Summary
Niger explains to Oceanus that he has come to the West on behalf of his daughters, in hopes of proving himself a worthy and kind father.
He explains that his daughters were the first women on earth, and that their eyes were once sparkling emblems of the sun. Their hew, he notes, was evidence of the Creator's divine love. Their dark hair and skin were reflections of immortality, as they never showed signs of age.
Niger tells Oceanus that his daughters' blackness is evidence of a transcendent beauty that renders them near divine.
But, Niger laments, the words of Western "brain-sicke men, stil'd Poets," have started to praise "painted beauties," or fair women who adorn themselves with makeup.
Since then, new civilizations have begun to take shape, and new conceptions of beauty have destroyed the notion that blackness is beauty in its purest form.
Niger cites the myth of Phaeton, saying that poets have argued Phaeton's fire is what "scorched" the Ethiopian women, who were originally fair-skinned.
Niger explains that since his daughters have heard this argument, they have been devastated and envious of fair-skinned women.
Analysis
The masque wastes no time establishing its central conflict: Niger's daughters, with their dark complexions, no longer feel beautiful and desire to be white.
That it is Niger himself who communicates this information to Oceanus is significant, because it allows his own perspective to color the otherwise undisputed notion that fair skin is pure and beautiful. Instead, before Niger explains why his daughters are so distraught, he praises their blackness as beauty in its truest form, citing the fact that blackness is less tainted by age or mortality.
In many ways, Niger's speech celebrates blackness as a natural and divinely derived phenomenon, a detail that has led many critics to read the rest of the masque as an ironic take on European notions of beauty. Because of Niger's genuine praise of his daughters' hair, skin, and demeanor, the masque does offer audiences a counter perspective that challenges early modern convention with historical precedent – that is, Niger's remarks allude to the fact that the first humans on earth were, indeed, darker-skinned.
The possibility of an ironic reading only amplifies when Niger explains how his daughters have developed the notion that they are not beautiful. It is the "stil'd poets" of the West who have started to praise "painted beauties," thereby denigrating blackness and making it a less desirable attribute. These comments allude not only to Western literature but also to the poetic generation preceding Jonson himself – including poets like Edmund Spenser, Philip Sidney, and in some respects William Shakespeare (though Shakespeare toyed with the concept of "black beauty" in his sonnet sequence). These poets were famous for writing poems about untouchable, fair-skinned, blushing women they wished to pursue romantically.
In The Masque of Blackness, Niger credits these poets with inventing and spreading the understanding that light skin is "purer" than dark skin. However, Jonson's largely ironic works frequently satirized these poets, and even Niger's remark that the poets are "brain-sicke" men suggests that the preference for white skin is arbitrary, if not entirely absurd. The rest of the masque will go on to endorse this notion that whiteness is superior, but in this early exchange between Oceanus and Niger, readers may take note of Jonson's subtle critiques of others who practice his craft.
