Synopses & Reviews
Politics and Political Culture in the Court Masque treats the Jacobean masque as engaged with a broad range of ideas, issues and texts from other political arenas rather than as an exclusive tool of monarchy and court culture. Building on James I's own sense of the monarchical stage as a site of scrutiny not adulation, this book traces the masque's involvement in political events, such as the crises and scandals that provoke political debate, to argue for a form that is more experimental and more intensively concerned with how to articulate political criticism. Exploring a series of Jonson's Jacobean masques staged at political pressure points (Love Restored, The Irish Masque at Court, News for the New World in the Moon, and Gypsies Metamorphosed), this book suggests that these texts contribute to a wider public political culture. It links the masques to politics and political forms, such as libelous verse, from beyond courtly ceremoniousness and tact, and argues that the masque can represent more critical and controversial political ideas. The book closes with consideration of Shirley's Triumph of Peace as a response to the reinstitution of the Jonsonian masque in the 1630s, itself part of a cultural 're-launch' of the Caroline regime. In highlighting moments of strain in the interactions between the masque and political culture the pressures on the form and the debates around its purpose are seen as urgent and explicit, exposing questions of how to speak politics and how to engage in a political culture. Politics and Political Culture in the Court Masque proposes a more critical and stringent role for masques in a more contested and diverse politics.
Synopsis
Challenging the deference to royal ideology that often typifies masque criticism, this study argues for the greater involvement of the masque in the wider political culture and discourses of early modern England. Drawing on news-books, contemporary reports, libellous verse and early political cartoons, and ranging across court and non-court texts, this study decentres Stuart masquing culture, to explore how masques participated in politics beyond the court, offering an alternative view of Ben Jonson's interactions with political and popular culture.
Synopsis
Politics and Political Culture in the Court Masque considers the interconnections of the masque and political culture. It examines how masques responded to political forces and voices beyond the court, and how masques explored the limits of political speech in the Jacobean and Caroline periods.
Synopsis
Challenging the deference to royal ideology that often typifies masque criticism, this study argues for the greater involvement of the masque in the wider political culture and discourses of early modern England.
About the Author
JAMES KNOWLES is Professor of Medieval and Renaissance Literature and Head of School at University College Cork, Ireland. He has edited the complete entertainments and selected masques for the forthcoming Complete Works of Ben Jonson, and has written extensively on the Jacobean and Caroline masque and its cultural context.
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
1.Introduction: 'Friends of all Ranks?' Reading the Masque in Political Culture
2.'Vizarded impudence': challenging the regnum Cecilianum
3.Crack Kisses Not Staves: sexual politics and court masques in 1613-14
4.'No News': News from the New World and Textual Culture in the 1620s
5.'Hoarse with Praising': Gypsies Metamorphosed and the politics of masquing
6.'Tis for kings, / Not for their subjects, to have such rare things': The Triumph of Peace and Civil Culture
Bibliography
Index