“Out of the authority of ancient and late writers”: Ben Jonson's Use of Textual Sources in The Masque of Queens

Abstract

The Masque of Queens EN Jonson's The Masque ofQueens (1609) begins with an antimasque B in which twelve witches, representing Ignorance and its associated vices, are plotting to disturb the courtly celebrations and the order of the universe. Their conspiracy is effortlessly prevented by Heroic Virtue and his daughter Good Fame, and the witches are vanquished. Then the entertainment moves to the main masque: the triumph of Fame, embodied by twelve renowned queens, who in the actual performance were personified by Queen Anne and her ladies.In this way the masque purports to establish a clear moral opposition between Ignorance and Fame. Ian Donaldson situates this opposition among other instances when Jonson contrasts extreme ends of the moral spectrum: "Between a Volpone and a Celia, between a Catiline and a Cicero, between the witches of The Masque of Queenes-those 'opposites to good Fume', who 'do all thinges contrary to the custome of Men'and the ladies of that masque who represent true heroical virtue, there can be no real meeting; such figures inhabit opposite sides of the moral globe, antipodeans to each other."' Similarly, Stephen Orgel argues that Jonson's witches and queens, representing Ignorance and Fame, are antithetical. Their absolute separation parallels that of the antimasque and the main masque, which are the mutually exclusive worlds that these two abstractions inhabit: "His antimasque figures are hags or witches, sustaining the persons of Ignorance, Suspicion, Credulity, etc., the opposites to good Fame (I ~-16)-they are devised, that is, as the abstract antitheses I . Ian Donaldson, The World Upside-Down: Comedyjom Jonson to Fielding (Oxford, I970), P. 78. 268 0 2002

Jacobean and Caroline Masquing Culture: Studies on Early Stuart Entertainments, 1998–2010

“…Returning to Jonson’s early work for Queen Anna, we move on to a piece by Monika Smialkowska entitled ‘“Out of the Authority of Ancient and Late Writers”: Ben Jonson’s Use of Textual Sources in The Masque of Queens ’. Here, the author points out that the text should be read as containing ‘a polyphony of contradictory messages’ about fame and the masque’s examination of hierarchy and even ‘the King’s [own]... virtue’ (269).…”