Timeline of Major 17th-

Century Historical
Events
1603 Elizabeth I dies. James VI of Scotland, now James I of England, accedes.
1620 First emigration of the Pilgrims to the New World
1625 James I dies. His son Charles I accedes
1641 The English Revolution and Civil War. Oliver Cromwell - Chief Protector
1645 the Royal Society
1649 Charles I is executed. The Interregnum
1651 Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan
1660 Charles II - the Restoration
1664–1666 The Great Plague and Fire of London
1685 Charles II dies. James II accedes
1687 Newton’s Principia, John Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human
Understanding
1688–1689 James II abdicates. The Glorious Revolution
1690 John Locke’ Two Treatises of Government
http://www.youtube.com/w
atch?v=G22UED2yJ_Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=xYPRXS6WndY
James I of England
Anne of Denmark
Anthony van Dyck. 
Equestrian Portrait of
Charles I, King of
England with
Seignior de St.
Antoine. 1633
Charles I
 Jacobean & Caroline Drama
1601 TO THE CLOSURE OF THE THEATRES, 1642

Jacobean: (1603-25) < Latin Jacobus

Caroline: (1625-1642)

the King James Bible (1611)

first FOLIO edition of Shakespeare's plays (1623)
▪         MASQUES
▪         COMEDIES OF HUMOURS
▪         REVENGE TRAGEDIES
 Court Masques
theatrical form - reigns of the Tudor & Stuart monarchs
almost immediately obsolete during the British Civil War
 
Shakespeare - short masque scene in The Tempest (1611)
 
at the courts of James I and Charles I - height of popularity
quarrelsome collaboration - Ben Jonson as writer & Inigo Jones as stage
designer (1605 – 1631)
George Chapman, Thomas Middleton
Composers  Thomas Campion, Henry Lawes, William Byrd, & Henry
Purcell
 SELECT CHRONOLOGY OF
STUART MASQUES
Ben Jonson
1605 The Masque of Blackness
1608 The Masque of Beauty
1609 The Masque of Queens
1610 Prince Henry's Barriers
1611 Oberon, The Fairy Prince
1611 Love Freed from Ignorance & Folly
1612 Love Restored
1615 Mercury Vindicated from the Alchemists at Court
1616 The Golden Age Restored
1616 Christmas His Masque
1617 The Vision of Delight
1617 Lovers Made Men
1618 Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue
1620 The News from the New World Discovered in the Moon
1620 Pan's Anniversary
1621 The Gypsies Metamorphosed
1622 The Masque of Augurs
1623 Time Vindicated to Himself & to his Honours
1624 Neptune's Triumph for the Return of Albion
1624 The Masque of Owls
1625 The Fortunate Isles & Their Union
1631 Love's Triumph through Callipolis
1631 Chloridia
Thomas Campion

1607 The Lord Hay's Masque

1613 The Lords' Masque
1613 The Caversham Entertainment
1613 The Somerset Masque
Thomas Middleton
1619 The Masque of Heroes
John Marston
1607 The Entertainment at Ashby
George Chapman
1613 The Memorable Masque
Thomas Carew
1634 Coelum Britannicum
William Davenant
1635 The Temple of Love
1638 Britannia Triumphans
1638 Luminalia
1640 Salmacida Spolia

Aurelian Townshend
1632 Albion's Triumph
1632 Tempe Restored
 ORIGINS
forms of court entertainment
▪ court pageants
▪ mimed tournaments
▪  allegorical dialogues

2. popular form of entertainment

 morris dance
 popular pageants
 tableaux
Morris dance
 OCCASIONAL
Court art-form
religious festivals, royal birthdays,
inaugurations, weddings
e.g. Chapman’s Memorable Masque

political purposes, "diplomatic occasions"

e.g. Milton's A Maske
 PRIVATE
aristocratic elite
≠ public theatres
held in private royal halls (Banqueting Hall in
Whitehall)
performed at court / manor of a member of the nobility
-- acted indoors
PERFORMERS: amateurs – aristocratic masquers,
elaborately, extravagantly costumed
 Baroque illusionism
< Portuguese barroco, 'rough or imperfectly shaped pearl' >> art --
extravagant, heavily ornate or bombastic
Counterreformation (age of the Baroque - synonymous with the Catholic
abhorrence of Protestantism)
17th century - masque, disguise, masquerade, dissimulation
Life = dream
appearances = illusion
irreconcilable conflict
• flesh & spirit
• worldly & celestial
• transitory & eternal

