Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-gtxcr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T00:35:43.875Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

15 - The Stuart masque and its makers

from PART III - JACOBEAN AND CAROLINE THEATRE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

By
David Lindley
Edited by
Jane Milling  and
Peter Thomson
Jane Milling
Affiliation:
University of Exeter
Peter Thomson
Affiliation:
University of Exeter
Get access

Summary

There is probably no literary genre more elusive of reconstruction, more fugitive of interpretation, yet more significant as a cultural symptom than the court masque. In its fully developed form it lasted only from 1604 to 1640; the scripts that survive (and by no means all of them do) give a very partial sense of the mix of words, music, scene, dance and audience participation that characterised the entertainments. Dismissed by Francis Bacon (in his essay ‘Of masques and triumphs’) as ‘but toys’, and regarded by many outside the court with horror both for their inordinate expense and their supposed encouragement of wantonness, they yet set out to display the magnificence of the court, especially to the foreign ambassadors who competed for invitations, and reported back, with varying degrees of accuracy and enthusiasm, on what they saw. At the same time the techniques of staging and the developments of musical style engendered by these evanescent entertainments were to be of profound significance for theatrical practice in succeeding centuries.

The Stuart masque most often formed a central part of the court's extended Christmas festivities, alongside plays and other entertainments, though they were also performed at other times of the year, and frequently celebrated significant political events – the investiture of Prince Henry as Prince of Wales in 1610, or the marriage of Princess Elizabeth in 1613, for example. The genre was dominated by two figures – Ben Jonson, who provided the words for the majority of Jacobean masques, and Inigo Jones, the designer (appointed Surveyor of the King's Works in 1615).

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of British Theatre , pp. 383 - 406
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2004

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Barroll, Leeds, ‘ Inventing the Stuart masque ’, in Bevington, and Holbrook, (eds.), The Politics of the Stuart Court Masque .
Bishop, Tom, ‘ Tradition and novelty in the Jacobean masque ’, in Bevington, and Holbrook, (eds.), The Politics of the Stuart Court Masque .
Butler, Martin, ‘ Courtly negotiations ’, in Bevington, and Holbrook, (eds.), The Politics of the Stuart Court Masque .
Butler, Martin, ‘ Politics and the masque: The Triumph of Peace ’, The Seventeenth Century 2 ( 1987).Google Scholar
Butler, Martin and Lindley, David, ‘ Restoring Astraea: Jonson's masque for the fall of Somerset ’, English Literary History 61 ( 1994).Google Scholar
Creaser, John, ‘ “The present aid of this occasion”: the setting of Comus ’, in Lindley, (ed.), The Court Masque .
Gordon, D. J., ‘ Poet and architect: the intellectual setting of the quarrel between Inigo Jones and Ben Jonson ’, in Orgel, S. (ed.), The Renaissance Imagination, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975.Google Scholar
Lewalski, Barbara, ‘ Milton's Comus and the politics of masquing ’, in Bevington, and Holbrook, (eds.), The Politics of the Stuart Court Masque .
Lewalski, Barbara, Writing Women in Jacobean England, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993.Google Scholar
Lindley, David, ‘ Campion's Lord Hay's Masque and Anglo-Scottish Union ’, Huntington Library Quarterly 43 ( 1979–80).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lindley, David (ed.), Court Masques, Oxford University Press, 1995.Google Scholar
Lindley, David, ‘ Courtly play: the politics of Chapman's The Memorable Masque ’, in Cruickshanks, (ed.), Stuart Courts .
McClure, N. E. (ed.), The Letters and Epigrams of Sir John Harington, University of Philadelphia Press, 1930.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Norbrook, David, ‘ The reformation of the masque ’, in Lindley, (ed.), The Court Masque .
Orgel, S., The Illusion of Power: Political Theater in the English Renaissance, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975.Google Scholar
Orrell, John, ‘ The agent of Savoy at The Somerset Masque ’, Review of English Studies 28 ( 1977).Google Scholar
Peacock, John, ‘ Ben Jonson's masques and Italian culture ’, in Mulryne, and Shewring, (eds.), Theatre of the English and Italian Renaissance .
Peacock, John, ‘ Ben Jonson and the Italian festival books ’, in Mulryne, and Shewring, , Italian Renaissance Festivals .
Peacock, John, The Stage Designs of Inigo Jones: the European Context, Cambridge University Press, 1995.Google Scholar
Ravelhofer, Barbara, ‘ “Virgin Wax” and “Hairy Men Monsters”: unstable movement codes in the Stuart masque ’, in Bevington, and Holbrook, (eds.), The Politics of the Stuart Court Masque
Spencer, T. J. B. and Wells, Stanley (eds.), A Book of Masques, Cambridge University Press, 1967.Google Scholar
Streitberger, W. R., ‘ Devising the revels ’, Early Theatre 1 ( 1998).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Strong, Roy, Henry, Prince of Wales and England's Lost Renaissance, London: Thames and Hudson, 1986.Google Scholar
Veevers, Erica, Images of Love and Religion: Queen Henrietta Maria and Court Entertainments, Cambridge University Press, 1989.Google Scholar
Walls, Peter, Music in the English Courtly Masque 1604–1640, Oxford University Press, 1996.Google Scholar
Welsford, Enid, The Court Masque, Cambridge University Press, 1927.Google Scholar
Yates, Frances, The French Academies of the Sixteenth Century, London: The Warburg Institute, 1947.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×