Masks |
Masks had many and ambiguous employments too. At the theatre well-born ladies concealed their faces so that they should not be seen blushing at the bawdy jests of the new dramatists. In the pleasure-gardens the same well-born ladies, still masked, flirted with any gallants who accosted them, exchanged improper badinage and made assignations which, on occasions, they kept. 'Masks have made more cuckolds than the best faces that ever were known,' says a character in William Wycherley's Love in a Wood. The mere fact that prostitutes continued to wear masks in public did not deter the skittish society women of the day. Then there was the organized masquerade, which gave further scope for audacity. In its true form it was a gathering of fully disguised individuals who performed their 'party pieces' and were duly applauded by each other. What happened after that was everybody's own private business. Some masked assemblies were raided by constables who had power to order the company to unmask; and according to one writer, great was the surprise of the more innocent visitors on these occasions to see the wicked faces which had been concealed under dominoes. The attraction of masquerades was that formal introductions were not required, indeed were actively discouraged. An adventurous woman did not have her style cramped by an escort. The rule against unmasking publicly was strict, though Addison tells of 'several rooms where parties may retire and show faces by consent'. He continues: 'Whispers, squeezes, nods and embraces are the innocent freedoms of the place and the whole design of this libidinous assembly seems to terminate in assignations and intrigues'. In Marriage a la Mode, Palamede describes the adventurous appeal of the masquerade:With a vizor mask we fool ourselves into courtship, for the sake of an eye that glanced, or a hand that stole itself out of the glove sometimes to give us a sample of the skin. But in masquerade there is nothing to be known, she's all terra incognita; and the bold discoverer leaps ashore and takes his lot among the wild Indians and savages, without the vile consideration of safety to his person, or of beauty or wholesome-ness in his mistress. By the puritanically minded, masquerades were bitterly assailed for the next hundred years and more. It was suggested that those who attended them should be taxed to support the Foundling Hospital, whose cots they filled with a stream of unwanted progeny. |