Theater-going in England’s Restoration period provided chaos and spectacle in an otherwise self-conscious and orderly society. The space of the theater itself represented a liminal place and time in which social hierarchy could potentially be subverted. The plays themselves also offered subversion, presenting a bawdy spectacle for even the most stodgy members of the upper classes to enjoy. Critics of the Restoration era condemned the moral laxity of the stage and of theater-going, but the immense popularity of the theater reveals the need people felt to participate in such a social subversion. The practice of masquerade, in which theatergoers from across the social spectrum wore masks to conceal their identities, was a key element in confusing gender and class, enhancing the chaos of the theater-going experience. Aphra Behn’s The Rover and George Farquhar’s The Beaux’ Stratagem each incorporate masquerade as a ritual element into their texts, demonstrating the effects of masquerade upon the social hierarchy within the plays. Though each play lauds the notion of the freedom offered by disguise, they both conclude that moments of masquerade ultimately return the characters to a strengthened social status quo.

Hogarth's Masquerade Ticket, 1727    

Aphra Behn’s 1677 comedy The Rover provides the modern reader with a thorough and complex treatment of several effects of masquerade in the Restoration Era. Behn uses her distinctly female perspective to provide insight into both the freedom and the danger of masquerading for women. Throughout the play, the potential for danger and deception lurks at the carnival, a place where masquerade was common. In her article “Cannibalizing and Carnivalizing: Reviving Aphra Behn’s The Rover,” Susan Carlson writes, “The carnival liberates its celebrants from the constraints of their everyday life, but also puts them…in contact with the dark abysses of that liberty” (Carlson 533). A careful analysis of the scenes of masquerade, in particular those that involve mistaken identities, reveals both the liberating and the perilous aspects of carnivalizing for the women of the play. Behn’s emphasis on the dangerous elements, especially through the double attempt of rape upon Florinda, shows the audience that the social release provided by masquerade also had the potential for disaster among its participants. 

Nevertheless, Behn does show how the masquerade grants Hellena and Florinda, two sisters living in Naples, a degree of exciting freedom which would otherwise never have been available to them. Behn creates a parallelism between the sisters to demonstrate the various forms of restriction women experienced in their daily lives outside of the masquerade. Florinda, promised to marry a man she does not love, and Hellena, promised to the nunnery, show how women could be trapped by their fate as decided by male relatives. Hellena desperately wants to attend the carnival so that she and her sister might experience its liberation before they are bound to the strictures of marriage or the nunnery. She pleads with her maid, Callis, to sneak out to the masquerade against the will of Pedro, her brother:

            Hellena: let me now see what I never did, the divertissements of a carnival.
            Callis: What, go in masquerade? ‘Twill be a fine farewell to the world, I take it. Pray, what would you do there?
            Hellena: That which all the world does, as I am told: be as mad as the rest and take all innocent freedoms. Sister, you’ll go
            too, will you not? Come, prithee be not sad. We’ll outwit twenty brothers if you’ll be ruled by me. Come, put off this dull
            humor with your clothes and assume one as gay and as fantastic, as the dress my cousin Valeria and I have provided, and
            let’s ramble. (I.i.208-215)

Hellena here reveals her desires and hopes about the masquerade, a place she expects to be filled with “innocent freedoms” where a communal madness is accepted.  She feels excluded from “all the world” because of her brother’s refusal to release his sisters from the protection of their home into the chaos of carnival. In describing Florinda’s dress, Hellena shows the contrast she perceives between the outside world, filled with “dull humor” and the masquerade, like the dress,“gay and…fantastic”. As of yet, Hellena is only aware of the positive side of the liberation that comes with masquerade; she seems oblivious of its potential dangers for women. Behn’s use of the word “innocent” for Hellena to describe the freedom of the carnival emphasizes her naiveté, heightening the drama of her sister’s attempted rape several acts later.

The male characters of The Rover take on a very different perspective regarding masquerade. The freedom the men gain in carnivalizing with the dissolution of class distinction frees their sexual inhibitions and allows them to pursue prostitutes without judgment from their social class. As Willlmore explains to Belvile,  “‘tis a kind of legal authorized fornication, where the men are not chid for’t, nor the women despised, as amongst our dull English” (I.ii.135-7). Clearly, this is an aspect of masquerading which Willmore, a lustful and promiscuous character, enjoys.

