“Where the gods meet and dance in masquerade!”
But Mount Ida had something divine about it, which our stage in the days of vizards certainly had not. As Joe Haines said to his masked audience, in the concluding lines of the prologue to the very play just named—
“All tragedies, egad! to me sound oddly;
I can no more be serious than you godly.”
The fashion, after it had been indifferently well worn by the ladies, of course fell to their maids, and Abigail wore the vizard which Lady Betty dropped. In Malcolm’s ‘London’ (eighteenth century) a writer is quoted, whose communication shows whither the masks had fallen in 1731. It is in a letter on “Boxing Day,” and in it occurs the following passage:—“My friend next carried me to the upper end of Piccadilly, where, one pair of stairs over a stable, we found near a hundred people of both sexes (some masked, others not), a great part of which were dancing to the music of two sorry fiddles. It is impossible to describe this medley of mortals fully; however, I will do it as well as I can. There were footmen, servant-maids, butchers, apprentices, oyster and orange women, and sharpers, which appeared to be the best of the company. This horrid place seemed to be a complete nursery for the gallows. My friend informed me it was called ‘a threepenny hop;’ and while we were talking, to my great satisfaction, by order of the Westminster justices, to their immortal honour, entered the constables and their assistants, who carried off all the company that was left; and had not our friend been known to them, we might have paid dear for our curiosity.”
After all, Justice was here, as usual, uncommonly blind; for the boxing party, masked or not, was not more offensive against bonos mores than the Ranelagh parties, where powdered “bloods” percolated their dreadfully luscious nonsense through the filter on the faces of the masked “belles.” And besides, masking at holiday-time had long been a privilege of the people. In ‘Vox Graculi’ (1623), above a century prior to the last date, I find it stated of Twelfth Night—“On this night, much masking in the Strand, Cheapside, Holborn, and Fleet-street.”
I have already noticed how our exceedingly precious grandmothers used to resort to the theatres with covered faces instead of stopped-up ears. The ears of the public did however rise angrily at last; the palled appetite loathed the long-served food. A society was formed “for the reformation of manners, for immoral words and expressions contra bonos mores, uttered on the stage.” The society retained hired informers, who sat in the pit, took down the naughty words and the names of the speakers, and then entered a prosecution against the utterers. They were driving a pretty trade, for the benefit of modesty and the suppression of masks, when all at once Queen Anne, sipping her hollands, gently bethought herself that these spies were flourishing by the abundance of that which they feigned desire to put down; and indeed the fellows were like some of our professional missionaries of the pavé, who steal spoons from chop-houses, and have as many wives as Rugantino. The Queen accordingly crushed the trading prosecutions by a “Nolle prosequi,” and took the matter into her own hands. She issued a “royal command” for the better regulation of the theatres, whereby she left to her Master of the Revels “the special care that nothing be acted in either of the theatres contrary to religion or good manners, upon pain of our high displeasure, and of being silenced from further acting.”
Now, leaving to a Master of the Revels the care of suppressing revelry on the stage, was very much like entrusting to Satan the suppression of sin. However, so it was; but her Majesty tore the masks off herself, or rather threatened to do so, as thus:—
“We do hereby strictly command that no person, of what quality soever, presume to go behind the scenes, or come upon the stage, either before or during the acting of any piece; that no woman be allowed or presume to wear a vizard mask in either of the theatres; and that no persons come into either house without paying the price established for their respective places.”
Good Queen Anne issued this decree in the second year of her reign, and it had just the effect that might have been expected. The houses played ‘London Cuckolds’ to vizards of masked ladies, as usual, on the 9th of November; and Pinkethman roared his buffoonery in his booth near Hyde Park during May Fair. What then did her Majesty deem contrary to religion and good manners? Well, I really do not know; but I do know that, in the very year of the decree, she herself had the comedy of ‘Sir Solomon’ acted before her and her ladies at court; and if she could listen to that without a blush, or a mask to conceal the want of it, why she must have construed immorality, and her royal command against it, in a very mild sense indeed.