The Masque of Blackness

It was written by Ben Jonson at the request of Anne of Denmark, the queen consort of King James I, who wished the masquers to be disguised as Africans.

In a ceremony earlier on the day, Prince Charles, Anne's second son (who was still in Scotland at Dunfermline Palace) was given the title of Duke of York.

[7] Jonson, familiar with the works of the historians William Camden and Claudian on Stilicho, may have adapted Roman descriptions of painted and scarified Pictish people, and a conception of blackness, to form a new idea of British sovereignty and empire.

Blackness introduced effects that Jones would repeat with variation throughout his career as a stage designer: it opened with a tempestuous seascape, simulated by flowing and billowing cloths.

The twelve daughters of Niger, played by the Queen and her ladies in waiting, entered in the company of a dozen nymphs of Oceanus as torchbearers; the ladies of the Court were dressed in tones of silver and azure to contrast with the blackness of the makeup, with pearls and feathers in their hair, while the torchbearers, in green doublets with gold puffed sleeves, had their faces, hands, and hair dyed blue.

[11] The ladies rode in a great hollow seashell, which seemed to float upon and move with the waves, and was accompanied by six large sea monsters carrying more torchbearers.

[12] (With Blackness as with many subsequent masques designed by Jones, one of the aspects of the show most commented upon by witnesses was the dazzling intensity of light involved...which inevitably says something about the normal conditions of life in the Jacobean era.)

The daughters try desperately to find the country whose name ends in "tannia", travelling as far as Mauritania (North Africa), Lusitania (Portugal), and Aquitania (France) in their quest.

Despondent at their lack of success they pray once more to Aethiopia, who tells them that the country is Britannia and that they should seek out its sun-like king, who has the power to bleach their black complexions white.

One observer, Sir Dudley Carleton expressed his displeasure with the play as such: Carleton also made a topical joke, comparing the huge sea-monsters that flanked the shell that housed the nymphs with an unusual sighting of a seal in the Thames at Isleworth, "it came in company with the Sea-fish that drew in our Lady-Moors, and carried a Waiting Gentlewoman and some baggage!".

[22] Anne of Denmark's apothecary John Wolfgang Rumler is known to have devised a more easily removeable blackface make-up for a masque in 1621, The Gypsies Metamorphosed.