THEATRE NOTEBOOK

'ASSISTED BY A BARBER':THE COURT APOTHECARY, SPECIAL EFFECTS,AND THE GYPSIES METAMORPHOSED

ANDREA R. STEVENS

Andrea R. Stevens is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of English at the University ofVirginia. This Autumn, she joins the Department of English at the University of lUnois atUrbana-Champaign as Assistant Professor. Her current research is into early modern specialeffects, in particular paint's use as a device for sudden or large-scale physical transformations.

In an epilogue added to the only court performance of his masque The GypsiesMetamorphosed (1621), Ben Jonson credited apothecary John Rumler with

making the theatrical paint used to disguise the masquers as 'tawny'-colouredgypsies.^ Given current re-evaluations of the trade affiliations of London'splaying industries in the early-modern period, this mention opens intriguinglines of inquiry into the role of apothecaries in providing special makeup effectsfor the court and possibly the public stage.^ In what follows, I briefly outlineRumier's background, discuss the role of the early-modern apothecary and itspotential relevance to the business of theatre, and examine Jonson's revisions tothe Windsor court performance of Gypsies. The ointment Rumler concocted forGypsies was a form of race-disguising paint, and I conclude by exploringRumier's possibly innovative contribution to the stage device of blackface (itselfoften a controversial special effect, in particular when deployed within the courtmasque). Reconsidering the involvement of different trades in the creation andsupply of the materials used to represent race on stage can help us account forthe way the conventions of racial representation changed over the course of theseventeenth century.^

Identified only as 'Master Woolf in the text of Gypsies, John Wolfgang Rumlerserved the households of Kings James I and Charles I as royal apothecary.^References to Rumler are to be found in narrative histories of the apothecaries'guild, for example, and more usefully in surviving court accounts. Rumler mayhave come to England with Queen Anne's retinue and likely came from anAugsburg family of medical men.̂ He is first mentioned in the Calendar of StatePapers Domestic for 20 July 1604: 'Grant to John Wolfgang Rumler of the office ofApothecary to The Queen, the Prince, and the rest of the Royal children, forlife'.^ In 1607 Rumler becomes Apothecary to the King: 'Grant to John WolfgangRumler of the office of Apothecary [to the King], for life'7 The CSPD recordssums owed to him for 'physical things, perfumes, and &' and safe conductgranted 'to go abroad for Rhenish wines'.^ In addition, Rumler either embalmed

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or oversaw the embalming of King James' body.^ He obtained a position inCharles the First's government and carried parcels to the King at Oxford duringthe Civil War.̂ " Particularly relevant to this discussion of paint is the fact that in1620 Rumler tried to secure a patent for the sole manufacture of 'mercuriesublimate', but was prevented by the Assistants of the Society of Apothecaries.^^Among its other uses, mercury sublimate is a skin-bleaching agent withpotentially toxic properties: in 1598 medical student Richard Haydock warnedof its noxious effects, calling it 'biting' and 'very offensive to mans flesh'. ̂ ^ Whatrecords remain of Rumler therefore show him developing processes both forartificially darkening, and lightening, the skin.

Primarily known for making medicines (and sometimes accused of confectingpoisons), apothecaries were also responsible for dispensing spices and makingointments, tinctures, washes, balms, sweet waters, perfumes, and cosmetics. ̂ ^Apothecaries were part of the Grocers' Company until a 1617 charter decreedthat they be separate. King James defended the split by declaring 'Grocers arebut merchants, but the business of an Apothecary is a Mistery, wherefore I thinkit fitting that they be a Corporation of themselves'.^* The Apothecariespurchased their Society Hall in the Biackfriars district in 1632, the purchase alsoincluding the Biackfriars Theatre.̂ ^ Given the less than rigid distinctions amongearly-modem medical professionals, apothecaries were closely associated withphysicians and barber-surgeons, although each performed different work:roughly speaking, physicians prescribed, apothecaries dispensed, and thebarber-surgeons cut.̂ ^ Early-modern plays often depict physicians andapothecaries in negative terms as charlatans or worse, as for example themurderous Eudemus in Jonson's Sejanus.^'^ln the dramatic imagination as in theculture, the physician and the apothecary possessed medical authority but alsopotentially sinister expertise about drugs and poisons. Rumler himself wasexamined in connection to the supposed poisoning of Thomas Overbury.^^

