The Early Stuart Masque: Dance, Costume, and Music 0199286590, 9780199286591

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THE EARLY STUART MASQUE

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The Early Stuart Masque Dance, Costume, and Music BARBARA RAVELHOFER

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3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © Barbara Ravelhofer 2006 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2006 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Ravelhofer, B. (Barbara) The early Stuart masque : dance, costume, and music / Barbara Ravelhofer. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN-13: 978–0–19–928659–1 (alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0–19–928659–0 (alk. paper) 1. Dance—England—History—17th century. 2. Masques with music— 17th century—History and criticism. 3. Dance costume—England— History—17th century. I. Title. GV1646 .E6R38 2006 782.1⬘5094209032—dc22 2005036609 Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddles Ltd., King’s Lynn, Norfolk ISBN 0–19–928659–0

978–0–19–928659–1

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Acknowledgements I would like to thank the following libraries, museums, and private collections for their collaboration: the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris; the Bodleian Library; the British Library; Angela Roche and Mia Jackson, British Museum; Bengt Häger and Anna-Karin Stahle-Varney, Carina Ari Library, Stockholm; Diane Naylor, Chatsworth Photo Library; Jane Cunningham, The Courtauld Institute; Tom Lisanti and Pat Rader, New York Public Library; Roberto and Karin Einaudi, Rome; Ilse Jung, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna; Dr Gamillscheg and Silke Pirolt, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna; Viscount De L’Isle and his administrator, Emily Shoard, Penshurst Place; Siân Cooksey and Jody Butterworth, Royal Collections, Windsor Castle; Suzanne Eward, Cathedral Library, Salisbury Cathedral; Christian Hogrefe and Prof. Schmidt-Glintzer, Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel; and Luitgard Nuss, Württembergische Landesbibliothek. Dr Birgit Borkopp and Mrs Eichler kindly allowed me to inspect sixteenth-century footwear stored in the Bavarian National Museum, Munich. Philippe Cousin generously granted access to costumes at the Opéra Garnier, Paris. Douglas Hofstadter drafted a very special ‘ambigram’. A section from Chapter 3 appeared initially as ‘Stage Design as Multi-Media Composition in Early Modern England’, in Margriet Hoogvliet (ed.), Multimedia Compositions from the Middle Ages to the Early Modern Period (Leuven: Peeters, 2004), 105–19. Mr Peeters kindly gave his permission to reproduce this essay in revised form. Parts of this book were presented on several occasions, and I thank Christa Jansohn, Bamberg University; Sebastian Klotz, then Humboldt University, Berlin; Arthur Kinney, University of Massachusetts; Helen Wilcox and Martin Gosman, Groningen University; and Julie Sanders, then University of Keele, for their invitations. My special thanks are due to the Mellon Foundation for covering the cost of illustrations in this book. At Oxford University Press, Andrew McNeillie, Frances Whistler, Val Shelley, Jacqueline Baker, and Tom Perridge dealt expertly and patiently with my manuscript. Rowena Anketell copy-edited this book with great care.

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Acknowledgements

The present work was made possible by a number of grants, scholarships, and fellowships. The German Academic Exchange Service and the postgraduate programme of the Ludwig-Maximilians-University at Munich generously provided two years’ funding, all facilitated by the energetic interventions of my Munich supervisor, Prof. Wolfgang Weiß. Some preliminary research on the masque was submitted as a Ph.D. at Cambridge, supervised by Prof. Anne Barton. In Cambridge, I was awarded bursaries from Trinity College and a Junior Research Fellowship at St John’s College. I am also grateful to the Institute of Advanced Study, Bologna University, and the English Department at Princeton University for Visiting Fellowships which enabled me to revise and expand the book to its final stage. Finally, my warmest thanks go to the wonderful members of the Centre for History and Economics at King’s College, Cambridge, and to my colleagues at the Department of English Studies, Durham, for their sterling support. I am grateful to colleagues, researchers, and performers in the world of early dance: Deda Colonna, Anne Daye, Stefan Haberl, Markus Lehner, Katherine McGinnis, Margaret McGowan, Jennifer Nevile, Ken Pierce, Rose Pruiksma, Barbara Sparti, Julia Sutton, and Jennifer Thorp have offered many helpful suggestions and on occasion made unpublished work available to me. Above all, I would like to thank Lieven Baert, who generously and humorously shared his expertise with me, for long years of friendship. This work has also benefited from the advice of many scholars within history, costume design, and literature: Nadine Akkerman, Gavin Alexander, Sydney Anglo, Janet Arnold, Marie Axton, John Baker, Richard Beadle, Kate Bennett, Ingeborg Boltz, Robert Carver, Katharine Craik, Robin Dix, Ian Donaldson, Ian Doyle, Hans Walter Gabler, Anthony Grafton, Peter Holman, Margriet Hoogvliet, Lynn Hulse, Clare Jackson, John Kerrigan, James Knowles, David Lindley, Jeremy Maule, Graham Parry, Claire Preston, Timothy Raylor, Malcolm Smuts, Peter Spufford, Sophie Tomlinson, and Klaus Winkler. Andrew Ashbee most generously helped me trace references pertaining to court music and costumes. Eva Griffith provided several manuscript transcriptions. Martin Butler and Paulina Kewes reviewed the complete manuscript and the present work has greatly profited from their insightful comments. I am indebted to Alison Shell and Graham Parry for reading the manuscript at its final stage. All mistakes are, of course, mine. Many friends saw this project to its happy conclusion: Ari Ercole, Eugene Giddens, Teresa Grant, Arnold Hunt, Gerhard Lauer, James Leifer, Elena Lupas, Yong Mao, Inga Huld Markan, Bettina Raaf, Sulagna Roy, William

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St Clair, Richard Serjeantson, Andrew Taylor, Philip West, and Ben Zachariah, and I thank Jeff Vernon and Kirby Farrell for their inimitable comments. I am deeply grateful to Luca and my parents for their love, support, and patience. My greatest debt is to Anne Barton and Emma Rothschild for encouraging and inspiring my work over so many years. This book is dedicated to them.

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Contents List of Illustrations Abbreviations and Conventions Introduction

xi xiv 1

PART I. DANCE 1. Methodology

15

2. English and Continental Sources What is an Early Modern Choreographic Treatise? Italian and Spanish Sources from the Mid-Sixteenth to the Early Seventeenth Century English Sources: From the Gresley Manuscript to Playford

27 27 28 36

The ‘Measures’ 38 Country Dances 41 Robert Bargrave’s Dances 45

French Sources Conclusion: A Multiplicity of Styles 3. Theatre Dances Histrionic Movement and the Antimasque Dance Music Rehearsals Optical Impact: The Individual Court Dancer and the Collective Geometric Movement The Human Stage 4. Discipline or Pleasure? Practice and the Written Source Female Performance and European Dance Treatises Conclusion

49 63 67 67 71 73 77 84 97 97 108 117

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Contents PART II. COSTUME 5. Masque Costumes Recycling Splendour: The Circulation of Masque Costumes The Creation of Masque Costumes Storage Conspicuous Consumption?

123 126 132 141 149

6. Colours and Lights: The Costume in Motion

157

7. Costume Conventions for Male and Female Masquers

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PART III. CASE STUDIES 8. Two Jonsonian Court Masques The Masque of Queenes (1609) Oberon (1611) Conclusion

187 187 199 204

9. Historical Costume, Historical Dancing: Coelum Britannicum

207

The Costumes The Dances Conclusion 10. Global Spectacle: An English Masque at Constantinople The Ottoman Empire in European Entertainment Culture Anglo-Ottoman Interests and Bargrave’s Masque

207 216 226 230 231 241

The Occasion 241 Music, Costume, and Dances 245

Dance and Theatre in Early Modern Constantinople Conclusion Conclusion Bibliography Index

252 260 263 271 309

List of Illustrations PL ATES 1. Inigo Jones, ‘Winged Masquer’ (before 1609?). Orgel and Strong, no. 5; Simpson & Bell, no. 418. © The Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth. Reproduced by permission of the Chatsworth Settlement Trustees. 2. Ottoman dancing girls. Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna. Cod. 8626, fol. 117. Bildarchiv der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek, Vienna. 3. Dance costume (‘tonnelet’), seventeenth century. MUS 918, RC A 32826. Opéra Garnier, Paris, and Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris. FIGURES 1. Dancer in seventeenth-century costume. Snapshot from a digital recording, 2002. Author’s collection.

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2. Courtly dancers performing a ballet at the court of Württemberg, Germany. Georg Rodolf Weckherlin, Beschreibung und Abriß (Stuttgart: Rößlin, 1618), engraving by Friedrich Brentel, plate C. Shelfmark R 17 Wec 3, Württembergische Landesbibliothek. Photographer: Joachim Siener.

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3. Scene from a Florentine spectacle. Jacques Callot, ‘Primo Intermedio’ from La Liberatione di Tirreno (Florence, 1617). Copyright of the British Museum, 1861-7-13-864.

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4. ‘The Suburbs of a Great City’, Salmacida Spolia (1640), Scene iv. Attributed to John Webb. Orgel and Strong, no. 409; Simpson & Bell, no. 355. The Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth. Reproduced by permission of the Chatsworth Settlement Trustees. Photograph: Photographic Survey, Courtauld Institute of Art.

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5. Andrea Pozzo, Perspectiva pictorum et architectorum (1693), fig. 73. By kind permission of Karin and Roberto Einaudi.

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6. Douglas Hofstadter, Barbara (2002). Ambigram, readable from left to right, and (flipped upside down) from right to left. Author’s collection.

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7. Caricature of Maria de’ Medici. Daniel Rabel, ‘Perrette la Hasardeuse’, for Ballet des Fées de la Forêt de Saint Germain (1625). Collection Hennin, QB 1625 53 B 12168. Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris.

114

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List of Illustrations

8. The Funeral Obsequies of Sir All-in-New-Fashions. Anonymous, England, 1620s. Douce Prints, portfolio 138, no. 89. The Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.

124

9. Inigo Jones, design for Henrietta Maria as ‘Divine Beauty’ in Tempe Restored (1632). Orgel and Strong, no. 244; Simpson & Bell, no. 161. The Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth. Reproduced by permission of the Chatsworth Settlement Trustees. Photograph: Photographic Survey, Courtauld Institute of Art.

136

10. John Hoskins, Queen Henrietta Maria, c.1632. RCIN 420891, GR 81. The Royal Collection © 2004, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

148

11. Inigo Jones, design for Queen Henrietta Maria (dress 1) in Luminalia (1638). Orgel and Strong, no. 392; Simpson & Bell, no. 317. The Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth. Reproduced by permission of the Chatsworth Settlement Trustees. Photograph: Photographic Survey, Courtauld Institute of Art.

182

12. Inigo Jones, ‘Lady Masquer [Henrietta Maria] in Amazonian dress’, for Salmacida Spolia (1640). Orgel and Strong, no. 442; Simpson & Bell, no. 354. The Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth. Reproduced by permission of the Chatsworth Settlement Trustees. Photograph: Photographic Survey, Courtauld Institute of Art.

183

13. Stage fury. Daniel Rabel, ‘one of the powers of hell’ (c.1619). Call number *MGZGA Rab D Tan 2. Jerome Robbins Dance Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations.

189

14. Circular dances as black magic. Pierre de Lancre, Tableau de l’inconstance (1613), shelfmark 719.i.10, folded engraving by Jan Ziarnko between pp. 118 and 119. By permission of the British Library.

193

15. Inigo Jones, final design of Oberon’s suit, in Oberon (1611). Orgel and Strong, no. 70; Simpson & Bell, no. 52. The Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth. Reproduced by permission of the Chatsworth Settlement Trustees. Photograph: Photographic Survey, Courtauld Institute of Art.

202

16. Sir Philip Sidney’s funeral helmet. Penshurst Place. By kind permission of Viscount De L’Isle from his private collection.

209

17. Inigo Jones, design for a masquer (an ‘ancient hero’) in Coelum Britannicum (1634). Orgel and Strong, no. 289; Simpson & Bell, no. 201. The Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth. Reproduced by permission of the Chatsworth Settlement Trustees. Photograph: Photographic Survey, Courtauld Institute of Art.

213

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List of Illustrations 18. Inigo Jones, design for a torchbearer (final design) in Coelum Britannicum (1634). Orgel and Strong, no. 286; Simpson & Bell, no. 206. The Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth. Reproduced by permission of the Chatsworth Settlement Trustees. Photograph: Photographic Survey, Courtauld Institute of Art.

215

19. Sixteenth-century tournament vizards: ‘Moor’ (right), ‘Turk’ (left). ‘Mohren- und Türkenmaske als Wechselvisiere’. Prague, 1557. Inv. no. B 69/B 62. Hofjagd- undRüstkammer, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

233

20. Daniel Rabel, design for ‘Entrée de Mahomet et ses Docteurs’, Grand bal de la douairière de Billebahaut (1626), Collection Hennin, QB 1626 51 B 8064. Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris.

234

21. Inigo Jones, design for a ‘Giant’, in Britannia Triumphans (1638). Orgel and Strong, no. 375; Simpson & Bell, no. 295. The Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth. Reproduced by permission of the Chatsworth Settlement Trustees. Photograph: Photographic Survey, Courtauld Institute of Art. v

240 r

22. Masque (1650?). Diary of Robert Bargrave. MS Rawl. C.799, fols. 27 –28 . The Bodleian Library, University of Oxford. 249 23. Ottoman dancing boys. Anonymous artist, c.1590s. Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. 8626, fol. 118. Bildarchiv der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek, Vienna.

260

Abbreviations and Conventions LITERATURE Astington

John Astington, English Court Theatre 1558–1642 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999)

Bargrave, Diary

Robert Bargrave, The Travel Diary of Robert Bargrave, Levant Merchant, 1647–1656, ed. Michael Brennan (London: Hakluyt Society, 1999)

CSPD

Calendar of State Papers Domestic

CSPV

Calendar of State Papers Venetian

DNB

Lawrence Goldman, Colin Matthew, and Brian Harrison (gen. eds.), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, new edn., 60 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), online version

Harbage and Schoenbaum Alfred Harbage, S. Schoenbaum, and Sylvia Stoler Wagonheim, Annals of English Drama, 975–1700, 3rd edn. (London: Routledge, 1989) HMC

Historical Manuscripts Commission

Holman

Peter Holman, Four and Twenty Fiddlers: The Violin at the English Court, 1540–1690 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993)

HS

Ben Jonson [Works], ed. C. H. Herford, and Percy and Evelyn Simpson, 11 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925–52)

JS

Ann Rosalind Jones and Peter Stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of Memory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000)

KJV

The Bible: Authorized King James Version, ed. R. Carroll and S. Prickett (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997)

LION

Literature Online, full-text database of the ChadwyckHealey group

MSC

Malone Society Collections

Nichols

John Nichols, The Progresses, Processions, and Magnificent Festivities of King James the First, 4 vols. (London: The Society of Antiquaries, 1828)

Abbreviations and Conventions

xv

OED

The Oxford English Dictionary, prepared by J. A. Simpson and E. S. C. Weiner, 2nd edn., 20 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), and online version

OS

Stephen Orgel and Roy Strong (eds.), Inigo Jones: The Theatre of the Stuart Court, 2 vols. (London: Sotheby Parke Bernet, 1973)

RECM

Andrew Ashbee (ed.), Records of English Court Music, 9 vols. (Snodland: Ashbee; Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1986–96)

Sabol

Andrew J. Sabol (ed.), Four Hundred Songs and Dances from the Stuart Masque. With a Supplement of Sixteen Additional Pieces (Hanover and London: University Press of New England, 1982)

SDIJ

John Peacock, The Stage Designs of Inigo Jones: The European Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995)

Simpson & Bell

Percy Simpson and C. F. Bell (eds.), Designs by Inigo Jones for Masques and Plays at Court (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1924)

STC

A. W. Pollard and G. R. Redgrave (eds.), A Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, and Ireland, and of English Books Printed Abroad, 1475–1640, rev. W. A. Jackson, F. S. Ferguson, and K. F. Pantzer, 2nd edn., 3 vols. (London: Bibliographical Society, 1976–91)

Walls

Peter Walls, Music in the English Courtly Masque, 1604–1640 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996)

If not stated otherwise, Shakespeare’s works are cited from The Complete Works, gen. eds. Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988). LIBRARIES BL

British Library, London

Bodl.

Bodleian Library, Oxford

BN

Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris

CUL

University Library, Cambridge

NLS

National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh

NLW

National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth

xvi NRA

Abbreviations and Conventions National Register of Archives

NYPL New York Public Library PRO

Public Record Office, National Archives, Kew, London TRANSCRIPTION OF MANUSCRIPTS

Abbreviations have been silently expanded. ‘I’ has been transcribed as ‘j’ and ‘u’ as ‘v’ where required. If not stated otherwise, the calendar dates are New Style.

Introduction On the evening of 26 December 1613, Giovanni Battista Gabaleoni, a Savoy diplomat, pushed his way into the packed Banqueting House at Whitehall, where the court celebrated the wedding of the Earl of Somerset and Frances Howard. The high-profile occasion demanded a lavish spectacle, and the poet-musician Thomas Campion had risen to the challenge. Grounded upon ‘inchauntments and severall transformations’, his masque started one hour before midnight and lasted until two o’clock in the morning. A magnificent triumphal arch disclosed a view of a seascape in perspective. Golden pillars turned into richly dressed dancers. Queen Anne herself graciously plucked a golden bough from a stage tree and honoured the king’s favourite and his beautiful bride to the sounds of lutes and viols. Only the Tuscan stage designer Constantino de’ Servi, ‘being too much of him selfe’ (in Campion’s opinion), had not lived up to his credentials, as his flawed machinery punctured the solemnities with creaking noises, and pulleys and ropes protruded into the exquisitely contrived illusionistic scenery.¹ Gabaleoni, a jaded observer, present for official reasons rather than by aesthetic inclination, attentively followed the course of events. What the agent reported back to Turin is one of the most intriguing eyewitness accounts of a courtly spectacle. It reveals how a masque went down with a spectator who did not understand a word of it. So as not to distort the way Gabaleoni emphasized certain elements of the masque, the report has been represented here almost unabridged. In the cloud there were twelve niches all in a group, where the twelve masquers sat, and when it came down one could see the ropes that supported it and hear the pulleys, or rather wheels, making the same noise as when they raise or lower the mast of a ship. The show was begun with a speech made by four men dressed poorly, which, to judge by the tenor of their voices, would have been more suitable to a funeral than to the joys of a wedding. When that was over a masque of twelve devils was begun. They made a decent sight because of the expressions of the men, but they made the spectators sad. After that came a band of musicians to present themselves before their Majesties’ State; they sang several verses in English, and a tree was presented to the queen, signifying the olive, which was placed in front of her. . . . The lords came down without any music, ¹ Thomas Campion, The Description of a Maske: Presented in the Banqueting Roome at Whitehall, on Saint Stephens Night Last (London, 1614), sig. A2r, A2v.

2

Introduction

with no other sound but the screeching of the wheels. They set themselves in order beneath the cloud. And then to the tune of violins [they danced] the ballet, which was composed of twelve lords, principal gentlemen, clothed in a tunic just to the middle of the thigh, closely fitted to the body, with layers in the antique fashion of crimson satin all embroidered with gold and silver, crimson stockings all garnished with gold ribbons, socks of silk all embroidered, the shoes and their roses loaded with diamonds. They began the dance very gravely, with little exertion, and the tune was very melancholy. When the dance was over, the four who had brought the tree to the queen returned, and made another short speech. That done, the queen gave them a branch of the tree; it was carried to the Earl of Pembroke as a sign that he might begin the revels [general dances], which he did, offering his hand to the queen. The other lords from the ballet gave their hands to the bride and the other ladies, and they danced a galliard which lasted several minutes. When that was done and the ladies had returned, the Earl went back to the queen and led her out to dance a coranto; the other gentlemen danced the coranto with other ladies. When that was over, the Earl again offered his hand to the queen, and they began a French brando [probably a branle or ‘brawl’], which was the only beautiful and praiseworthy thing in all of the festivity, on account of the person of the queen and the sight of her dancing with as much majesty and grandeur as one could imagine. The prince did not dance. When this brando was over the music returned to the same place. Meanwhile the twelve gentlemen put themselves back in order and—the music having retired—began another ballet to another tune, and very ordinary it was. That done, they danced some galliards and then retired. Twelve mariners then appeared, clothed in linen and red berets in the manner of slaves, and they began a dance in the peasant fashion which looked quite well-done, both for the gestures and the expressions of the young men, and for the noise they made when they all shrieked together. With this the festivity ended. Apart from having seen their Majesties in good order and with great majesty, and also the great number of ladies, one could see nothing that remotely merited the inconvenience of the thousands of people who waited twelve hours without dinner.²

Key elements in the performance were, according to the diplomat, special effects, prominent courtiers, and good-looking ladies, but above all, dances and costumes. Based on dance and costume, Gabaleoni tried to guess who the protagonists on stage were. He collectively labelled all groups of grotesque masquers as devils. While Campion’s text tells us that the masque concluded with a lively dance of ‘skippers with red caps’,³ the visitor from Savoy saw merry ² John Orrell, ‘The Agent of Savoy at The Somerset Masque’, Review of English Studies, 28 (1977), 301–5, at 303–5, with Italian text. Orrell’s translation, with a few minor rephrasings. Where he reads ‘balletto’ as ‘masque’; I prefer ‘ballet’ or ‘dance’. I also did not translate ‘honesto’ as ‘honest’, as Gabaleoni alluded not to an ‘honest’ but ‘decent’, ‘sufficiently well-done’ performance. ³ Campion, Description of a Maske, sig. B3v–B4r.

Introduction

3

freedmen turned mariners. (A powerful political symbol, the red cap was originally worn by released slaves in ancient Rome; it later became a republican icon and stood for liberty in 1789.) Gabaleoni’s version of events may be erratic but should not be taken for the insignificant guesswork of an individual out of his depth at James’s court. Court masques were diplomatic events, regularly performed before a significant number of foreigners (at times, as many as twenty different states might send representatives to Whitehall). Pocahontas saw Ben Jonson’s The Vision of Delight in 1617.⁴ In 1613, Gabaleoni’s ignorance of Campion’s fine text must have been shared by a good many spectators with a shaky command of English. ‘They sang some trifling things which we did not understand’, wrote the Venetian chaplain Orazio Busino after he had seen Ben Jonson’s Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue (1618).⁵ Even audiences without a language problem were sometimes not able to hear what was going on on stage—‘the perpetual laughter and applause was above the music’, as the account of The Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray’s Inn (1613) put it.⁶ Furthermore, brilliant as many songs and speeches were, they competed with dazzling costumes, fanciful ballet, and lavish scenery to capture their clientele. As Graham Parry has characterized such occasions: the hall was always vastly overcrowded . . . Members of the audience dressed as lavishly as they could: opulence was the order of the evening. The air was stiflingly hot and heavily perfumed by the spectators. It was very dim inside the hall . . . There must have been an immense amount of chatter. . . . The music was often loud in order to impose itself on the audience, and to cover the creakings of the scene changes. In contrast, the songs were hard to hear, and lute accompaniments virtually inaudible. Several masque descriptions note that singers went up close to the chair of state so that the king could hear the words. . . . What gave most delight and appealed to the connoisseurship of the audience was the dancing: after all, the high point of a masque was the revelation of the masquers followed by the new dances they had rehearsed for weeks or months. Dancing must have occupied three-quarters of the time of a masque. . . . The actors and their words received little attention and few commentators said anything about the main fable. . . . It must have been very hard to follow the intricacies of poetry and understand the significance of mythological figures in the distracting atmosphere of a festival at court.⁷ ⁴ Audience estimate, Astington, 165. ‘The Virginian woman Poca-huntas . . . and her assistant well placed at the maske.’ The Letters of John Chamberlain, ed. Norman E. McClure, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, 1939), ii. 50, to Carleton, 18 Jan. 1617. ⁵ ‘Cantarono alcune cossette [sic], non intese da noi’, 24 Jan. 1618. OS i. 280, trans. after Sabol, 545. ⁶ Francis Beaumont, The Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray’s Inn, ll. 241–2, in T. J. B. Spencer and S. Wells (gen. eds.), A Book of Masques (Cambridge, 1967), 139. ⁷ Graham Parry, ‘The Politics of the Jacobean Masque’, in J. R. Mulryne, and M. Shewring (eds.), Theatre and Government under the Early Stuarts (Cambridge, 1993), 87–117, at 113–14.

4

Introduction

Campion’s account of The Somerset Masque, complete with stage description, cast list, and music scores, was apparently published in retrospect, as the title (‘The Description of a Maske: Presented in the Banqueting Roome at Whitehall, on Saint Stephens Night Last’) suggests.⁸ We do not know whether booklets or pamphlets were available to guide audiences during the performance of a masque. At ballets de cour in seventeenth-century Paris, leaflets or livrets were distributed to spectators: on the night of the celebrated Ballet de la délivrance de Renaud (1617), for instance, the queen and her ladies received verses which explained the characters the king and his courtiers represented in their danced entries.⁹ Yet some early critics dismissed such information ‘because this kind of divertissement is almost exclusively intended for the eye’.¹⁰ Furthermore, certain locations in Paris were so dark that viewers required extra candles for reading (there is no evidence that English masque audiences were ever provided with such lights).¹¹ English plays of the period which feature masques make references to written programmes. In Thomas Middleton’s No Wit, No Help Like a Woman’s (written perhaps in 1611–12), a presenter enters ‘with a pasteboard’ which elucidates the meaning of the spectacle (‘Here is an abstract . . . of what’s shown, | Which I commend to your favour’).¹² In James Shirley’s The Constant Maid (probably performed in 1638), ‘papers’ are handed to the audience explaining ‘the subject of the Masque’.¹³ At the same time, early Stuart plays also included scenes in which masque audiences happily ignored both the plot and the explanatory efforts of presenters. In Shirley’s The Traitor (performed in about 1631), the lecherous Duke of Florence is supposed to contemplate a moralizing antimasque of furies which plague a young rake, yet he finds himself distracted by a pretty lady sitting next to him (‘My eyes so feasted here, I did not marke it’).¹⁴ If stage plays of the early Stuart period indicate, albeit humorously distorted, possible audience behaviour during masques, and if the performance conditions of ballets de cour approach those of English court ⁸ As the title of the 1614 quarto suggests. See n. 1, above. ⁹ Ballet de la délivrance de Renaud, in Paul Lacroix (ed.), Ballets et mascarades de cour (Geneva, 1968), ii. 119. ¹⁰ ‘Par-là il est aisé de voir la defectuosité de ces Balets, où l’on ne connoit rien que par les recits qu’on y chante, que par les Livres qu’on y distribuë, & que par les Vers qu’on y insere pour en debroüiller le sujet . . . Car ce divertissement est destiné presque uniquement pour les yeux.’ Michel de Pure, Idée des spectacles anciens et nouveaux (Paris, 1668; Geneva, 1972), 210. ¹¹ At the Palais Cardinal, ‘on distribuait des bougies aux spectateurs’. Henry Prunières, Le Ballet de cour en France avant Benserade et Lully (Paris, 1914), 144. ¹² No Wit, No Help Like a Woman’s, IV. iii. 32–7, in Thomas Middleton, A Mad World, My Masters and Other Plays, ed. Michael Taylor (Oxford, 1995), 275. ¹³ James Shirley, The Constant Maid (London, 1640), Act IV, sig. G3v. ¹⁴ James Shirley, The Traytor (London, 1635), Act III, sig. Fr.

Introduction

5

masques, we need to ask ourselves if the nature of such events might have discouraged reading during performance. Few critics have put themselves into the place of a Gabaleoni, trying to imagine the masque stage from the point of view of a puzzled observer. Masques are nowadays mainly understood as literary phenomena. They arguably represent the best-documented dramatic art form in early seventeenthcentury England: booklets, eyewitnesses’ letters, financial records, and the like have survived. Inigo Jones’s designs and music scores apart, the nature of these sources is mostly verbal, which prompts critics to privilege the verbal, too. The excellent creations of a Jonson, Daniel, Carew, or Campion rest assured of lasting scholarly dedication. In his famous preface to Hymenaei (1607), Ben Jonson had predicted as much: It is a noble and just advantage, that the things subjected to understanding have of those which are objected to sense, that the one sort are but momentarie, and meerely taking; the other impressing, and lasting: Else the glorie of all these solemnities had perish’d like a blaze, and gone out, in the beholders eyes. So short-liv’d are the bodies of all things, in comparison of their soules. And, though bodies oft-times have the ill luck to be sensually preferr’d, they find afterwards, the good fortune (when soules live) to be utterly forgotten. This it is hath made the most royall Princes, and greatest persons, . . . not onely studious of riches, and magnificence in the outward celebration, or shew; . . . but curious after the most high, and heartie inventions, to furnish the inward parts: . . . which, though their voyce be taught to sound to present occasions, their sense, or doth, or should alwayes lay holde on more remov’d mysteries.¹⁵

In Jonson’s view, a masque in performance resembled a body with a voice. Although magnificent and sensually enchanting, this body represented the mortal counterpart to the poet’s invention—the true and everlasting soul of a masque—and was thus subject to time and, ultimately, oblivion. A masque text, however, appealed on a more abstract level to human understanding; it therefore outlived a physical performance. In effect, Jonson never subscribed to strict anti-sensualism, given that his own publications and autograph manuscripts could be regarded as material bodies in quarto or folio which flaunted beautiful visual effects in the text design. In Discoveries, he compared language to a body with flesh and blood.¹⁶ Yet a lingering contempt for the ‘body’ seems to have been passed on to masque scholarship. Many critics have followed the poetic voice in pursuit of the more removed mysteries, and so does the present study, building upon the wealth of ¹⁵ Hymenaei, ll. 1–19, HS vii. 209.

¹⁶ Discoveries, ll. 2061–89, in HS viii. 626.

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scholarship on the masque as literary genre. Yet, rewarding and important as readings of masques-as-texts are, it seems as crucial to know more about the impact these events had during performance, the ‘one houres words, the rest in Songs & Dances’, in Thomas Middleton’s judgement.¹⁷ To understand the dynamics of such spectacles better, we must pay more attention to what seventeenth-century observers were interested in. For this reason, the present book celebrates dance and costume in the masque, those features which so intrigued audiences at the time. In Francis Bacon’s Device for the Gray’s Inn Revels (1595), the Prince of Purpoole chose the Five Senses as counsellors.¹⁸ Early modern audiences experienced a masquing night as a complex assault upon their five senses. Methodologically, I have tried to duplicate this experience (as far as this is possible in a print medium) by an approach which connects poets’ voices, movement, and visual design. The term Gesamtkunstwerk has often been applied to describe the splendid pyrotechnics by which spectacles at early modern European courts overwhelmed dazzled spectators. Yet this definition invokes a total work of art dominated by one master-producer. At the time, however, festivities and entertainments—not least English masques—were often chaotically planned and involved, next to the patron, a host of different artistic decision makers. We could argue that masques were multimedia spectacles employing the means of their time: even though struggling with adverse performance conditions, they reached out to their audiences with music, movements, words, machinery, colours, and lights. They constitute one of the most fascinating, enigmatic, and beautiful art forms in English theatre history. Masque texts fused political allusion with grotesque imagery and lyrical moment. In spoken and sung performance, they were endowed with a sumptuous audiovisual setting. Texts and non-verbal elements complemented each other in a complex resource of information, catering for the needs of both audience and independent reader. After the event, elusive beauty gave way to printed (or handwritten) magnificence when poets celebrated the event once more in verbal accounts. We may arrive at a fuller grasp of the masque experience if we try to balance these various aspects of performance and textual record against each other, and compare the sartorial, kinetic, iconic, and verbal languages of the event. ¹⁷ Thomas Middleton, A Courtly Masque: The Device Called The World Tost at Tennis (London, 1620), sig. Br. The entertainment was probably planned for late 1619. ¹⁸ A Device for the Gray’s Inn Revels, in Francis Bacon, ed. Brian Vickers (Oxford, 1996), 59–60.

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I hope to show how masque producers, with their multimedia facilities at hand, attempted to render a spectacle accessible. This book is concerned with both the unfortunate Gabaleonis and their more informed peers in the audience. It takes a fresh look at the multitudes of disguised ‘bodies’ which so successfully vied for public attention at the time, the household servants, princes, children, lawyers, actors, aristocrats, dancers, and musicians. To the present day, practical questions concerning the actual protagonists on stage remain unanswered. No study cuts to the essential question of what it means for a performer to act in a dimly illuminated, illusionistic setting. How visible were dancers? How did they relate to their scenic environment? What colours and lights did seventeenth-century spectators see in an indoor theatre? How might a masque performance differ from its verbal account? How might spectacle work across language barriers? Did dance and costume play a special role here? Bringing ‘Body’ and ‘Soul’ together, I have divided this book into three parts: dance, costume, and a final section of three case studies. All parts are informed by a wider European perspective: rooted in English traditions, many masques were produced for an international audience. Supplemented by French, Italian, Scottish, and German professionals in preparation and performance, they fused local and Continental artistic influences. Throughout the book, the question of whether and how the combination of costume and movement made it easier for an audience to understand the action will remain important.

I. DANCE In early modern Europe, dance played a vital role in court and theatre culture. In particular, France and Italy (to use modern geographic terms) produced a rich repertoire for both the stage and social occasions which became popular beyond local confines. Composers such as Monteverdi, Cavalieri, or Lully provided ballet scores, a task they did not take lightly. Today, specialist ensembles play these compositions for an audience of early music connoisseurs who expect only the best. At the same time, the no less sophisticated early dance repertoire remains widely underestimated, a situation compounded by the mediocre performances shown in recent films and theatre productions.¹⁹ In ¹⁹ e.g., the amateurish and historically uninformed volta scenes in Shekhar Kapur’s film Elizabeth (1998).

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literature on early modern theatre culture, choreographic sources are often sidelined, although the study and practice of early dance has long been established as a serious discipline. The elusive nature of movements makes research on the topic difficult. Steps and gestures can hardly be pressed into words; worse, no standard choreographic notation was available in early seventeenth-century Europe. Usually dancing masters left no record of their work. Choreographies for English theatre of the Stuart period are extremely rare; those composed for the court masques at Whitehall are lost. Therefore, any investigation of the topic must be based on circumstantial evidence, such as eyewitness reports or masque texts, or other dance repertoire circulating in Europe at the time. All of these sources must be treated with extreme caution, as words are not identical with movements, and the practice in one region does not necessarily reflect that of another. Part I assesses various dancing styles as practised in early modern Europe and their potential impact on English court culture. It asks whether and for what purposes masques could have employed certain dance traditions and genres. The survey includes select French, Italian, Spanish, and English repertoire of the sixteenth and seventeenth century. Documents not as yet covered in masque studies are: ‘L’instruction pour dancer’, a source relating to Michael Praetorius’s well-known collection of dance music, Terpsichore (1613); Ercole Santucci’s ‘Mastro da Ballo’ (1614); and Barthélemy de Montagut’s ‘Louange de la danse’ (c.1620), dedicated to the Marquess of Buckingham.²⁰ The discussion involves a closer look at professional dancers in early modern Europe and their working techniques. With a brief biography of Montagut, dancing master to Buckingham and King Charles as well as protégé of Queen Henrietta Maria, this part presents an account of a professional dancer’s career and personal circumstances at the early Stuart court. The book then pursues the question of how early modern choreographies for the stage worked during performance. This includes a technical discussion of select theatre dances produced in Europe before 1700, their duration, spatial range, and focus. I will investigate how masque dancers might have communicated with their audience, and how they related to their scenic environment, notably the sumptuous stage designs by Inigo Jones. It is often said that architects like their creations best without people. For practical reasons, Inigo Jones rarely drafted his performers into his scenic backdrops; ²⁰ B. de Montagut, Louange de la danse, ed. B. Ravelhofer (Cambridge, 2000). The treatise has been mentioned by Orrell, Canova-Green, and Walls but not analysed.

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this has encouraged his critics to do the same. The interaction between dancers and architectural setting is still poorly understood. While it is true that, in court masques, much of the action took place before the proscenium arch in the so-called dancing space, we should not regard Jonesian scenes as spaces without human interference. This study will therefore try to recover what John Orrell has called ‘the human stage’.²¹ Given the increased attention to female agency and the ideologies of courtly dancing in the Renaissance and Baroque period, the chapter ‘Discipline or Pleasure?’ examines gender- and power-related theories. Was early modern dance largely a disciplining exercise, did courtly repertoire suppress a performer’s creativity, and were women in particular subject to rigid monitoring? Current theoretical assumptions will be tested against actual choreographies and practical implications of performance. Post-Foucauldian approaches regard dance as a ‘text’, a means of negotiation in a complex discourse of power (exemplified in the works of Mark Franko, Skiles Howard, or Rudolf zur Lippe). While acknowledging such approaches, my book is also indebted to a musicological tradition (as established by John Ward, Peter Holman, David Lindley, and Peter Walls), and the performance-based dance research by Julia Sutton, Barbara Sparti, or Anne Daye. It results from close collaboration with professional dancers and choreographers, among them Lieven Baert. The perfect reconstruction of an early dance does not exist; yet we may dare to approximate sixteenth- and seventeenth-century movements. The effort remains worthwhile as long as we accept that our conclusions may be coloured by our subjective perception and we are prepared to revise our judgement.

II. COSTUME From the most elusive aspect of a masque production the book moves on to the material one of theatrical fashion. In the seventeenth century, the lion’s share of masque expenditure went on costumes. Performance accounts often included sumptuous, paragraph-length descriptions which evoked the colour and quality of fabrics. The amount of attention costumes solicited from seventeenth-century audiences and writers stands in inverse relation to the unenthusiastic response in modern masque research. It is true that Mary Linthicum, Enid Welsford, Janet Arnold, John Peacock, Stephen Orgel, Roy ²¹ John Orrell, The Human Stage: English Theatre Design, 1567–1640 (Cambridge, 1988).

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Strong, and more recently, Peter Stallybrass and Ann Rosalind Jones have provided exceptional contributions to our understanding of theatrical costume. Even so, no study has given a full account of masque costume production, circulation, and storage, attempted here. The most comprehensive discussion of costume production to date is offered in Orgel and Strong’s two-volume reference work, but their investigation largely reflects Charles’s household, which might suggest to the casual reader that the administration of court masques was handled by the king’s bureaucrats only. Research by Erica Veevers, Sophie Tomlinson, Caroline Hibbard, Leeds Barroll, Melinda Gough, Karen Britland, and Clare McManus has highlighted the female ambience at the early Stuart court. I draw on newly discovered references to masquing in Henrietta Maria’s debenture books, which substantiate such recent approaches.²² The queen’s books give us unique evidence of the administrative processing of masque costumes, revealing a detailed picture of communication between craftsmen, designers, and performers during rehearsal periods. Even more, such records offer insight into the use of costumes in performance. Inigo Jones’s costume designs tend to be seen as examples of Palladian elegance, a quarry for art historians, not illustrations for performance purposes. Even John Peacock’s magisterial work on Jonesian theatre is concerned with iconography rather than the living splendour of sets and costumes in action.²³ This book discusses the impact colours and lights had on performers on stage, and how costumes may have encouraged specific movements or dancing styles. It further investigates dress codes for male and female courtiers.

III. CASE STUDIES The third part of my book consists of individual studies, ranging from Ben Jonson’s Jacobean productions to a relatively obscure masque intended for performance in the Ottoman Empire in the 1650s. The first case study focuses on The Masque of Queenes (1609) and Oberon (1611), exploring costumes and movement vis-à-vis Jonson’s sumptuous textual versions. The next chapter analyzes a Caroline court production—Thomas Carew’s brilliant Coelum Britannicum (1634)—to find out how a masque might employ dance genres ²² I am grateful to Andrew Ashbee for drawing my attention to the debenture books. ²³ John Peacock, The Stage Designs of Inigo Jones: The European Context (Cambridge, 1995).

Introduction

11

and theatrical garments to visualize British history. The final chapter offers a detailed study of an English masque abroad. It examines a manuscript for a wedding masque, composed by Robert Bargrave, a secretary of the Levant Company in Constantinople. The importance of the dances described in this source—the first surviving choreographies for the stage in English theatre history—has been largely ignored. The book counterpoints Bargrave’s English masque with Ottoman dramatic culture of the early modern period, including fatwas regulating theatre. Did sartorial and kinetic codes play a special mediating role in masques? If so, what are the wider implications for the politics of the form? My book will investigate these dimensions which are almost absent from existing discussions, and evaluate the role of dance and costume within the total symbolic topography of a masque.

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PART I DANCE

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1 Methodology The lawyer Justinian Pagitt was a punctilious dancer. Not a little troubled by the thought that choreographies are easily forgotten if not continually practised, he noted in his Liber Miscellaneorum (1633): ‘Write the marks for the stepps in every daunce under the notes of the tune, as the words are in songs.’¹ Based on such statements, and on the circulation of dance repertoire in manuscript and print, critics propose that dance was learnt by doing and writing in early Stuart England.² This is a possibility. (A dual approach based on text and movement is certainly adopted in modern classes of early dance repertoire where students watch and imitate an instructor; note-taking or the consultation of a written or printed choreography may occur.) Yet no evidence confirms note-taking during masque rehearsals. The few comments of early modern dance enthusiasts suggest a strong preference for learning by doing, not copying a text. Ironically the very texts which describe choreographies stress the physical aspects of learning. As the Jacobean lawyer John Ramsey said about a Spanish Pavine, ‘It must be learned by practise & demonstration’; likewise, The French Galliarde was ‘performed with ye cinquepace, halfe capers, traverses, ye round turnes & such like, learned onlye by practise’.³ Pagitt’s pragmatic concern for turning dance into text remained exceptional for his time. Dance was a practical activity. Dancers learnt by doing, listening to instructors and imitating them. Star choreographers at the French court, dancing masters in Caroline plays, and professionals involved in court masques had one thing in common: their contempt for writing. Choreographies were rarely put to paper. Ben Jonson’s masque Pan’s Anniversary (1620) contains a joke about a clerk who ‘is to take the whole Daunces from the foot by Brachygraphie, and so make a memoriall, if not a map of the businesse’. This might ¹ BL Harl. MS 1026, fol. 7r, c.1633–5 (date according to HMC/NRA database, Feb. 2003). ² e.g. John Ward; indeed his ‘Apropos “The Olde Measures” ’, Records of Early English Drama, 18/1 (1993), 2–21, proposes a model of ‘classroom instruction’ (6). ³ Bodl. MS Douce 280, fol. 66br–v.

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reflect an innovation in Jacobean choreographic practice but no evidence has survived; the idea as such was certainly considered as ludicrous by Jonson, given that it is proposed by a fencer in the antimasque.⁴ Even a century later, voices attest that some dancing masters were still stubbornly refusing to learn notation.⁵ Between 1400 and 1699, very few choreographic works were written or published; current counts circulating within the scholarly community arrive at a two-digit number.⁶ The present study draws upon thirty sources produced in an English context between 1500 and 1699; two of them are French texts. Only one of these appeared in print between 1603 and 1642. John Playford’s editions of the Dancing Master, which attest to a more substantial mediation of dance through print, were published after the early Stuart period, from 1651 onwards. The current state of research suggests that all choreographies for the great court masques are lost. The only compositions for English theatre dance before 1700 survive in a diary dating to the early 1650s.⁷ In response to this tantalizing loss of information about early modern dance movements, critics have adopted contingency measures which extend the focus of research both synchronically and diachronically. The first contingency assumption proposes a common European dance culture which is then brought to bear on regional practice; chronological boundaries may significantly exceed those of the specific event or source under investigation. The second postulates that valuable information can be gleaned from non-choreographic contemporary source material such as dance descriptions in letters or scenes in paintings. Both approaches have risks and merits. I will deal with each in turn. ⁴ ll. 143–5, in HS vii. 533–4. ⁵ As in Stephen Philpot’s An Essay on the Advantage of a Polite Education (1747). See Richard Ralph, The Life and Works of John Weaver (London, 1985), 107. ⁶ Based on current catalogues and information by Barbara Sparti, Jennifer Thorp, Lieven Baert, Markus Lehner, and Katherine McGinnis, my personal count at the time of going into print arrived at 76 sources of French/Burgundian, Italian, Spanish, English, German, and Swedish provenance. See also Judith L. Schwartz and Christena L. Schlundt, French Court Dance and Dance Music: A Guide to Primary Source Writings 1643–1789 (Stuyvesant, NY, 1987); Carol Marsh and Meredith Little, La Danse Noble: An Inventory of Dances and Sources (Williamstown, Mass., 1992); Francine Lancelot, La Belle Dance: Catalogue raisonné fait en l’An 1995 (Paris, 1996); and the index at www.rendance.org. By choreography I mean sustained information on steps and figures, possibly from the beginning to the end of the dance. My count excludes: (a) reissues or copies of the same work; (b) works of uncertain date which may have been produced after 1699; (c) single ‘snapshot’ illustrations of dances with no step information, as found in European festival books; (d ) iconographic sources such as costume designs; (e) literary allusions to dance. Borderline cases have been included, such as Malvezzi’s description of the final ballo in La Pellegrina (1589), which contains some floor patterns and step sequences. ⁷ See below, Ch. 2, sections on English and French dance sources; and Ch. 10.

Methodology

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Dances of the early modern period were, it is proposed, part of a common European heritage. Historians interested in what we might call spectaculum Europaeum have long sought to establish cultural traditions which might be shared despite regional difference. ‘If the specialist in Polish drama could learn about Italian fireworks or Danish drama, if the pervasive influence of Dutch or Spanish or Latin drama or of the commedia dell’arte were realised, . . . how much this would enhance our understanding of all forms of theatre and spectacle in the period under review’, thus the enthusiastic mission statement in one such survey. In the areas which concern us here, studies have shown how certain dramatic genres or forms of ostentatious public display were practised all over Europe.⁸ Many courts and cities were familiar with the concept of a colourful allegorical spectacle involving music, spoken text, and dance before illusionistic scenery. Dance played an important role in theatrical events at Brussels, Paris, Florence, Stockholm, Dresden, Cracow, and London alike. (This does not mean audiences invariably caught the meaning of such cosmopolitan endeavours; for instance, in 1589, French and German eyewitnesses departed clueless from the supposedly epoch-making Florentine intermedi.⁹) Festive culture generated a certain mobility of professionals within the arts and theatre. Furthermore, when individuals travelled abroad, dance could form part of the cultural experience. During a visit to Venice in 1506, Albrecht Dürer wished to improve his dancing skills but found that the outcome did not merit his efforts (‘Nobody could make me go there again. I would have to pay out all that I have earned, and at the end I still wouldn’t know how to dance!’).¹⁰ English travellers who took dance lessons on the Continent are documented from the late fifteenth century: in 1475, the young merchant George Cely paid a professional at Calais, who taught him the ‘footing of base dances’.¹¹ In England, the Tudor and Stuart courts employed violinists of Italian-Jewish

⁸ P. Béhar and H. Watanabe-O’Kelly (eds.), Spectaculum Europaeum: Theatre and Spectacle in Europe (1580–1750) (Wiesbaden, 1999), p. vii. M.-C. Canova-Green and F. Chiarelli (eds.), The Influence of Italian Entertainments on Sixteenth-Century and Seventeenth-Century Music Theatre in France, Savoy and England (Lewiston, NY, 2000). P. Béhar (ed.), Image et Spectacle (Amsterdam, 1989). ⁹ An anonymous French eyewitness and the German Barthold von Gadenstedt were incapable of grasping even the most obvious mythological references. Iain Fenlon, ‘The Origins of the Seventeenth-Century Staged ballo’, in Fenlon and T. Carter (eds.), Con che soavità: Studies in Italian Opera, Song, and Dance, 1580–1740 (Oxford, 1995), 13–40, at 25 (n. 36), 32–3. ¹⁰ Cited from Jennifer Nevile, The Eloquent Body (Bloomington, Ind., 2004), 24. ¹¹ Alison Hanham, The Celys and Their World (Cambridge, 1985), 34. John Stevens, Music and Poetry in the Early Tudor Court (Cambridge, 1979), 284.

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origin and French consort players.¹² Under Elizabeth I, Hungarian tumblers toured the English provinces together with the Queen’s players.¹³ Florentine spectacle experts such as Constantino de’ Servi received invitations to Jacobean England. In early modern Europe, high-class dancers were as mobile as star castrati. In 1602, the prominent Milanese choreographer Cesare Negri listed forty-five professional dancers (all male, many his former students), more than a third of whom had had engagements abroad, some as far away as Poland. Their patrons included the Emperors Charles V and Rudolf II, the Dukes of Lorraine and Bavaria, and the archbishop of Cologne. They worked for Philip II of Spain, and the kings of France since the times of Henri II.¹⁴ The Continental influence on English court masques has long been established. It is therefore likely that Continental dancing styles had an impact on English practice as well. Galliards and the volta were among the popular dance genres practised on both sides of the Channel; ensemble choreographies consisting of geometric figures were performed in the Escorial, the Louvre, Whitehall, Vienna’s Hofburg, Neapolitan Jesuit seminaries, and Roman palazzi.¹⁵ Dance was widely recognized as an accomplishment, in particular, in court life, where it was pursued by individuals (and criticized by opponents) with an energy uncommon today. At the French court, those who dared to ridicule the balletic style of favourites might risk their lives. Sebastiano Zamet, a financier of Henri IV and Maria de’ Medici, killed a gentleman who had mocked his performance during a ball as graceless. He was pardoned.¹⁶ In Stuart England, young ladies might learn to dance as they learned to walk. Aristocratic children regularly participated in court masques and practically grew up in a performance culture. Mary Villiers, the daughter of the Duke of Buckingham, took her first dancing lessons when she was about 2 years old: when she is set to her feet and held by her sleeves, she will not go subtly but stamp . . . She loves dancing extremely and when the saraband is played she will set her thumb and her finger together offering to snap and then, when Tom Duff is sung, then ¹² Up to two-thirds of Elizabeth’s musicians were immigrants. Craig Monson, ‘Elizabethan London’, in I. Fenlon (ed.), The Renaissance: From the 1470s to the End of the Sixteenth Century (Houndmills, 1989), 304–40, at 317–18. ¹³ This included various feats of vaulting and rope-dancing, in which the troupe ‘excersisid them selves in sutche maner of tumblinge and turninge as the . . . lick was never seene in shrewsburie before’ (1589–90). Records of Early English Drama: Shropshire, ed. J. Alan B. Somerset (Toronto, 1994), i. 247. ¹⁴ Cesare Negri, Le gratie d’amore, facs. edn. (Milan, 1602; Sala Bolognese, 1983), 2–6. ¹⁵ See also Jennifer Nevile, ‘Dance and the Garden: Moving and Static Choreography in Renaissance Europe’, Renaissance Quarterly, 52/3 (1999), 805–36. ¹⁶ Sara Mamone, Paris et Florence: Deux Capitales du spectacle pour une reine, Marie de Médicis (Paris, 1990), 162–3.

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she will shake her apron and when she hears the tune of the clapping dance my lady Frances Huberd taught the prince she will clap both her hands together and on her breast and she can tell the tunes as well as any of us can and as they change the tunes she will change her dancing . . . She is so full of pretty play and tricks and she has got a trick that when they dance [with] her she will cry hah hah and Nicolae will dance with his legs and she will imitate him as well as she can. She will be excellent at a hat [sic] for if one lay her down she will kick her legs over her head but when she is elder I hope she will be more modest.¹⁷

‘Pretty Mall’ danced in the court masque Tempe Restored (1632) when she was not much older than 11, and later performed in Salmacida Spolia (1640).¹⁸ The level of proficiency among the more serious English, Italian, or French practitioners of the period must have been very high. As Anne Daye assesses the skill of such seventeenth-century ‘amateurs’, ‘the art of dancing was pursued by gentlemen and ladies to a level that today we can only associate with professionalism and life-long dedication’.¹⁹ In the London of James I and Charles I, bystanders scrutinized courtiers’ movements on social occasions and during theatrical ballets. Eyewitnesses scrupulously noted whether masked ensembles jumped synchronously and ticked off wobbly legs—woe to those who forgot their choreographies. Not surprisingly, the best performers cultivated a range of different styles, including (as will be shown) foreign ones, and sought professional advice. Such circumstances encourage scholars to consult sources from all over Europe in absence of a substantial body of choreographies pertaining to English dancing culture. Drawing upon material from different countries and periods, many current studies tacitly accept that dance repertoire in early modern England is connected to Continental practice. Recent works on the English masque adopt the all-European approach pioneered by Mabel Dolmetsch.²⁰ With reference to a pan-European court culture, Skiles Howard marshals an impressive range of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century dances from ¹⁷ Letter by her mother, 16 July 1623, BL MS Harl. 6987, no. 64, fol. 119. Possibly the mother meant to say that Mall was capable of kicking her legs up to the height of her hat. ¹⁸ B. Ravelhofer, ‘ “Virgin Wax” and “Hairy Men-Monsters”: Unstable Movement Codes in the Stuart Masque’, in D. Bevington and P. Holbrook (eds.), The Politics of the Stuart Court Masque (Cambridge, 1998), 244–72. ¹⁹ Anne Daye, ‘Skill and Invention in the Renaissance Ballroom’, Historical Dance, 2/6 (1988/91), 12–15, at 15. See also Marcia Vale, The Gentleman’s Recreations: Accomplishments and Pastimes of the English Gentleman, 1580–1630 (Cambridge, 1977). ²⁰ Mabel Dolmetsch’s influential books Dances of England and France from 1450 to 1600: With Their Music and Authentic Manner of Performance (London, 1949) and Dances of Spain and Italy from 1400 to 1600 (London, 1954) have by and large been superseded by more recent dance research.

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Ferrara, Paris, Langres, Milan, Venice, and Burgundy to elucidate the politics of dancing at the Tudor and Stuart court: Court festivity throughout Europe, it is generally agreed, was informed by the same images, assumptions, and practices. Cultural trends that emerged in Italy and France in the fifteenth century, including fashions in dancing, manifested themselves in England in the sixteenth, when Henry VII returned from exile and introduced the customs of the Burgundian court . . . Later, the ‘common going of Englishmen into Italy’ and the immigration of dancing masters from the Continent ensured a continuing fertilization of ‘lavoltas high and swift corantos’.²¹

Thus, Howard speaks of ‘the Continental courts’ in a collective manner and perceives a common European tradition in Jacobean masque choreographies. To what extent did the same cultural practices really inform repertoire from Tuscany to Flanders, and to what extent can they safely be projected onto early modern England? Can the dance theories of Domenico da Piacenza, a Jewish choreographer active in about 1460 in Ferrara, elucidate the way the early Jonsonian masque ‘rehearsed for Empire’?²² Writing about the court of Anna of Denmark, Clare McManus proposes a ‘shared’ ‘pan-European elite dance discourse and practice defined in opposition to non-courtly dance’, but the question remains of how ‘discourse’ relates to ‘practice’, which, as McManus points out, may differ.²³ Precise, sustained information on early modern dance movements is very rare; for this reason, the present study will cautiously follow the tradition of bringing Continental dance sources of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century to bear upon early Stuart masques. It will offer speculative historical reconstructions of early Stuart dancing practice—but at the same time, it will also make an effort to substantiate any speculations about movements in masques with evidence on dancers, theatre management, stage and costume design, patrons, and the like. ²¹ Skiles Howard, The Politics of Courtly Dancing in Early Modern England (Amherst, Mass., 1998), 5. ²² Howard refers to Domenico in a chapter entitled ‘Rehearsing for Empire: Dancing in the Early Jonsonian Masque’ (ibid. 113–14). On Domenico, see A.W. Smith (ed.), Fifteenth-Century Dance and Music: Twelve Transcribed Italian Treatises and Collections in the Tradition of Domenico da Piacenza, 2 vols. (Stuyvesant, NY, 1995). ²³ Clare McManus, Women on the Renaissance Stage: Anna of Denmark and Female Masquing in the Stuart Court (1590–1619) (Manchester, 2002), 22, 31. While she shows clear examples of this dichotomy, it should be noted that early modern repertoire may on occasion elude her classification of ‘elite’ versus ‘proletarian dance forms’; English country dances, for instance, were also danced during high-profile receptions. Likewise, the branle genre was diversified: a 16th-cent. French branle might imitate the movements of a washerwoman (Arbeau’s branle des lavandières), but 17th-cent. branles were on occasion danced in suites at the French court.

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While concrete solutions to strictly choreographic questions are difficult to obtain, we know much more about the cultural context of dancing in early modern England. Dance was a favourite pastime. In public playhouses, performances regularly ended with the popular, if today obscure, jig. Shakespeare’s comedies contain many dance scenes. Spenser invented sinister masques in The Faerie Queene, Sir John Davies played with dance genres in Orchestra, and Margaret Cavendish’s shorter stories specialized in matchless balletic heroines. Conduct literature celebrated the art, notably Thomas Elyot’s The Governour, and Thomas Hoby’s translation of Castiglione’s Il Cortegiano. For sympathetic observers, dance was a Neoplatonic exercise which could uplift body and soul, and improve one’s physique and social graces. Less generous minds regarded dancing schools, of which early modern London boasted a respectable range, as nurseries of vice, and the practice itself as a lewd abomination which corrupted the minds of innocent maidens and kept the populace from honest work.²⁴ Literature and drama, archival records, and iconography elucidate attitudes towards dance in the Stuart period. Diaries and household bills reveal how much time and money individuals devoted to the discipline. The documentary evidence regarding early Stuart dancing culture is immense and provides a rich and rewarding area of research. This book will mine the wealth of such circumstantial information, but with care: a few examples may illustrate the problems of proceeding from secondary information to the elusive movements themselves. This concerns, for instance, iconography, which plays an important role in identifying movement. Critics have cited Inigo Jones’s costume designs as evidence for the movements on stage, interpreting them, as it were, as snapshots of a performance: The masquer design . . . catches the figure dancing, his weight thrown forward on to the right foot, the legs promoted by the short skirt, high heels and ankle rosettes, the left hand and arm elegantly spread, the right hand jauntily placed on the hip. We see here a deliberate anticipation of Charles or Lord Wharton in action and, dramatically lit, an action photograph from the show.²⁵ ²⁴ Among the many studies of early dance as cultural phenomenon are Charles R. Baskervill, The Elizabethan Jig (New York, 1929; repr. 1965); Alan Brissenden, Shakespeare and the Dance (London, 1981); Judy Smith, ‘The Art of Good Dancing—Noble Birth and Skilled Nonchalance: England 1580–1630’, Historical Dance, 2/5 (1986–7), 30–2; Françoise Carter, ‘The Protean Image: A Study of Dance as an Image in English Renaissance Literature with Special Reference to Spenser and Milton’, D.Phil. thesis (Oxford, 1989); Jonas Barish, The Antitheatrical Prejudice (Berkeley and Los Angeles: 1981); Skiles Howard, ‘Rival Dicourses of Dancing in Early Modern England’, Studies in English Literature, 36/1 (1996), 31–56. ²⁵ Keith Sturgess, Jacobean Private Theatre (London, 1987), 209.

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Unfortunately, Jones applied this very posture not only to the masquer in question, a courtly performer in Thomas Carew’s Coelum Britannicum (1634), but to dozens of designs from the early Jacobean to the late Caroline period. Furthermore, he often copied a Continental model not only in sartorial features but even gestures. In Jonesian character sketches we see the shadows of Mantegna, Buontalenti, and Rabel. A two-dimensional sketch does not translate straight away into the living dancer whose costume it represents. A design is first and foremost a ‘designer’s vision’,²⁶ not an ‘action photograph’ giving evidence of a specific choreography danced in 1634. We could, however, compare this particular design to others which show courtly dancers, and investigate how it corresponds with verbal descriptions of grand masque dances. Words and images taken together, it is possible to conclude that Jones preferred drafting his aristocratic masquers in the classical contrapposto, a posture considered dignified and beautiful in his time. This posture might well have informed the actual performance of early Stuart grand masquers. The cumulative evidence of designs, combined with contemporary verbal description, demonstrates that certain mannerisms were restricted to specific parts of the masque; wild gesticulation, for instance, was the domain of grotesque performance. It is impossible to reconstruct whole choreographies from such sources, but at least they allow for a better idea of general movement styles. Even elaborate descriptions of a dance performance may offer surprises, as emerges from Orazio Busino’s famous report on Ben Jonson’s masque for Prince Charles, Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue (1618). Busino’s extensive eyewitness account provides an excellent illustration of how ambiguously verbal information refers to movement. Busino began his career as a priest and lawyer in the service of the Contarini family. Later he resided in Rome as a member of the Congregazione Urbana. Between 1617 and 1619, he accompanied the Venetian ambassador Pietro Contarini to Madrid and London. Busino’s low esteem of English architecture was matched by a guarded opinion of court masques.²⁷ A connoisseur used to the high standards of Monteverdi’s ballet compositions (Monteverdi worked for the Gonzaga at Mantua and later for the Republic of Venice), Busino criticized the music in Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue as too pompous (‘spoiled as we are by the graceful and harmonious music of Italy, the composition did not strike us as very fine’).²⁸ Busino also dropped ²⁶ McManus, Women on the Renaissance Stage, 28. ²⁷ Joseph Connors, ‘Orazio Busini [sic] in England’, Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome, 40 (1995), 235–6. Connors is exceptional in noticing Busino’s shortsightedness. ²⁸ ‘L’attione non passò con molto garbo, massime à gusto nostro, come svogliati dalle gratiose et sonore musiche d’Italia’. OS i. 280, and Connors, ‘Orazio Busini’.

