Court Masques: Jacobean and Caroline Entertainments: 1605-1640.David Lindley David Lindley may refer to:
abbr. International Standard Book Number ISBN International Standard Book Number ISBN n abbr (= International Standard Book Number) → ISBN m : n.a. Lindley's anthology of eighteen Jacobean and Caroline entertainments provides a well-edited compilation of an array of examples of the genre, the fullest collection since Spencer and Wells's Book of Masques (1967). As part of the Oxford Drama Library, this text provides an extremely compact and accessible introductory reader for college teachers and their students. Many of the supplementary materials are similarly ideal for classroom use, including a very succinct introduction, a brief note on the circumstances surrounding each masque's original performance, readable and unobstrusive commentary, eleven illustrations from the masques, and even an index of performers. Lindley's selection includes several of the most popular and widely-available masques, such as Jonson's The Masque masque, courtly form of dramatic spectacle, popular in England in the first half of the 17th cent. The masque developed from the early 16th-century disguising, or mummery, in which disguised guests bearing presents would break into a festival and then join with their of Blackness and Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue is a Jacobean era masque, written by Ben Jonson and designed by Inigo Jones. It was first performed on Twelfth Night, January 6, 1618, in the Banqueting House at Whitehall Palace. . Yet, as Lindley explains in his introduction, the selection of texts is also intended to emphasize the genre's diversity. He therefore includes court entertainments written by Chapman, Campion campion: see pink. campion Any of the ornamental rock-garden or border plants that make up the genus Silene, of the pink family, consisting of about 500 species of herbaceous plants found throughout the world. , Daniel, Carew, Davenant, and Aurelian Townshend Aurelian Townshend (sometimes Townsend) (c. 1583 - c. 1643) was a seventeenth-century English poet and playwright. Very little is well established about Townshend's life. , texts often omitted from anthologies and critical attention. In his selection of masques, Lindley intends to stress the flexibility of the genre, from Jonson's Christmas his Masque (1616), and its roots in traditional mummings and Christmas plays, to Jonson's Barriers at a Marriage (1606), an example of the lingering interest in the combats and tilts more often associated with the Elizabethan court. Although Lindley gives the most attention to examples performed at court, he also includes two entertainments performed in private homes during royal progresses - Campion's The Caversham Entertainment (1613) and Jonson's Love's Welcome at Bolsover Love's Welcome at Bolsover (alternative archaic spelling, Balsover) is the final masque composed by Ben Jonson. It was performed on July 30, 1634, three years before the poet's death, and published in 1641. (1634), his final masque with its notorious attack on Inigo Jones. A previously unedited private entertainment, the anonymous The Coleorton Masque (1618), is one of the collection's greatest assets. This masque, a private entertainment performed for and by members of the Essex circle, far from the court at Sir Thomas Beaumont's home in Leicestershire, makes clear how divergent political views found expression through masques and entertainments in Stuart England The Stuart Period The Stuart period was an important stage of English history. It represented the time frame from James I of England (or James VI of Scotland) all the way to the reign of Queen Anne. James I came to the throne in 1603. . Lindley's introduction serves to counter the two most common objections to the genre: that the masque is, by definition, both frivolous and sycophantic syc·o·phant n. A servile self-seeker who attempts to win favor by flattering influential people. [Latin s . Lindley traces these objections to contemporaries such as Bacon, who considered masques frivolous "toys" (x). But such complaints were shared by those responsible for the masques' production, most especially by Ben Jonson, and helped shape a decidedly ambivalent aesthetics for the genre. Lindley remarks that many masques metatheatrically comment on their own enterprise, calling attention to the role of the poet and others excluded from the audience (like the tailors who intrude upon Shirley's Triumph of Peace [1633]) yet necessary to the masque's production. Lindley, in fact, could have elaborated this point, particularly in explaining Jonson's compensatory attempts to emphasize the "literary" character of his texts and differentiate the masques in their published form. In response to the second traditional complaint lodged against the masque, its association with flattery and court advancement, Lindley notes often-overlooked tensions in patronage, the anxieties of flattering the wrong courtier, for example. Like recent critics of the genre, including Joanne Altieri and Kevin Sharpe, Lindley qualifies "univocal" readings of court masques and instead foregrounds these texts' ability to offer advice to the monarch, or even, as in the case of Momus in Carew's Coelum Britannicum (1634), satirize sat·i·rize tr.v. sat·i·rized, sat·i·riz·ing, sat·i·riz·es To ridicule or attack by means of satire. satirize or -rise Verb [-rizing, the ethos of the court and mock recent royal policies. Specialists would of course appreciate a more detailed consideration of the texts' political contexts, which Lindley often sacrifices for the sake of brevity. Explicit references to recent criticism in the introduction and notes might also have increased the collection's value for those working in the field. But these factors do not detract from detract from verb 1. lessen, reduce, diminish, lower, take away from, derogate, devaluate << OPPOSITE enhance verb 2. the anthology's usefulness for the general reader. Alongside James Knowles's recent rediscovery of the Jonson entertainment The Key Keeper (1609), the present moment provides many new opportunities for research on the masque; Lindley's accessible edition, it is hoped, will introduce a new generation of students to the genre. MARK NETZLOFF University of Delaware [3] The student body at the University of Delaware is largely an undergraduate population. Delaware students have a great deal of access to work and internship opportunities. |
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