<i>May Masque</i> (1627)

In celebration of International Women’s Day in 2025, Boston Manor House, a carefully restored seventeenth-century house on the outskirts of London, hosted a delightful performance of Lady Rachel Fane’s May Masque of 1627.1 This revival had its origins in the Shakespeare and his Sisters project, run by Professor Alison Findlay at Lancaster University, whose earlier production of Lady Mary Wroth’s Love’s Victory was performed at Penshurst Place in 2018.2 The project endeavors to revive early-modern private theatrical works, written by aristocratic women and often surviving only in manuscript form. It aims to enrich our understanding of women’s early contributions, as precursors to the flowering of Restoration drama, which established their public dramatic voice. Private theatrical productions of the Civil War and Interregnum periods maintained the dramatic traditions that enabled Margaret Cavendish (1623–1673) to write her plays, printed in the 1660s, that included assertive female roles with the “largest parts and the most lines.”3 Born ten years after Fane, Cavendish had much in common with her. Also from a Cavalier family, Cavendish’s early dramatic works were performed for her family, but as Susan Wiseman argues, her later plays drew on “both public and private, aristocratic and commercial theatre.”4Fane’s May Masque at Boston Manor involved students from the University of West London’s musical-theatre course, members of the early music ensemble, Passamezzo,5 and staff and volunteers at Boston Manor. Their combined skills and enthusiasm resulted in a unique entertainment, with the location, staging, and historical context adding many layers of site-specific meaning. The evening celebrated two seventeenth-century women, their families, and households. The house was built in 1623 for the wealthy widow of Sir William Reade, Lady Mary. During the construction, she included representations of the senses and of female deities on the magnificent plasterwork ceiling in the drawing room to announce her identity as a woman of virtue and learning. On the day of the performance, these appropriately presided over the masque below and reflected many of the scholarly and classical references made by the masque’s teenage writer, Lady Rachel Fane (1613–1680). Her literary skills and educational accomplishments at such a young age were clearly intended to be on display and celebrated by her audience. In later life, Lady Fane married twice and managed estates in London, Devon, and Essex.Her May Masque was written for her family at Apethorpe Hall in Northamptonshire and included family members as performers and as audience members. At Boston Hall, costumed actors sat among the visitors, dressed as Fane’s father, mother, brother, and his pregnant wife, her sister, and three gentlewomen. Her brother, Mildmay Fane, 2nd Earl of Westmorland (1602–1666), was himself a Cavalier poet whose own masques written for the family’s entertainment were likely to have inspired her. Lady Fane’s masque celebrated the family’s success, prosperity, and fertility, so that the pregnant Lady Grace Thornhurst Fane, auguring a happy future for the family line, was the most important focus for the original occasion and also provided one for this reenactment.Professor Findlay introduced the performance in a prologue drawn from Fane’s notebook. Dressed as the Duchess Ortigamus, she addressed a gentlewoman, asking about the preserving of fruit from the estate, and scolded a second for spending her time on “plays and toys” rather than concentrating on her domestic duties. This scolding emphasized Fane’s youth in a cameo role of Fane herself, whose time spent in a great household, like many young noble women, was preparation for her future role as matriarch of an aristocratic family.The masque was divided into two halves, the rustic antemasque with maypole dancing, and the dignified main masque with its cast of divine beings, nymphs, and courtly dances. The cast consisted of fifteen named individuals and additional dancers. Servants from the Fane household and estate were likely to have originally entertained the family during the antemasque, and this production offered us lively renditions of country dances with pipe and tabor accompaniment. The figure of a jester completed this section by offering emblematic gifts to the family: flowers, a bird, a book, to gratify all the senses. These acknowledged the individual merits of the custodians of this microcosm of social order, important as a counterpoint to the “disorder” implied by the presence and contributions of the maypole dancers. A nymph brought a symbolic close to the antemasque by moving round the room with her sweet-smelling incense burner to diffuse the coarse odor of the “countryside” and establish refined air suitable for the introduction of the gods. This gave some amusement to the audience but reminded us of the cultural background with its strict hierarchical views of social order within which such performances were staged.The main masque began with the entrance of Venus, brought in by Cupid and by Urania, goddess of the heavens and astrology, to cast away Cupid’s arrows of lust and to bless the family with chaste love and longevity. Her dance of the Canary, an energetic and popular dance originating in the Canary Islands, was beautifully rendered in the restrictions of a heavy costume, and with much noise and stamping of feet.6 Illustrations of dance alone cannot give us an understanding of its sounds and rhythms, which were so much part of the sensual experience. Findlay notes in the program that Fane describes “a dance of mine own making” for the nymphs of wood and weather who joined the assembled goddesses in an elegant, courtly, and controlled display. Urania concluded the masque with a farewell song.The audience and performers filled the space of Boston Manor’s hall. It was an intimate occasion, with responses and interaction between them forming essential elements of its success. Clearly there had been much thought put into the staging, casting, historic costumes, and props, but a sense of spontaneity gave it lively and entertaining energy, maintaining the essential amateur nature of the original production. It was a unique and fascinating evening much enjoyed by all.