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dance names: ‘They performed every sort of ballet and dance of every country whatsoever, such as passamezzi, corantos, canaries, spagnolettas, and a hundred other very fine gestures devised to tickle one’s fancy.’²⁹ Busino’s detailed description of the revels is invariably cited by dance historians hoping to identify specific choreographic genres.³⁰ Yet it contains many possible interpretative pitfalls. Did he refer to music, steps, or full-scale choreographies? Judging from his narrative, he did not participate in any dances but followed the performance entirely as an observer. Hence his recollection does not result from active bodily involvement. Enthusing about the variety of ‘spagnolettas’ and ‘canaries’, Busino may have seen some familiar step sequences. Published in Venice between 1581 and 1630, Fabritio Caroso’s dance books included a Spagnoletta with a characteristic sideward/backwards movement in the refrain; as Caroso’s books were best-selling and his style was taught in courts all over Europe, these choreographies might reflect a more widely known practice, a practice which Busino knew from his Venetian days and which he recognized in the dance-floor activities in the Banqueting House. His comment on ‘every sort of ballet and dance of every country’ certainly attests to a cosmopolitan character of the revels. Mentioning ‘canaries’, he may have seen and heard the typical clacking canario steps as they were described in Italian and French sources from the late sixteenth century onwards. He could, however, have based his judgement on characteristic tunes and rhythms only. The so-called ‘eye’-witness suffered from severe myopia. Busino, who was not able to make out the faces of the pretty young things in the audience, relied on the reports of his company (‘owing to my shortsightedness I could not form an accurate idea of distant objects, and referred myself in everything to my colleagues’).³¹ One wonders how he could draw conclusions as to the ‘very fine gestures’ which tickled his fancy. Is Busino’s dance description second-hand, and does it simply reflect movements as seen by his ‘colleagues’? Or was his seat sufficiently close to the performance area to allow him a visual identification even under dim artificial lighting? In the Stuart period, indoor performances of masques relied on a specific dancing space. While a scenic backdrop, and all those protagonists ²⁹ ‘Fecero tutti le sorti di balletti, et danze, che si costumano in qualsivoglia paese, à modo de passamezzi, correnti, Canarie, spagnolette, et cento altri gesti fatti a pizzego molto belli.’ OS i. 281; trans. in Sabol, 545. ³⁰ Jennifer Nevile has drawn on Busino to prove the existence of Italian repertoire in the Jacobean masque (‘Dance and the Garden’, 831). Peter Walls suggests the passamezzi may have been English measures (328). ³¹ ‘Rispetto alla mia caligante vista, non hò potuto far sientifico giud⬚. da lontano: et mi sono rimesso in tutto et per tutto alli miei ssri. Colleghi’. OS i. 280; Sabol, trans. in 544.

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contained within it, might be confined to one end of a hall at the expense of disadvantageously positioned spectators, this dancing area was usually cleared in front of the stage right at the centre of the auditorium. Here, performers were not only visible from all sides, at times they must have approached frontrow viewers closely enough to be touched. This may explain why eyewitness accounts dwell so much on the fashion and movements of dancers. Still, the precise motive for Busino’s enthusiasm remains a mystery. The Venetian may have told us not what he saw but what he heard. Let us assume for a moment that Busino heard a spagnoletta. In a massive anthology of music for English masques, Andrew Sabol, a strong supporter of the pan-European methodology, includes a score after Michael Praetorius’s German compilation of dance music, Terpsichore (1612), where three versions of the spagnoletta are recorded.³² This score, Sabol argues, can safely be projected onto a Jacobean spectacle since the spagnoletta ‘always used the same tune’.³³ Widely current the tune certainly was—that of Caroso’s Spagnoletta resembles the one included in Terpsichore—but did it always accompany the same movements, too? Sabol assumes that it did, for his description of the dance conflates English with Italian choreographies.³⁴ John Ramsey (also spelt Ramsay), a lawyer admitted to the Middle Temple in 1606, collected a few dances in a manuscript miscellany. His ‘Practise for Dauncinge’ (c.1607) includes an instruction for a ‘Spanioletta’: Honour. Take handes, fall in to your pace, parte with your pace, traverse sydewayes, meete with your pace, & heave upp ye woman in your armes, part againe, pace, traverse meete againe, the woman heave up ye man, honor & soe ende.³⁵

Ramsey’s compact six-liner poignantly contrasts with Caroso’s elaborate creations. The latter’s spagnoletta variations covered two pages each in his dance ³² Michael Praetorius, Terpsichore (1612), ed. G. Oberst (Wolfenbüttel and Berin, 1929), pp. 38–9, nos. 26–8. ³³ Sabol, pp. 17, 469–70, no. 342. ³⁴ Sabol, pp. 17, 547, app. C. Accordingly, the spagnoletta ‘demanded unusual athletic feats: not only must the man lift up the woman, but the woman in turn must lift up the man [Ramsey only]. The basic figure for the dance consists of two couples forming a quadrangle [Ramsey does not specify the number of couples]’. The ‘flourishes in retreat’ and ‘zopettas’ Sabol finds in the spagnoletta are restricted to Italian sources of the period. ³⁵ Bodl. MS Douce 280, fol. 66br. Transcription in D. R. Wilson, ‘Dancing in the Inns of Court’, Historical Dance, 2/5 (1986–7), 3–16, at 7; and Ian Payne, The Almain in Britain, c.1549–c.1675 (Aldershot, 2003), 226.

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book Il Ballarino (1581).³⁶ They were about nine times as long as Ramsey’s and, it seems, nine times as difficult. Caroso, a master of mannerist elegance, would have recoiled at the idea of women lifting up their men at the end of one of his perfectly chiselled dances, as Ramsey’s robust instruction stipulated. Even if performed in an elite context, the English version would certainly not have been considered ‘courtly’ by Milanese and Venetian choreographers. A fundamental aesthetic difference separated the spagnolette as danced by London lawyers and by Venetian ladies, even if the tunes may have been closely related. The identification of music, let alone choreographies, for the early Stuart masque requires caution. In this particular case Busino could simply have heard a tune which he associated with the spagnoletta. As this example shows, a connection may exist in particular elements of a dance—here, its music and its name—while a difference remains elsewhere, as in the movements. Such distinctions need to be taken into consideration for the entire body of early modern European dances. For instance, ‘galliard’ was an immensely popular dance type which emerged in the sixteenth century and is mentioned in English, German, Italian, Spanish, and French documents. In Shakespeare’s and Jonson’s days, it was characterized by a typical jumped five-step sequence (‘cinquepace’) in triple time. Sir Andrew Aguecheek’s excellent leg is famously said to have been ‘formed under the star of a galliard’; audiences in the public playhouses would have roared at Sir Toby’s hectic proposition to ‘make water but in a cinquepace’.³⁷ Yet sources might allude to the movements of the whole dance, to the specific step combination only, or to music. Furthermore, the term remained the same, while the movement changed: an early seventeenth-century ‘galliard’ step sequence differs from a late seventeenth-century one; Spanish galliards may be danced to a duple-time rhythm. Methodologically, a discussion of early dance in England may rely on evidence from more than one country or period. Yet it is important to understand two crucial issues: first, that verbal dance descriptions may refer to movement or music and certain rhythms; and secondly, that movements, music, and their ³⁶ Fabritio Caroso, Il Ballarino (Venice, 1581; New York, 1967), fols. 163r–165r, Spagnoletta and Spagnoletta Nuova. Caroso also includes a complex Spagnoletta Nuova and a Spagnoletta Regolata in Nobiltà di dame (1600); see Courtly Dance of the Renaissance: A New Translation and Edition of the ‘Nobiltà di dame (1600)’, ed. and trans. Julia Sutton and F. Marian Walker (New York, 1995), 193–5, 279–80. Cesare Negri uses a variation on the musical theme in a Spagnoletto. Le gratie d’amore, facs. edn., 116–17. These dances differ in the number of performers and step variations. ³⁷ Twelfth Night, I. iii. 124–8.

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terminologies may change over time.³⁸ Once such caveats are observed, the concept of a pan-European discourse of courtly dancing turns out to be a helpful and appropriate tool as it acknowledges the rich cultural exchanges between courts and cities beyond national boundaries. ³⁸ Eugénia Kougioumtzoglou-Roucher, ‘Aux origines de la danse classique: Le Vocabulaire de la “Belle Dance”, 1661–1701’, 4 vols., Ph.D. thesis (Paris, 1991). Walls, 125–6.

2 English and Continental Sources WHAT IS AN EARLY MODERN CHOREOGRAPHIC TREATISE? Choreographic sources produced before 1700 rarely included floor patterns or iconographic dance notation. Dances were described verbally, in a linear stepby-step, beat-after-beat manner. Steps were represented as text, either in shorthand as a sequence of letters (for instance, r, b, and s stood for révérence, branle, and simple in fifteenth-century Burgundian basses danses), or as a full prose account (in the way Ramsey wrote down his ‘Spanioletta’).¹ Some preliminary experiments aside, an iconic standard to indicate steps, arm movements, and spatial directions appeared in France towards the end of the seventeenth century. Invented by Pierre Beauchamp, a choreographer under Louis XIV, and popularized by the publisher Feuillet, this so-called Feuillet notation became accepted practice all over Europe and persisted throughout the eighteenth century. If music accompanied the choreographies, it was usually represented as a simple tune, or in lute tablature. Hence, instrumentalists were expected to improvise on the provided samples and set the music for themselves. Some choreographies exist only as a shorthand notation on the back of a flyleaf, or they were compiled with completely unrelated matter in commonplace books and diaries. No-frills dance publications contained little more than a tune, and the steps noted below. Other treatises are semi-literary endeavours which clearly follow an agenda beyond providing a simple aide-memoire. The most elaborate dance books printed before 1700 may include choreographies, illustrations, poems, dedications to persons of consequence, short mythological histories of the dance, rules of conduct in better society, references to famous dancers, or lists of theatrical events orchestrated by the author. Such books may represent how-to guides, bibliophilic or commemorative objects, or ¹ See 15th-cent. ‘descriptive notation’, Guglielmo Ebreo, De pratica seu arte tripudii, ed. B. Sparti (Oxford, 1993), 12.

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a choreographer’s monumental self-promotion exercise. Copies which suggest practical application (for instance, by readers’ notes on steps in the margins) are very rare.² One exceptional 1589 copy of Thoinot Arbeau’s Orchésographie contains ink doodles in a sixteenth- or early-seventeenth-century hand. Its reader copied a dancer’s head from a woodcut in the book, erratically underlined the text, and commented on dances and postures in the margins. On the whole these addenda seem to result from playful browsing rather than serious balletic interest.³ The following survey gives a short account of the Italian, Spanish, French, and English dance repertoire of the early modern period and its potential influence on masquing culture. A number of terms will be used in the course of this survey. ‘Antimasque’ refers to the grotesque or comic dance sections of masques; ‘masque proper’ or ‘main/grand masque’ to the courtly ensemble dances towards the end of masques. ‘Entry’, a neutral term which became fashionable towards the Caroline period, refers to the performance of a dance in any theatrical context. ‘Revels’ allude to the social part of masques, when disguised performers joined members of the audience for popular dances of the period before the spectacle ended. By ‘social dance’ I mean any kind of dance performed during a social gathering. ‘By ‘theatre dance’ I mean any kind of dance specially choreographed for the stage or a spectacle.

ITALIAN AND SPANISH SOURCES FROM THE MID-SIXTEENTH TO THE EARLY SEVENTEENTH CENTURY The terms ‘mummery’ and moresca are strongly associated with spectacle under Henry VIII, who is usually credited with having introduced Italian fashions at the English court. In early modern usage, both terms might have been used interchangeably. ‘Mummery’ derives from mumaria, which William Smith defines as ‘a cluster of allegorical episodes which can include parades of floats and costumed performers, music performances, acting, miming, dancing, and other forms of entertainment’. Moresca applied to any kind of mimed and ² None of the books by Caroso, Arbeau, or Negri I inspected at the British Library, the Bodleian Library, and various Cambridge libraries showed any traces of early users. ³ Thoinot Arbeau, Orchésographie (1589), collection of the Société historique et archéologique de Langres, Musées de Langres, facs. edn. with pref. by Bernard Collin (Langres, 1988), fols. 27r (head of dancer copied), 45r (note that Arbeau disapproves of the volta), 47r (on postures of the right and left foot), 48r (on the cadence).

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costumed interlude which broke up lengthy occasions such as banquets. Fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italian festivities of this kind often involved girls or women performing in public.⁴ Giulio Romano was never the sculptor made out in The Winter’s Tale, but he certainly staged entertainments of the kind we see in Shakespeare’s play. An expert theatrical designer, Romano devised the costumes for a moresca with eight shepherds at the Mantuan court in 1542. To the violins and lutes of Pan’s orchestra, dancers circled about the room with contrapassi.⁵ Did Italian dance styles cross over to England in the same way as stage machinery or recitative singing? Might Italian traditions of female dancers have encouraged female performance in England? Well known are, of course, the enigmatic contemporary references to Queen Elizabeth’s Italianate dancing. As the French ambassador De Maisse famously reported about her: in her youth she danced very well, and composed measures and music, and had played them herself and danced them. . . . When her Maids dance she follows the cadence with her head, hand and foot. . . . Without doubt she is a mistress of the art, having learnt in the Italian manner to dance high. She told me that they called her ‘the Florentine’.⁶

Apparently, the queen was proficient enough to compose both music and choreographies (‘measures’) herself. Her court relied on the services of Jasper Gaffoyne, an Italian dancing master who had been appointed under Henry VIII. Gaffoyne’s presence is documented between 1542 and 1584. He received an annual fee of £23. 6s. 8d. and a pension of £40, and in later years lived in the parish of St Katherine Colman, where he was registered as ‘Gasperinge Italian, the Quenes man, borne in Italie, and his wyfe in Tolledo in Spayne, and hath byn in England thirtie yeares’.⁷ Lucretia de’ Tedeschie from Milan, another member of Elizabeth’s household who was married to the lutenist Antonio ⁴ The term may have had a ‘moorish’ etymology, but from the 15th cent. onwards it was often synonymous with ‘intermezzo’. ‘Morris’ and moresca should not be conflated. Frederick Hammond, Music & Spectacle in Baroque Rome (New Haven, 1994), 195. A. William Smith, ‘Dance at Mantua and in Northern Italy: The Tradition Inherited by Leone de’ Sommi and His Generation’, in Ahuva Belkin (ed.), Leone de’ Sommi and the Performing Arts (Tel Aviv, 1997), 83–97, at 86. Ebreo, De pratica, ed. Sparti, 48, 52–4, appendix with information on female performers. ⁵ A. William Smith, ‘Dance at Mantua’, 86, 92. Bruno Adorni, ‘Apparati effimeri urbani e allestimenti teatrali’, in Sergio Polano (ed.), Giulio Romano (Milan, 1989), 498–501. Adorni talks about eight dancing ‘servidori’. ⁶ André Hurault, Sieur de Maisse, A Journal of All That Was Accomplished by Monsieur de Maisse Ambassador in England . . . Anno Domini 1597, ed. and trans. G. B. Harrison and R. A. Jones (Bloomsbury, 1931), 95. ⁷ A. Ashbee and D. Lasocki, A Biographical Dictionary of English Court Musicians, 1485–1714, 2 vols. (Aldershot, 1998), i. 452. Gaffoyne received his denization in 1549 and his pension in 1550.

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Conti, may have been employed as a dancer.⁸ The queen’s Italian violinists (one of them wonderfully named Galliardello) can also be expected to have had some expertise in Italianate dancing. What did de Maisse mean by dancing high ‘in the Italian manner’? From a report by the Milanese ambassador we gain a glimpse of King Henry’s nightly revels in 1514. Dancing ‘in his shirt and without shoes’ with the ladies, Henry did ‘wonders and leaps like a stag’.⁹ Ostentatious leaping was certainly a feature cultivated by Italian masters. From the mid-sixteenth century, choreographers such as Fabritio Caroso, Prospero Lutij, Livio Lupi, Lutio Compasso, Cesare Negri, and Ercole Santucci had created a prolific repertoire. They developed idiosyncracies of their own, and changed their personal style over the years; for instance, Caroso obsessively revised the dances in his first book, Il Ballarino (1581), to make them appear more symmetric in the sequel Nobiltà di dame some twenty years later.¹⁰ Yet Italian choreographies of the period shared a certain set of conventions and terminology, for which reason dance historians now speak of an ‘Italian’ style.¹¹ At its height, the Italian style was much sought after by courts all over Europe. Published between 1560 and 1630 in places such as Palermo, Venice, Florence, Naples, Milan, and Rome, Italian dance books dwarfed in number those produced in other languages; they could, in theory, have ensured a wider dissemination of the repertoire through the print medium. The earliest publication of this kind known so far is indeed a treatise published in Florence, Lutio Compasso’s Ballo della Gagliarda (1560).¹² As Katherine McGinnis has shown, Milan, then under Spanish rule, hosted a community of internationally acclaimed dancers, teachers, and choreographers, including Cesare Negri (c.1536 – before 1610), who dedicated a dance book to Philip III of Spain, served Don John of Austria, and danced before Emperor Rudolf II.¹³ The Italian style coexisted with other regional fashions for a long period and was still locally practised more than a century later.¹⁴ In ⁸ For a detailed discussion of Tedeschie, see B. Ravelhofer, ‘Dancing at the Court of Queen Elizabeth’, in C. Jansohn (ed.), Elizabeth I: Past and Present, (Münster: LIT, 2004), 101–15. ⁹ John Stevens, Music and Poetry in the Early Tudor Court (Cambridge, 1979), 245. ¹⁰ I am grateful to Lieven Baert for discussing this matter with me. ¹¹ e.g. Barbara Sparti’s articles cited in this book. ¹² Lutio Compasso, Ballo della Gagliarda, introd. Barbara Sparti, facs. edn. (Freiburg, 1995). Compasso dedicated it to Francesco Medici, Prince of Florence. The author himself was from Rome. ¹³ Cesare Negri, Le gratie d’amore, facs. edn. (Milan, 1602; Sala Bolognese, 1983), dedication, and 1, 7. Katherine Tucker McGinnis, ‘At Home in the “Casa del Trombone”: A Social-Historical View of Sixteenth-Century Milanese Dancing Masters’, in Proceedings of the Society of Dance History Scholars, 20th annual conference, compiled by Linda Tomko (Riverside, 1997), 203–16. ¹⁴ Barbara Sparti, ‘La “danza barocca” è soltanto francese?’, Studi musicali, 25 (1996), 283–302.

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1641, Caroso’s Nobiltà di dame (1600; reissued 1630) still found an admirer in the composer and collector Pietro della Valle.¹⁵ As late as 1703, students of the Jesuit College in Naples danced Italian balli under the supervision of a Spanish instructor; what precisely those balli looked like is, however, unknown.¹⁶ Italian dancing masters loved to exhibit their virtuoso technique in a mindnumbing catalogue of rules. Fabritio Caroso listed sixty-eight different steps and instructions for comportment in his Nobiltà di dame. What Bayle’s Dictionary is to lexicographers, Ercole Santucci’s ‘Mastro da Ballo’ (1614) is to dance historians. Santucci was a professional ballarino from Perugia who must have decided to write the definitive manual of the art. His manuscript treatise in three parts offers the largest collection yet known of Italian repertoire as it was created by eminent masters and danced in places such as Bologna, Rome, Munich, and Paris.¹⁷ Over 474 pages, Santucci includes 214 rules ‘for beginners [per i principianti]’ alone. Eighty-three mutanze (variations) are added for the fearless in part III, amounting to about 267 different ways of dancing one six-beat measure (the basic unit) of the gagliarda.¹⁸ Santucci calls himself ‘author’. In part III of his treatise, he indicates where he has added a variation, ‘changed’ or indeed ‘modernized’ choreographies by others (‘moderata/ modernata dall’autore’). His book demonstrates the extent to which the idea of authorship had by then crossed over from literature into the field of professional dance. Original authors added prestige. They had to be acknowledged before they could be revised. Above all, Italian masters excelled in ‘dancing high’ in the gagliarda. Here they invented intricate jumps in the characteristic five-step triple-time sequence. Such variations were not only employed in improvised (male) solo performances but also often included as mutanze (or passeggi) for both men and women in formal theatre choreographies and suite-style social dances.¹⁹ Italian ¹⁵ Sparti, ‘ “Baroque or Not Baroque—Is That the Question?”, or Dance in Seventeenth-Century Italy’, in Angelo Chiarle (ed.), L’arte della danza ai tempi di Claudio Monteverdi (Turin, 1996), 73–93. Della Valle had studied dancing with Caroso. He paid not a shocking 55 scudi (as often reported) but 55 baiocchi, an adequate price, for what Sparti thinks may have been the 1630s reissue (ibid. 81). ¹⁶ Barbara Sparti, ‘Breaking Down Barriers in the Study of Renaissance and Baroque Dance’, Dance Chronicle, 19/3 (1996), 255–76, at 262. ¹⁷ ‘Mastro da Ballo’, Carina Ari Library, Danshögskolan, Stockholm; no shelfmark. Santucci cites choreographies by famous masters such as Lutio Compasso and Oratio Martire from Rome; Alessandro Barbetta (abroad in Bavaria), and Fabritio Caroso. Ercole Santucci (Perugino), Mastro da Ballo, introd. Barbara Sparti (Hildesheim, 2004), 59. ¹⁸ Santucci, Mastro da Ballo, 21, and Sparti’s introd., 65–6. Some of the additional rules refer to ladies’ variations. ¹⁹ Julia Sutton, ‘Triple Pavans: Clues to Some Mysteries in Sixteenth-Century Dance’, Early Music, 14/2 (1986), 174–81. I follow Sparti’s understanding of passeggi (Santucci, Mastro da Ballo, 59).

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style was marked by leaps of all sorts, from quaint hops ( fioretto, trabucchetto) which hardly left the ground, to the vigorous, athletic capriola, where the feet performed nimble movements while the dancer was still up in the air. The upper body was kept straight; rarely the torso turned independently of the lower body, as in swaggering shoulder movements. Arms received little attention: they were usually supposed to hang relaxed at the sides while the feet were showing off a firework of complicated steps. Dancers did not turn out their feet, as we see it in classical ballet, although later treatises suggested they should affect it a little (Negri and Santucci make some allowance for moderately turned-out feet). Performers occasionally moved on tiptoe or bent their knees, but regular bending in plié-style movements was unknown. The vertical ambitus (or range) ranged from medium low to very high. The Spanish-Italian connections via Milan, Sicily, and Naples were strong.²⁰ The little we know about early seventeenth-century Spanish choreographies suggests that Spanish masters shared with their Italian colleagues an interest in intricate jumping. In 1630, Negri’s treatise Le gratie d’amore was translated into Spanish and dedicated to the newly born prince Balthasar Carlos.²¹ A Sevillan dance book from 1642, Discursos sobre el arte del dançado, included a number of ‘dancing high’ features, heavily inflected by local style, and indeed mentions Italian masters who came to Spain.²² As its author, Juan Esquivel de Navarro, had been taught by a master to Philip IV of Spain, it reflects a style practised at the Spanish court in the late 1630s, if not earlier. According to Lynn Brooks, the dances retain many conservative features reminiscent of sixteenth-century Italian usage, such as a graceful yet precise, vertical posture.²³ Discursos sobre el arte del dançado distinguished an impressive variety of saltos, kicks, capers, and turns. As in good Italian tradition, the arms moved little: Ha de ir el Cuerpo dançando bien derecho sin artificio, con mucho descuido, del mesmo modo que se lleva por la calle, sin endereçarle más de aquello que su natural le dà . . . verdaderamente el Dançado es un descuido cuydadoso. Hanse de llevar los braços caidos, de modo que las manos esten a las faltriqueras de los lados, sin devanar con ellos, sino moverlos muy poco y con descuido. ²⁰ Katherine Tucker McGinnis draws attention to Italians with Spanish connections such as Cesare Negri or Virgilio Bracesco, who went both to Spain and France. See her ‘Moving in High Circles: Courts, Dance and Dancing Masters in Italy in the Long Sixteenth Century’, Ph.D. thesis (Chapel Hill, NC, 2001), ch. 6. ²¹ Maurice Esses, Dance and Instrumental Diferencias in Spain during the Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries, 2 vols. (Stuyvesant, NY, 1992), i. 432. ²² Juan de Esquivel [Navarro], Discursos sobre el arte del dançado (Seville, 1642; Valencia, 1992), fol. 47. ²³ Lynn Brooks, The Art of Dancing in Seventeenth-Century Spain: Juan de Esquivel Navarro and His World (Lewisburg and London, 2003), 78.

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(In dance, the body must be held erect, without artifice, [but rather] with much nonchalance, the same way that one carries oneself in the street, without straightening up more than is natural for you . . . truly the dance is a careful nonchalance. One must carry one’s arms hanging so that the hands are at your side pockets, without wriggling them, but rather moving very little and with nonchalance.)²⁴

English courtiers on mission to Spain during the early Stuart period must have seen some of the mannerisms outlined by Esquivel. In 1623, when Prince Charles travelled to Madrid to win the Infanta as a bride, learning the Spanish style was part of the cultural programme. Charles took lessons with Manuel de Frías, dancing master to both the queen and the Infanta, for which the professional was plentifully rewarded.²⁵ Italian professionals had a huge impact on sixteenth-century French dancing culture, notably ballet de cour. Two Medici queens ensured a lasting cultural transfer between Italian territories, France and Savoy. Henri III’s dancers may have been exclusively Italian. Possibly Cesare Negri had, apart from his commitments for the Spanish crown, a stint in Paris in the 1580s as violinist and instructor, accompanied by his wife (an excellent dancer herself ).²⁶ Names associated with the late sixteenth-century French court are Pompeo Diobono, Lodovico Paluello, Bernardo Teton (Tettone), and Virgilio Bracesco. The latter, a former student of Negri’s, served Henri II, François II, and Henri III, who complained if his dancer absented himself for too long in Italy.²⁷ Paluello and Diobono were mentioned by Montaigne: Je voudrais que le Paluël ou Pompee, ces beaux danseurs de mon temps, apprissent des cabrioles à les voir seulement faire, sans nous bouger de nos places, comme ceux-ci veulent instruire notre entendement, sans l’ébranler. (I wish Paluël or Pompey, those fine dancers of my time, could teach us capers just by performing them before us and without moving us from our seats, as those ²⁴ Esquivel, Discursos, fols. 9v–10r, 21r–v. Brooks, Art of Dancing, 272–7, 283. ²⁵ De Frías (fl. 1637–52) served as dancing master in the queen’s household. Brooks, Art of Dancing, 44–5. Esses, Dance and Instrumental Diferencias, i. 489, 496–8. Francis Cottington listed 1,000 reales paid to ‘Fryas dauncing master for the Princes accompt’ for 18 Aug. 1623. Barthélemy de Montagut, Louange de la danse, ed. B. Ravelhofer (Cambridge, 2000), 15. I am grateful to James Knowles for this reference. ²⁶ François Lesure mentions one Cesare Negri as violinist in 1587 court records but insists that he is not the choreographer Negri. ‘Die Terpsichore von Michael Praetorius und die französische Instrumentalmusik unter Heinrich IV’, Die Musikforschung, 5 (1952), 7–17, at. 10–11. Katherine McGinnis, however, believes that Negri was indeed in Paris because in 1587 the Milanese painter Lomazzo stated that ‘il trombone’ (under which name the dancer Negri was known) had gone to France (‘Moving in High Circles’, ch. 6). On Italian baladins see Jacqueline Boucher, La Cour de Henri III (Rennes, 1986), 101. ²⁷ Letter of Henri III, 1574, in McGinnis, ‘Moving in High Circles’, ch. 6.

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people [bad teachers] want to train our understanding without setting it in motion.)²⁸

The imitation of Diobono’s and Paluello’s feats requires physical involvement. Montaigne regards dance as active creative involvement just in the same way as reading is an active involvement with the text. A fine Pavaniglia by one Lodovico Padoello—probably Montaigne’s Paluël—is included in the Santucci manuscript; it may give us an idea of Italianate social dancing in Paris.²⁹ ‘Pompee’ Diobono was ‘the best’, Cesare Negri declared not quite impartially, as he himself had studied under the celebrity and taken over Diobono’s school upon the latter’s departure to Savoy and France. At the court of Henri II and Catherine de’ Medici, Diobono taught dancing and genteel comportment, and was paid handsomely, privileged with livery and official titles. Even his children still received royal benefits.³⁰ The choreographer of the famous Balet comique de la Royne (1581), Balthazar de Beaujoyeulx, or Baltazarini Belgioioso, was a Lombard violinist.³¹ According to his friend Brantôme, Belgioioso (‘le meilleur viollon de la chrestienté’) was a humourous character who excelled in conversation. He had come to France in 1557, and taught Mary Stuart, the mother of James I, in 1567. Belgioioso certainly came into close contact with Pompeo Diobono while both of them stayed at the Savoy court.³² The Milanese presence in Paris, and the joint engagements of Diobono and Belgioioso in both France and Savoy, suggest that Italian tastes influenced sixteenth-century French ballet de cour. The movement language cultivated by the Valois and Medici was polyglot, and Negri’s and Paluello’s works may give us an idea of the Italianate aesthetics preferred at Paris. A strong Italian accent informed the kaleidoscopic permutations of geometric, alphabetic, and emblematic patterns in ballet de cour of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth ²⁸ Michael de Montaigne, Les Essais, ed. Denis Bjaï, Jean Céard et al. (Paris, 2001), bk. 1, ch. 25, ‘De l’institution des enfants’, 234–5. Translation after Mark Franko, Dance as Text: Ideologies of the Baroque Body (Cambridge, 1993), 61. Franko opposes the traditional view that Montaigne dismisses dancing. ²⁹ ‘Pavaniglia di Lodovico Padoello di Padova, Modernata dall’Autore alla Romana’, in Santucci, Mastro da ballo, 433. ³⁰ Negri, Le gratie d’amore, facs. edn., 3. Negri estimated Diobono’s yearly income as amounting to 620 Francs. ‘Diobono, Pompeo’, in S. J. Cohen (ed.), International Encyclopedia of Dance, 6 vols. (New York, 1998). ³¹ As Katherine McGinnis tells me, Belgioioso is a town in Lombardy, about 12 km east of Pavia (private communication). ³² Œuvres complètes de Pierre de Bourdeille Seigneur de Brantôme, ed. Ludovic Lalanne (Paris, 1864–82), iv. 81–2, ix. 663–4. Diobono was valet de chambre to Maria Stuart and Catherine de’ Medici (1567), and later to Charles IX, and Henri III. Jean-François Dubost, La France italienne: XVI e–XVIIe siècle (n.pl., 1997), 446–7. I owe this reference to Katherine McGinnis.

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century. In this way, English contemporaries who observed that ‘the French fashion of dancing’ was ‘in most request’ in Elizabethan England made a deceptive statement.³³ To investigate the possible influence of Italian traditions on early Stuart masques, we need to consider the dissemination of knowledge either by individuals or in the written and printed medium. A few possible trajectories lead across the Channel. It has been proposed that the early circulation of Italian dance books in England familiarized the Jacobean court with Continental repertoire. Thus, Prince Henry is supposed to have learnt choreographies by Cesare Negri in around 1604 because a copy of Negri’s Nuove inventioni di balli (1604) was acquired for his library—a theory worth considering but unproven.³⁴ Italian dance books were occasionally bought by early modern collectors. A 1605 catalogue of Sir Thomas Bodley’s library included Caroso’s Ballarino.³⁵ Several old libraries in the UK hold copies of Italian dance books, but the acquisition of these books may not date back to the late sixteenth or early seventeenth centuries. Typically, the Wren Library at Trinity College, Cambridge, owns a mint copy of Caroso’s Ballarino, brought by William Gryll, a former student, in the 1860s; how long it had been in the possession of Gryll or his family is unknown. It remains speculation whether such dance books were regarded as bibliophilic objects or sources for practical instruction. Looking at the transmission of the Italian repertoire by travelling individuals, we find patterns of exchange going back to at least the sixteenth century. Elizabethans such as the dancing master Gaffoyne, the Lupos and Galliardellos, or Rocco Bonetti, who ran a fencing school in London³⁶, may have introduced Italian fashions with a lasting influence on the Jacobean court. Furthermore, English courtiers went abroad. One of James’s Scottish dancers had been to Padua and Venice. As John Chamberlain wrote about Ben Jonson’s Irish Masque (1613): ‘yesternight there was a motley maske of five English and five Scotts (which are called the high dancers,) among whom Sergeant Boide, one Abraham crummie and Ackmoutie (that was at Padoua and Venice) are esteemed the most principall and loftie, but how yt succeeded I heare ³³ ‘There is another exercise to be learned in France, because there are better teachers, and the French fashion is in most request with us, that is, of dancing.’ Robert Dallington, A Method for Travell (London, 1605), sig. [B4]v. ³⁴ Judy Smith and Ian Gatiss, ‘What Did Prince Henry Do with His Feet on Sunday 19 August 1604?’, Early Music, 14/2 (1986), 198–207. They cannot prove that the copy was definitively in the Royal Collections in Henry’s time. ³⁵ Ibid. 201. ³⁶ John Ward, ‘Apropos “The Olde Measures” ’, Records of Early English Drama, 18/1 (1993), 7.

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not’.³⁷ James had handpicked ‘lofty’ Scotsmen among the best performers at court. Did their reputation as ‘high dancers’ result from an Italian experience? English texts of the period suggest that learning foreign dances and etiquette was considered de rigueur. Many plays make fun of the habit that dancers should kiss their own hand before taking that of their lady (before and during a dance). It was considered an apish Italianate mannerism.³⁸ Gabriel Harvey condemned the habit of kissing one’s fingertips as ‘Tuscanisme’.³⁹ If comedy jokes can be trusted, fashionable gentlemen affected Italian dancing. In The Ball (1632), Freshwater, supposedly a traveller returned from the Continent, brags: I can informe you of their dance in Italy, Marry that very morning I left Venice, I had intelligence of a new device.⁴⁰

Given the dominance of Italian dancing at the time, and its impact on France and Elizabethan England, we may assume an influence on the early Stuart court. The mobility of individuals and contemporary references to foreign customs strongly suggest that polyglot, urban circles cultivated the Italian together with other dancing styles, and that court masques—in particular Jacobean ones—made use of it.

ENGLISH SOURCES: FROM THE GRESLEY MANUSCRIPT TO PL AYFORD The earliest choreographies to be found in English archives date back to about 1500, but not all are English by origin.⁴¹ The earliest English choreographies for social dancing survive in the papers of the Gresleys of Drakelow, a ³⁷ Letter to Alice Carleton, 30 Dec. 1613. The transcription given in HS x. 541 is more accurate than that provided in McClure’s edition and has been adopted here. Warrants emphasize the performers as chosen ‘good dauncers’ (ibid.). Andrew Boide received the substantial gift of £500 in 1614/15. Nichols, ii. 78. ³⁸ Françoise Carter, ‘The Protean Image: A Study of Dance as an Image in English Renaissance Literature with Special Reference to Spenser and Milton’, D.Phil. thesis (Oxford, 1989), 166. ³⁹ Harvey dubbed the Earl of Oxford ‘Speculum Tuscanismi’ because of his ‘cringing side necke . . . forefinger kisse, and brave embrace to the footwards’. Cited from Anna Bryson, From Courtesy to Civility: Changing Codes of Conduct in Early Modern England (Oxford, 1998), 76–7. ⁴⁰ James Shirley, The Ball (London, 1639), sig. [A4]r. Performance date according to Harbage and Schoenbaum. Freshwater has, in fact, never left England but mimics a well-seasoned traveller. ⁴¹ Fifteenth-cent. French choreographies on a flyleaf in a copy of Johannes Balbus de Janua’s Catholicon (Venice, 1497) are held at Salisbury Cathedral (shelfmark Y.2.12); the book was bequeathed to the library by Edmund Gheast, bishop of Salisbury, in 1577. My thanks to Suzanne Eward for this bibliographic information. Robert Coplande’s The Maner of Dauncynge, also known as

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Derbyshire family. One John Banys (hitherto unidentified) collated them around 1500 in a tiny pocket book with Latin prayers and other unconnected matter. The dance section amounts to twenty-six choreographies in English (without step explanations), followed by tunes and an alphabetical list of ninety-one dance titles, most of them supplied with the number of dancers needed for performance.⁴² The entire repertoire seems to require male dancers only, a unique phenomenon among pre-1700 European collections of social dances. Given its many terms of French, Italian, and English provenance, the book has no specific local origin.⁴³ The Gresley dances have intriguing titles: Rotiboully also occurs in variations in Burgundian and Italian manuscripts. Newcastle is the kind of name we find in country dance collections of the seventeenth century. Lubens discunens may allude to Libeaus desconus, a fourteenth-century English romance attributed to Thomas Chestre; Eglamour to Sir Eglamour, another Middle English romance. Instructions such as ‘change places’ or ‘meet’ are oddly reminiscent of the terminology used in countrydancing some 150 years later. ‘Compass’ and ‘triangle’ formations also appear in Robert Bargrave’s mid-seventeenth-century dances (of which more later). It would, however, be over-optimistic to infer a continuously transmitted English dance repertoire from such scant terminological evidence. Few other English choreographies pre-dating the late sixteenth century have been found. A single choreography survives in an early Tudor moot book of Lincoln’s Inn, glossed as ‘the old measure’ by a seventeenth-century hand: The howe of the howse [margin: or the old measure] Fyrst half turn and undo yt agayn, flower, iij forth, the fyrst man and the second folowe, flower and roll into other placys, hole turn, flower, and then roll into other placys.⁴⁴ The Manner to Dance Bace Dances (1521), is a translation close in character to a treatise published by Michel Toulouze, L’Art et instruction de bien dancer (c.1488–96). See also Peggy Dixon, ‘Reflections on Basse Dance Source Material: A Dancer’s Review’, p. I, Historical Dance, 2/5 (1986–7), 22–9, and p. II, Historical Dance, 2/4 (1985), 24–7. ⁴² David Fallows, ‘The Gresley Dance Collection, c.1500’, Research Chronicle, 29 (1996), 1–20. ⁴³ Jennifer Nevile, ‘Dance in Early Tudor England: An Italian Connection?’, Early Music, 26/2 (1998), 230–44. Nevile privileges an Italian background of the Gresley repertoire. ⁴⁴ CUL MS Ll.1.11, a thin parchment volume of 33 leaves. Fol. 33r, probably in a hand from around the time of Henry VII or Henry VIII. Transcribed in John Hamilton Baker, The Legal Profession and the Common Law: Historical Essays (London and Ronceverte, W. Va., 1986), 26, 30; also J. H. Baker (ed.), A Catalogue of English Legal Manuscripts in Cambridge University Library (Woodbridge, 1996), 430. I am grateful to Dr Richard Beadle for this reference. A 15th-cent. Christmas carol (‘Nowell Nowell’, fol. 32r) with musical notation precedes the dance; it might have been sung during performance. For Baker, ‘howe’ refers to ‘hove-dance’ or ‘hof dans’: John Gower, perhaps a member of an Inn, knew the word. See Confessio Amantis (III. 6): ‘Where as I muste daunce and singe The houe daunce and carolinge’ (date: 1390). In Caxton’s Reynard, ‘ther was daunsed . . . the hovedaunce with shalmouse trompettis and alle maner of menestralsye’ (date: 1481) (all cited from OED).

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This seems to be a dance for three men, with a pattern of one advancing at a time, the others following, full turns, obscure ‘flowers’, and another change of places. If the piece indeed belonged to the ‘old measures’ (explained hereafter), it differs from those recorded from the late sixteenth century onwards.

The ‘Measures’ The ‘measures’ represent an English social dance repertoire of which the oldest choreographies (the ‘old measures’) date back to the Elizabethan period. Although the number of ‘measures’ increased in the seventeenth century, a core group of eight dances can be identified: Quadran Pavan, Turkeyloney (in various early spellings), The Earl of Essex Measure, Tinternell, The Old Almain, The Queen’s Almain, Cecilia [Almain, Pavan], and The Black Almain. These names are frequently mentioned in music sources of the period; hence the dances (and their tunes) may have belonged to a stock repertoire played in the Inns of Court and aristocratic households.⁴⁵ The ‘measures’ are included in seven manuscripts, roughly compiled between the 1560s and 1670s. These documents have been associated with the Inns, even though, as John Ward has shown, their connection to actual lawyers’ ceremonial is mostly spurious.⁴⁶ The ‘measures’ have been discussed and analyzed at length by Ward, James Stokes, Ingrid Brainard, David Wilson, Ian Payne and others; they will therefore be mentioned only briefly here, with the dates based upon Ian Payne’s recent bibliographic assessment.⁴⁷ The so-called ‘Gunter Manuscript’ (traditionally estimated early 1570s, but 1563–6 according to Payne) represents an aide-memoire of dances in the commonplace book of a Lincoln’s Inn student, Edward Gunter.⁴⁸ A second manuscript contains eight ‘olde Measures’ without music on a bifolium signed by one John Willoughby (1571–1658) in 1594. Willoughby had numerous ⁴⁵ James Stokes and Ingrid Brainard, ‘ “The Olde Measures” in the West Country: John Willoughby’s Manuscript’, Records of Early English Drama, 17/2 (1992), 1–10, at 4. ⁴⁶ Ward, ‘Apropos “The Olde Measures” ’, 2–21. ⁴⁷ Ian Payne, The Almain in Britain, c.1549–c.1675: A Dance Manual from Manuscript Sources (Aldershot, 2003), 11–16; the book also contains transcriptions, music scores, and choreographic reconstructions. James P. Cunningham, Dancing in the Inns of Court (London, 1965), 12–13. On certain tunes connected with the ‘measures’, see John Ward, ‘Music for A Handefull of Pleasant Delites’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 10/3 (1957), 151–80; Patri Pugliese and Joseph Casazza, Practise for Dauncinge: Some Almans and a Pavan, England 1570–1650 (Watertown, Mass., 1980); D. R. Wilson, ‘Dancing in the Inns of Court’, Historical Dance, 2/5 (1986–7), 3–16. ⁴⁸ Bodl. MS Rawl. poet. 108, fols. 10r–11r.

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acquaintances at the Inns of Court.⁴⁹ Another manuscript miscellany of uncertain date (perhaps 1611–21), partly written in the hand of the antiquary John Stow, includes two leaves with dance descriptions whose author or compiler remains unknown, and an amateurish caricature of a male dancer.⁵⁰ The fourth, John Ramsey’s already-mentioned ‘Practise for Dauncinge’, belongs to a conduct treatise in a commonplace book, composed in about 1609; these dances may have connections with the Inns of Court since Ramsey had been admitted to the Middle Temple in 1606.⁵¹ Apart from the traditional eight ‘measures’, Ramsey added a vague account of Jacobean social dances such as galliards, brawls, and corantos, which, as Ward believes, were typical of the repertoire performed in the revels of court masques. Further dances are to be found in the miscellaneous papers of Elias Ashmole, the famous benefactor of the University of Oxford. This copy of the ‘measures’ may have been composed around 1630, when Ashmole was still a boy. The same miscellany also contains rough instructions for a coranto with a diagram.⁵² The Inner Temple Library holds the so-called ‘Butler Buggins Manuscript’ (1670s), which describes the Inner Temple measures. Buggins was Master of the Revels at the Inner Temple in 1672 and 1674–5, and his family had multiple connections to Cambridge and the Inns of Court.⁵³ Another version of the ‘old Measures of the Inner Temple . . . by Mr Butler Buggins’—not, in fact, written down by Buggins as often assumed—contains the ‘measures’ ‘as they were first begun and taught by Robert Holeman a dancing-Master, before 1640 and Continued ever since in the Inner-Temple-Hall’.⁵⁴ They were composed in the 1670s or even later.⁵⁵ The instructions for the ‘measures’ are fairly short. The longest, a Quanto dyspayne (from guanti di Spagna, ‘the gloves of Spain’⁵⁶), amounts to twenty-six lines; the shortest, a Pavyan, consists of ‘ij Singles and a duble Forward | | ij singles sydes | Reprynce backe’, to be performed by couples.⁵⁷ The description of the Pavyan is reminiscent of a dance type named Numbers by the Jacobean author James Cleland. For Cleland, it recalled ancient customs and was therefore commendable for gentlemen: ‘Dauncing named Numbers, ⁴⁹ Taunton, Somerset Record Office, DD/WO 55/7, item 36. Transcribed in Stokes and Brainard, ‘ “The Olde Measures” ’. ⁵⁰ Anon., BL MS Harl. 367, fols. 178r–179v. Caricature on fol. 179v. ⁵¹ Bodl. MS Douce 280, fols. 66av–66bv. ⁵² Bodl. MS Rawl. D 864, fols. 199r–v, 203, and 204. ⁵³ Inner Temple Library, London, misc. vol. xxvii, fols. 3r–6v. ⁵⁴ Ibid., fol. 1r. ⁵⁵ Royal College of Music, London, MS 1119, fols. 1r–2vand 23v–24r for the music. ⁵⁶ Ward, ‘Apropos “The Olde Measures” ’, 4. ⁵⁷ Bodl. MS Rawl. poet. 108, fols. 10v–11rand 10r.

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wherein daunced both men and weemen togither: which with our Divines permission (not approving the immoderate moving of the feet, more then I wil describe the proprieties of Honour, of Singles, of Two in Number, of Reprinse, and Double).’⁵⁸ ‘Measures’ certainly correlate well with ‘numbers’, and hence make references to ‘numbered’ dancing in court masques seem the more intriguing. Ben Jonson praised the performance of Queen Anne and her lady masquers in The Masque of Queenes (1609) in mathematical terms: a more numerous composition could not be seene: graphically dispos’d into letters, and honoring the Name of the most sweete, and ingenious Prince, Charles, Duke of Yorke [.] Wherein, beside that principall grace of perspicuity, the motions were so even, & apt, and theyr expression so just; as if Mathematicians had lost proportion, they might there have found it.⁵⁹

As David Lindley suggests, ‘numerous’ should be read as ‘made up of numbers’;⁶⁰ which agrees well with the mathematical method of combining steps for the ‘measures’. Did the ‘measures’ have an impact on court masques? As the legal profession actively engaged in plays and entertainments, and masque texts often exhort dancers to perform their ‘measures’, this seems very likely. At least one dance of the ‘measures’ group appears to have a theatrical history. The Nine Muses, it is proposed, was performed in an entertainment for Queen Elizabeth in 1565.⁶¹ Here nine performers move forward in three rows of three and at the end return to their places in a round, a practice faintly reminiscent of the three-figure pattern in the early Tudor Howe of the House. By the time of James I, however, formal choreographies had become more elaborate, and Jacobean masque texts—such as Jonson’s description of The Masque of Queenes—describe geometrical patterns in the masque proper which far exceed the level of The Nine Muses. And further caution is recommended when we consider the meaning of the word ‘measure’ in seventeenth-century usage: it could refer to ‘a specifically choreographed dance’, ‘a slow and stately dance’, a dance from the ‘old measures’, but also ‘dance’ in a general sense.⁶² ⁵⁸ James Cleland, Hero-Paideia, or The Institution of a Young Noble Man (Oxford, 1607), 225. ⁵⁹ HS vii. 315–16. ⁶⁰ David Lindley (ed.), Court Masques: Jacobean and Caroline Entertainments, 1605–1640 (Oxford, 1995), p. 231, n. to l. 677. ⁶¹ Bodl. MS Rawl. poet. 108, fol. 11r. For musical and choreographic interpretations, see Helena Mennie Shire, Song, Dance and Poetry of the Court of Scotland under King James VI (Cambridge, 1969), 35, 170, 264. Ward, ‘Music for A Handefull of Pleasant Delites’, 174. ⁶² See Robert Mullally, ‘Measure as a Choreographic Term in the Stuart Masque’, Dance Research, 16/1 (1998), 67–73; see also John Ward, ‘The English Measure’, Early Music, 14/1 (1986), 15–21.

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The ‘measures’ as described in the seven manuscripts listed above hardly required week-length rehearsals which were customary for the specially choreographed dances in masques. Thomas Giles, who created the formal dances in The Masque of Queenes, certainly did not instruct Anne and her ladies to perform a choreography resembling The Nine Muses. He could have used steps and floor patterns as they occurred in the ‘measures’ to build up the new, ‘more numerous composition’ which Jonson so admired, but none of the ‘measures’ make provision for dancing letters, as Anne did; masque proper choreographies were clearly enriched by elements alien to the English ‘measure’ tradition. While ‘measures’ in the way they are presented in manuscripts must be discounted for the theatrical part of masques, they could have been employed in the social part: in the revels, easy dances which included as many members of the audience as possible were in demand.⁶³ In William Browne’s Masque of the Inner Temple (also known as Ulysses and Circe), which was probably performed at the Inns in 1615, the masqued knights took out the ladies for ‘the old measures, galliards, corantos, the brawls etc.’.⁶⁴ ‘The Prince did leade the measures with the French embassadors wife’, Sir Henry Herbert reported about the revels of Time Vindicated in 1623, alluding to a specific social repertoire which he distinguished from the ‘galliards’ or ‘corrantos’ danced on that occasion.⁶⁵ If the revels did indeed draw upon the ‘measures’, as Herbert’s statement strongly suggests, they emphasized a conservative repertoire of social dances which dated back to the Elizabethan period, and thus emphasized the continuity from the Tudor to the Stuart reign.⁶⁶ By asking for ‘measures’ in the revels of court masques, Stuart rulers could have made a conscious effort to claim dynastic legitimacy by kinetic re-enactment.

Country Dances It is questionable whether country dances dominated James’s court because, as unsympathetic seventeenth-century accounts claimed, Buckingham’s relatives could not master more challenging genres. Yet such views tell us that country ⁶³ See Alan Brissenden, Shakespeare and the Dance (London, 1981), 7. ⁶⁴ William Browne, The Masque of the Inner Temple, ll. 459–61, in T. J. B. Spencer and S. Wells (gen. eds.), A Book of Masques (Cambridge, 1967), 199. ⁶⁵ The Control and Censorship of Caroline Drama: The Records of Sir Henry Herbert, Master of the Revels 1623–73, ed. and introd. Nigel Bawcutt (Oxford, 1996), 140. ⁶⁶ In the 1670s the Inns sought ‘to restore an old custom of ceremonial dancing discontinued during the years of the Commonwealth’, and abandoned this only in the 1730s. Ward, ‘Apropos “The Olde Measures” ’, 2, 9.

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dances were perceived as popular and accessible, and indeed explain why country dances in published form enjoyed such success from the later seventeenth century onwards.⁶⁷ A few manuscript sources in seventeenth-century hands of uncertain date survive. Several are held at the British Library: MS Lansdowne 1115 (fols. 35–8) contains four unnamed dances with the patterns of the dancers’ initial positions; MS Sloane 3858 (fols. 15–18), a collection entitled ‘Chorea’, contains step descriptions for ‘Bobing Joe’, The Marriners’, ‘Amy’, ‘Parssons [sic] farewell’, ‘The Boone Companion’, ‘Sollibrand’, ‘Abergany’, ‘Ladie Dutchesse’, ‘Jog on’, ‘Sheppeards Holi[day]’, and ‘Jack Pudding’; MS Add. 41996 (fol. 18r) gives step instructions for a ‘Maurice daunce’, ‘Newcastle’ (a round dance for eight), ‘Put up thy dagger’, and ‘Lavena’, all placed next to some poetry, in a minute seventeenth-century hand; there is no evidence that it was composed in 1650.⁶⁸ Recently, the ‘Pattricke Manuscript’, a commonplace book at Harvard Library, has been discovered by John Ward and studied by Carol Marsh. It was composed between 1649 and 1815 and contains various matter such as poems by Lovelace and others, as well as thirty-two country dances. These may represent ‘pre-Playford’ repertoire circulating in manuscript before 1651.⁶⁹ Indeed Carol Marsh has argued that the ‘Pattricke Manuscript’ is a prime example to prove a rich and idiosyncratic tradition mediated through manuscript circulation.⁷⁰ Such manuscripts represent an alternative to standardized country dance publications of the later seventeenth century. This standardizing influence was exerted by John Playford’s The Dancing Master, a compilation of country dances which saw ten editions between 1651 and 1700, topping any other European dance publication of the period.⁷¹ The Dancing Master catered for a mass readership. It would have been possible to learn dances from this resource. A simple explanation of basic steps and ⁶⁷ Allegedly, Buckingham’s family learnt ‘to carry themselves in a Court-like garbe, but because they could not learne the French Dances so soone as to be in gay Clothes, Countrey Dances must be the garbe of the Court, and none else must be used’. Anthony Weldon, The Court and Character of King James (London, 1650), 134. Given Weldon’s anti-Jacobean agenda, and the composition long after Buckingham’s death, the account must be taken with a pinch of salt. ⁶⁸ Date proposed by John Forrest, who discusses the ‘Maurice daunce’ at length. The History of Morris Dancing, 1458–1750 (Cambridge, 1999), 303–5. ⁶⁹ Houghton Library, Harvard, MS Eng. 1356. A transcription by John Ward and Carol Marsh is forthcoming in the Harvard Library Bulletin. See also Carol Marsh, ‘The Lovelace Manuscript: A Preliminary Study’, in U. Schlottermüller and M. Richter (eds.), Morgenröte des Barock: Tanz im 17. Jahrhundert (Freiburg, 2004), 81–90. ⁷⁰ Marsh, ‘Lovelace Manuscript’, 81, 89. ⁷¹ Count according to Robert Keller, The Dancing Master 1651–1728. Database of all editions at: ⬍http//.www.izaak.unh.edu/nhltmd/indexes/dancingmaster/⬎

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symbols for figures take care of beginners. Choreographies are described verbally, following a tune. A frequent instruction reads ‘for as many as will’, in line with Playford’s projected audience and print-run. Country dances are inclusive and easy to learn; popular tunes and a variety of geometric figures provide attractive entertainment. By the late seventeenth century, country dances were deemed as integral to good manners as witty conversation and marketed accordingly in phrasebooks. John Shirley’s The Triumph of Wit (1688) advertised itself as an ‘academy’ which delighted its readers with poems, songs, and other entertaining matter, including ‘an Introduction to the modish Method of DANCING, in the Examples of several Set Dances greatly in Request’.⁷² By 1699, Thomas Bray’s anthology of Country Dances: Being A Composition Entirely New promised both a varied homegrown repertoire as well as ‘The Newest French Dances’ and other social dances.⁷³ This is a huge development from the country dances of which we hear in the early Stuart masques. Here, country dances occurred in antimasques, where they characterized low-class characters, country people, or seasons; The Chirk Castle Entertainment (1634), for instance, included an entry of haymakers with country dances.⁷⁴ Country dances developed a range of geometric formations, such as interlacing figures with squares or chains, which could have provided attractive basis material to construct more complicated formal masque proper dances. For instance, the dance ‘Step stately’ (‘Pattricke Manuscript’, no. 19, fol. [19r]) for three couples stipulates that the dancers ‘shall leade upwards, in the shape of an halfe moone’. The ‘half moon’ does not occur in the published versions of this dance. It is a formation usually associated with theatre choreographies, and thus just one example to show that country dances do have theatrical potential. Indeed, it has been suggested that country dance publications from the mid-seventeenth century and later reflect the performance practices in early Stuart masques. According to such views, Playford’s collections contain dances which ‘came immediately and mainly from theatrical material, in particular from pre-Civil War court masques and entertainments, including those of Ben Jonson’; with his publications Playford intended ‘a cultural-political propagandist re-assertion of Stuart court values in the aftermath of Charles I’s ⁷² [John Shirley], The Triumph of Wit (London, 1688), 229–32. ⁷³ Thomas Bray, Country Dances: Being A Composition Entirely New (London, 1699). ⁷⁴ Jean Knowlton’s survey of dance genres in masques lists one country dance in the masque proper (Corona Minervae, 1636); one in the revels, and ten in antimasques. ‘Some Dances of the Stuart Masque Identified and Analyzed’, 2 vols., Ph.D. thesis (Bloomington, Ind., 1966), i. 37–52.

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execution’.⁷⁵ Playford, it is argued, may have acquired choreographic material pertaining to Jonson’s The Gypsies Metamorphos’d (1621) either through persons connected with the masque (such as actors or musicians), or through other printers or stationers in possession of foul papers from the masque, and therefore the country dance An Old Man is a Bed Full of Bones to the tune of Cock Lorell (Playford 1651, no. 76) may reflect the performance of the then Marquess of Buckingham and his fellow gypsies before James I.⁷⁶ We would have to ask how such material, if it ever existed in the first place, survived for thirty years. And how do we know that Playford’s published Interregnum dance accurately represents a choreography for a Jacobean entertainment? Other sources contain a version of the same dance: in the ‘Pattricke Manuscript’, the country dance ‘The old man with a bed full of bones’ (no. 13 fol. [11r–12r]) concludes with the instruction that the tune ‘Cooke Laurrel’ is to be played. The basic idea in both versions is similar (the men lead their ladies to the end of the room, then return and take another partner), but some differences exist in detail (for instance, the manuscript version involves six or eight dancers while Playford stipulates eight or ‘as many as will’). Versions of the same dance in different, unconnected sources attest to a widely circulating, popular piece whose origins remain unclear. Furthermore it has to be said that, as with the ‘measures’, English country dances of the seventeenth century were usually short and easy. (Students with average dancing talents and no previous experience in early repertoire can easily learn one in less than one hour, as the present author is able to confirm from personal experience.) Experienced masque performers would certainly not have spent weeks on the likes of An Old Man is a Bed Full of Bones. The nature of this repertoire would suggest that its performance took place in the sociable part of masques, the revels. Country dances were accessible, used familiar music, and often posed no restrictions on the number of participants. Eyewitnesses mention the names of such dances, such as ‘Huff Hamukin’ (probaby Half Hanikin, as it is termed in Playford) or ‘The Soldiers Marche’, energetically performed by Jacobean ladies in the revels.⁷⁷ Country dances were taught in dancing schools and some limited evidence links such schools with the theatre and the Caroline court, showing that the repertoire was acceptable for aristocratic and even royal performers. Lord Percy of Alnwick, ⁷⁵ Keith Whitlock, ‘John Playford’s The English Dancing Master 1650/51 as Cultural Politics’, Folk Music Journal, 7/5 (1999), 548–78, at 548. ⁷⁶ Ibid. 553–4. ⁷⁷ The Records of Sir Henry Herbert, ed. Bawcutt, 140, 19 Jan. 1623, on Time Vindicated.

