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Race-making is vital in understanding how race is constructed and used to maintain systems of oppression. Race is not an anachronism as it still dictates the manner in which societies get shaped. This paper explores the concept of blackness as a tool of subversion and the consequent genesis of trepidation in Ben Jonson’s The Masque of Blackness. Blackness presents itself as a challenge to the white-dominated world. Through this paper, researcher intends to analyse the potency of blackness in becoming an apparatus to incapacitate the established primacy of the white male monarch.

This paper aims to analyze the portrayal of blackness in Ben Jonson's The Masque of Blackness as a means of subverting the established white male monarchy and challenging racial and gender biases. It also explores the potential of blackness as an instrument for resistance and the underlying imperialist motives behind its representation.

The study of early modern English literature and race has continued to expand in recent years, with a growing focus on the role of blackness in shaping cultural and political discourse. Several scholars have engaged with Ben Jonson's masques, including The Masque of Blackness, as a key site for exploring the construction of race and blackness in early modern England.

In her book "Blackface and Transgression: Black Masculinity in Early Modern England" (2020), Margo Hendricks examines the ways in which blackface performance was used to reinforce and subvert dominant racial and gender norms in early modern English drama, including Jonson's masques. Hendricks argues that the figure of the black masquer is a site of ambivalence and anxiety, embodying both the threat of subversion and the potential for resistance to dominant power structures.

Similarly, in her article "Blackness, Sovereignty, and the Limits of Performance in Jonson's Masques" (2021), Jessica Rosenberg analyzes The Masque of Blackness and other early modern English masques as performances of sovereignty and power. Rosenberg argues that the representation of blackness in these masques serves as a reminder of the limits of performance and the tenuousness of political power, as well as a means of challenging dominant narratives of racial and cultural superiority.

Finally, in his essay "Blackening the Page: Ben Jonson and the Poetics of Racialization" (2022), Christopher Pye considers the ways in which Jonson's use of blackness in his masques and other works contributed to the development of racialized poetics in early modern English literature. Pye argues that Jonson's experimentation with the aesthetics of blackness was a response to the cultural anxieties surrounding race and identity in early modern England, and that his work helped to shape the contours of racial discourse in the period.

Overall, recent scholarship on The Masque of Blackness and other early modern English masques has continued to explore the complex and multifaceted ways in which blackness was constructed and contested in the period. These studies have emphasized the importance of considering the role of race and racialization in early modern English literature and culture, and have provided valuable insights into the ongoing legacy of these issues in contemporary society. 

Masques typically consisted of a troop of costumed and masquerading participants who danced and sang before a royal and noble audience. This festive affair was a quasi-dramatic form of entertainment that evolved as an elaborate court spectacle. The English masque reached its pinnacle under the Stuarts when Ben Jonson familiarised the audience with his conception of the masque, which strategically placed the King’s throne at the level of the vanishing point of the perspective. This calculated positioning, resembling the sun, ensured a perfect view for the King. Ewbank called it “a sophisticated Renaissance celebration of social and divine order” (Ewbank 308). This arrangement corroborates endorsement of white male authority. It can be read as a metaphor for the preservation of the social order and monarchical hierarchy.

Stephen Orgel, while discussing the convention and the tradition within which Jonson was working, reveals blackness as an antithetical quality to the court. Black presence and female participation can consequently be recognised as a transgressive act that discredits the King as a dominant figure.

The Masque of Blackness was performed on the Twelfth night of 1605 at Whitehall and published later in 1608 along with The Masque of Beauty. This deliberate coupling of the two masques indicates the potential threat of blackness, which needs to be bridled. Jonson wrote the masque at Queen Anne’s behest and it was “her Majesty’s will to have them blackamoors at first” as recorded by him in the prefatory note to the masque. She insisted on using black paint to simulate blackness, eschewing the established methods of using masks, gloves, and black cloth to cover one’s body. This imposed requirement constrained the physical realisation of assimilation of blackness.

The composite nature of the work distributes the responsibility of representation amongst the creators of the masque. Inigo Jones, the architect of the stage, Queen Anne, and Jonson collaborated with diverse motivations to construct a ‘black subject.’ Jonson conceives his function as not merely an instrument to celebrate the greatness of his royal spectators but also “to redeem them as well from Ignorance as Envy.” D.J. Gordon counters this view by highlighting the flattery of the patron in the writing of the two masques. He notes that the masque disseminates “notions more ‘remov’d’ than the everyday apotheosis of the Crown. A grander apotheosis is adumbrated, in which James is given the position and function assigned to the Sun in the theory of Beauty held by the Florentine Platonists” (Gordon 129).

