Masques

A recreation of the costume worn by a masquer portraying a classical warrior queen, such as Penthesilea, Queen of the Amazons.

The bulk of extant drawings for masque costume come from the early 17th century masque designer Inigo Jones.

Includes webpages on the development of the masque, stage settings for the masque, Inigo Jones, the antimasque, Oberon: a royal showcase, and costumes in the masque.

View 253 digitized Renaissance festival books that describe the magnificent festivals and ceremonies that took place in Europe between 1475 and 1700 -- marriages and funerals of royalty and nobility, coronations, stately entries into cities and other grand events.

Three genres of dancing were employed in the Stuart masque: professional dance in the antemasque, choreography in the noble style in the courtiers' entries; the current ballroom repertoire in the revel. This aspect of the masque has left behind the scantest records and has therefore been given the scantest treatment by scholars to date. This provides two goals to motivate an entry into the revels: to open up the topic of the revels for discussion, and to see how far current knowledge of dancing in the ballroom can illuminate the sparse evidence.