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John Evelyn, and Prince Charles (the future Charles II) all took classes at John Bosseley’s prominent establishment in Oxford.⁷⁸ Bosseley junior’s partner William Stokes was responsible for the dances in William Cartwright’s Persian fantasy The Royal Slave, which was performed by students when Charles and Henrietta Maria visited Oxford in summer 1636. On that occasion, Stokes collaborated with the masque composers William and Henry Lawes.⁷⁹ Yet, as far as we know, Stokes and Bosseley were never commissioned with choreographies for court masques. To conclude, specially choreographed masque dances could have drawn on country dance elements within overall more complex structures, but they are lost. Playford’s compilations represent—if at all—a distant echo of masque revels. For certain Playford sold print versions of widely popular country dances in standardized form (as Carol Marsh has shown). His repertoire was commodified for public mass consumption. The preface to the reader in the first edition of The English Dancing Master alludes to dance as ‘a quality that has been formerly honoured in the Courts of Princes’.⁸⁰ We must not exclude the possibility that, to boost sales figures, Playford took advantage of Caroline nostalgia and overemphasized connections to the Stuart court—or indeed established some where there were none—by endowing his dances with arbitrary names suggestive of past occasions. This business strategy was common at the time: household almanacks or receipt books of the later seventeenth century, for instance, boasted spurious recipes for cordials, allegedly straight from Queen Henrietta Maria’s closet.⁸¹

Robert Bargrave’s Dances The first English choreographies for a theatrical context are preserved in the draft for a wedding masque in Constantinople. They consist of what might be ⁷⁸ Records of Early English Drama: Oxford, ed. J. R. Elliott et al., 2 vols. (Toronto, 2004), ii. 622. Bosseley, a city musician, started it before 1606, and his son continued there as late as 1661. ⁷⁹ Accounts regarding Cartwright’s The Royal Slave and William Strode’s The Floating Island, performed at Christ Church, state that ‘Stoakes’ was paid £22 ‘for Composing & performing 3 Dances and for Pumpes and some apparrell’. ‘Mr Lawes & his brother’ were paid for music and ‘apparrel’. Records of Early English Drama: Oxford, i. 520. These entries probably refer to both plays as both included a masque and dances. ⁸⁰ John Playford, The English Dancing Master (1651), ed. Hugh Mellor and Leslie Bridgewater (London, 1984), title-page verso. ⁸¹ See e.g. the anonymous compilation The Queens Closet Opened. Incomparable Secrets in Physick, Chirurgery, Preserving and Candying, & c. which appeared in many editions throughout the later 17th cent.

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called a ‘Dance of the Four Seasons’ and an ‘Antick’ for four men and a woman (presumably played by a man as well). All were composed by Robert Bargrave, a secretary of the Levant Company, in about 1650.⁸² As this event will be discussed at length in a separate chapter, I will restrict myself to a brief technical discussion of the ‘Dance of the Four Seasons’. Here, Bargrave includes steps, spatial directions, and tunes. John Ward considers Bargrave’s creations eccentric: The words used in describing country dances were part of a widely shared code for naming a limited number of movements and actions repeatedly called for. Bargrave’s choice of words (some of which appear to be synonymous with country dance terms) seems to have been in large part original with him, as were the measures he was describing, which probably accounts for the variety of words used and for the absence of any systematic use made of them.⁸³

Even so a systematic terminological comparison reveals much common ground with dances contained in the ‘measures’ manuscripts and country dances, as Table 1 (in alphabetic order) shows. In the ‘Dance of the Four Seasons’, Bargrave distinguishes about thirty recurring steps, gestures, and figures. Most terms express the dancers’ positions in space and their relation to partners (‘face to face’, ‘hand in hand’, ‘fall into four corners’, etc.). Often the movements are reversed immediately after they have been carried out (‘& then home’, ‘& then back againe’ etc.). Pantomime is restricted to ‘look back’, ‘bend forwards/backwards’, and ‘start’. Even so, Bargrave includes more than either Playford (‘peep’) or the ‘measures’ sources, which might indicate the theatrical purpose of his dance. The many terminological parallels with Playford and the ‘measures’ might originate from the author’s studies at Oxford, or his time at Gray’s Inn as a musical boy.⁸⁴ Bargrave was not a dancing master in full pursuit of the correct terminology. He describes what he knows from experience rather than the lexicon, and in this shares the attitude of the person who compiled the ‘Pattricke Manuscript’ close in time to Bargrave’s masque. Bargrave’s intriguing choreography adapts conventions from country dancing and Elizabethan old measures to theatrical use.

⁸² See Bargrave, Diary. I discount the earlier ‘The Nine Muses’ as theatre dance; by the time it was written down it might have been a social dance. ⁸³ Ward, ‘Newly Devis’d Measures for Jacobean Masques’, Acta Musicologica, 60/2 (1988), 111–42, at 136. ⁸⁴ On the question of Bargrave’s admission see Bargrave, Diary, 1. Michael Tilmouth, ‘Music on the Travels of an English Merchant: Robert Bargrave (1628–1661)’, Music & Letters, 53/2 (1972), 143–59, at 158.

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Table 1. Movement and formation terminology in Bargrave’s ‘Dance of the Four Seasons’, The English Dancing Master (1651), and dances in the ‘measures’ manuscripts Bargrave, ‘Four Seasons’

Playford (1651)

Measures MSSa

arms

advance arms (a double round in arms)

bend forwards | backwards bounds Bring (your woman | man under your left | right arm cast off (changing corners) change (sides, corners)

cast off change (places, ends, hands)

capers (half capers) cast off change (place, hands round); shift hands chase (forward)

chase (forward, backward): [might correspond to the French chassé] cross with cross cross (over, round) (over | above | about | below | right or left hand | to your place) double (forward, round, back) double (forward, back, round) draw smoothly your leg b [later versions: embrace] embrace enter face (to face) face [noun] face to face fained mounts [feigned?] fall (back | into | off | out fall (back | into | on | even | fall (into cinque pace, from) | into a rank) down) follow galliard pace | cinque pace go off go or come (half round | round | about | down | between | behind | toward | up | under the arms of another dancer) hand in hand | hands with (hold | take) hands, hand hold (hands), shift hands, down, with one hand and join hands then the other hay (single | double) hey heave up (the man, the woman in your arms) home (again)

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Table 1. (Continued) Bargrave, ‘Four Seasons’

Playford (1651)

Measures MSSa

honour (and embrace)

honour (with the left, right foot), honour & embrace hop

kiss lead up | down | towards lead | lead up (hand in hand): in country (a double | forwards | back dancing, the partners | in | out | to the wall) would have done so with a double step

meet: in country dancing, partners would have approached each other with a double step part again pass (between) [look back, start?]

meet

part hands pass (over)

slide up | downc

leane long steps meet

part (hands) pase [pace? or pass?], pas, pass over

peep (three times) pull [a partner] about (and kiss) put (back [a partner] by both hands) rise

round salute separate set and turn round: ‘set’ in country dancing means ‘one step to the left, one to the right’

lead (forward)

repryme [repeat] (back) arise round (in arms), round cross

salute set (to one’s own) set (two singles), set and turn set and turn single (a single to one hand, a single to the other, and a turn single) single (two steps, closing single (forward, back, side) both feet, side) sides [a double towards each side other, or cross] slide (upwards | downwards), French slides [1640] slip up | down | slip [noun] slip (noun) [identical with ‘slide’?] [identical with ‘slide’?] snap (fingers)

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Table 1. (Continued) Bargrave, ‘Four Seasons’

take out

turn round | back | off | half round compass (four) corners hay rank triangle

Playford (1651)

Measures MSSa

stand

stand still, with face inward, with back against step forward (and close) take hands

take hands | your own [partner] traverse turn (a partner, one’s own | half about) (come with a) compass (to your place) square dance hey file

to and fro traverse (forward, back, sideways) turn (back, round)

walk (up, down, steps) wheel wind to your place, back all to your (back) to your place places a brest [position of breast] a

Bodl. MSS Rawl. poet. 108, Rawl. D 864, Douce 280. BL MS Harl. 367. Inner Temple Misc. vol. xxvi. RCM MS 1119. Somerset Record Office, DD/WO 55/7, it. 36. b Kissing and embracing had already intrigued the young Erasmus when he first visited England in 1499. It was still common in English social dances of the 17th cent. (Stokes and Brainard, ‘ “The Olde Measures” ’, 9–10). c Did Bargrave mean a ‘French slide’ as indicated in a late ‘measures’ source? Would it have been reminiscent of the French glissé?

Perhaps we find in Bargrave’s creation a modest, downscaled example of how dancing masters went about their business in court masques, mixing traditions and personal taste. FRENCH SOURCES French dance sources of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century include Thoinot Arbeau’s Orchésographie (1588?, 1589, 1596);⁸⁵ the anonymous ‘Instruction pour dancer’, an undated manuscript associated with Michael ⁸⁵ The year 1588 is a conjecture based on the imprimatur (22 Nov. 1588). An undated copy in the BN has ‘1588’ written on the title page (date of hand unclear). The so-called 1588 version might simply be another print-run of the 1589 one. The 1596 issue occurred one year after Arbeau’s death.

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Praetorius’s Terpsichore (1612); François de Lauze’s Apologie de la danse (1623); and Barthélemy de Montagut’s plagiarized version of an earlier draft of the same, ‘Louange de la danse’ (1620s).⁸⁶ These works are interested in social dance genres of the period. The technical level ranges between low and high. Orchésographie begins with a conventional history of the dance before moving to popular dance types. In a Socratic dialogue, an avuncular master imparts his knowledge to a fictitious student called Capriol. The book covers choreographies, music, illustrations of dance postures, and customs of the period, such as advice on proper female behaviour. Given the learned prefatory matter, Orchésographie catered for an upmarket audience (the text refers to the University of Orléans). Its author has been identified with the canon Jehan Tabourot (1520–95), an uncle of the writer Étienne Tabourot. Under the pseudonym ‘Arbeau’, Tabourot also wrote another didactic book not related to dance: Compot et Manuel Kalendrier (Langres, 1582; Paris: Jean Richer, 1588) is a beginner’s guide to calculating the dates of moveable feasts. It shares the easygoing, conversational tone of the dance book. Orchésographie is an exceptional source as it gives readers a glimpse of regional French dancing, and it even reproduces a theatrical mock battle for four dancers armed with batons and bells. Some social dances are uncommonly rich in gesture and mime: the Branle des Hermites prescribes pious bows, and Arbeau asks his readers not to dress up in clerical costume out of respect for the faith.⁸⁷ By the 1580s, some dances may no longer have been fashionable since the author was an elderly man and the publication occurred long after its composition.⁸⁸ Orchésographie shares with Italian sources an interest in legwork and jumping. Again, the upper body is kept straight, with relaxed arms. Given its lively, diversified repertoire and copious commentary, Orchésographie has become a favourite with critics, and its author has even been considered ‘the authority on Renaissance dancing’.⁸⁹ Two, if not three, editions in the late ⁸⁶ Thoinot Arbeau [Jehan Tabourot, 1520–95], Orchesography [Orchésographie] (Langres, 1589), ed. J. Sutton, trans. M. Stewart Evans, 2nd edn. (New York, 1967). Instruction pour dancer: An Anonymous Manuscript, ed. A. Feves et al. (Freiburg, 2000); the manuscript is held at Hessische Hochschulu. Landesbibliothek, Darmstadt, MS 304. François de Lauze, Apologie de la danse (n.pl., 1623). Barthélemy de Montagut, Louange de la danse, ed. B. Ravelhofer (Cambridge, 2000). ⁸⁷ Orchésographie (1589), fols. 83r–84r, 85r–86r. ⁸⁸ Jehan des Preyz to Guillaume Tabourot, ibid., title-page verso. ⁸⁹ Skiles Howard, The Politics of Courtly Dancing in Early Modern England (Amherst, Mass., 1998), 14. Rudolf Braun and David Gugerli call it the most famous dance book of the 16th cent. in Macht des Tanzes—Tanz der Mächtigen: Hoffeste und Herrschaftszeremoniell 1550–1914 (Munich, 1993), 53. Franko privileges it in The Dancing Body in Renaissance Choreography (c.1416–1589) (Birmingham, Ala., 1986).

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sixteenth century attest to a certain success with contemporary readers. Yet there is no proof that the treatise circulated in early modern England.⁹⁰ In this context it is worthwhile to look at an obscure Almanach, ou Prognostication des Laboureurs (1588), by a certain ‘Jean Vostet, Breton’, also a product of Arbeau’s Paris publisher Richer. The dedication to one Mr Aubert Josaquot, a preacher, contains an intriguing reference to ‘Sieur Arbeau nostre bon seigneur’. Apparently, Vostet had sent a promotion copy of Arbeau’s Compot to Mr Josaquot. As he explained, Arbeau’s Compot could, despite its ‘elegant and gentle discourse’, not attract the readership it deserved because it had been printed in provincial Langres (‘lequel n’ayant esté imprimé qu’au lieu de Langres, n’a pas encore esté veu de beaucoup de gens, combien que ie ne treuue discours plus gentil’).⁹¹ Vostet was trying to sell Compot to a wider public; indeed it has been suggested that Vostet was yet another pseudonym of Arbeau/ Tabourot.⁹² Whatever the identity of Vostet, his attempt raises questions about the circulation of Arbeau’s other book which was published in Langres, Orchésographie. If books from Langres needed to be rescued from provincial oblivion, how well known was Orchésographie beyond a certain regional reputation? The influence of Orchésographie on English dancing practice in the early seventeenth century remains therefore uncertain. In 1612, Michael Praetorius published a collection of French dance music, Terpsichore, which he dedicated to Duke Friedrich Ulrich of Braunschweig. As Praetorius explained the provenance of his tunes, they derived from social dances and contemporary ballets de cour: Nebenst dem ist noch ferner zuwissen | daß die Melodyen vnd Arien, wie sie es nennen | dieser Däntze | von den Frantzösischen Däntzern | vnd zugleich meistentheils sehr guten Geigers . . . oder Lautenisten componiret vnd gedichtet seyn | vnd jhre Pässe in Däntzen | Couranten, Balletten vnd Auffzögen | etc. darnach richten: vnd wenn sie jhre Discipulos, als grosse Herren | Adels vnd ander Standes Personen | im dantzen vnterweisen | zugleich mit auff der Geigen oder Lauten dieselbe Däntze darzu spielen vnd musiciren. Vnter diesen seynd noch jetziger zeit Viere des Königes in Franckreich Violons und Däntzer | welche zugleich auch darneben gute Componisten, im leben: Als 1. de la Motte, welcher an die 20 000 Kronen mit Dantzlehren erworben. 2. de la Fond. 3. de la Grenee. 4. Beauchamp. . . . Vber daß seynd in die 300. Meister zu Paries, so dantzen ⁹⁰ Smith and Gatiss failed to trace Orchésographie in early English libraries (‘What Did Prince Henry Do?’, 201, 207 n. 39). ⁹¹ Jean Vostet, Almanach, ou Prognostication (Paris, 1588), sig. [Aij]r. ⁹² Electronic catalogue entry on that work, BN.

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lehren | vnd zum theil auch componiren; Aber biß an die oberzehlete gelangen sie nicht. Also seynd nun dieser Meister und deroselben Vorfahren auffgesetzte Melodyen vnd Arien von solchen allerhand Däntzen | meistentheils von des . . . Fürsten und . . . Herrn Friedrich Vlrichen | Hertzogen zu Braunschweig vnd Lüneburg | etc. meines gnedigen Fürsten vnd Herren Dantzmeister Anthoine Emeraud mir communiciret worden. Furthermore it must be known that the melodies and airs (as they call them) of these dances were composed and invented by French dancers who were at the same time for the most part excellent violinists . . . or lutenists, and they coordinate their steps in dances, courantes, ballets, and processions with these. And when they instruct their disciples, such as great lords, noblemen, and other persons of rank, in the dances, they play at the same time these dances on the violin or the lute. Among these four are still alive, at present in the King of France’s Violins and dancers, who are also good composers. 1. de la Motte, who earned about 20,000 Kronen by teaching dancing; 2. de la Fond; 3. de la Grenee; 4. Beauchamp. . . . Furthermore, there are 300 masters in Paris who teach dancing and, in some part, also composing, but they are not up to the level of the above-mentioned. Thus, most of the melodies and airs of sundry dances by these masters and their predecessors . . . have been communicated to me by Anthoine Emeraud, dancing master of my gracious Prince and Lord, Friedrich Ulrich, Duke of Braunschweig and Lüneburg.)⁹³

‘La Motte’ recalls a prominent family of dancers and musicians which was also connected with Henrietta Maria. Jehan de la Motte, maître baladin des pages de la grande écurie du roi, and member of the French king’s Violins, was mentioned in Paris records beween 1583 and 1631.⁹⁴ Noël, another court violinist (active c.1610–29), was employed by Henrietta Maria as ‘baladin des pages’ in the 1620s, together with the famous Bocan, who created many dances for court masques: Baladin et Mr a danser Jacques Cordier dit Boccan Balladin pour Les Pages, Noel de La Motte.⁹⁵

⁹³ Michael Praetorius, Terpsichore (1612), ed. G. Oberst (Wolfenbüttel and Berlin, 1929), p. xi; my trans. See also Instruction pour dancer; 32. ⁹⁴ For Jehan and other family members, see Yolande de Brossard, Musiciens de Paris, 1535–1792 (Paris, 1965), 165–7. ⁹⁵ BL MS King’s 136, IV, no. 842, fols. 433r, 435v, 436v, 439r. The manuscript lists household members who ‘did not accompany the queen’ to England in 1625.

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Recently an anonymous French dance manuscript, ‘Instruction pour dancer’ (late sixteenth or early seventeenth century), has been discovered in Germany, whose sequence of choreographies corresponds with that of Praetorius’s dance scores. As the choreographies nicely match the music of Terpsichore, there is a fair chance that ‘Instruction pour dancer’ represents dances brought back from Paris to Braunschweig by the dancing master Anthoine Emeraud, and that its choreographies were de rigueur in French court ballet and social dancing. The twenty-eight dances include very traditional pieces, such as a an oldfashioned dance where performers exchange candlesticks. There are few arm directions (one dance, La Gillotte, stipulates lifting the lady at the end of a phrase). We find a familiar sequence of branles, some of them ‘danced at court’, as the writer asserts; their order of performance and names are partly reminiscent of Arbeau’s, while the style seems closer to later branle choreographies. Among its innovative features, the manuscript describes sliding steps (‘glissade’, ‘pas glissé’, ‘coulade’). A Pavanne stipulates a turnout of the feet, not prescribed in Arbeau. Phrases such as ‘il faut senlever les deux piedz ensemble’ resemble later French preferences for dancing on tiptoe. The author also likes counting the number of steps, in the manner of 1620s French dance literature.⁹⁶ Terpsichore is, in Britain, a rare volume.⁹⁷ Nonetheless, it includes tunes which were current all over Europe and also recorded in early modern English sources; some of them have been identified as having been played during masque revels.⁹⁸ The young Henrietta Maria must have been familiar with some of the repertoire presented in both Praetorius’s book and the anonymous ‘Instruction pour dancer’. Two later French prose treatises are directly linked with Jacobean court culture. Widely known is François de Lauze’s Apologie de la danse, published in 1623 (printer unknown), which its author dedicated to Buckingham (then still Marquess) and his wife Katherine Manners. Barthélemy de Montagut’s ‘Louange de la danse’ (c.1620) also addresses Buckingham. Both treatises include a history of the art of dancing and observations on proper behaviour in better society, followed by choreographies of social dances. Music or practical illustrations are missing. De Lauze’s version is more elaborate, with rules for women in a separate afterpiece and prefatory matter such as confident poems ⁹⁶ Instruction pour dancer, 17–24, 107, 132–4. I agree with editor Langston’s stylistic assessment of the dances. La pavanne a sept passages requires dancing on tiptoe and is characterized by sections such as ‘Le cinquieme passage a 58 pas’ (85–107, esp. 93, 97). ⁹⁷ I yet have to find a copy in one of the old libraries of the UK. ⁹⁸ Sabol uses Terpsichore as source for his scores of revel dances.

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on the author’s dancing skills and Buckingham’s generosity. ‘Louange’ represents a plagiarized, slightly modified version of an early draft of Apologie, now lost. Both treatises are interesting not only for dance historians but literary scholars as they represent an unusually well-documented plagiarism affair.⁹⁹ Montagut probably began as a dancer at the court of Louis XIII. Accounts mention him as a member of the French royal household in 1614; at about that time, a ‘Monsieur de Mont-Aigu’ danced as a hermaphrodite, ‘voltigeant tousjours en l’air’ (always tumbling in the air), in a ballet before the king.¹⁰⁰ De Lauze, a dancing master from Gascony, started off his career in Paris, where he had married the daughter of a sergeant-at-arms. Like so many of their colleagues, both Montagut and de Lauze were attracted to the Jacobean court. They sought the patronage of Buckingham, who was, after all, not only James’s favourite but also known for his French tastes and arguably the most famous aristocratic dancer of his time. Montagut eventually succeeded in finding employment in Buckingham’s household, where de Lauze approached him. Montagut, however, must have been wary of helping a potential rival; soon the amicable relationship between the dancers turned sour over a book project proposed by de Lauze. As de Lauze later put it, he had prepared a draft on the history and art of dancing which he intended to present to Buckingham. Montagut was asked for an informed critical opinion: I informed Sieur Montagut of my plan to prepare something on the dance, and, leaving him a copy of what I had already sketched, I asked him to consider it, and to advise me as a friend, if it was appropriate that I should continue. He had no sooner seen it, than, praising extravagantly my original decision to make a tract, he encouraged me by countless flatteries to continue with this work, whose completion he professed to desire impatiently, . . . whereupon I felt that his encouragement was directed only to his own advantage, and that his vanity was counting on my openness to yield readily to him all the credit which my labours could attract. . . . Telling him some months later that I had put the finishing touches, and also showing him a discourse which I had added in support of my subject, he used all his devices to obtain from me, and to print under his own name, that which I was not yet confident enough to have printed; but his pleas, his promises, and all his attempts having no effect, he sought other means which I pass over, and of which those who know them can only speak to his discredit . . . He finally ⁹⁹ For a full account of the affair, see Montagut, Louange, introd., and B. Ravelhofer, ‘The Medium of Plagiarism: Rogue Choreographers in Early Modern London’, in Paulina Kewes (ed.), Plagiarism in Early Modern England (Basingstoke, 2002), 134–48. ¹⁰⁰ P.B.S.D.V., Le recueil des balets (1615?), in Paul Lacroix (ed.), Ballets et mascarades de cour, 6 vols. (1868–70; repr. Geneva, 1968), ii. 52. BL MS Eg. 915, fol. 88v. Montagut, Louange, 9.

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had transcribed, without any change, the copy which he had had from me and expanded it with a certain discourse, which he called Loüange de la Danse.¹⁰¹

The incident must have been talked about—according to de Lauze, Montagut gave ‘to the whole Court (who knew of the deception) an occasion of entertainment for a while by this nice contrivance for fame’—but had no long-term effect on Montagut’s reputation.¹⁰² On the contrary. In 1623, the year de Lauze presented his Apologie to Buckingham, where he accused Montagut of piracy in public and in print, Montagut accompanied his master and Prince Charles to Spain. During Charles’s ill-fated mission to woo a reluctant Infanta, Montagut was apparently on excellent terms with the prince himself, from whom he won a prize at ‘jumping and running’.¹⁰³ Later that year in November, upon the return from Spain, Montagut choreographed a masque à l’espagnole with twelve gentlemen dancers in Spanish ruffs and ‘a fair appearance of ladies’ for the Spanish ambassador at York House. An unremarkable duple-time tune dubbed ‘York House Masque’, now held in the British Library, may have been played on that occasion.¹⁰⁴ The masque capitalized on the travellers’ newly acquired experience of court culture at Madrid. Presumably Buckingham showed off some Spanish dancing on this occasion as he had taken lessons with the Spanish court instructor de Frías, and possibly he even employed a Spanish expert at home in that year.¹⁰⁵ The text for this entertainment by John Maynard does not survive. It must have been difficult to reconcile the delicate topic, ‘a congratulation for the Princes returne’, with the failed Anglo-Spanish wedding project. Either the challenge proved too much for Maynard’s pen, or the guests felt caricatured by pseudo-Spanish costumes and movements—the entertainment received ‘litle or no commendation’ and ‘the Spaniards tooke offence at yt’.¹⁰⁶ Unperturbed by Montagut’s questionable literary record, Buckingham seems to have pushed him into Henrietta Maria’s service as soon as she had ¹⁰¹ De Lauze, Apologie, ‘Advertissement’, 1–2; my trans. I have considered Joan Wildeblood’s version in her edition of Lauze’s Apologie (London, 1952). ¹⁰² De Lauze, Apologie, ‘Advertissement’, 2. ¹⁰³ Montagut, Louange, 15. I am grateful to James Knowles for this reference. ¹⁰⁴ Ibid. 14; Nichols, iv. 940–1; Sabol, no. 153, John Orrell, ‘Buckingham’s Patronage of the Dramatic Arts: The Crowe Accounts’, Records of Early English Drama, 2 (1980), 8–17, at 12–13. ¹⁰⁵ For 1623, Buckingham’s controller of accounts Crowe lists £13. 6s.–8d. ‘given to a Spanish dauncer that taught his Lordship’. Montagut, Louange, 12. Previously I had assumed that the payment referred to a dancer in Madrid. But as Crowe paid in pound sterling, not in reales (in which currency Buckingham’s expenses were paid during the trip), it must refer to a Spanish professional on site in London. ¹⁰⁶ To Dudley Carleton, 21 Nov. 1623, The Letters of John Chamberlain, ed. N. E. McClure, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, 1939), ii. 527.

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arrived from France, for we find the dancer on her payroll as early as 1625. Together with six other professionals, Montagut was involved in a high-profile banquet-cum-masque for Charles, Henrietta Maria, and the French ambassador Bassompierre in November 1626, where dancers performed to French music. On this occasion, which lasted into the morning hours, each course was separated by intermedi. Buckingham himself excelled ‘in posturing and agility’.¹⁰⁷ A final tableau impressed the guest with lifelike appearances of Henrietta Maria’s favourite sister, Christine of Piedmont, and her mother, Maria de’ Medici, amongst the gods. The queen-mother of France beckoned to the rulers of Spain, Savoy, and the Palatinate, exhorting them to concord. For the general dancing, some crowd control seems to have been exercised as Bassompierre admired the turnstiles leading to the dance floor. With country dances the party revelled until four o’clock in the morning, before it settled to a fivecourse collation.¹⁰⁸ Shortly after, Henrietta Maria gave a birthday masque at Somerset House to which Bassompierre was again invited. The queen’s masque played on the theme of Gargantua’s education. Three tutors tried to teach him courtly virtues, among them the Earl of Holland, George Goring, Buckingham, and other servants of Henrietta Maria, probably Montagut as well.¹⁰⁹ As an ebullient example of the latest French court fashion, the masque endorsed Henrietta Maria’s cultural background. The Venetian ambassador judged the performance ‘very elegant’, yet certain members of the English audience felt uncomfortable with the recently imported conventions of burlesque ballet, where even kings might dance as pickpockets and prominent courtiers temporarily indulged in expressive roles of ill repute. The duke’s superb performance as a fencing master was, in the view of an English observer, ‘too histrionical’ to become an aristocrat.¹¹⁰ After Buckingham’s assassination in 1628, Montagut moved for good into a comfortable, well-remunerated position in Henrietta Maria’s household where he remained groom of her privy chamber (an honorary title) as well as pensioner until 1639. By 1631, Montagut also was the king’s personal dance ¹⁰⁷CSPV 1626–1628, xx. 22; Alvise Contarini to the Doge and Senate at Venice, 20 Nov. 1626. Depending on the sources, the masque took place on 5 or 15 Nov. ¹⁰⁸ F. de Bassompierre, Journal de ma vie, ed. M. de Chantérac (Paris, 1870–7), iii. 274: 15 Nov. John Orrell, ‘Amerigo Salvetti and the London Court Theatre, 1616–1640’, Theatre Survey, 20/1 (1979), 1–26, at 12. ¹⁰⁹ Sir John Finet, Finetti Philoxenis (London, 1656), 192, 16 Nov. 1626. Bassompierre, Journal, iii. 277. Accordingly, the masque took place on 16 Nov. ¹¹⁰ CSPV 1626–1628, xx. 32; Contarini to the Doge and Senate, 27 Nov. 1626. ‘His grace took a shape upon the other Thursday night, which many thought too histrionical to become him.’ Letter to Joseph Mead, 3 Dec. 1626, OS i, 389.

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instructor.¹¹¹ He probably performed in Chloridia (1631); although the masque text does not mention him, the costume accounts include a suit for him.¹¹² In July 1635, however, Montagut got into serious trouble while staying at or near Oatlands, Henrietta Maria’s summer residence. ‘Montague, the French Dancer, killed two Days since a Grasier, a substantial honest Man, hard by Brainford for which it is thought he shall fetch a Caper at Tyburn’, James Howell wrote from Westminster to the Earl of Strafford; and another letter seconded, ‘little Montague the Dancer hath killed a Man in Oatlands, for which I hope he will be hanged’.¹¹³ The outcome of the affair is unknown. Despite the antipathy expressed by men connected with the court, Montagut appears to have continued in office. For certain, he danced in Luminalia (1638), but his situation seems to have deteriorated in those later years, for he wrote an exasperated letter to Charles in which he alluded to imprisonment and penury. We have very few records of dance professionals in the early Stuart period; this particular piece is unique in its detail and personal tone. The menace of the Civil War seems to loom over the letter, as its author offers to pray for the preservation of the monarchy. Montagut pleads with Charles to pay him so that he may return home to France. Emotionally charged as the tone is, the dancer yet insists in a confident, businesslike attitude on the value of his service. We also get a rare glimpse of local xenophobia, turned against immigrant professionals in early modern London. The extraordinary document is worth citing almost in full: Sire, we are so greatly touched by the longing to see our country again, that we can only be happy again once we have returned there. This one desire forces me to plead with your sacred Majesty, that you have pity of me, so that I can leave where I am lost, having remained more than three years without having received a single denier of my wages. To the point that to live I am forced to sell all I have. Your Majesty, let me no longer languish for such a long time; if your Majesty intends to do me some good, I beg your sacred Majesty to do it quickly, without making me lose body and soul. All the world knows well that I have been afflicted here by all kinds of misfortune. I have lost my kinsmen [patrons?], I have been attacked [literally: assassinated] not once but many times, I have been robbed, injured, mocked, made prisoner, and sometimes even been reduced to guard my house to avoid the bad treatment and the affronts which ¹¹¹ PRO E403/2191, Charles’s accounts for 1631, fol. 42v. Montagut was paid £160 p.a. for this. ¹¹² PRO LR5/64, bill of Mr Henshaw, silkman, Lady Day Quarter 1630/1. ¹¹³ William Knowler (ed.), The Earl of Strafforde’s Letters and Dispatches, 2 vols. (London, 1739), i. 446, 448: letters by James Howell, Westminster, 30 July 1635, and George Garrard, Hatfield, 30 July 1635. I owe this reference to Timothy Raylor.

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I received from the people of this country. . . . Had I stayed in France, or travelled around, I could have acquired some modest means to keep me from poverty: and would now be spared from misery. I have no means but my art: this is all my merchandise, in which I trade, without meddling with any other business; given that I have assiduously struggled to acquire it, it seems only reasonable that it serves me to keep me from necessity. I very humbly beg your sacred Majesty to acknowledge the justice of my request . . . for what I have acquired through my labours in twenty-five years which I had the honour of serving your sacred Majesty, and for which I employed my best years. This is quite something, and it seems that nobody with a sense of justice can refuse my request. Your Majesty acquits yourself of a debt in giving me what was promised; as if you borrowed money and paid me with interest . . . It will please your Majesty to consider my poverty, my star-crossed fortunes, my lost youth, my age, incapable of starting a new career [literally: fortune] again, and the necessity to which I have been reduced to sell all I have to live . . . I prefer good health to any worldly goods, knowing that the air of this country exhausts me and will kill me if I stay only three months longer. May your Majesty’s actions make me leave this country in honour with compensation, of which your Majesty assured me so many times; which will be used to pay my debts so that I will no longer be cried after like a thief. Again I beg your sacred Majesty to let Sir Henry Vane issue my compensation. Do show at last your generosity and clemency to a poor foreigner, I beg you in the name of God. So that I can finally leave and end my old days in my fatherland, and I will be obliged to offer my most humble blessings to your sacred Majesty, and publicize everywhere loudly and incessantly your praise, and continuously pray for both your Majesties, for your good counsel and the happy preservation of your monarchy.¹¹⁴ ¹¹⁴ ‘Sire, Nous sommes tellement touchez du desir de revoir nostre patrye: que nous ne sommes jamais contents que lors que nous y retournons, ce seul desir me force de pryer vostre sacree Majesté. qu’elle ait pityé de moy que je m’en puisse aller ou je suis perdu, ayant esté plus de trois ans sans avoir receu un seul denier de mes gages. tellement que pour vivre je suis contraint de vendre tout que j’ay. que vostre Majesté ne me face plus languir si long temps, si vostre Majesté a envie de me fair du bien; je suplye vostre sacrée Majesté. de le faire promptement, sans me fair perdre le corps et l’ame. tout le monde scait bien que j’ay este affligé icy de toutes les facons. J’ay perdu mes parens, J’y ay esté assassiné non par une mais plusieurs fois, J’y ay esté volé, injurié, bafoué, prisonnier, et mesmes estant (parfois) reduit a garder ma maison pour eviter le mauvois traittement et les affrons que je reçois de ceux du paijs. . . . Si j’eusse demeuré en France: ou que j’eusse voyagé en quelque part que ce fut, je my aurois acquis quelque peu de chose pour m’exempter de la pauvreté: et serois a present hors de la misere. Je n’ay aucun bien que ma science; c’est toute ma marchandise, de laquelle seule je fais trafic, sans me mesler d’aucunes affaires; et comme j’ay bien sue et travaillé a l’acquerir: aussi est il raisonnable qu’elle me serve pour me mettre a couvert dela necessité. Je suplye tres humblement vostre sacrée Majesté d’avoir esgard ala justice de ma requeste. . . . je ne demande que ce qui m’est deu, et que ce que j’ay aquis par mes travaux en ving cinc ans qu’il y a que j’ay l’honneur de servir vostre sacrée Majesté et ou j’ay employé le plus beau de mon aage. Cela est bien considerable, et il semble que justement on ne puisse pas me refuser. vostre Majesté. me donnant ce qui’il m’a promis, s’aquite d’une debte: C’est comme s’il avait emprunté de l’argent et qu’il en payast l’interests . . . Il vous plaira sacrée Majesté d’avoir esgard a ma pauvreté, aux traverses que j’ay receües: a la perte de ma jeunesse: a mon aage incapable de pouvoir recommencer une nouvelle fortune: et a la necessité ou je suis reduit a vendre tout pour vivre et desirant preferer la santé, a tous les biens du

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In 1644, Montagut appeared again in Paris at the exile court as ‘écuyer, sieur d’Aillac’, gentleman of the chamber of the king and queen of England.¹¹⁵ De Lauze, for his part, seems to have given up on a London career as we find him later at the French court of Louis XIII and Louis XIV. His Apologie was published in French, which restricted his English readership to a polyglot elite such as Buckingham (schooled in his youth at the academy at Angers) and the French minority in London. In Paris, the volume could have made a greater impact. Apparently, de Lauze was successful at last, as he was appointed ‘médecin ordinaire du roi’ and ‘capitaine du parc’.¹¹⁶ As with their colleagues at the English court, French dancers were often awarded honorary titles. Households employed them as ‘valet’ (groom), or in a function connected with the stables. De Lauze’s medical position is an odd choice and suggests some knowledge in this field. His erudite Apologie might result from academic training. That he was not simply a writer with a theoretical knowledge of dance is substantiated by his involvement in ballets de cour, for instance, in the Ballet de la félicité (1639) which celebrated the Dauphin’s birth. In a first thespian appearance, Louis XIV was carried onstage by the character ‘Félicité’ (Bliss). On that occasion, de Lauze impersonated a Spanish river, and in another entry the Grand Turk.¹¹⁷ Two years later, de Lauze danced as a fury in the Ballet de la prospérité des armes de la France: ‘Les sieurs de Looze, Montan & la Barre, representans les Furies tenans des serpens en leurs mains. Un Aigle descend d’une nuée, & deux Lyons sortent de leurs cavernes. Les Furies touchent de leurs serpens l’Aigle & les Lyons, pour leur inspirer la fureur. L’Enfer se referme, & la Terre paroist comme auparavant.’¹¹⁸ No further stage appearances of de monde, cognoissant que l’air de ce pays me mine et me tüe sy j’y demeure seullement trois mois. Quoy faisant et m’assistant en me faisant sortir honnorablement de ce pays avec la recompence, que vostre Majesté m’a asseuré tant de fois de me donner, la quelle servira a acquitter mes debtes afin quon ne puisse cryer apres moy comme un voleur: Je suplye de rechef vostre sacrée Majesté de me fair donner responce par Sir Henry Vane, faire paroistre sur la fin vostre generosité et clemence a un pauvre estranger, je vous en suplye au nom de Dieu. a fin que je m’en puisse aller finir le reste de mes vieux jours en ma patrye, et je seray tenu de rendre tres humble graces a vostre sacrée Majesté, de publier partout hautement et hardiment vos loüanges, et de pryer continuellement pour vos Majestez. pour vostre bon Conseuil & pour l’heureuse conservation de vostre Monarchie.’ PRO SP78/92, no. 288; erratic punctuation. Undated; the catalogue suggests 1632. Yet until the late 1630s, Montagut was routinely paid. The references to low payment morale and twenty-five years of service suggest the early 1640s. ¹¹⁵ Montagut, Louange, 22. ¹¹⁶ Ibid. 3, 22–3. ¹¹⁷ Ballet de la félicité ([Paris], [1639]). ¹¹⁸ Ballet de la prospérité des armes de la France ([Paris], 1641). De Lauze also danced as a ‘Frenchman’ in Act II, second entry, together with three other professionals. Both ballets also in Lacroix (ed.), Ballets et mascarades de cour, v. 236, and vi. 36, 38. (The Ballet de la félicité is erroneously dated to 1634 here.) I am indebted to Rose Pruiksma for the information on both productions and a correct transcription from the 1641 ballet.

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Lauze are recorded. There is a fair chance that plagiarist and victim met again during Henrietta Maria’s exile years in Paris. In terms of dance technique, Montagut’s ‘Louange’ and de Lauze’s Apologie are almost identical. Their courantes and branles greatly differ in style from those described by Arbeau, who privileges jumps. They are slightly closer to ‘Instruction pour dancer’, which includes sliding and relevé steps (Santucci too mentions slides). Interestingly, de Lauze and Montagut tend not to give a full choreography but suggest elements from which performers may compose a whole dance for themselves. This invalidates the received view that, towards the Baroque period, dance books became ever more prescriptive and represented strictly codified Cartesian instruments of discipline. Apart from their improvisational slant, both works have a new aesthetic understanding of the dance. To begin with, they rely on regular bending of the knees and rising on tiptoe (plié-relevé-. . .-assemblé). Such movement sequences might have been promoted by the introduction of the high-heeled shoe in France and England. Inigo Jones devised high heels for grand masquers, by which they were distinguished from antimasquers. If dancers are already propped up by heels, they cannot rise much higher, hence they must lower themselves to achieve vertical variety. Intriguingly, danse noble under Louis XIV, which was performed with high heels, included features of lowering such as pliés as a standard element. From the high heels used with English courtly theatre costumes we might infer an increasing popularity of dance repertoire close to French Baroque style, which would also be consistent with the presence of French musicians and dancers at court. As for other new movement categories in Apologie and ‘Louange’, arms are opened and drawn towards the chest in a circular manner, corresponding to the steps. The feet are usually turned out. Despite a new emphasis on gliding steps, de Lauze and Montagut retain athletic caprioles, yet warn that only a confident dancer should attempt them, for flashy tricks smack of affectation and the professional tumbler. All these characteristics are strongly reminiscent of later French Baroque (or danse noble) style. To find them documented in close connection to the Jacobean and Caroline elite makes the early Stuart court, at least in terms of movement, appear more French Baroque than previously assumed. The vertical range of Italian repertoire had ranged from medium low to very high; the French style extended from very low to very high, increasing the vertical expressivity of dancers. Furthermore, plié-relevé and port de bras had consequences for female performers. Whatever a woman’s feet accomplished, it was often concealed by petticoats. Her costume, however, did not obstruct a

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view on the rising or sinking body, or the deployment of arms. Both French techniques therefore added welcome new expressive means. At about the time Terpsichore went to press, English courtiers familiarized themselves with current French fashions through educational trips to the Continent. With his stay at Angers, Buckingham gave only an early example; the fashion became immensely popular under Charles. In the 1640s, Blois was at times overcrowded by tourists seeking refinement. Robert Montagu, a cousin of the poet, took lessons in fencing, singing, guitar-playing, and dancing during his stay in Saumur in 1649.¹¹⁹ In turn, many Continental professionals considered England an ever more attractive destination. About half of the dancing masters living in early Stuart London were French. Most were connected with the court: Montagut, Simon de la Gard, Nicolas Confesse, Jacques Gaultier, and Sebastian La Pierre. A few seem to have been freelance professionals. These include Michel Robinser and a certain Monsieur Lever from La Rochelle.¹²⁰ Sir Henry Herbert also granted a gratis one-year licence to the multi-talented Alexander von Kückelsom (Kukelson, Cuquelson) for teaching music and dance. Active in the 1620s and 1630s, Cuquelson had instructed the daughters of Christian IV of Denmark in maths, languages, and dancing.¹²¹ Herbert’s involvement attests to an established bureaucratic procedure regulating the teaching of dancing in the early Stuart period, similar to that known in Elizabethan times, but now dancing schools were no longer monopolies. The possibility of temporary licences gave foreign professionals a chance to make a living in London, which no doubt increased immigration rates. French choreographers contributed to Jacobean and Caroline masques. Outstanding artists include Nicolas Confesse, later Sebastian and William Lapierre, but most of all, Jacques Cordier dit Bocan (c.1580–1653). In France, Bocan was a celebrity. His nickname apparently refers to an area in Picardy, promised to him by the Duke of Montpensier. Marin Mersenne’s Harmonie Universelle (1636) reproduced a tune attributed to him, La Bocanne.¹²² The French king’s Violins were called ‘les disciples de Bocan’; the artist himself

¹¹⁹ John Walter Stoye, English Travellers Abroad, 1604–1667 (London, 1952), 402–3. ¹²⁰ Count based on masters recorded in Walls; Holman; Irene Scouloudi, Returns of Strangers in the Metropolis 1593, 1627, 1635, 1639: A Study of an Active Minority (London, 1985), 309, 332; and Andrew Ashbee (ed.), Records of English Court Music, 9 vols. (Snodland, Aldershot, 1986–96). ¹²¹ The Records of Sir Henry Herbert, ed. Bawcutt, 213. The licence (dated 6 Mar.) does not indicate the year. Mara R. Wade, Triumphus Nuptialis Danicus: German Court Culture and Denmark (Wiesbaden, 1996), 61, 68, 84–5. ¹²² Marin Mersenne, Harmonie universelle, 2 vols. (Paris, 1636–7), i, ‘livre second des chants’, 170.

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‘le Baptiste d’alors’, ‘Lully of his day’.¹²³ Bocan made faces when he played moving pieces. He frequently insulted professional rivals. The queens of France, Spain, Denmark, Poland, and England sought his expertise; he could afford to charge astronomical fees.¹²⁴ Bocan was affluent enough to speculate on the Paris property market and buy an expensive three-storey house with adjacent grounds in 1626.¹²⁵ Like so many of his colleagues, Bocan travelled much, pursuing a dual career in both London and Paris, where his family lived. At the English court, Bocan enjoyed a long career as choreographer and violinist. He taught Prince Henry, Arbella Stuart, as well as Queen Anne, and received substantial gifts from Charles and Henrietta Maria.¹²⁶ He also accompanied the court abroad. In spring 1615, Ann Dudley, a maid of honour to Princess Elizabeth, married Meinhard von Schönberg, a high-ranking official in the household of the Elector Palatine. For the festivities, which took place in Heidelberg in March, Bocan composed a ballet in which four of Elizabeth’s English pages participated.¹²⁷ In London, he contributed to Love Freed From Ignorance and Folly, The Lords’ Masque (1613), and probably Coelum Britannicum (1634). Returning from France in early 1630, he was seized by pirates, together with Jeffrey Hudson and the royal French midwife, Madame Peronne. The event was celebrated in William Davenant’s mock-heroic poem Jeffereidos and described thus in a letter: The queen’s majesty, having no fancy, it seems, to our English midwives and nurses, had sent into France for both: who as they were coming, together with a dwarf, and, as some say, twelve nuns, were all intercepted and carried away by the Dunkirkers. . . . The dwarf taken . . . was Sesquipedal Geoffrey, coming from the queen mother out of France, . . . and, in his company and the same bark, the queens midwife, her nurse’s husband, Rocan [sic], her dancing master, &c.¹²⁸

¹²³ Holman, 176. ¹²⁴ Jules Écorcheville (ed.), Vingt suites d’orchestre du XVIIe siècle français, 2 vols. (Paris, 1906), i. 12–13. ¹²⁵ Catherine Massip, La Vie des musiciens de Paris au temps de Mazarin (1643–1661) (Paris, 1976), 96. He bought this house for more than 15,000 livres. ¹²⁶ In about 1608, Bocan appeared in Prince Henry’s household with an annuity of £60. He received substantial royal gifts, e.g. £500 in Aug. 1625, procured by Buckingham, and £200 in 1633 and 1634. Holman, 175–6; Walls, 223. ¹²⁷ Klaus Winkler, ‘Heidelberger Ballette: Musik und Tanz am kurpfälzischen Hof von Elizabeth Stuart und Friedrich V.’, in Georg Günther and Reiner Nägele (eds.), Musik in Baden-Württemberg, vol. vii (Stuttgart, 2000), 11–23, at 18. ¹²⁸ William Davenant, The Shorter Poems, and Songs from the Play and Masques, ed. A. M. Gibbs (Oxford, 1972), 37–43. Letter by Joseph Mead to Sir Martin Stuteville, dated 20 Mar. 1629/30 (p. 364). ‘Rocan’ is a misspelling.

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All eventually escaped. Given the strong cultural impact of French ballet de cour on the Caroline court, not least through Henrietta Maria, and the dominating presence of French artists in the royal household, the great Caroline masques must have looked very French, as far as movements were concerned. Both in grand productions in London and in private countryside entertainments, the influence of French burlesque ballet led to multiple, thematically often disconnected entries which replaced the Jonsonian antimasque.¹²⁹ Very likely, the Caroline masque proper, where performers sought to to express courtliness through dancing, was informed by proto-danse noble aesthetics.

CONCLUSION: A MULTIPLICIT Y OF ST YLES A number of various styles had an impact on English masquing, including practices of foreign origin. Even though no Italian choreographies for English entertainments have been found, Italian models were groundbreaking for early modern courtly dancing culture. Italian experts were the first to publish theatre choreographies. Figured dances, as they were performed in intermedi and French ballet de cour, could have found their way to England directly from Italian courts or via French mediation, and must have provided attractive templates for theatrical dances in Elizabethan and Jacobean courtly entertainment. Italian gagliarda variations, a domain in which Italian masters excelled, could have inspired male solo performances and even added diversity to female masque dances. If a rural Derbyshire family knew about Italian balli in about 1500, it seems extremely unlikely that the pervasive Italian dancing culture of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century bypassed the English court. As far as English sources are concerned, country dances and ‘measures’ were in themselves short and easy. Experienced masque performers would certainly not have spent weeks on this repertoire, as customary for court productions. It is, of course, possible that choreographers used steps and conventions from English traditions to build up a complicated, long choreography, in the same way that one can use the alphabet to write either an epigram or a novel. By the 1650s, country dances had developed a range of attractive formations, such as interlacing figures with squares or chains, which could have been used in theatre dances; although not documented with certainty in writing in the ¹²⁹ Walls, ch. 6.

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Jacobean and Caroline period, they might have been already available in practice. For certain, country dances were employed for local colour in comic or grotesque masque entries, and occurred in revels. The revels also offered a likely forum for repertoire circulating at the Inns and dancing schools, as shorter, inclusive social dances were on demand here. A series of dances whose choreography and order of performance was widely known would have represented an attractive option. Many English dances of the early seventeenth century posed no restrictions on the number of participants. Given that their music was familiar as well, country dances and ‘measures’ provided an inclusive medium, wrapping performers in muscular and acoustic bonding. Such features were desirable in spectacles which sought to involve the audience in the court’s vision of itself. Of all stylistic possibilities, the case for French style in masques is best documented. Many French artists migrated to London. They found powerful patrons and dominated the royal household by the Caroline period. Henrietta Maria created an influential French cultural ambience at the English court. French dancers not only taught an elite clientele, they actively performed as masquers or instrumentalists (often playing the violin). They even devised entertainments in the first place. Montagut’s biography conveys a good idea of a foreign professional’s career at the English court and the high standards of early Stuart ballet. The national identity of the dancer does not determine the dance. Accomplished courtiers such as Buckingham mastered various dancing styles just as they could speak several languages. Whatever the specific character of ‘los branles de Poitou’ danced in the revels of Oberon (1611), their origin was clearly not English.¹³⁰ The mobility of professionals and the cross-currents of fashions beyond borders should alert us to a multifaceted dance experience in court masques. Successful choreographers and performers were generalists. Montagut not only knew the latest French fashion but was perfectly capable of running a show with ‘Spanish’ choreographies; these could well have resembled a Spanish-Milanese style. The qualifications of both professionals and advanced amateurs in early modern London offer rich possibilities for dramatic characterisation by movement: mimesis by kinesis. I would therefore argue for a presence for many different styles in early Stuart masques, ranging from traditional English measures to foreign ones such as proto-French Baroque style. These styles were not deployed at random—on the contrary, they were strongly ¹³⁰ Eyewitness account, cited in OS i. 206.

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associated with particular sections of the masque, fulfilling particular functions and having particular connotations.¹³¹ Many masque entries featured national stereotypes. Judging from the scant description in booklets, this involved not only costume or strange accents but specific dancing. The Spaniard in The Entertainment at Richmond (1636) entered with a slow, stately sarabande, a dance of Spanish origin.¹³² In Jonson’s Love’s Triumph Through Callipolis (1631), confused lovers danced ‘with anticke gesticulation, and action, after the manner of the old Pantomimi, . . . expressing their confus’d affections, in the Scenicall persons, and habits, of the foure prime European Nations’.¹³³ This must mean that masque audiences were sufficiently dance literate to identify different and even foreign styles. A clear example of typecasting by dance was Jonson’s Irish Masque (1613). Here ‘Irish masters’ danced a ‘fading’ or ‘fadow’. The Irish spoke with an obtrusive accent (which some bystanders found insulting), wore their typical floor-length mantles, and were accompanied by what was then considered their national instrument, the harp. Now obscure, the ‘fading’ was an Irish dance which a contemporary play described as ‘a fine Jigge . . . now a capers sweet heart, now a turn a’th toe, and then tumble’.¹³⁴ The description is reminiscent of the minute artistry in Irish folk- and tap-dancing practised today, where performers flash agile ankles and turn their feet during leaps. Interestingly, the cast for The Irish Masque consisted of handpicked courtiers, all renowned for jumping, among them one Scottish dancer who could have honed his skills in this respect during a trip to Venice and Padua.¹³⁵ In the same way as costume, speech, or verse rhythm, specific types of movements were associated with specific parts of the masque. Stereotyped characters were endowed with balletic mannerisms which the audience associated with a particular country or community. A multiplicity of movement styles, including acrobatics and pantomime, provided variety. The choreographer’s art established a subset of a masque’s theatrical vocabulary, adding yet another facet to the rich multimedia experience such events offered during performance. Masque productions might employ German musicians, French dancers, Italian spectacle experts, Irish harpists, and English actors.¹³⁶ In the revels ¹³¹ See Knowlton’s lists, ‘Some Darces’, vol. i, ch. 2. ¹³² For a history of the genre, see Rainer Gstrein, Die Sarabande (Innsbruck and Vienna, 1997). ¹³³ ll. 30–3, in HS vii. 736. ¹³⁴ The Knight of the Burning Pestle (1613), Act IV, Scene i, cited from HS x. 543. The ‘fading’ seems incongruous with the solemn harps; yet the dialogue of the footmen confirms that the ‘masters’ dance it. ¹³⁵ HS x. 541. ¹³⁶ The Triumph of Peace alone involved, according to Bulstrode Whitelocke, ‘English, French, Italians, Germans, and other Masters of Musick’. OS ii. 540.

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English courtiers and foreign guests mingled. Courtly dance culture seems to have been cosmopolitan and heteroglot. Dance was a prime medium to engage a multinational audience. As an audiovisual and physically involving medium, dance promised contemplation and participation without language. Widely current styles contributed to typecasting, sidestepping the problems of bad acoustics or guests insufficiently aquainted with English. Dancing offered a tactile, immediate physical experience of English court life. Mark Franko writes about French burlesque ballet that it was ‘an event legible in its own terms’, ‘independent of verbal means’.¹³⁷ For English masques of the early Stuart period, I propose a kinetic vocabulary, legible in its own terms, which supplemented the theatrical vocabulary of early modern illusionistic theatre culture in England. ¹³⁷ Mark Franko, Dance as Text: Ideologies of the Baroque Body (Cambridge, 1993), 4–5.

3 Theatre Dances HISTRIONIC MOVEMENT AND THE ANTIMASQUE In a rare consensus, early modern theorists shared the belief that the more animated and gesticulatory a performance, the more histrionic and undignified it was. As such views occur in many sources regardless of period and region, they probably respond to a deep-rooted understanding of a ‘dignified’ ‘slow’ movement category in Western culture. The idea pervades not only dance tracts of the fifteenth century, sixteenth-century conduct books, and anti-theatrical treatises, but also the iconography of medieval and Renaissance rulers (preferably depicted motionless), where we may distinguish between imperious gestus and histrionic gesticulatio.¹ The phenomenon can even be traced back to Ciceronian and Quintilian rhetoric, Greek drama, and Aristotelian theory. In the Nicomachean Ethics, the wise citizen walked in a stately, unaffected manner.² This was echoed in early modern English treatises such as The Passions of the Mind (first published in 1601) which sought, in the words of its author Thomas Wright, to discover the ‘passions by externall actions’. Gestures which were ‘not too quicke’ signified ‘magnanimitie’; and walking too had psychological significance: fast going becommeth not grave men; for as philosophers hold, a slow pase sheweth a magnanimous mind: and if necessitie requireth not, a light pase argueth a light mind, because thereby wee know how the spirits are not sufficiently tempered & brideled; whereupon followeth lightnesse of bodie and inconstancie of mind.³

For Wright, the expressive potential of dancing did not simply indicate character but might even allow observers to draw conclusions about one’s profession (‘by ¹ Jean-Claude Schmitt, La Raison des gestes dans l’occident mediéval (Paris, 1990), 14, 30. ² Jan Bremmer, ‘Walking, Standing, and Sitting in Ancient Greek Culture’, in J. Bremmer and H. Roodenburg (eds.), A Cultural History of Gesture: From Antiquity to the Present Day (Cambridge, 1991), 15–35. ³ Thomas Wright, The Passions of the Minde in Generall (London, enlarged edn., 1604), bk. IV, ch. 2, pp. 124, 133–4.

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gestures in dancing some can give to understand most mechanicall arts and trades’).⁴ Given that physical movement was seen to project social status it is not surprising that conduct book authors considered the topic carefully and recommended ‘mediocritie’, a via media which avoided extremes: there is nothing so good, but if it be used with excesse wil become bad. Wherefore I praise not those Ordinarie Dauncers, who appeare to be druncke in their legs, . . . in shaking alwaies their feet, singing continuallie, one-two-three: foure; & five. When you go to Daunce in anie Honourable companie, take heede that your qualitie, your Raiment, and your skil go al three togither: if you faile in anie of those three, you wilbe derided. Imitate not so much the Masters Capers, as to have a good grace in the carriage of your bodie: this is the principal, and without the which al the rest is naught.⁵

A virtuoso galliard technique, as it would have been employed in the five-step ‘shaking’ of the feet, might attract and enchant onlookers, and yet appear artful, hectic, and histrionic—therefore the appeal of sprezzatura, the ‘snatch[ing]’ of ‘a grace beyond the reach of art’, as Pope later famously put it.⁶ For English moralists, dance was superfluous: it subverted the economy of human existence, where everything was measured—as St Matthew knew, ‘the very hairs of your head are all numbered’ (KJV, Matthew 10: 30). Divine foresight did not only count one’s hair but also one’s movements. No one put it more succinctly than William Prynne: ‘as many paces as a man maketh in Dancing, so many paces doth he make to Hell. A man sinneth in Dancing divers wayes: as in his pace, for all his steps are numbred . . .’⁷ For such reasons, apologists of the dance resorted to legitimizing strategies. Taking trouble to make the art appear not gratuitous, they pointed out how usefully the exercise preserved one’s health and improved one’s manners. Author-choreographers distanced themselves as true artists of the dance from incompetent instructors who spoiled their students with affected mannerisms. The dancer Montagut, who taught the Duke of Buckingham and Charles I, saw himself as a guardian of fine style. His ‘Louange de la danse’ advised that today people dance very simply and without affectation; and consequently [dancers should] refrain in their dances from . . . steps which are reminiscent of the baladin such as fleurets and caprioles, and even demi-caprioles . . . but they should only combine very ⁴ Ibid. bk. IV, ch. 2, p. 124. ⁵ James Cleland, Hero-Paideia, or The Institution of a Young Noble Man (Oxford, 1607), 226. ⁶ Essay on Criticism (1711), l. 153, in Martin Price (ed.), The Restoration and the Eighteenth Century (New York and London, 1973), 316. ⁷ William Prynne, Histrio-Mastix (London, 1633), 229.

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grave, well-timed steps . . . And if there are some who want to take offence at this advice instead of benefiting from it, and if, not knowing their limitations, their own opinion makes them think they can do better, I say to them that I speak only out of charity.⁸

Montagut’s colleague de Lauze disapproved of agitated ‘piroüetes’ and recommended ‘liaisons, & des beaux temps’, a kind of elegant legato expressed in movement and timing.⁹ Both dancers relegated excessive jumping and oversophisticated steps to the domain of the professional performer, the baladin, whereas the ‘amateur’ had, in theory, to make measured use of them. In practice, their use was widespread even among courtiers and princes: Prince Henry’s excellent leaps were admired by the Spanish envoy Velasco in 1604.¹⁰ Even masque-proper choreographies occasionally included vivacious footwork for reasons of diversity. In Oberon (1611), the grand masquers leaped vigorously. Well known is, of course, the incident in Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue (1618), where Buckingham saved a tedious performance by cutting a series of athletic capers. Significantly it was Buckingham, too, who was singled out by certain contemporaries as too histrionic for a courtier and privy counsellor.¹¹ English literature of the period often represented figures who danced very well as effeminate, theatrical, or foreign, and not to be taken seriously, as Robert Heath’s epigram ‘On Mounsieur Congee’ illustrates: A Proper handsome courtly man indeed, And wel set out with cloaths, can for a need Discourse with legs, and quarter congies, and Talk half an howr with help of foot and hand. But when I viewd this Mounsieur clean throughout I found that he was only man without.¹²

The affected, emasculated French dancing master became a stock figure in Caroline comedies and remained a favourite with Restoration drama. In opposition to the ‘French footeman’, ‘Rat’, or ‘Court dancing Weesill’, dramatists scripted a positive figure—male, heterosexual, English—into the play: audiences were invited to identify with conspicuously local heroes who had

⁸ Barthélemy de Montagut, Louange de la danse, ed. B. Ravelhofer (Cambridge, 2000), 133, 135. ⁹ François de Lauze, Apologie de la danse (n.pl., 1623), 36. ‘Temps’ in the usage of contemporary dance manuals could also mean ‘step’. ¹⁰ See Judy Smith and Ian Gatiss, ‘What Did Prince Henry Do with His Feet on Sunday 19 August 1604?’, Early Music, 14/2 (1986), 198–207. ¹¹ His role as fencing master, which would have involved balletic agility, was considered ‘too histrionical’. Letter, Dec. 1626, in OS i. 389. ¹² Robert Heath, Clarastella (London, 1650), 62.