time: fleeting, momentary, time’s swift flight – tempus irreparabile

fugit, vanitas vanitatum, carpe diem
paradox: experience the moment to its fullest, intensely – to defeat
time  
 Mask
thin & fragile screen : ignorant illusion &
revelation of the truth
baroque mentality - infatuation with
concealment & disguise
metaphor of the stage
life is precarious - certainty of death
carefree masquerade of a privileged society
 Spatial illusionism
(consciousness of infinity) - coextensive space –
trompe l’oeil – dissolves the barrier between:
• real space of the observer
• perspective space of the painting, sculpture, theatre stage

infinite prolongation of space (micro &

macrocosmos)
illusionistic ceiling paintings
        psychological effect
integration of real & fictive space
transferring the mind of the viewer from material to
eternal things
Rubens’s ceiling panels to Jones’s
Whitehall Banqueting House
Rubens’s ceiling panels to Jones’s
Whitehall Banqueting House
 Light
complex solar symbolism: glorifies royalty,
serves autocratic regimes
sun as the source of universal light (the Roi
Soleil)
doctrine of divine right
unlimited magnificence and splendour
baroque imagination delighted above all --
creation of an illusory reality -- more opulent &
splendid than the ordinary world could offer
 Baroque performance
synchretic indoor performance combining
• poetic drama, music, dance, song, lavish costumes,
spectacular stage effects, elaborate stage designs &
machinery
transitory and ephemeral art
spectacular & musical elements
predominated over plot & character
 STRUCTURE
poetic induction / prologue
antimasque(s)
main masque
revels - epilogue dance
 Revels
complex choreographed dances by masqued
performers "taking out" audience members –
form geometrical shapes & intricate patterns [late
Tudor & early Stuart period -- root in Italian
balletto]
breakdown - barrier - stage & spectator
blurs - line - performance & reality
heighten allegory & symbolism
removal of masks - end of the dramatic
entertainment -- world of the masque - dissolved
Inigo Jones (1573-1652)
 Inigo Jones
principal British exponent of an essentially baroque
phenomenon
illusionistic stage settings animated by spectacular
machinery – stage architect
elaborate set designs, scenery & costumes for plays
& masques 
machina versatilis or 'turning machine'
proscenium arch
introduces perspective, illusionist setting to the English
theatre
cancel the separation of stage & audience – brings them
together – participate in the glorification of the monarch
Haven with a Citadel
Stage machinery
Proscenium
Courtly dancers
Sketch by Inigo Jones for first
scene of Britannia Triumphans
Sketch by Inigo Jones for final
scene of Britannia Triumphans
 Ben Jonson
the masque as a literary form
unify the various elements of the masque
(literary/dramatic & spectacular/theatrical) into a
cohesive whole
• 17th c critics -- dismissed masques -- ephemeral and expensive
entertainments, occasional, extravagant, and wasteful spectacles --
unrealistic and shameful flattery of the monarch
• Jonson considered them important enough to publish his texts

poet's vision = soul of the masque

sought to counter the ephemerality of performance, to
"borrow a life of posteritie" for them
 Anti-masque
comic or grotesque characters & plot material -- as
foils to the main masque
• preceded the performance of a MASQUE (antemasque)
• Jonson -- a "foyle, or false-Masque"
• antic masque
• farcical prelude - - a BURLESQUE of the main action.
• highlight by contrast - central theme - political & social harmony
witches, satyrs, grotesque monsters – world of darkness &
evil
temporary submergence into chaos - disfigurement of the
underlying order of nature
professional actors & singers - antimasque
noble ladies & gentlemen - masque
A Turkey
Stage fury Giant
Inigo Jones, design for Henrietta Maria as
‘Divine Beauty’ in Tempe Restored
(1632)
Inigo Jones, design for Henrietta
Maria, Luminalia 1638
Inigo Jones – Lady masquer in Amazonian dress –
Salmacida Spolia 1640
A Knight of Apollo
Inigo Jones, design for Masque
of Blackness 1605

