English 609.39 L01 Governing the Governement in Caroline Drama
Instructor: Dr. Mary Polito
The reign of Charles I (1625-42) has most often been figured as a period when political chaos led to the horror of the king's execution in 1649 or, as the ignition point for a people's revolution. Historians such as Kevin Sharpe have more recently called for a less teleological view. He argues that in the 1620s and 30s, the King was not as politically uncompromising and/or inept as history would see him; nor were allegiances yet solidified into royal and parliamentary/puritan factions. Rather, this was a period of vibrant debate about the nature of government, about the wisdom and justice of Caroline policy and about the freedom and authority of the various voices who would be heard on such topics, under the constraint of increasing censorship of the printed and public voice. Similarly, theatre historians have lately proclaimed a new aesthetic value and historical significance for the wide array of dramatic writing and the vibrant performance culture of the period. Through theories of government and close attention to historical context, this course will examine plays, masques, and performances that speak to the debate about aesthetic authority and censorship in response to the perceived perils and promise of the present political moment and which employ striking innovations in genre and theatre practice to do so.
The course will focus on three overlapping spheres of debate and study the role of dramatic texts and performance events in each. The first occurs early in the reign and concerns the case of the George Villiers, the Duke of Buckingham, King James and later Charles I's favourite courtier and advisor. While he was welcomed to court in a masque produced by Queen Henrietta-Maria, in which both the Duke and the Queen performed, he was seen by many as decadent, over influential and a failure as foreign policy advisor and in military affairs. The density and complexity of public responses to the Duke is clear in the plethora of documentary evidence which remains and his case will serve as an illustration of the diversity of voices who would advise the prince, from traveling musicians whose ballads against the Duke were censored to plays such as The Emperor's Favourite, an anonymous, unpublished play found in a miscellany held by the Newdigates of Arbury Hall, Warwickshire.
Secondly we will attend to the role of geography and notions of community in dissent in the period. The painstaking archival work of the Records of Early English Drama (REED) project has successfully challenged a London-centric view of dramatic activity in the period. We know now that not only did the London theatre troops tour far more frequently and widely than we had thought, but that purpose-built country-house dramas sprang up in the seventeenth century, in part as a means to answer and enter the political debates at the centre. Voices from the counties, towns and great houses used plays, ballads, illegal sermons and the courtly masque to address and question the political and cultural centrality of London as well as Stuart policy. Included in our reading will be the University of Calgary anonymous, seventeenth-century manuscript play (Osborne MS32.27), which, research has established, was composed in the 1630s and engages with particular policy documents.
In the same period, aristocratic and gentry women were challenging prevailing views about both politics and women on the stage, through their roles as patrons, directly involved producers and as performers of drama. Scholars such as Julie Sanders and Karen Britland have convincingly demonstrated that the court masques sponsored by and played in by Queen Henrietta Maria, far from being frivilous examples of Neo-Platonism indulgence, were making pointed arguments, in the spirit of the female dominated salons of Europe, about the nature of good government and citizenship. The Queen herself took the first speaking part by a woman in a royal masque and her ladies-in-waiting played male roles. Evidence points to similar salons in both London (under the direction of Lucy Hay, the Countess of Carlisle) and the counties (Lady Jane Burdett). William Prynne responds to the presence of women on the stage in his hysterical Hysteromatrix, in which he claims that such performing women were whores of Babylon; he was certainly punished for insulting the queen. Professional playwrights such as Jonson, Brome, Shirley and Massinger took up the theme of women on the stage in their plays of the 1630s, and often appear to be making direct topical reference to both the Queen and figures such as Lucy Hay. As Julie Sanders argues, “The Caroline 1630s are the period in which the sea-change in attitudes towards women and performance undoubtedly begins. We will also consider such figures as the prophet Eleanor Davies who published almost seventy pamphlets against Stuart religious and political policy and also took part in some startling public performances to make her point.
This course will expand our conception of government, our historical understanding of late Stuart culture and our sense of the productive relations between performance and politics.
Key Texts and Contexts
Buckingham, Representation and Political Voice, Primary documents about Buckingham's actions, impeachment, assassination and afterlife as touchstone for political complaint
A Game at Chess, Thomas Middleton, 1624
Descriptions of Gargantua 1626 (Queen Henrietta's lost masque welcoming Buckingham to court in which both the Duke and the queen performed).
The Emperor's Favourite Arbury Hall A414
A selection of ballads
Geographies of debate: Dystopian Londons and Country Communities
A New Way to Pay Old Debts, Philip Massinger, 1625
The Antipodes, Richard Brome, 1636-7
Osborne MS 32.27(University of Calgary Special Collections), 1632-37
The King's Entertainment at Welbeck, Ben Jonson, 1633 (commissioned by William Cavendish)
Love's Welcome to Bolsover, Ben Jonson, 1634 (commissioned by William Cavendish)
The Country Captain, William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle, 1641
A Jovial Crew, Richard Brome, 1641
Women, Politics, Patronage and Performance
Chloridia, Ben Jonson, 1631 (masque commissioned by Queen Henrietta Maria).
The Shepherd's Paradise, Walter Montagu, 1632 (masque commissioned by Queen Henrietta Maria).
Funeral Elegy for Lady Jane Burdett (d.1638)
Selections from the works of Eleanor Davies
Selections from William Prynne's Histriomastix (1633)
The New Inn, Ben Jonson, 1629
The Bird in a Cage, James Shirley, 1633
Critical, historical and theoretical readings will also be assigned.