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trouble with remembering steps and figures.¹³ Paradoxically, the English gentleman’s performance required carefully modulated imperfection. Such circumstances might have prepared the ground for a growing subsequent rift between a theatrical canon towards the end of the century— flashy jumps, pirouettes, minute trickery of the feet—and a social code, where performers, for reasons of taste or incapacity, abstained from demanding movements. While we do not know of contemporary English views of the increasing professionalization of ballet, French voices comment on the widening gap between virtuosi and ‘amateur’ performers in late seventeenth-century Paris. If we can generalize from Michel de Pure’s account, the efforts of Lully and his colleagues were frustrated by incompetent dancers from the better classes: They are greatly let down by the stupidity of most great lords and persons of quality. Usually these are not capable of anything, and constrain in this manner the neatest and most famous masters to restrain the force of their steps, the speed of movement, and other graceful elements of the dance, so as not to cripple an entry by the discrepancy in step and action. . . . [the pas de balet] must be more daring and vigorous than that of common [social] dancing, as applied in the balls and those ordinary and domestic dances which the women proudly claim to perform as well as the men; . . . it needs to have something faster and more vivacious . . . The first and foremost rule is, to make the step expressive, so that face, shoulders, arms, hands make [the audience] understand what the dancer does not say.¹⁴

The key words here are ‘fast’, ‘vigorous’, ‘daring’, ‘vivacious’. These categories rehearsed, yet again, the traditional concept of gesticulatio. Looking for gesticulatio in Stuart masques we find the category confirmed in the antimasque, where dancers excelled in multiplicity of gestures, leaps, and pantomime, and music was particularly lively. The acoustic conventions of the antimasque stipulated irregularity and confusion. Fast triple-time sequences, changes of rhythm, or unusual intervals do occur in dance music for aristocrats, but they are particularly prominent in ¹³ Such dancing masters can be found in James Shirley’s The Ball (performed in 1632, pb. London, 1639), from which the expletives cited (sig. [A4]r), and Shirley’s and William Cavendish’s The Varietie (pb. 1649). John Bryce Jordan, ‘ “Is He No Man?”: The Emergence of the Effeminate Male Dancer in English Restoration Comedy’, in J. Willis (ed.), Proceedings of the Society of Dance History Scholars (Riverside, Calif., 1999), 207–16. ¹⁴ Michel de Pure, Idée des spectacles anciens et nouveaux, facs. edn. (Paris, 1668; Geneva, 1972), 248–9; my trans. De Pure witnessed the collaborative productions of Lully, Benserade, and Molière. James R. Anthony, ‘More Faces than Proteus: Lully’s Ballet des muses’, Early Music, 15/3 (1987), 336–44, at 340.

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grotesque entries.¹⁵ If movements corresponded to the musical dynamics, as Anne Daye has proposed,¹⁶ scores indicate a highly irregular performance. With abrupt musical changes every few seconds, a tightly cued choreography becomes necessary. For antimasques, this means intense rehearsal and, probably, a predetermined movement catalogue. Asymmetric, irregular figures might result from detailed planning and map collective space as much as formal courtly formations. The dance instructions for an ‘Antick’ in a small-scale wedding masque of the 1650s (see Chapters 2 and 10) prescribe grotesque action in surprising detail. In court productions, where little was left to chance, rehearsals might last for weeks, and costumes and scenes were carefully pre-programmed; antimasque dances are unlikely to have provided an arena for individual spontaneity. Recent Bakhtinian approaches romanticize the grotesque body as unruly, open to change, and resisting orthodox codification, while courtly repertoire is condemned as ‘prescribed’ and ‘formal’.¹⁷ Yet seeming chaos was an aesthetic category appreciated by connoisseurs of the period: we need only think of the proverbial ‘very wild regularity’ praised in English gardens.¹⁸ In practice, grotesque antimasquers might well have been not liberated individuals but conformist performers following a prescribed course.

DANCE MUSIC Scores for masque dances have not had kind reviews. Jean Knowlton calls them ‘background music’.¹⁹ Apparently, their unappealing character resulted from crude practice in Continental ballet: wherever John Ward finds ‘stop-and-go, add-a-strain, motif- instead of melody-based music’, he detects ‘the hand of a ¹⁵ See the scores of antimasque music reproduced in Sabol. ¹⁶ A. Daye, ‘Dance and Music in the Stuart Masque’, paper given at The Marriage of Music and Dance, National Early Music Association conference (London 1992). A similar view is taken in Sabol, 13. ¹⁷ Most recently Skiles Howard in The Politics of Courtly Dancing in Early Modern England (Amherst, Mass., 1998). Mark Franko sees burlesque dancers as subversive courtiers who playfully challenge royal power by their ironic, pseudo-submissive performance. Dance as Text: Ideologies of the Baroque Body (Cambridge, 1993), 65, 69–70, 106. As any choreography depends on its interpretation, the assumption is perfectly valid, but then we would have to concede the same ironic capacities to interpreters of formal repertoire. ¹⁸ James J. Yoch, ‘A Very Wild Regularity: The Character of Landscape in the Work of Inigo Jones’, Research Opportunities in Renaissance Drama, 30 (1988), 7–16. ¹⁹ Jean Elizabeth Knowlton, ‘Some Dances of the Stuart Masque Identified and Analyzed’, 2 vols., Ph.D. thesis (Bloomington, Ind., 1966), i. 489.

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French dancing master or evidence of his influence’.²⁰ According to Peter Walls, professional choreographers were hacks who devised dances and ‘featureless melodic fragments’ to lengths ad libitum.²¹ For Ward, the result is hardly memorable: ‘The recycling of shared motifs was almost certainly not a conscious compositional act on the part of the composers. . . . The composer dipp[ed] into a common fund of musical ideas, much as the choreographers appear to have drawn on a shared figural vocabulary for their dances.’²² Dancing masters doctored tunes while experimenting with various steps and figures. Unappealing as their technique seems now, it offered benefits. On stage, music amounted to prompting. As aide-memoire, it efficiently complemented other methods such as silent counting or observing what the other members of the ensemble were doing. With rhythmic changes or shared musical motifs, dancers received clear acoustic cues for particular step sequences. Theatre dances were multi-purpose creations, catering for practical as well as aesthetic ends. The practice of repetitive recycling occurred in sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century dance tunes all over Europe. Was it mindless? Italian and German repertoire reshuffled not only indiscriminate fragments but entire tunes, especially very popular ones. Under various titles, the so-called Nonette, originally a German travellers’ song from 1560, crept out in France, England, Germany, and Italy. It was used for Fabritio Caroso’s social dance Celeste Giglio (1600). In England, it accompanied almains and possibly also one of the ‘measures’.²³ The Jesuit opera Il Sant’ Alessio (1631), a rousing counter-reformation propaganda production, ended with a ballet to the irresistible tune Fuggi, Fuggi. Some twenty years later, the English merchant secretary Bargrave intended to use it in a wedding masque (of which more in Chapter 10). The famous Aria di Fiorenza for the final ballo in the 1589 Florentine intermedi was recycled in many music and dance scores.²⁴ A Danse de pages Heid.[elberg], ascribed to Bocan, may have been composed for Ann Dudley, a maid of honour ²⁰ J. Ward, ‘Newly Devis’d Measures for Jacobean Masques’, Acta Musicologica, 60/2 (1988), 111–42, at 132. Also D. Buch (ed.), Dance Music from the Ballets de Cour 1575–1651 (Stuyvesant, NY, 1993), 11, for another dismissive verdict. ²¹ Walls, 126. ²² Ward, ‘Newly Devis’d Measures’, 127. ²³ R. Hudson, The Allemande, the Balletto, and the Tanz, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1986), i. 35–6, 44–5, 63–4, 98–9, 113–14, and ii. 218, for a summary, and a choreographic reconstruction of The Queen’s Almain to a Nonette version. Caroso used the tune for the dances Alta Morona in Il Ballarino (1581) and Celeste Giglio in Nobiltà di dame (1600). I am indebted to Barbara Sparti for a discussion. ²⁴ W. Kirkendale, L’Aria di Fiorenza id est Il Ballo del Gran Duca (Florence, 1972). It was revamped, for instance, for Caroso’s Laura Suave (1600).

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of Princess Elizabeth, on the occasion of her wedding in 1615.²⁵ The soft melody is reminiscent of the popular Duretto, which appeared in the important German dance music collection Terpsichore (1612) and contemporary English lute books. It was played at the Inns of Court in The Masque of The Inner Temple and Gray’s Inn (1613), which celebrated the Protestant match between Frederick and Elizabeth, and The Masque of Flowers (1614).²⁶ In this way the Danse de pages acoustically connected Elizabeth, and her maid, with past festivities given in their native country. Although much dance music of the period qualified as an unremarkable pastiche, it had, on occasion, a high recognition potential. In masques and entertainments, invisible links were established between listeners and performers when well-known music resounded from the stage. Dances generated—and recalled—complex memories which involved sound and movement. They affected not only local members of the audience, for instance, when musicians played a favourite country dance in the revels. We should try to imagine the impact on foreign guests who suddenly heard or saw something they recognized from their home country. For such eye- or earwitnesses, the spagnolette, corantos, and branles de Poitou were more memorable than spoken texts. Masque dances therefore represented an inclusive medium, drawing spectators into the performance. Music and dance prepared, literally speaking, a common ground to encourage a common identity shared by performers, patrons, and audience. Unimpressive tunes mingled with all-time crowd-pleasers. A closer consideration of performance conditions and audience reaction invites more charitable assessments of early modern dance music. REHEARSALS Like acting, dancing is a discipline which requires learning by rote. English comedies of the time illustrated the process in comically exaggerated form. In ²⁵ The score is variously dated 1613 and 1615. Werner Braun, Britannia Abundans: Deutsch-englische Musikbeziehungen zur Shakespeare-Zeit (Tutzing, 1977), 273–81. An anonymous German organ tablature book, Bibliotheca Bipontina, Zweibrücken, includes music for the Heidelberg court compiled between 1576 and 1613, of which no. 25, Ballett des pages Heid., refers to a certain ‘Bocam’. Josef Pontius, ‘Eine anonyme kurpfälzische Orgel-Tabulatur’, Ph.D. thesis (Saarbrücken, 1960), 116. I am grateful to Dr Klaus Winkler for this information. See also the latter’s ‘Heidelberger Ballette: Musik und Tanz am kurpfälzischen Hof von Elizabeth Stuart und Friedrich V.’, in Georg Günther and Reiner Nägele (eds.), Musik in Baden-Württemberg, Jahrbuch vol. vii (Stuttgart, 2000), 11–23. ²⁶ John Ward, ‘The Lute Books of Trinity College Dublin: II: MS D.1.21: The So-Called Ballet Lute Book’, Lute Society Journal, 10 (1968), 15–32, at 24. Jean Knowlton, ‘A Definition of the Duret’, Music & Letters, 48/2 (1967), 120–3. Sabol, no. 312.

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John Marston’s The Malcontent (c.1603) an endless string of step sequences challenges the intellect of Duchess Aurelia and her obliging courtiers: aurelia. We will dance. Music! We will dance. guerrino. ‘Les guanto’, lady, ‘Pensez bien’, ‘Passa regis’, or ‘Bianca’s brawl’? aurelia. We have forgot the brawl. ferrardo. So soon? ’Tis wonder. guerrino. Why, ’tis but two singles on the left, two on the right, three doubles forward, a traverse of six round; do this twice, three singles side, galliard trick- of-twenty, coranto-pace; a figure of eight, three singles broken down, come up, meet, two doubles, fall back, and then honour. aurelia: O Daedalus, thy maze! I have quite forgot it.²⁷

In principle, though, many dances of the early modern period sought to facilitate learning. Choreographies preserved in Europe between 1580 and 1660 have a preference for recurring formalisms. In the same way as a linguistic grammar may stipulate a subject-verb-object sequence, they follow a logic of their own, and favour certain step clusters. For instance, the English ‘measures’ often made use of the combination ‘honour, take hands, fall in to your pace’. In early seventeenth-century French social repertoire, a ‘cadence’ often concluded a dance phrase. The rational approach ensured quicker memorizing. Sloppy dancers as they tumbled about in plays were not unknown in masques. Sir Thomas Germain, one of the less accomplished participants in Juno and Hymenaeus, ‘had lead in his heels and sometimes forgot what he was doing’.²⁸ Courtiers occasionally disappointed the high expectations of their audiences, as King James’s famous outbreak at languid noble masquers in Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue proves.²⁹ Yet on the whole contemporary voices confirm a high standard. Participants were picked as much for their pedigree as for their stage presence. In Oberon only the best dancers had been selected for difficult synchronous leaps.³⁰ Henrietta Maria’s dwarf Jeffrey Hudson, a rare comic talent, routinely joined Caroline masques.³¹ Anna Sophia Countess of Carnarvon mastered entries in Chloridia (1631), Tempe Restored (1632), The ²⁷ John Marston, The Malcontent, IV. ii. 1–14, in The Selected Plays of John Marston, ed. M. P. Jackson (Cambridge, 1986), 252–3. ²⁸ Dudley Carleton to John Chamberlain, 1603–1624: Jacobean Letters, ed. Maurice Lee (New Brunswick, NJ, 1972), 67, 7 Jan. 1604–5. ²⁹ OS i. 283. ³⁰ OS i. 206. ³¹ He participated in an unknown masque (1626), Chloridia, Luminalia, and Salmacida Spolia.

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Temple of Love (1635), Luminalia (1638), and Salmacida Spolia (1640). Experienced teachers such as Jeremy Herne, Thomas Giles, Bocan, Montagut, or Sebastian Lapierre ensured a high performance quality. If comedies of the period are to be believed, French dancing masters were notorious for their rigour—they took great pains to exorcize bad habits acquired from negligent English teachers: ‘aller, aller looke up your Countenance, your English man spoile you, he no teach You looke up, pishaw, carry your body in the swimming Fashion, . . . your oder men dance lop, lop with De lame legge as they want crushes begore, and looke for Argent in the ground pishaw’.³² Such scenes are, of course, caricatures, yet they may give us a feeling for practical issues during masque rehearsals. Skill-oriented casting and long rehearsal periods ought to have produced impressive effects. In Oberon, the dancing masters Confesse and Herne were rewarded for ‘peyns bestowed almost 6, weekes continually’, and during winter 1616, masquers were practising for fifty days at Newmarket for what was presumably Jonson’s January masque The Vision of Delight (1617).³³ Prince Charles and the Duke of Buckingham repeated their dances ‘diligently every day’ in mid-December for Neptune’s Triumph, planned for January 1624.³⁴ Under Charles and Henrietta Maria, rehearsal periods of some two to over five weeks were common.³⁵ The court was summoned weeks ahead for Britannia Triumphans and Luminalia in 1638: ‘For two weeks the king has been preparing to dance his masque next Sunday, and in the same fashion the queen will perform hers three weeks from now. She spends every evening practising for it, with the result that both of them will come off very well.’³⁶ Teachers performed on stage as well (didactic to the end, Giles was not above playing a cyclops who imperiously hammered the rhythm to his dancers during the masque itself ).³⁷ Supervising and participating at the same time must have been arduous: no wonder that masque productions frequently employed several choreographers. Most dancers survived the strains of preparation, unlike a courtier rehearsing

³² Monsieur Le Friske in Shirley’s The Ball, sig. C2r–v. ³³ Royal warrant, HS x. 519. Paul Reyher, Les Masques anglais (New York, 1964), 35. ³⁴ Sir Edward Conway to the Earl of Bristol, 18 Dec. 1623. HS x. 658. ³⁵ A minimum of two to three weeks was the norm for court masques between 1633 and 1638, according to the Florentine agent’s reports, cited in John Orrell, ‘Amerigo Salvetti and the London Court Theatre, 1616–1640’, Theatre Survey, 20/1 (1979), 1–26. ³⁶ Report of the Savoy agent in London, 4/14 Jan. 1638. John Orrell, ‘The London Court Stage in the Savoy Correspondence, 1613–1675’, Theatre Research, 4/2 (1979), 79–94, at 92. ³⁷ In Ben Jonson’s Haddington Masque (1608), ll. 345–51, in HS vii. 260.

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for The Somerset Masque, who, ‘over-heating himself with practicing . . . fell into the small pocks and died’.³⁸ Given the large number of participants, groups rehearsed in various locations. In the Jacobean period, Charles practised in the queen’s privy apartments and the Great Chamber at Whitehall.³⁹ Initially, dancers may have been accompanied by a few musicians, or only the teacher himself who played the violin or pochette while giving instructions. In Love Freed from Ignorance and Folly (1611), ten violinists ‘contynualy practized to the Queene’.⁴⁰ In the meantime, musicians memorized their scores elsewhere. Dancers moved to the Banqueting House to prepare The Triumph of Peace (1634), while the musicians spent more time at Salisbury Court, where Bulstrode Whitelocke, one of the chief organizers, caused them all ‘to meet in practise att his house . . . where he might be with them, & had sometimes 40 lutes, besides other instruments & voyces, in consort togither’.⁴¹ As David J. Buch observes about ballet de cour, musicians learned their scores by rote: ‘I have yet to find a single illustration of a ballet performance from this period that shows music or music stands in front of the performers. If it were true that performers were expected to memorize their music, then this would certainly help to explain the paucity of original parts for the ballet [music] repertory.’⁴² The significant influence of French dance and music on the early Stuart court, especially in the Caroline period, suggests a similar practice in English masque productions. Musicians needed to observe the dancers; at times they even took to the stage themselves. This excluded stealthy glances at sheets. Closer to the main night, the performers moved on site. About two weeks before the performance of The Masque of Queenes, Anne held ‘daily rehearsals and trials of the machinery’ in the Banqueting House.⁴³ Given that masques built on multimedia effects, the interaction between stagehands, lighters and technicians, musicians, actors, and dancers had to be carefully timed and practised. In the final phase, full-scale dress rehearsals included an audience. ‘I was twice at Court to see the Queen practise’, the Countess of Huntingdon ³⁸ Sir Henry Bowyer, who had danced in Love Restored (1612). The Letters of John Chamberlain, ed. N. E. McClure, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, 1939), i. 497, to Alice Carleton, 30 Dec. 1613. ³⁹ Accounts, probably relating to News from the New World Discovered in the Moon (1620) and The Masque of Augurs (1622): ‘for makinge readye Whitehall . . . the privie chamber on the Quenes syde twoe severall tymes for the Princes practysinge fower dayes, the hall for the Princes maskes twyce ten dayes’. Cited from Reyher, Les Masques anglais, 36. ⁴⁰ OS i. 230. ⁴¹ The Diary of Bulstrode Whitelocke 1605–1675, ed. R. Spalding (Oxford, 1990), 74. OS ii. 540. ⁴² David J. Buch, ‘The Sources of Dance Music for the ballet de cour before Lully’, Revue de musicologie, 82/2 (1996), 314–31, at 329. ⁴³ CSPV 1607–1610, xi. 222, Marc’ Antonio Correr to the Doge, 22 Jan. 1609.

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wrote in January 1633 about Henrietta Maria’s preparations for her Shrovetide spectacles.⁴⁴ William Cavendish’s Christmas Masque distinguished between a ‘practisinge’ and a ‘maske’ night. The former offered a welcome opportunity for those who would normally not be admitted to the packed Banqueting House to see the spectacle after all.⁴⁵ Charles’s secretary Weckherlin saw a rehearsal of Salmacida Spolia (‘I saw the practising of the Maske’).⁴⁶ On this quasi-official occasion, the king and queen had been called in to participate. The French ambassador, who was to depart before the actual performance, had been seated incognito in the box reserved for the Earl and Countess of Arundel: ‘the queen was pleased he should be honoured with a sight of the practice of the dances and of the motions of the scene, three or four dayes before the maske was to be completely acted’.⁴⁷ It makes sense that events for which the court entertained such high expectations should have had a serious run-through before their premiere.

OPTICAL IMPACT: THE INDIVIDUAL COURT DANCER AND THE COLLECTIVE GEOMETRIC MOVEMENT In the early seventeenth century, dance fashion subtly changed the visual profile of performers. Caroline grand masquers looked very much like later seventeenth-century French court dancers, in that their costume elevated the body by way of illusion. The high heels, the tiptoe technique, and the cut of the costume which moved the point of gravity from the belly towards the breast, all elongated the legs and suggested a graceful, light figure, earthbound in one single point only. The new upward projection improved a dancer’s impact, especially on a dimly lit stage. It can be observed at its most extreme in classical ballet. The heel flattered the instep, which was now lifted and furthermore turned out for the audience’s closer attention. Those seated in front of a dancer ⁴⁴ Cited from John Yoklavich, ‘The Seven-Thousand-Pound Pastoral’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 28/1 (1964), 83–7, at 83. ⁴⁵ Here, ladies complain that they have been barred from the city and its entertainments: ‘when theye wante sutch Glorius spectators as our selves att their Courte maskes, & see their Banquetinge House emptie, their seates Bare; or filld with yea forsoth Dames off the Citeye; Lookinge rather like a Practisinge then a maske nighte’, Dramatic Works by William Cavendish, ed. Lynn Hulse (Oxford, 1996), pp. 28–9, ll. 54–9. ⁴⁶ BL MS Add. 72433, fol. 77v. ⁴⁷ Ceremonies of Charles I: The Note Books of John Finet 1628–1641, ed. Albert J. Loomie (New York, 1987), 272, 21 Jan. 1640. See also Astington, 187.

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Figure 1. Dancer in seventeenth-century costume. Snapshot from a digital recording, 2002. Author’s collection.

were thus allowed a full glance at the movements of the feet—especially if the dancer performed on an elevated stage. Another strange effect can be observed in performers who engage in certain basic elements of danse noble (and its early forms described by de Lauze and Montagut): regular arm movements towards the chest gesture at a vertical axis of the body. When they open again they seem to project towards a frontal audience. When dancers on tiptoe stretch out their legs, their limbs might be compared to streets running towards the centre of the body. Each dancer thus resembles a miniature perspective in motion, opening up, branching out, and converging again in the bodily centre (see Fig. 1). These techniques greatly enhanced the appeal of a masquer. They privileged a frontal audience; to please spectators on lateral seats, dancers must have frequently turned. Performed with high heels, the ‘perspective’ mode could have made a particularly strong impression in a perspective environment. It is tempting to assume that such new conventions increasingly lured dancers onto the stage itself.

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We must, of course, also consider collective patterns, such as the geometric shapes or letters which dominated formal theatre choreographies in sixteenthcentury French ballet de cour and Italian intermedi, and which also characterized masque-proper choreographies. Margaret McGowan uses the term ‘danse horizontale’ to describe the aesthetic appeal of such formations: best seen from above, movements on stage appeared almost two-dimensional.⁴⁸ For good reason, contemporary illustrations often portrayed geometric dances from a bird’s-eye view. Particularly conscientious publications of courtly ballets showed courtly dancers as seen from the viewpoint of an observer seated right in front of the dancers, and at the same time showed choreographic patterns as they might be perceived from a much more elevated position; this is beautifully depicted in an German engraving for a ballet danced at the court of Württemberg in 1618 (See Fig. 2). Beaujoyeulx’s description of the final dance in the

Figure 2. Courtly dancers performing a ballet at the court of Württemberg, Germany. Georg Rodolf Weckherlin, Beschreibung und Abriß (Stuttgart: Rößlin, 1618), engraving by Friedrich Brentel, plate C. Shelfmark R 17 Wec 3, Württembergische Landesbibliothek. Photographer: Joachim Siener.

⁴⁸ Margaret McGowan, L’Art du ballet de cour en France, 1581–1643 (Paris, 1963), 36–7.

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famous Balet comique de la Royne (1581) nicely describes certain effects of a traditional ‘danse horizontale’. At the end of the show the violins resumed a most beautiful entry, to the sounds of which the dryads rose and left their niches, to present themselves . . . then [the naiads] went, in orderly couples, up to the middle of the hall. In the first rank walked the Queen, holding my lady the Princess of Lorraine by the hand . . . the others followed as well in couples, each according to her rank . . . At this moment the violins changed the tune and began to play the entry of the grand ballet, composed of fifteen passages, designed in such a manner that at the end of each all turned, facing the king: once they had arrived before his majesty, they danced the grand ballet in forty passages or geometric figures: and each and everyone most correctly, with regard to their spatial positions, as many square as round, and of the utmost variety . . . Whenever these figures were represented by the twelve naiads, dressed in white . . . the four dryads (dressed in green) foreclosed any interruption: as soon as one finished, another immediately continued with her performance. Halfway through this dance they formed a chain of four different interlaced figures, in a way that one might have thought to have seen a well-manoeuvred battle, so precisely had the order been respected . . . even Archimedes could have had no better understanding of geometric proportion . . . great variety of music was used on that occasion, some tunes grave, others jolly, some in triple time, the others for a gentle, slower pace.⁴⁹

This ballet seems to have lasted for ever, or so it appears from its prolix description. In modern recordings which respect the score as printed in the livret, the introductory petit grand ballet takes less than a minute, the grand ballet itself less than four minutes.⁵⁰ It is perfectly possible for ensembles to dance ‘forty passages or geometric figures’ in this time; several patterns can be executed simultaneously by different groups. The longest dances attributed to French productions before 1700 are passacailles and chaconnes amounting to some six to eight minutes. The longest surviving Italian theatre choreography, Cesare Negri’s Brando Alta Regina from his book Le gratie d’amore (1602), takes about four minutes and a half—roughly the duration of the final dance in the Balet comique. Monteverdi’s Tirsi e Clori is, if danced from beginning to end, estimated at ten to twelve minutes.⁵¹ Judging from their scores, masque dances may have lasted between half a minute and several minutes.⁵² We do not know ⁴⁹ Le Balet Comique, by Balthazar de Beaujoyeulx, 1581, introd. Margaret McGowan, facs. edn. (Paris, 1582; Binghamton, NY, 1982), fols. 55–6, my transl. ⁵⁰ Gabriel Garrido’s recording amounts to 4.30 minutes for both parts together. Le Balet Comique de la Royne, Ensemble Elyma, France, 1997. ⁵¹ I am grateful to Lieven Baert for discussing this problem. ⁵² Estimate based on Sabol’s anthology.

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how often music may have been repeated during performance, yet the audience’s patience must have set a limit to excessive da capo. Emphasizing the length of a performance seems to have been an aggrandizing trope in festival narrative, conspicuous consumption of time, as it were. Accounts should therefore not be taken at face value.⁵³ In the Balet comique, dancers did not casually amble to the performance space but entered in a balletic ouverture. Then came the figured dance, executed by two differently coloured groups, twelve naiads in white costume, and four dryads in green. The dance never really stopped: while one group rested, the other provided action. The effect would have been that of a kaleidoscope in which certain formations had already settled while others still moved. The colours counterpointed the unfolding choreography like punctuation marks in a kinetic narrative. A ‘passage’ often ended in a clear front-stage focus (‘all turned, facing the king’). In these moments, the score provided one or several half or long notes, which gave performers time to honour the presence and then fall into the next formation. At times the rhythm changed into lively triple-time sequences, which suggests passages with leaps for greater variety. The earliest surviving choreographies in the formal geometric or ‘horizontal’ style are Italian. Two illustrations of Emilio Cavalieri’s final dance for the Florentine spectacle La Pellegrina (1589) were published together with a verbal account which specified steps as well as the number and gender of participants. Furthermore, Cesare Negri composed two theatre dances for a spectacle in Milan to celebrate the wedding of the Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia of Spain and the Archduke Albert of Austria in 1599. Negri’s Brando Alta Regina was danced by eight noble ‘nymphs’ and ‘shepherds’; it involved eleven passages and eight basic steps with variations. Austria Felice was a torch dance performed by six Milanese ladies and as many lords dressed in the Hungarian fashion.⁵⁴ As ⁵³ The printed account of Le accoglienze (Turin, 1620), which included a ballet supposedly lasting for an hour, may serve as an example. In honour of Madame of France, two Savoy princesses and twelve court ladies performed a ‘ballet of forty figures, which they danced . . . passing from one figure to another in various courantes and galliards with such justness and in such perfect time that it seemed almost by habit and not specially contrived. This ballet continued without interruption for an hour . . .’. Cited in Lorenzo Bianconi, Music in the Seventeenth Century, trans. David Bryant (Cambridge, 1987), 284. This was a typical composite court ballet, in which several distinct dance sections facilitated memorizing the whole structure. Forty figures in one hour means one figure lasting for 90 seconds, which is far too long and not matched by any early modern choreography, social or theatrical; compare, for instance, the far shorter duration of the 40 figures in the grand ballet of Le Balet comique. Either there were repetitions, or the action was interrupted by tableau-like stills while the music kept playing. ⁵⁴ Both dances in Cesare Negri, Le gratie d’amore, facs. edn. (Milan, 1602; Sala Bolognese, 1983), 271–6, 291–6.

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some of their features would have applied to geometric dances on the English stage as well, they merit a short discussion. Figures unfolded in a kaleidoscopic manner. In rare moments the whole ensemble stopped for a second or two to let the effect of a particular figure sink in the better. The dancers moved along an axis and regularly zoomed in on the presence.⁵⁵ In Negri’s theatre dances, crescents and axes projected to the front stage for the benefit of dignitaries. Yet figures such as circles, lines, or chains could just as nicely be observed from a lateral seat. Thus Negri struck an agreeable balance between pleasing a larger audience and honouring his patrons. While Negri’s dances and the Balet comique took place in a hall, Cavalieri’s ballo is the only surviving early example of a choreography performed on a perspective stage. In the final scene of La Pellegrina, the gods descended to earth and taught the mortals (represented as shepherds and their girls) to dance after celestial harmonies. Most roles in these intermedi, including the female parts, were taken by male actors and boys. However, women, including at least three celebrated female soloists, participated in the ballo.⁵⁶ The soloists sang, danced, and played exotic instruments (though perhaps not at the same time). The steps were generally level, but evolved at times into more animated small jumps and (for men only) capers (‘capriole’).⁵⁷ In the initial position, twentyseven dancers—‘huomini’ and ‘dame’—lined up in a semicircular chorus line. From this larger ensemble, seven soloists (three men, four women) disengaged themselves to form an independent smaller crescent closer to the audience. For reasons of space, Jennifer Nevile proposes, the dancers further behind refrained from extended motions and provided instead a living backdrop to the flashy front dancers.⁵⁸ Cavalieri’s technique of dividing an ensemble into soloists and a larger group of background dancers maximized performance space, and created a double focus on both solo dancers and the state. If such strategies were also employed in masques, they could have enabled choreographers to use the stage despite scarce space. ⁵⁵ Yvonne Kendall, ‘Theatre, Dance and Music in Cinquecento Milan’, Early Music, 32/1 (2004), 75–95. Pamela Jones, ‘The Relation between Music and Dance in Cesare Negri’s “Le Gratie d’Amore” (1602)’, 2 vols., Ph.D. thesis (London, 1989), and ‘Spectacle in Milan: Cesare Negri’s Torch Dances’, Early Music, 14/2 (1986), 182–96. Jones’s analysis privileges the front-stage aspect. ⁵⁶ James Saslow, The Medici Wedding of 1589: Florentine Festival as Theatrum Mundi (New Haven, 1996), 52, 54, 157. ⁵⁷ ‘Ballo dell’ultimo intermedio’, published by Christofano Malvezzi in 1591. D. P. Walker (ed.), Musique des Intermèdes de ‘La Pellegrina’ (Paris, 1963), pp. lvi–lviii. ⁵⁸ Jennifer Nevile provides an excellent interpretation in ‘Cavalieri’s Theatrical ballo “O che nuovo miracolo”: A Reconstruction’, Dance Chronicle, 21/3 (1998), 353–88; and ‘Cavalieri’s Theatrical ballo and the Social Dances of Caroso and Negri’, Dance Chronicle, 22/1 (1999), 119–33.

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Continental geometric models clearly had an impact on the masque proper, where chains, triangles, and circles were executed by a generous number of grand masquers. In the Jacobean period, an ensemble might consist of twelve dancers; in the Caroline period, fifteen became the norm. Salmacida Spolia provided a true overkill with twenty-two—the king and queen presiding over ten followers each. Allowing for a full view from three sides, the early Stuart dancing space in front of the stage gave spectators a palpable sense of immediacy. They could connect to dancers right before their eyes. According to Nevile, sixteenth-century horizontal dances were ‘designed to be viewed from all sides’, because many geometric figures such as circles do not aim at any specific direction.⁵⁹ Details from the German ballet engraving in Fig. 2 show axisorientated patterns (see Fig. 2a) as well as patterns where a front stage focus is less apparent (see Fig. 2b); these latter ensemble formations would have proved particularly attractive for viewers on lateral seats.

2a

2b

Masque choreographies which considered both types of patterns would have delighted a maximum number of viewers. As long as performances evolved in the dancing space and viewers had an elevated seat, the latter could enjoy squares and circles from anywhere in the house. Figures such as lozenges or pyramids, however, would have emphasized the axis leading from the stage perspective towards the royal dais. Letters of names, as they were sometimes danced in the masque proper, would have been especially difficult to read from a seat on the sides. The development from even to odd numbers in grand masquers’ ensembles suggests an interest in focus. A royal prime dancer was singled out by standing at the apex of a formation (like Charles in Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue) or at the centre of it. Focusing figures would have projected to the state, highlighting the connection between a dancing consort and a watching king (or vice versa). It is tempting to envisage Caroline Personal Rule in choreographic ⁵⁹ Nevile, ‘Dance and the Garden: Moving and Static Choreography in Renaissance Europe’, Renaissance Quarterly, 52/3 (1999), 805–36, at 819. Nevile concedes, though, that danced initials would have been difficult to perceive from all sides.

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structure. The Personal Dancer might have been privileged with a central position and more space, while the entourage was relegated to the background. Even so, the geometric tradition in ballet de cour and Italian festivals offered—and practised—methods of reconciling selective praise with egalitarian appeal. The most successful masque choreographies must have been those which did not neglect a wider audience in favour of preoccupations with the perfect representation of an absolute soloist. THE HUMAN STAGE When we compare Jonesian stage designs to their Continental models we find a striking difference. Continental festival books aimed at a comprehensive account of a courtly spectacle, which at best included full illustrations of the event. These publications often represent performers in action onstage. Giulio Parigi’s 1608 designs for Il Giudizio di Paride (a great favourite with Jones for his own masque sets) depicted stage architecture replete with actors and dancers who make some use of the space. Jacques Callot’s celebrated ‘Primo Intermedio’ from La Liberatione di Tirreno (1617) seeks to capture audience, performers, and setting in a generous panoramic overview (see Fig. 3). In contrast, Jones’s watercolours provide an empty space because they served as a basis for the actual stage canvases. Some drafts show a square grid, which means that workmen and painters were supposed to copy and enlarge them, section after section, for the actual wings and backdrops. For technical reasons, people rarely appear in Jonesian scenery. Unfortunately, many critics therefore regard Jonesian creations as architecture without people. Yet we need to ask what effect his perspectives had in performance when actors and staff crowded the stage. Masque performances (especially at court) took place on several levels. The dancing floor usually consisted of a timber platform slightly raised above the actual floor. In 1620, Somerset House was provided with ‘a false floore of tymber and boordes for the Prynce and Noblemen to daunce uppon’.⁶⁰ Unlike stone or tiled ground, such constructions were made of flexible wood and thus rebounded slightly when trodden or jumped upon, which must have helped reduce dance-related injury. Furthermore, dancers could use the floor as acoustic instrument by stamping, as a wooden surface resonates. This would have required energy, though, since masquing floors were covered with cloth to muffle unwanted sounds. Workmen used perpetuana (a rough fabric), often ⁶⁰ MSC X, 31, and Astington, 95.

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Figure 3. Scene from a Florentine spectacle. Jacques Callot, ‘Primo Intermedio’ from La Liberatione di Tirreno (Florence, 1617). Copyright of the British Museum, 1861-7-13-864.

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green while in tragedy it might be black.⁶¹ For a 1626 masque at Somerset House green cotton was tacked to the ground.⁶² It became a standard in Henrietta Maria’s later pastorals. Flights of steps connected the dance floor with the elevated stage itself. It is commonly accepted that perspectives served as an elaborate visual backdrop but were not of much use in terms of performance. For one thing, the stage floor was raked to match the vanishing point of the perspective—this made it more difficult for actors to keep their balance. Furthermore, perspectives suggest depth by reducing objects in size as they recede towards the background. If performers move towards backstage, they, of course, do not shrink, unlike the painted objects around them, and therefore soon look spectacularly out of scale. Thus, in court productions, gigantic masquers lumbered around miniature houses. In the final scene of Salmacida Spolia, a door painted on the furthest left wing would have reached the chest of Henrietta Maria, herself hardly of Herculean proportions. The incongruity between performer and object size was a frequent problem in theatrical practice of the early modern period. The Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza, a location Jones visited and greatly admired, is today praised for its Palladian elegance and model function for Northern theatre culture. Some contemporary Italian playgoers thought otherwise. Spectators who attended the 1585 production of Oedipus Rex complained about narrow seating rows— knees prodded into backsides. They could not understand sung words. There were no toilets. Only those sitting in the middle of the auditorium could properly appreciate the perspective scenery. Worse, producers had miscalculated the effect of human actors in the settings: ‘when persons emerged from the streets along the centre of the perspective, they appeared gigantic when seen from afar, and diminished in size when approaching; the contrary should be the case’.⁶³ Florentine theatre productions of the early seventeenth century suffered from human interference where illusion was supposed to reign supreme. As much can be gathered from an Italian treatise on stagecraft, composed in the 1630s. Its anonymous author complained about curious actors and stagehands whose heads poked out of the scenes: ‘not only does this cause an ugly sight, but they might hamper the movements of the triangles [rotating triangular wings, ⁶¹ PRO LR 5/65, Jan. 1633, bill of Ralph Grinder, upholsterer, for Henrietta Maria’s pastoral The Shepherds’ Paradise. ⁶² Astington, 95, and Walls, 315, on green cloth to muffle noise. ⁶³ Sixteenth-cent. eyewitness accounts, reprinted in Alberto Gallo (ed.), La prima rappresentazione al Teatro Olimpico: con i progetti e le relazioni dei contemporanei (Milan, 1973). Witness Antonio Riccoboni, letter, 49. ‘Nell’uscir delle persone dalle strade che calavano per centro della prospettiva, di lontano parevano giganti e nell’accostarsi si diminuivano, che dovrebbe esser il contrario’. Witness Giovanni Pinelli, notes, 59, 60.

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periaktoi with painted scenes] and create confusion in many other ways’. Not even drastic measures might stop people from ruining special effects, ‘given that Grand Duke Cosimo of blessed memory found no other way than keeping two dwarfs to aim with a crossbow at anybody who looked out from the scenes’.⁶⁴ The instruments of Duke Cosimo’s practical jokes were probably weapons loaded with clay pellets.⁶⁵ Surveying the havoc, researchers conclude that the stage released its performers as soon as possible into the dancing space in front of the proscenium arch.⁶⁶ This leaves the question of how to deal with performers while they are still on stage. Caroline designers appear to have been increasingly interested in keeping at least some of the action in the elevated area. If we systematically check the expressions masque texts of the period used to describe the movements between stage and dancing space we find that antimasquers, grotesque dancers, or preliminary groups such as noble youths ‘come forth’, ‘make their entry’, ‘enter to dance’, ‘prepare for their entry’; in two cases only, Salmacida Spolia (1640), and The Triumphs of the Prince d’Amour (1636), a downward movement is signalled, as when a fury explicitly ‘comes down’. The emphasis on descent is much more pronounced with the grand masquers’ groups: they ‘dance their entry’, ‘descend’, ‘descend into the room and make their entry’, ‘descend then retire towards the scene’, ‘come into the room and make their entry’, ‘come down and dance their entry’. It is possible to read such descriptions metaphorically: as ‘higher’ beings, masquers ‘descend’. Furthermore, since they were often perched on mountains, clouds, and the like, they could have descended ‘from the heavens to the stage’. But accounts might indeed indicate a differentiated use of the stage, in which case grand masquers ‘descended’ to the dancing space more often than grotesque performers. The Caroline period often saw as ⁶⁴ ‘che nessuno de’ recitanti o altri di quei ministri s’affacci alle prospettive, perché oltre alla brutta vista che fanno, possono impedire i movimenti de’ triangoli e causare molti altri disordini, se bene questa sarà cosa molto difficile non essendo mai riuscito al granduca Cosimo di felice memoria il poterlo conseguire in altro modo se non con tenere due nani che davano delle balestrate a chiunque s’affacciava’. Paolo Fabbri and Angelo Pompilio (eds.), Il Corago (Florence, 1983), 125; my trans. Grand Duke Cosimo must be Cosimo II de’ Medici (d. 1621), associated with Il Giudizio di Paride (1608) and La Liberatione di Tirreno (1617). Roger Savage and Matteo Sansone, ‘Il Corago and the Staging of Early Opera: Four Chapters from an Anonymous Treatise circa 1630’, Early Music, 17/4 (1989), 494–511, at 511. ⁶⁵ According to Savage and Sansone, the dwarfs actually shot at people. A serious crossbow, however, would have damaged the scenes and risked casualties. In modern Italian, ‘dare delle balestrate’ means ‘hitting [someone] with a crossbow’, thus, the ducal dwarfs might have dealt blows only. Or they were equipped with a smaller type for hunting birds and lizards, with clay pellets as ammunition. Salvatore Battaglia describes such miniature balestre in Grande dizionario della lingua italiana (Turin, 1961– ), ii. 8. Pop guns with clay bullets were known as children’s toys in early modern England (OED, ‘pellet’, since 1553). ⁶⁶ Orgel and Strong stress the importance of the dancing space (OS i. 16–17).

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many as fifteen grand masquers; no wonder that the spacious dancing area would have been more attractive. In antimasques a group of seven would be considered large; solo performances were common. Smaller ensembles or soloists could have used the stage as a performance space in its own right. And they did. In James Shirley’s The Triumph of Peace (1634) workmen-dancers famously erupted onto the stage and commented on its settings. Designed by one Mr Corseilles from Antwerp, The Triumphs of the Prince d’Amour was a Middle Temple masque with one central stage where alterations of scenes took place.⁶⁷ This included a village with alehouses, where drinking antimasquers were sitting on three-dimensional, hollow trees, all of which must have taken up a generous share of the space between the wings. Inigo Jones became fascinated by elaborate crowd scenes. About the impressive final tableau in Tempe Restored (1632) the text enthuses: ‘This sight altogether was, for the difficulty of the engining and the number of the persons, the greatest that hath been seen here in our time. For the apparitions of such as came down in the air, and the choruses standing beneath, arrived to the number of fifty persons, all richly attired, showing the magnificence of the court of England’.⁶⁸ Jones managed to assemble more than fifty people on a stage of which the visible area amounted to perhaps 41 m2 and the frontstage section extended to some 21 m2. Even if we assume that some participants were cast out to the dancing floor, and three gigantic clouds bore performers on this occasion, it is unlikely that Jones could have got away with keeping most of the space empty.⁶⁹ The technical achievement was not only considered worth praising in the masque booklet, it could even be regarded as a mechanical synecdoche for the flawless functioning of the Stuart monarchy. Jones expended massive efforts to improve the spatial capacity of the elevated stage by arranging performers on several levels. In late productions, ⁶⁷ On Corseilles/Corsellis (fl. 1605–36), see OS ii. 796. Murray Lefkowitz (ed.), Trois masques à la cour de Charles Ier d’Angleterre: ‘The Triumph of Peace’, ‘The Triumphs of the Prince d’Amour’, ‘Britannia Triumphans’ (Paris, 1970). ⁶⁸ Aurelian Townshend, Tempe Restored, ll. 192–6, in D. Lindley (ed.), Court Masques: Jacobean and Caroline Entertainments, 1605–1640 (Oxford, 1995), 160. ⁶⁹ I assume that the dimensions of the stage for Tempe Restored resembled that of Salmacida Spolia (1640). An estimate of the maximum space theoretically available to performers in Salmacida Spolia amounts to 40–5 m2, or some 9.6 m width at the front and 4.27 m width at the furthest end of the stage, which had a depth of 5.8 m with closed back shutters and 7 m with opened back shutters. All figures are approximations after Jones’s drafts, reproduced in OS ii, pp. 738–41, nos. 399, 400; and pp. 752–3, no. 409. If performers favoured the front half of the stage for reasons of proportion, more than 21 m2 would have been available. For a technical discussion of Jones’s 1640 set see OS i. 80 and ii. 736–7; Richard Leacroft, The Development of the English Playhouse (London, 1988), 62–4; and Richard Southern, Changeable Scenery (London, 1952), 49–59. It is unclear how Southern arrives at a stage depth of 48 ft (14.63 m), as the maximum distance from the proscenium to the wall approximates 31 ft (c.9.45 m).

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even dances might take place in the cloud and fly machinery. The designer’s most spectacular feat was an aerial ballet for Henrietta Maria’s Luminalia (1638). A bright and transparent cloud came forth far into the scene, upon which were many zephyri and gentle breasts with rich but light garments tucked about their waists and falling down about their knees . . . These to the violins began a sprightly dance, first with single passages, and then joining hands in rounds several ways. Which apparition for the newness of the invention, greatness of the machine, and difficulty of engining was much admired, being a thing not before attempted in the air.⁷⁰

How Jones constructed this piece of machinery remains a mystery. It must have been a platform, camouflaged with cloud reliefs at the front, which was slowly lowered or pulled towards the proscenium. The zephyri were probably played by children; they added less weight to the structure than adult performers. They also allowed the choreography to unfold more comfortably in the scant space. The platform could have extended further back, as children were less likely to jar with the proportions of objects painted on wings and backdrops. Raising performers to upper regions left room for additional groups on the floorboards. Vertical extension facilitated mass scenes. It has been argued that the space behind the proscenium would have been inconvenient because of scarce space and the inclination of the floor. Yet modern professional dancers cope with a stage raked up to five degrees.⁷¹ As for space, Jennifer Nevile proposes some 16 m2 per dancer, based on her experience with staging early modern repertoire. It is a realistic estimate—for modern performers, who tend to make huge steps.⁷² Yet masquers were smaller compared to today’s dancers (Henrietta Maria measured under 5 ft, or 1.52 m; Charles was not much taller). Furthermore, they did not stride out. In Henrietta Maria’s pastoral Florimène (1635), the dancing space amounted to something like a quarter of the total auditorium area; here dancers had altogether about 35 m2 at their disposal (we need to reckon with guards and a few spectators besides the degrees). This does not seem much for modern tastes, but evidently the queen’s ladies and her partners found the space sufficient. ⁷⁰ OS ii, p. 709, ll. 403–11. ⁷¹ As Lieven Baert informs me, up to 5 per cent may be tackled by professionals trained in pre-Romantic repertoire. With practice, the tolerance might be even higher. ⁷² For Nevile, Jacobean masques offered not ‘enough room on the front of a prospective stage to adequately perform a dance with eight, nine, twelve, or sixteen participants’. She suggests 21 ft by 50 ft ‘for more than six performers’. ‘Dance and the Garden’, 819 n. 47. In classes of early modern repertoire (by Barbara Sparti, Andrea Francalanci, and Lieven Baert), dancers regularly fell into excessive pacing.

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Cavalieri’s choreography for La Pellegrina, O che nuovo miracolo, contained twenty-seven people on a stage 48 ft (14.6 m) deep.⁷³ The stage of Salmacida Spolia yielded a maximum depth of 7 m—while it might not have accommodated a choreography for more than twenty persons, smaller groups seem feasible. Naturally, the dancing area offered a more generous space. On the tentative assumption that the one provided in the Caroline Banqueting House (and its adjacent provisional structure made of brick and timber) amounted to a quarter of the auditorium, revellers could have exerted themselves on more than 100 m2.⁷⁴ This gives the largest Caroline ensemble, the twenty-two grand masquers of Salmacida Spolia, some 5 m2 per person. Visual techniques developed for stage designs since the late sixteenth century acknowledge a human presence. As early as the 1580s, Italian architects tried to place people within a stage perspective by way of elegant tricks. For La Pellegrina, Bernardo Buontalenti developed scenes with curved side alleys as if to deflect attention from the central vanishing point.⁷⁵ If we compare Serlio’s influential Comic and Tragic Scene with epigonal ones by later architects, the latter appear expansive: the buildings aim less obviously at a clearly defined centre. Giulio Parigi’s designs, closely studied by Jones, often contain not a vanishing ‘point’ but a vanishing ‘zone’, delineated by the contours of a fountain, building, or human figure. Jones and his assistant John Webb too produced designs of the sort.⁷⁶ Salmacida Spolia (1640), the last masque staged at court, includes a drawing of the ‘Suburbs of a Great City’ for the final scene (see Fig. 4). This design by Jones, or rather, his assistant John Webb, to whom it is usually attributed, has ⁷³ Uffizi theatre dimensions after Saslow, Medici Wedding, 79. ⁷⁴ According to Sir John Finet, the new structure, built some 10 ft away from the Banqueting House, extended to some 110 ft length, and 10 or 12 ft into the first court, and 45 ft into the preaching place. To John Scudamore, 1 Nov. 1637, in J. P. Feil, ‘Dramatic References from the Scudamore Papers’, Shakespeare Survey, 11 (1958), 107–16, at 111. Estimates for masquing spaces after Jones’s plan for Salmacida Spolia, 120 ⫻ 53 ft for the Caroline Banqueting House, and 112 ⫻ 57 ft, with a height of 59 ft, for the provisional structure (latter figure, slightly more generous than Finet’s, after 1638 accounts relating to the building of the masking house, PRO E351/3271, cited from Glynne Wickham, Early English Stages, 1300 to 1660, ii. 1576 to 1660 (London, 1972), ii, pt. 2, p. 225). The auditorium figure results from subtracting the stage from the total dimension of the House. If the dancing area, not included in Jones’s draft, amounted to a quarter of the auditorium, we arrive at some 108 m2 for these venues. The space cannot have been fully available. It had to be cleared by the Lord Chamberlain in Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue (Busino’s account, OS i. 283). ⁷⁵ A design of this type is reproduced in Saslow, Medici Wedding, no. 68, pp. 244–5. ⁷⁶ Italian templates for Jonesian experiments—such as Giulio Parigi’s Il Giudizio di Paride (1608) and Alfonso Parigi’s La Flora (1628)—have been discussed and reproduced in SDIJ, ch. 3, esp. pp. 82, 84–5, and 194–5; Orrell identifies the latter design as a ‘double horizon’ type. The Human Stage: English Theatre Design, 1567–1640 (Cambridge, 1988). OS i and ii routinely include reproductions of Continental models.

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Figure 4. ‘The Suburbs of a Great City’, Salmacida Spolia (1640), Scene iv. Attributed to John Webb. Orgel and Strong, no. 409; Simpson & Bell, no. 355 . The Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth. Reproduced by permission of the Chatsworth Settlement Trustees. Photograph: Photographic Survey, Courtauld Institute of Art.

been dismissed by critics as a flawed draft.⁷⁷ Webb, however, was not an unskilled apprentice but an architect in his own right, involved in an ambitious plan to rebuild the royal palace at Whitehall on a grand scale (yet another pet project of Charles I which was abandoned for financial reasons).⁷⁸ How could an experienced artist have failed to produce a standard scene? If the structures drawn on one side do not agree with the rules of perspective, why did he repeat the mistake on the other side? If there is an error, there is method in it. As early as the 1620s, John Orrell argues, Jones had experimented with strategies to make performers look less out of scale with the perspective. This he achieved by discarding the single vanishing point. If a design suggests two horizons, a lower and a higher one, ‘the architecture opens itself upwards like a hinge as it recedes from the viewer’. The architect’s efforts thus resulted in a ‘stretched’ type of stage design which can be traced in many drafts of the 1630s. ⁷⁷ OS ii. 752–4, no. 409. Peacock calls the city scene ‘faulty’ (SDIJ, 105). ⁷⁸ Webb’s Design for a New Palace at Whitehall (c.1637–9), about twice the size of the Escorial, is reproduced in Kevin Sharpe, The Personal Rule of Charles I (New Haven, 1992), 213–14.

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Orrell sees the technique as a Baroque fashion—the liberation from tedious scientific orderliness. The ‘double horizon’ of such ‘stretched’ designs catered for both spectators and masquers. A high horizon flattered the performers on the raked stage, a low horizon satisfied an audience gazing at the animated scenes. The picture therefore clicks into focus from two different points of view.⁷⁹ Orrell’s theory is doubtless attractive: if a design does not converge to a single vanishing point, a spectator’s vision is not troubled by the fact that the performer does not correspond with it. The ‘Suburbs of a Great City’ might respond to such concerns. Yet Orrell is unable to explain the ‘riot of confusion’ in this particular draft.⁸⁰ The roofs of Jones’s houses have been drawn in an almost inverted manner, projecting into the audience rather than the stage. The draft improves, however, if one bends the scene into a U-curve, similar to reading a newspaper on a crowded train. Viewed from an angle, the houses designed on the flat wings suddenly seem more convincing, as their strangely inflated sides click into focus again. The design seems to illustrate the thoughts of a character in Shakespeare’s Richard II (c.1595), who muses about [. . .] perspectives, which, rightly gazed upon, Show nothing but confusion; eyed awry, Distinguish form.⁸¹

To transfer this observation from a two-dimensional page into three-dimensional space means that the actual stage wings ought to have been positioned not parallel to a proscenium arch, as they usually were in Jonesian productions, but in an angle, pointing towards the backstage. On such wings, objects need to be painted differently. To counterbalance the oblique setting, painters need to distort and inflate the proportions of their scene—perhaps in the awkward manner pursued in the ‘Suburb’. The technique of oblique flat wings was not unknown in seventeenthcentury Europe. Italian artists of the Baroque period experimented especially with such possibilities. Andrea Pozzo’s Perspectiva pictorum et architectorum (1693) calls it the ‘Italian manner’ (see Fig. 5). Pozzo admits that it is difficult to paint such settings as the Point of Sight is not so easily found in these; and from the Obliquity of the Grooves in which the Scenes run, it comes to pass, that the right Lines which ought to appear ⁷⁹ Orrell, Human Stage, 239, 244, 248. ⁸⁰ Ibid. 242–3. ⁸¹ William Shakespeare, Richard II, II. ii. 18–20 (Bushy). My discussion is inspired by Hanneke Grootenboer’s excellent book The Rhetoric of Perspective (Chicago and London, 2005), which cites this passage (p. 101).

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Figure 5. Andrea Pozzo, Perspectiva pictorum et architectorum (1693), fig. 73 . By kind permission of Karin and Roberto Einaudi. parallel to the Line of the Plan, must not be drawn parallel thereto, but oblique; which is a Work of some Difficulty. This indeed may be avoided, by fixing the Grooves parallel to the P[r]oscene; as is usual in some Places, expecially in Germany. Nevertheless, the Italian Manner has this Advantage; That those who are employ’d to prompt the Actors, and shift the Scenes, &c. are less expos’d to Sight, in the Performance of their Business.⁸² ⁸² John Sturt’s Latin-English edition of Andrea Pozzo, Rules and Examples of Perspective Proper for Painters and Architects, trans. John James (London, 1707), no pagination, commentary to Fig. 72.

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Pozzo draws our attention to a feature which had already disturbed Duke Cosimo when he made his dwarfs target undesirable persons in the perspective scenery. People going about their business behind the wings threatened the illusion. If these wings were positioned parallel to a proscenium arch, spectators placed on the sides close to the proscenium could have seen stagehands at work. An oblique setting prevented such unwelcome insights. In preparing Salmacida Spolia, Jones—or Webb—experimented with obliquely placed side-wings. This was a novelty in English theatre. We know of only one other set of flat oblique wings dating back to the time. It was devised by Mildmay Fane for a private play in 1641. Yet Fane’s designs do not reveal whether his wings were to be painted in a distorted manner.⁸³ We do not know the source of Jones’s inspiration. At odds with the customary theatrical settings in Northern Europe, such early examples attest to the existence—and crosscultural transmission—of oblique wings ‘in the Italian manner’ long before Pozzo’s description. Supposedly flawed, the ‘Suburbs of a Great City’ resulted from a deep-rooted interest in Continental technology and a feeling for the interaction between people and stage architecture. Yet, as Pozzo pointed out, such scenes were tricky to paint and required experience. The technical realization of Salmacida Spolia suggests that designer and assistant were dissatisfied with their efforts, as Jones eventually retained the routine solution. His final floor plan for the last Caroline court masque shows the usual arrangement of flat wings placed parallel to the proscenium. The designs for late court masques allow for several readings. Orrell’s refreshing argument counters the accepted view that absolutist theatre had a monofocal perspective, and that the stage was devised to please the king’s eye only.⁸⁴ Undoubtedly, geometric proportion was, in seventeenth-century painting, employed as a visual rhetoric of reason and truth.⁸⁵ And similarly it is clear that the architecture and choreographies of masques sought to persuade and please the viewer through the orderly display of figured dances, settings in perspective, and an axis leading from the presence to the vanishing point on ⁸³ For the early use of oblique wings on the English stage, see Leacroft, Development, 99–100, 135; also Kalman A. Burnim, ‘Some Notes on Aaron Hill and Stage Scenery’, Theatre Notebook, 12/1 (1957), 29–33, and ‘Notes, Queries and Answers: Oblique Wings’, Theatre Notebook, 12/3 (1958), 105. Both authors refer to examples after Pozzo’s publication; Burnim’s date to 1719, 1738, and 1749; Leacroft’s to the late 18th cent. Fane’s flat revolving wings for Candy Restored are reproduced in Mildmay Fane’s Raguaillo d’Oceano 1640 and Candy Restored 1641, ed. Clifford Leech (Louvain, 1938), following the text of Candy Restored; see also commentary, 33. The wings could be reversed simultaneously. Allardyce Nicoll, Stuart Masques and the Renaissance Stage (London, 1937), 37, 152. ⁸⁴ OS i. 7. Peacock concedes that the king’s perfect view might only ever have been fully realised in Jonson’s prose. SDIJ, 163. ⁸⁵ On Pascal, geometry, and the rhetoric of truth see Grootenboer, Rhetoric of Perspective, 83.

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stage. Yet, as this chapter has shown, even orthodox figured dances could have appealed to viewers seated in all sections of the auditorium. Furthermore, linear perspective had been understood from the very beginning as a flawed ideal: theorists and artists (Leonardo da Vinci possibly being the first) had long recognized that the concept required an ‘ideal-yet-impossible position of the viewer, who has only one point at his disposal but looks at a picture with two eyes’, and indeed many early modern works of art deliberately contain perspectival errors.⁸⁶ As late Jonesian stage designs show, court masques might apply the visual rhetoric of geometry-as-truth, and at the same time acknowledge the ‘ideal-yet-impossible’ by subtly tweaking the perspective to please many eyes. Playing with U-turns and ‘view-zones’ rather than a clear single vanishing point, and dazzling spectators with the moving geometry of dances, the visual technology of Caroline productions suggests that masques were indeed spectacles between criticism and compliment. As Kevin Sharpe has argued, such occasions negotiated tactfully, if not always successfully, between various factions and interests at court, and the visual politics of masque performances confirm this view.⁸⁷ Wistfully adopting flawed aesthetic ideals and compromise formulae, choreographers and stage designers mastered a difficult task, just as court poets did: ‘to know fully, and yet to praise’.⁸⁸ As David Lindley has shown, Salmacida Spolia was produced in a troubled political context—the Scottish rebellion and a restive parliament called in after years of personal rule. The masque exemplified ‘the King’s desire for co-operation, and the terms of his wish for peace. Unusual in that both the King and Queen performed, it makes one last effort to reassert their role as model of the love that should infuse the whole of society.’⁸⁹ Here the royal couple implored spectators to appreciate that the tough love of Charles was always preferable to war. In the text by William Davenant, the audience was summoned to ‘learn to love’ ‘through his [the king’s] optic’: All that are harsh, all that are rude, Are by your harmony subdued; Yet so into obedience wrought As if not forced to it, but taught.⁹⁰ ⁸⁶ Ibid. 53, 113. ⁸⁷ Kevin Sharpe, Criticism and Compliment: The Politics of Literature in the England of Charles I (Cambridge, 1987). ⁸⁸ I adopt a bon mot from Joanne Altieri, ‘Responses to a Waning Mythology in Carew’s Political Poetry’, Studies in English Literature, 26/1 (1986), 107–24, at 112. ⁸⁹ Lindley (ed.), Court Masques, 269. ⁹⁰ William Davenant, Salmacida Spolia, in Lindley (ed.), Court Masques, p. 212, ll. 425–8; p. 210, l. 371.

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Figure 6. Douglas Hofstadter, Barbara (2002). Ambigram, readable from left to right, and (flipped upside down) from right to left. Author’s collection.

