‘What els do Maskes, but Maskers Show’: Masked Ladies in Shakespeare’s Comedies

Abstract

ABSTRACT Black vizard masks, worn as a fashion accessory in the early modern period, were a source of mixed anxieties: while they were worn by many women, they were associated with sex workers. Vizards preserved pale beauty but also could conceal the lack thereof. This essay proposes that William Shakespeare’s comedies tap into these tensions, first by proposing that fashionable vizard masks were indeed worn onstage. Using Love’s Labour’s Lost and Much Ado About Nothing as key case studies, I then argue that these costume masks, weighted with the baggage of both offstage prostitution and the stage history of cloth racial prosthetics, carried specific semiotic meaning, allowing playwrights a shorthand for reflecting on contemporary fears regarding women’s whiteness, sexual availability, and the impossibility of ever knowing a woman’s heart by looking at her face.