For the British cavaliers, the setting in Naples acts as a layer of liminality in addition to the masquerade, much like the “inn” of The Beaux’ Stratagem. In a place far from British soil, the cavaliers feel free to abandon their traditional expectations of behavior. This freedom offers them a time to experiment with their identities through acting differently. The masquerade, then, served as a stage-like setting. As Carole Hamilton writes,

Carnival time is the epitome of a special performative space. Carnival goers for various reasons take advantage of the anonymity of this masked affair to engage in relationships that would otherwise be denied to them, because of their class or gender. Since the carnival represents the world turned upside down, carnival time in Naples is a time for experimenting with role reversals. (Hamilton sec 1)

This world being turned upside down has different ramifications for both men and women. Though the male characters in the carnival do not fear the physical threat of rape, as the female characters do, masquerading still leaves them vulnerable to deception. Their vulnerability often puts them in uncomfortable situations, thus providing a role reversal between genders. By forcing her male characters to confront the complications of deception, Behn emphasizes the dangerous side of masquerade for both male and female participants. Peter Stallybrass and Allon White, in exploring the carnivalesque, write of the dangers that a participant, and especially a visitor, can feel during a carnival:

The occasional and irregular nature of the event compounds the phobic isolation and unexpected eruption of panic in the subject, whose status here…is of a visitor, a stranger even, at the festival. (Stallybrass and White 181)

The experience of panic is clearly not exclusive to women, then, as the male characters of The Rover prove.

The character of Blunt, a spoiled and sheltered banker who “knows no pleasure beyond riding to the next fair” (I.ii.331), demonstrates how the masquerade could be both an attractive and repulsive activity for men, full of both thrills and dangers. Initially, Blunt is excited at the prospect of mingling with women, but mistaking the identity of first a whore and then “a maid of quality” (IV. v.155) proves disastrous. Tricked by Lucetta, a prostitute, and her pimp, he loses all of his money and possessions, including his clothes. This loss mirrors the loss of identity in masquerade and shows how such confusion can ultimately hurt its participants. While Blunt is frustrated and angry from this experience, Florinda enters the scene and he and plans to beat and rape her. Here, Florinda shifts to the character in the vulnerable position because of her lack of identity, and Blunt takes on the role of the aggressor. Florinda pleads with him to “pity a harmless virgin” (IV.v.49), but Blunt is convinced that she too is a deceptive whore upon whom he must have revenge. He informs Florinda of his cruel plan:

Yes, I will kiss thee and beat thee all over; thou shalt lie with me too, not that I care for the enjoyment, but to let thee see I have ta’en deliberated malice to thee and will be revenged on one whore for the sins of another. I will smile and deceive thee, flatter thee, and beat thee, kiss and swear and lie to thee, embrace thee and rob thee, as she did me…(IV.v.60-7)

Thus Behn shows how the confusion of social class during masquerade proves to be a humiliating experience for Blunt, and a terrifying experience for women like Florinda, who are accustomed to the protection of their social standing.

In desperation to prove her upper-class status, Florinda offers Frederick and Blunt a diamond ring. As a gift from Belvile outside of the context of the masquerade, the ring represents the beginning of the dissolution of the masquerade by revealing Florinda’s class, if not her name. With the anonymity of masquerade beginning to be violated, Blunt and Frederick reconsider their plan, thinking, “ ‘twould anger us vilely to be trussed up for a rape upon a maid of quality, when we only believe we ruffle a harlot” (IV.v.153-155). Behn has shown how the maid and the harlot are easily confused in masquerade but are treated very differently when true identities are apparent. They lock her up in a chamber as Belvile, Willmore, and Pedro enter. When Belvile recognizes the ring, he realizes that it is Florinda in the closet and advises Blunt to hide his mistake. In the company of his countrymen, which establishes his identity as a British visitor, and with the re-establishment of Florinda’s identity, the freedom of masquerade dissipates even further. Blunt’s mistake becomes a risk for both his own reputation and that of England. Belvile warns him,

Hark ye fool, be advised, and conceal both the ring and the story for your reputation’s sake. Do not let people know what despised cullies we English are, to be cheated and abused by one whore, and another rather bribe thee than be kind to thee, is an infamy to our nation. (V.i.91-96)

In the same way that Blunt must conceal his error, Florinda must also prevent her brother, Pedro, from realizing who she is.  She runs out in mask, praying, “Good heaven, defend me from discovery” (V.i.122). The episode overall has then threatened the reputation of Blunt, England, and Florinda.  Behn has thus quite markedly focused on the negative ramifications of concealing one’s identity. This sets up the ending as a time in which the characters will be relieved to return to their everyday lives in which social class and hierarchy are clearly defined.

