Masquerade

Masquerade (pronounced mas-kuh-reyd)

(1) A party, dance, or other festive gathering of persons wearing masks and other disguises, and often elegant, historical, or fantastic costumes.

(2) A costume or disguise worn at such a gathering.

(3) A false outward show; façade; pretense.

(4) An activity, existence etc, under false pretenses.

(5) To go about under false pretenses or a false character; assume the character of; give oneself out to be; a pretentious display.

(6) To disguise oneself.

(7) To take part in a masquerade.

(8) Figuratively, an assembly of varied, often fanciful things.

(9) A dramatic performance by actors in masks; a mask or masque (obsolete).

(10) A Spanish entertainment or military exercise in which squadrons of horses charge at each other, the riders fighting with bucklers and canes (always rare, now obsolete).

(11) In military jargon, to conceal (artillery pieces etc) from the view of the enemy.

1560s: The noun "assembly of persons wearing masks and usually other disguises" was from the Middle French mascarade, masquerade & masquerade (the modern French is mascarade (masquerade, masque; farce)), or the Spanish mascarada (masked party or dance) (sometimes as masquerada & mascarado), from the Italian mascarata (a ball at which masks are worn), a variant of the etymon Upper Italian mascherata (masquerade) from maschera (source of mask), from the Medieval Latin masca (mask).  The English word was cognate with Late Latin masquarata, the Portuguese mascarada and the Spanish mascarada.    Some sources insist the supposedly Spanish derivatives of the French were actually “pseudo-Spanish” but in Spanish mascara was anyway “a mask”.  The spelling maskerade has been obsolete since the late 1600s although the synonym masque endured beyond another two centuries.  The verb was derived from the noun and the extended sense of a "disguise in general; concealment or apparent change of identity by any means" dates from the 1660s; the figurative sense of "false outward show" emerging during the next decade.

The related verb forms (used without object) were masqueraded & masquerading and masquerader was a noun, the adjective masqueradish and the adverb masqueradingly both rare; the plural was masquerades (also attributively).  Words vaguely similar, if not actual synonyms, include carnival, circus, cloak, color, costume, cover, cover-up, deception, dissimulation, domino, facade, festivity, front, guise, impersonation, imposture, mask, mummery, personation & pose.

Curiously, although the word appears not to have entered English for another half-century, the masquerade (masked ball, festive entertainment in which participants wear a disguising costume) was known in French since the 1510s.  It developed to mean an "amateur theatrical performance" in the 1560s, such entertainments popular (and performed originally in masks) with the Elizabethan nobility.  The military sense to describe a type of camouflage used to conceal field pieces such as cannons dates from 1706 and, in the army way of things, was quickly shortened to “mask”.

Masked Ball at the Opera (1873) by Edouard Manet (1832–1883).

Much associated with the tradition of the Venetian Carnival, masquerade balls (maschera in the Italian) moved from the ballroom to become costumed public festivities in Italy during the sixteenth century Renaissance although they never lost the perception of the link with the upper classes.  As they spread to France and England, they also took with them their fashionable status and, expensive & exclusive, they soon became one of the most preferred gatherings for the urban elite of Paris and London which constituted a genuinely new economic and social structure but, although symbolizing extravagance, whether there was ever the extent of sexual frivolity, debauchery, and gender subversion that was suspected then and has often been the depiction in latter-day popular culture, is at least uncertain.

The perception of there being something wrong surfaced early, clergy and the other usual suspects assuming the anonymity and sexual mixing of the masquerade must obscure the gender restraints they thought proper.  The satirical artists of the time lent weight to the vicars’ vexations, prints of masquerade balls showing women often scantily clad and leaning towards men with immodest intention: gender roles not just fluid but actually reversed, women asserting sexual power.  Henry Fielding’s (1707–1754) first published poem, The Masquerade (1724), highlighted the subversive power of the masks.

here, in one confusion herl'd,

seem all the nations of the world,

Cardinals, quakers, judges dance;

Grim Turks are coy, and nuns advance,

Grave churchmen here at hazard play;

So for his ugliness more fell,

Was H-d-g-r toss'd out of hell,

And in return by Satan made

First Minister of masquerade.

Lindsay Lohan in masquerade mask.

Reading Fielding, that middle-class moralist, it seemed that when masked in the company of masked men, women tainted their innocence and some feared that were women to taste sexual freedom, who knew where that might lead.  The masquerade, like many things which broke barriers of class, gender, and ethnicity by at least appearing to challenge social norms, induced one of the moral panics at which the English excel.  The clergy would preach from their pulpits of the "evils of the masquerade" and if that didn’t get through to the congregation, pamphleteers passed out their papers on the streets, warning of corruption and depravity.  Perhaps conflicted, because their presses printed advertisements and tickets for the very masquerades they claimed to oppose, newspaper editors wrote scathing editorials and the civil authorities responded with a predictably selective suppression, The Weekly Journal of 10 April 1775 describing with some relish the forcible breaking-up of a masquerade described as a gathering of "Chamber-Maids, Cook-Maids, Foot-Men, and Apprentices".  It seems the idea of a massed gathering of the working class in masks was a threatening thing; there’s no record of the events hosted by the gentry being disturbed.

Masqueraders (circa 1880 by Raimundo de Madrazo y Garreta (1841-1920).

The concerns however persisted and the masquerade was just one example of what was seen as an epidemic of unwholesome foreign influences which had of late landed upon English shores.  Returning to his theme, in a submission to An Enquiry into the Causes of the Late Increase of Robbers, Henry Fielding wrote that, "bad Habits are infectious by Example, as the Plague itself by Contact" and the masquerade being foreign meant it was suspect, like much of the diabolical and unwelcome cultural epidemic spread from Italy, France and the Orient.  In a 1724 sermon, the Bishop of London blamed the presence of the masquerade on English soil on a certain "ambassador of a neighboring nation” and went on to preach that the masquerade was a plot devised by France to "enslave true Englishmen by encouraging in them licentious and effeminacy" and journalists pursued the idea of continental corruption, noting the masquerade began in "hot countries notorious for Lewdness”.  There was even a conspiracy theory, one writer suggesting this “foreign diversion" was a European plot to neutralize the beauty of English women by forcing them to "hide their charms with a mask".

The fear of women enjoying sexual licence was the problem.  Those in the anti-masquerade movement equated attending the masquerade with the sexual act itself, just another expression of the double standards in eighteenth-century English culture, the presence of women at masquerades thought something heinous, while that of men, though hardly condoned, was more or less tolerated.  Some female critics were more pragmatic.  Writing in The Female Spectator Eliza Haywood (circa 1693–1756) advised her female readers that "women of honour" not only should not attend the masquerade but "shun the gentlemen who were so depraved as to offer them tickets".  On the other hand, she advised her male readers not against going to the masquerade themselves but against bringing their wives or sisters, lest their mistress might also be in attendance.  Undeniably sound advice.

Nineteenth century drawing, Lisbon earthquake, 1755.

It was an act of God which drove a stake through the heart of the English masquerade.  On November 1, 1755 an earthquake destroyed much of the city of Lisbon, killing thousands.  As news spread, the anti-masquerade movement spoke out publicly, claiming the earthquake was visited upon the Portuguese for their sin and corruption, the very thing that had spread to England.  Whether those in government took this analysis too seriously isn’t known but they certainly reacted to the public outcry the mob’s rantings summoned and masquerades were banned for a year.  Although there were spasmodic attempts at revivals, the popularity suffered and it was by the late eighteenth century extinct in England, not to return for more than a hundred years.