"Sbiancare un Etiope e risuscitare un morto". Riti di purificazione nel "Masque of Blackness" Di Ben Jonson

"The Masque of Blackness" (1605), the first of a series of masques written by Ben Jonson together with the architect, choreographer and costume designer Inigo Jones, appears to the modern reader like a mysterious riddle: the Ethiopian god Niger travels the world in the company of his twelve daughters, who - having heard that poets prefer blondes - are now determined to change the colour of their skin. An oracle has assured them that their wish will come true when they reach a land whose name, in Greek, ends in TANIA: a land under a sun brighter than the sun, so dazzling that it can "blanche and Aethiop, and revive a corpse". According to the well established analogies of court ideology, the promised land is of course England and its sun none other than James I, who attended the play as a member of the audience. And yet, Jonson's Masque is more than a complacent celebration of whiteness: the play's ambiguous ending, its revolutionary, albeit paradoxical defense of negritude and, last but not least, the Queen's presence among the black masquers, points towards a more subversive reading, which the essay explores. Conditioned by the linguistic, structural and performative conventions of the genre - including the physical presence of the King and the Queen - Jonson's Masque employs all tricks of the trade to convey its subtext of sublte defiance: riddles, oracles with double meanings, hieroglyphics, stage machinery and, finally, the dazzling beauty of the black masquers.