Bacon’s Antimasquing Baboons

This chapter responds to Francis Bacon’s inclusion of ‘baboones’ in the list of antimasque characters in his essay, ‘Of Masques and Triumphs’, and focuses on the way apes operate to facilitate the meaning created by the interaction of the antimasque and masque. The chapter looks at Jonson’s conception of the antimasque in comparison to the ways in which it was used by others such as Chapman and Beaumont. It argues that the traditions of place-and-scaffold staging and commedia dell’arte inform the dramaturgy of masque and antimasque. Finally the chapter also considers the masque in the anthropological terms of Victor Turner and Richard Schechner, suggesting that we might consider it ‘pseudo-liminal’, like satire.