Willmore and Hellena offer a parallel case of the male confusion and female terror that accompanies the disappearance of true identities during the carnival.  Their “asides” are particularly revealing as they each uncover new information about each other’s identities. On seeing Hellena’s face, Willmore discovers that, in spite of his hopes that a new woman was in love with him, it is the same woman he calls “his gypsy,” Hellena. 

“Hah! Do not I know that face? by Heaven, my little Gypsy! what a dull dog was I! Had I but looked that way I’d known her. Are all my hopes of a new woman banished? Egad, if I do not fit thee for this, hang me.—Madam, I have found out the plot. (IV.ii341-6)

While Willmore has indeed discovered that he is speaking to a woman he has met before, he still does not know her full identity. Hellena recognizes the danger if he does find out, as she thinks he already has: “Aye, aye, he does know me—Nay dear Captain! I am undone if you discover me. (IV.ii.351-2). Her use of the word “undone” shows that she considers her anonymity as protection of her reputation in this moment, a stark contrast to Florinda’s insistent pleas to Blunt that she is a woman of quality. Willmore’s confidence in his knowledge of “his gypsy” in the midst of carnival also proves to be problematic, much as Blunt’s assumption that Florinda was a whore led to his own humiliation. Thinking “this can be none but my pretty Gypsy” (V.i.225), about Angellica, a prostitute he has wronged, Willmore lets himself become vulnerable to her murderous intentions. As she pulls of her vizard. all elements of the masquerade in their relationship disappear. As if to affirm the move from a dangerous space to a safe one, Angellica does not shoot him.

Masquerades and Operas, c. 1700.

The final scene of the play further demonstrates the move from the masquerade back into everyday life. The series of marriages remind the audience that a return to the established institutions of everyday society, such as marriage, is necessary after dealing with the dangers and chaos of masquerade. Belvile and Florinda marry and even Willmore, the most promiscuous character, ends up with Hellena. This outcome subtly shows how the experience inside the masquerade potentially does have influence upon the outside world: Hellena has avoided the nunnery by promising Willmore her love. As Willmore explains, “Since I loved her before I either knew her birth or name, I must pursue my resolution and marry her” (V.i.567-9). It seems unlikely, however, with this return to a firm social hierarchy, that Willmore would have acted this way had he fallen into the same scenario with Angellica or another woman of lower social standing. The very end of the scene affirms the main characters’ return from masquerade to their normal lives by incorporating other masqueraders:

Willmore: Hark—what’s this?
            Boy: Sir, as the custom is, they gay people in masquerade who make every man’s house their own are coming up.
           Enter several men and women in masquing habits with music; they put themselves in order and dance. (V.i.619
           -22)

As these masqueraders dance in mysterious disguise, the characters of the play remain firmly entrenched in their lives in which identities and social standings are clear. Overall, then, the carnival transforms the characters from people longing for social release into people who uphold social stability and the status quo.

Farquhar’s use of masquerade in The Beaux’ Stratagem is rather more oblique than in Behn’s The Rover, since there are no scenes in which carnivalizing or masks are used. However, if we understand masquerade to be “the assumption of a disguise or a false character” (Oxford English Dictionary, 5a), then masquerade is an essential element of the The Beaux Stratagem around which Farquhar continually shapes the plot. He manages to create many of the elements of a masquerade as seen in The Rover, including a liminal space and time, disguise, deception, and social subversion. While Farquhar’s play does not emphasize the dangerous side of masquerade quite to the extent that Behn’s does, he still reaffirms the notion that the chaos of the masquerade strengthens the status quo when it is over. Farquhar’s depiction of marriage throughout the play offers an interesting foil to masquerade. He emphasizes the attention to social standing and the hierarchy between husband and wife to set marriage apart from the liberation and blurring of social boundaries in masquerade. The constant comparison of being married to being bound by chains ensures that the reader does not miss this significant contrast, yet the deep concern about marriage by many of the characters reveals that it is an institution of paramount importance.

