The Performance of Power: Theatrical Discourse and Politics

Sexual Politics and Cultural Identity in The Masque of Blackness

Sexual Politics and Cultural Identity in The Masque ofBlackness KIM F. HALL When she commissioned Ben Jonson to write her first court masque, Queen Anne specifically asked for a performance in which she and her ladies would appear disguised as "Blackamoors." The result, The Masque of Blackness (r605), inaugurated a new era in the English court which demonstrated a renewed fascination with racial and cultural differences and their entanglements with the evolving ideology of the state. The Jacobean court was a crucial site for England's development of its sense of national empire: the country earnestly stretched its imperial grasp and England's poets began identifying it as "Great Britain" when James became king of Scotland, England, and Wales. The Masque of Blackness and its later counterpart, The Masque ofBeauty (r608), became the catalyzing agents for a discursive network of "blackness" which participated in this process of identity and empire formation by dramatically reconfiguring issues of racial/cultural identity and gender difference. Many critics who study The Masque of Blackness hasten to note that the conceit of blackness in a court masque was by no means a new invention . Enid Welsford argues that Jonson was influenced by the Florentine tournament which commemorated the marriage of Francesco de' Medici and Bianca Cappello.1 Stephen Orgel minimizes both the significance of the disguise and the possibility of Anne's influence on the performance in noting that "Queen Anne's bright idea for a 'masque of blackness ' was by r605 a very old one." 2 More recently, Anthony Barthelemy 3 4 : Materialist Semiotics has suggested that the request for blackness in the masque was "nothing extraordinary," given the history of Black characters in court masques, although he does concede that the masque itself had a recognizable impact on its audience.3 Although it is very true that blackness was long a part of court tradition in Europe, critical attempts to discount the issue of actual racial blackness in the interests of historical continuity or misogyny ignore the persistent presence of a discourse of blackness in James's court. In focusing merely on the chronological, such criticism works to preclude investigation of the issues of imperialism, race, and gender difference raised by the masque. The reactions of the audience to the masque and growth of actual contact with Africans, Native Americans, and other racially different foreigners (which went much beyond anything seen previously in England) indicate that a more disruptive reading of both the text and the performance may be useful. The political import of Anne's request for a racial disguise is often effaced by this insistence on locating the masque solely within a dramatic tradition. Interest in the importance of this first collaboration of Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones ignores the very central political question of why such a landmark production involves bringing "Africa" (albeit a European version) to the English court. By examining these masques in conjunction with other dramatic modes of court presentation and within a more overtly political context of empire formation, this essay insists on the centrality of racial difference in the Jacobean court as well as in the masques themselves. I further suggest that the "aesthetic" values of the audience, the playwright, and subsequent critics of the masque are actually political concerns which address crucial anxieties over gender and racial difference. Representations of Blacks, as well as actual Blacks, were an integral part of Scottish court entertainment during James VI's reign. At his wedding to Anne, princess of Denmark, James arranged an entertainment for his Oslo hosts: "By his orders four young Negroes danced naked in the snow in front of the royal carriage, but the cold was so intense that they died a little later of pneumonia."4 This spectacle, the first entertainment by the royal couple, was followed by a wedding pageant featuring fortytwo men dressed in white and silver and wearing gold chains and visors over blackened faces. Such engagement with "outsiders" followed from the very inception of James I's reign in England and contrasted sharply The Masque of Blackness : 5 with Elizabethan insularity. The cult of Elizabeth fostered an identification of the queen's bodily integrity as a virgin with the integrity of the English nation.5 However, James's ascension brought to the surface acute and pervasive threats to that identity. His joint rule of England and Scotland and his pet project of creating a "Great Britain" gave...