The Stuart Court Masque and Political Culture

Description

Court masques were multi-media entertainments, with song, dance, theatre, and changeable scenery, staged annually at the English court to celebrate the Stuart dynasty. They have typically been regarded as frivolous and expensive entertainments. This book dispels this notion, emphasizing instead that they were embedded in the politics of the moment, and spoke in complex ways to the different audiences who viewed them. Covering the whole period from Queen Anne's first masque at Winchester in 1603 to Salmacida Spolia in 1640, Butler looks in depth at the political functions of state festivity. The book contextualizes masque performances in intricate detail, and analyzes how they shaped, managed, and influenced the public face of the Stuart kingship. Butler presents the masques as a vehicle through which we can read the early Stuart court's political aspirations and the changing functions of royal culture in a period of often radical instability.

Martin Butler is Professor of English Renaissance Drama at the University of Leeds.

'... this book is so learned and teacherly at the same time - its panoply of historical discoveries and literary insights conveyed in such pleasurably readable prose - that it is hard to ask it for more. Butler writes in his introduction that 'It goes without saying that masques were complex events'. Alas, in masque criticism, this does not yet go without saying. Perhaps after this book, it will.' Lauren Shohet, Villanova University 'This ambitious and comprehensive book takes account of the large corpus of masques written and performed in the reigns of James I and Charles I. Its scope and attention to detail are likely to make it an indispensable resource.' Theatre Research International