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Shrove-Tide Dancing: Balls and Masques at Whitehall Under Charles II

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Shrove-Tide Dancing: Balls and Masques at Whitehall Under Charles II Sandra Tuppen Shrove-tide Dancing: Balls and Masques at Whitehall under Charles II Accepted manuscript of an article published in The Court Historian: the International Journal of Court Studies, Vol. 15/2 (2010), 157-169. Abstract: The tradition of the Shrove-tide court entertainment with dancing and music, strong in the first half of the seventeenth century in England, was restored with the monarchy in the 1660’s. Shrove-tide masques, balls and plays, along with dishes of pancakes and fritters, remained a feature of the court calendar to the end of Charles II’s reign. As well as borrowing elements from the Jacobean court masque, some of the entertainments presented before Charles II were modelled on French entertainments staged for Louis XIV. John Blow’s court opera Venus and Adonis may have received its first performance at a Shrove-tide event in 1682/3. ___________________________________________ In England in the first half of the seventeenth century, elaborate masques – theatrical entertainments featuring music, dancing, lavish costumes and often complex stage machinery – were habitually staged at court on Twelfth Night, and sometimes also on Shrove Monday or Tuesday.1 During the reign of Charles I, it became common for the King to stage the Twelfth-Night masque in honour of the Queen, and for the Queen to 1 Ben Jonson’s Masque of Blackness, for example, was performed on Twelfth Night (6 January) in 1604/5; his Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue was performed both on Twelfth Night and on Shrove Tuesday (17 February) in 1617/18. 1 reciprocate with a masque for the King at Shrove-tide.2 Court masques were sometimes also performed on Candlemas Day (2 February).3 In England, as in many other parts of Europe, 2 February heralded the start of the Carnival season, a period of merrymaking which concluded with the festivities of Shrove Monday and Shrove Tuesday, and which was succeeded, on Ash Wednesday, by the sober season of Lent.4 At the Restoration, Charles II might have been expected to eschew the masque, it being a form of entertainment associated with the extravagant courts of his predecessors. However, both Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn describe the presentation of masques at court in the 1660’s, and official court records provide additional information about such entertainments. For example, the Office of Works accounts reveal the occasions when carpenters were called upon to make alterations to the stage in the theatre at Whitehall in order to make it suitable for dancing, and the Lord Steward’s records show when provisions such as food, drink, coal and candles were required for masques and balls.5 Some, but by no means all, of these masques and balls have been calendared by scholars of the Restoration theatre.6 However, few of those entertainments held in the first part of the year have hitherto been identified as Shrove-tide entertainments.7 2 Enid Welsford, The Court Masque: A Study in the Relationship between Poetry & the Revels (Cambridge, 1927), p. 217. Shrove-tide is usually defined as the three days before Ash Wednesday, namely Quinquagesima Sunday and Shrove Monday and Tuesday. Its dates vary each year, being dependent on the date of Easter. 3 Jonson’s Masque of Queens, for instance, was performed at court on 2 February 1608/9. 4 In France, for example, the festival of La Chandeleur, on 2 February, heralded the start of Le Carnaval, which ran until Lent. 5 The comments of Pepys and Evelyn will be outlined later in this article. Relevant records from the Office of Works accounts at the National Archives are transcribed in Eleonore Boswell, The Restoration Court Stage, 1660-1702 (Cambridge, Mass., 1932) and J. Milhous and R. D. Hume (eds), A Register of English Theatrical Documents, 1660-1737 (Carbondale, 1991). The Lord Steward’s records, also held at the National Archives, have hitherto been little studied in this context. 