Anne of Denmark and her African servants
[5] James VI sailed to Norway to meet Anne of Denmark in October 1589, as his advisers thought it was time for him to marry and her older sister was already engaged.
[6] John Allyne Gade, a 20th-century biographer of the queen's brother Christian IV of Denmark, wrote in 1927 of the detail of the royal couple seeing a dance performed by African men in the snow at Oslo.
[14] A contemporary description of the 1590 Entry and coronation of Anne in Edinburgh by a Danish observer distinguished between townspeople who had blackened their faces or wore black masks,[15] and "an absolutely real and native blackamoor" leading the ushers or whifflers who made way for the royal convoy.
David Moysie wrote that there were "42 young men from the town all clad in white taffeta and visors of black colour, on their faces like Mores, all full of gold chains, that danced before her grace all the way".
[20] These performers, according to the poet John Burel, represented "Moirs" of "the Inds" who lived in comparative ease and comfort by the golden mountain of "SYNERDAS".
Costume for the "Moir" included an orange velvet "jupe" and breeches and a doublet of shot-silk Spanish taffeta festooned with white satin passementerie.
[29][30] At least one of the pages, a young man, James Murray, had previously served the king and travelled to Denmark to join Anne's household in 1589.
[34] This money was the cash equivalent of their allocated "linen cloth" livery as members of the queen's household, calculated "according to the custom of Denmark".
[35] One list of payments mentions three keepers of the Queen's riding horse, naming "Williame Huntar", "George Kendo (or Keudo)", and "Johnne Broun", who received Scottish livery allowances.
[48] The Chapel Royal, in Falkland Palace, dedicated to Thomas the Apostle,[49] was a separate foundation and is now open to the public and reserved for Catholic worship.
At the feast following the baptism of her son Prince Henry on 30 August 1594 at Stirling Castle, a "Moore" dragged a pageant cart with six ladies holding desserts towards the dais or high table in the great hall.
[56] The scene was described, in the Scots language:there cam into the sight of thame all a blak More drawing as it seemed to the behalders a tabernacle ful of patisserye frutages and confections and in the sydis thairoff wer placed sax wemen quhilk [which] represented a silent comedie, ...
So this tabernacle, quhilk suld have bene drawen in by a lyon it self, yet becaus his presence might [have] brought some feare to the nerrest it was thought gud the More suld supple [supply] that roume,[57]The women, in glittering costumes bought with money from Anne's dowry,[58] represented Ceres, Fecundity, Faith, Concord, Liberality, and Perseverance (Assurance), celebrating Anne's statecraft and offering benefits in accord with Scottish masque traditions.
His published description of the substitution of the African actor for the lion has been suggested by Edmond Malone and others as the source of an allusion in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Records of the royal stable survive, naming some of the grooms and riders who attended Anne of Denmark and the fees and livery payments they received.
[62] Three years after Anne's death, the Earl of Salisbury gave six shillings to an African servant at Theobalds House, to "the blackemor att Theoballs".
[67] The portrait may have been intended to bolster Anne of Denmark's image as queen consort in the year her husband left her London for a return visit to Scotland.
[77] Kim F. Hall draws attention to The Masque of Blackness and the documented reactions of its audience, in the context of the "growth of actual contact with Africans, Native Americans, and other ethnically different foreigners" and, referring to Shakespeare's Dark Lady sonnets, a "collision of the dark lady tradition with the actual African difference encountered in the quest for empire".
[80] Sujata Iyengar reads Anne of Denmark's decision to disguise herself and her ladies as "Blackamores" as a revival of Scottish court drama, and a desire for a "new coronation" and an assertion of her power in England.
