Venetians dressed up as their favourite characters from the commedia dell’arte. There was Mattacino, dressed all in white except for red shoes and red laces; he wore a feathered hat, and threw eggs of scented water into the crowd. There was Pantalone, the emblem of Venice, dressed in red waistcoat and black cloak. And there was Arlecchino in his multi-coloured costume. There were masked parties and masked balls. There were masked processions through the streets of the city. The Carnival in fact became intimately associated with the wearing of the mask or volto.
It is first mentioned in public documents of 1268, when masked persons were forbidden to gamble. It came out of the East. The most popular form of the Carnival costume was the bauta, a mantle of silk or velvet that covered the head and shoulders; a three-cornered hat was worn on top of the hood of this garment. The face itself was covered by a half-mask, of silk or velvet, black or white, or by a white beak-like object known as larva. There were some masks that had to be held by the teeth, thus prohibiting speech. Secrecy and silence consorted. The masker, male or female, also wore a black cloak known as a domino. The women tended to wear black masks, and the men white. Even if the disguise of the mask was less than perfect the identity of the masker was never to be revealed; he was always addressed as “Signor Maschera.” It was all highly ritualised, as befits a ceremony that has its roots in ancient worship.
By the eighteenth century, at the very latest, the masks had become indispensable. During the six months of the Carnival everyone in the city wore them—the rich and the poor, the shopkeepers and the priests, the magistrates and the prostitutes. The priest was in fact denounced by his parish if he did not wear a mask in public. The dignitaries of the city wore them in public ceremonies and processions. Only the money changers were not permitted to wear them. It was reported that a masked mother was seen suckling a masked infant. Even the beggars wore masks.
Altogether it was a curious spectacle. There were assignations. There were betrayals. There was spontaneous sex behind doors and in the corners of alleys. Pleasure is addictive. It can have all the elements and attributes of a fever. Pleasure is a dream. One Venetian described how “women of every condition, married, maid or widow, mingle freely with professional harlots, for the mask levels all distinctions; and there is no filth they do not practise, publicly, with their paramours, young and old.” There were also less salacious diversions. Three or four women in masks might go up to various acquaintances and in squeaky, assumed voices tease them for their well-known weaknesses. It was a case of dressing-up and pretending, a game beloved by children of all kinds. The word bauta itself is supposed to derive from the childish lisping of “bau … bau.” And it was often said, of course, that the Venetians were essentially children. Addison believed that the intrigue and “secret history” of the Carnival “would make a Collection of very diverting Novels.” Venice always seems to prompt the telling of stories. The Carnival offered the possibility of another world, and of another reality. It represented a second life for those who had been, or who had felt themselves to be, cheated in the first one.
The masked balls were known as i festini, and were open to anyone wearing a mask; their location was marked by a lantern garlanded with flowers. Within could be heard the music of the cello and the spinet, and the guests danced the minuet and the gavotte. The kind owners of the house would then go among their guests and demand their fees. Nothing was free in Venice. There were various rules concerning the use of the mask, promulgated through the centuries, but they were generally disregarded. In the nineteenth century, for example, it was decreed that no reveller might touch or walk with a masked person without being given express permission. How was that to be policed?