The use of an inn as a setting provides the sense of liminality for Archer and Aimwell, the two main characters who disguise themselves as a lord and his servant to trick any rich woman into marriage. An inn represents a transitory state which has an uncanny resemblance to one’s home without having any connection to that familiarity at all. It acts as a false mirror of home, as masquerade presents a distortion of reality. Just like the cavaliers experienced new freedom in the setting of Naples, Archer and Aimwell take advantage of the country inn where no one knows their reputations. In London, they have stretched the limits of their lying and fled to put on their deceptive performance elsewhere. Archer explains, “Our friends, indeed, began to suspect that our pockets were low, but we came off with flying colors, showed no signs of want in word or deed.” Terrified at the prospect of poverty, they move to the country where they can conceal their true identities. For the entirety of their trip, money, a tangible element of great importance in the real world, is the motive; as Archer proclaims,  “there is no scandal like rags nor any crime so shameful as poverty” (I.i.139-140). Thus the outside factor of money drives Archer and Aimwell to their masquerade, an interesting overlap of their real and disguised worlds.

Archer and Aimwell design their own social subversion through an elaborate plan of deception which includes costumes, behaviors, and actions appropriate to a lord and his servant. Confident of their ability to deceive, Aimwell declares,  “Would not any man swear now that I am a man of quality and you my servant,” (I.1.169-170). They carefully construe their false identity at the inn run by Bonniface. Entrusting him with an empty box to guard, Archer says aside, “This will give us a reputation” (I.i.297). Quickly, Bonniface and his daughter Cherry attempt to identify the occupations of the two men.

Cherry: Money! All that money! Why sure, father, the gentleman comes to be chosen parliament-man. Who is he?Bonniface: I don’t know what to make of him. He talks of keeping his horses ready saddled and of going perhaps at a minute’s warning or of staying perhaps till the best part of this be spent.
Cherry: Aye, ten to one he’s a highwayman.
Bonniface: A highwayman! Upon my life, girl, you have hit it, and this box is some new-purchased booty. Now could we find him out, the money were ours. (I.i.317-327)

Their conlusion that the men are highwaymen increases the dramatic irony of the play and allows Archer and Aimwell to continue their masquerade.

While Cherry and Bonniface try to make Archer and Aimwell admit they are highwaymen, Farquhar shifts his emphasis on marriage as the opposite of a socially liberating masquerade. The marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Sullen contrasts sharply with the world which Archer and Aimwell have created as masqueraders.  The wily tricksters are always thinking, while Mr. Sullen, according to his wife, never thinks at all. Here Farquhar introduces the analogy of chains to a marriage as Mrs. Sullen laments,

Oh sister, sister! if ever you marry, beware of a sullen, silent sot, one that’s always musing but never thinks! There’s some diversion in a talking blockhead, and since a woman must wear chains, I would have the pleasure of hearing ‘em rattle a little. (II.i.64-8)

Mrs. Sullen maintains that women are enslaved, “nay, cheated into slavery” (IV.i.5) by marriage, and that it is especially constricting for women in the country: “‘tis a standing maxim in conjugal discipline that when a man would enslave his wife, he hurries her into the country” (II.1.128-30). For the Sullens, the country offers none of the freedoms thatit does for Archer and Aimwell; it is their permanent place in which everyone knows each others’ identities. 

Marriage for Mr. and Mrs. Sullen thus constitutes an uncomfortably restrictive life. They both wish for a masquerade-like existence in which they could pursue sexual desires without the inhibition of being judged by society. Mrs. Sullen reveals to her sister-in-law, “I could be contented, with a great many wives, to humor the censorious mob and give the world an appearance of living well with my husband” (II.i. 159-62). Later when Sullen catches Count Belair and Mrs. Sullen embracing, he too asserts that his own appearance and reputation are all that matter to him in the marriage. He tells her,

Look ye, madam, don’t think that my anger proceeds from any concern I have for your honor but for my own, and if you can contrive any way of being a whore without making me a cuckold, do it and welcome. (III.iii.405-9)

The disparaging view of marriage, as “two carcasses joined unnaturally together.” (III.iii.305-6) makes a much stronger argument for the positive and liberating side of masquerade than Behn’s The Rover.

Masquerade and marriage meet as Cherry, wanting a husband, and Archer, still disguised, discuss a potential union between the two of them. This begins to fall apart as Archer’s masquerade dissolves; without his disguise, he reverts to the old social order in which he would never marry an innkeeper’s daughter. As he considers her lower social status and as his own becomes more clear, Archer’s enthusiasm about the marriage wanes in spite of her offer of two thousand pounds. Cherry confronts him about his status as a footman, “Your discourse and your habit are contradictions, and it would be nonsense in me to believe you a footman any longer” (II.ii.201-3). Her doubt about his social standing brings her own into clearer light, and Archer realizes:

Then, an innkeeper’s daughter! Aye, that’s the devil—there my pride brings me off…
On earth, I’m sure, ‘mong us mortal calling,
Pride saves man oft, and woman too, from falling. (II.ii.255-260)

Archer’s lapse into verse at this point is an effective way of calling the reader’s attention to the significance of his decision to maintain the status quo of social expectations instead of marrying Cherry. Archer’s decision not to marry parallels Willmore’s decision to marry: both are based from the pressures of social beliefs and the desire to maintain a social hierarchy. 

