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" Familial politics and the Stuart court masque. "
Haslem, Michelle.
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Latin Dissertation
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| Record Number
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1094979
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TLets367810
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| Main Entry
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Haslem, Michelle.
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| Title & Author
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Familial politics and the Stuart court masque.\ Haslem, Michelle.
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| College
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University of Liverpool
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| Date
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1999
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| student score
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1999
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| Degree
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Ph.D.
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| Abstract
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This thesis contends that the monarch-centred view of the masque, which hasprevailed since the publication in the 1960s and 1970s of Stephen Orgel's seminalworks on the genre, needs to be challenged in the light of recent scholarship on thecultural agency of other members of the royal family. In my introduction I arguethat while the New Historicism has been crucial in elucidating the theatricalization ofpower in the early Stuart court, its insistence on the inevitability of the collusionbetween art and sovereign power needs to be questioned.The masque has long been seen as a monolithic and univocal celebration ofmonarchical power, despite the fact that it was promoted at court not by King Jamesbut by other members of the royal family. Adopting a loosely chronologicalapproach, this thesis retells the story of the 'Jacobean' court masque by recoveringthe role played in the commissioning and performance of masques by James's wife,his children, and his male favourites. The chapters set out to hear voices other thanthat of the King, and discover that, while panegyric was part of each masque, it wasrarely as unequivocal as traditional criticism has suggested. On the contrary, theannual masques were frequently appropriated to express the oppositional agendas offactions at court, and above all, of members of James's own family.I argue that Queen Anne set a precedent for the disruptive use of the masquewhich she exploited to present herself as independent from the King, and toemphasise her importance as the mother of the royal children. Prince Henry, andlater Prince Charles, both used the masque to contest the pacifist policies of theKing, while Buckingham's success as a favourite was linked to his skilfulexploitation of the masques as an integral part of his self-fashioning.Above all by shifting the focus away from King James to consider the more activeparticipation in the masque of other members of the royal family, this thesis offers apossibility of moving beyond the current impasse of the subversion / containmentdebate to a more nuanced reading of the culture of the early Stuart court whichrecognises the delicate process of negotiation and accommodation in which themasquers and their audiences were engaged.
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| Subject
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James I; 17th century; Masques; Monarchy
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| Added Entry
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University of Liverpool
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