Jonson attempts to build a case for the acknowledgment of the eminence of blackness but a simultaneous careful dissolution of the same can also be observed. By invoking Leo, the African, alongside the three classical authorities in the preface, he accords a place of recognition to the Africans. The masque is collaterally charged with the antagonism of the East and the West. It does not unequivocally ratify whiteness over blackness but the relentless Orientalist- Occidentalist dichotomy demonstrates the use of race as an apparatus to authorize differences. The stark contrast between the introductory  Niger, presented in “form and colour of an Ethiop” with “a blue and bright mantle,” is an attempt at binding Niger within the Black tradition. Words and phrases used as racial markers infiltrate the text cautiously. These include, “negroes,” introduction of Ethiopia as “the blackest nation of the world,” “blackamoors,” “orient,” “firm hues,” “black despair,” and “to blanch an Ethiop” among other examples.

The representation of blackness in the masque is unstable. It oscillates between its exaltation as “beauteous” and its denigration as “scorched.” The underlying reasons for this instability can be entrenched in simultaneous exigency to glorify the queen, who was one of the masquers, and the need to maintain the court’s decorum and royal character. Black presence risked tainting the ‘brightness’ of the court, as documented in Sir Dudley Carleton’s complaints of indecorum. He registered his shock at the ‘horrific’ sight of “lean cheeked moors.” Foregrounding the impossibility of Jonson's task of praising the queen as black, Ann Cline Kelly calls it an “insuperable” commission, “given the ethno-centric prejudice intrinsic in the English language” (Kelly 342).

Theatricality remained an important aspect of Jonson’s masques. He is credited with conceiving the concept of the anti-masque which usually preceded the masque proper and featured grotesque or comical elements. It was performed by professional actors and presented an exaggerated disorderly enactment. It provided a direct contrast to the elegance and order of the masque that followed. Ewbank identifies the didactic function of the antimasque as “merely affirming by contrast the beauty and harmony and order which the main masque establishes” (Ewbank 318). Stephen Orgel identifies Niger as an anti-masquer, whose worldview must be repudiated “by realizing potentially valid alternatives- ideal worlds- where blackness is not admirable” (Orgel 121). He opines that the antimasque figures remain unacquainted with the knowledge of “self-evident truths, such as whiteness is better than blackness.” He highlights Niger’s ignorance in assuming blackness to be beautiful and declares that “there is something he does not know about his world, and it is expressed by the riddle that has sent the nymphs all over the map and whose solution can turn the antimasquers to masquers.” (Orgel 122).

Niger must resume his “native cheer” as the “greater light” from the land of Britain unfolds as a saviour to absolve him and his daughters of their “errors”. This intended transformation aspires to reinforce the ‘greatness’ of Britannia and the Albion King. The masque is replete with laudations of the British empire and King James, who is alluded as “Albion, the fair”. Depiction of his powers to “blanch an Ethiop and revive a cor’se” and “salve the rude defects of every creature” exalt the status of the King. This provides a sanction to the hegemonic power of King James and extended support to his mission of bringing together the three kingdoms of England, Scotland and Wales. Wilson reads the restitutive powers vested in the King as his “civilizing presence” that has “purifying effects” on the polluted body. Andrea Ria Stevens talks about the right conditions that can transform the “constancy of blackness.” Assimilation of Black identities by recognition of greatness of Britain by demanding the black figures to salute the land and keep “reverence to the place, And shout with joy of favour, you have won, In sight of Albion, Neptune's son” (327-329). There is only a promise of resolution in the masque, which is climaxed in The Masque of Beauty, performed in 1608, where the metamorphosis of the daughters of Niger is realized by their transformation into their “real” selves.    

The volatile nature of the idea of blackness addresses a shift in approach mandated by the Queen’s proviso. The confluence of blackness and beauty stands in contradiction of association of blackness with abjection. The stress on ‘inward fairness’ of the black figures advances the incongruity in depiction of the constructed ‘Other’:

Fair Niger, son to great Oceanus,
Now honor’d thus
With all his beauteous race,
Who, though but black in face,
Yet are they bright,
And full of life and light (80-85)

The appearance of words, “though” and “yet” in conjunction with praise of blackness, implicitly associates blackness with innate inferiority. In an attempt to vindicate the literary component of the masque, Jonson extols the “inward parts” and illuminates the perishable quality of the outward show. Extrapolation of this proposition can be instrumental in understanding the intricacies of depiction of complexion in the masque as an extension of superior character of ‘inward fairness.’

