MASKS, coverings for the face, taking various forms, used either as a protective screen or as a disguise. In the latter sense masks are mostly associated with the artificial faces worn by actors in dramatic representations (see DRAMA) or assumed in savage rites for exciting terror.
The mask was primarily a ceremonial and religious object, its secular and festival employment being secondary. Man made gods in his own image, but their early, if not their first, dwellings were the bodies of human creatures. Auto-suggestion and drugs were used to secure divine possession and the appearance of the destined individual was made inviting. Clothes, adornments and, above all, facial masks were used for this purpose, the latter bearing a special significance in that the countenance was regarded as the most definite symbol of divine intelligence. Masks were employed also to perpetuate the appearance of the living after death and placed upon the mummy, as among the Egyptians, to aid in its revivification.
Our own culture is not directly and deeply rooted in primitive conditions, nor was that of the Greeks and Romans from whom we derive the great mass of our literary and artistic traditions. We know the mask as they knew it—as an appliance of the theatre, and as a festal object. As such it exists in Tibet, China, Japan, Burma, Siam, Ceylon and Java, identified with dances and dramatic performances comparable to the miracle plays of mediaeval Europe.
the mouth and eyes, the latter not being larger than the pupil of the eye and the former only just wide enough to afford egress to the voice. This was the case at least in tragedy. Comic masks, on the other hand, showed distorted features, and a mouth widely opened, the lips serving as a kind of speaking trumpet. Several of the manuscripts of the plays of Terence contain illustrations of the masks used by actors. In all cases the mouth appears to be fashioned in the form of a large bivalve shell for the sake of resonance. They were attached to a sort of cap which covered the head.
Among the remains of the Greeks and Romans is a very large and constantly increasing series of artistic representations drawn from the stage and exhibiting, especially in the comic and satyric line, every conceivable variety of character. In some cases these characters are the same as may be seen in our day, e.g., the Pun chinello. It would not be fair to the ancients, particularly the Greeks, if we judged their notions of the effect of a mask by our standards. Apart from their employment in the drama, the f ore most usage of masks about which there is some certainty is sepulchral. In the tombs opened by Schliemann at Mycenae he found gold masks over the faces of the dead. These could not have been portraits unless they were intended to represent the deceased persons as they looked when dead, for there is a death like expression on them and on all other masks hitherto discovered on or beside the faces of the dead in Roman and Greek tombs. Murray suggests they were made with some resemblance to cover the face during the interval between death and interment when relatives and friends were admitted to see the body, or in the case of the Romans when the body was publicly conveyed to the market place previous to combustion. This conjecture is still more applicable in those cases where masks, always with a death like expression, are attached to helmets in such a way as to cover the head entirely.