| This project aims at a complete revision of the way in which we view the relationship between popular and elite theater in early Stuart England. The court masque was, by definition, an aristocratic entertainment form, yet scenes containing inserted masques or masquing elements abound in the popular drama of the period. This raises important questions: how did common playgoers, who ostensibly had no access to court culture, comprehend masquing scenes when they saw them enacted upon the public stage? More importantly, how did the appropriation of an elite art form by the popular theater register socially and politically? The first part of the project addresses the former question by examining the dissemination of masque dramaturgy into the culture at large. Incorporating analyses of theater hermeneutics, masque publication, and material stage practice, I outline the means by which popular audiences could become familiar with the conventions of court spectacle.The second part of the project presents a broad chronological study of the interplay of the two forms through the period. This is a history that has not been written before now, and I believe it is crucial to understanding both forms' development. One striking characteristic that runs through many dramatic depictions of the masque is their criticism of court culture and royal policy. The appropriation of the masque, then, is an important dimension of anticourt drama and opposition politics in the period. Examining representations of masques in works by Jonson, Marston, Middleton, Shakespeare and other writers, I trace the use of inserted masques to satirize and interrogate the institutions that the court masque was designed to celebrate. Ultimately I argue for a new conception of the masque in its public iteration as a form marked by increasing social and political contention in the decades prior to the English Civil War. |
