Masquerades in London [ Dance, Music & Songs / Social interaction ]
… at 10 shillings – it offered a space of carnivalesque class disorder and transgression prompted by anonymity and identity play, even if the lower orders needed more affluent patrons to guarantee entrance (as can be seen, for example, … In listing the participants, the quoted passage nods towards another crucial aspect of eighteenth-century masquerades: identity play. The names given to the disguised participants – Nobody, Somebody and A Double Man – underline the negotiable nature of the category of person, which was part of the contemporary philosophical debate on identity, most notably the works of John Locke, who wrote about the changing states of consciousness, and David Hume , …
Assemblies | Masquerade
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