PERFORMANCE, POLITICS, AND RELIGION: RECONSTRUCTING SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY MASQUE by Eliza Fisher Laskowski A dissertation submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of English. Chapel Hill 2006 Approved by Advisor: Reid Barbour Reader: Mary Floyd-Wilson Reader: Ritchie Kendall Reader: Megan Matchinske Reader: Jessica Wolfe © 2006 Eliza Fisher Laskowski ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT Eliza Fisher Laskowski: Performance, Politics, and Religion: Reconstructing Seventeenth-Century Masque (Under the direction of Reid Barbour) This dissertation revises the critical understanding of masque in the early modern period. While past scholarship has evaluated individual texts against the limiting formula of the “Jonsonian masque,” I situate Jonson as but one of many writers working successfully in the genre. Moreover, although Stephen Orgel and others have provided invaluable insight into the political contexts of masque, I expand and supplement these arguments by considering the extensive social and artistic complexity of the form for its diverse range of writers, patrons, and audiences. As I demonstrate, the concept of variety is the constituent factor in the flexibility and diversity of masque during the seventeenth century. Finally, my dissertation introduces to masque studies several manuscripts—including Add. 10311, Enchiridion Christiados, and Royal 18 A LXXX, The Theater of Apollo—that I discovered in the British Library. By introducing the concept of aesthetic variety articulated by a majority of seventeenth- century masque writers, chapter one lays the foundation for re-evaluating the inherent complexity of masque. The second chapter explores the history and etymology of “masque” to postulate that, in the sixteenth century, masquing was inseparable from other forms of military display; it then traces the intersections of masque’s martial iconography and English foreign policy in both early Stuart courts. Chapter three examines the increasing emphasis iii on pseudo-liturgical display in masque during the early seventeenth century, culminating in the masque’s establishment as the secularized liturgy of state by the Caroline period. The final chapter further demonstrates the multifariousness of the genre by probing the multiple, often contradictory, reactions of country masque writers to the secularized, “popish” liturgy of the Caroline court masque — for instance, the strict adherence to The Book of Common Prayer lectionary calendar that grounds Enchiridion Christiados. In short, this dissertation foregrounds variety as the central element of both the masque’s formal diversity and its socio-political potential to advise, critique, and defend as well as simply entertain. The masque is transposed from the domain of Ben Jonson, Inigo Jones, and the court to a genre of broad influence and importance to early modern culture as a whole. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Although this study was written by only one, it could never have been completed without many. From a café in the British Library to countless meetings in his office, my director, Reid Barbour, has offered unbounded guidance, insight, encouragement, and enthusiasm; I am enormously grateful for his mentorship, throughout both this long process and my career at Carolina. Additionally, I owe to Ritchie Kendall, Megan Matchinske, Jessica Wolfe, and Mary Floyd Wilson much thanks; the wisdom I gained in their examples will carry me farther than all the lessons I learned in their classrooms. For their patience and advice, their support and comradare, I must particularly thank my dissertation writing group, Kathleen Beres, Austin Fairfield, Kimberly Burton-Oakes, and Elizabeth Brignac. Convivium! I am also deeply grateful to my advisors and faculty at both The University of the South and The University of Alabama, where this project had its genesis. Both my faculty and co- participants at the 2005 Mellon Seminar challenged me in ways I could never anticipate, and I owe much to their inspiration. Finally, this project would not have been possible without the support of both the Department of English and the Graduate School and the invaluable assistance of the staff at the British Library and the Bodleain. Without the many gifts of my parents, their passion for learning, their understanding, and most importantly their love, I could never have come so far. So many others have also kept me balanced, especially my sister, Alex, and brother, William; my grandparents, Bob and Bertha Wenzel; my husband’s parent’s, Leo and Jeri Laskowski; my old friends from v Sewanee and from Memphis; my new friends here. Although you knew so little about the path, you never stopped cheering me on the journey. But most importantly, I must thank my little family, those two who have lived with me day in and day out during this long and challenging process; you kept me at work and forced me to relax, you listened to me and loved me, even when I was at times unloveable. Mark, you willingly share every sacrifice and struggle, so this, if ever it is mine, is also yours. