The Stuart Court Masque and Political Culture

The Stuart Court Masque and Political Culture

by Martin Butler
ISBN-10:
0521883547
ISBN-13:
9780521883542
Pub. Date:
02/05/2009
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
ISBN-10:
0521883547
ISBN-13:
9780521883542
Pub. Date:
02/05/2009
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
The Stuart Court Masque and Political Culture

The Stuart Court Masque and Political Culture

by Martin Butler

Hardcover

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Overview

Court masques were multi-media entertainments, with song, dance, theater, and changeable scenery, staged annually at the English court to celebrate the Stuart dynasty. They have typically been regarded as frivolous and expensive entertainments. This book dispels this notion, emphasizing instead that they were embedded in the politics of the moment, and spoke in complex ways to the different audiences who viewed them. Covering the whole period from Queen Anne’s first masque at Winchester in 1603 to Salmacida Spolia in 1640, Butler looks in depth at the political functions of state festivity. The book contextualizes masque performances in intricate detail, and analyzes how they shaped, managed, and influenced the public face of the Stuart kingship. Butler presents the masques as a vehicle through which we can read the early Stuart court’s political aspirations and the changing functions of royal culture in a period of often radical instability.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780521883542
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Publication date: 02/05/2009
Edition description: New Edition
Pages: 462
Product dimensions: 6.10(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Martin Butler is Professor of English Renaissance Drama at the University of Leeds.

Table of Contents

Introduction; 1. Spectacles of state; 2. Rites of exclusion; 3. Rites of incorporation; 4. The invention of Britain; 5. The consort's body; 6. The revival of chivalry; 7. The dance of favour; 8. The Jacobean crisis; 9. The Caroline Reformation; 10. The Caroline crisis; Appendix: A calendar of masques and entertainments, 1603–41.
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