male, whereas in France, and on the continent as a whole, there was an acceptance of female professionals in dance, drama, and music. Nevertheless, Anne of Denmark had established the right of a queen to dance in a masque at the outset of the Stuart reign, and ladies ’ masques were received as seriously as gentlemen’s masques. Ladies and gentlemen would occasionally combine in a double masque for a suitable occasion such as a wedding, while in France at this time separate performances were maintained for ladies and gentlemen. Among the differences in the common structure of each genre, a significant one was the placing of the social dancing: in France, le bal followed the conclusion of le ballet; in England, the revels were integrated into the action of the masque. The French court drew on larger resources than did the English and presented ballets more frequently. A ballet was 72 A D presented through song and dance with complex stage machinery, including fireworks. There was also a greater emphasis on fantasy and spectacle with an episodic structure, featuring the ballet à entrées. In England a masque included speech, with a “through-written” text by a poet, and an emphasis on verisimilitude and character in the antimasque. A synopsis of Henrietta Maria’s life in France will reveal her first experiences of dance theater in Paris...