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Tables……………………………………….……………………………………… viii List of Figures………………………………………….……………………….…………… ix Introduction Performance, Politics, and Religion: Reconstructing……………………….. 1 Seventeenth-Century Masque Chapter 1 “Let them oft and sweetly vary”: Masque and Variety……………….….… 19 Chapter 2 “Arms defensive a Safe Peace Maintain”: The Martial Masque…….……. 101 Chapter 3 “We now shall hear, and see the forms of their devotion”:……………….. 178 The Liturgical Masque Chapter 4 “It were a Sinne to make them stoope more lowe, or streyne……….……. 249 more high”: The Country Masque “Mungrell Masque,” “Secular Masque,” or “English Opera”? Looking Beyond…..…….. 300 the Early Seventeenth Century Appendix A: Calendar of Seventeenth-Century Masques…………………………….…... 312 Appendix B: Ben Jonson’s Descriptions of the Masque Dances and Revels…………..…. 315 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………….… 319 vii LIST OF TABLES Table 3.1. Comparison of Liturgical Borrowings in Jacobean Masques…...…….…….….…….202 and Jacobean Wedding Masques 3.2. Comparison of Liturgical Borrowings in Jacobean Masques……….…………..……214 and Caroline Masques 4.1. The Twelve Acts of Enchiridion Christiados Related to the Book…………………..284 of Common Prayer Lectionary Calendar viii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1.1. Inigo Jones’s House of Fame for The Masque of Queens………………………………35 1.2. Inigo Jones’s Ruined City for Coelum Britannicum…………………….……………...36 1.3. Figures Géométriques—Geometric Shapes………………………………………….…40 1.4. Figures Géométriques—Letters……………………………………………………..….41 1.5. Detail of the ground plan of the first Jacobean Banquet House,……………………..…80 Whitehall, 1606–1618 63 1.6. Ground Plan and Elevation of the Northern End of the First Jacobean……………..….81 Banquet House, Whitehall, 1606–1618 64 1.7. Final Dance of “Le Balet des Polonais,” from Jean Dorant’s Magnificentissimi….…...82 spectaculi, Paris 1573 3.1. Banqueting House Interior, facing the bottom of the room………………….……..….182 3.2. Bristol Cathedral Floor Plan Detail…………………………………………..………..183 3.3. Lorenzo Lotto. Madonna in trono col Bambino e i Santi Caterina…...……….……...229 d'Alessandria, Agostino, Sebastiano, Antonio Abate e Giovannino 3.4. Inigo Jones’s sketch for Luminalia’s cloud machine…………………………..……...230 ix Introduction Performance, Politics, and Religion: Reconstructing Seventeenth-Century Masque “These things are but toys,” Francis Bacon famously opines in his essay “Of Masques and Triumphs,” “but yet, since princes will have such things, it is better they should be graced with elegancy than daubed with cost.”1 Bacon’s rhetorical juxtaposition of infantilized trifle to divinely ordained power is intentionally jarring, demanding that a reader pause and contemplate the relationship of monarch and masque. More often than not, masque suffers through such comparison. For the modern reader of Bacon, the implications of his opening rhetorical gambit seem especially damning: why bother with such a difficult and obscure genre if one of the great thinkers of the age deems it a “toy”? The body of Bacon’s essay offers little help, brimming as it is with advice on musical styles, staging effects, costume choices, and antimasque characters: “Let the scenes abound with light, specially coloured and varied; and let the masquers, or any other, that are to come down from the scene, have some motions upon the scene itself before their coming down.” Equally problematic, the closest Bacon comes to discussing poetry is his observation that “Acting in song, especially in dialogues, hath an extreme good grace; […] and the voices of the dialogue would be strong and manly.” Recitative, if indeed this is Bacon’s reference, and voice parts, rather than meter and poetic form in comfortable Aristotelian style — the entirety of Bacon’s criticism centers on the performance of masque, not its texts. Bacon, therefore, moves his reader from triviality to the ephemerality of performance practice and back again, with no attempt to resolve the initial paradox of his essay. Delving further into the genre results in further paradoxes and conundrums, and the texts themselves offer little assistance. In practical terms, Neptune’s Triumph for the Return of Albion, Tempe Restored, and A Mask at Ludlow Castle, all written within ten years of each other (1624, 1632, and 1634 respectively), share little but music, dancing, and the generic title