Apothecaries (including those with royal appointment) kept shops in London,primarily in the Bucklersbury district. ̂ ^ They imported, stored, and sold manyof the chemical and herbal components found in cosmetics and drugs.Moreover, apothecaries published treatises that made generally availableknowledge about pharmaceuticals; we can attribute the periodic outcry againstsuch publications to the brisk trade in self-help tracts issued by unqualifiedpractitioners - and to general fears about the democratization of suchknowledge. Indeed, the compounds apothecaries stored could be literallyexplosive. Philip Butterworth's research into sixteenth-century English andScottish special effects suggests that grocers and apothecaries sometimesprovided the chemicals necessary for pyrotechnic effects, grocers' stock-listscontaining ingredients such as gun powder. Butterworth's examination of thehistory of stage fire suggests that the materials for which the apothecaries wereresponsible had clear theatrical value.^"

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Given long-standing associations between cosmetic transformations and theart of playing, paint has evident theatrical value, but the role of the apothecaryin its making or distribution within an explicitly theatrical context has beenlargely ignored.^^ Again, though the apothecaries' responsibilities were broad-ranging, they included regulation of drugs, medicines, and cosmetics (the lattercategory including substances intended to improve, embellish, or colour theskin). Because they often contained the same (sometimes toxic) ingredients,seventeenth-century cosmetics were considered species of drugs. Anti-cosmeticwriters frequently warned against the dangers of using cosmetics; they wereright to be concerned about the physical side-effects of paint, if not the moralones. These disapproving voices condoned cosmetic use only if its applicationtook place under the supervision of a medical authority.^^ The controversysurrounding the use of paint in general may have prompted Jonson to publicizeRumier's involvement in the execution of the Gypsies Metamorphosed.

In this masque commissioned by the Duke of Buckingham, Buckingham andfamily members appeared as dark-skinned gypsies of Egyptian extraction. Themasque repeatedly calls attention to the performers' 'olive', 'brown', 'dark', and'tawny faces'.^^ After a 'reveal' scene in which the men suddenly appearcleansed of paint, the masque's presenter explains to the Windsor audienceprecisely how the playwright engineered this change of face:

At Burley, Bever, and now last at Windsor(Which shows we are gypsies of no common kind, sir).You have beheld, and with delight, their change.And how they came transformed may think it strange.It being a thing not touched at by our poet;Good Ben slept there, or else forgot to show it.But lest it prove like wonder to the sightTo see a gypsy, as an Ethiop, white.Know that what dyed our faces was an ointmentMade and laid on by Master Wolf's appointment.The court lycanthropos, yet without spells.By a mere barber, and no magic else.It was fetched off with water and a ball.And to our transformation this is all.Save what the master fashioner calls his;For to a gypsy's metamorphosisWho doth disguise his habit and his face.And takes on a false person by his place.The power of poetry can never fail her.Assisted by a barber and a tailor. (W.1379-1398)

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Jonson uses the epilogue to transfer responsibility for the racial transformationfrom himself to Rumler, in so doing debunking the spectacle's magic altogether.Why Jonson felt it necessary to do so is worth considering further.

