The representation of African people in court masques had precedents both in England and Scotland.[22] Anne of Denmark had African servants.[23] There was a masque involving blackface at the coronation of Christian IV of Denmark in 1596, witnessed by Anne of Denmark's brother, the Duke of Holstein and perhaps, by Inigo Jones.[24]
Kim F. Hall draws attention to The Masque of Blackness and the documented reactions of its audience, in the context of the "growth of actual contact with Africans, Native Americans, and other ethnically different foreigners" and a "collision of the dark lady tradition with the actual African difference encountered in the quest for empire".[25] A "pride in the revival of ancient Britain is continually yoked to the glorification of whiteness".[26] For Bernadette Andrea the masque reveals "complicity with an emerging institutional racism as England's increasing investment in the transatlantic slave trade underwrote its imperialist expansion in to the Americas".[27]