first performed at the Stuart

Court in the Banqueting Hall
of Whitehall Palace
written by Ben Jonson at the
request of Anne of Denmark,
who wished the masquers to be
disguised as Africans
Anne was one of the
performers in the masque
along with her court ladies, and
appeared in blackface makeup
Inigo Jones, design for Neptune’s
Triumph for the Return of Albion
masque intended as
the major
entertainment of
the 1623–24
Christmas holiday
season
Inigo Jones, design for Oberon
the Fairy King 1608
Torch-bearer: An Indian
Headdress of Queen Saba
masque
gigantic allegory celebrating the triumph of Peace, Virtue,
Concord, Wisdom, Eternity (symbolised by the Royal
Presence at whose feet the masquers ended their dance &
ritual)
essentially nondramatic, no room for tension or conflict
characters are symbolic rather than realistic
antimasque
drama is possible only here
grotesque world of vice or comic disorder which is subdued
or displaced by the courtly masque
 Political significance
vehicle for celebrating the monarch, glorifying the court or a
particular aristocrat
• exalted conception of the divine right of kings - Stuart monarchs -17th
century court hierarchy
• political overtones - masques were major political events, displays of
liberality and magnanimity
sycophantic panegyric
rules of flattery'--- praise was obligatory
Masque: mouthpiece of absolutist ideology
• tributes to James's pacific wisdom
• mutual love of Charles & Henrietta Maria
Antimasque : covert criticism of royal policy
 dramatize abuses - monarch encouraged to correct
 complex negotiation between court & sovereign /different political
factions within the court
 Tudor monarchs
Henry VIII often took part in the revels, &
masque designs
Elizabeth I - prophetic themes drawn in
particular from Golden Age mythology
• Elizabeth - cast as Astraea
• Virgin Queen - Mary, the queen of heaven
alchemical emblematics - gold - symbol
 Stuart period
alchemical or Platonic Golden Age was to be realised -
through the enactment of masques
e.g. Jonson’s The Golden Age Restor’d (1615)
After the succession of James I in 1603, Court artists
laboured to legitimate the new ruler & the union of
Scotland with England & Wales
cultivated - king figure - threefold roles
British Solomon
Augustus
Constantine
• imperial archetypes of Jewish king, pagan emperor, & Christian
prince
Stuart monarchs - establishment of an empire
separate from, but equal to, that of Rome
imperial mission served to emphasise their
established Protestant role as the ‘Defenders of
the Faith’
Stuart expectations of a Golden Age
claims to Protestant imperial destiny
reference to British legend, & to the tale of an Albion
of magical virtue which would one day be restored
Stuart aspiration to restore Albion both physically
& spiritually
Geoffrey of Monmouth, - Historia Regum
Britanniae - 1130
• The British - described as the heirs to a lost antiquity
comprising the Trojan & later Arthurian land of Albion
• ancient British kings - descended from Brute, the grandson of
Aeneas of Troy
• fulfilling Diana’s prophecy, Brute had conquered the island of
Albion & founded London as the New Troy
articulation of this mythology - masque
Oberon, the Fairy Prince (1611)
Neptune’s Triumph for the Return of Albion
(1624)
Albion’s Triumph (1632)
Coelum Britannicum (1634)
Britannia Triumphans (1638)
the Stuart masque - animated by Neoplatonic
philosophy
allegories which harmonised music, dance,
emblematic costume, & changeable perspective
scenery
belief that complex occult correspondences
controlled the cosmos
Stuart Court as a model of Platonic harmony
revelation of the divine Ideas— justice, religion,
virtue, peace
 the Court as a paradigm of order
contrasted & emphasised by its opposite, hell as a
disharmonious collection of supernatural
forces, witches & popular magicians—all
ultimately banished by the king
turning winter into spring & drawing down
favourable spirits, the masque celebrated the
monarch’s supposed magical powers over nature
herself
Charles I & Henrietta-Maria
Celebrations of royal marriages
Platonic theme of harmony
alchemical pairing of opposites, male & female
Caroline Court -- a Neoplatonic cult of love centred on
the royal pair
‘Carlo-Maria’ union - Hermaphrodite
Jonson’s Love’s Welcome at Bolsover (1634)
Jonson’s Love’s Triumph through Callipolis
(1631) -- king was cast emblematically as Heroic
Love & the queen as Beauty
 Bibliographical Sources

Lindley, David (ed) (1995) Court Masques.

Jacobean & Caroline Entertainments 1605-1640
Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press
Hart, Vaughan (1994) Art & Magic in the Court of
the Stuarts London & New York: Routledge
Donaldson, Ian Grant (1997) Jonson's Magic
Houses: Essays in Interpretation Oxford:
Clarendon Press