This masque was performed three times, the first two times at private familyhomes: Burley-on-the-Hill, Buckingham's own seat; and Beivoir, the home of hisfather-in-law the Earl of Rutland. Jonson therefore adds the epilogue to themasque's most public performance in front of the 'court grandees' whom MartinButler suggests had good reason to be sceptical of the controversialBuckingham.^* The epilogue reassures those assembled that the courtiers'darkness was applied and removed under official auspices: by the courtapothecary, John Rumler. The reference to 'seeing an Ethiop white' resurrects thememory of Jonson's poorly received Masque of Blackness (1605) where QueenAnne and other courtly women appeared painted as 'blackamores' (18).^5ir, 1605it was indeed labour in vain to wash an Ethiop white, the black paint evidentlytoo intractable to remove during the course of the performance.^^ While Gypsiesdelivers a stage action that corresponds to its promised metamorphosis, the finallines of the Windsor epilogue explicitly dismantle the 'wonder' of the sight.Moreover, Jonson's attitude toward his own artistic production is ambivalent:clearly he wants to distance himself from the transition from dark to whitewithout wholly selling out the power of his own 'poetry' (1397-1398). Jonsonenlists Rumler's authority to his cause, but by calling him a 'mere barber' (eventeasingly, as the tone suggests) he diminishes Rumler's contribution whileconceding the transformative powers of the apothecary's office.

While most of the Windsor revisions simply tailor the masque to the newperformance venue, a further addition also calls attention to the materials of themen's disguise. At Windsor, the rustics who dance in the antimasque ask howthey themselves might become gypsies.^^ The Patrico adopts the language oftrade to discuss the 'mystery' of the gypsy identity, emphasizing that to be agypsy is a matter of craft and artifice, or rather a matter of having the rightmaterials at hand (1081):

If your hand be light,I'll show ye the slightOf our Ptolemy's knot;It is, and 'tis not;To change your complexionWith the noble confectionOf walnuts and hog's grease.Better than dog's grease (W.1116-1123)

Here, Jonson again foregrounds the technology of transformation, debunking,or rather materializing, theatrical magic.

6 THEATI^E NOTEBOOK

What has gone unnoticed about the Windsor revision is that its two majoradditions emphasize stage trickery involving paint. While revising the masquefor perforniance at court, Jonson felt compelled to emphasize the materialcomponent of the spectacle involving the labours of others - specifically, theapothecary and the tailor. The most likely explanation for these additions is thatundermining the masque's metamorphosis bolsters Buckingham in front of hiscourt audience, the implication that he is a thieving gypsy tempered byreminders that this is all just 'theatrical legerdemain'.^^ Furthermore, theepilogue's pointed reference to the Masque of Blackness suggests a lingeringcontroversy surrounding the use of skin-altering paint that needs to be dispelledby invoking the temporariness of the disguise and the involvement of a medicalauthority. Jonson's definition of paint as 'ointment' - a v^ord that in 1621 hadcosmetic, medical, and sacramental connotations - might be construed as anattempt to license the use of paint in this courtly context.

Two compatible possibilities, therefore, might account for the Windsorrevisions' emphasis on paint: first, that underscoring stage trickery distancesboth Jonson and Buckingham from the negative connotations of the gypsydisguise; and second, that given the controversy surrounding the use of paint ingeneral (and specifically in Blackness), Jonson thought it best to cite anotherauthority's hand in the laying on of paint. Still, these explanations do notaccount for the epilogue's painstakingly literal explanation of theatricalmechanics. How wondrous indeed was it to see a gypsy, as an Ethiop, white?

Remarkably, Jonson's epilogue seems to be the earliest evidence anywhere, onthe public or private stage, of the use of paint in a racial disguise in which thedisguise gets removed during the course of the performance. Late Jacobean andCaroline theatre makes frequent use of what Virginia Mason Vaughan calls the'theatrical legerdemain' of the racial quick-change, but not necessarily before1624 (in Massinger's The Parliament of Love). Prior to this, race is either a fixedproperty (in plays like Othello and in masques like The Masque of Blackness) or adisguise that is acknowledged but not removed during the course of the play(Francisco/Mulinassar in The White Devil, 1612; Jolenta in The Devil's Law Case,1619).̂ ^ Plays that directly stage a character's transformation from black to whitedate mainly to the 1630s: see for example Richard Brome's The English Moor(1637), William Berkeley's The Lost Lady (1637), and possibly WilliamHeminges's The Fatal Contract (1639). Jonson's masque seems to point to arelatively innovative theatrical display of racial change, rather than static racialidentity.'"'

