#masquearde

A moodboard for Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare.

Finally, draw the Masquerade outfit for Kira! Her mask is a bat, I guess.

Masky (The masquerades), Jacques de Gheyn II., 1595 - 1596

Each sheet from this arresting cycle of then copper engravings represents three figures wearing masks and comical costumes. These are likely carnival or theatre figures; some of them refer directly to commedia dell'arte. De Gheyn had a close relationship to theatre and even acted in one play. Masks erasing people's personal and social identities were also worn during the carnival, an event that turned a familiar city into a great illusion.  The title page featuring a poem by Hugo Grotius inscribed in a tomb-shaped aedicula gives the whole series the moralizing undertone of a memento mori. A man and a woman stand praying on each side of the tomb, while a skeleton removes masks from their faces. The cycle can therefore be interpreted as an allegory of the worldly theatre: we act throughout our lives but no mask holds up against death and we meet eternity stark naked.

“Why aren't you stealing it off of me?”

Botan abruptly swallowed, her eyes doubling in size.

“Why would I do that?” she asked.

“Because I'm just your partner!” Doshu wailed. “I'm just a tool you use! I'm nothing without you, I need you to survive, you're supposed to take advantage of me and make me suffer and I'm supposed to be grateful for it! Don't you understand anything about this world?”

“Well, I understand now that you have a lot to learn about good manners, Missy,” Botan concluded, before once more biting into the rancid pear.

“Why are you still eating that thing? Oh – wait – no – now I understand! You are going to eat the whole thing, then steal the apple from me and leave me with nothing to eat at all!”

“Doshu! Don't say things like that!”

“What sort of demon are you?”

“I'm not a demon, Doshu, I'm a ferry girl!”

“Not any more you're not!”

Botan stood up abruptly and pushed her fists against her hips.

“Now you listen here, Miss Doshu,” she said sternly. “I don't care what Uso did to me. I don't care about this–”

Botan lifted her free hand from her hip and waved it in the air, illuminated in demon energy.

“–because what she has done to me might have changed what I am – or what I appear to be – but what she has done – and anything anyone else ever does – will never change who I am! And who I am is Botan! And Botan is a person who does not treat her friends poorly! Do you understand?”

Doshu numbly nodded her head.

Photograph of guests at a “tacky” party in 1932. Tacky parties were masquerades held at various locations in Mobile.