6 Boswell, The Restoration Court Stage; W. Van Lennep, E. L. Avery and A. H. Scouten (eds), The London Stage 1660-1800. Part 1 1660-1700 (Carbondale, 1965); Andrew R. Walkling, ‘Masque and Politics at the 2 Pepys’s diary reveals that the long tradition of feasting and playing games on Shrove Tuesday continued after the Restoration: on 26 February 1660/1, the first Shrove Tuesday of Charles II’s reign, Pepys marked the day by eating fritters and watching ‘the flinging at Cocks’.8 The records of the Lord Steward show that the King partook of pancakes and fritters on Shrove Tuesday throughout his reign.9 On Shrove Tuesday in 1660/1 (26 February), Edward Gower wrote to Sir Richard Leveson: ‘No more plays at Court after this night, and but three days the week at the play houses.’10 Eleonore Boswell has inferred from the first clause of this sentence that a play was performed at court on the night of 26 February.11 This may indeed have been the case, though no other evidence for a performance has been found. Gower’s comment suggests that the coming of Lent the following day would not only bring about a reduction in the number of performances on the public stage but also put a temporary ban on theatrical performances at court. Given this, it seems likely that the court would have marked Shrove-tide with a performance of some sort. Restoration Court: John Crowne’s Calisto’, Early Music, 24 (1996), pp. 27-62; Peter Holman, Four and Twenty Fiddlers: The Violin at the English Court 1540-1690 (Oxford, 1993), pp. 359-388. 7 Andrew Walkling has shown that Calisto was conceived as a Christmas-tide entertainment but postponed first to Shrove Tuesday and subsequently to early in Lent (Walkling, ‘Masque and Politics at the Restoration Court’, pp. 28-30). Eleonore Boswell noted that masques took place in 1666/7 and 1667/8 on Shrove Monday and Shrove Tuesday respectively (Boswell, The Restoration Court Stage, p. 137). 8 R. Latham and W. Matthews (eds), The Diary of Samuel Pepys: A New and Complete Transcription (London, 1985), vol. 2, pp. 43-44. Throwing at cocks was a somewhat barbarous game traditionally played on Shrove Tuesday. Participants competed to kill a cock by throwing missiles, such as cudgels, at it. 9 See, for instance, LS 1/11 (1669) and LS 1/16 (1674), which contain separate lists of ingredients for the pancakes and fritters of the King and Queen respectively. 10 Historical Manuscripts Commission, 5th Report, Part 1 (London, 1876), p. 202. 11 Boswell, The Restoration Court Stage, pp. 278-9. 3 The next year, a play was certainly presented on Shrove Tuesday, though it is not clear which play was performed, and the King himself did not attend. In his diary entry for Shrove Tuesday (11 February 1661/2), John Evelyn wrote: ‘I saw a Comedy acted before the Dutchesse of York at the Cock-pit. The king was not at it.’12 The following year, Charles II appears to have taken a keener interest in pre-Lenten court festivities. On 9 February 1662/3, he wrote to his sister, the Duchess of Orléans, revealing that he had strongly urged the Queen to follow the example of the Queen Mother in France in staging a masque at court before the end of the Carnival season.13 The letter shows that, although the King had decided on the general outline of the masque, his plans had thus far come to nothing, as he could not find a single statesman at court with the dancing skills to perform a bearable entrée [masque dance]. The King noted that the Queen had begun to develop a taste for such entertainments, arranging for country dances to be performed in her room. 14 It is not clear whether Charles’s desire to stage a masque before the start of Lent came to anything, but Pepys implies that there was dancing of sorts at court that Shrove-tide. On 7 March 1662/3, four days into Lent, he described a situation that had arisen at a ball a few days earlier, when Charles refused to dance with Lady Gerard because she had spoken ill of his mistress, Lady Castlemaine, to the Queen.15 It is unlikely that the ball would have taken place during Lent, so it probably took place on or just before Shrove Tuesday (3 12 E. S. de Beer (ed.), The Diary of John Evelyn (Oxford, 1955), vol. 3, p. 315. 13 Charles de Baillon, Henriette-Anne d’Angleterre, duchesse d’Orléans: sa vie et sa correspondance avec son frère Charles II (Paris, 1887), p. 109-110. In 1662/3, the carnival season ended on 3 March. 14 Ibid. 15 The Diary of Samuel Pepys, vol. 4, p. 68. 4 March). Unfortunately, Pepys did not attend himself, but only recounted what the naval administrator John Creed had told him about the Gerard incident. Dancing was certainly arranged at Shrove-tide for the King’s entertainment in 1663/4. On 22 February, Shrove Monday, Pepys recorded that a ball was to be held that evening at the Great Hall at Whitehall, in the presence of the King. Apart from revealing that the Great Hall was to be guarded by the Horse Guards, Pepys did not give any details of the occasion.16 Pepys is more informative regarding a masque that took place at court the following year, shortly before Lent. On 3 February 1664/5, five days before the start of Lent, he wrote: Then Mrs. Pickering … did, at my Lady’s command tell me the manner of a Masquerade before the King and Court the other day – where six women (my Lady Castlemayne and Duchesse of Monmouth being two of them) and six men (the Duke of Monmouth and Lord Aron and Monsieur Blanfort being three of them) in vizards, but most rich and antique dresses, did dance admirably and most gloriously.
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