In other words, the way blackness features in the public drama changes overa period of about thirty-five years. We do not know what kind of paint was usedin these earlier productions where the paint did not, or could not, come off. Ifindeed we can rely on it as a visual cue for an actual performance, the Peacham

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drawing of Aaron in Titus Andronicus suggests very dense black paint. MegTwycross and Sarah Carpenter's exhaustive research into masks and maskingfurther reveals that on at least some occasions 'painters' were paid to paintbodies and scenic backdrops alike, 'with no implication that either techniques ormaterials might differ between the two'.^'' The use of just such a dense, non-naturalistic black paint likely accounts for the absence of a white-washing scenein The Masque of Blackness?^

We may not be able to draw a direct line of connection between Rumier'screation of an easily removable tallow or grease-based paint and later publicperformances making use of a similar trope, but Rumier's contribution to theviability of the racial quick-change is worth noting. His creation of a paintflexible enough to disguise the masquers and be removable with 'water and aball' does, however, testify to the theatrical value of his expertise as apothecary.It seemingly took the expert intervention of a professional from 'outside' thetheatrical circuit to assist the stage in representing racial transformation withinits fictions. The tantalizing possibility is that the early English stage's evolvingtreatment of racial representation was driven in part by developments inindustries usually considered outside the theatre's commercial or culturalaffiliation.

Further questions remain. For example, did Jonson specifically commissionRumler to make this effect? Was Rumler present at Burley and Belvoir as part ofthe 'crew', so to speak, or was he involved only at the Windsor performance?We know relatively little about the paint used on the public stage. We assumethat actors probably made and owned their own makeup. Did this also holdtrue, however, when more elaborate face-painting effects were required, as forexample when the stage direction called for blackface, gilding, or blood effects?At what point in the rehearsal process do makeup effects get resolved,discussed, rehearsed? Theatre historians have compiled valuable informationabout the use of clothing in the theatre: might we be able to do the same for lessdurable properties like paint? Should we read more into the trade affiliations ofplayers and boy apprentices, and the expertise they may have applied to the artof playing?^^

As these questions suggest, the painted body is an under-researched butimportant component of the visual field of the so-called 'bare' early modemstage. Matter matters: the more we know about material properties, the betterwe can reconstruct early-modem performance conditions and the decisions thatinformed theatrical practice. It may be that the changing deployment ofblackface had as much to do with changing technical innovations as it did withchanging cultural and social factors.''̂

8 THEATRE NOTEBOOK

My thanks to the members of Alan Nelson's theatre history seminar at the 2006

Philadelphia Shakespeare Association of America meeting, especially Alan Dessen

and Paul Menzer for their helpful suggestions.

' All citations to Jonson's masques refer to The Complete Masques, ed. Stephen Orgel,New Haven, 1969. Gypsies exists in three forms, the Burley, Belvoir, and Windsor editions. Thefirst two performances took place in August 1621 at private family homes; the thirdperformance, probably at royal request, took place at Windsor in early September. For this anda textual history of the masque see W. W. Greg, fonson's Masque of Gypsies in the Burley,Belvoir, and Windsor Versions, London, 1952. For an account of the remuneration Jonson wassupposed to have received because of Gypsies' success, see Orgel, The Jonsonian Masque,Cambridge, 1967, 68.

^ See David Kathman, 'Grocers, Goldsmiths, and Drapers: Freemen and Apprentices in theElizabethan Theatre', Shakespeare Quarterly 55, 2004, 1-49 and, forthcoming, Kathman's'Citizens and Playhouse Builders', Research Opportunities in Renaissance Drama.