In the same way as the poetry anxiously preached reconciliation between factions, Jones might have sought a technical solution to making viewers ‘learn to love’ through optics. Jones’s visual compromise resulted in ambiguous perspectives over the 1630s, of which the design for Salmacida Spolia remained a last, unrealized attempt. The mathematician and linguist Douglas Hofstadter has coined the term ‘ambigram’, a structure which combines verbal and visual elements, and often consists of a calligraphic wordplay. The interpretation of such ‘ambigrams’ depends on the way we look at them. We may decipher one and the same text regardless of whether we read an ambigram upside down or from right to left [see Fig. 6]. We may even arrive at rival messages—simply by shifting our point of view.⁹¹ In a Greek or Latin context, ‘ambi’ or ‘amphi’ means ‘ambiguous, double’ and ‘to both sides’. Perhaps we find in late Jonesian designs an attempt at ambi-/amphi-theatre, a more inclusive form of spectacle by way of ambiguity. Orrell’s proposition of a ‘human stage’ and the Pozzo hypothesis both put the performer back into the scene. If English illusionistic theatre of the early modern period has a syntax, it has found its subject here. The ‘Suburbs of a Great City’ must be regarded not as a failure but an intriguing experiment. Jones and Webb engaged with new foreign technologies to reconcile the multimedia elements of a performance. Their concern for the ‘human stage’ turned architecture into living theatre.

⁹¹ Douglas Hofstadter, Ambigrammi (Florence, 1987), 17.

4 Discipline or Pleasure? PRACTICE AND THE WRIT TEN SOURCE What was early dance like before choreographers started writing about it? Many dance historians hold that it afforded innocent pleasure whose origins are now lost in the mists of time. Round dancing belonged to the catalogue of egalitarian, ‘participatory’, and ‘improvisational’ medieval pastimes, untainted by taxonomy.¹ Later, however, Renaissance and Baroque choreographers deprived the dancing individual of jouissance. No longer ‘mimesis’ in which action and spirit were one, courtly performance turned into mere ‘mimicry’.² The gestures of the elite, we learn, were ‘suppressed’ as dancing ‘moved out of the oral tradition and, progressively codified . . . and transcribed, into literate culture’. If male courtiers suffered, how much more than them the women, as courtly dancing was ‘obviously a patriarchal practice’.³ In court ballet the discourses of power became all too obvious. The many rules of danse noble ‘alienated’ the dancing subject, making it subservient to the ruler’s will, for whom it performed.⁴ The particularization of the body into distinct parts which had to perform different movements disturbed the dancer’s sense of wholeness and weakened the performing body’s resilience against absolutist appropriation. In this manner, critics have delineated a neat development which leads, via increasing textual/symbolic codification, from the almost artless pursuits of early choreographers to the domesticated dance floor of the Sun King. ¹ A widely shared view as, for instance, expressed in Skiles Howard, The Politics of Courtly Dancing in Early Modern England (Amherst, Mass., 1998), 8, 11. Irena Janicka-Swiderska, Dance in Drama: Studies in English Renaissance and Modern Theatre (#odz, 1992), introd. ² Best known is Rudolf zur Lippe’s standard work, Naturbeherrschung am Menschen, 2 vols. (Frankfurt, 1974), ii. 241. Instead of using the revised 1981 text I cite from the more widely available first edition. The arguments I draw on remain unchanged in the later version. ³ Howard, Politics of Courtly Dancing, 8, 3. ⁴ Rudolf zur Lippe, Sinnenbewußtsein: Grundlagen einer anthropologischen Ästhetik (Hamburg, 1987). Der Körper—erstes Werkzeug der Kulturen (Oldenbourg, 1983), 14.

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Dance-as-text approaches have shown that in the early modern period ‘choreography was frequently likened to, and indeed contrived to suggest, a written text’.⁵ Dance treatises of the time famously called the art a ‘mute rhetoric’.⁶ Fabritio Caroso saw it as a means of communication, equal to a spoken dialogue, for which he invented the term ‘pedalogue’: in such a ‘pedalogue’, the feet spelled out what was left unsaid: ‘just as we say that when two people converse they are engaging in a dialogue, so here, when the gentleman dances one group of steps (or one variation) with his feet, and the lady answers the same way, this foot conversation leads me to term it “pedalogue” ’.⁷ Perplexingly, however, the early modern period produced very few written or printed choreographies, as the previous chapters have shown. The dismal source situation does not suggest a towering presence of logocentric dancing masters. Prominent French instrumentalists and dancers of the early seventeenth century might have been illiterate; no written music scores have been found in their possession.⁸ David Buch questions the traditional view that baladins— professional dancing masters—were musically unsophisticated but concedes that a good deal of dance music composition might have been teamwork based on aural communication. Before the period of Lully, French court musicians would often compose their accompanying parts once the melody had been played to them.⁹ The celebrated violinist and choreographer Bocan was an analphabet (‘ne savait point de musique et même ni lire ni écrire, ni noter’), and yet he managed a full-fledged professional career from the age of 16 to 70 and contributed to early Stuart court masques.¹⁰ A variety of media—oral communication, physical practice as well as notation—must have ensured the survival of dance repertoire. It is not clear why oral and literate cultures should be mutually exclusive; at least in the field of early dance, they coexisted. ⁵ Mark Franko, Dance as Text: Ideologies of the Baroque Body (Cambridge, 1993), 15. ⁶ Thoinot Arbeau, Orchésographie (Langres, 1589), fol. 4r, ‘Rhetorique muette’. ⁷ ‘Si come due persone che discorrono insieme, si dice che parlano in Dialogo: cosi, facendo il Cavaliere nel Ballo un Tempo di Moti, overo una Mutanza con gli piedi; & rispondendogli il medesimo la Dama, per questa corrispondenza che fanno con gli piedi, gli hò dato questo nome di Pedalogo’. Canario variation of Laura Suave, in Fabritio Caroso, Nobiltà di dame (Venice, 1600), 115; trans. in Courtly Dance of the Renaissance: ‘Nobiltà di dame’, ed. and trans. Julia Sutton and F. Marian Walker (New York, 1995), 164. ⁸ Catherine Massip, La Vie des musiciens de Paris au temps de Mazarin (1643–1661) (Paris, 1976), 126. ⁹ David J. Buch (ed.) Dance Music from the Ballets de Cour 1575–1651 (Stuyvesant, NY, 1993), 16–17 and n. 15. ¹⁰ A receipt from 1623 with his name is reproduced in Jules Écorcheville (ed.), Vingt suites d’orchestre du XVII e siècle français, 2 vols. (Paris, 1906), i. 12, but the name was probably written by a scribe, not Bocan.

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It has become a critical commonplace that choreographic codification constrains individual self-expression. Ensemble choreographies, where dancers dressed and moved en suite, have been singled out as orchestrating repression, notably when they were devised to please an absolutist ruler. The ballet, critics claim, was restricted in a twofold way by space and gaze: a perspective setting would privilege the monarch with the best view of the action, as well as frame and contain the orderly geometric ballet formation. Such accounts propose that individual action is more satisfactory than group action: the dancer is the happier the fewer rules there are. Conformity thus automatically means constraint. Yet if we argue that codification suppresses self-expression, we must ask what exactly a spontaneous, or natural, movement might be. What seems original could be acquired, as Montaigne already knew.¹¹ The human body is singularly fond of formalisms. If they are not imposed, it will invent them. Individuals will, in the course of their lives, imitate other people’s gestures and may not even be aware of it. They will acquire routine movements and certain mannerisms of doing things. Whether consciously affected or unwittingly performed, such bodily motions endow each person with an unmistakable kinetic profile. We are sometimes able to identify people from afar, from the way they walk or act, before we see their faces. When an external code is imposed on a body engaged in formalisms of its own, it invites reaction. It may provoke resistance or creative appropriation. Stravinsky argued, with regard to order in musical composition: ‘Le fait même de recourir à ce que nous appelons l’ordre, cet ordre qui nous permet de dogmatiser dans l’espèce que nous traitons, ne nous entraîne pas seulement à y prendre goût: il nous incite à placer notre propre activité créatrice sous l’égide de ce dogmatisme’.¹² The same applies to the deeply musical activity of dancing. Subversion—in the sense of creative interpretation—is integral to formalism itself, a central theoretical paradox which post-Foucauldian dance theory has been unable to accommodate. Early modern choreographers (de Lauze, Montagut, Caroso, Negri, Santucci, and others) offered variations to be chosen by individual performers, or even basic rules from which dancers could construct a repertoire of their own. This contradicts the image of courtly dancing as strictly disciplinary exercise and straight path to absolutism, paved by ever more prescriptive dancing masters.

¹¹ For an excellent discussion of ‘natural’ movement and Montaigne see Franko, Dance as Text, ch. 3. ¹² Igor Stravinsky, Poetics of Music in the Form of Six Lessons, pref. George Seferis (Cambridge, Mass., 1970), 6. B. Ravelhofer, ‘Memorable Movements’, Internationales Archiv für Sozialgeschichte der deutschen Literatur, 22/1 (1997), 1–18, at 10–11.

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The more rules there are, the more a performer has to practise to comply with them. If he or she does not like the style, or struggles with technical difficulties all the way through a dance, the effect can, of course, be alienating. Otherwise, there are various possibilities. No matter how accurately and in how much detail early modern dancing masters formalized a step, these descriptions were, and still are, always open to, and challenged by, their physical interpretation. A text (or notation) and its corresponding movement do not engage in a one-to-one relation—a reason why the reconstruction of the historical repertoire is such a delicate task even when page-length elaborate step instructions have survived. Indeed, some dance historians repudiate the notion of ‘reconstruction’ on the grounds that too much time has passed to capture the intricacies of early modern repertoire, and that a written or graphic representation is not to be confused with the movement itself. Thus, Mark Franko prefers the term ‘construction’ and distinguishes between text and improvisation.¹³ There is no way of fixing a choreography to the point of eliminating the individual dancer’s (or scholar’s) creativity. In the same way as Lully’s ballet-opéras sound different in the recordings by Christophe Rousset, Marc Minkowski, or William Christie, their dances look different depending on the performers. The research and performance of early modern choreography has resulted in various interpretive schools. Students will develop certain mannerisms informed by personal taste and training background: the styles of Barbara Sparti, Mary Collins, Francine Lancelot, Marie-Geneviève Massé, Deda Colonna, Andrea Francalanci, Lieven Baert, or the Dolmetsch school are different. How much more difference must, then, have animated a rich early modern dancing culture with comparatively little written codification and only a few dance works circulating in print. Complex interactions between a code and its interpretation can be traced, for instance, in Ben Jonson’s Love Restored (1612). Here Cupid praises the orderly performance of ten masquers: See, here are ten, The spirits of Court, and flower of men, Led on by me, with flam’d intents, To figure the ten ornaments, That do each courtly presence grace. ¹³ Franko, Dance as Text, 152; also Franko, ‘Renaissance Conduct Literature and the Basse Danse: The Kinesis of Bonne Grace’, in Richard Trexler (ed.), Persons in Groups: Social Behavior as Identity Formation in Medieval and Renaissance Europe (Binghamton, NY, 1985), 55–66.

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Nor will they rudely strive for place, One to precede the other; but, As musique them in forme shall put, So will they keep their measures true, And make still their proportions new, Till all become one harmonie, Of honor, and of courtesie, True valure, and urbanitie, Of confidence, alacritie, Of promptnesse, and of industrie, Habilitie, Realitie.¹⁴

In this Twelfth Night masque, the text stresses that each dancer kept to his place. It captures once more the synchronous movements happening on stage for both audiences and post-production readers. Ordinary Jacobean courtiers, Jonson’s verse insinuates, sadly lacked the virtues of concord and should therefore imitate their exemplary dancing colleagues. The masque sought to translate abstract courtly ideals into concrete, if ephemeral, movements of ‘one harmonie’. Yet the effort was somewhat undercut by the emphatically long, and very funny, first part of the entertainment, which was about not keeping to one’s allotted place. Here, the dominant character, Robin Goodfellow, succeeded by not playing by the rules. A Jacobean gatecrasher, as it were, he told his audience how he finally managed to get past the bouncers into the packed masquing hall. Goodfellow was given the prominent, enabling role of leading all the characters offstage and directing them to true ‘Love’. Thanks to his mediation, the king’s power released ‘Love’ and prompted the appearance of the masquers. The courtly dancers owed their performance to a cheater.¹⁵ Such circumstances rendered the final ‘courtly’ entry rather more complex. Surely the aristocratic dancers knew that their figured allegorical choreography was an ephemeral concession to an ideal. For masquers disaffected with James’s court, their ‘measures true’ might well have constituted an ironic gesture. As Robin Goodfellow said at some point, ‘we all are masquers sometimes’, doubtless a view shared by a monarch who (echoing Elizabeth I) famously wrote that ‘a King is as one set on a stage, whose smallest actions and gestures, all the people gazingly doe behold’.¹⁶ From the viewpoint of both king and courtiers, ¹⁴ ll. 253–68, in HS vii. 384: ‘habilitie’ means ‘ability’; ‘realitie’ in the sense of ‘devotion, loyalty’. ¹⁵ ll. 193–7 in HS vii. 382. ¹⁶ l. 103, in HS vii. 380 Basilikon Doron (1599; rev. edn. 1603), in King James VI and I, Political Writings, ed. Johann P. Sommerville (Cambridge, 1994), 49.

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the whole thrust of the spectacle was directed at the usefulness of cheating, play-acting, or make-believe, to enable the fiction of an ideal court, as ‘harmony’ was difficult to attain in the reality of an ordinary household. A production apologetic of Charles’s Personal Rule, William Davenant’s Britannia Triumphans (1638) exhibited the king’s naval policies. The highlight of the entertainment consisted in the appearance of the king disguised as ‘Britanocles’, impersonating military victory. Charles took the stage together with aristocratic heroic performers who embodied ancient and modern virtues. Davenant’s masque was bifocal, for Charles danced as chief masquer while Henrietta Maria followed the spectacle from the auditorium (the masque text made the double focus explicit by spoken and sung lines which addressed her during performance). Her privileged position, a raised dais, offered her an optimal view of the stage perspective and the dancers who descended to the open space before her. Before Henrietta Maria’s eyes, a geometric performance unfolded which featured her husband and fourteen lords, among them the Duke of Lennox, and the Earls of Elgin, Carlisle, and Devonshire. They wore identical suits in white and carnation, reminiscent of French classical ballet costumes, with a pyramidal headdress of feathers. The odd number of performers implied that Charles was primus inter pares on whom all the figures centred. Fame’s song celebrated the king’s effect on performers and audience. In dialogue with Fame, the chorus—a second audience on stage—echoed once more the power of the royal movements. This cumulative effect built up a frenzy of joyful excitement: (Chorus:) His person fills our eyes, his name our ears, His virtue every drooping spirit cheers! (Fame:) Why move these Princes of his train so slow As taking root they would to statues grow, But that the wonder of his virtue turns them so! ’Tis fit you mix that wonder with delight, As you were warmed to motion with his sight, . . . . . . . . (Chorus:) Move then in such a noble order here As if you each his governed planet were, And he moved first, to move you in each sphere. O with what joy you’ll measure out the time! Each breast like his still free from every crime, Whose pensive weight might hinder you to climb!¹⁷ ¹⁷ ll. 550–6, 558–63, in OS ii. 666. Further line references to Britannia Triumphans appear in the text.

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Davenant’s lines give us much implicit information on the choreography and instruct us in its correct interpretation. King and courtiers performed a conventional geometric dance illustrating the movement of the spheres. French ballets de cour and intermedi had orchestrated the like since the sixteenth century. Not until Charles had stepped out of the Palace of Fame were the masquers able to begin their dance. The monarch was an impulse giver and prime mover (‘he mov’d first, to move you in each sphere’). His dazzling aspect initially slowed down the masquers and almost froze them to statues; then, however, Apollonian fire warmed them to motion. A veritable sun king was in control of lesser lights. His dancers reflected ‘governed planets’. Thus Charles’s orderly universe extended to many worlds, reminiscent of the imperial motto ‘unus non sufficit’: in terms of hyperbole, the Habsburgs could still learn from the Stuarts. Davenant’s imagery is very sensual, invoking heat, sight, and sound. According to the text, Charles overwhelmed his observers by a royal performance which filled eyes and ears: through Charles’s saviour-like presence, his dancing subjects were granted absolution. The masquers reached a prelapsarian state of absolute innocence, although the penultimate line, ‘still free from crime’, carried some menace. Charles’s sea power was brought to the fore. Galatea rose from the ocean to announce that the king now choreographed a pacified maritime world. The audience witnessed a dance of immortal nymphs. Rejoicing in the royal appearance, the ocean offered as tribute ‘sparkling treasures’ beyond the reach of ordinary ‘breathless divers’ (ll. 611–12). As the masque text points out, the maritime scene of pleasantly rocking ships continued ‘to entertain the sight whilst the dancing lasted’ (l. 625). This means that, while the masquers took out members of the audience to dance in the revels, the setting continued to be displayed, visually enveloping the moving court. The integration of the audience in the spectacle had thus multimedia features, which reached from movements to audiovisual clues. The backdrop which illustrated the actions of performers and audience alike implied that Charles had not simply calmed the immortal nymphs on stage but also those individuals plotting against him in the auditorium. From reading Davenant’s text, we might argue that the courtiers performing in the final dance of a Stuart court masque were deprived of their individuality, as they looked identical and danced the same steps and patterns. Mere puppets, they engaged in a grander geometric scheme to please the sovereign eye. Thus the dance visualized the prevailing power structures, privileging the monarch (in this case Henrietta Maria) with the ‘Überblick’, the all-surveying

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gaze.¹⁸ With its absolutist hyperbole, Britannia Triumphans might offer a multimedia template for a daunting post-Foucauldian reading of ballet-asobedience if it were not for its historical context. Britain’s morale as a sea power was at a historic low, not to speak of Charles’s domestic problems with the Scottish Kirk, factions at court, and a discontented Parliament. Readings of courtly ballet often focus on the relationship between sovereign and dancing courtiers, while they neglect other observers in the audience. This particular court masque, however, had been intended to impress a special guest, the Moroccan ambassador, a representative of an important region where English captives were sold into slavery by pirates. The diplomatic occasion will be revisited in the last chapter of this book, but a brief discussion of the power dynamics of the performance seems appropriate now. In Britannia Triumphans, the court defined itself vis-à-vis an outsider, addressing an issue of utmost significance to which the relationship between Charles and his aristocrats was subordinated. The masque portrayed a monarch in charge of court and commonwealth. For once, Charles’s government rocked the waves. Disguised as supernatural heroes, individual performers had cast off constraining particularities and arrived in an ideal world at the royal beck and call, a world which embraced the audience, including ambassadors of potentially hostile powers. The Moroccan guest was granted the flattering ‘Überblick’ (he had been seated near Henrietta Maria) and at the same time softly checked by a hosting country whose representatives moved in tune, as if prompted by a unity of purpose. The songs enacted fantasies of oceanic affluence quite at odds with the squabbles surrounding Charles’s imposition of ship money. Judging from the text, Charles controlled his dancers—and spectators—in a manner never attainable offstage, enjoying the temporary fiction of a universe in tune with royal policies. Studies have called such strategies an ‘illusion of power’.¹⁹ Yet we should not rule out that participants knowingly colluded in this illusion and regarded it as a useful cultural technique. Davenant’s masque texts show a clear awareness of the multimedia possibilities of illusion; an awareness he later spelled out in a theoretical treatise on dramatic entertainment which argued that the joint effects of lights, sounds, machinery, ¹⁸ A central theory in zur Lippe’s works; on controlled movement as marker of courtliness, see also Georges Vigarello, ‘The Upward Training of the Body from the Age of Chivalry to Courtly Civility’, in M. Feher, R. Naddaff, and N. Tazi (eds.), Fragments for a History of the Human Body: Part Two (New York, 1989), 148–99. ¹⁹ Stephen Orgel, The Illusion of Power: Political Theater in the English Renaissance (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1975).

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and action should merge in an ‘entire body, full of grace and proportion’.²⁰ On the performance night of Britannia Triumphans, it was hoped that the powerful vision of spectacle would command the minds of spectators—in particular, that of the Moroccan ambassador. Post-Foucauldian models of court ballet emphasize an antagonistic relationship between king and court. Courtiers could, of course, have felt uncomfortable with a choreography which subordinated them as ‘governed planets’ to the king. Furthermore, such events were assaults upon individual vanity: the audience would not recognize fully masked dancers until after the performance, when they were allowed to take off their vizards. On the other hand, in terms of realpolitik, a performance to honour kings represented a complex interaction to the mutual benefit of the parties involved. The monarch enjoyed a satisfying display of control which could be projected to third observers. For the dancing aristocrat, an active participation yielded proof of being in favour, an excellent reason to concede the ruler a brief tribute. Self-effacement can be a career option. Seen from an anthropological point of view, a synchronous performance which erases personal specificities does not only have destabilizing effects on an individual. According to readings of French ballet de cour in the tradition of Frances Yates, it was ‘reassuring to watch human beings in such clear agreement and ritualized pomp’ in an unpredictable world of religious wars and other crises.²¹ As Thomas Greene has shown, multi-figured geometric ballets included sequences of seeming confusion as performers changed places, but they ultimately always resolved into recognizable patterns. Such triumphant conclusions had an apotropaic function, exorcizing the powers of disorder that beset performers and audiences offstage. Choreography thus suggested, at least temporarily, a sense of control.²² The final choreographies in Britannia Triumphans could have left just such an effect on their audience, when the labyrinthine meanderings of the planet-courtiers resulted over and over again in recognizable constellations. In that sense, masque choreographies duplicated what has been observed about mazes on the floor in medieval cathedrals: ‘in a labyrinth, you do not lose yourself, . . . in a labyrinth, you find yourself ’, ²⁰ A Proposition for Advancement of Moralitie (London, 1654), 19–20. James R. Jacob and Timothy Raylor, ‘Opera and Obedience: Thomas Hobbes and A Proposition for Advancement of Moralitie by Sir William Davenant’, Seventeenth Century, 6/2 (1991), 205–50: app. i, p. 245. ²¹ Buch, in Dance Music from the Ballets de Cour 1575–1651, p. xviii. ²² Thomas M. Greene, ‘Labyrinth Dances in the French and English Renaissance’, Renaissance Quarterly, 54/4 (2001), 1403–66.

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for such devices represent the twisting yet hopeful path to salvation.²³ This seems to have been the point of the courtly dance which Ben Jonson’s lines evoked so mysteriously in Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue (1618): Then, as all actions of mankind are but a Laborinth, or maze, so let your Daunces be entwin’d, yet not perplex men, unto gaze. But measur’d, and so numerous too, as men may read each act you doo. And when they see the Graces meet, admire the wisdom of your feet. For Dauncing is an exercise not only shews the movers wit, but maketh the beholder wise, as he hath powre to rise to it.²⁴

In Britannia Triumphans, too, a court pulled together to reassure itself in a crisis. Where words could not cross language barriers, or were drowned in noise, movements and uniform costuming visualized assertive diplomacy in action. Dance offered an easily accessible element of performance; if the Moroccan ambassador ‘had the power to rise to it’, he could have decoded synchronous movement as a sign of strength and translate it into political meaning. A ‘pedalogue’ communicated the single-minded resolve of the dancing state to its observers. William McNeill stresses the euphoric response to muscular bonding in physical exercise: ‘keeping together in time . . . remains the most powerful way to create and sustain a community that we have at our command’.²⁵ Not surprisingly therefore, masques, whose cardinal aim was to generate a feeling of togetherness under the benevolent guidance of a patron, consisted of ‘one houres words, the rest in Songs & Dances’.²⁶ Coordinated muscular bonding ²³ Joseph Kerman, ‘That Old Labyrinth Song’, New York Review of Books, 51/11 (24 June 2004), 42–5, at 42. The labyrinth as symbol of salvation is a central tenet of Craig Wright’s The Maze and the Warrior: Symbols in Architecture, Theology, and Music (Cambridge, Mass., 2001). ²⁴ ll. 261–72, in HS vii. 488–9. ²⁵ William H. McNeill, Keeping Together in Time: Dance and Drill in Human History (Cambridge, Mass., 1995), 2, 8, 150. During army drill, McNeill experienced self-enlargement in what he termed a collective ritual. As he argues, collective dancing also causes boundary loss and heightens fellow feeling with all who share the dance. Ensemble ballet and manoeuvring must, of course, not be conflated, given the different contexts and degrees of sophistication. They share, however, the feature of synchronous movement exercised by a group, which can generate well-being. ²⁶ Thomas Middleton, A Courtly Masque: The Device Called The World Tost at Tennis (London, 1620), sig. Br.

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provided the closure of the event, first in the synchronous movements which constituted the grand ballet, and then in the revels, where dance provided an audiovisual and tactile inclusive medium. Under such circumstances, collective dancing could represent an enabling, apotropaic practice. The group meant more than an individual’s limited existence. Ruler and courtiers shared a fantasy: all gained importance by prosthetic self-enlargement. A larger Herculean body smoothly moved in perfect harmony, an experience so seductive that it might even engulf audiences. In the joint dancing of audience and performers, revels brought the illusion of the stage to bear on early Stuart society at large.²⁷ Judging from eyewitness accounts and masque texts, the revels compromised between individual expression and hierarchic order. Participants in the dances were often selected according to rank in a tightly cued manner, and the repertoire usually followed an established sequence. Dancers kept together in time in common social dances. Yet participants also enjoyed opportunities for improvisation and liberal self-display. Even women gave virtuoso performances: in Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue, the ‘Master Controllers daughter bare away the bell for delicat dauncing’.²⁸ Hence, the kinetic economy of masques seems to have balanced representative needs against pleasure and excitement. As finely tuned events, they sought to satisfy as many participants as possible. The biography of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, allows us to explore the role of dancing as enabling exercise. Critics have traditionally portrayed him as a protean figure who acquired his graceful manners for the purposes of social climbing. More recent work, however, has shifted the emphasis onto the demands of court life which weighed upon the favourite of James I and Charles I. Roger Lockyer describes Buckingham’s frequent illnesses and nervous breakdowns, caused by the stress of keeping on top of political opponents, running an elaborate patronage network, and maintaining the affection of a mercurial monarch.²⁹ Buckingham knew a multiplicity of dance styles, among them the latest French and Spanish fashions. The rules in the French dance treatises dedicated to Buckingham prefigure to some extent those of late seventeenth-century danse noble. Post-Foucauldian studies regard the latter as a classic example of choreography by constraint. Dancers need ²⁷ The seminal text on the fusion of reality with illusion remains, of course, Stephen Orgel, The Jonsonian Masque (1967; New York, 1981). ²⁸ Isabella or Mary, daughters of Sir Thomas Edmondes, in Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue (1618). The Letters of John Chamberlain, ed. N. E. McClure, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, 1939), i. 128. ²⁹ Roger Lockyer, Buckingham: The Life and Political Career of George Villiers, First Duke of Buckingham, 1592–1628 (London, 1981), 95, 194–6.

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years of practice and a quasi-professional education to perform with aplomb. Yet it seems naïve to view Buckingham simply as a subject who groomed his body as a perfect, mechanized instrument subservient to the king’s will. His balletic brilliance constituted an act of sly submission in the same way as he fashioned himself as ‘dog’ in his private letters to James (an address too intimate to suggest awestruck respect; it asserts privilege as much as subordination). Performance can work like an empowering drug. Brilliant dancers have a hypnotic effect on their audience. Seventeenth-century accounts attest to Buckingham’s mesmerizing, erotic stage presence.³⁰ The advantages of public performance aside, could Buckingham have tried to master his own anxieties by mastering his body? For modern practitioners of danse noble or mannerist Italian repertoire of the sixteenth century, commanding detailed movements may give intense pleasure. The ‘increased codification’ condemned in many recent studies of early dance might therefore have had positive effects. ‘Particularization’ means not automatically an assault upon a body’s integrity but draws attention to previously ignored expressive potential. Depending on the dancer’s will and ability, the body becomes an army, orchestra, elaborate toy, or clockwork, whose perfectly attuned movements infuse an individual with a sense of control. An accomplished dancer may reach the point where his or her body seems to perform by itself, without receiving conscious mental instructions. The body’s precise, beautiful motions are a bulwark against the chaos outside.

FEMALE PERFORMANCE AND EUROPEAN DANCE TREATISES If codification and its interpretation in performance offered various possibilities for male performers, what about female dancers? The repertoire composed in Europe between the fifteenth and the seventeenth century has been described as a discipline written by men for a male clientele, while women were marginalized not only in performance but also in the medium of text and ³⁰ Buckingham’s famous performance in Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue (1618) is one example. Produced after Buckingham’s death, Anthony Weldon’s The Court and Character of King James (London, 1650) is a biased account which reveals a mid-17th-cent. fascination with Buckingham’s erotic presence. See Daniel R. Woolf, ‘Two Elizabeths? James I and the Late Queen’s Famous Memory’, Canadian Journal of History, 20 (1985), 167–91. See also Franko, Dance as Text, on erotic self-display in ballet de cour.

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image. They were uncomfortably dressed, and monitored by more rules than their male counterparts. Choreographers, it is often argued, excluded them from certain steps and genres, while men would be given every opportunity to show off their prowess. In Stuart masques, female dancers were confined to prescribed, formal choreographies, while men had fun with risqué roles in grotesque entries.³¹ On the dance floor, the dictates of patriarchy even affected powerful English queens. According to one study, the Earl of Leicester had, for once, the upper hand when he took Elizabeth I out for the volta: her entrapped body and ‘passive legs’ fired the ‘voyeuristic fantasies’ of male courtiers. This relationship was representative of ‘all those other women who danced’, since they, as ‘object of the male gaze’, were at once powerfully attractive and disenfranchised.³² Dancing women thus exerted self-censorship, which resulted in a demure performance. As critics argue, the ‘male gaze was active and the female passive. . . . The female was prohibited from gazing at her male partner; . . . the ideal female dancer was complicit in the reification of her body, made a fetish by the impossibility of returning the active male gaze’.³³ The theoretical attempt at the feminine ‘ideal’ raises questions about the actual practice. The author and dancing master Fabritio Caroso (to whom the above assessment, a study of Queen Anne’s masques, refers) did indeed recommend a ‘level’ gaze (‘gli occhi à mezz’aria’). But he also criticized women who cast their eyes too low (‘troppo gli occhi bassi’), and allowed situations in which she could choose her partner and look at him.³⁴ Caroso’s books did not address an exclusively male readership: his follow-up of Il Ballarino, ‘The Dancer’—incidentally a work dedicated to a powerful elite woman, Bianca Cappello, Grand Duchess of Tuscany—was called Nobiltà di dame (‘On the Nobility of Ladies’) (1600). The second choreography in this collection, Nuova Regina, honours Maria de’ Medici, Henrietta Maria’s mother. Forty-seven of the forty-nine dances are ³¹ See e.g. Deanna Shemek, ‘Circular Definitions: Configuring Gender in Italian Renaissance Festival’, Renaissance Quarterly, 48/1 (1995), 1–40. For representative studies of female performance in masques, see Marion Wynne-Davies, ‘The Queen’s Masque: Renaissance Women and the SeventeenthCentury Court Masque’, in S. Cerasano and M. Wynne-Davies (eds.), Gloriana’s Face: Women, Public and Private, in the English Renaissance (New York and London, 1992), 79–104, at 83–4. Suzanne Gossett, ‘ “Man-maid, begone!”: Women in Masques’, English Literary Renaissance, 18/1 (1988), 96–113. ³² M. Bella Mirabella, ‘Mute Rhetorics: Women, the Gaze, and Dance in Renaissance England’, Genre, 28/4 (1995), 413–43, at 438–40. She discusses genre pieces with no connection to the queen. Elizabeth never commissioned artworks which represented her dancing. ³³ Clare McManus, Women on the Renaissance Stage: Anna of Denmark and Female Masquing in the Stuart Court (1590–1619) (Manchester, 2002), 35–6, with reference to Arbeau and Caroso. ³⁴ Caroso, Nobiltà di dame (1600), 82. ‘A Lady’s Conduct When Inviting a Gentleman to Dance’. Nobiltà di dame, ed. Sutton and Walker, 146.

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addressed to elite women alone.³⁵ An all-time favourite in literature on early dance in England, the sixteenth-century French dance expert Thoinot Arbeau described certain situations and dances where women should not look at their male partners. Yet elsewhere his book does not insist on passive women: in a follow-and-refusal game, men kneel down before their ladies, then the ‘dasmoiselles se rendoient entre leurs bras, & dançoient ladite Courante pesle mesle’.³⁶ In early modern England, authors such as Sir Thomas Elyot promoted modesty in female performance—whether from observation, or wishful thinking, we do not know. Rules for the carriage of the head affected men, too. In works dedicated to the Duke of Buckingham, the French dancers Montagut and de Lauze had clear ideas about the male gaze, which was preferably ‘level’ as well.³⁷ Spanish sources, such as Esquivel’s book, recommended the level gaze for male dancers.³⁸ Have we interpreted the ‘level gaze’ in an over-restrictive way? A ‘level glance’, not too high, not too low, but in an unaffected straight manner, seems to respond to the courtly principle of eschewing extremes. It therefore agrees with an aesthetic of the via media—‘à mezz’aria’, as Caroso put it—which governed conduct books and humanist philosophy of the period. In early European repertoire there exist, of course, dances in which women might look at the floor all the way through while they are led on by their partners.³⁹ Yet other choreographies afford an intensely social experience. A downcast gaze, or the refusal of gazing, may imperil the very choreography, as dancers are deprived of a means of communication. Many sixteenth- and seventeenth-century choreographies for mixed couples from France, England, and Italy involved complex ensemble interaction. Performers needed to scan both spatial and human coordinates if figures were to fall into place. In the early Stuart period, female masquers specialized in complicated choreographies: in the wedding masque Hymenaei (1606), eight ladies joined an equal number of lords to ‘write’ the letters of the bride and the groom in their dances. Two years later, in The Masque of Beauty, a dance of lady masquers crystallized in a diamond figure. In the last court masque (1640), eleven ‘amazons’ led by Henrietta Maria joined as many knights for the grand ballet. In each case ³⁵ Bianca Cappello, member of a leading Venetian family, was married to Francesco de’ Medici. Caroso, Nobiltà di dame, ed. Sutton and Walker, 16. ³⁶ Orchésographie, fol. 66r. ³⁷ B. de Montagut, Louange de la danse, ed. B. Ravelhofer (Cambridge, 2000), fol. 17v, ‘sans baisser la teste, et tenant tousjours la veüe esgalle de sa hauteur’. F. de Lauze, Apologie de la danse (n.pl., 1623), 31. ³⁸ Juan de Esquivel [Navarro], Discursos sobre el arte del dançado, facs. edn. (Seville, 1642; Valencia, 1992), fol. 21r–v. ³⁹ e.g., in simple Burgundian basses danses, or in processional pavanes described by Arbeau.

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dancers would have had a hard time if they had not continuously checked their positions against the rest of the group. As the spectacle expert Michel de Pure observed about theatrical ensemble dancing, performers rehearsed best wearing their mask and costume—otherwise they gave too much attention to the faces of their partners when they memorized their various positions and figures.⁴⁰ De Pure implies that facial identification was, for men and women alike, a preferred technique of learning and performing a dance. He wrote, of course, about French ballet in the later seventeenth century, but his advice addresses a problem which must have occurred wherever performers dressed and masked identically, thus also in Italian intermedi as well as English masques. To insist that women did not look at men seems a rather artificial theoretical imposition on what might have been animated practice. Some English country dances were social games which prescribed an exchange of glances: Parson’s Farewell is punctuated by male and female dancers nodding at each other for mutual amusement.⁴¹ Precisely such opportunities explain the visceral reactions against mixed-sex dancing in moralistic treatises from Stubbes to Prynne, an inconceivable stance if the modest ‘level gaze’ had been the prevailing performance mode of the early modern Englishwoman. On occasion, women danced as they liked, as church records demonstrate. In 1608, when Catherina Jones was summoned by parish authorities because she had danced on the sabbath, she replied, ‘I care not for parson Acton toord in his teathe; I will dance on the Saboath daie in despite of him even at his nose’.⁴² Drawing our attention to women’s fashion which restricted their dancing, researchers have referred to unwieldy farthingales, tight corsets, and awesome footwear. In late sixteenth-century Italy, it was customary for women to dance in chopines, a kind of high platform mules. Choreographers, we are told, employed them in a subtle strategy to monitor female performance.⁴³ The combined impediments of outfit and step prescription had devastating consequences: The movement of her eyes was strictly disciplined. The lady was not to meet the gentleman’s gaze, but simply to absorb it . . . She was estranged from her body by the ⁴⁰ Michel de Pure, Idée des spectacles anciens et nouveaux, facs. edn. (Paris, 1668; Geneva, 1972), 257–8. ⁴¹ John Playford, The English Dancing Master (1651), ed. Hugh Mellor and Leslie Bridgewater (London, 1984), 6. ⁴² Archdeaconry of Ludlow Acts of Office, 8 Nov. 1608, Records of Early English Drama: Shropshire, ed. J. Alan B. Somerset (Toronto, 1994), i. 11. ⁴³ McManus, Women on the Renaissance Stage, 55.

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gown that concealed her while it displayed the wealth and rank of her husband, for the stiffened bodices that encased women’s torsos replaced their own contours with the geometrical shapes of their padded costumes. Even the woman’s relation to the spot upon which she stood was disrupted by the high chopines often worn when dancing; deprived of direct contact with the ground, with a center of balance set precariously high, she was forced to rely on the proffered support of the gentleman in order to totter, hand in hand, with equal, careful, and diminutive paces.⁴⁴

A closer look at sixteenth-century Italian dance manuals invalidates this scenario. Chopines were not unproblematic, as Caroso conceded, but could be managed: Now in order to walk nicely, and to wear chopines properly on one’s feet, so that they do not twist or go awry (for if one is ignorant of how to wear them, one may splinter them, or fall frequently, as has been and still is observed at parties and in church), it is better for [the lady] to raise the toe of the foot she moves first when she takes a step, for by raising it thus, she straightens the knee of that foot, and this extension keeps her body attractive and erect, besides which her chopine will not fall off that foot. Also, by thus raising it she avoids sliding it along [the ground], nor does she make any unpleasant noise. . . . By observing [this rule], she may move entirely with grace, seemliness, and beauty, better than the way one walked before; for a natural step is one thing, but a well-ordered step is another. By walking this way, therefore, even if the lady’s chopines are more than a handbreath-and-a-half high, she will seem to be on chopines only three fingerbreadths high, and will be able to dance flourishes [i.e. ‘fioretti’] and galliard variations at a ball, as I have just shown the world this day.⁴⁵

Judging from contemporary descriptions and chopines preserved in museum collections, there were two types, which differed greatly in height and weight. Heavy ones rising to some 40 cm were worn by fashionable Venetian ladies in the street, giving them an opportunity to lean on an escort from forbidding heights (a feature which stunned early modern tourists, especially English travellers). Small ones, weighing less than a modern street shoe, were used for convenience and worn on all other occasions when a lady could not show off her servant.⁴⁶ This latter type was suitable as dance footwear and is still used in ⁴⁴ Howard, Politics of Courtly Dancing, 101–2. ⁴⁵ Caroso, Nobiltà di dame, ed. Sutton and Walker, n. xi, p. 141. ⁴⁶ I am grateful to Dr Borkopp and Mrs Eichler for letting me inspect the chopines in the Bavarian National Museum, Munich: Inv. I 7–47,48: Italy, c.1600, length 24.5 cm, width 9 cm, height 6 cm. Inv. I 7–269,270: height 11.5 cm, weight 290 g. Inv. I 7–38,39: Zoccolo, c.1600, length 20.5 cm, width 5 cm, height 15.5 cm, weight 277 g. Inv. I 7–36,37: Venice, late 16th cent., length 20 cm, width 7 cm, height 19 cm, weight 280 g. Inv. I 7–34,35: weight 945 g, width 16 cm, length 21 cm, height 37.5 cm. Inv. I 7–32,33: c.1600, length 22.5 cm, width 17.3 cm, height 40.3 cm, weight 1018 g; the highest in

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classes on the Renaissance repertoire.⁴⁷ A costume design for the intermedi of the Florentine spectacle La Pellegrina (1589) shows nymphs frisking on moderately high chopines—at least fashion designers expected fully mobile dancers.⁴⁸ The fact that Caroso complained about noise casts doubt on the image of a silent dance floor. Women, the choreographer remarked, abused their footwear: ‘Some ladies and gentlewomen slide their chopines along as they walk, so that the racket they make is enough to drive one crazy! More often they bang them so loudly with each step, that they remind us of Franciscan friars [i.e. zoccolanti, certain friars that go on high wooden pattens].’⁴⁹ Ladies made themselves not only seen but heard. In French ballet de cour and English masques, chopines were used for local colour or comical effect.⁵⁰ Racan’s Ballet royal du grand bal de la douairière de Billebahaut (1626) was a three-hour romp about a terrifying old dowager from Bilbao, choreographed by Bocan, who was also involved in English court masques. The piece probably satirized the old-fashioned balls given by Queen Marguerite de Valois. Monsieur Joly, a burlesque dancer, played the leading role, dressed in black with a widow’s bonnet and orange underskirts. When he swayed onto the stage in platform shoes he brought the house down.⁵¹ In another French ballet given the year Henrietta Maria left for England, a male professional danced a caricature of her mother, Maria de’ Medici, as the scheming gambler ‘Perrette la Hasardeuse’ (see Fig. 7).⁵² Chopines identified this character as Italian. In England, Albion’s Triumph (1632) saw ‘a captive lady of Verdun’ whose old-fashioned appearance was compounded by platform mules.⁵³ William Davenant’s The Triumphs of the Prince d’Amour (1636) offered a view on a Venetian piazza ‘with courtezans looking out of windows and balconies’. Into the scene burst a debauched English lover, hanging ‘in the the collection. All items are inclined towards the ball of the foot, hence, the weight of the wearer would have rested more on the toes. Catalogued in Saskia Durian-Rees, Schuhe: Vom späten Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart (Munich, 1992), 32–7. ⁴⁷ Chopines require a good sense of balance, ‘gripping’ toes and careful handling of ‘kicking’ steps lest the shoe flies off into the room. They have no serious impact on dancing skills or self-expression. Pat Rader, Laura Crockett, and Julia Sutton, RENDANCE mailing list, June 1996. ⁴⁸ Designs for two female characters. Reproduced in James M. Saslow, The Medici Wedding of 1589: Florentine Festival as Theatrum Mundi (New Haven, 1996), pl. 8. ⁴⁹ Caroso, Nobiltà di dame, ed. Sutton and Walker, n. xi. p. 141. ⁵⁰ Designs for Ballet des Infatigables (1624) and Ballet des Fées de la Forest de Saint Germain (1625), in Margaret McGowan (ed.), The Court Ballet of Louis XIII (London, [1994]), figs. 44, 59, 171. ⁵¹ Ibid., fig. 88. The ballet involved several authors, among them Racan. ⁵² Marie-Françoise Christout (ed.), Le Ballet de cour au XVIIe siècle (Geneva, 1987), 163. ⁵³ OS ii, 477, no. 214.

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Figure 7. Caricature of Maria de’ Medici. Daniel Rabel, ‘Perrette la Hasardeuse’, for Ballet des Fées de la Forêt de Saint Germain (1625). Collection Hennin, QB 1625 53 B 12168. Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris.

right ear his mistress’s muff, in the left her shoe with a chapeen’.⁵⁴ Elite women at the English court used chopines on rare occasions. Henrietta Maria and her ladies wore them in her production of Artenice (1626), a pastoral by the same writer who had co-authored the text for the ballet of the dowager from Bilbao. Artenice was followed by an unidentified masque. Did a dance with Italian elements and appropriate footwear allude to Henrietta Maria’s Medici connections, given that chopines so often signposted Mediterranean characters in French and English spectacle?⁵⁵ In such contexts, chopines constituted expressive theatrical devices rather than instruments of patriarchal repression. Gender discrimination is also perceived in dance movements themselves. Women’s repertoire, critics argue, remained limited while physical effort and virtuosity dominated male performance. Thus, early modern Italian choreographers devised solo performances with ‘complicated steps for the man and ⁵⁴ Murray Lefkowitz (ed.), Trois masques à la cour de Charles Ier d’Angleterre (Paris, 1970), 131–2. ⁵⁵ OS i. 384. Order for seven chopines in a bill for a ‘masque’. The chopines were either employed in the pastoral or the masque afterwards.

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simplified ones for the woman’. Especially the gagliarda was ‘interwoven with canario stamping, fioretti, and trabucchetti for him, while they became simple if executed by her’.⁵⁶ Dancing masters might even replace the gagliarda with the supposedly less demanding tordiglione in the ladies’ version.⁵⁷ In France, ‘only male social dancers engaged in elevation whereas female dancers specialised in level steps’.⁵⁸ Imported from the Continent, such practices are, for many scholars, characteristic of English dancing. Here too the pavane, coranto, galliard, and volta ‘emphasised gender difference with their distinct variations for gentlemen and ladies’. The galliard in particular privileged the early modern phallocrat: men ‘resolutely penetrated the air with elaborate capers’, while woman looked on in admiration.⁵⁹ There are, of course, early modern treatises aplenty which emphasize the pyrotechnics of male dancers in galliards and thus underpin such critical views. Italian dancebooks of the period promote display-oriented male soli, and may provide more restrained variations for women. Yet, while Italian canario steps, fioretti, and trabucchetti may have been the domain of the male dancer in a specific variation, they belonged to a commonplace repertory for both sexes and were frequently performed by women too, even with chopines. Judging from the difficult jumps and intricate rhythmic changes in sixteenth-century tordiglione choreographies for women, they accomplished no mean trifle here.⁶⁰ Women performing in the Italian style of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century coped with intricate, rapid steps and jumps. They were in principle expected to master the same choreographic requirements as their male partners. Italian choreographers offered easy variations to men as well as women. Gender was an issue, but so was balletic proficiency or simply individual taste.⁶¹ ⁵⁶ Marina Nordera, ‘La maniera che la Dama doverà usare ballando: La donna che danza tra XVe XVIII secolo’, in M. Padovan (ed.), La danza in Europa fra Rinascimento e Barocco (Rome, 1995), 17–26, at 20; my trans. ⁵⁷ McManus, Women on the Renaissance Stage, 35. ⁵⁸ Franko, Dance as Text, 67. ⁵⁹ Howard, Politics of Courtly Dancing, 65, 19. For galliards as male domain see also Buch (ed.), Dance Music from the Ballets de Cour, 11; McManus, Women on the Renaissance Stage, 35, 47. ⁶⁰ Despite a suggestive lexical correlation, Caroso’s tordiglione choreographies have no obvious connection with the tourdion of 15th- and 16th-cent. French and Burgundian sources. Italian versions do not simply consist of a tourdion’s cinquepace sequence, jumped not too high, but can be technically demanding. See Caroso’s Tordiglione Balletto, in Nobiltà di dame, ed. Sutton and Walker, 284–7. ⁶¹ Caroso, Nobiltà di dame, ed. Sutton and Walker, 163, galliard section of Laura Suave: ‘if the gentleman knows how to dance the galliard, he does a solo variation’. An easier part is suggested to the lady not because of hampering footwear or gender but balletic knowledge (‘if she does not know the knot . . . she may do the [following] graceful variation’). Likewise, in the galliard section of Alta Vittoria, the gentleman chooses as first variation ‘whichever one seems best to him’, the lady ‘may do what the gentleman did’ ‘if she does not know how to do this variation’ (270–1).

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If Continental fashions travelled as far as London, a certain degree of agility should be granted to English female dancers. Women did jump, as numerous social dances from Italy, France, and England attest.⁶² In early Stuart entertainments women’s parts did not always conform with modern critics’ expectations. In a particular dance of the ‘measures’, women might be expected to ‘heave up’ their men.⁶³ In the revels of Anne’s masques, the women often chose their partners in lively dances, tossing even the prince around: for galliards and corantoes they went by discretion, and the young prince [probably Henry] was tossed from hand to hand like a tennis ball. The Lady Bedford and Lady Susan [de Vere] took out the two ambassadors and they bestirred themselves very lively, especially the Spaniard, for his Spanish galliard shewed himself a lusty old reveller. The goddesses they danced with did their parts, and the rest were nothing behindhand when it came to their turns; but of all for good grace and good footmanship Pallas [Queen Anne] bore the bell away.⁶⁴

The capriola, an athletic ornate leap often translated as ‘caper’, was the only step excluded from repertoire for women across Europe. It involved ornamental movements of both feet in the air, was exhausting, and very difficult to perform. An early example of bravura technique, the capriola was associated with the skilled dance professional. Even men were strongly advised to abstain if they lacked the technical skills. Buckingham’s choreographer Montagut dismissed the pathetic efforts of overambitious amateurs: Ce sauteur imitant le vol des sauterelles D’un plumage emprumpté se façonne des aisles, Et lors qu’il tache en vain de s’eslever en haut, Le poulmon luy pantelle, et La voix luy defaut. (This jumper imitating the flight of grasshoppers With borrowed plumage makes himself wings And as he attempts in vain to rise up, His lungs pant, and his voice fails him.)⁶⁵ ⁶² Women performed ‘saltarelli’ in 15th-cent. Italian balli, leaps in Arbeau’s volta and courante, and hops in English country dances. Leaps such as fioretto, trabucchetto, saffice, groppo, and passi di gagliarda featured in women’s parts in dances by Caroso, Negri, and Santucci. ⁶³ Sir John Ramsey’s ‘Spanioletta’, Bodl. MS Douce 280, fol. 66br. ⁶⁴ Dudley Carleton, 15 Jan. 1604, on the revels of The Vision of the Twelve Goddesses. Dudley Carleton to John Chamberlain, 1603–1624: Jacobean Letters, ed. Maurice Lee (New Brunswick, NJ, 1972), 56. ⁶⁵ Montagut, Louange, ed. Ravelhofer, p. 155, fol. 30r.

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For women encased in skirts, farthingales, and padded rolls, a capriola made little sense given that the artistry remained hidden by a voluminous outfit. In later periods, though, professional female dancers included the jump in their repertoire. In the 1660s Margaret Cavendish was very taken by the performance of what must have been a female French professional, who being in her Dublet and Breeches, and a Sword hanging by her side, one would have believed she never had worn a Petticoat . . . and when she Danced in a Masculine Habit, she would Caper Higher, and Oftener than any of the Men, although they were great Masters in the Art of Dancing, and when she Danced after the Fashion of her own Sex, she Danced Justly, Evenly, Smoothly, and Gracefully.⁶⁶

Other accounts of the later seventeenth century confirm the prowess of female professionals. Thérèse de Gorla (also known as Marquise Du Parc), an accomplished member of Molière’s company, was praised as a ‘lovely actress, with the bearing of an empress, [who] does everything delightfully, be it in singing or dancing’. Another contemporary fantasized about her ‘remarkable cabrioles— for one could see her legs and part of her thighs through the slit in her skirt, as well as her silk hose attached to her tights’.⁶⁷ Similar to a Restoration actress in a breeches part, Du Parc invited a titillating glance at her legs. As the response to her performance—and underwear—implies, the capriola may have proven too risqué to enter mainstream repertoire for women.

CONCLUSION I have provided a brief glimpse of well-known European dance sources which are frequently brought to bear on practice in the English masque. As many excellent studies have shown, dance works often sought to monitor performers, especially women. Masques and ballets took place within accepted norms; these were shaped by a hierarchical society with patriarchal values. Yet one point has consistently been sidelined in current research on gender and the dancing body in general: the value of a description vis-à-vis its realization in practice; the way a medium may distort a supposed movement. Furthermore, ⁶⁶ Margaret Cavendish, CCXI Sociable Letters (London, 1664), p. 407, no. 195. The letter probably refers to a French dancer, for the fool of the company had a French name. ⁶⁷ Jean Loret, La muze historique, letter, 1661, and a retrospective ‘Lettre sur les comédiens’, Mercure de France (May 1740), cited from John Powell, Music and Theatre in France, 1600–1680 (Oxford, 2000), 409–10. Du Parc was exceptional. In her time female dance roles were still often taken by male professionals.

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post-Lacanian and post-Foucauldian studies express a strong bias towards portraying early dance as a coercive, alienating activity. But the pleasures of dancing are a far from trivial topic.⁶⁸ We must consider the positive implications of bodily self-control and muscular bonding as a source of individual and collective strength. Gender studies exaggerate restrictions on female performance while they belittle the rich kinetic vocabulary offered to women in European repertoire of the early modern period. The concept of a ‘passive’ female gaze may be helpful to elucidate modern film or theatre, where we actually see the protagonists in action, but its application to putative movements some four hundred years ago seems more difficult. A satisfactory definition of how a woman might look ‘passively’ at her partner in a concrete dance situation needs yet to be found. Often, certainties gained from the safe distance of a text or image appear less evident once the practical implications of actual movement come into play. We should be careful not to impose the simplistic concept of the ‘active male gaze’ and its ‘passive’ female counterpart on the complex interaction of dancing since this might lead to stereotyped accounts of leering oppressors and helpless female victims. Dance should also be valued as a ‘pedalogue’ (to use Fabritio Caroso’s expression), a medium for social communication. It did impose rules, some sexist, but at the same time allowed for interaction across gender and hierarchy boundaries. In a finely balanced assessment, Judith Bryce proposes to rethink female dancing as at once ‘coercive and enabling’: ‘the attractive argument in favour of restoring to women a degree of agency, and thereby counteracting their prevailing presentation in terms of helpless passivity, can perhaps be cautiously entertained but tempered by allowing for its existence primarily within the patriarchal arena’.⁶⁹ Dance was predominantly choreographed and written by men, but also a medium which opened, within certain limits, a public arena for female expression. In Renaissance Naples, Ippolita Sforza created balli of her own to French chansons which she sang as she danced.⁷⁰ Tudor monarchs ⁶⁸ As Douglas Lanier points out, scholars have ‘perhaps been slow to address the more immediate bodily pleasures of courtly dancing’. ‘Fertile Visions: Jacobean Revels and the Erotics of Occasion’, Studies in English Literature, 32/2 (1999), 327–56, at 331. ⁶⁹ Judith Bryce, ‘Performing for Strangers: Women, Dance, and Music in Quattrocento Florence’, Renaissance Quarterly, 54/4 (2001), 1074–1107, at 1102. Bryce’s theoretical stance could apply within a wider context. ⁷⁰ A. William Smith (ed.), Fifteenth-Century Dance and Music, 2 vols. (Stuyvesant, NY, 1995), i, 112–13. Eileen Southern, ‘A Prima Ballerina of the Fifteenth Century’, in A. Dhu Shapiro and P. Benjamin (eds.), Music and Context: Essays for John M. Ward (Cambridge, Mass., 1985), 183–97.

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employed foreign female professionals.⁷¹ The professional performer Vittoria Archilei sang, danced, and played the guitar in the 1589 Florentine intermedi. A female rope dancer displayed her skills before Henri IV and Maria de’ Medici.⁷² In the 1620s, Eleonora Gonzaga, Queen of Hungary and consort to Emperor Ferdinand II, introduced ballets in Vienna; these she also taught and directed.⁷³ In Paris, even nuns invented choreographies and danced before Louis XIII.⁷⁴ It may be argued that female professionals were showcased as moving objects from a male patron’s Wunderkammer for the titillation of a patriarchal society.⁷⁵ But if recent studies have granted male performers the acumen and physical ability to undercut an orthodox, repressive framework by performance itself,⁷⁶ why exclude women from creative dancing? In performance, not least in masques, a female dancer might test the limits of existing rules—hence the guarded instructions in contemporary dancebooks, the mixed reviews of Anne’s and Henrietta Maria’s productions, and the vitriolic feedback in moralist literature. The analysis of early dance has remained surprisingly text-centred, adopting the very attitude so often denounced in the supposedly ‘logocentric’ object of investigation. It cannot be stressed enough how elusive, and prone to individual whim, practice was in a period which turned only a tiny fraction of dances into a written or iconic medium. Sitting at our desks, we may have too much confidence in the dictating powers of a text or notation and too little in the expressive faculties of a performer, and we may lionize literary sources—such as anti-theatrical treatises—rather than considering a representative body of early modern choreographies and the realities of a performance. In the physical dance, both male and female performers always challenge choreographic codification. Nobody has defined the charged relationship between brain and feet more succinctly than Ben Jonson in his portrait of a figured dance performed by sixteen lords and ladies in Hymenaei (1606): ‘Here, they daunced forth a most neate and curious measure, full of Subtilty and Device; which was so ⁷¹ B. Ravelhofer, ‘Dancing at the Court of Queen Elizabeth’, in Christa Jansohn (ed.), Elizabeth I: Past and Present (Münster, 2004), 101–15. ⁷² Powell, Music and Theatre in France, 6. ⁷³ Andrea Sommer-Mathis, Die Tänzer am Wiener Hofe im Spiegel der Obersthofmeisteramtsakten und Hofparteienprotokolle bis 1740 (Vienna, 1992), 8–10. ⁷⁴ ‘Les domestiques du roi, des religieuses, les Enfants de la ville . . . dansaient des ballets et même en inventaient’. Tallemant des Réaux noted ‘l’insolence de deux religieuses de Poissy, qui vinrent danser une entrée de ballet à St Germain devant le Roy’. Margaret McGowan, L’Art du ballet de cour en France, 1581–1643 (Paris, 1963), 135. ⁷⁵ Nina Treadwell, ‘The Performance of Gender in Cavalier/Guidiccioni’s ballo “O che nuovo miracolo” (1589)’, Women & Music, 1 (1997), 55–70. ⁷⁶ Franko, Dance as Text, 106.

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excellently performed, as it seemed to take away that Spirit from the Invention, which the Invention gave to it: and left it doubtfull, whether the Formes flow’d more perfectly from the Authors braine, or their feete.’⁷⁷ In a beautiful reading, Sarah Cohen draws our attention to an alternative Post-Foucauldian model which regards the body as ‘an agent of cultural expression’, a producer of social meaning rather than passive receptor.⁷⁸ In that sense, each performer, irrespective of gender or rank, is an interpreter of a choreography and an active producer of its social meaning. ⁷⁷ ll. 310–15, in HS vii. pp. 220–1. ⁷⁸ Sarah R. Cohen, Art, Dance, and the Body in French Culture of the Ancien Régime (Cambridge, 2000), 10, 12.

PART II COSTUME

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5 Masque Costumes In the late 1620s, a popular engraving, The Funeral Obsequies of Sir All-in-New-Fashions, circulated in the English, French, and German satirical press (see Fig. 8).¹ Its unknown artist portrayed the rites administered to a defunct city fop: his mortal remains are paraded in a theatrical pageant while insignia inform bystanders about his lifetime achievements. In best heraldic tradition, the engraving harks back to funerary processions as they were orchestrated for persons of consequence. Sir All-in-New-Fashions’s last outing resembles a macabre catwalk more than an attempt at heroic immortality: his coat of arms consists of his wardrobe. Clothes constituted his identity while he was alive; now they are the only signposts left of his existence, fit to be carried before a meaningless body: ‘there can be no kernel in this light nut. The soul of this man is his clothes’.² After the commodities and their lifeless consumer follow the producers in a reversed chain of consumption. Creditors represent the most conspicuous group in the party, for the late spendthrift owed money to poets, fencers, musicians, painters, and craftsmen. Tailors, haberdashers, goldsmiths, shoemakers, spurriers, and feathermakers congregate behind the bier. In economic terms, the engraving illustrates the various branches of the clothing trade in the early Stuart period and the wide range of products available. The nature of the debts reflects the intimate connections of the entertainment with the fashion business. The Funeral Obsequies offers a theatrical flow chart of costume production.

¹ Variant copies from about 1630 and 1634 are preserved in the BN, with one showing fashionable women (Collection Hennin, 77.c.84101–2, 81.B.93165), the Bodleian Library, and Wolfenbüttel; on the German pamphlet ‘Deß Alamodo . . . Leich’ (Augsburg, 1629), see Ruth Bleckwenn, ‘Antimodische Tendenzen in Deutschland’, Waffen- und Kostümkunde, 1 (1977), 66–77, at 66–7; on the Bodleian copy see F. P. Wilson, ‘The Funeral Obsequies of Sir All-in-New-Fashions’, Shakespeare Survey, 11 (1958), 98–9. Wilson did not trace other copies but insisted that the theme was English by origin. ² Lafeu about Paroles, in Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well, II. v. 43–4.

