Jonson's Masque of Blackness and Multicultural Approaches to Early Modern English Literature Kristin Mcdermott

Language Arts Journal of Michigan Volume 18 Article 5 Issue 1 Diversity 2002 "To blanch an Ethiop": Jonson's Masque of Blackness and Multicultural Approaches to Early Modern English Literature Kristin McDermott Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/lajm Recommended Citation McDermott, Kristin (2002) ""To blanch an Ethiop": Jonson's Masque of Blackness and Multicultural Approaches to Early Modern English Literature," Language Arts Journal of Michigan: Vol. 18: Iss. 1, Article 5. Available at: https://doi.org/10.9707/2168-149X.1301 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@GVSU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Language Arts Journal of Michigan by an authorized editor of ScholarWorks@GVSU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. "To blanch an Ethiop": Jonson's Masque of Blackness and Multicultural Approaches to Early Modern English Literature Kristin McDermott Before joining the faculty ofCentral Michigan of Blackness, even though one would assume it University, I taught for eight years at Spelman offered an important chance to explore one of the College, a historically black college for women in earliest treatments of race in English Literature, Atlanta, Georgia. Teaching Early Modern English is not often studied in any but the most advanced Literature (which encompasses both the Medieval classes, for obvious reasons. Briefly, a masque is period and the 16th _17th centuries in England) a form of dramatic entertainment in which poetic presented some exciting challenges in a setting praises ofthe monarch, the court, and their values whose mission included both Women's Studies and are presented in a setting of music, dance, and an African-Diasporic approach to culture and elaborate scenery. Court masques, unlike other history. Finding early literature that highlighted forms of drama, were performed only once (much gender issues was easy; finding material that like modern-day pageants, opening ceremonies, discussed race in terms comprehensible to the 20th or halftime entertainments), were performed for century was much more difficult, as our modern an invited audience of aristocrats, were conceptions and definitions ofrace owe more to 19th enormously expensive, and featured both century cultural attitudes than to those of earlier professional actors as well as performances periods. (usually dances) by members of the court. The My Shakespeare classes, of course, tackled masques ofBen Jonson were written and performed Othello and The Tempest, both of which offer in the early 17th century for the court of King comprehensive interrogations of "otherness" as James I of England and his queen, Anna of expressed in terms of skin color or physical Denmark. The "texts" of such masques, however, difference. The Merchant of Venice also offered reveal little about their actual performance, even students a chance to explore a definition of race in the case of Jonson, who published his masque that was not dependent on skin color. But in my texts with extensive footnotes describing not only Renaissance Literature course, there was little the scenery and action, but also his own scholarly opportunity to explore issues of race beyond the sources for the complex classical allusions that traditional privileging of"faimess" over "blackness" informed his poems and song lyrics. in lyric poetry's neoplatonic definitions of beauty. Still, the masque form is a valuable source I finally decided that lowed it to my students of exploration of the relationship between art and to tackle a text that, though difficult, even obscure, power. A number of Jonson's masques offer in form and content, offered a unique opportunity complex portraits of the tension between to witness how the culture-makers of the 17th neoclassic decorum and more subversive poetic century envisioned the beginnings of the notion of practices; they offer an opportunity to investigate African racial difference. Ben Jonson's The Masque the intensely interdisciplinary nature of 18 Language Arts Journal ofMichigan Renaissance art; and they often contain provocative an influential study that was further fleshed out statements about gender (or race or nationality) in her 1996 Things ofDarkness: Economies ofRace and power. This masque in particular offers a rare and Gender in Early Modem England. She argues glimpse of early modern England's conception of that any investigation of England's initial Africa, enhancing the appearance, at least, of involvement in the triangular slave trade must multiculturalism in a collection of "Dead White include consideration of this esoteric expression Male" literature that is often perceived as the ofJames' benevolent plans for a passive and needy antithesis of multiculturaL It also offers the Africa. Hall also suggests that such expressions of opportunity to present a little more England's economic dominance are inseparable straightforwardly the relationship between the from constructions of female passivity and masque and Stuart power. objectification as well. Such ideas are certainly The Masque of Blackness does have its not beyond the scope of undergraduate students drawbacks. Its plot is almost nonexistent; its poetry when presented in a course that offers other not the highest example of Jonson's capacity for examples of literature in the context of both poetic mordant wit, even in the context of royal praise; self-definition and of the power of patronage. its conception and execution are morally suspect In the preface to her book, Black London: Life from any enlightened 20th century point of view; Before Emancipation, Gretchen Gerzina recalls and most of all, its ending is incomplete. Because inquiring at a London bookshop for Peter Fryer's the masque featured Queen Anne and her ladies well-known history of Black People in Britain and in blackface makeup, the traditional unmasking being told by the clerk, "Madam, there were no black of the courtiers that concluded each masque was people in England before 1945" (3). While Gerzina impossible, necessitating the promise of a sequel decries this fact as "a case of the present erasing in which the ladies would be transformed into their the past," I became accustomed to teaching beauteous selves. This sequel, The Masque of Renaissance Literature at Spelman to a population Beauty, was not staged until three years later, and ofupper-class scholars who were well versed in the it is probably the least literarily interesting of history of African-Americans and of the African Jonson's masques. Diaspora by the time they came to my course, and who, even so, were often surprised to learn that there were black people in England before 1700. This masque in particular offers a Their sole exposure to early modern English rare glimpse ofearly modern England's descriptions of Black figures before they take my conception ofAfrica, enhancing the course was usually Shakespeare's Othello; many appearance, at least, of also probably read a footnote noting that Elizabeth multiculturalism in a collection of expelled blacks from England in 1599 and most "Dead White Male" literature that is probably assumed that they did not return until often perceived as the antithesis of brought there as slaves or freedmen in the 18th multicultural. century. When they encountered Jonson's The Masque These drawbacks affect only Masque of of Blackness in each semester of Renaissance Blackness's teachability, not its intrinsic scholarly Literature, then, it sparked lively discussion of its value. This document has been of great interest presentations of "blackness" in the context of my in the last decade particularly, as early modern students' ongoing investigations into the history constructions ofrace and gender come under more of race and identity. Much of our class time on frequent scrutiny. Kim Hall's "Sexual Politics and this text was heretofore devoted to understanding Cultural Identity in The Masque ofBlackness" was its literal meanings and to presenting general Spring 2002 19 information about the function of the masque in Providing Background late Renaissance culture; for this reason, my Therefore, I re-edited the text of the masque students' responses focused more on the overtly with an introduction designed specifically for the disparaging references to the "blackness" of the undergraduate student, and with expanded glosses Ethiopean nymphs than on the complex ofthe text, hoping that the ready availability ofthis negotiations of aesthetic and historical myth material would allow us to devote more class time presented in the masque. They were quick to to an understanding of the cultural and aesthetic express dissatisfaction with what Kim Hall calls the issues in the text. This class had also been well scholarly tendency to "remystif{y] the appearance prepared from the beginning of the semester to of blackness in literary works by insisting that compare texts to fundamental classical (and mostly references to race are rooted in European aesthetic Neoplatonic) source materials, so I provided a tradition rather than in any consciousness ofracial detailed introduction explaining the theatrical and difference" (Things 1). For this reason, I collected, occasional functions of the masque and its literary from semester to semester, as many resources as antecedents. I also sought to convey the political I could to help my students explore both the and social complexities of the kind of discourse historical contexts of the masque as an aesthetic involved in occasional

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