^ Most critical studies of early modern race all too briefly consider the relationship betweenstage material and representation. See for example Kim F. Hall's Things of Darkness:Economies of Race and Gender in Early Modem England, Ithaca, 1995. Two notable exceptionsare Dympna Callaghan's chapter on Othello's blackness in Shakespeare Without Women:Representing Gender and Race on the Renaissance Stage, London and New York, 2000, andVirginia Vaughan's Performing Blackness on English Stages, 1500-1800, Cambridge, 2005.Neither critic, however, addresses the question of competing theatrical expertise from groupsnot normally considered part of the theatrical circuit, in the development of conventions forrepresenting race.

•• Orgel identifies him as 'Johann Wolfgang Rumler' but does not provide any additionalbiographical background. For general sources on royal apothecaries and some background onRumler, see Leslie Matthews The Royal Apothecaries, London, The Wellcome HistoricalMedical Library, 1967, and Cecil Wall, A History ofthe Worshipful Society of Apothecaries ofLondon, London, 1963.

5 On the connection between John (or Johann) Wolfgang Rumler and Augsburg physicianJoharm Udalric Rumler, see J. O. Leibowitz's entry on 'Joharm Udalric Rumler and a Letter ofVesalius' in Medical History 8,1964,377-378. According to Leibowitz, Queen Arme consultedthe Augsburg Rumler and sent him her portrait cast in bronze and a chest containing drugs.Leibowitz speculates the two Johanns were brothers. Wall suggests that a provision in theApothecaries' charter saying that 'apothecaries holding Royal appointments should be exofficio Freemen' was inserted on behalf of the many foreign-bom apothecaries, includingRumler, 13n.

* Calendar of State Papers Domestic: James 1,1603-1610,134. The Calendar itself providesa good starting point for references to Rumler (most of which indicate payments for variousservices). The surviving documents consulted thus far with respect to these entries haveyielded nothing yet of special relevance to the scope of this essay; this research is, however,ongoing.

7 Ibid., 379.8 Ibid., 387, 501.' CSPD 1627-1628, 423. See also CPSD 1603-1610, 654, for same services for 'physical and

odiferous parcels, provided for the Queen, Prince of Wales, Duke of York, and Princess Sophia,deceased'.

'" 'Ordered, That Jo. Wolfgang Rumler, His Majesty's Apothecary, shall have a Warrant, tosend to Oxford such Parcels of Apothecaries Stuff as are for His Majesty's own Service; and that

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they may be searched here before they go; and Mr. Rumler to have a Pass, for himself and hisMen and Horses.' House of Lords Joumal Volume 5, 20 December 1642, 503-08.

'^ Reported Matthews 95. Mercury sublimate was both a cosmetic compound and a poison;according to Wall, groups of physicians periodically petitioned the King to restrict or ban itssale. The author of The Devil's Charter was accused of using mercury sublimate as a poison;see Pollard (cited below) 85.

1̂ See Haydock's translation of Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo's A Tracte Containng the Artes ofCurious Paintinge Carvinge & Buildinge, London, 1598. Elizabethan and Jacobean anticosmetictracts frequently mention the harmful properties of mercury.

^̂ On the connection in the early modem imagination between drugs, poisons, andcosmetics, see Tanya Pollard's Drugs and Theatre in Early Modem England, Oxford, 2005, inparticular her chapter 'Cosmetic Theatre'. Pollard discusses the metaphorical connectionsbetween drugs and theatre (noting important similarities between early modern discussions ofthe effects of theatre and the operations of invasive drugs), but does not discuss specificallytheatrical application of apothecary labour. Pollard notes important similarities between earlymodem conceptions of the effects of theater and the effects of invasive drugs.

^* For this and for a brief account of the gradual specialization of the apothecaries from thegrocers, see Valerie Hope, Clive Birch, and Gilbert Torry, The Freedom: The Past and Presentofthe Livery, Guilds, and City of London, Buckingham, 1982,162-163.

15 Ibid., 162.1* On this and the frequent conflicts between apothecaries and physicians, see Hope et al.

cited above. See also R. S. Roberts, 'The Personnel and Practice of Medicine in Tudor and StuartEngland', Medical History 8,1964, 217-234.