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Figure 8. The Funeral Obsequies of Sir All-in-New-Fashions. Anonymous, England, 1620s. Douce Prints, portfolio 138, no. 89. The Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.

Ann Rosalind Jones and Peter Stallybrass have addressed the connection between theatre and fashion in early modern England. According to their research, members of drapers’ companies were often playhouse investors. Likewise, entrepreneurs such as Henslowe ran a thriving second-hand clothing business, providing garments both for individual citizens and actors’ companies. Serving their purpose on stage and in daily life alike, clothes were bought and sold to a wide range of clients. Dress embodied prestige, making visible the wearer’s buying power and social status. Jones and Stallybrass therefore see clothing as an alternative currency to money which circulated within early Stuart society through pawning, selling, and borrowing.³ Yet one decisive difference remains between cloth and coin. Money is neutral, but garments embody a history of former owners and bygone occasions.⁴ While one cannot guess from coins who previously owned them, costumes have a past. Tailored to the needs of a specific owner, they represent a commodity of exchange fraught with cultural memory. ³ See JS. Peter Stallybrass, ‘Worn Worlds: Clothes and Identity on the Renaissance Stage’, in Margreta de Grazia et al. (eds.), Subject and Object in Renaissance Culture (Cambridge, 1996), 289–320. ⁴ Stallybrass, ‘Worn Worlds’, 304, 316.

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Early modern society was well aware of the cultural memory invested in clothing, and the powerful statement garments made about the people who wore them: hence the manifold attempts at dress norms for certain groups in society, sumptuary laws, and the frequent offence against such regulations in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England.⁵ If everyday wear was a matter of concern for authorities and playwrights, masques solicited even greater critical attention, given that they showcased the court. Purpose-made for a specific performance, masque costumes represented visual political currency, often with substantial material value. They were perhaps the most expensive items in masque productions, therefore important factors in stressing the exclusivity of the event. Costumes started a pencilled existence as drafts on paper and ended up as written text in letters and masque booklets. Detailed descriptions revealed what was worn on a masquing night. Customarily, they emphasized colours, fabrics, expense, and the effect on the audience. Samuel Daniel expatiated at length on the garments Queen Anne and her ladies wore as marine deities in summer 1610: first their head-tire was composed of shells and coral, and from a great murex shell in form of the crest of an helm hung a thin waving veil. Their upper garments had the bodies of sky-coloured taffetas for lightness, all embroidered with maritime invention; then they had a kind of half-skirts of cloth of silver embroidered with gold, all the ground-work cut out for lightness, which hung down full, and cut in points; underneath that came bases (of the same as was their bodies) beneath their knee. The long skirt was wrought with lace, waved round about like a river, and on the banks sedge and seaweeds all of gold. Their shoulders were all embroidered with the work of the short skirt of cloth of silver, and had cypress spangled, ruffed out, and fell in a ruff above the elbow. The under-sleeves were all embroidered as the bodies; their shoes were of satin, richly embroidered, with the work of the short skirt.⁶

The costumes were light yet splendid: thus they represented at the same time a convenient solution for performers and a dazzling emblematic image of a sea power. With lace and embroidery imitating the effect of foam, Anne’s garments seemed like a river. For those who had not seen her in performance, Daniel’s text once more captured the royal costume and provided an interpretive aid. In recollection, audiences dwelt on the visual side of masques as much as on their poetic aspect. Henry Herbert wrote about Coelum Britannicum that ‘it ⁵ On sumptuary laws, see Lisa Jardine, Still Harping on Daughters: Women and Drama in the Age of Shakespeare (Brighton, 1983), ch. 5. ⁶ Samuel Daniel, Tethys’ Festival, ll. 236–49, in OS i. 195.

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was the noblest masque of my time to this day, the best poetrye, best scenes, and the best habitts’, and Henrietta Maria herself said about the same entertainment that ‘elle n’avoit jamais rien vue de si brave’.⁷ In the same way as a text recapitulated the performance, a costume represented a powerful mnemonic aid to remember an event. Hence the frequent tendency of masquers to have themselves portrayed in their costumes, giving ocular proof of their participation in an exclusive performance. Despite their obvious importance for contemporaries, not only during performance but also in retrospective commemoration, costumes have not attracted much attention in criticism. In comparison to the massive amount of literature devoted to masque texts and their political implications, few studies comment on theatrical fashion. Mary Linthicum’s book is still a standard source on costume in the public theatre.⁸ For Stallybrass and Jones, too, the public stage remains the main area of investigation. Janet Arnold’s work has changed our understanding of early modern textiles; sadly, theatre forms a minor part of her studies.⁹ John Peacock’s compelling reading of Jones’s designs and sources addresses costume-as-iconography rather than costume-inperformance. Stephen Orgel and Roy Strong have produced the as yet best account of courtly theatre costume in production and performance, but their argument is open to revision since more records have been discovered in the thirty years since their survey.

RECYCLING SPLENDOUR: THE CIRCUL ATION OF MASQUE COSTUMES In Elizabethan times, tailors had truly been masters of the provisional. The strategy to curb spending in fashion was traditionally to replace sleeves or add new lace to old gowns. An inventory from 1560 provides a characteristic example of Elizabethan frugality, detailing the frequent transformations of costumes for dramatic purposes. The material had been ‘translated into lyninge of the Almayne’s sloppes and agayne cut in peces to payne [sic] Fissher mens sloppes & bodies and againe translated into A Maske of Marryners and againe ⁷ OS ii. 570. Henry Herbert’s memoirs, 18 Feb. 1634. ⁸ M. Channing Linthicum, Costume in the Drama of Shakespeare and His Contemporaries (Oxford, 1936). ⁹ Janet Arnold, Queen Elizabeth’s Wardrobe Unlock’d (Leeds, 1988), and ‘Costume for Masques and Other Entertainments c.1500–1650’, Historical Dance, 3/2 (1993), 3–20.

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translated into Torchebearers for a maske of Turkes’. Elizabeth’s theatrical wardrobes were scavenged until the fabrics virtually fell apart, ‘beinge so often shewen and translated’ that they were ‘forworne and not serviceable nor chargeable’.¹⁰ Retailoring was not only typical for Elizabethan households, as Janet Arnold has shown, but proved common practice in the Jacobean period. Costumes were patched up, ‘translated’ from everyday scenes to the public theatres, delivered from parents to children. In 1616, John Holles wrote to his profligate son Denzel concerning a costume for a university play at Cambridge. This was a well-seasoned old garment which recorded the Holles family history: it had already adorned the father at barriers, and later, Denzel’s brother John had worn it when he attended Henry’s investiture as Prince of Wales. Now bestowed on Denzel, the suit was intended to set off his shapely dancer’s legs, his main asset, as the father observed: Den I have sent yow by this carier a sute of black silk grogram as yow desired, and your mother hath sent yow a band, and cuffs, stockins, garters and roses. If . . . yow could have found the way hither, I could have fitted yow for your Clare hall part with suche a sute, as all your showes can not affoard the like, the hose were a bullion paire of carnation velvett, and satten all embroderd over with riche embrodery of gould, silver, and silke, they had been my barrier hose, and were thus made up for your brother against the Princes creation, and since muche lengthned, this with a dubblett sutable of some clinquant, and a paire of carnation silk stockins would have done your busines a great deale of honor, and your self grace, for your legg beeing (as it is) the best part of your boddy had been muche sett oute by a long stockin. But that is past, I wishe this wearing sute may fitt yow well, which is shuffled up in hast, and at randum, and this is meerly by your default, and idlenes, . . . I can not beeleeve your flesh is so muche multiplied that your dubblett is too straite for yow by 3 or 4 fingers: it is your antient slovenly lithernes . . . yow have goseled, and goodfelloed it more then yow have studied, . . . yow ar not now so young, but yow see the rewards of a well, and ill spent youth daily before your face . . . Your loving father J Holles.¹¹

Dress code for the Holles progeny changed, however, when court life hit the sons. As Roy Schreiber points out, James has wrongly been described as a down-at-heel monarch ‘indifferent to his appearance and wrapped in large, ungainly quilted garments designed more to stop an assassin’s dagger than to ¹⁰ Arnold, ‘Costume for Masques’, 7. ¹¹ Letters of John Holles 1587–1637, ed. P. R. Seddon, 3 vols. (Nottingham, 1975–86), i, pp. 62–3, no. 153, 4 Mar. 1615. Denzel played Antonious in Ruggle’s Ignoramus. I owe this reference to David Lindley.

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hold the fashion’. Between 1610 and 1613, he acquired expensive suits, which culminated in the purchase of doublets made from coronation cloth of gold on the occasion of the Palatine wedding.¹² The king, it appears, had to keep up with the notorious food-and-fashion frenzies laid on by prominent courtiers such as the Duke of Buckingham and Lord Hay, Viscount Doncaster. As both aesthete and economist, James fanatically pursued the establishment of a domestic silk industry, with trial silkworm rooms and mulberry tree plantations at Whitehall, Oatlands and Greenwich, and a special keeper; allegedly staff had to carry the insects wherever the king went.¹³ The connection between the production of silk and its subsequent use in the representation of royal politics was readily drawn in polemical literature. Late Jacobean treatises accused James of providing for spectacle while ignoring the Protestant cause on the Continent: Wee have gone to the Silke-worme, and learned there to waste and spin out our owne bowels, to make our backes brave; To consume all in flourishes, Banquets, Maskes, Revels, and merriments; whilest our brethren in one faith, goe fasting in sackcloth, are besieged with dangers, threatned with Massacres, and sit mourning and weeping by the waters of Babylon.¹⁴

Buckingham’s and Hay’s embassies to the French court came to be regarded as a byword for conspicuous display.¹⁵ A possibly apocryphal anecdote relates how the latter made his entry into Paris in 1616: Hay rode a horse whose silver shoes were attached loosely enough to fly off into the populace and attract enthusiastic crowds.¹⁶ Whether or not such stories are true, they tell us much about the public perception of eminent figures at James’s court. Holles, too, sourly commented on the luxurious appearance of English envoys and advised his son John, who happened to reside in Paris, to leave, lest his meaner garb expose him or he be tempted to a ruinous lifestyle. ¹² Roy E. Schreiber, The First Carlisle: Sir James Hay, First Earl of Carlisle as Courtier, Diplomat and Entrepreneur, 1580–1636 (Philadelphia, 1984), 145. James’s suits for the Palatine wedding amounted to a total of £1,000. ¹³ John Feltwell, The Story of Silk (New York, 1990), 16–23; J. Harris, S. Orgel, and R. Strong, The King’s Arcadia: Inigo Jones and the Stuart Court ([London], 1973), 113. ¹⁴ Thomas Scott, The Belgicke Pismire (London, 1622), 48; Also cited by Martin Butler, ‘Romans in Britain: The Roman Actor and the Early Stuart Classical Play’, in Douglas Howard (ed.), Philip Massinger: A Critical Reassessment (Cambridge, 1985), 139–70, at 161. ¹⁵ Henry Wotton, A Short View of the Life and Death of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham (London, 1642), 14. ¹⁶ Timothy Raylor, The Essex House Masque of 1621: Viscount Doncaster and the Jacobean Masque (Pittsburgh, 2000), 50.

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Lord Hays cumming into France . . . furnishes himself very sumptuously, and purposes to appear in that court with as muche magnificence, as good clothes, and ambroderies can give, beeing accumpanied with Sir Harry Riche, Sir George Gowring, and many others of that humor, who not heeding the inequality of their springs, he fedd from the Kings purs, they from their owne freehould, spend themselvs in that imitation, . . . and peradventure repent with the prodigall chyld: I therefore wished yow retyred, ear this inundation came into view.¹⁷

Holles characterized Hay as a sponge and cannot have been the only one to do so, since Hay subscribed to the precautionary motto ‘redit, unde fuit’ (it returns whence it came), thereby directing the public eye to the font and final purpose of munificence, the king.¹⁸ He was rewarded with lucrative posts at court, the Mastership of the Robes and the Wardrobe. As it happened, the Holles brothers did not heed their father’s warning and threw themselves into court life and masquing in subsequent years. Denzel, whose legs had been his main asset in university plays, later became involved with the masque writer John Maynard in an entertainment in 1623. Francis found, according to family legend, an untimely end by immoderate rehearsing: asked to perform in the king’s masque at Whitehall, he practised by himself the night before in the gallery, when the apparition of a fair lady joined him for the dance. This preoccupied him so much that he died soon after. John became intimately connected with Hay’s circle since he danced in his Essex House Masque (1621).¹⁹ Thomas Nevitt, steward to Sir Robert Sidney, first Earl of Leicester, would have been more to old Holles’s liking. Nevitt belonged to the traditional school of thrifty Elizabethan household administrators. In his early career, he had the opportunity of working for Lord Hunsdon, once Lord Chamberlain to Queen Elizabeth, but nobly sacrificed himself instead to the cause of the Sidney family, a fact he was always eager to point out to his employer. Holding up his own prudent housekeeping as a model, Nevitt scolded his master for wasting money on greyhounds and mastiffs, keeping too many horses and servants, and selling land to meet the cost of fashion. Apparently, Sidney did not adequately reward his servant for decades of scrupulous dedication to the wardrobe: ‘many a desperate thing have I entered into, to supply your honors wantes to [sic] tedious to relate. I have receaved within 34 yeares from your honor two sutes of ¹⁷ Letters of John Holles, i, pp. 125–6, no. 210, 29 Apr. 1616. ¹⁸ Raylor’s trans. of Hay’s impresa. The Essex House Masque, 52. ¹⁹ Timothy Raylor, ‘Who Danced in The Essex House Masque (1621)?’, Notes and Queries, 242/4 (1997), 530–3, at 531–2.

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cloth one with a cloake, and thother without and a black velvett cloak, this is all that I ever receaved from your Wardrobe’.²⁰ Interestingly, Nevitt did not complain about dire remuneration in cash but turned his master’s attention to other forms of compensation. Nevitt resented the fact that he had been excluded from the circulation of clothes in the Sidney household. In an age when livery demonstrated one’s belonging to a community, a suit directly descended from his Lordship would have invested Nevitt with ocular proof that his loyal service was appreciated. The steward contrasted this neglect with the lavish outfits Sidney bought for himself. He complained bitterly about his master’s habit of attending masques in extravagant new fashion. Sidney closely followed the court’s entertainment calendar. In letters to William Trumbull, he passed on current news about spectacle, for example, on the impending marriage of Lady Essex to the Earl of Rochester (‘there will bee three maskes, one of Earles and Lordes for the most parte, which is the first night, an other from the Ins of court. and the thirde of the choisest dansers’).²¹ Apparently, Sidney attended The Vision of the Twelve Goddesses (1604), The Masque of Blackness (1605), Hymenaei (1606), The Lord Hay’s Masque (1607), possibly The Masque of Queenes (1609), Tethys’ Festival (1610), and masques celebrating the wedding of Princess Elizabeth.²² Each time expensive new suits, including jewels, were required. The balance for 1605 details the money spent on seeing The Masque of Blackness: When the late Queene made a maske att Whitehall wherein the Maskers came in like Moores your honour made a sute of Ashe coulor satten cutt with a peach coulor taffetie and laid on thick with silver lace this sute cost your honour—080li/Att which tyme I borrowed of M[asters] Hanbury and Michaell Gouldsmiths and of Sir John Spilman as many Jewells as were worth 10000li out of which Jewells there were two Dyamondes lost the loane of which Jewells and the dyamondes which were lost cost your honor—040li.²³

Sidney’s case shows that the idea of distinction affected audiences as much as performers. As chamberlain of Queen Anne, he was involved in the preparations for ²⁰ S. Butler (ed.), Sidneiana (London, 1837). ‘Memorial of Thomas Nevitt to the Earle of Leicester’, 104. BL MS Add. 12066, fol. 10r. I am grateful to Gavin Alexander for this reference. Citation after corrected transcription in Nevitt’s Memorial, ed. Gavin Alexander and Barbara Ravelhofer at ⬍http://www.english.cam.ac.uk./ceres/sidneiana/nevitt.htm⬎. Probably 1624. Nevitt repeatedly reminds Robert Sidney of 34 years of service (fol. 9r), and attached at the end of the document is another letter by Nevitt addressed to Sidney’s son, dated 1626, which mentions 36 years of service. ²¹ Letters, Flushing, Sept. 1612 to Sept. 1617, [Sotheby’s], The Trumbull Papers: The Property of the Most Honourable the Marquess of Downshire, auction catalogue (London, 1989), p. 77, no. 34. ²² As Gavin Alexander pointed out to me (unpublished note). ²³ Butler (ed.), Sidneiana, 89–90; BL MS Add. 12066, fols. 4v–5r.

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her masques.²⁴ He borrowed from the jeweller who had been working for the court since 1582.²⁵ Sidney’s tastes were much removed from the modest barrier suit passed on within the Holles family. He entirely complied with the principle of aristocratic ostentation as expressed in George Chapman’s Memorable Masque (an entertainment he might have seen in 1613): ‘If your worship love Honour, indeed, sir, you must needs be bountiful.’²⁶ Eyewitnesses confirm a contest of carats between guests and performers on masquing nights. John Pory wrote about the lady masquers in Hymenaei (1606): ‘They had every one a white plume of the richest Herons fethers, and were so rich in jewels upon their heades as was most glorious. I think they hired and borrowed all the principal jewels and ropes of perle both in court and citty’.²⁷ One can imagine dancers and spectactors, among them Sidney fresh with the diamonds from Spilman, vying with each other for the most spectacular dress. The ‘court caterpillars’ in their ‘prodigall glistrings’ and ‘spangled damnations’ (as critical contemporaries characterized them) come to mind.²⁸ It must sometimes have been difficult to determine which side of the hall was the stage and which the auditorium. Strong social pressure drove courtiers into spending and borrowing. Large sums were invested on such occasions on both sides of the proscenium arch. Individual cases such as Holles, Nevitt, Sidney, and Hay make clear that the economy of a spectacle touched on a number of issues. A moralistic point of view condemned fashion as a frivolous ornament. Church fathers branded such abundance as luxuria, a cardinal sin. The moral blended with the costsaving aspect when thrifty parents admonished their offspring to keep a modest appearance, for ‘Salomon in all his glory was not so clad’.²⁹ On the other hand, aristocratic decorum pushed Jacobean courtiers to increase standards of ostentation. Religious, social, and economic aspects contested with each other in the consumption and circulation of clothes and accessories, which led at times to curious results. We can only begin to understand these results if we follow a masque costume full circle, from its production to its storage.

²⁴ Gavin Alexander, ‘Five Responses to Sir Philip Sidney 1596–1628’, Ph.D. thesis (Cambridge, 1996), 77. ²⁵ On Spilman/Spillman, see Diana Scarisbrick, Jewellery in Britain 1066–1837 (Norwich, 1994), 88. ²⁶ ll. 408–9, in OS i. 259. ²⁷ To Sir Robert Cotton, 7 Jan. 1606, in OS i. 106. ²⁸ Lucy Hutchinson, Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson, ed. J. Sutherland (London, 1973), 45, on Jacobean ‘caterpillars’. Thomas Middleton, The Black Book (London, 1604), sig. C4r. ²⁹ Letters of John Holles, i. p. 127, no. 211, to his son John in Paris, 9 May 1616.

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Royal sponsors took an active interest in the artistic choices of masques.³⁰ Anne and Henrietta Maria were particularly keen on sartorial matters (the ‘Henrietta’, a light cloth of silk and wool first made about 1660, was named after the latter³¹). Both queens expected Jones to accept their advice; thus, he submitted to Henrietta Maria an annotated costume draft for her masque Chloridia (1631). Based on Ovid’s Fasti, the spectacle presented the queen as the nymph Chloris, for which undertaking the architect desired to know her fancy: ‘This designe I conceave to bee fitt for the invention and if it please hir Majestie to add or alter any thing I desier to receave hir majesties command and the dessigne againe by this bearer. The collors allso are in her majesties choise; but my oppinion is that several fresh greenes mix with gould and silver will bee most propper.’³² The role of Stuart queens in masque productions ought to be stressed, given the evidence emerging from administrative documents. Best known is, of course, Anne’s command that Jonson include an antimasque in her Masque of Queenes (1609), but Henrietta Maria, too, was a decision-making consort. Charles’s German secretary Georg Weckherlin, a writer in his own right, offered French ballet drafts to Henrietta Maria in which he repeatedly entreated her to choose the characters she liked best.³³ Designs for her masque The Temple of Love (1635) were inspired by Daniel Rabel’s drafts for French ballets de cour from 1626 and 1632. Rabel, the most prominent costume designer at the court of Louis XIII, managed an entire workshop which devised inventions for divertissements; many of these watercolour scenes and characters are still preserved in albums at the Louvre. The artist never publicized his creations in prints or engravings which would have reached a wider audience; his watercolours circulated in very limited copies. Jones must have had access to this kind of material through Henrietta Maria.³⁴ ³⁰ Stephen Orgel, ‘Marginal Jonson’, in David Bevington and Peter Holbrook (eds.), The Politcs of the Stuart Court Masque (Cambridge, 1998), 144–75, at 153. ³¹ Florence Montgomery, Textiles in America 1650–1870 (New York, 1984), 258. ³² OS ii, pp. 439, 445, no. 181. ³³ Leonard Forster, ‘Two Drafts by Weckherlin of a Masque for the Queen of England’, German Life & Letters, 18 (1965), 258–63. ³⁴ Designs by Rabel and his workshop are held at the Louvre and the BN; and edited by Margaret McGowan, The Court Ballet of Louis XIII (London, [1994]). For Rabel’s impact see SDIJ, 144–7; and Peacock, ‘The French Element in Inigo Jones’s Masque Designs’, in David Lindley (ed.), The Court Masque (Manchester, 1984), 149–68, at 159.

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The text of Luminalia (1638) reveals the genesis and production structure of a masque commissioned by the queen. A long paragraph singles out how Henrietta Maria took interest in all aspects of performance, from songs to dances and scenes, with the express intention to impress spoilt foreigners: the Queen commanded Inigo Jones . . . to make a new subject of a masque for herself, that with high and hearty invention might give occasion for variety of scenes, strange apparitions, songs, music, and dancing of several kinds, from whence doth result the true pleasure peculiar to our English masques, which by strangers and travellers of judgement are held to be as noble and ingenious as those of any other nations. This being suddenly done and showed her majesty, and she approving it, the work was set in hand, and in all celerity performed in shorter time than anything here hath been done in this kind.³⁵

It is no coincidence that the passage emphasizes ‘celerity’, for speed was crucial for a successful performance. Usually, designers, craftsmen, and artists had little time to rehearse and prepare a spectacle (if we assume that they started shortly before the dancers’ rehearsals, they had about three or four weeks at their disposal).³⁶ The Egerton boys received their costumes one day before the performance of Coelum Britannicum (1634), in which they danced as torchbearers; a servant’s note from 17 February indicates ‘2 Masken seuts for my Lo. Brackley, and the other for Mr. Thomas’, including ‘2 gaberdynes of tinsell lynd with Callico’.³⁷ Therefore, the production process unfolded in a string of parallel activities. Sources reveal to what extent shared labour and minute working processes seamlessly locked into each other to optimize resources and timing. Once approved, the plot of a masque quickly materialized, prompting a flurry of painters, poets, musicians, choreographers, designers, and tailors into action. Costume designs were duplicated. Jones and his assistants pricked drafts to trace more efficiently the contours of a costume and thereby facilitated a rapid reproduction of patterns for tailors and craftsmen.³⁸ Multiple copies were necessary since a range of skilled workers manufactured masque costumes through joint, specialized labour under time pressure. Like Sir All-in-NewFashions’s wardrobe, masque costumes had a composite structure, resulting ³⁵ ll. 1–12, in OS ii. 706. The anonymous text is commonly attributed to William Davenant. ³⁶ Estimate for the Caroline period. See above, Ch. 3, section ‘Rehearsals’. ³⁷ Bridgewater family papers, cited in Milton’s Comus Being the Bridgewater Manuscript: With Notes and a Short Family Memoir, ed. Alix Egerton, facs. edn. (London, 1910; Edinburgh 1974), 28. ³⁸ OS i, p. 97, no. 2: ‘Tracing of a Masquer’. The pricked outline was ‘a standard method . . . used during the Renaissance, coloured chalk being rubbed through the holes onto paper beneath. . . . Later Jones improved the tracing technique by rubbing the backs of drawings with chalk or lead.’ OS i. 36.

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from combined efforts. As Queen Henrietta Maria’s accounts for her Shrovetide Masque (1633) show, it took at least a haberdasher, a property man, a shoemaker, and two tailors to fabricate a complete shepherd’s costume, including a shepherds’ hook, lambskin, wig, cap, and garland.³⁹ Thus, planning must have been efficient to complete sets of outfits in a short working period, and craftsmen involved in the process must have communicated with each other and exchanged specific costume items. In that sense, the current understanding of a masque tailor’s job as ‘the costumier’⁴⁰ seems a little misleading. Aristocrats needed to dwarf other performers visually for reasons of decorum while at the same time the cost factor necessitated a prudent use of precious materials. Hence, Jones and his tailors experimented with several dress versions before settling down to a final cut for grand masquers’ costumes. References to ‘patterns’ in several colours frequently occur in the bills for masque costumes. These were painted, basic multiplications of Jonesian designs which went to the tailors. One John Knight, for instance, was paid ‘for makeing and painting in Cullors the patterns for the said masqueing suite’ for Coelum Britannicum.⁴¹ Yet tailors restricted themselves not simply to ‘patterns’ on paper, as current research has proposed.⁴² They also produced preliminary versions in fabric. These were often executed in materials cheaper than the prospective silks, such as calico. In this way, patterns allowed for a choice among several prototypes which could actually be worn. Given that actual masque costumes might have arrived very shortly before a performance (as the Egerton example illustrates), one wonders whether participants might have worn their ‘patterns’ during rehearsals. In Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue (1618), Charles’s coming-of-age masque and therefore a particularly important event, the designer spared no effort to make the Prince look splendid, for the tailor charged for ‘three patternes in divers fashions’.⁴³ For Time Vindicated, records mention yellow patterns although the masquers appeared in scarlet, carnation, and white satin in the event. By the Caroline period, test costumes had become standard practice. The bills for Chloridia refer to patterns of green and white calico, while the final costume consisted of satin and taffeta. Likewise, Jones presented a calico pattern to Henrietta Maria for her masque Tempe Restored (1632), and in his design for ³⁹ PRO LR 5/63–5. ⁴⁰ Astington, 154. ⁴¹ OS ii. 569. ⁴² OS i. 36. ⁴³ OS i. 277. The bill refers to three masquing suits for Charles and two other courtiers. The three patterns ‘in divers fashions’ relate to the royal costume.

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the queen, alternative sartorial solutions were glued on top of the original draft, thus illustrating the process of costume-making (see Fig. 9).⁴⁴ For Coelum Britannicum, tailors produced two sets of costumes: a preliminary pattern with white and carnation calico, counterfeit tinsel, and copper lace, and a final version in silk and taffeta.⁴⁵ Elaborate costumes underwent a series of fittings and colour combinations, until the enormous expenses paid off in a visually convincing creation which flattered the aristocratic masquer. Communication between rehearsing parties and the production teams was of vital importance but has not been sufficiently investigated. Craftsmen commuted between the City and Whitehall (and other royal palaces) to take measurements, or to deliver finished products and bills. Henrietta Maria’s debenture books preserve an impressive record of the transactions between the City, Somerset House, and her summer residences at Oatlands and Richmond between 1628 and 1640. So far, very little information about drama in these latter locations has been recovered. The only known theatrical performance at Oatlands took place under Elizabeth, a commedia dell’arte show in August 1602.⁴⁶ Henrietta Maria’s bills, which allude to four unknown summer performances away from Whitehall, provide an important addition to our knowledge of countryside entertainments.⁴⁷ Members of her household were responsible for the flow of materials and instructions. Two reliable grooms of her chamber, Richard Scutt and Toby Bailie, who served the queen between 1630 and 1642, travelled up and down the Thames to satisfy various needs ranging from chamberpots to tapestry and lighting devices: Richard Scutt one of the Gromes of her Majesties chamber beinge commanded by the gentelman usher tow [sic] carrie ffrom whight Hall to denmark howse divers necessearyes to be imployd at bouth her Majesties Maskes as candelstickes chamberpotts bumberds Jackes and other necessaries and tow recarrie them back againe ffrom denmark howse tow whight Hall in which Sarves [sic] hee hath desburst severall somes of mony for boatt hire . . . ffor which hee humblie craveth . . . twenty shillinges.⁴⁸

⁴⁴ Bills of Mr Gelin, tailor, Jan.–Mar. 1631 and Jan. 1632. PRO LR5/64. ⁴⁵ OS ii. 569–70, bills for torchbearers. ⁴⁶ Astington, 73. ⁴⁷ PRO, LR5/63–7, bills for 1628, 1632, 1634–5. The debenture books are briefly referred to in The Control and Censorship of Caroline Drama: The Records of Sir Henry Herbert, Master of the Revels 1623–73, ed. N. W. Bawcutt (Oxford, 1996). ⁴⁸ Scutt’s bill, received 4 Apr. 1633 (o.s.). Tobie Bailie’s bill for carrying ‘foure christall brainches’ and other items ‘to be imployed at her Majesties Pastrall’, received 7 May 1633 (o.s.). PRO LR5/65.

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Figure 9. Inigo Jones, design for Henrietta Maria as ‘Divine Beauty’ in Tempe Restored (1632). Orgel and Strong, no. 244; Simpson & Bell, no. 161. The Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth. Reproduced by permission of the Chatsworth Settlement Trustees. Photograph: Photographic Survey, Courtauld Institute of Art.

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Transportation became particularly tedious if entertainments took place away from the capital. In August 1635, the haberdasher Arthur Knight not only charged for beaver hats worn by Henrietta Maria’s ladies in an unknown pastoral at Oatlands, but put two journeys including horse hire on the bill as well. Even after delivery, craftsmen might be recalled. During the rehearsals for Salmacida Spolia, Henrietta Maria needed a new sword, ‘the first broken by some mischance’, and the property man John Walker obliged.⁴⁹ Stockings were prone to be ruined during rehearsals. Therefore, tailors might supply several sets from the start. A hosier provided six ‘payer of longe underhose to practice’ for the masquers in Time Vindicated (1623).⁵⁰ Notwithstanding such extensive trafficking between rehearsal sites, royal residences, and merchant quarters, Jones seems to have supervised the production process in person. A veritable control freak, Jones even shuttled between individual craftsmen and the sovereign, as a tailor’s bill for Tempe Restored (1632) suggests: The xxvjth [26 January] ffor 12 yardes of callico to make a patterne of a Masking gowne ffor the making of it and furnitures

00-14-00

The same day ffor another patterne of a Masking gowne which [illegible] Enego Jones delivered to her Majestie ffor the furnitures and making

00-10-00.⁵¹

Once masques had been performed, the great reckoning started. Where evidence exists, it refers to management within the royal households of the king and queen. Nothing indicates that costumes or properties for court masques were brought in or hired from the deposits of public playhouses. Yet we do not have the full picture: in comparison to costumes for grand masquers, few documents relate to the administration of cheaper costumes for antimasquers, and we can therefore not rule out the possibility that these were on occasion procured and paid for in a different way. The labyrinthine manner in which payments for masques were processed through several departments complicates any attempt to establish a complete survey of provenance of goods, cost, and administrative competence. At times payments for masque materials were ⁴⁹ PRO LR5/66–7. ⁵⁰ OS i. 349, payment to Robert Wadeson. ⁵¹ George Gelin’s bill, PRO LR5/64.

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directed through the Office of the two Exchequers, the central accounting and auditing department at court. Most payments for Charles’s masques were settled directly by special clerks within the Office of the Robes and the Great Wardrobe. These were two distinct departments and not to be confused with the Removing Wardrobe. The Removing Wardrobe (a staff of about eighteen; location unknown) seems to have cleaned, transported, or stored items rather than producing them. It moved wardrobe materials and furnishings (including heavy furniture) as well as properties for theatrical purposes between the various royal residences. Two weeks after the production of The Fortunate Isles (9 January 1625), one of the officers of the Removing Wardrobe asked a week’s allowance for himself and eight men ‘for takinge downe makinge Cleane, makinge up of all such stuffe as was used and Imployed for the Maske in the Banquettinge howse twoe severall times as also for the Counsell of ware as Likwise for placinge of the said stufe in the Removinge wardrobe at whithall after the device beinge ended’.⁵² In Charles’s time the Robes included a staff of nine, including a clerk, tailor, brusher, and grooms (Henrietta Maria’s Robes, an independent department, employed seven). It not only supplied textiles and garments for everyday use within the royal household but also occasionally defrayed expenditure for masquing materials from its budget. The Robes was also responsible for brushing garments; its tailors provided masque costumes. Located in western London, the Great Wardrobe comprised some sixty persons, among them clerks, cutters, storekeepers, porters, artificers, and arras makers. A universe in itself, it was largely independent from the rest of the household. Despite its misleading name, it supplied many royal offices, such as the Lord Chamberlain’s. As Roy Schreiber points out, the Great Wardrobe could hire anyone from a roofer to a boxmaker and produce anything from liveries to dogcarts.⁵³ The payments to its office holders consumed some £ 6,000 per annum in the mid-1630s. The Great Wardrobe had a reputation for waste and fraud, especially during the Jacobean period, and Caroline reforms sought to control the flux of materials given out.⁵⁴ The uncertain state of masquing accounts resulted from slovenly bookkeeping. Part of the budget for spectacle lay in the hands of individual courtiers who ⁵² Bills, Oct. 1624 to Mar. 1625. PRO SP14/185/105–14, fols. 184r–193v. SP14/185/1121, fol. 190r–v, CSPD 1623–1625, xi. 509. I am grateful to Katharine Craik for transcriptions of these documents. ⁵³ Schreiber, First Carlisle, 147. ⁵⁴ On the Great Wardrobe in general, see G. E. Aylmer, The King’s Servants: The Civil Service of Charles I, 1625–1642, rev. edn. (London, 1974), 27, 29, 42, 62, 150–1, 249, 473, 475–6.

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were often reluctant to disclose where exactly the money had gone. Hay was notorious for losing bills and receipts in his time as Master of the Great Wardrobe, which he plunged into debt during his six years of office before he had to leave in 1618.⁵⁵ In March 1632, the clerk William George sent a petition to Charles’s treasurers in which he accused George Kirke, Gentleman of the Robes, of negligence. Kirke had received £5,000 to procure apparel for the king’s use, from which he paid for Love’s Triumph through Callipolis (1631) and possibly Albion’s Triumph (1632) but failed to show how much he had actually spent. Unable to close the annual audit, George asked that no further money be issued to Kirke until he submitted receipts for examination.⁵⁶ Henrietta Maria’s productions were on occasion subsidized by Charles, in particular, if members of his household participated in her masques. Thus, the Lord Chamberlain’s office processed a costume for Tempe Restored (1632), where Thomas Killigrew played a young gentleman who sought to escape the temptress Circe. For Killigrew’s debut on the courtly stage, the Great Wardrobe procured a creation in pinkish plush: A warrant . . . to the great Wardrobe for ye providing of these parcelles following for a masqueing habit for Mr Thomas Killigrew one of his Majesties Pages of Honour who is to present the person of an enamoured courtier in the Masque presented by the Queenes Majestie at Shrovetide next and that you cause them to bee compleatly fitted & furnished vizt A doublet, of white Satin, Breeches of Carnation Satin Cloake of the same coloured Satin lined with Carnation coloured Plush trimmed with silver lace: silke stockins of pearle colour white shooes Roses & Garters of Carnation, A Hatt & a feather A falling Band with lace of the newest fashion Gloves Girdle & pointes sutable & such other thinges as shall bee requisite for that purpose.⁵⁷

Most of the time, however, the queen’s household, a body of some 180 members, handled matters independently.⁵⁸ Thus the queen retained full artistic and ⁵⁵ Mismanaging the Great Wardrobe, Hay authorized expenses of £162,000 and ended up with a deficit of some £42,000. After Lionel Cranfield had told James that the department could be run for some £20,000 per annum, he replaced Hay in 1618. Paying off debts became Hay’s preoccupation for the next decade (Schreiber, First Carlisle, 6, 22, 146–9). BL MS Cotton Titus.B.IV, fols. 319–25, survey of Hay’s misdemeanours. ⁵⁶ William George to Richard Lord Weston and Francis Lord Cottington, probably Mar. 1632, referring to Christmas 1630/1 and 1631/2. OS ii. 419 (n.); HS x. 681, attributing the charges not to Albion’s Triumph but Chloridia (1631); CSPD 1631–1633, v. 299–300, identifying the petition as pertaining to Christmas masques in 1630 and 1631; PRO SP16/214/93, fol. 1r–v. I am grateful to Katharine Craik for a transcription of this document. ⁵⁷ PRO LC5/132, p. 287: 8 Feb. 1631/2 (o.s.). ⁵⁸ Aylmer, King’s Servants, 474. For a general survey of the queen’s administration, see N. R. R. Fisher, ‘The Queenes Courte in Her Councell Chamber at Westminster’, English Historical Review, 108/427 (1993), 314–37.

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financial control over her masques and pastorals. Her suppliers in the City of London had often been in business for a long time; among them the silkman Ben Henshaw (his family had already provided masquing materials for Queen Anne). Some were proper members of her court. The perfumer Jean-Baptiste Ferrin scented the leather masks and gloves worn in courtly performances. The shoemaker Jehan Fausse received an annual pension of about £36 in the 1630s. By comparison, the poet Lodowick Carlell, Groom of the Privy Chamber, was remunerated with £60 per annum. Fausse was certainly worth the investment, producing one pair a day upon the queen’s orders alone. He also supplied dancing shoes for masques. For Henrietta Maria’s Shrovetide Masque (1633), buskins in ash colour, green, watchet, and white were embroidered with tinsel.⁵⁹ George Gelin, who tailored masque costumes, was also Groom of the Robes. Susan Countess of Denbigh, Lady of Her Majesty’s Robes, controlled household and costume expenditure throughout the 1630s. Family connections facilitated Denbigh’s appointment to this office: she was sister to the late Duke of Buckingham; her husband, William Feilding, had been created Master of the Great Wardrobe in 1622.⁶⁰ Expenses for costumes, shoes, perfumes, and the like were collected, checked, and countersigned by members of the queen’s household and supervised by Sir Richard Wynne, Treasurer and Receiver General between 1629 and 1649. Wynne’s Hispanophobia but also his efficiency recommended him to the queen.⁶¹ Sir Robert Ayton, Henrietta Maria’s principal secretary, routinely countersigned the bills and payment orders. Ayton, a Scotsman who had travelled south with James, also tried his talents as a poet. Some of his pieces were inspired by dance tunes, then a widely followed practice in England.⁶² Cicely Crofts, a maid of honour who took a breeches part in The Shepherds’ Paradise, was the object of his verses on platonic love (‘You’r all Etheriall, there is in you noe dross | Nor any part that’s gross, . . . . | I faine would tune my fancy to your key | But cannot reach your abstract way’).⁶³ Over the years, Henrietta Maria’s suppliers, performers, and bureaucrats represented a team which had not only developed a production routine but established personal ties which were expressed at times in poetry. ⁵⁹ PRO LR5/63, acquittances, Michaelmas 1636–7; LR5/64, Lady Day quarter 1631/2, bill for almost 90 pairs of boots and shoes; LR5/65, bill, Shrovetide 1632/3. ⁶⁰ JS, 52. ⁶¹ Aylmer, King’s Servants, 362–3. ⁶² Helena Mennie Shire, Song, Dance and Poetry of the Court of Scotland under King James VI (Cambridge, 1969), 34, 164, 237, 246. As she suggests, he used the tune ‘I lov’d thee but once’, also published in John Playford’s Dancing Master (1652 edn.). ⁶³ BL MS Add. 10308. No. 13, ‘upon platonik love’, fols. 6v–7r. Crofts played Agenor/Genorio.

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The prices established by tailors, shoemakers, and merchants were suggestions at best. Bureaucrats often reduced them to 50 per cent of the original sum, if we can generalize from the practices in Henrietta Maria’s household. Here again, the debenture books provide us with a unique source in assessing the financial post-mortem of a court masque. The queen’s creditors could consider themselves lucky if they were paid promptly; many would wait for years until Wynne’s office finally disbursed the money. A letter the queen addressed to him in 1633 captures the mood of her creditors: ‘wee are given to understand by Sir Henry Harbert Master of the Revells that ever since our Maske two yeares ago [Chloridia] their hath ben resting unpayed the summe of fiftie pounds for which he is much Importuned by the workmen and others to whome it is due’.⁶⁴ Compared to the pageant creditors of the court would have formed, the procession following Sir All-in-New-Fashions seems an intimate family outing.

STORAGE The Tempest wistfully gestures at the connection between acting and keeping costumes. Prospero’s island is not only full of noises, it also has a costume deposit. A wide variety of garments hanging from lines are waiting to lure Stephano and Trinculo into playing roles which are a size too big for them.⁶⁵ Prospero’s pageants were not so insubstantial, after all, and they might have involved some tedious maintenance. According to Janet Arnold, four different stores housed the royal wardrobe in the Elizabethan period, situated at the Tower of London, at the Palace of Whitehall, at Somerset Place, and at the Office of the Wardrobe of Robes. All required ‘constant supervision’ to avoid damage from ‘mildew, mice, moths and dust’. Chests, trunks, and leather or cloth sacks protected the garments, which were often individually wrapped. Fires prevented damp. Perfumes kept vermin away and made the garments, particularly those of cured leather, smell more pleasant.⁶⁶ A Yeoman of the Robes arranged for the continual movement and airing of clothes (in the Revels Office, the ‘Ayringes and repayringe of the ⁶⁴ Warrant, 22 Feb. 1632/3 (o.s.), PRO LR5/65. B. Ravelhofer, ‘Bureaucrats and Courtly Cross-Dressers in the Shrovetide Masque and The Shepherd’s Paradise’, English Literary Renaissance, 29/1 (1999), 75–96. ⁶⁵ The costumes may not hang on lime trees, as traditionally assumed, but lines. W. Shakespeare, The Tempest, IV. i. 193, ed. D. Lindley (Cambridge, 2002). ⁶⁶ Arnold, Queen Elizabeth’s Wardrobe Unlock’d, 232–4.

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Robes Garmentes & Stufes’ was an occupation undertaken in summer, which cost the Master of the Revels more than £57 in 1605).⁶⁷ The cleaning of clothes was a science in itself, with a burgeoning market of specialist literature catering for the desperate keeper. Leonard Mascall’s compilation of Remedies, to Take Out Spots and Staines in Silkes, Velvets, Linnen and Woollen Clothes ran into four editions between 1583 and 1606.⁶⁸ Whichever court department housed masque costumes (if they were kept), the task demanded active storage, with extra staff, constant supervision, and mending. Robes and gowns required a great deal of work in the early seventeenth century, an incentive to maintain a small stock of theatrical garments, which conflicted with the possibility of saving on expenses by storing and recycling properties. It is not clear what happened to masque costumes after the event. But if we do not know where theatrical garments circulated, we cannot establish the cultural meaning of clothes. Who was responsible for the post-production use of costumes; who owned them? As Jean MacIntyre points out, the Revels Office had established routines for regular maintenance and disposal of theatrical wardrobes in the time of Elizabeth I.⁶⁹ Some practices might have continued into the Jacobean period. All the same, the procedures of safekeeping in the Revels departments during the Stuart period are unknown. Masques were ‘separately designed’ to fit individual plots and themes, hence, ‘few if any of the costumes were likely to be wanted again . . . The absence of Revels inventories taken at the beginning of James’s and of Charles’s reigns . . . may indicate that there was not much in store to inventory.’⁷⁰ The Revels Office appears to have stopped producing costumes, properties, and settings some time after the 1580s, while still maintaining a costume store (including annual cleaning and airing) and taking care of lighting. The great court masques were from the start not financed from the Revels budget.⁷¹ Garments could have gone to the quarters of the Surveyor of the Works. The Office of the Works had a broad range of responsibilities, such as repair and building of architectural structures and decorative art, and assembling the stage and structures accommodating an audience.⁷² After 1615 it was directed by Inigo Jones. We know very little about the location of this office before the Great Fire. It had a depot at the Tower of London; maps after 1666 show a ⁶⁷ For Revels practices, see HS x. 445. PRO AO3/908, 13, fols. 2v–4. I am grateful to Katharine Craik for drawing my attention to this document. Its authenticity is discussed in MSC, vol. xiii, pp. xxx–xxxii and 13. ⁶⁸ STC, nos. 17590–3. ⁶⁹ Jean MacIntyre, Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres (Edmonton, Alta., 1992), 92. ⁷⁰ Ibid. 232–3. ⁷¹ Astington, 9, 12–13, 18. ⁷² Ibid. 15.

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flight of rooms which would today be situated north of the Banqueting House in the area of Whitehall Place and Great Scotland Yard.⁷³ Such an arrangement would have enabled Inigo Jones to draft his designs and at the same time survey existing stocks of fabrics and properties. These practices prevailed at other European courts. The private home of Dresden’s sixteenth-century theatre designer and architect Johann Maria Nosseni also accommodated a tailor’s shop and a store of pageant inventions. Templates for masks and figures, wigs, casts for pasteboard arms, wings, and sirens’ tails piled up in Nosseni’s attic.⁷⁴ According to Janet Arnold, the production of theatre garments, including those for court masques, relied on the recycling of used costumes. Costumes may have been initially very expensive but could be turned into alternative versions for future productions or even adapted to everyday use once the more theatrical properties were removed.⁷⁵ Such revamping requires a costume deposit, and a composite structure of garments. Arnold is mainly interested in the Elizabethan period, but her claim might apply to the Jonesian stage. With their skirts, bodices, ornaments, trunkhoses, and jerkins, masque designs by Inigo Jones did have a composite structure. They could have been dismounted into several parts after performance. Each detached element could, in theory, have started a separate course of circulation. Such single pieces are, however, difficult to trace. No documents pertaining to masque productions of the early Stuart period indicate that costumes were routinely reused. References to mending or changing are strikingly absent. According to wardrobe bills, literary texts, and performance reports, the material seems always to have been genuinely new. In Charles’s and Henrietta Maria’s masque accounts, tailors used terms such as ‘cutting’, ‘fitting’, or ‘making a pattern of calico’, but never mentioned worn or repaired outfits. Henrietta Maria’s investment in theatre fashion greatly differed from her expenditure for everyday wear. Here, her household spent money on ‘altering’ bodices and petticoats throughout the 1630s. Evidence suggests concessions to wear and tear in daily sartorial practice but uncompromising renewal in costumes for the stage. In only a few cases costumes were definitely employed on more than one occasion. Garments from Queen Elizabeth’s wardrobe were used in Samuel Daniel’s The Vision of The Twelve Goddesses (1604). At this point, James and Anne had not yet established a routine of masquing at Whitehall. The court had little time to prepare the ⁷³ Plans of Whitehall, c.1670. Simon Thurley, The Lost Palace of Whitehall (London, 1998), 2, 41. ⁷⁴ Claudia Schnitzer, Höfische Maskeraden (Tübingen, 1999), 308–9, 354–5. ⁷⁵ Arnold, ‘Costume for Masques’, 7, 12.

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spectacle; hence the late queen’s wardrobe provided a makeshift expedient. As Clare McManus argues, Queen Anne was able to appropriate Elizabeth’s memory by putting on her clothes.⁷⁶ The transfer of Tudor paraphernalia to the Stuart consort provided the latter with a visual symbol of her newly acquired authority. Yet the practice remained exceptional. Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue and For the Honour of Wales (both 1618) represent an unusual case of Jacobean costume recycling. For the Honour of Wales was, however, not an independent entertainment but a revised version of Pleasure Reconciled. Both were performed within a short time. In 1625, a tailor was paid for that rarest of rare services, ‘repairinge his Highnes maskinge suite and Thomas Boweys’, who were both to dance in The Fortunate Isles.⁷⁷ These suits were left over from the previous year’s masque, Neptune’s Triumph, which had never been performed. The tailor mended costumes which had never been presented on stage and were, for an audience, as good as new. While a practice of large-scale recycling does not emerge from court records, a limited reuse or borrowing of select properties and costumes seems possible. When the play The Faithful Shepherdess was revived in January 1634 at Denmark House, the actors received clothes previously used in The Shepherds’ Paradise.⁷⁸ The oddly incomplete character of some masque bills suggests that grotesque costumes were procured from several sources. A receipt for the antimasquers in Pan’s Anniversary (1620), for instance, lists mostly properties but not entire sets of garments. Surely, the ‘Clooke Keeper’ wore more than a sundial? Indeed the same bill mentions ‘two porters for goeinge of busines between Westminster and Black Friers’, which might indicate that they picked up stuff from a theatre depot which complemented the custom-made outfits for this masque.⁷⁹ Actors must at times have brought their own gear. Jones, a perfectionist, would still have insisted on the supervision of such material. Costumes for professional performers in masques, Keith Sturgess argues, were initially provided by the Revels Office; other outfits came out of stock, left over from previous court productions.⁸⁰ MacIntyre suggests that Queen Anne’s players who performed in her masques ‘received apparel “in reward” as had Elizabethan players at court. They may also have offered to hire or buy these ⁷⁶ Clare McManus, Women on the Renaissance Stage: Anna of Denmark and Female Masquing in the Stuart Court (1590–1619) (Manchester, 2002), 107. ⁷⁷ OS i. 370. ⁷⁸ Henry Herbert, cited in Bawcutt (ed.), Control and Censorship, 186. ⁷⁹ OS i. 315–16. This character had a bunch of keys, a bell, a sundial, and a girdle. The Revels had moved out of Blackfriars by 1608, hence the porters were probably involved with a theatre company. ⁸⁰ Keith Sturgess, Jacobean Private Theatre (London and New York, 1987), 196.

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costumes from the Yeoman of the Revels after the masque was over, when there was no foreseeable court use for them’.⁸¹ In this manner, it has been proposed that the satyr costumes from Oberon (1611) went to the Red Bull, to be used again for the singing satyrs in Thomas Heywood’s The Golden Age (estimated performance date 1609–11).⁸² Oberon has also been associated with The Winter’s Tale, which was staged in the same year. Songs from the masque, it is argued, were reused in Shakespeare’s romance which includes a dance of twelve satyrs in Act IV; the King’s Men, who had probably acted as satyrs in the masque, might simply have repeated their antics in the play.⁸³ Yet none of these propositions have been proven, whereas evidence suggests that the court was extremely sensitive about the circulation of costumes which had been used in a courtly context. In summer 1636, Charles and Henrietta Maria visited Oxford. On this occasion, the students performed William Cartwright’s The Royal Slave, which, as is well known, pleased the queen so well that she borrowed the costumes for another production by her own players later that year. ‘Cloaths & perspectives of ye stage’ were duly ‘sent to Hampton Court in a waggon’.⁸⁴ In a warm letter, Henrietta Maria thanked the vicechancellor and the convocation for their generosity (‘A thing which wee doe not only take very kindly, but are Ready to Remember very Really’) but she also made clear how the university should use these costumes in future: ‘In ye Meane time you may bee confident that no Part of these things yat are come to our hands, shall bee suffered to bee prostituted upon any Mercenary Stage, but shall bee carefully Reserv’d for our owne Occasions and particular Entertainments att Court.’⁸⁵ In Henrietta Maria’s understanding, the act of exhibiting costumes from an exclusive production in a public playhouse was tantamount to prostitution. A splendid occasion became tainted if it was commercialized and exposed to what she considered the vulgar gaze. This sense of decorum doubtless informed the use of costumes in court masques. More relaxed rules may have applied to props used by professional actors on such occasions, and perhaps satyrs’ fleeces did indeed amuse audiences at the Red Bull or the ⁸¹ MacIntyre, Costumes and Scripts, 262. ⁸² Ibid. 233. Performance date after Harbage and Schoenbaum. ⁸³ For a summary of current criticism on the topic, see William Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale, IV. iv. 332–7, ed. Stephen Orgel (Oxford, 1996), introd., pp. 79–80, and app. C. MacIntyre challenges this as there would have been only ten costumes available for the twelve satyrs in Shakespeare’s play (Costumes and Scripts, 233). ⁸⁴ Anthony Wood, ‘The History or Annals of the University of Oxford’, in Records of Early English Drama: Oxford, ed. J. R. Elliott et al., 2 vols. (Toronto, 2004), ii. 892. ⁸⁵ Letter from Hampton Court, 6 Dec. 1636, ibid. 791.

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Blackfriars Theatre, but costumes that had been worn by high-ranking participants were extremely unlikely to end up on the ‘Mercenary Stage’. The composite structure of Stuart theatrical wear would have encouraged the fitting of accessories to a number of different costumes. Inigo Jones tended to copy his own designs. Ben Jonson made fun of this in his ‘Expostulation’, yet Jones might have acted in the interests of the royal purse. Thus, virtually identical angels’ heads, embossed and fastened to masquers’ breast plates, occur in The Masque of Queenes, Albion’s Triumph, and The Triumph of Peace. The last was an Inns of Court production: did the lawyers borrow properties from Whitehall? Jones also played with animal features in his designs. In 1611, Oberon’s shoulderpieces were modelled after the face of a grim-looking, leonine creature. Later, similar items were employed in The Shepherds’ Paradise, Coelum Britannicum, and Salmacida Spolia. As a theatrical shorthand for ‘Hercules’, these elements enabled the audience to identify the performer as a heroic figure. Weapons, too, strongly suggest a recycling practice. A curved sword with an eagle’s head handle was brandished in The Masque of Queenes, The Shepherds’ Paradise, The Temple of Love, and Salmacida Spolia. Such accessories were easy to store. Even better, careful observers might have noticed them as intimate, complimentary allusions to past productions. Recurrent features contributed to a recognition effect and helped to establish standards of representation. Such visual signals led to a more efficient communication between audience and stage, assisting those who either did not understand the English language or could not hear the spoken text. Some evidence illuminates the post-production use of masque costumes by individuals. At times, expensive costumes for the aristocracy were paid for by the participants, and therefore probably returned to private households. The great Jacobean ladies who had themselves painted in their masquing dress no doubt kept them in family wardrobes until they decayed, John Astington assumes.⁸⁶ A case dating back to the 1630s supports this hypothesis: in the household of the Earl of Bridgewater, theatrical garments were certainly stored and possibly reused, as wardrobe records by servants show. As has been mentioned before, Thomas and John Egerton (Lord Brackley) danced as torchbearers in Coelum Britannicum when they were 9 and 11 years old. Two days after the masque performance (18 February 1634) these costumes were returned ‘to my ladyes owne hands to remayne in her Ladyships Closett during her Ladyship’s pleasure’. The boys kept their costumes in a hamper at home; in ⁸⁶ Astington, 158.

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1636, a servant’s inventory mentioned ‘Maskin cloathes’ ‘which stand in my lord’s wardrobe and is [sic] not entered in any book or note’.⁸⁷ These ‘cloathes’ must have been the torchbearers’ suits; the boys did not perform in any other court masque, and the Bridgewater household suffered no waste. It has been suggested that these suits were worn a second time when Thomas and John played the Younger and the Elder Brother in Milton’s Comus, which was performed in the same year as Carew’s court masque.⁸⁸The design for the torchbearers still survives (see Fig. 18), showing a costume ‘after the old British fashion in white coats embroidered with silver’ (as Carew’s text described it); additional carnationcoloured satin and silver buttons added lustre during performance. The choice materials explained the cost of over £20 per costume.⁸⁹ If the Egerton boys reused their masquing suits, or parts of them, which made sense given the initial investment, it would have been a little harder to distinguish them from the ‘glistering’ rout of Comus.⁹⁰ On the other hand, bright-coloured mock-Tudor garments could have added a Spenserian touch to the brothers’ appearance which, after all, was described in Spenserian terms by Comus (‘I took it for a faëry vision | Of some gay creatures of the element | That in the colours of the rainbow live’, ll. 297–9). Visually the opposite of the threatening ‘swart faër[ies]’ (l. 435) evoked by Milton’s text, the brothers could thus have dispelled the ‘double night of darkness, and of shades’ (l. 334) which characterized the plot. Very few masquing outfits appear in royal inventories. Those pertaining to Queen Anne reveal only the costume she wore in Tethys’ Festival (1610), the one Daniel had described so evocatively: one maskeinge gowne of satten: the bo:[dies?] Jagges and tagges of white sattne Imbroydery verye riche with gold purle plaett and owes the skertes of grasse greene satten Imbroydery with silver owes alover Cutt rounde belowe with peakes and scollops and edged with a silver frenge linde with greene sarsnett.⁹¹ ⁸⁷ All references from Bridgewater family papers, cited in Milton’s Comus: Being the Bridgewater Manuscript, ed. Egerton, 28–9. ⁸⁸ Alix Egerton was the first to suggest this. See also John G. Demaray, Milton and the Masque Tradition (Cambridge, Mass., 1968), 101, and Martin Butler, ‘A Provincial Masque of Comus, 1636’, Renaissance Drama, 17 (1986), 149–73, at 157–8. ⁸⁹ OS ii. p. 570, bill for Lord Cranborne’s suit; masque text, p. 578, ll. 955–6; design, p. 593, fig. 286. ⁹⁰ A Masque Presented at Ludlow Castle [Comus], in John Milton, Complete Shorter Poems, ed. John Carey, 2nd edn. (London, 1997), 185, stage direction. Further line references to Comus will appear in the text. ⁹¹ CUL MS Dd.1.26, fol. 29v, ‘Whitehall’ in the margin. The Queen’s Wardrobe was, at least in 1670, situated between the Palace Court and the adjacent Banqueting House on one side and the river on the other. Contemporary part-copy of Greatorex’s survey of Whitehall Palace, c.1670, reproduced in Thurley, Lost Palace of Whitehall, 41. This map may not represent the realities of the old palace.

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Figure 10. John Hoskins, Queen Henrietta Maria, c.1632. RCIN 420891, GR 81. The Royal Collection © 2004, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

On occasion garments became venerated museum pieces. ‘Little Jeffreyes Boots’ and ‘Little Jeffreyes Masking-suit’, which had belonged to Henrietta Maria’s favourite dwarf, an inveterate performer, eventually found their way into John Tradescant’s cabinet of rarities in the 1650s.⁹² In other instances, costumes were moved to the regular wardrobe. In Tempe Restored, Henrietta Maria wore a sky-blue dress with silver stars. A miniature from the same period portrays her in a low-cut sky-blue gown reminiscent of Inigo Jones’s design (see Figs. 9 and 10). Orgel and Strong maintain that the miniature is not connected with the masque dress.⁹³ Indeed the portrait shows a lace collar and bonnet, while ⁹² John Tradescant, Musaeum Tradescantianum: Or, A Collection of Rarities (London, 1656), 48, 179–83. Also JS, 324. ⁹³ OS ii, p. 494, no. 244. The miniature was painted in about 1632; although attributed to Hoskins, it bears Samuel Cooper’s signature on the reverse. It may relate to Tempe Restored, ‘but no sketch for such a dress has been discovered’. Daphne Foskett, Miniatures: Dictionary and Guide (Woodbridge, 1987), 87, 89.

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onstage Henrietta Maria wore a ruff and shoulderpieces. Yet in substance the garment is the same. Once the more theatrical accoutrements had been removed, the creation turned into an expensive formal dress. Different layers of accessories expressed different layers of meaning, reflecting the different representational functions of a garment in spectacle and court life. Henrietta Maria’s portrait may reflect a widely current practice. The transformation of masque costumes into regular outfits could account for the lack of evidence on storage, repair, and transactions with actors’ companies. As grotesque outfits were often worn by professionals, rules may not have insisted on new, custom-made material but occasionally allowed for used components of indeterminate provenance. Yet a full-scale circulation of costumes between Whitehall and the public playhouse would have reduced masques to mere theatre performances, a most counterproductive effect since masques sought to represent not a mimicry but the true essence of the early Stuart court. The creation of aristocratic sets from scratch, and their final destination in an aristocratic wardrobe, would have provided an economically viable and ideologically attractive solution. In the same way that Sir Robert Sidney returned all the jewels once the performance was over but kept his suit, Henrietta Maria simply translated theatrical into stately costume. Thus theatrical currency was converted into the regular coinage of courtly display.

