“But why do I describe what all must see?”: Verbal explication in the Stuart Masque

Abstract

Composed of signs taken from various art disciplines, the seventeenth-century masque involved a considerable amount of interaction between its constituents. Among these, word and image seem to have been particularly interdependent. One of the key aspects of the relationship between the two media in question was that the masque’s frequently obscure visual element conditioned the explicative character of the verbal component. This paper attempts to classify the elucidative passages to be found in masques: it shows that these referred both to the signalled fiction and to the material structure of the scenic arrangement. Moreover, the study proves that these comments, essentially devised to clarify pictorial signs, fulfilled a variety of other functions: for instance, they served as ostensive markers, invested the scenic composition with temporal qualities, and emphasised the close connection between the stage set and the figure.