Ben Jonson on Development of the Antimasque

Neither of these fancy dressrade partys features an anti masquerade costume, although Jonson had first experimented with antimasque elements in Hymenaei in 1606. The third is Oberon, the Fairy Prince (1611), Jonson's second work with a complete antimasque. The fourth selection, Lovers Made Men (1617), has no antimasque. By 1617, however, some features of the antimasque had become so inseparable from Jonson's approach to the masque that he incorporates them into the masque proper.

The masque form was not assure for a writer who aspired to literary greatness. The texts of Jonson's masques are slight -- no longer than the longest scenes in most Renaissance dramas. Music, spring and spectacle took up much of the time allotted to the performance, and many in the audience rated the spectacle much higher in importance than the text. disdain their brevity, the texts frequently carried an enormous weight of immediate meanings and current references -- often addressing specific problems the monarchs were facing at the time. Short texts, topicality, and the f stage that they were mean for one or, at most, three performances by and for a nice aristocratic audience meant masques were regarded as an ephemeral art. There was no broader audience for whom the masques could be staged. They centered almost invariably on the king's mien, and the ultimate point of the performance was the merging of

Schwarz, Kathryn. "Amazon Reflections in the Jacobean Queen's masquerade party." Studies in side of meat Literature 35 (1995): 293-319.

Palmer, Barbara D. "Court and Country: The Masque as Sociopolitical Subtext." Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England 7 (1995): 338-54.

Orgel judged Oberon to be a failure in some respects. He fix that Jonson faced considerable difficulties in making the transition from the masque world to the actual court in which James sit watching his son. While he may not sustain solved the problem of how "the sovereign [was] to be praised within the masque", Jonson made great progress in relating the antimasque and the masque (Orgel, Jonsonian Masque 88).

In the antimasque, Jonson discarded the approach of The Masque of Queens, in which the pit of the witches disappeared as the witches were "bound and vanquished" to make way for the world of the masque (Cunnar 155). In Oberon, Jonson created a single world that included the characters of two antimasque and masque, and Silenus is a character who bridges these two worlds. Though changes in lighting and personnel take place as the call down to the masque occurs, the primary change is not the result of skirmish but of "the gradual ordering of chaos, a creative act" (Orgel, Jonsonian Masque 84). The unrest of the satyrs is supplantd by the calm that is conferred by the presence of Oberon. But Silenus' affair as the go-between for the two worlds (a role somewhat analogous to Jonson's role as poet) prepares the way for Oberon and facilitates the change. The vicissitude is a clarification of the antimasque world. Sights and sounds become clearer as the light increases and the voices of the Fays replace those of the satyrs. The soft jumble of sounds pouring out of the satyrs, "Holla, sylvans! Sure they're caves / Of sleep, these, or else they're graves" (115-16) is exchanged for the brassy clarity of the Fays' voices, "Seek you majesty, to cancel? / Bid the world produce his like" (286-87
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