Andreyev, a pseudo-symbolist playwright, used masks and stylized acting techniques to create a world of dreams and madness—a stage imprisoned in the human mind. In his play The Black Maskers, a medieval lord prepares for a
masked ball.
Soon, as we discover, the castle is invaded by a swarm of uninvited
guests, ominous creatures that take over the festivities and torment the lord, Lorenzo, and his servants’ world. These guests, in turn, become phantasmal beings of Lorenzo’s disturbed mind; black masked demons that hideously embody all of the deep
sins and doubts hiding behind this aristocrat’s benevolent façade.
The mischievous Black Maskers appear as if out of another world; by disguising their identity they have the freedom to say and do anything they wish. Because of this, they can confront Lorenzo, as his servants cannot. Lorenzo is at first uneasy because he cannot identify his guests; he begs, indeed, entreats the maskers to give him some idea of who they are, in order to make familiar the unfamiliar. But soon their identity becomes all too clear to the lord:
Lorenzo: …Who are you, Signora? I do not know you.
The Masker: I am your falsehoods, Lorenzo.
Lorenzo: …But you mistake, there are no lies in me … Ah, what is this?
Something formless and shapeless, with many arms and legs,
creeps up. It speaks with many voices.
The Thing: We are your thoughts, Lorenzo.
The masked guests become fragmented apparitions of Lorenzo’s character, his sins and his fears. As the play progresses, Lorenzo’s internal struggle reaches its climax, manifesting itself in an external battle between two Lorenzos. The first Lorenzo encounters a second self and fights him to the death.
With this embodiment of his internal struggle, our fragmented hero continues on his path towards delusion and madness. Later, appearing with a self-inflicted wound on his breast, Lorenzo finds in his own face another mask:
Lorenzo: (Horrified) What is this? What has happened to my face? It does not obey me. It will not smile, but grows rigid. (Piteously) Perhaps I am going insane. Just look at me, gentlemen. This is surely not a mask. It is a face—a living, human face…All is lost, gentlemen … I tried to weep and could not weep. I wear a mask of stone.
In this way the theatrical trope of mask-work loses its external form and becomes a display of Symbolist philosophy. Andreyev’s play uncovers the mask within; the playwright manipulates his audience’s concept of what is façade and what is truth.
The horrible sins Lorenzo finds in himself become apparent to the audience. Our first feelings are that the castle has been invaded by external demons out to create havoc; soon we find that the demons lie within and all without are mere manifestations of the Lord’s disturbed mind. We become aware that we have been peering at this world, not through a keyhole, but through the eye of Lorenzo’s madness. This outward exhibit of the inner world was the greatest achievement of Symbolist art. By inverting the action on the stage, the Symbolists forced their audience to question its own perception of universal truth as well as that in the performance. If in the theatre reality proves illusory, then, perhaps, it will prove so in day-to-day life as well.
Meader & Scott, Plays of Leonid Andreyeff, 21.
Meader & Scott, Plays of Leonid Andreyeff, 41.
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