CONSPICUOUS CONSUMPTION? Critics have repeatedly stressed how much aristocrats and arriviste citizens spent on rich dress in early modern England.⁹⁴ Jones and Stallybrass point out that Shakespeare’s house at Stratford cost less than one of the Earl of Leicester’s suits. The Earl’s ‘staggering’ expenditure, they argue, demonstrates the shift taken place since the Renaissance period, for ‘whatever we might think about the price of an Armani suit, we could not equate its cost with the price of a house’.⁹⁵ Courtly spectacle, we are told, was ruinous. The sartorial excesses and ‘reckless extravagance’ of Queen Anne’s entertainments have become commonplace in literature on early modern English drama.⁹⁶ Masques, David ⁹⁴ According to JS, saving was regarded as miserly and discrediting in pre-capitalist societies (28). ⁹⁵ In 1597, Shakespeare paid £60 for New Place, the second largest house in Stratford, which cost less than one item on the Earl of Leicester’s fashion bill (£543 for seven doublets and two cloaks). Andrew Gurr, The Shakespearean Stage, 1574–1642, 3rd edn. (Cambridge, 1992), 13. S. Schoenbaum, William Shakespeare: A Documentary Life (Oxford, 1975), 173. JS, 178. ⁹⁶ e.g., Orgel and Strong on Tethys’ Festival (OS i. 43, 46).

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Norbrook writes, were ‘the last place where one would expect a serious call for austerity and economy’.⁹⁷ Such assumptions rely on early modern accounts which assert that no expenses were spared. As William Farington wrote to his father in February 1609, The Masque of Queenes was thought by those ‘that had a hand in that bussines’ to have ‘Cost at the least towe thowsande Powndes. The Commonalty doe somwhat murmur at suche vaine exspences, and thinckes that that mony wich was bestowed thes waies, might have bene conferred upon better uses. But Quod supra nos, nihill ad nos.’⁹⁸ Defiant of the muttering commonalty, Thomas Carew’s Coelum Britannicum (1634) elevated spending to a virtue: We not require the dull society Of your necessitated temperance, . . . . . . but we advance Such virtues only as admit excess, Brave bounteous acts, regal magnificence.⁹⁹

Did facts match the rhetoric? To assess the value of rich garments in the early modern period we might compare them to contemporary prices for bread, real estate, coal or gold, or wages and pensions. Charles’s masquing suit for Coelum Britannicum will suffice as an example to assess the value of costumes (see Fig. 17). The king’s suit was produced in a period characterized by subsistence economy, which means that anything which did not serve everyday needs was expensive. It is estimated that average households spent more than 80 per cent of their resources on food.¹⁰⁰ Charles paid some £121. 8s. 7d. to appear as an ‘ancient hero’ in an aurora-coloured, pseudo-classical suit embroidered with silver. This is a lot in comparison to masquers’ suits in The Vision of Delight (1617) (three suits for £249. 16s. 11d ); News from the New World (1620) (three suits for £205. 17s. 7d.), or The Masque of Augurs (1622) (three suits for £78. 7s. 9d.),¹⁰¹ Some 10 per cent of his personal budget for the production (which ⁹⁷ David Norbrook, ‘The Reformation of the Masque’, in David Lindley (ed.), The Court Masque (Manchester, 1984), 94–110, at 106. ⁹⁸ Letter, 7 Feb. 1608/9, in Records of Early English Drama: Lancashire, ed. David George (Toronto, 1991), 152. ⁹⁹ Mercury to Poverty, Coelum Britannicum, ll. 659–60, 666–8, in OS ii. 576. ¹⁰⁰ Gurr, Shakespearean Stage, 13; Bruce Boehrer, The Fury of Men’s Gullets: Ben Jonson and the Digestive Canal (Philadelphia, 1997), 84. ¹⁰¹ My calculation, based on bills in OS i. 43; ii. 567–70. Excluded are £ 120 paid to George Kirke, Gentleman of the Robes, to avoid possible double counting, and bills which clearly refer to other masquers’ suits. Of multiple identical terms, only one has been counted.

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amounted to at least £1,200) went into the royal outfit. The sizeable costume bill explains why Charles expected other aristocratic masquers to contribute funds.¹⁰² Coelum Britannicum was an expensive masque by Caroline standards. How substantial are these figures compared to the annual income of king and queen? Stuart households were notoriously inefficient (a view one is inclined to share after trying to trace masque expenditure in Charles’s Byzantine departmental system). As early as 1604, members of the Privy Council urged James to economize on festivities, given that his predecessor Elizabeth had never spent so much money on ephemera. The complaint remained on the agenda in subsequent years.¹⁰³ Unimpressed, James insisted he needed to keep up appearances. He challenged Members of Parliament to survive on the pittance he had received while in Scotland (‘he that in your House was not ashamed to affirme, that the silver and gold did so abound in Edenburgh, was very farre mistaken; but I wish him no worse punishment, then that hee should onely live upon such profit of the money there’). Freeness in giving graces the gift: ‘Nay I am sure every good Subject would rather chuse to live more sparingly upon his owne, then that his Kings State should be in want.’¹⁰⁴ Between 1626 and 1630, Charles faced a financial crisis which resulted in the sale of crown lands—a fatal measure since the king was then expected to rely on his own means, and Parliament as a rule did not grant subsidies to settle royal debts. Henrietta Maria allegedly was so ashamed of the state of her apartments that she received the Duchess of Tremouille in the dark. Charles eventually recuperated: by 1634, when Coelum Britannicum was performed, the king’s annual revenue had reached £600,000 thanks to the sale of monopolies, additional impositions, and forced loans.¹⁰⁵ The queen lived comfortably off a fixed income, boosted by a transfer of some £30,000 Charles had received while having been Prince of Wales. Between 1631 and 1642 Henrietta Maria could expect an annual revenue ranging between £31,000 and £47,000, of which she paid a fairly constant sum between £9,300 and £9,600 for the wages, pensions, fees, liveries, and entertainment of her household members. Each year was usually concluded with a slight surplus in the queen’s coffers—at the occasional expense of servants and creditors, whom Henrietta Maria might choose not to pay promptly. One could argue that Henrietta Maria kept her ¹⁰² OS ii. 567–70. ¹⁰³ Norbrook, ‘Reformation of the Masque’, 96–7. ¹⁰⁴ Speech to Parliament, 21 Mar. 1610. King James VI and I, Political Writings, ed. Johann P. Sommerville (Cambridge, 1994), 197–8. ¹⁰⁵ All financial figures and the anecdote from Kevin Sharpe, The Personal Rule of Charles I (New Haven, 1992), 105–6.

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own accounts afloat by low payment morale—yet her resources were at times more than sufficient to settle even substantial debts; in 1640, her treasurer concluded the year with the staggering surplus of more than £11,000.¹⁰⁶ Household audits indicate that her finances were stable until at least 1642. Contrary to the received view that the queen was forever suffering from penury, Henrietta Maria certainly did not have to receive visitors ‘in the dark’ during the 1630s.¹⁰⁷ Three hundred and twenty copies of Charles’s costume would have covered Henrietta Maria’s total annual expenditure for her household (£38,795) in 1634, a budget which included 139 wage earners and 35 pensioners.¹⁰⁸ Charles’s costume approached the average annual wage of one of Henrietta Maria’s French musicians (£120). The total expenses for Coelum Britannicum amounted to only 0.33 per cent of what the king annually paid to his 1,800 office holders.¹⁰⁹ Between 1604 and 1640, royal masques started from about £800 (Chloridia, 1631) and ended at about £3,000 (The Masque of Queenes, 1609).¹¹⁰ They were not out of scale compared to New Year’s gifts to courtiers and servants (each year, Henrietta Maria left aside a fixed sum of £1,500 for gifts; this minimum she regularly exceeded, spending at least £2,900 in 1634). Even Anne’s ‘reckless extravagance’ must cede to supposedly restrained countryside entertainments: Ben Jonson’s entertainments at Welbeck (1633) and Bolsover (1634) cost the Earl of Newcastle about £4,000 and £15,000 respectively.¹¹¹ The Inns of Court easily dwarfed the royal budget in The Triumph of Peace (1634), the most expensive masque ever staged: for this event the lawyers ¹⁰⁶ NLW MS Wynnstay 168 and 174–85, annual expenditure for the years 1631 to 1642. MS Wynnstay 177, transfer of Charles’s revenue to Henrietta Maria, 1629 to 1634. Money left each year might range from £103 in the budget year 1631 to the unusually high sum of £11,840 in 1640. Nothing was left in 1636. The Wynnstay records yield no total figure for 1642 but since Henrietta Maria was able to pay the usual fixed costs we may conclude that her budget conformed to the customary range. My count does not include extraordinary payments such as gifts. Aylmer states that Henrietta Maria’s household cost £20,000 p.a. (King’s Servants, 170); it is unclear how he arrives at this figure. His study is not concerned with her administration. ¹⁰⁷ Henrietta Maria’s down-at-heel image has been perpetuated in Carola Oman, Henrietta Maria (London, 1936; repr. 1976); Elizabeth Hamilton, Henrietta Maria (London, 1976); Rosalind K. Marshall, Henrietta Maria the Intrepid Queen (London, 1990); and Alison Plowden’s Henrietta Maria: Charles I’s Indomitable Queen (Stroud, 2001). ¹⁰⁸ NLW MS Wynnstay 178. Household privileges might cover meals, gifts, or liveries, but not usually boarding. In addition to annual fixed costs, the queen’s budget included extraordinary fees, debts, and other expenses. ¹⁰⁹ In the 1630s, he paid up to £360,000, including subsidies to Henrietta Maria. Aylmer, King’s Servants, 27, 29, 249. ¹¹⁰ OS i. 46–7. ¹¹¹ NLW MS Wynnstay 168 and 174–85. Margaret Cavendish’s estimate in The Life of William Cavendish, ed. C. H. Firth, 2nd edn. (London, [1906]), 78. Even if she exaggerated, the sum must still have been staggering.

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had allegedly raised £21,000.¹¹² Such comparisons question the assertion that court masques exemplified conspicuous consumption. Yet if we compare the expenses for Charles’s costume to the financial situation of workers away from London, an enormous gap opens. In the 1620s Lincolnshire judges assessed the maximum yearly income for maid servants at about £1 and agreed on £13 for master carpenters, masons, and bricklayers. In the early Caroline period, craftsmen in southern England may have earned about £18 per annum while labourers might expect £12.¹¹³ Work in these days was often rewarded by commodities other than cash, such as free lodging, livestock, or food, and a wage difference between metropolis and countryside is likely; yet all considered, Charles’s costume still seems outrageous by comparison with the means of the southern English working community. Compared to food, Charles’s costume was worth 1,166 turkeys at the time.¹¹⁴ Bread, economic historians argue, has always been a staple diet and therefore had to remain affordable. Its lack might unleash revolutions (‘let them eat cake’). In theory, bread prices remain relatively stable—as opposed to real estate, precious metals, and the like. In 1634, the average price for ordinary bread was 5.8d. /4 lb (or 1.8144 kg).¹¹⁵ That means Charles’s costume would have bought some 9,117 kg of bread in Caroline London. In 2002, 1 kg of standard household bread might have sold for 49p in a British supermarket, which would give Charles’s costume a value of some £4,467 in today’s money.¹¹⁶ Shakespeare’s house was worth 4,665 kg of London bread in 1597, or, in today’s money, perhaps £2,286. Did early modern countryside property sell at extremely competitive rates, giving the bard a very good reason to retire to rural Stratford? Was the house price a ‘legal fiction’?¹¹⁷ Were bread and clothes outrageously expensive in the early modern capital? According to statistics on building wages and retail prices from the late 1620s to the late 1990s, a skilled bricklayer’s income increased 1,232-fold, while retail prices grew by a factor ¹¹² OS ii. 544. For another estimate, £15,013, see MSC XII, 41–2. ¹¹³ HMC, The Manuscripts of His Grace the Duke of Rutland Preserved at Belvoir Castle, 12th report, app., pt. 4 (London, 1888), i, 460–2. B. de Montagut, Louange de la danse, ed. B. Ravelhofer (Cambridge, 2000), introd. E. H. Phelps Brown and Sheila V. Hopkins, ‘Seven Centuries of Building Wages’, in E. M. Carus-Wilson (ed.), Essays in Economic History, reissue of 1954–62 edn., 3 vols. (London, 1981), ii. 168–78, at 177. ¹¹⁴ A turkey cost 25d. p. PRO LR5/65, July 1631. ¹¹⁵ The ‘pound’ differs in various countries; in Britain the legal pound (as established in 1826) amounts to 453.6 g. ¹¹⁶ B. R. Mitchell, British Historical Statistics (Cambridge, 1988), list no. 14, for Caroline prices. Sainsbury’s, Cambridge, charged 49p for 1 kg of the cheapest household bread on 20 Apr. 2002. ¹¹⁷ A possibility raised by Schoenbaum, who argues that ‘we do not know how much Shakespeare actually laid out’ (William Shakespeare, 173).

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of 122. Therefore, commodities such as bread appear much cheaper today. Yet again, comparisons remain tentative as ‘baskets of commodities’ and tasks of workers change over long periods.¹¹⁸ These experimental calculations simply show us the relative value of money—and commodities—even in one and the same period. They demonstrate how little we really know about the exchange rate in the currency of clothing in Shakespeare’s and Carew’s time. It is infinitely more difficult to compare prices in different centuries. Leicester’s doublets do not square with an Armani suit, nor are sixteenth-century townhouses compatible with twenty-first-century quality mansions, and even bread does not represent a universal value. Back to the question of conspicuous consumption in masquing apparel. Orgel and Strong have established a critical tradition of costume distinction. As with aristocratic masquers, ‘for sheer extravagance, nothing matched the prodigality of the Jacobean court in masquing attire’, while antimasquers’ garments revealed ‘an abundant use of cheap materials, of taffeta and sarcenet, tinsel and copper lace, satin and tiffany’.¹¹⁹ We need to be careful, though: materials classified as lowly today may not have been so then. In the seventeenth century, ‘tinsel’ was often worked with gold and silver;¹²⁰ it became more affordable only in a counterfeited version. Masque bills sometimes mention ‘counterfeit tinsel’ or ‘copper lace’ in place of ‘gold’ or ‘silver lace’. Cheap stuff was easily frowned upon. When Buckingham and other young courtiers danced to honour the French ambassador in the Running Masque (1620), a guest reported ‘that their greatest bravery consisted in copper lace, which in my opinion was very pore for such parsonages’.¹²¹ ‘Copper lace’ actually became, as Jones and Stallybrass show, a metonymic expression for ‘professional player’.¹²² How, then, was it possible to ward off accusations of waste in spectacle and at the same time preserve courtly decorum? William Cavendish cunningly recommended selective distinction to the future Charles II: ‘All but your Majesty may have their glorious attire of copper, which will do as well as silver and gold for two or three nights, and much less expensive, which otherwise ¹¹⁸ I am immensely grateful to Prof. Peter Spufford (letter from 27 Jan. 2003) for a discussion of this problem; he remains sceptical as to the validity of price comparisons over long periods. He kindly forwarded calculations which extend those from the 1620s to 1999 (later data according to Annual Abstract of Statistics, HMSO, Sept. 1999). ¹¹⁹ OS i. 43. Linthicum, however, rates taffeta, sarcenet, and satin as expensive (Costume, 121, 123, 124). ¹²⁰ Linthicum, Constume, 116–17. ¹²¹ John Chamberlain to Dudley Carleton, 8 Jan. 1620. The Letters of John Chamberlain, ed. Norman E. McClure, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, 1939), ii. 282. ¹²² JS, 191.

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might be much found fault with by those that attend your Majesty at the mask. . . . Copper laces are very cheap and will make as good a show for one day as the best.’¹²³ Even the most sumptuous masque garments occasionally included ignominious material such as counterfeit tinsel, a fact silently passed over in official festival reports. For everyday wear, too, the court frequently fell back on material classified as second-rate by Orgel and Strong. On the other hand, antimasque costumes, although noticeably scaled down in expense, were not composed of rags. Henrietta Maria’s shepherds, wanton women, and turks wore silk, camlet, and taffeta: even humble roles had to look impressive so as not to mar the allure of an entertainment. Aristocratic decorum was, in practice, the result of a compromise between budget considerations and ostentatious brilliance. The management of spectacle expenditure challenges received notions of conspicuous consumption and early modern cost (in)efficiency. We have been told that Renaissance courts had money to burn and that dazzling public appearances were the conditio sine qua non of successful leadership. Yet contemporary voices and financial evidence contradict each other. As official publications, masque books exaggerated both the event and the investment in it. Garments were matchless because the people who wore them said so. Supposedly visible monuments to ‘Brave bounteous acts, regal magnificence’, the masquers in Coelum Britannicum wore counterfeit tinsel. In the disputes between moralists and apologists for courtly splendour we find the origins of the luxury debate which animated subsequent centuries. John Holles and Thomas Nevitt regarded costumes as superficial ornament and unnecessary expense. In Milton’s countryside entertainment Comus, the virtuous heroine called for a redistribution of wealth, while the antimasque villain defended dazzling solemnities.¹²⁴ Many courtiers, however, thought that costumes were no idle toys but created wealth in the first place—Robert Sidney hoped for a career by investing in conspicuous display. In the more frugal Bridgewater household, garments were stored, ripped, repaired, and dyed; having received this treatment, gowns worn by Lady Bridgewater were sent to friends such as Lady Mary Herbert—an evocative example for economic costume circulation within aristocratic circles.¹²⁵

¹²³ ‘The Little Book’, in An English Prince: Newcastle’s Machiavellian Political Guide to Charles II, ed. Gloria Anzilotti (Pisa, 1988), 162–3. ¹²⁴ Norbrook, ‘Reformation of the Masque’,106. ¹²⁵ Bridgewater family papers, cited in Milton’s Comus: Being the Bridgewater Manuscript, ed. Egerton, 25.

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‘Property . . . is a memory system’, Stallybrass and Jones have argued.¹²⁶ If we regard theatrical paraphernalia as a memory system, we may better understand the intricate processes of costume production and consumption, and even grasp aesthetic choices which seem irrational or inconsequent at first sight. We must distinguish between actual costume production and circulation, and the perception and manipulation of these processes in public. In practice, Stuart masques discreetly followed a cost-saving policy which interfered as little as possible with the ostentation of luxury in performance. A masque costume was the result of a compromise formula, governed by ideas of aristocratic distinction, budget restraints, and a new professional, pragmatic concern for theatrical effect on stage. This led to the provision of new materials for aristocrats for each production, and their combination with ignoble materials where detection was unlikely. Lowly parts were cheaper, yet often sartorially upgraded for reasons of visual impact. Instead of being released into the public, better costumes were retained within courtly circles as if to avoid a contamination with the professional stage. Fabrics in their various manifestations in print, painting, and performance provided a long-lasting souvenir of a unique event. Garments embodied memories. Selective recycling in close circuits kept these memories exclusive. ¹²⁶ JS, 264.

6 Colours and Lights: The Costume in Motion This habit was beautiful, rich, and light for dancing, and proper for the subject of this masque. William Davenant, Britannia Triumphans (1638)

If we tried to restage a court masque based on literary scholarship we would end up with a black-and-white performance. The subject of colour has eluded even groundbreaking studies of Jonesian festival iconography. It was not so in the seventeenth century, when eyewitnesses loved to dwell on colours and fabrics far more than on the literary contents of a performance. For Bulstrode Whitelocke, the colours of his masquers in The Triumph of Peace (1634) embodied the event itself. Twenty years later, he still kept their silver and blue for his own embassy to Sweden.¹ Is colour simply not serious enough to merit critical attention? When Goethe composed his Theory of Colours (1810) he joked that he was up against a long tradition of Western thought (‘a bull will get angry at the sight of a red scarf; but the philosopher will start to rave if you just mention the topic of colour’).² In ancient Greek philosophy, colour was seen to affect the human body physically. Plato called it pharmakon; in his Republic he denounced scene painting as ‘witchcraft’.³ In Latin, color meant ‘exterior, shell, colour, make-up, beauty, complexion’. It is related to celare, to hide. Colour was regarded as an ¹ The Diary of Bulstrode Whitelocke, 1605–1675, ed. Ruth Spalding (Oxford, 1990), 75. ² ‘Hält man dem Stier ein rotes Tuch vor, so wird er wütend; aber der Philosoph, wenn man nur überhaupt von Farbe spricht, fängt an zu rasen.’ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Zur Farbenlehre: Das gesamte Hauptwerk von 1810, ed. Manfred Wenzel (Frankfurt am Main, 1991), ‘Einleitung’, 25. ³ Jacqueline Lichtenstein, La Couleur éloquente: Rhétorique et peinture à l’âge classique (Paris, 1989), ch. ‘De la toilette platonicienne’. Jacques Derrida, ‘La Pharmacie de Platon’, in La Dissémination (Paris, 1972), 69–197. David Batchelor, Chromophobia (London, 2000), 31, 52. Republic, X, 602d, in The Collected Dialogues of Plato Including the Letters, ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (Princeton, 2nd printing, 1963), 827.

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unnatural additive to the human condition. Tertullian (also noted for his anti-theatrical stance) condemned dyed fashion: had God willed people to wear coloured garments, he would have created coloured sheep.⁴ Thus a venerable tradition relegates colour to the realm of the inessential. At best it endorses trivial ornamentalism, at worst it has the effect of a treacherous palliative which pleases but deceives. The English word colour inherited this wide range of meanings, including, since the Middle Ages, ‘show’, ‘concealment’, ‘mask’, ‘ornament’, and, from the the late sixteenth century onwards, ‘timbre’ and ‘expression’ in music. In the seventeenth century poets still used it in the sense (now lost) of ‘rhythm’ and ‘metre’ (Ben Jonson allegedly said ‘that Verses stood by sense without either Colour’s [sic] or accent’).⁵ Puttenham thought that ‘our vulgar Poesie’ could not ‘shew it selfe either gallant or gorgious, if any lymme be left naked and bare and not clad in . . . kindly clothes and colours’.⁶ In Jonson’s, Carew’s, Chapman’s, and Jones’s time, colour was a powerful, evocative word. Its synaesthetic quality reached beyond the boundaries of the visual into the acoustic and verbal domain, as did masques, those spectacles with light, sound, and motion. John Peacock and Anthony Johnson have shown the enormous value which Inigo Jones attributed to disegno, for him the manifestation of a creative force equal to that of poetic inspiration.⁷ Jones never wrote a theory of colour. While costumes added glamour to performances and written reports, their sketched drafts remained most of the time mousy. Jones’s standard monochrome designs consisted of outlines in pencil or ink, washed with shades of brown and grey.⁸ While he gave indications for colours, and (on very rare occasions) applied them himself, criticism insists on treating the drafts as disegno alone. Here, masque costumes remain as colourless as if they had never left the drawing board. Typically, Peacock’s magisterial study conveys a clear idea of how Inigo Jones established Continental visual culture in England and used neo-classicism as a representational medium for the Stuart court, but it does not discuss the implication of colour for costumes on an artificially lit stage.

⁴ Jonas Barish, The Antitheatrical Prejudice (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1981), 50. Tertullian, De cultu feminarum [on the apparel of women], bk. I, ch. 8, in Disciplinary, Moral and Ascetical Works, trans. R. Arbesmann and E. Joseph Daly (New York, 1959), 126. ⁵ Conversations with William Drummond of Hawthornden, in HS i. 143. ⁶ George Puttenham, The Arte of English Poesie (London, 1589), bk. 3, ch. 1, p. 114. ⁷ See SDIJ. Anthony Johnson, Ben Jonson: Poetry and Architecture (Oxford, 1994). Three Volumes Annotated by Inigo Jones: Vasari’s Lives (1568), Plutarch’s Moralia (1614), Plato’s Republic (1554), ed. A. Johnson (Åbo, 1997). ⁸ OS i, introductory section ‘The Colour Plates’, also pp. 34, 46.

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This lack of interest in colour—or even chromophobia, to use David Batchelor’s term—taps into a strain of Western art criticism which pits disegno against colore, line against colour, and considers the latter vulgar, trivial, and superficial. As late as 1938, British Museum officials had the Parthenon frieze scraped with chisels because traces of gaudy colours conflicted with a desire for ‘pure’ Western art.⁹ In Goethe’s view, vivid colours excited animals, savages, and children.¹⁰ In Roy Strong’s study of Jacobean miniature, they are the hallmark of a reactionary style.¹¹ The early Stuart court, however, was obsessed with colour symbolism. Colours followed the calendar, signposting Carnival and Lenten seasons. In 1631, Henrietta Maria’s dwarf Jeffrey Hudson paraded in a ‘masquing suit’ of white, crimson, and green, and later wore a ‘lenten suit’ equally theatrical in its expression of sobriety.¹² Courtiers practised amateur mindreading based on colours. Only four months after Queen Anne’s death James raised eyebrows, ‘himself very fresh in a suit of watchet satten laide with silver lace, with a blew and white-feather’. John Chamberlain wondered what the Duke of Lorraine and his attendants, all in black and soon to arrive to condole with the king, would think of his appearance.¹³ Colour determined a social dress code, taken to extremes in plays of the period: Your colours, to an understandinge lover, carry the interpretation of the heart, as plainly as wee expresse our meaninge one to an other in Characters. . . . Heere is Azure and peach. Azure is constant, and peach is love; which signifies my constant affection . . . It saves the trouble of writinge, where the Mistresse and servant are learned in this Amorous Blazon, yesterday I wore fuille-mote; greedeline; and Isabella; fuillemote is withered, greedeline is absent, and Isabella is beauty: which put together exprest’d, I did wither or languish for your absent beautie.¹⁴

⁹ William St Clair, ‘The Elgin Marbles: Questions of Stewardship and Accountability’, International Journal of Cultural Property, 8/2 (1999), 397–521. ¹⁰ ‘daß wilde Nationen, ungebildete Menschen, Kinder eine große Vorliebe für lebhafte Farben empfinden, daß Tiere bei gewissen Farben in Zorn geraten, daß gebildete Menschen in Kleidung und sonstiger Umgebung die lebhaften Farben vermeiden und sie durchgängig von sich zu entfernen suchen’. Goethe, Zur Farbenlehre, ‘Didaktischer Teil’, i. 135, p. 69. Batchelor, Chromophobia, 28–31, 112. ¹¹ Roy Strong, The English Renaissance Miniature (New York, 1983), 180–5, on William Larkin’s ‘reactionary costume pieces’ and Isaac Oliver’s Elizabethan tastes for brilliant colouring. ¹² PRO LR5/64, bill, Richard Miller, Lady Day Quarter 1630/1. ¹³ To Dudley Carleton, 5 June 1619, The Letters of John Chamberlain, ed. Norman E. McClure, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, 1939), ii. 242. ¹⁴ Monsieur Device, in William Cavendish [and James Shirley], The Country Captaine (London, 1649), 28.

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Even if over the top, such passages reflect a society which was sensitive to minute details of appearance and at the same time addicted to arbitrary change. Dressing up required not only social intelligence but a retentive memory. ‘I strive as much as possible to dress the performers differently . . . so that as soon as one sees them . . . one recognizes them, without having to wait for them to declare themselves in words’, the playwright and producer Leone de’ Sommi (1527–92) said.¹⁵ The writings of this Jewish professional who worked for the Mantuan court may never have been appreciated at Whitehall, but de’ Sommi draws our attention to an essential concern of early modern stagecraft: how to be accessible. Masques, too, grappled with the problem of how to bring the more removed mysteries closer to an audience. Colour-coding provided an important reading aid. From the very first court masque under the Stuarts in 1604, Samuel Daniel’s The Vision of the Twelve Goddesses, poets and stage designers expected their audiences to identify allegorical figures by visual clues. They drew on stock-characters, employed in festivals all over Europe and easily recognized by an emblematically literate foreign audience: thus, ‘Diana’ appeared in a green mantle embroidered with silver moons, ‘Night’ regularly descended darkish-blue, ‘Fancy’ wore all the colours of the rainbow, and furies and madmen were swarthy. With their golden suits, the exotic Virginian knights of Chapman’s Memorable Masque (1613) made the audience fantasize about colonial riches. One wonders how Inigo Jones managed the ‘invisible lady’ in Salmacida Spolia.¹⁶ Henrietta Maria’s first (and Jonson’s last) court masque, Chloridia (1631), set out with the motto ‘Unius tellus ante coloris erat’ (once upon a time the world knew one colour only). Here, the queen ruled the colours, indeed (as Erica Veevers has shown) generated them in the first place. With Henrietta Maria’s appearance as the nymph Chloris before the backdrop of a rainbow—a hallmark device of hers, used again in Luminalia (1638)—the stage exploded into colours. Jonson’s text extolled the life-giving force of her performance, imaginatively praising her dancing feet ‘that so | Impres’t the Earth, and made such various flowers to grow’.¹⁷ In the course of almost four decades, Inigo Jones employed some thirty-five different colours in his masque costumes. His choices reflect both the ¹⁵ Dialoghi, c.1565. Cited from James Saslow, The Medici Wedding of 1589: Florentine Festival as Theatrum Mundi (New Haven, 1996), 60–1. ¹⁶ OS ii. 732, entry 10. ¹⁷ ll. 236–7, in HS vii. 757. Erica Veevers, Images of Love and Religion: Queen Henrietta Maria and Court Entertainments (Cambridge, 1989), 176. On Henrietta Maria’s horticultural iconography see also Karen Britland, ‘ “All Emulation Cease, and Jars”: Political Possibilities in Chloridia, Queen Henrietta Maria’s Masque of 1631’, Ben Jonson Journal, 9 (2002), 87–108; and Melinda J. Gough, ‘A Newly Discovered Performance by Henrietta Maria’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 65/3–4 (2002), 435–47.

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wide-ranging early modern meanings of colour and practicalities of the theatre. Jones’s experiments can be quantified by comparing them to the experiences and opinions of Continental spectacle professionals. A number of early modern French and Italian treatises dealt with the problems of staging; notably Leone de’ Sommi’s Quattro Dialoghi (before 1598), the anonymous manuscript treatise Il Corago (attributed to Pierfrancesco Rinuccini, probably composed between 1628 and 1637), Monsieur de Saint-Hubert’s La manière de composer et faire réussir des ballets (1641), and the late seventeenth-century theatre histories by the Jesuit Claude-François Ménestrier and Michel de Pure.¹⁸ These works were composed independently and under very different circumstances: Il Corago is based on performances in Florence and Venice, Saint-Hubert writes about ballet at the court of Louis XIII, Ménestrier sails with epic sway from the Romans to Lully. This makes it all the more interesting to see how they approached basic technical questions such as artificial light and special effects in indoor performances. English and Continental spectacle were not entirely detached from each other. In 1608, Prince Henry asked John Harington, off on a grand tour, for copies of festival books relating to Medici weddings. In 1611 Constantino de’ Servi, a Florentine artist and connoisseur invited to Whitehall, requested ‘a number of the sketches for the different designs formerly made by Bernardo delle Girandole [Buontalenti], or by others, either for masques, barriers, or intermedi from the time of the Grand Duke Francesco up to now’, which he wished to use in ‘balletti’ for Prince Henry, and in late 1612 or 1613 he ordered them again, in anticipation of a commission to design wedding festivities. ‘I would send them back straightaway’, he promised and asked for discretion (‘do not tell anyone that they are for me, so as to avoid people finding out what I am copying’).¹⁹ Thomas Campion may have drawn upon texts by Giovanni de’ Bardi for The Lords’ Masque (1613). Various ‘signori di corte’, among them Jones, regularly pestered Amerigo Salvetti, the Florentine resident in London, for festival books such as La Flora (1628) and Le Nozze Degli Dei (1637), publications which Jones used for The Temple of Love (1637), Britannia ¹⁸ Monsieur de Saint-Hubert, La manière de composer et faire réussir les ballets, introd. MarieFrançoise Christout, facs. edn. (Paris, 1641; Geneva, 1993). P. Fabbri and A. Pompilio (eds.), Il Corago (Florence, 1983), 9–10. Michel de Pure, Idée des spectacles anciens et nouveaux, facs. edn. (Paris, 1668; Geneva, 1972). Claude-François Ménestrier, Des ballets anciens et modernes selon les règles du théâtre, facs. edn. (Paris, 1682; Geneva, 1972). ¹⁹ On Harington and de’ Servi, see Roy Strong, Henry Prince of Wales: The Lost Renaissance (1986), 92, 95. Undated letter, c.1613, in John Orrell, ‘The London Stage in the Florentine Correspondence, 1604–1618’, Theatre Research, 3 (1978), 157–76, at 170.

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Triumphans (1638), and Salmacida Spolia (1640).²⁰ In 1639, John Milton saw Rospigliosi’s celebrated carnival spectacle Chi soffre speri in Rome and immortalized the singer Leonora Baroni in epigrams.²¹ French costume workshops influenced English tastes. And vice versa, Ménestrier regarded The Lords’ Masque as an exemplary English court spectacle, describing at length its ‘Chevaliers dans le Ciel tous vêtus d’une couleur de flames tenant des lances noires’.²² In short, a European perspective gives us a feeling for the issues involved in performances at the English court. To be seen and read, costumes had in the first place to be visible. Many English masques were performed indoors in spaces lit by torches and candles. The less light there is, the more you see on stage: the advantages of illusionistic artificial lighting were, theatre historians agree, first explored by Italian stage designers. De’ Sommi was apparently the first to turn down the lighting in the auditorium to focus the audience’s attention entirely on the stage (‘When plunged in darkness, a man naturally sees something gleaming in the distance much better than if he were located in a lit place’). He also used lighting to create moods: ‘I remember once I had to produce a tragedy . . . During all the time when the episodes were happy in mood I had the stage brightly illuminated, but so soon as the first unhappy incident occurred . . . most of the stage lights not used for the perspective were darkened or extinguished.’²³ In English court productions, flickering lights—reflected through coloured water or oiled paper, and refracted from polished metal—provided a delusive atmosphere. Jones experimented with moving, indirect, and coloured illumination.²⁴ Installed on posts in the auditorium, sconces with reflectors could be made to shine in two directions. In The Temple of Love (1635), such ‘armes of double plate to hold greate waxe lightes on the Postes in the Maske’, as well as ‘24 smale branches’, added lustre to the occasion.²⁵ The temporary theatrical ²⁰ J. Peacock, ‘Ben Jonson and the Italian Festival Books’ in J. R. Mulryne and M. Shewring (eds.), Italian Renaissance Festivals and Their European Influence (Lewiston, NY, 1992), 271–88, at 276; and ‘Inigo Jones and the Florentine Court Theater’, John Donne Journal, 5 (1986), 201–34. John Orrell, ‘Inigo Jones and Amerigo Salvetti: A Note on the Later Masque Designs’, Theatre Notebook, 30/3 (1976), 109–14. ²¹ A. Ademollo, I teatri di roma nel secolo decimosettimo, facs. repr. (1888; Bologna, 1969), 25–6. ²² Ménestrier, Des ballets anciens, 174. ²³ Leone de’ Sommi, Quattro dialoghi in materia di rappresentazioni sceniche, cited from Georges Banu, ‘De’ Sommi, or “Stage Cement” ’, 211–19, at 217, and J. Guinsburg, ‘Leone de’ Sommi: A Precursor of Modern Theatricality’, 221–29, at 227, both in A. Belkin (ed.), Leone de’ Sommi and the Performing Arts (Tel Aviv, 1997). ²⁴ ‘Diaphanall’ glasses with coloured water imitated the effect of precious stones in The Entertainment at Theobalds and The Masque of Queenes (OS i. 17). R. B. Graves, Lighting the Shakespearean Stage, 1567–1642 (Carbondale, Ill., 1999), 168–9. ²⁵ OS ii. 599.

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auditoria at court multiplied such effects. Tapestries woven with gold and silver thread commonly hung from the walls, and halls themselves were coloured and gilded (the 1607 Banqueting House was decorated with blue-green gilded friezes, and in the provisional Caroline masking house, blue cloth covered the ceiling).²⁶ The colours of floor and furniture coverings emphasized hierarchies. In the second performance of The Triumph of Peace (1634) at the Merchant Taylors’ Hall, green cotton covered the ‘new foote place all along the said hall’, while crimson-coloured plush highlighted ‘the Piramids that supported the lights or candles by the Kings seate’.²⁷ Furthermore, the proscenium and scenery were a source of light, and indeed in the aptly named Luminalia: The Queen’s Festival of Light (1638), ‘women feigned with silver [i.e. silver statues of women]’ decorated the opening scene, above them ‘frontispieces of great scrolls with fruitages, from which hung lighted lamps’.²⁸ In 1605, the Banqueting House was lit by eighteen candlesticks and sixteen hanging candelabra, eight of which held fifteen large lights. Such chandeliers were often decorated with tassels and fringes of arsedine, a golden metal foil cut small to serve as spangles.²⁹ An impressive amount of various lights illuminated the stage in Albion’s Triumph (1632): lightes for the firnature of his majesty’s meske to bee deliverd on monday by 6 of the cloke in the afternone Torches

4 dosen

Lights according to thos of the branches of goodwax 16 dosen ordinary torches

3 dosen

Sises

2 hunderd³⁰

Associated with court and church, sizes were small round wax candles.³¹ Albion’s Triumph used two different types of torches: the ordinary one, and a better sort, presumably impregnated with wax. As Robert Graves points out, the modern plaited wick was only invented in 1820. The ordinary tallow candle in public playhouses produced thick stinking fumes. Without continuous snuffing every five to twenty minutes, it easily lost 75 per cent of its luminosity. ²⁶ Astington, 48, 51, 134. On the provisional structure, see PRO E351/3271, dated 1638, cited from Glynne Wickham, Early English Stages, 1300 to 1660 (London, 1972), vol. ii, pt. 2, p. 225. ²⁷ C. E. McGee, ‘ “Strangest Consequence from Remotest Cause”: The Second Performance of The Triumph of Peace’, Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England, 5 (1991), 309–42, at 331. ²⁸ ll. 44–9, in OS ii. 706. ²⁹ Astington, 97, 140. ³⁰ OS ii. 464, notes to design of scene 4. ³¹ In 1611 Cotgrave defined them as ‘small round candles’. OED.

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Hundreds of such snuffing operations accompanied each play, hence lights had to be placed within easy reach. Although beeswax was about four to five times more expensive than tallow, it burnt more brightly and caused less smoke, and therefore became popular for lighting devices in masques.³² Even so, indoor performances posed a safety hazard, if we are to believe jokes in plays of the period. In Ben Jonson’s Epicoene (c.1610), Mrs Otter complains about her night at the ‘Lords masque’, where ‘it dropt all my wire, and my ruffe with waxe-candle, that I could not goe up to the banquet’.³³ Onstage smoke posed a recurrent obstacle to enjoying a performance. In technically advanced Florentine productions it was so excessive that the composer and choreographer Cavalieri begged technicians to ‘make it so it doesn’t stink’.³⁴ It afflicted English court masques, too: as Daniel regretfully concludes his account of Tethys’ Festival, performed in summer 1610, ‘the introducing of pages with torches might have added more splendour, but yet they would have pestered the room, which the season would not well permit’.³⁵ Illumination was therefore a sensitive technical issue best handled by experienced staff. As John Astington observes, the Revels Office never gave over to the Office of the Works in the duties of lighting. Its wiredrawers specialized in ‘bracing, hanging, and repairing the many candleholders which lit royal chambers for the plays’. Lines might be rigged across the room, from which chandeliers hung on wires or cords, ‘with pulleys to lower them in order to trim and replace the candles’.³⁶ The excellent special effects in masques should not be attributed to Jonesian genius alone, for he could rely on skilled technicians. Henrietta Maria employed her personal wiredrawer for her masques. William Hurt was on standby during rehearsals for Walter Montagu’s pastoral The Shepherds’ Paradise (1633). He and four men looked after brass and wooden pulleys, cords and wires, and branches of crystal (i.e. hung with pieces of crystal or mirrors for rich radiance), all of which were brought from Whitehall to Denmark House for that purpose.³⁷ Far from fulfilling a trivial task, light attendants needed to learn their role in a performance as much as the performers themselves had to practise their parts. In court masques light was a staff-intensive status symbol. Booklets which detailed the employment of ‘virgin wax’ torches for grand masquers’ entries (as ³² ³³ ³⁴ ³⁵ ³⁷

Graves, Lighting, 14–16, 18, 20, 165. Ben Jonson, Epicoene, III. ii. 70–2, in HS v. 203; see also Astington, 97. Saslow, Medici Wedding, 127. Rehearsals for the 1589 intermedi. ll. 363–5, in OS i. 196. ³⁶ Astington, 24, 97. PRO LR5/65, Nov. 1632 and Jan. 1633.

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in Coelum Britannicum) did not simply tell their readers that the stage lit up but delivered a financial statement as well. The cost and radiosity of devices separated grotesque entries from that of the grand masquers. If grand masquers were literally brighter, less shrouded in smoke, and easier to perceive thanks to special illumination, the full extent of technical support can be gleaned from Jones’s costume designs and the experiences of his Continental counterparts. Italian and French stage managers were well aware of the correlation between dress and lighting. Saint-Hubert boasted that, thanks to torchlight, he had managed to arrange expensive-looking ballets on a small budget. He advocated the use of cheap glass and glittering material with large patterns, since jewels and costly fabrics would be lost in performance. A successful creation sent audiences into raptures: all eyes for the glamour, they might forget to scrutinize the foot technique of dancers. (Essential for this effect was, however, the moment of surprise, all too often ruined by the cast. Throughout his career, Saint-Hubert clashed with vain soloists, who produced themselves in public before performances so as to be recognized on stage later on.)³⁸ Il Corago, too, laconically affirmed a golden rule of costume making: high in (fake) splendour, low in spending. The author distinguished between day- and night-time costumes. A woman in a gaudy dress looked vulgar in the street, while on an illusionistic stage she made a gorgeous impression. Here, tinsel, glass jewels, and colours added lustre.³⁹ In La Pellegrina (1589), which Inigo Jones admired, costumes exceeded everyday clothes in their manifold brilliant colours so as to dazzle the audience even from a distance in a dimly illuminated environment.⁴⁰ English designers chose fabrics and colours according to their appearance under artificial illumination. Gold, silver, (counterfeit) tinsel, and shiny materials produced a spectacular effect, particularly if highlighted by jewels or glass. In the accounts for Coelum Britannicum, 16 yards of ‘counterfeit tincell’ were worked into the masquers’ outfit, the silk hoses and the ‘stockins’ of ‘aurora Cullor’, and ‘white sweet leather’ was used for the masks.⁴¹ Observers perceived and appreciated the effects of lighting on particular materials. In his account of The Triumph of Peace, Bulstrode Whitelocke referred persistently to the special gloss of costumes (‘the Torches and flaming huge Flamboys . . . made it seem lightsom as at Noon-day, but more glittering’.)⁴² Jones put balletic needs first: arms and legs had to be visible despite adverse performance conditions. ³⁸ Saint-Hubert, La manière de composer, 20, 27–9. ³⁹ Fabbri and Pompilio (eds.), Il Corago, 114–15. ⁴¹ OS ii. 569.

⁴⁰ Saslow, Medici Wedding, 61. ⁴² OS ii. 543, emphasis mine.

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Thus he chose light colours for sleeves and stockings. If a masquer wore a black or olive-coloured mask, Jones set it off by conspicuous bright headgear. He never used black footwear for grand masquers, whereas it was very often white. Even in repose, as Frederick Hammond writes about Roman Baroque opera, performers were bathed in flickering illumination, which motion rendered unnecessary ‘the aimless perpetual movement imposed on singers by modern stage directors’.⁴³ In masques, artificial lighting must have turned the stage into a dynamic venue, when the general sparkle of torches and candles made glittering costumes almost move. The effect can still be observed in a richly embroidered blue silk costume preserved at the Paris Opéra (see Pl. 3). Stylistically, it approaches Jonesian creations for Caroline grand masquers, although it probably dates to the late seventeenth century. Traditionally ascribed to the court dancer Jean Balon, the ballet costume consists of two parts, a classical bodice with panes, and a bellskirt (tonnelet), which must once have been supported by whalebone or iron hoops. The delicate upper material is mounted on robust fabric. The bodice would have been thrown over the dancer’s head, rather like a poncho, and closed by ribbons on both sides. The flexible cut facilitated rapid changing and accommodated slim and stout performers alike. Although of very small size—today, it would fit a 10-year-old child—the garment is heavy. Twisted gold and silver wire, stiff stripes of parchment all wound about with metallic thread, more pieces of metal and glass, pearls, mirrors, and paillettes cover it to the extent that the blue silk underneath remains hardly visible. The tonnelet consists of richly decorated stripes of velvet and silk sewn together. The effect of the costume is almost that of a bas-relief, in which layers of brilliant material mirror each other. Its uneven surface refracts and multiplies the light.⁴⁴ Garments came to life in a contrast of colours. Court productions consciously exploited the effect in dance ensembles: typically, John Pory reported to Sir Robert Cotton about Hymenaei that ‘the men were clad in Crimzon, and the weomen in white’.⁴⁵ Francis Bacon, presumptive author of The Masque of Flowers (1614), an Inns of Court production presented before the king and queen, gave some practical advice about colours in a night-time entertainment. ‘Of Masques and Triumphs’ admitted that such amusements were but trifles ⁴³ Frederick Hammond, Music and Spectacle in Baroque Rome (New Haven, 1994), 188. ⁴⁴ BN MUS 918. I am grateful to Philippe Cousin, curator at the Opéra Garnier, for letting me inspect the costume. ⁴⁵ To Sir Robert Cotton, 7 Jan. 1606. John Pory 1572–1636: The Life and Letters of A Man of Many Parts, ed. William S. Powell (Chapel Hill, NC, 1977), microfiche 1077, p. 3.

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yet betrayed a remarkable concern for stagecraft. Bacon recommended variety in costume to dispel boredom. Lighting should be carefully considered: ‘The colours that shew best by candle-light, are white, carnation, and a kind of sea-water-green; and oes, or spangs [spangles or sequins], as they are of no great cost, so they are of most glory. As for rich embroidery, it is lost and not discerned.’⁴⁶ Bacon presumably referred to watchet, a tone varying between light blue, deep sky-colour, and blueish green. Carnation comprised the whole range of flesh colour from light pink to full crimson in the early Stuart period. Both are unsaturated colours.⁴⁷ Interestingly, watchet and carnation were a standard combination in masques, where they signposted positive values. Several oil paintings are said to represent ladies who danced in Hymenaei (1606), which drew upon these colours. These paintings have darkened over the centuries; a portrait of (probably) Lucy Countess of Bedford shows her wearing an upper garment tending towards crimson, and a very dark blue skirt.⁴⁸ Sadly, Inigo Jones turned out very few colour designs and we must take into account that the watercolours have faded or slightly changed their hue. Bearing those caveats in mind, it could cautiously be argued that one early draft of a ‘winged masquer’ portrays a female courtly dancer in the ideal watche/carnation combination (see Pl. 1). When audiences saw a performer clad in these colours they could be almost certain he or she was ‘virtuous’. ‘Watchet’ or ‘carnation’ frequently signalled grand masquers and figures such as Religion, Understanding, Chaste Love, Apollo, Truth, or Peace. Together with white, those two shades were the most popular in costume designs for heroic grand masquers.⁴⁹ The positive character might therefore have been the best visible, if we are to believe Bacon’s theory of stage lighting. The last court masque played on both colours in two sets of grand masquers. In Salmacida Spolia (1640), the king and queen performed together, Charles dressed in watchet, Henrietta Maria in carnation. ⁴⁶ ‘Of Masques and Triumphs’, The Essays or Counsels Civil and Moral (1625), in Francis Bacon, ed. Brian Vickers (Oxford, 1996), 416–17. ⁴⁷ On effectful colours, see OS i. 46. For Graves, this refers to the colour of lights (Lighting, 170), but Bacon surely means costumes. Carnation is often conflated with crimson in masque documents. ⁴⁸ John de Critz the Elder, ‘Lady in Masque Costume as a “Power of Juno” ’, reproduced in Karen Hearn (ed.), Dynasties (London, 1995), 190–1. See also OS i. 104, 114. ⁴⁹ ‘Watchet’ refers to grand masquers (The Masque of Queenes, The Lords’ Masque, Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue, The Fortunate Isles, Albion’s Triumph, Tempe Restored, The Temple of Love, Salmacida Spolia), figures such as Religion (Albion’s Triumph), Truth (Coelum Britannicum), or Understanding (The Temple of Love). ‘Carnation’ was worn by grand masquers (Hymenaei, The Lord Hay’s Masque, The Masque of Queenes, Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue, Time Vindicated, The Triumph of Peace, Britannia Triumphans, Salmacida Spolia), and figures such as Peace (Albion’s Triumph), Apollo (The Triumphs of the Prince d’Amour), or Chaste Love (The Temple of Love).

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While Davenant’s verse implored its audience to peace and concord, Inigo Jones’s stage machinery, consisting of several gigantic clouds exhaling luminous vapours, lifted the noble performers to a strained apotheosis. Henrietta Maria descended as a triumphant Amazonian queen: accompanied by martial ladies she offered support to a meek king: ‘the valiant take from her their fire’.⁵⁰ If Salmacida Spolia cast Charles as ‘forgiving Christ’, Erica Veevers writes, the queen, who ‘was already beginning to seek help abroad’, appeared as the complementary image of ‘Militant Virgin’, dressed in a colour favoured by male grand masquers.⁵¹ Symbolically, the colours might have harked back to Marian iconography, which represented the virgin clad in a pink- or fleshcoloured garment and a skyblue mantle. Two ideal colours merged on stage in visual optimism, which stood in exact opposition to the atmosphere of tension which embraced performers and audience on the eve of the Civil War. Except for the Vision of the Twelve Goddesses (1604) and The Masque of Queenes (1609), productions favoured en suite appearances for the aristocracy.⁵² The reduced colour catalogue corresponded with trends in fashion and painting.⁵³ Caroline grand masquers usually dressed in one or at most two colours plus a neutral complement, white. Uniformity in colour produced a strong, theatrical ensemble effect. Pragmatism turned into political expediency as the theme of concord became one of the underlying principles of Stuart masques. Jones was expected to create a vision of an orderly stage realm, which in its turn served as a wishful representation of the wider kingdom of Britain. A multiplicity of colours and forms in the appearance of grand masquers flattered individual characters but detracted from the harmony of the whole. Extolling soloists was not a priority in a genre which subordinated all action to the guidance of a royal figure. An entry en suite stressed the synchronous dance movements in a grand masque ensemble. It symbolized agreement between aristocratic masquers who might pursue conflicting political schemes offstage. If king or queen participated, the colours cancelled out any sense of discord between the aristocracy and their royal leader. Looking back on masque performances, audiences recalled identical performers engaged in unanimous action. By creating this idealized image, costume design built up the false memory of a harmonious aristocratic society wedded to the same political goals. ⁵⁰ Salmacida Spolia, l. 426, OS ii. 733. ⁵¹ Veevers, Images of Love, 203. Carnation was indeed popular with male grand masquers, yet watchet was not ‘reserved’ for female participants (Charles wore it in Albion’s Triumph). ⁵² OS i. 139. In another special case, The Masque of Beauty (1608), one half of the masquers dressed in orange-tawny, the other in sea-green. ⁵³ Strong, The English Renaissance Miniature, 180–5.

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According to Stuart conventions of staging royalty, all grand masquers were equal, but some were more equal than others. Designers and choreographers solved the paradox of stressing the ensemble effect and yet signposting the most important dancer in the group. Subtle details singled out prominent courtiers or monarchs: endowed with a colour or accessory other members of the group did not possess, they might dance in a central position. Here, costumes unambiguously cut through the illusion and pronounced the status of the wearer. Thus, in 1635, Henrietta Maria as Queen Indamora wore short willowcoloured feathers in addition to the white and watchet plumes given to her ladies. In Albion’s Triumph (1632), Charles was the only dancer to be crowned with golden rays. In Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue (1618), the headpiece for Charles, then Prince of Wales, included fifty dozen egrets, while his entourage was allowed only forty. In addition, he led the ensemble at the apex of a pyramid formation.⁵⁴ In 1611, Henry-Oberon was the only masquer to wear a scarlet band, while all the others had a blue one. Such methods were common practice at other European courts. Il Corago makes much of the ensemble effect and applauds the custom of privileging a leader with conspicuous paraphernalia.⁵⁵ A French design for the Ballet du Château de Bicêtre (1632) demonstrates distinction in an en suite performance reminiscent of the method employed in Oberon. In this group of dancers, only the dauphin wears a red scarf wound round his sleeve; two close relatives dance with blue ones.⁵⁶ The French actor Gérard Philippe once said about the Teatro Olimpico at Vicenza, ‘il joue par lui-même’.⁵⁷ In the early modern period, costumes, like stage architecture, provided a strong statement of their own. Like their French and Italian counterparts, Inigo Jones and his collaborators developed a deliberate and sophisticated colour programme for English masque productions which relied upon a common knowledge, and almost a century of experience, of sartorial effect in an artificially lit environment. A masque costume played by itself, softly caressed by flickering illumination. It already performed before the wearer started moving at all.

⁵⁴ HS x. 579. OS i. 283. ⁵⁵ Fabbri and Pompilio (eds.), Il Corago, p. 114. ⁵⁶ Reprod. in Marie-Françoise Christout, Le Ballet de cour au XVIIe siècle (Geneva, 1987), 58, erroneous source. The correct reference is Louvre, Dessins, inv. no. 32651. ⁵⁷ After a performance of Corneille’s El Cid in 1952, Philippe turned the applause back on the Olimpico, pronouncing these words. Fernando Rigon, The Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza (1989; Milan, 1995), 70.

7 Costume Conventions for Male and Female Masquers In her survey of early modern costume, Anne Hollander distinguishes between ‘theatrical’ and ‘dramatic’ outfit: the former expands the performer’s own self, the latter transforms the performer into a character other than himself.¹ Antimasque costumes were ‘dramatic’ devices: they came in a multiplicity of styles and shapes, representing exotic nationalities, animals, abstract concepts, and even objects such as bottles. Since they did not express a person’s ‘self ’ they were open to professional dancers and actors, and, towards the Caroline period, even high-ranking aristocrats. Grand masque outfits, however, expressed variety within the confines of courtly decorum. They always visualized and idealized the essence of a Stuart courtier. Given their ‘theatrical’ function as consummate amplifiers of collective aristocratic identity, they could not accommodate professionals.² For the exclusive group of male and female grand masquers, Inigo Jones developed a specific sartorial language. From the start, Stuart dance costumes imposed an ideal physique on their wearers. Lord Hay, who had participated in major Jacobean entertainments, recalled his masquing years: ‘when I was a masker . . . the mode was to appeare very small in the wast, I remember I was drawne up from the ground by both hands whilst the tayler with all his strength buttoned on my doublet’.³ While ¹ Anne Hollander, Seeing through Clothes (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1993), 250. ² In The Jonsonian Masque (1967; New York, 1981), Stephen Orgel famously distinguishes between the professional who ‘can assume all personalities because he has none of his own’ and the aristocratic disguise, which ‘is a representation of the courtier beneath’ (117–18). Orgel veers between performer- and property-orientated argument. A functional approach based on costume types and masque sections, however, explains why aristocrats did not always represent what they were but took, on occasion, grotesque roles in Jacobean countryside entertainments and Caroline court masques, while the grand masque remained off limits for professionals, who were, in theory, free to assume ‘all personalities’. ³ Cited from Roy Schreiber, The First Carlisle: Sir James Hay, First Earl of Carlisle as Courtier, Diplomat and Entrepreneur, 1580–1636 (Philadelphia, 1984), 10. Hay was involved in Hymenaei (1606); Lord Hay’s Masque (1607); The Haddington Masque (1608); The Lords’ Masque (1613); and The Somerset Masque (1613).

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Jacobean grand masquers danced on flat soles, plumed headgear made them seem taller. High-heeled shoes, which became fashionable in the Caroline period, raised their bodies even higher. The waistline in the cut of men’s and women’s costumes moved up towards the chest, a phenomenon which also occurred in contemporary fashion and French court ballet. Raising the dancing body’s balance point (at least in the perception of the audience), such designs defied gravity and flattered the dancer’s physique.⁴ Male protagonists profited, or suffered, most from the development in balletic costume standards. To suggest muscles, tight stockings were occasionally stuffed with bombast (cotton wool)—‘bumbast stockings, vile leg-makers’, John Marston joked in his Entertainment at Ashby (1607). Mimicking muscles on the less than adequately endowed male leg, such enhancement could be regarded as the early modern masculine equivalent to the wonderbra. Combined with high heels and a short bell skirt, it made Caroline masquers’ legs appear long and shapely.⁵ When male courtiers rose on tiptoe, as they frequently did when practising new-style French repertoire, they seemed almost independent from the ground on which they traced their steps. Everything in their appearance suggested lightness by an upward motion: the raised waistline, and the elaborate, bright plumes in the headgear which waved in response to the dance movements. Jones’s efforts started with the footwear. Seventeenth-century English poets used the word ‘buskin’ to denote the cothurnus, a tight-fitting half-boot or platform sandal worn by soldiers, demigods, or tragedians of classical antiquity.⁶ Milton reserved the ‘royall buskin’ to capable writers and portrayed ideological adversaries as comedy characters with stinking socks.⁷ Buskins were not only widely depicted in heroic painting; stage and costume designers appreciated them as well. They became immensely popular in French ballet de cour, Italian entertainments, and court masques. Inigo Jones devised light boots for a whole spectrum of serious and grotesque performers, but above all established delicate, ornate versions as standard footwear for grand masquers. Matched with a Stuart version of classical military armour and an appropriate scenic ⁴ The classic study is Rudolf zur Lippe, Naturbeherrschung am Menschen, 2 vols. (Frankfurt am Main, 1974; 2nd edn. 1981), ii. ⁵ Entertainment of Alice, Dowager-Countess of Derby, in The Works of John Marston, ed. A. H. Bullen, 3 vols. (London, 1887), iii. 399. ⁶ Maurice Leloir, Dictionnaire du costume (Paris, 1951; repr. 1992), 47, 110. OED, entry ‘buskin’. ⁷ Apology Against A Pamphlet (1642), in John Milton, The Complete Prose Works of John Milton, ed. Douglas Bush et al., 9 vols. (New Haven, 1953–82), i. 894, 915. Occasionally, Milton qualified the sock with a more generous epithet, as when he praised Jonson’s ‘learned sock’ in L’Allegro.

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backdrop, the stage buskin recovered ancient heroism and invested British princes with masculine virtue. By the mid-1630s, the grand masquers’ standard had changed to shoes with high heels and a ribbon rose on top.⁸ This corresponded with contemporary European fashion, leading in France to the famous red heels of aristocrats at the court of Louis XIV. In masques, grotesque characters rarely sported this shoe type. Figuratively and physically, heels spelled out to the audience the upward mobility of the Jonesian grand masquer. The idealist heroic code in English productions of the early Stuart period can be understood within a wider European trend. Grand masque costumes corresponded not only with sartorial conventions in seventeenth-century French, German, Italian, and Piemontese court ballet, but also with an old courtly standard which pervaded tragedy and opera of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It glorified the wearer and gave ‘unconditional satisfaction to the public eye’.⁹ The convention died hard. Among its eighteenth-century critics, Joseph Addison observed, ‘the ordinary Method of making an Heroe, is to clap a huge Plume of Feathers upon his Head, which rises so very high, that there is often a greater Length from his Chin to the Top of his Head, than to the Sole of his Foot. One would believe, that we thought a great Man and a tall Man the same thing.’¹⁰ On paper, Jones’s designs for lady masquers seem revealing in comparison to twenty-first-century British standards. Up to the early Caroline period, drafts show at times the performers’ breasts. Jones could have been inspired by a contemporary taste for a liberal décolleté which prevailed in England rather than on the Continent. In 1616, the wife of an English citizen caused a tumult in Paris because of her ‘nude’ cleavage and white shoulders, an incident sufficiently memorable to be credited with an entry in Bayle’s dictionary.¹¹ An Italian eyewitness attending Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue (1618) observed with relish that the ‘plump and buxom’ ladies showed ‘their bosoms very openly’.¹² Costume drafts should, however, not be taken at face value. Might the ‘breasts’ ⁸ The Temple of Love featured the last noble group with flat-soled buskins. OS ii. 622, 628. ⁹ Hollander, Seeing through Clothes, 250, 256, 262. ¹⁰ Richard Steele et al., The Spectator, ed. Donald F. Bond, 5 vols. (Oxford, 1965), i, p. 178, no. 42, 18 Apr. 1711. ¹¹ Bayle, Dictionnaire, entry [Thomas] Dempster, ii. 611; cited from Georges Ascoli, La Grande Bretagne devant l’opinion française au XVIIe siècle(Paris, 1930), 343. ¹² OS i. 282. Queen Anne’s dress displayed her bosom ‘bare down to the pit of the stomach’; some ladies ‘lay their bosoms bare’ (CSPV 1617–1619, xv. 80, 270). On liberal Elizabethan fashion, see Louis A. Montrose, ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream and the Shaping Fantasies of Elizabethan Culture: Gender, Power, Form’, in M. Ferguson, M. Quilligan and N. Vickers (eds.), Rewriting the Renaissance: The Discourses of Sexual Difference in Early Modern Europe (Chicago, 1986), 65–87, at 67.