1̂ Though he is called a 'physician', the play gives him expertise in drugs and cosmetics,specialized knowledge more clearly falling to the apothecary.

18 CSPD 1611-1618,313: 'Examination of John Wolf Rumler, French Apothecary. Was neverappointed to admiruster medicine to Overbury, but wrote to the Lieutenant to say that it wasthe King's pleasure he should do so'.

1' See entry under 'Bucklersbury', Dictionary of London (1918): http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.asp?compid=6596 . According to Matthews, Rumler kept a shop outsideWhitehall and bound apprentices, 97.

^° See Philip Butterworth, Theatre of Fire, London, 1998, 18. According to Butterworth,apothecary John Burwell is named in the Cambridge King's College Mundum Book for1552-1553 as being paid 'for a drye ffatte to make the thunder on' and other 'gere fetched at himto ye plaie' in a production of Hippolytus, 19.

1̂ For a fascinating dissection of an early modem 'culture of cosmetics', see Farah Karim-Cooper's Cosmetics in Shakespearean and Renaissance Drama, Edinburgh, 2006; see especiallyher discussion of cosmetic recipe manuals and apothecaries, 55-56. See also Annette Drew-Bear's Painted Faces on The Renaissance Stage: the Moral Significance of Face-PaintingConventions, London 1994. Both critics focus more on female cosmetics than on the paints usedto sustain theatrical special effects.

^ The few times they did indeed sanction its use, that is. See also Frances Dolan's excellentsurvey of anticosmetic discourse in 'Taking the Pencil out of God's Hand: Art, Nature, and theFace-Painting Debate in Early Modern England', PMLA 108,1993,224-239. Actors and women,because of their use of paint, were often collapsed together as emblems of deceit.

23 While I recognize that this paint is not the blackface we typically associate with Africancharacters on the early modem stage (perhaps the expression 'tawny'-face might be more apt),I nonetheless read it as an iteration of the same convention, given that the gypsies are dark-skinned characters supposedly from Egypt. This attention to the nuance of colour raises an

10 THEATRE NOTEBOOK

interesting question about if, when, and how the stage made visual distinctions that reflectedthe culture's certain knowledge of skin colour difference (notwithstanding the stage'sconflation of 'Negroes and Moors', as Stephen Orgel points out in 'Marginal Jonson', ThePolitics of the Stuart Court Masque, Cambridge, 1998, 158). See also Alan Dessen and LeslieThomson's Dictionary of Stage Directions (Cambridge, 1999) under 'face': they list a cue 'likeAmazons; Their faces discoloured to a comely brown' in Amorous War (1638). The intensity ofthe colour may contribute to the ease of removal.

•̂* Martin Butler,' "We Are One Mans All": Jonson's Gypsies Metamorphosed', Yearbook ofEnglish Studies 21, 1991, 252-273. For a general discussion of Buckingham and the divisivefigure he presented, see Roger Lockyer's biography Buckingham, the Life and Political Careerof George Villiers, First Duke of Buckingham, London, 1981.

^ 'Washing an ethiop white' was, of course, a common figurative expression for impossible,or futile, labour. Nevertheless, I think it is safe to read this line as explicitly pointing to 16O5'sMasque of Blackness as the only other Jonsonian masque which deploys a similar conventionof blackface. In his edition of the masques, Orgel glosses the line as referring to Jonson's 1608Masque of Beauty, itself the delayed sequel to Blackness. In Beauty, women identified as the'Daughters of Niger' appear white, 'their beauties varied according to promise, and their timeof absence excused, with four more added to their number' (5-6).

