what is exactly is the form 'bergamasque?' what is this?

[pianistimo]

i never really learned this.  can someone help me?  i'm thinking 'suite bergamasque' as the particular piece that made me start thinking about what exactly 'bergamasque' meant.

wiki says debussy was influenced by paul verlaine's poem clair de lune which references a bergamasque.  does anyone have this poem. i am looking for it right now.

ok.  here it is.  it seems a double entendre to the moons smiling face with sad eyes:

'moonlight'

your soul is like a landscape fantasy
where masks and bergamasques, in charming life
stum lutes and dance, jut a bit sad to be
hidden beneath their fanciful guise.

singing in minor mode of life's largesse
and all-victorious love, they seem quite reluctant
to believe their happiness,
and their song mingles with the pale moonlight.

the calm, pale moonlight, whose sad beauty,
beaming, sets the birds softly dreaming in the trees,
and makes the marbled fountains, gushing, streaming--
slender jet-fountains - sob their ecstasies.

[pianistimo]

here, it is described as a rustic dance?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bergamask

here are some notes on debussy's suite - but it's still not exactly explaining what a bergamasque is:

https://classicalmusic.about.com/od/romanticperiod/a/suitebergamasqu.htm

[counterpoint]

A suite is a series of several pieces, and this one is dedicated to the people of Bergamo.

That's how I understand it.

[dss]

Suite Bergamasque is a set of dances even though one is called Moonlight. 
In its earliest form it had nothing to do with moonlight (1890).  Debussy originally titled this piece "Promenade Sentimentale"  but used this familiar name
only when released in 1905. 
Bergamasque (French) a 16th- 17th - century peasant dance from area around
Bergamo, then in simple duple time but now a wider range of time signatures.
Bergamo is also the traditional name of Harlequin of the Comedia Dell'Arte, a dramatic form to which Debussy was much drawn to.
This is my understanding.

[pianistimo]

thank you counterpoint and dss!  this helped me understand this word better.  i was trying to understand if it was a dance - and it appears so (which makes the word 'suite' understandable).  and, that it typified also a region and perhaps a bit of harlequin.  cool!  thank you!