This chapter provides the readers with a reassessment of the Stuart masque. In order to have a broader perception of the Stuart masque texts themselves, Barroll contrasts them with the livrets of a number of ballets presented at the contemporary courts of France. Then, turning to Jonson, Barroll observes that if one considers the literary values in the printed texts of Ben Jonson’s masques, they emerge as uneven records of his oeuvre. The poet’s various attempts to influence the transmission of his masques have affected our assumptions about them. Barroll pays specific attention to the transmission history of Oberon and Love Freed from Ignorance and Folly, first printed, with four others, in Jonson’s 1616 Folio. Beyond our sense of Jonson’s inclination to present all his F1 masques not as multi-dimensional spectacles but as literary endeavors, another factor may well have contributed to this great difference in detail between the Oberon and Love Freed texts, Barroll suggests. This was the changed atmosphere of the 1615 as opposed to the 1610 Stuart court.

This chapter contends that the Stuart court masque provided a scenic environment that was conducive to the display of the supernatural, the most famous example being the antimasque of witches in The Masque of Queens. Zukowska aims to prove that the masque’s basic magical prop, which served to bridge the gap between the metaphysical (the gods and abstractions revealed on stage) and the real (the king and courtiers watching the entertainment), was the masquer. Silent, passive, and styled to look like statues, masquers could only be activated by the king. The Stuart monarch would thus assume the role of a magician infusing life and motion into the inanimate, which was all the more miraculous as he did not even enter the stage. This chapter proposes the reading of the masquer as a mystical automaton, where the performing aristocrat is not only affected by magic but also acts as a tool of spreading it further to the entire court so as to deify it. Particular attention is paid to Campion’s The Lord Hay’s Masque, with its magic wand, charmed grove of dancing tress, and the overwhelming presence of musical magic, as well as Jonson’s magical globes with animated figures.