*̂ The critical consensus on Blackness, Jonson's first masque for James's court and the firsttime Jonson collaborated with Inigo Jones, was that it failed to please. Critics invariably citeDudley Carleton's reaction as proof of the masque's poor reception and of the possible tabooinvolved in seeing female performers blackened: 'Their black faces and hands, which werepainted and bare up to the elbows, was a very loathsome sight and I am sorry that strangersshould see our court so strangely disguised', (letter from Dudley Carleton to John Chamberlaindated London, 7 January 1604/5, in Dudley Carleton to John Chamberlain, 1603-1624, ed.Maurice Lee, New Brunswick, 1972,66.) Most critics (see for example Vaughan, Callaghan) takefor granted that the paint in Blackness could not come off readily enough during theperformance to have the women re-appear white as promised. The supposed awkwardness ofBlackness is often attributed to Jonson's inability to make good, within the scope of themasque, on this promise of racial transformation, a promise only fulfilled in 16O8's Masque ofBeauty. As I point out in the body of this essay, spectacles featuring on-stage or quick back-stage changes of race within the scope of a perfonnance seen only to take place well after 1605.

^̂ For a scheme of the main Windsor revisions, see Greg 47. In his edition these added linesoccur between 953 and 1064.

^ Vaughan's phrasing. Jonson himself also applies the word 'legerdemain' to the gypsies'thieving abilities. For an engaging but untenable argument suggesting that Jonson deliberatelytumed Buckingham into a gypsy in order to discredit him, see Dale Randall's Jonson's GypsiesUnmasked, Durham, 1975. See Butler for a refutation of Randall.

2' For a discussion of this convention see Vaughan's chapter 'Europeans disguised as blackMoors' in Performing Blackness. The dates I provide for each play come from the list of 'playsand editions cited' in Dessen and Thomson's Dictionary of Stage Directions, 268-284: the datesgiven there are the 'known or conjectured date of first performance', 267.

3" See also two plays with an 'Indian' disguise that may include removable face paint:Massinger's The City Madam (1632) and The Fatal Marriage, or The Second Lucretia(authorship unknown; conjectured date of performance 1620-1630). The latter play mentions'the tawny that soild ouer his fface comes of / youle find him an imposter'. My thanks to GavinHoUis for drawing my attention to these two examples.

'• Meg Twycross and Sarah Carpenter, Masks and Masking in Medieval and Early TudorEngland, Aldershot, 2002, 317. See also REED records relating to 'face paints'. These entries

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usually credit a 'painter' for the labour of application and the materials used, and seem not todistinguish between face paints and paints used for masks and playing gear. Thus for exampleentries for Chester, 1549-50 note 'item paid ffor geyldeng of godes ffase & ffore peyntying ofthe geylers ffasses; item peyd ffor pyantyng & gyldyng of the pleyeng geyre' (50). See also AlanNelson's discussion of 'painters and painting' in Early Cambridge Theatres: College,University, and Town Stages, 1464-1720, Cambridge, 1994, 110-111. This credit to 'painters'anticipates some of the questions I raise at the conclusion of this essay, namely which groupsof professionals were associated with theatrical paint effects, and at what point did actorsbecome responsible for owning and applying their own cosmetics.

32 See note 26. Eldred Jones says The Masque of Blackness 'sets new standards of realism forthe masque, and in line with this new realism, paint and not cloth was used to effect thedisguise'. Certainly paint would read differently from a mask or visor, but I suggest therewould be nothing necessarily 'naturalistic' or 'realistic' about the resulting effect. See EldredJones, Othello's Countrymen: The African in English Renaissance Drama, London, 1965;elsewhere, I develop in more detail the importance of staging materials to Jonson's conceptionof The Masque of Blackness.

'3 David Kathman's research into 'Freemen and Apprentices in Elizabethan Theatre'identifies the trade affiliations of specific apprentices and players, listing several bound to theGrocers or Apothecaries. He notes, however, that actual occupations might not correspond toan association with a livery company. See Kathman, 'Grocers' cited above, 2.

^ Vaughan writes that 'the plot device of the disguised Moor must have suited audienceswith a penchant for improbable and romantic endings', 109. This may be true, but I suggest thatwe keep in mind the technical side of the convention that enables it to be staged in the firstplace - were new techniques developed to. accommodate the demands of the stage, or didinnovations in technique shape the way the convention gets deployed? I suggest we considerthe latter possibility before speculating about 'audience taste'.

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