Niger asserts the positive attributes of his daughters’ complexion by building a case for their beauty. His reverence for the beauty of his black daughters is adulterated with suggestions of their ‘inward fairness’, which is heralded superior to their outward black beauty:

That in their black the perfect'st beauty grows,
Since the fixed colour of their curled hair
(Which is the highest grace of dames most fair) (120-122)
… Ethiops were as fair

As other dames, now black, with black despair (139-140)

Kelly argues that in “styling the moon both as Aethiopia and chaste Diana,” the masque strives to “counteract the idea of black sensuality.” In order to make sure that the beauty of blackness of his daughters is not sexualised, Niger dissociates them from any passion:

And more, how near divinity they be,

That stand from passion, or decay so free (129-130)

The constant emphasis on fairness of Ethiopians in Niger’s speech weakens his appeal for the magnanimity of blackness. The masque does not explore black beauty without contamination. This ascertains barriers in realising the potential of blackness as an alternative to whiteness. The acknowledgement of the beauty of blackness becomes a source of apprehension as it poses a potential challenge to the English throne. The imminent threat of the collapse of the colonial substructure of the British throne emanates from a recognition of blackness and embracing beauty in blackness. The expansionist impetus of the English empire can ostensibly suffer a blow from upholding blackness as a measure of beauty because it benefits hugely from the trans-Atlantic slave trade by exploiting the black population of the African continent and the eastern countries. The lingering threat of the destabilization of the crown is made evident in sustained references to the ‘fairness’ and “sciential light” of King James I, the ruling monarch who was the patron of the masque.

The expectation of reaffirmation of identities towards the end of the masque by ‘blanching’ the Ethiops is reflective of the necessity of assimilation of foreign identities into Great Britain for their acceptance. The approach towards alterity in the masque reveals the modus operandi of the imperialist powers, that advantage from creating a subordinating image of the ‘Other’. The call for transformation of the black daughters of Niger hints at an impending threat originating in the possibility of an equal ‘Other’. This institutionalised racism meets resistance in Queen Anne’s performance.

Queen Anne’s notable rebellion demolishes the ‘sanctity’ of the court by the means of espousing blackness. Bernadette Andrea argues that the masque does not “endorse the division between privileged whiteness and suspect blackness, which lies at the heart of the emerging early modern norm of ‘fair’ white beauty” (Andrea 248). She notes the Queen’s enthusiastic embrace of blackness in collapsing “this dichotomy by deliberately staining her skin black and presenting herself and her ladies as ‘black beauties.’” (Andrea 248)

Daniel Packer notes the Queen’s passion and fascination with blackness in her elaborate collection of peculiar jewellery. The jewels and costumes of the Queen and her ladies accentuated their whiteness with ornaments “best setting off from the black”. Azure and silver colour of their attire accented their darkened bodies even further. In Packer’s opinion, the moors’ head pendants served as “a foil to her pale or whitened complexion, thus playing their part in defining the queen as a model of feminine perfection.” (Packer 219) These details function as a medium of ensuring Jonson’s loyalty to the King. Nevertheless, Queen Anne’s insistence on partaking in the masque despite being six months pregnant and blackening her skin is indicative of her assertion of autonomy.

The masque can be discerned as a protofeminist piece of literature. Queen Anne’s revolutionary act of exercising female agency is a celebration of the subversive power of femininity and blackness. Blackness is not explicitly abhorred. The latency of its beauty, which has a potency of conquering in “great beauty’s war,” emerges as a likely nemesis of fair white beauty. The alliance of blackness and female sovereignty is an exercise of visibilising their covert powers that disrupts the hegemony of male white authority.

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Bio-note:
Niharika Sirohi is an M.Phil research scholar at the Department of English, Faculty of Arts, University of Delhi. She is also a faculty member at Delhi Skill and Entrepreneurship University. She has previously worked as a lecturer at two different universities. She completed her M.A. in English from Jamia Millia Islamia and her B.A. Honours in English from Miranda House, University of Delhi. She is working on speculative fiction for her research, with a primary focus on anxiety and gender consciousness in the narratives.