Thus Behn and Farquhar both return to a stabilized and strengthened status quo after their plays’ characters experience the social subversion provided by masquerade. This process clearly connects to the act of theatergoing in the Restoration age: the audience, captivated by the play, must return to their ordinary lives after it is over. Plays such as The Rover and The Beaux’ Stratagem, with their inclusion of masquerade, emphasize the necessity of returning to life outside the playhouse. Thomas Brown identified the playhouse as a liminal space that blurred social divisions, much like the carnival or the inn Behn and Farquhar’s work:

The play-house is an Inchanted Island, where nothing appears in Reality what it is, nor what it should be. ‘Tis frequented by Persons of all Degrees and Qualities whatsoever, that have a great deal of Idle Time lying upon their Hands, and can’t tell how to employ it worser. Here Lords come to Laugh at to be Laugh’d at for being there, and seeing their Qualities ridicul’d by every Tribolary Poet. (Brown 65)

Brown’s assertion that the playhouse contains nothing of reality demonstrates his support of the importance of the world outside the playhouse. One cannot stay on the enchanted island forever.

Other writers contemporary to the Restoration era addressed the guilt they felt at escaping their ordinary lives through attending plays. In his diary, Samuel Pepys reveals his bizarre system of rationing his theatergoing experiences so that he might prevent “excess” in his real life:

…and though my oath against going to plays doth not oblige me to going to this house, because it was not then in being…I am resolved to deny myself the liberty of two plays at Court which are in arreare to me for the months of March and Aprill; which will more than countervail this excess. (Pepys 113)

In denying himself “liberty”, Pepys has turned down a masquerade-like experience that would otherwise free him from social norms. His restraint shows that the social subversion of theater-going could leave one feeling overwhelmed. Much like the characters in The Rover, who have experienced threats of rape, murder, and theft in masquerade, Pepys seems to find relief in staying at home in his stable world.

Modern critics have developed the feelings of theatergoers such as Brown or Pepys to examine the role of the audience in theater. William Beeman, in studying theater from a cultural anthropological perspective, writes of the necessity of the audience. Building on Victor Turner’s theory of theater as a cultural institution, Beeman explores the role of the audience: “for theater and spectacle, an observer/evaluator audience  (as opposed to a participatory audience) is always present. Theatrical forms have no purpose without the audience” (Beeman 12). With the audience constituting an integral part of the performace, then, the boundaries between stage and audience become increasingly blurred. Derek Hughes explains "play-acting . . . and reality . . . collapse into each other, and the boundaries of performative and essential self becomes indistinct" (Hamilton sec. 1). This confusion mimics the confusion felt by the characters in masquerade in The Rover and The Beaux’ Stratagem. However, from understanding the return of the characters to a stable world after masquerade, the audience must know that they too must return to the outside world when the play is over.

In historical connection to the liminal and chaotic state of both masquerade and of theater-going, the Restoration period itself provides a neat parallel. Sandwiched between the closing of the theaters and the Licensing Act of 1737, material for the stage in this era was uncensored and chaotic. Some critics have connected the bawdiness of plays in this period to Charles II himself, arguing that “Many of the plays he supported legitimized his own licentious behavior by staging it for the audience to celebrate with him” (Hamilton sec. 1). With the return to stricter standards and more discrete material after 1737, we see that theater material also returned to a strengthened status quo after a period of wildness and chaos.

Masquerade in The Rover and The Beaux’ Stratagem, the experience of Restoration theatergoing, and the uncensored and bawdy material of Restoration plays, all constituted liminal experiences which ultimately returned characters, audience members, or those involved in play production, to a strengthened sense of what was normal. Examining these liminal moments of the Restoration, we learn that although such experiences do provide a necessary release, they are often dangerous as well as exciting, forcing participants to appreciate their everyday lives. Behn and Farquhar, in their respective depictions of masquerade, seem to anticipate this change through their conclusions in which their characters revert to the old social order. Masquerade, as a temporally bound activity, offers merely a brief escape from our ordinary lives.