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of lady masquers have been accessories? At other European courts, breast prosthetics made of fabric or plaster were employed as theatrical shorthand for ‘woman’ regardless of gender. In the 1589 Florentine intermedi, women too wore cardboard breasts.¹³ In seventeenth-century festivals at Dresden, similar devices were used for cross-dressing men: skin-colour tissue covered the décolleté of a tournament costume representing Queen Semiramis (it was worn by the Prince of Saxony); inventories from the 1620s listed ‘two women’s breasts with two teats’ made of pasteboard.¹⁴ English masques regularly employed so-called ‘skin coats’ as a shorthand for ‘nakedness’; this included artificial breasts for cross-dressing male performers. In The Masque of Flowers (1614), ‘the body and legs’ of the character Kawasha were made ‘of olive-colour stuff, made close like the skin’, and a gentleman of Gray’s Inn dressed up as ‘Spring’ in the guise of a nymph, wearing ‘an upper-body of cloth of silver flory, naked neck, and breast, decked with pearls’.¹⁵ Tempe Restored (1632) included skin coats for Indians in the costume designs.¹⁶ The antimasquer respresenting the swarthy stage fury with a ‘lean, wrinkled’ body whose ‘breasts hung bagging down to her waist’ in Salmacida Spolia (1640) clearly wore a similar costume with prosthetic breasts.¹⁷ While evidence indicates the use of false breasts in disguises for cross-dressing male masquers, we should not rule out the possibility that Jonesian lady masquers too resorted to such means in light of Continental conventions; furthermore, masques projected an idealized version of courtly femininity. Masques may well have aimed at a symbolic rather than naturalistic representation of female courtiers. Whatever the sartorial solutions Inigo Jones adopted in this question, English masque audiences remained indifferent to the topic of cleavage. Trouble unfolded in other zones. An experiment Queen Anne never repeated was the combination of bare arms with conspicuous make-up when she and her ladies performed as ‘Negroes, and the daughters of Niger’ in The Masque of Blackness (1605). The effect might have been achieved by woad, a substance which was commonly used to dye fabrics in dark blue and was later superseded by indigo. Philippa Berry and Jayne Archer interpret Anne’s woad-induced blackness as an attempt to invoke Celtic antiquity and turn the masque into a quasi-archaeological visual experience. As they show, a number of early ¹³ James Saslow, The Medici Wedding of 1589: Florentine Festival as Theatrum Mundi (New Haven, 1996), 55. ¹⁴ Claudia Schnitzer, Höfische Maskeraden (Tübingen, 1999), 180, 183, 194. ¹⁵ Anon., The Masque of Flowers, in T. J. B. Spencer and S. Wells (gen. eds.), A Book of Masques, (Cambridge, 1967), p. 162, ll. 91–2; p. 164, ll. 176–7. ¹⁶ OS ii, p. 490, no. 224, ‘Indians’. ¹⁷ OS ii, p. 731, ll. 119–20; design p. 763, no. 416.

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publications endowed the substance with historical credentials.¹⁸ According to a 1601 edition of Pliny’s Natural History, Britain’s women anointed their bodies using woad, which made them look like ‘Moores and Aethyopians’. In Golding’s translation of Caesar’s Bellum gallicum (1565), ‘al the Brittons doe dye themselves wyth woade, which setteth a blewish color uppon them: and it maketh them more terryble to beholde in battell’. Similarly, the pamphleteer Thomas Tuke referred his readers to Caesar’s commentaries, pointing out how Picts used body paint to frighten the enemy.¹⁹ Anne’s masquers certainly frightened an English spectator: Dudley Carleton called them ‘ugly’, ‘lean-cheek’d Moors’: for ‘instead of Vizzards, their Faces, and Arms up to the Elbows, were painted black’.²⁰ Current literature on the masque focuses on the racial dimension of such audience feedback and the performance as a whole.²¹ Indeed it has been argued that Shakespeare, or another reviser, toned down the ‘most virulent language of racial difference’ in the first performance of Othello at court in November 1604, given that a royal moor would be mounting the courtly stage only a couple of months later.²² Interestingly, the blue faces of Anne’s escort, female torchbearers, attracted no derogatory remarks, presumably because this colour invited no ethnic associations.²³ In other masques, blue shades evoked positive values. For Milton, they signified Britishness: in A Masque Presented at Ludlow Castle (1634) the Attendant spirit hails ‘this isle’ as a domain of Neptune’s ‘blue-haired deities’.²⁴ Anne’s performance played on a colour spectrum between blue and black, ¹⁸ Philippa Berry and Jayne Archer, ‘Reinventing the Matter of Britain: Undermining the State in Jacobean Masques’, in David Baker and Willy Maley (eds.), British Identities and English Renaissance Literature (Cambridge, 2002), 119–34, at 119, 131–2. ¹⁹ Plinius Secundus [Pliny the Elder], The Historie of the World Commonly Called, The Naturall Historie of C. Plinius Secundus, bk. xxii, ch. 1, trans. Philemon Holland (London, 1601), 114. The Eyght Bookes of Caius Iulius Caesar Conteyning His Martiall Exploytes in the Realme of Gallia, trans. Arthur Golding (London, 1565), fol. 117r. See also Thomas Tuke, A Discourse Against Painting and Tincturing of Women (London, 1616), 17. ²⁰ To Ralph Winwood, Jan. 1605. A letter by one Mr Vincent from Jan. 10 commented on their ‘Blackamores face and neck’. Both cited from HS x. 448–9. For a similar letter, see also Dudley Carleton to John Chamberlain, 1603–1624: Jacobean Letters, ed. Maurice Lee (New Brunswick, NJ, 1972), 68. ²¹ Among the copious literature on ethnic implications, see Hardin Aasand, ‘ “To Blanch an Ethiop, and Revive a Corse”: Queen Anne and The Masque of Blackness’, Studies in English Literature, 32 (1992), 271–85, and Stephen Orgel, ‘Marginal Jonson’, in D. Bevington and P. Holbrook (eds.), The Politics of the Stuart Court Masque (Cambridge, 1998), 144–75, at 146, 149. ²² Leah S. Marcus in explanation of the shorter quarto version of Othello, which possibly represents a cut text, in ‘The Two Texts of Othello and Early Modern Constructions of Race’, in Lukas Erne and Margaret Jane Kidnie (eds.), Textual Performances: The Modern Reproduction of Shakespeare’s Drama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 21–36, at 33. ²³ OS i. p. 99, no. 4. ²⁴ John Milton, A Masque Presented at Ludlow Castle, ll. 27–9, in Complete Shorter Poems, ed. John Carey, 2nd edn. (London, 1997), 181 and commentary.

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ancient Briton and noble moor, and her own hue emerged as just a touch too dark for the taste of some observers. Yet, while taking note of racial currents in audience sentiment, we should also pay attention to what else Carleton said. Shuddering, he observed that the Spanish ambassador risked a mark on his lips, kissing the Queen’s hand when he took her out to dance. Practical or aesthetic considerations could have played into his verdict. Make-up may be difficult to remove from fabrics; dark ointments do not blend well with fair skin. Aristocratic masquers did not usually rely on cosmetics for their disguises: they wore gloves, long (if at times transparent) sleeves, and, above all, a mask. Special vizard makers such as Henrietta Maria’s supplier, John King, worked for the early Stuart court. He procured bright perfumed leather masks for grand masquers. Accounts mention ‘Venetian’ vizards, which probably alludes to a traditional Italian technique. Here, cleaned, soaked leather is fixed on a model for at least one day before colouring, polishing, and fine-cutting. More comfortable than a pasteboard version, this mask type caresses the skin and absorbs sweat without ever losing shape.²⁵ At many European courts, vizards for entertainments and spectacles were common. Extreme make-up which altered the complexion instead of subtly enhancing it was not. When the Earl of Nottingham attended a reception at Valladolid a few months after the performance of Blackness, Spanish etiquette stipulated masks for the dances.²⁶ In Tudor revels, leggings and gloves made of goat skin or black cloth as well as masks were used to represent moors.²⁷ Black vizards for women were acceptable, if we can generalize from a positive review by a mid-seventeenth-century English eyewitness who saw Queen Christina of Sweden play a Moorish lady.²⁸ All facts considered, Queen Anne’s performance raised a scandal because she was a ‘blackamore’ and painted. Court masques showcased Whitehall abroad, hence Carleton’s concern ‘that strangers should see owr court so strangely disguised’. The offence against a widely accepted convention made him complain about the absence of ‘vizzards’.²⁹ ²⁵ I am grateful to the workshop of Il Mercante Veneziano, Venice, for a detailed explanation of the process. ²⁶ Anon., The Royal Entertainement of the Right Honourable the Earle of Nottingham (London, 1605), 16–18. ²⁷ Ian Smith, ‘White Skin, Black Masks: Racial Cross-Dressing on the Early Modern Stage’, Renaissance Drama, n. s., 32 (2003), 33–67, at 44. ²⁸ Report on a masque on 8 Apr. 1654. Bulstrode Whitelocke, A Journal of the Swedish Ambassy, in the Years 1653 and 1654, ed. C. Morton and H. Reeve, 2nd edn., 2 vols. (London, 1855), ii. 113. Diary 1605–1675, ed. Ruth Spalding (Oxford, 1990), 350. ²⁹ HS x. 448–9.

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Prince Henry’s tilts in June 1610 provided a rare occasion on which men wore make-up in English spectacle: Lord Compton’s attendants issued into the tiltyard, ‘everie one wearing a hat of strawe, and havinge theyer faces paynted as blacke as the devill’.³⁰ This group was, however, of low rank. Male nobles used strong make-up only once, and not on a grand occasion at Whitehall. In Ben Jonson’s scatological countryside entertainment The Gypsies Metamorphos’d (1621), the Marquess of Buckingham and his entourage performed as swarthy pickpockets (an effect procured by a mixture of walnut oil and grease). Jonson had to weigh every word to maintain decorum before its courtly audience. Black or dark vizards for men were, in contrast to facial paint, readily accepted in dazzling Jacobean productions. The Indian knights in Chapman’s Memorable Masque (1613) wore olive-coloured masks, Henry turned to a black one in Oberon (1611), so did Charles in Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue (1618). Charles’s and Henry’s appearance in black alluded to their famous eponymous ancestor, Edward Prince of Wales (1330–76), who had won the battle at Crécy. Given his interest in warrior figures who embodied English expansionism, Henry was more than once compared to this prince. In the 1610 Barriers, Jonson evoked ‘the black Prince edward, ’gainst the French, who then | At Cressey field had no more yeeres then you’.³¹ Masques continuously confronted English audiences with newly imported stage conventions. Foreign observers compared the ‘lovely sight’ and ‘magnificence and rarer invention’ of The Masque of Blackness favourably to events commissioned by male aristocrats of the period.³² Yet English observers were not philistines unable to appreciate Anne’s masques but simply had to come to terms with novelty. Dress code itself was an issue. An English observer, one Mr Vincent, struggled for the right expression to describe Anne’s frocks in Blackness, writing about ‘Barbaresque mantells to the halfe legge’ which exposed buskins encrusted with jewels.³³ The costume perfectly fit Anne’s role as ‘Abundance’. The words ‘barbaric’ and ‘barbarian’ occurred in Jacobean English, but ‘Barbaresque’ became current much later in the 1820s, when it meant ‘pertaining to Barbary in Africa’, ‘barbarous in style’, and ‘rich in decoration’. Vincent coined a new term to express an alien but at the same time sophisticated and sumptuous phenomenon. The suffix ‘-esque’ (‘resembling the style of ’) ³⁰ Unspecified eyewitness account, cited in Roy Strong, Henry, Prince of Wales and England’s Lost Renaissance (London, 1986), 159. ³¹ ll. 256–7, in HS vii. 330–1. ³² The Florentine correspondent Lotti, probably comparing Anne’s to the Earl of Pembroke’s masque in Dec. 1604, in John Orrell, ‘The London Stage in the Florentine Correspondence 1604–1618’, Theatre Research, 3 (1978), 157–76, at 160–61. ³³ OS i. 90, Vincent to Benson, 10 Jan.

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was attached to many words of Italo-French origin. Vincent’s exotic term seems to fuse the moorish ‘barbary’ with ‘grotesque’. In early modern usage, the latter meant ‘extravagant, bizarre’ and was associated with Italian grottesche, graceful, fantastical pictures or motifs.³⁴ Was Vincent describing garments which, he felt, derived from French and Italian theatrical practice? To English audiences, Anne’s costumes resonated with Continental festival heritage in the same way as stage perspectives did. Her sartorial tastes generated creative impulses, which ultimately enriched English vocabulary. The fantastical barbaresque mantle allowed a glance at the legs, then by no means a common sight if we are to believe Dudley Carleton’s description of The Vision of the Twelve Goddesses (1604). Here, the costume singled out Anne as ‘Pallas’ by a daring gown: ‘Pallas had a trick by herself; for her clothes were not so much below the knee but that we might see a woman had both feet and legs, which I never knew before.’³⁵ As a rule, the skirts of Anne’s masquers ended much above the ankle. This facilitated a view of intricate dance steps but was not uncontroversial. At the French court, flaunting one’s leg was the trademark of the ‘professional’ or male dancer. If designs of the period showed the legs of a female character, it was either played by a woman not belonging to the court, or a performer en travesti.³⁶ Furthermore, the queen and her ladies were interested in footwear as worn by men. In Blackness and The Masque of Queenes, they donned ornate buskins of the kind Prince Henry, Lord Hay, and other Jacobean aristocrats favoured for their entertainments. Italian observers disliked the preferences of Jacobean ladies in the audience. Mildly scandalized, Orazio Busino noted ‘all of them with men’s shoes, or at least with very low slippers’.³⁷ As a Venetian, Busino was clearly missing the feminine touch of the chopines or zoccoli, platform mules used back home by dancing cortegiane. Limb exposure compounded by masculine accessories such as buskins, plumed headgear, or weapons resulted in an assertive representative style. In select entertainments, Anne’s female ensembles imitated a male heroic code.³⁸ ³⁴ OED. Entries 1 a, b and 2 a (noun); 1 and 2 a (adj.). Florio’s translation of Montaigne’s essay ‘Of Friendship’ (bk. I, ch. xxvii) (1603), ‘fantasticall pictures, having no grace, but in the variety and strangenesse of them’. The Essayes of Michael Lord of Montaigne, Translated by John Florio, introd. A. R. Waller, 3 vols. (London, 1910), i. 195. ³⁵ Dudley Carleton to John Chamberlain, 55. ³⁶ As evident in designs for early 17th-cent. ballet de cour by Rabel and his workshop. Also Rose A. Pruiksma, ‘The Fabric of noblesse in Louis XIV’s Court Ballets’, paper given at the Royal Musical Association Annual Conference: Music and Theatre, New College, Oxford, 1998. Marie-Françoise Christout, Le Ballet de cour au XVIIe siècle (Geneva, 1987), 34. ³⁷ OS i. 282. ³⁸ Buskins were the predominant footwear for Jacobean lady masquers, with the exception of Hymenaei (1606) and perhaps The Lords’ Masque (1613).

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The enormous scope of female performance under Henrietta Maria might not have been possible without Queen Anne’s impertinent ankles. Henrietta Maria’s pastorals at court inaugurated travesti roles and speaking parts for women for the first time in English theatre history.³⁹ Female professional singers were given a first opportunity in her masque Tempe Restored (1632).⁴⁰ Were her costumes as daring and innovative as Anne’s? Henrietta Maria’s debenture books, which contain detailed tailors’ bills for a Shrovetide Masque in 1633, give us new insight into the composition of Caroline travesti costumes. Women’s dance outfits usually included ‘hoses’ or ‘stockings’ in colours fitting the costume. Male antimasquers were, however, equipped with ornate breeches even if they cross-dressed in long gowns. In the Shrovetide Masque John Maynard (an old hand who had already danced in Time Vindicated (1623) and probably wrote the Running Masque in 1619/20) presented a ‘wanton woman’ in a black taffeta petticoat, a French hood and a wig. (The ‘hood’, an old-fashioned comic accessory, signalled hags and widows in ballet de cour.) Maynard’s colleague, one Mr Boye, played a witch in a sky-blue taffeta gown, for which role he had been provided with an artificial hump. A third, the dancer Lapierre, appeared as ‘Queen of Vices’ in silver lace and yellow taffeta.⁴¹ In all three cases, the breeches were, with additional expense, embellished and gartered to match the costume, which means that they were an integral part of the disguise and intended for exposure to the audience’s gaze. Breeches in the 1630s ended about the knee. In performance, these ‘women’ dancers must have shown their legs—not in the way a lady masquer might casually flash her ankle, but by lifting the petticoats provocatively high. Entertaining his audience with pantomime, leaps, and antic innuendo, a male dancer’s liberality contrasted with conventions for cross-dressing women, if we can generalize from Inigo Jones’s drafts for the kings and princes played by Henrietta Maria’s ladies in Walter Montagu’s The Shepherds’ Paradise (1633).⁴² ‘Prince Basilino’ (the Marchioness of Hamilton) and the ‘King of Castile’ (Goditha Arden) represent the only illustrations of English women en travesti before 1660. Hamilton’s and ³⁹ See Sophie Tomlinson’s essays ‘Too Theatrical? Female Subjectivity in Caroline and Interregnum Drama’, Women’s Writing, 6/1 (1999), 65–79, and ‘Theatrical Vibrancy on the Caroline Court Stage: Tempe Restored and The Shepherds’ Paradise’, in Clare McManus (ed.), Women and Culture at the Courts of the Stuart Queens (Basingstoke, 2003), 186–203. See also Karen Britland, Drama at the Courts of Queen Henrietta Maria (Cambridge, forthcoming). ⁴⁰ See also Roy Booth, ‘The First Female Professional Singers: Madam Coniack’, Notes and Queries, 242/4 (1997), 533. ⁴¹ PRO LR 5/65, bill by James Masson, Shrovetide 1633. On the hood, see Christout, Le Ballet de cour, 169. ⁴² OS ii, p. 527, no. 258; p. 534, no. 265.

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Arden’s skirts generously covered the knees, while creations for male grand masquers showed as much of the legs as possible. English courtly costumes of the early Stuart period highlighted men’s movements through more generous limb exposure. Costumes privileged the artistry of their steps over women’s footwork and at the same time increased the pressure on men to perform well. While Caroline women might dance the same choreography as men, their prowess remained largely guesswork since audiences might scarcely see their feet. It is argued that Henrietta Maria and her ladies provoked sterner moralists because they took speaking roles and were cross-dressing, yet the queen’s dramatic pursuits may also have caused controversy for reasons which are now less obvious. For seventeenth-century audiences, an exposed leg signposted masculinity as much as a (false) beard.⁴³ In the parlance of godly literature, such assertive strategies elevated women above their station, turning them into stage furies, professionals, sexually incontinent creatures. Interestingly, outfits for female performers became longer again in the course of the 1630s. In the last masques they reached the floor. With their rounded sleeves, ribbons, and plain colours, Caroline theatrical garments for women recalled contemporary fashion.⁴⁴ On the other hand, skirts were still sustained by padding. Into the 1630s the queen employed a farthingale-maker.⁴⁵ Several sterner designs saw the return of the ruff, a feature already dear to Elizabethans. Henrietta Maria’s costumes corresponded not at all to a cavalier stereotype. While Henrietta Maria took an active political role in the 1630s, reinventing herself as the resolute daughter of Henri IV, she monitored her appearance on stage. The overall effect of many of her performances might best be described as guarded brilliance. Erica Veevers has shown how Henrietta Maria sought to promote the Catholic cause in her masques through a language of light.⁴⁶ For his queen, Inigo Jones wove light into a sartorial expression. Henrietta Maria’s costumes lit the stage. In Tempe Restored (1632), Henrietta Maria wore a blue satin gown embroidered with silver stars, in line with the iconography of ‘Night’. More stars adorned her head in a crown. ⁴³ Will Fisher, ‘The Renaissance Beard: Masculinity in Early Modern England’, Renaissance Quarterly, 54 (2001), 155–87. ⁴⁴ OS i. 44–5. Aileen Ribeiro, Dress and Morality (London, 1986), 81. ⁴⁵ Farthingales had not been abandoned by the early Jacobean period as Orgel and Strong claim (OS i. 44). Bills by Henrietta Maria’s farthingale maker for 1631/2, PRO LR 5/65. ⁴⁶ Erica Veevers, Images of Love and Religion: Queen Henrietta Maria and Court Entertainments (Cambridge, 1989). See also Marie-Claude Canova-Green, La Politique-Spectacle au grand siècle: Les Rapports franco-anglais (Paris, 1993), 26, on the particular nature of the queen’s masques.

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Blazing stars were a common theatrical shorthand for the supernatural or prodigious.⁴⁷ Jones had invented a courtly indoor version of the ‘blazing comets’ which public playhouses unleashed by way of fireworks. Henrietta Maria, it was hoped, would smite a starstruck audience with a quasi-religious epiphany. As Townshend’s lines explained, ‘corporeal beauty, consisting in symmetry, colour, and certain unexpressible graces, shining in the Queen’s majesty, may draw us to the contemplation of the Beauty of the soul, unto which it hath analogy’.⁴⁸ The royal gown recalled nativity stars (no longer used in plays and church ceremonies since the Reformation).⁴⁹ Henrietta Maria might have fashioned herself as a Neoplatonic stella maris giving hope to Catholic traditions.⁵⁰ To the stars evoked in fabric and text, Henrietta Maria added the sun, the classic symbol of male authority. Beams adorned the waistline and sleeves of her gown. To announce the queen’s ensemble, the scene changed ‘into an oriental sky such as appears at the sun rising’.⁵¹ The royal costume was reminiscent of illustrious predecessors in French ballet, such as the Balet comique de la Royne (1581) and Le Grand Ballet de la Reyne représentant le Soleil (1621), an event in which Henrietta Maria, then a 12-year-old princess, most likely participated. Henrietta Maria’s appearances as a blazing star-sun pre-date the famous epiphany of Louis XIV as le roi soleil in the Ballet Royal de la Nuit (1653).⁵² All-embracing in her imagery of light, Henrietta Maria was herself a universe. In Luminalia (1638), Henrietta Maria again embodied light triumphant. William Davenant, presumed author of the text, went out of his way to capture the splendour of her dress for his readers. The ladies wore close bodies, open before the breasts, of Aurora colour, richly embroidered with silver; about the waist ran a short basis cut in star-like beams of white, and under these were lower labels, large at the bottom and cut in a trefoil, tacked together with small twists of gold; the ornament at the shoulders coming down to the bowing of the arm was of the same colour and form as the basis, their arming-sleeves and skirts of their gowns as ⁴⁷ A. Dessen and L. Thomson, A Dictionary of Stage Directions in English Drama, 1580–1642 (Cambridge, 1999), 32. ⁴⁸ Aurelian Townshend, Tempe Restored, ll. 336–9, in D. Lindley (ed.), Court Masques (Oxford, 1995), 164. ⁴⁹ R. B. Graves, ‘Elizabethan Lighting Effects and the Conventions of Indoor and Outdoor Theatrical Illumination’, Renaissance Drama, n.s., 12 (1981), 51–69, at 61. ⁵⁰ Veevers refers to the concept of the star in (Henrietta-)Marian devotion and the ‘stella maris’ in stage designs (Images of Love, 99, 122). ⁵¹ ll. 182–3, in OS ii. 481. ⁵² Jones copied his design from the Cardinal Virtues in the Balet comique. John Peacock, ‘The French Element in Inigo Jones’s Masque Designs’, in David Lindley (ed.), The Court Masque (Manchester, 1984), 149–68, at 158. Louis XIV famously danced the role of Apollo at 14.

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that of the bodies; they wore well-proportioned ruffs, and on their hair stood a small band or diadem of jewels and stars between, which in the hinder part had a scroll, large at the bottom and narrow toward the top, to which their falls of white feathers were fastened.⁵³

Much of the appeal Luminalia must have had in its day is now lost, not least because its memory has mostly been preserved in words. Verbally, the queen’s festivities may not have solicited as much enthusiasm as the productions of a Jonson or Carew. On their performance night, however, they might well have dwarfed rival productions at court. Luminalia gradually brightened up in sound and vision, from the songs of night birds in a dark setting to transcendent splendour and jubilant music in the final heavenly scenes. Not even the dancers remained earthbound. The spectacle culminated in an aerial ballet of zephyrs, presumably played by children, on a bright transparent cloud, ‘a thing not before attempted in the air’.⁵⁴ Henrietta Maria and her ladies descended on the audience like an image from Revelations, each one almost the woman ‘clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars’.⁵⁵ Rays on Henrietta Maria’s gown seemed like blades, cast over a scaled, armour-style bodice (see Fig. 11).⁵⁶ The colours, oscillating between aurora, red, and yellow, visualized her as a sun risen on stage. To compound the effect of dazzling brilliance, the stage designer had fixed a ‘glory with rays’ about Henrietta Maria’s seat. In a metonymic relation between costume and scenery, the queen’s presence expanded into the stage machinery and rendered her truly larger than life.⁵⁷ In performance, she must have stunned her audience; yet the masque’s massive audiovisual—and sartorial—efforts to ensure the effect seem oddly defensive. Henrietta Maria’s defiant impression in Luminalia prefigures the Amazon queen she played in the last court masque, Salmacida Spolia (another spectacle whose telltale hyperbole stood for a troubled monarchy). Her costume looks, on paper, more imposing than the woman herself. Heavily puffed sleeves are attached to a tight bodice and a sizeable ruff. Somewhere at the extremities, a head and small hands poke out. Henrietta Maria did not wear a costume, it was wearing her. The late costumes for Caroline lady masquers were fortresses with the women inside under siege. The public persona Henrietta Maria created for herself and her ladies in the late masques resonated beyond the confines of England. A Dutch poet praised ⁵³ ll. 358–68, in OS ii. 709. ⁵⁴ ll. 410–11, in OS ii. 709. ⁵⁵ Veevers, Images of Love, 122, draws upon Revelations but not in connection with the costume in Luminalia. ⁵⁶ OS ii, p. 720, no. 392. ⁵⁷ ll. 356, in OS ii. 709. See also Veevers, Images of Love, 118, 143.

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Figure 11. Inigo Jones, design for Queen Henrietta Maria (dress 1) in Luminalia (1638). Orgel and Strong, no. 392; Simpson & Bell, no. 317. The Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth. Reproduced by permission of the Chatsworth Settlement Trustees. Photograph: Photographic Survey, Courtauld Institute of Art.

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Figure 12. Inigo Jones, ‘Lady Masquer [Henrietta Maria] in Amazonian dress’, for Salmacida Spolia (1640). Orgel and Strong, no. 442; Simpson & Bell, no. 354. The Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth. Reproduced by permission of the Chatsworth Settlement Trustees. Photograph: Photographic Survey, Courtauld Institute of Art.

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her as if she were a comet landed on Continental shores, a second, militant, Mary: Men huwt de koningklijke aen uwe Keizerskroon, Die wijdt haer stralen schiet, maer noit zoo hel en schoon Als heden; overmits her diamante glanssen Verdubbelt, om dit licht, als nieuwe starren, danssen. . . . . . . . . . De joffers gingen om her Amazone staen; En’t hair, niet meer met hoên, maer met bepluimde helmen Beschaduwende, in ’t oogh der eervergete schelmen, Betoonden, dat een man in vrouwenboezem steeckt, Die, naer gelegenheit, nu Mars nu Venus queeckt. (The royal is married to your imperial crown, Whose rays are shooting far, never more brightly and beautifully Than today; because her diamond sparkles Dance around this light, doubly splendid, as new stars. . . . . . . . . . The virgins surrounded her Amazon presence; And cast a shadow upon her, no longer with hats, But plumed helmets, even in the eye of honourless rogues, They blazed out that a male spirit dwells in the female breast, Which, if occasion affords it, quickens now Mars, then Venus.)⁵⁸

Thus Joost van den Vondel, who described Amsterdam’s joy at Henrietta Maria’s visit in 1642. Vondel composed his poem shortly after his conversion to Catholicism. He called the queen a ‘mother’ and ‘leading star of crowned light’. In Vondel’s extremely visual poem, plumed helmets cast a shadow on Henrietta Maria, who yet again appears surrounded by Amazon warriors, all of them spirited, splendid heiresses of Mars and Venus (see Fig. 12). The poet’s vision almost tempts us to imagine that he had seen Salmacida Spolia. His lines convey the power of costumes. The image of Henrietta Maria’s dancing martial ladies had settled in collective memory and travelled abroad. This is about the finest tribute for a queen who loved to call herself ‘her she-majesty, generalissima’ and was, in performance, as good as her word.⁵⁹

⁵⁸ Joost van den Vondel, Henriette Marie Koningin van Groot Britanje, Vranckrijck, en Yrlant (Amsterdam, c.1642), sig. A3r. The queen as ‘Leitstar von’t gekroonde Licht’, sig. C2v. ⁵⁹ To King Charles, Newark, 27 June 1643, Letters of Queen Henrietta Maria, ed. Mary Anne Everett Green (London, 1857), 222.

PART III CASE STUDIES

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8 Two Jonsonian Court Masques The Masque of Queenes (1609) has often been interpreted as the struggle between a patriarchal king, a queen who wished to promote her own vision of a female court, and a poet caught in between.¹ Much has been written about Ben Jonson’s subtle stratagems to give heroic queens of the past (and present) a voice, and yet nod at the male authority figure of James. This renders the lack of interest in what made the queens most conspicuous on stage all the more surprising. The key to their striking performance was not the text—in which they, as silent masquers, had the least share—but their physical appearance. To recover these lost physical aspects of a Jonsonian masque, this chapter considers the importance of dance and costume in The Masque of Queenes (thereafter called Queenes), and Oberon. The impact of colours, fabrics, sounds, and movements during a masquing night will be read vis-à-vis the representation of performance in manuscript and print. THE MASQUE OF QUEENES (1609) From the start, Anne’s masque was devised as a collaboration between social and functional elites. Jonson regarded the relationship as one between equals when he weighed his contribution against that of the aristocratic performers; for him, ‘the Nobilyty of the Invention’ was ‘answerable to the dignity of theyr persons’.² To secure her approval, Anne was probably shown a plot synopsis before further planning ensued. A document of this kind survives in a page-length preliminary account.³ An unassuming manuscript, it details the appearance of eleven witches, or hags, led by a Dame, who personified discord. Their demonic ¹ Stephen Orgel, ‘Marginal Jonson’, in D. Bevington and P. Holbrook (eds.), The Politics of the Stuart Court Masque (Cambridge, 1998), 144–75, at 164. Leeds Barroll, Anna of Denmark, Queen of England: A Cultural Biography (Philadelphia, 2001), 114. ² The Masque of Queenes, ll. 4–5, in HS vii. 282. Further line references to Queenes will appear in the text. ³ BL MS Harl. 6947, fol. 143, transcribed in HS vii. 318–19.

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performance was routed by the appearance of Anne and her ladies in the guise of legendary queens. The manuscript may attest to a routine followed throughout the Elizabethan and early Stuart period. As is well known, Hieronimo gives out a book for the audience’s better information in The Spanish Tragedy (Act IV, Scene iv). Abrégés were, Jonson’s editors Herford and Simpson suggest, regularly presented to monarchs to assure them of an appropriate invention: in Hamlet, Claudius famously asks the prince, ‘Have you heard the argument? Is there no offence in’t?’⁴ Similar ‘arguments’ were produced in the Caroline period. When Georg Rodolf Weckherlin, a secretary to Charles, proposed a ballet to Henrietta Maria, he first drafted an outline of the action and even graphically designed the initial formation of her grand masque dance.⁵ Such documents reveal that royal commissioners were greatly interested in all multimedia features of a masque, including textual content, characters, and choreographic devices. The balletic part of the masque was a complicated procedure which involved interfering patrons as well as various professional groups. Poets too reserved a right over movements, as can be gleaned from Jonson’s assertion that Anne had first turned to him ‘to think on some Daunce’, ‘a spectacle of strangenesse, producing multiplicity of Gesture’ (ll. 12, 20–1). As much as his account claims choreographic competence, his ‘owne stepps in that kind’ (l. 15) were certainly negotiated with the dancing masters Jeremy Herne and Thomas Giles, who were responsible for the actual realization of the invention (and duly acknowledged by Jonson). The hags’ dance in Queenes consisted of eleven witches and their Dame, impersonated by male actors. The characters had much in common with fates or furies. In European courtly spectacle, the fury was a balletic stock figure which represented a moving emblem of ‘discord’. As Cesare Ripa’s Iconologia described ‘discordia’, the female figure wore a multicoloured dress; brandished firearms, torches, or daggers; and had snakes curled in her hair.⁶ In French ballet de cour, furies often danced lightly dressed (especially in the early seventeenth century), endowed with daggers, torches, or snakes (see Fig. 13). Jonson’s Dame conformed with the type, as she appeared with naked arms and barefooted, ‘her frock tuck’d, her hayre knotted, and folded with vipers; In her hand, a Torch made of a dead-Mans arme, lighted; girded with a snake. To whome they all did reverence’ (ll. 96–9). (The hags’ deference to the Dame ⁴ HS vii. 318. Hamlet, III. ii. 221–2. ⁵ Summarized in Leonard Forster, ‘Two Drafts by Weckherlin of a Masque for the Queen of England’, German Life & Letters, 18 (1965), 258–63. ⁶ Yassu Okayama, The Ripa Index: Personifications and Their Attributes in Five Editions of the Iconologia (Doornspijk, 1992), 64.

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Figure 13. Stage fury. Daniel Rabel, ‘one of the powers of hell’ (c.1619). Call number *MGZGA Rab D Tan 2. Jerome Robbins Dance Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations.

parodied conventions in social dances, which often started with a ‘reverence’, a movement greeting one’s partner or bystanders.) Scrolls of written text, which furies in emblem books toted to represent divergent opinions and slander, were missing in Queenes. Instead, Jonson converted visual to textual props in the written and printed versions of the masque. Absent in performance (where the witches were encumbered enough, having to handle snakes, bat wings, and other such paraphernalia), these scrolls were relegated to Jonson’s margins,

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where the poet explains the origins of the furies and their function as agents of rumour. Indeed, at least to certain modern readers, Jonson’s margins convey (if perhaps unintentionally) the impression of ‘chatter’: some critics feel quite overcome by their barrage of notes and references.⁷ Jonson’s text retains a spectacular character throughout, combining vivid images with acoustic information. The witches appear in a sonic overture, with a kind of hollow and infernall musique . . . . First one, then two, and three, and more, till theyr number encreasd to Eleven; all differently attir’d; some, with ratts on theyr heads; some, on theyr shoulders; others with oyntment-potts at theyr girdles; All with spindells, timbrells, rattles, or other veneficall instruments, making a confused noyse, with strange gestures. (ll. 29–36)

This masque provided not only accessories to distinguish each character but acoustic costumes, as each hag was equipped with noisy instruments. Acoustic expression in masques included the choice of musical instruments as well as the composition of scores. As Jean Knowlton and David Lindley have argued, lowkey instruments such as tabor and pipe or fiddles were frequently employed in grotesque or comic entries; whereas lutes, considered fashionable and elegant, often orchestrated an aristocratic entry.⁸ The hags’ rattles fit comfortably into the undistinguished ‘noise’ category. Each hag was dressed and moved according to her nature.⁹ ‘Black-mouth’d Execration’ (l. 129) probably wore a vizard made up according to the textual description. Even so, Jonson considered it safer to expound the various qualities through the spoken text. Thy fearefull Sister, wild Suspicion, Whose eyes do never sleepe; Let her knit hands With quick Credulity, that next her stands[.] (ll. 119–21) ⁷ Joseph Loewenstein on ‘typographic chatter’: ‘The dense play of roman and italic type (sometimes further unsettled by Greek), the visual interruptions worked by stage directions (both tabular registers and prose descriptions, the latter of sometimes Shavian length), and, above all, the printed marginalia, with their pointed clog of abbreviation and textual reference— the combined effect of all this is to produce a textual coruscation that disrupts the easy symmetries of verse array.’ In ‘Printing and “The Multitudinous Presse”: The Contentious Texts of Jonson’s Masques’, in J. Brady and W. H. Herendeen (eds.), Ben Jonson’s 1616 Folio (Newark, Del., 1991), 180. ⁸ Jean Knowlton, ‘Some Dances of the Stuart Masque Identified and Analyzed’, 2 vols., Ph.D. thesis (Bloomington, Ind., 1966), i, ch. 4; David Lindley, ‘The Politics of Music in the Masque’, in Bevington and Holbrook (eds.), Politics of the Stuart Court Masque, 273–95. ⁹ Anne Daye, ‘Dance and Music in the Stuart Masque’, paper given at The Marriage of Music and Dance, National Early Music Association conference (London, 1992).

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Jonson’s text places great emphasis on the connectedness of the witches. The choreographed entry (‘first one, then two, and three, and more, till theyr number encreasd to Eleven’) suggests a logical sequence, confirmed by the subsequent linking of hands (‘Let her knit hands | With quick Credulity’). Here the performance visualized the genesis of evil. Jonson explained: ‘In the chayning of these vices, I make, as if one linke produc’d another, and the Dame were borne out of them all.’¹⁰ All hags were physically linked to each other, turning Jonson’s text into movement. As the Dame announced, the hags were the ‘faythfull Opposites | To Fame, & Glory’ (ll. 132–3). Their number corresponded with that of Anne and her ladies; their initial dance, however, presented an uneven number, eleven, while the famous queens later danced in an even formation of twelve. In the first dance, the Dame positioned herself into the midst of the crowd for an incantation. The dance exploded in different gestures, such as baring the legs, untying the hair, beating the grounds with snakes, or wounding one’s arm with a rusty knife. The performance was accompanied by shouts and clamours of ‘Hoo, Har, Har, Hoo’, and the Dame commanded her subjects to dance ‘àround, àround. | Àround, àround, | Àround, àround’.¹¹ Jonson’s margins define the moment as demonic singing, unsynchronized verbal rhythm, comparable to ‘the noyse of diverse oares, falling in the water’.¹² The cacophony was compounded by the hags’ dialogues, which included trochaic, iambic, and dactylic meter, and couplets of varying length. The rhythm of Jonson’s spoken lines accentuated the dance beat, as it repeatedly emphasized the wrong syllable of the word ‘àround’. The ‘spectacle of strangeness, with multiplicity of gesture’ culminated in a menacing last dance: with a strange and sodayne Musique, they fell into a magicall Daunce, full of praeposterous change, and gesticulation, but most applying to theyr property: who, at theyr meetings, do all thinges contrary to the custome of Men, dauncing, back to back, hip to hip, theyr hands joyn’d, and making theyr circles backward, to the left hand, with strange phantastique motions of theyr heads, and bodyes. All which were excellently imitated by the Maker of the Daunce, Mr. Hierome Herne, whose right it is, here to be nam’d. (ll. 344–53)

Round dances are among the oldest forms we know. Magic qualities were attributed to the circle: in Italian courtly choreographies of the sixteenth century, it represented perfection, and in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, ¹⁰ Margin to l. 116. ¹¹ ll. 324, 337–9. According to the commentary (HS x. 504), the false accent is meant to show that the word is not a pronoun; in this way, Jonson also wrote ‘à-sleepe’ (l. 172). In the context of the dance, however, grammar is not the issue. ¹² Margin to l. 340.

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it formed part of the fairies’ enchantment.¹³ Sixteenth-century French branles often included a characteristic circular figure with alternating movements to the left and the right; these simple figures may have had their origins in regional popular traditions. In such cases, circles appeared benevolent, making a dance more inclusive. Depending on the performance context, however, they could assume a threatening character, in particular, if contrived ‘contrary to the custome of Men’, to a rhythm against nature (‘àround’) and performed with brooms, ‘with which we armd our Witches’, as Jonson proudly noted.¹⁴ Popular imagination of the period associated circular dances with witches’ covens. A contemporary illustration of a formation ‘back to back’, as Jonson imagined it, can be found in Pierre de Lancre’s Tableau de l’inconstance (1613) (see Fig. 14). Lancre’s lurid prose revealed how thousands of masked worshippers would gather for orgiastic rounds with motions contrary to nature to a cacophony of instruments so as to please the devil.¹⁵ In The English Gentlewoman, the Caroline author Richard Brathwaite observed that the learned regarded dance as ‘the Divels procession: Where the Dance is the Circle, whose centre is the Devil’.¹⁶ A Restoration compilation of ‘The Old Measures of the Inner Temple’ concludes with a jocular choreographic poem called ‘An Holy Dance’. Inviting a ‘holy sister’ to dance, the poem distinguishes virtuous movements forwards and backwards (common in ‘old measures’) from mischievous circular and sideward ones: Holy Sister please you to dance With a Holy Brother for Recreation Not as the Wicked do nor as Hemini and Gemini in the Wilderness But Leading on to virtue and back from vice retireing Not on this side nor on that side Nor profanely turning round But as the Spirit mooves us.¹⁷ ¹³ See also Skiles Howard, ‘Hands, Feet, and Bottoms: Decentering the Cosmic Dance in A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, Shakespeare Quarterly, 144/3 (1993), 325–42. ¹⁴ Margin to l. 345. ¹⁵ Pierre de Lancre, Tableau de l’inconstance (Paris, 1612; augmented edn. 1613), sig. a iij, p. 121. Registered in an old royal catalogue, BL MS Royal App. 86, fol. 36r. The book might have circulated among Jacobean collectors, although it would not have been available for Jonson’s masque. The 1613 edition includes the engraving by the Polish artist Jan Ziarnko. Margaret McGowan, ‘Pierre de Lancre’s Tableau de l’Inconstance des Mauvais Anges et Demons: The Sabbat Sensationalised’, in Sydney Anglo (ed.), The Damned Art: Essays in the Literature of Witchcraft (London, 1977), 182–201. ¹⁶ Richard Brathwaite, The English Gentlewoman (London, 1631), 77. ¹⁷ RCM 1119, fol. 2v, transcribed in Ian Payne, The Almain in Britain c.1549–c.1675 (Aldershot, 2003), 241.

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Figure 14. Circular dances as black magic. Pierre de Lancre, Tableau de l’inconstance (1613), shelfmark 719.i.10, folded engraving by Jan Ziarnko between pp. 118 and 119. By permission of the British Library.

The infernal performance in The Masque of Queenes might therefore well have had a creepy impact on an audience whose most prominent member believed in black magic and wrote on the topic. Jacobean spectators found movements realized onstage which were described in authoritative manuals of witchhunters. At the time some people readily believed rumours that credited the appearance of an extra devil to an act of staged necromancy in Dr Faustus (at least William Prynne insisted that he had heard this ‘from many now alive, who well remember it, there being some distracted with that fearefull sight’).¹⁸ For spectators of this mindset, the imitative dance had the unsettling potential of turning into reality. Fortunately, loud music blasted the eerie performance; hags and hell vanished, ‘scarse suffring the memory of any such thing’ (ll. 358–9). Switching ¹⁸ William Prynne on the late Elizabethan performance of Dr Faustus in Histrio-Mastix (London, 1633), p. I, 556.

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to orderly heroic iambic couplets, Heroic Virtue announced the grand masquers, restoring the wonted regular rhythm. The prolix nature of this speech indicates that Jonson did not expect his viewers to decode in full the theatrical fashions flaunted before their eyes. After lengthy self-referential comments on his own costume, Heroic Virtue drew the viewers’ attention to the House of Fame, where the noble queens were enthroned in colourful display. As Jonson so aptly put it in another of his masques, ‘the life of Fame is action’.¹⁹ In Queenes, the motto on the title page of both holograph manuscript and quarto edition reads ‘Et Memorem famam, quae benè gessit, habet’. Jonson had discreetly modified his source, Ovid’s Fasti, where the sentence runs ‘Fama manet facti . . . et memorem famam, quod bene cessit, habet’, meaning something like ‘the fame of the deed endures . . . and lasting fame enjoys what has turned out well’.²⁰ In Jonson’s version, fame is feminine: the neuter turns into a feminine pronoun, and the passive ‘cessit’ into the active ‘gessit’. The Latin joke conveys a memory of the night when Anne and her ladies had appeared on stage in a dynamic performance. The masque text itself balanced the queens’ active qualities of military leadership with traditional female virtues such as marital fidelity, as if anxious to please James and at the same time satisfy Anne’s interest in heroic women. As Kathryn Schwartz has remarked, ‘in Jonson’s notes the queens wear armor, eat their victims, cut their hair, kill their men . . . the first step in the construction of Amazons is the death of the husband, the death of the king’.²¹ Yet Jonson tactfully withheld a précis of such deeds from the lines spoken during performance. The Bohemian queen Valasca kills on the page only: ‘to redeeme her selfe . . . from the tyranny of Men, [. . . she] led on the Women to the slaughter of theyr barbarous Husbands, and Lords; And possessing them selves of theyr Horses, Armes, Treasure, and places of strength, not only ruld the rest, but liv’d, many yeares after, with the liberty, and fortitude of Amazons’ (ll. 644–51). A finely tuned representation of female fame was not simply a textual matter but concerned the masque in its different media. With the costume designs, ¹⁹ Chloridia, l. 287, in HS vii. p. 759. ²⁰ HS vii. 277–8; x. 499. ‘Fama manet facti: posito velamine currunt, | Et memorem famam, quod bene cessit, habet’ (‘The success of that day enjoys a lasting fame’). Ovid, Fasti, 2. 379–80, ed. and trans. James George Frazer and G. P. Goold (Cambridge, Mass., 1989), 84. ‘Quae’ relates to fem. ‘fama’, whereas ‘quod’ relates more to the sentence as a whole. Given the occasion of the motto—Anne and her ladies in action—Jonson’s joke is not purely philological. I am grateful to Andrew Taylor for discussing this passage. ²¹ Kathryn Schwartz, ‘Amazon Reflections in the Jacobean Queen’s Masque’, Studies in English Literature, 3/2 (1995), 293–319, at 310.

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Jones followed Jonson’s strategy in visual terms. Queenes was, as has been pointed out, one of the rare events in which grand masquers did not dress en suite. Since each lady embodied a different historical figure, they could not wear the same garment. The costumes in Queenes represented, of course, not accurate reconstructions of period dress but a fusion of iconographic sources. In contrast to the swarthy hags of the antimasque, the lady masquers wore many vibrant colours. With their energetic appearance, the stage brightened up. Penthesilea, a well-armed Amazon, was dressed in the complementary primary colours of blue and red. This queen commanded the whole spectrum of colours, Jones’s costume seemed to tell its audience. Other characters relied on specific properties. Some queens wore close-fitting armour and brandished weapons in the manner of Greek or Roman soldiers. Special strategies were reserved for Zenobia of Palmyra, a warlike ruler represented by Elizabeth, Countess of Derby: ‘Her Chastety was such, “that she did not even know her husband, except for the sake of conception”. . . . When she made Orations, to her Souldiers, she had alwayes her Caske on.’²² Armed Zenobia’s oration might echo Elizabeth’s speech before her soldiers at Tilbury in 1588. The queen was thought to have ridden through all her squadrons, in full armour, when she defiantly proclaimed that, even though a feeble woman, she would take arms against any enemy to defend her kingdom.²³ In Queenes, Zenobia was restricted to mute visual representation. Jonson’s mirthless text emphasizes her dutiful sex life, a detail which might not have communicated itself during performance. The ‘casque’ was not only mentioned in the text but actually worn by the lady masquer. Jones had designed some kind of exotic horsetail, like those antique warriors fastened to their helmets, on a crown of crescents, a symbol for chastity. During performance, Jones’s costume cast Zenobia as martial yet virtuous: a material prop sought to persuade the audience that there was nothing immoral about female self-display. After the performance, Jonson’s ‘casque’ of letters, as it were, a verbal prop, dissuaded the readership from gazing on Zenobia as on a ‘public woman’. Artemisia, Queen of Caria, was a powerful ruler in Asia Minor and besides a medical herbalist, praised by Theophrastus, Strabo, and Pliny. When her husband Mausolus died in 355 BC, she erected a tomb which was to become a wonder of the ancient world. A brilliant military leader, she conquered ²² ll. 623–7. Orgel and Strong’s translation of Jonson’s ‘ut ne viru suu quidem sciret, nisi tentatis conceptionibus’. ²³ I owe this reference to Anne Barton. The popular fantasy of an armed Elizabeth at Tilbury pervaded Jacobean history plays. Michael Dobson and Nicola J. Watson, England’s Elizabeth: An Afterlife in Fame and Fantasy (Oxford, 2002), 58–9. Susan Frye, ‘The Myth of Elizabeth at Tilbury’, Sixteenth Century Journal, 23/1 (1992), 95–114. First documented in 1620s sources, its impact on Queenes is uncertain.

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neighbouring Rhodes. An older namesake of hers, Artemisia, Queen of Halicarnassus and Cos (c.480 BC), participated in Xerxes’ expedition against the Greeks.²⁴ Jonson’s masque portrays Artemisia as a militant mother, admired by Herodotus and Xerxes (‘feminae autem viri’). But she is no lesse renowm’d [sic] for her chastety and love to her Husband, Mausolus, whose bones . . . she preserv’d in ashes, and drunke in wine, making her selfe his tombe: and, yet, built to his memory a Moniment, deserving a place among the seaven Wonders of the World, which could not be done by lesse then a Wonder of Women. (ll. 539–45)

A wonder of women indeed, for Jonson conflated both queens, creating a martial heroine dedicated to her husband.²⁵ Artemisia sported buskins in the manner of male heroic masquers, and her skirts revealed the ankles. Yet Jones dressed her in orange tawny, ash-colour, and yellow. Her gown thus combined the saffron shades of Hymen with the colours of her husband’s mortality. Jones perfectly expressed historical circumstance in the performer’s visual appearance. Simply by way of her colours, the stage Artemisia figured as a monument of marital faithfulness, a moving mausoleum to the audience. Her husband’s presence in her costume almost obliterated the presence of the queen herself. Helmets with crescents, contentious matter in the read-only medium of Jonson’s commentary, colourful concessions to dead husbands, hems above the ankle, and martial buskins: in both costume and text, the masque sent contradictory signals. The portrayal of the queens shifted between self-effacement and self-assertion. Costume and language contained the energy of the female performer, signposting her delivery as ‘virtuous’ and conscious of courtly decorum. Yet in their visual and verbal ambivalence, the characters of Queenes asked for creative interpretation. Anne and her ladies could have found great dramatic opportunities for bold self-expression as soon as they moved into action in the dances of the masque proper. Initially the queens performed spirited choreographies with ‘subtile, and excellent Changes’ (ll. 733–4). Their third dance, where figures took the shape of letters, attracted Jonson’s particular admiration: a more numerous composition could not be seene: graphically dispos’d into letters, and honoring the Name of the most sweete, and ingenious Prince, Charles, Duke of Yorke[.] ²⁴ Margaret Alic, Hypatia’s Heritage: A History of Women in Science from Antiquity to the Late Nineteenth Century (London, 1986), 28, 193–4. ²⁵ The composite character was first noted in HS x. 506. The role was performed by Elizabeth Somerset. Her marriage to Sir Henry Guildford in 1596 had famously been celebrated in Spenser’s Prothalamion. D. Lindley (ed.), Court Masques (Oxford, 1995), 276. Were such echoes the reason for casting her in a role of exemplary conjugal loyalty?

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Wherein, beside that principall grace of perspicuity, the motions were so even, & apt, and theyr expression so just; as if Mathematicians had lost proportion, they might there have found it. The Author was Mr. Tho. Giles. (ll. 749–56)

The hags had crawled, skipped about in a frenzy, and beaten the floor. In contrast, the queens created rational formations in which they never stooped to the ground. After the sonic chaos in the witches’ incantation, refined instruments (cornets and violins) provided a reassuring contrast. While the antimasque was ‘praeposterous’ (l. 345), inverting order, the masque proper had regained proportion. As David Lindley has pointed out, ‘numerous’ should be read as ‘made up of numbers’; the queens’ compositions therefore embodied mathematical harmony.²⁶ Just as the number of dancers was even this time, the text emphasized ‘even’ motions. Giles, the choreographer, had probably drawn on the geometric tradition of Italian intermedi and French ballet de cour. Indeed, Jonson’s quips about mathematical proportion seem to echo Balthazar de Beaujoyeulx’s famous Balet comique de la Royne (performed in 1581) (a copy of which Jonson owned), where the ladies’ grand ballet was universally praised: ‘chacun creut qu’Archimede n’eust peu mieux entendre les proportions Geometriques, que ces princesses & dames les pratiquoyent en ce Balet’.²⁷ As Clare McManus argues, ‘writing’ the dance by forming letters was, in England at least, primarily a practice of female performers.²⁸ A choreographic genre might, then, have created a specifically female ambience in the final moments of the masque. It is often said that the queens were diminished by having to dance the name of Charles, a male prince. Furthermore their moving letters privileged one side in the auditorium—where a male authority, James, was seated— with easy reading. All the same, Anne’s choice of Charles, then Duke of York and only 9 years old, is revealing, given that Prince Henry and King James were more properly the exponents of patriarchal power in 1609. A lettered dance did not only subject its performers to prescribed patterns, it also endowed them with control. Rulers who saw their names danced were at once flattered and reminded that their fame depended on the cooperation of the persons forming the letters. With this production, Jonson and Jones aspired to a theatre of Fame for the greater glory of the court. The queen’s residence, the House of Fame, ‘is all of ²⁶ Lindley (ed.), Court Masques, 231. ²⁷ Le Balet Comique by Balthazar de Beaujoyeulx 1581, introd. Margaret McGowan, facs. edn. (Paris, 1582; Binghamton, NY, 1982), fol. 56. Jonson’s copy is now at the New York Public Library, shelfmark Drexel 5995. ²⁸ McManus, Women on the Renaissance Stage: Anna of Denmark and Female Masquing in the Stuart Court (1590–1619) (Manchester, 2002), 42.

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echo made, | Where never dies the sound’ (ll. 725–6). Might its columns, made of gold, silver, and brass, have alluded to acoustic technologies in classical theatre? Vitruvius, an architect greatly admired by Jones, described how huge brass vases in ancient theatres amplified the actors’ voices. As a Jonson-Jones brainchild, the House of Fame might have visualized acoustic architecture.²⁹ An amplifying medium where sound never dies can, of course, cause trouble: what if a dissonance enters the structure? (The noisy witches had wisely been dispatched before the House of Fame was wheeled into sight.) As Monika Smialkowska has shown, the masque probed the thin divide between notoriety and glory: skittish Fame may perpetuate both.³⁰ So, it appears, did the brazen stage if we look at the kinetic economy of the masque. The House of Fame which revealed the queens on a throne of honour was a revolving piece of machinery, and in this recalled the circular dance of the witches’ sabbath. Reminiscent of their infamous predecessors, where ‘one linke produc’d another’ in choreographic sequence, the queens ‘composed’ figures and letters. Moreover, the line concluding the antimasque, ‘scarse suffring the memory of any such thing’, suggested that the witches might linger in the audience’s memory even if they had physically left the stage—quite contrary to Heroic Virtue’s assertion ‘So should, at FAMES loud sound . . . All poore, and envious Witchcraft fly the light’ (ll. 368–9). Indeed, the hags were back in the final scene, tied to the chariot of the victorious queens, dubiously sharing the fame. Throughout the masque Jonson’s text played on ‘joining’ characters and emphasized the ‘composition’ of dances. It prepared readers and spectators for the linked constellation of (in)famous women in the final tableau. At the end of the performance, rumour or fame were close alternatives which might be arbitrarily chosen. Echoes from the antimasque, and from wild times when warrior women killed kings, pervaded the masque proper. A legendary Amazon might represent an alluring model for Anne but remained a virago in the eyes of a patriarchal monarch who (in Graham Parry’s words) was ‘notoriously averse to ²⁹ Vitruvius, Ten Books on Architecture, ed. I. Rowland and T. Noble Howe (Cambridge, 1999), book V, ch. 5, and fig. 82: ‘Echea, sounding vessels in theatres’. These were bronze vessels set up in chambers under the seats, distributed in a regular manner across the auditorium, to reflect actors’ voices. Bruce Smith places them along the rising tiers for both ornamental and acoustic function (The Acoustic World of Early Modern England (Chicago, 1999), 207), which is not quite what Vitruvius says. ³⁰ Monika Smialkowska, ‘ “Out of the Authority of Ancient and Late Writers”: Ben Jonson’s Use of Textual Sources in The Masque of Queenes’, English Literary Renaissance, 32/2 (2002), 268–86. She reads ‘brass’ as a Chaucerian element (see also HS x. 508). Yet could we not read a piece of machinery in terms of theatre acoustics? The ‘sounding brass’ might be a Jonesian retort to the ‘golden’ poets privileged by Jonson. Jonesian architecture seems to tell us that it is also the medium of machinery which ensures fame.

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the sight of cold steel’.³¹ The choice was up to the audience, while the producers of the spectacle—choreographers, architects, and poets—provided a medium, amplifying the voices from the past. This included uncomfortable resonances, supplied by not only the hags but the ambiguous queens themselves.³² As Barbara Kiefer Lewalski notes, the provoking final tableau of Queenes eschewed opposites: ‘there are intimations that the Queens appropriate rather than destroy the power of the witches. They themselves are figures of fierce violence, overturning gender norms . . . Queen Anne . . . is said (disconcertingly enough) to possess all the qualities and virtues “for which, One by One | They were so fam’d”.’³³ Like the Dame, the product of linked vices, Anne was the glorious consequence and embodiment of legendary virtues, ‘One by One’. Here again, Jonson explicitly ‘joyne[s] the living, with the dead ’, as they all live in Fame, ‘And so I present them’ (II. 417–18; 673–7). Fame, as we know by now, is mischievous. Anne absorbed the energy of all female protagonists, an energy which ran through linked words and choreographies, visual, verbal, moving chains. OBER ON (1611) Many critics regard Jonson’s coming-of-age masque for Prince Henry as the apogee of chivalric revivalism at the Jacobean court. In his entertainments, Henry built on Tudor heritage: he emulated Elizabethan Protestant heroism and cast himself as a masculine warrior figure. Henry’s complex visual appearance as Oberon evolved in costume and choreography, commented upon by text and stage design. Carefully, the multimedia features of dance, sound, and setting prepared his entry. The masque opened with mirth in a forest. Joyful leaps and ‘thousand strange gestures’ of satyrs excited ‘great laughter’. This, Jonson noted in the margins, corresponded with ‘satyrica saltatio’; cornets—noble wind instruments employed in both antimasques and main masques of the period—were chosen to match the movements.³⁴ The satyrs’ lines included trochaic meter ³¹ G. Parry, ‘The Politics of the Jacobean Masque’, in J. R. Mulryne and M. Shewring (eds.), Theatre and Government under the Early Stuarts (Cambridge, 1993), 87–117, at 94. ³² As Yumiko Yamada has pointed out, Jonson’s concept of ‘honour’ reminds us not only of the triumph of virtue but slaughter and sacrifice. ‘The Masque of Queenes: Between Sight and Sound’, in Yasunari Takahashi (ed.), Hot Questrists after the English Renaissance (New York, 2000), 255–67. ³³ Barbara Kiefer Lewalski, Writing Women in Jacobean England (Cambridge, Mass., 1993), 37–8. ³⁴ HS vii. 343, and eyewitness account, HS x. 522. Cornets were ambiguous instruments. Regarded as ‘noble’, they were employed in both antimasque and masque proper (Walls, 151).

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(then regarded as dance-like).³⁵ After the satyrs followed a dance of lesser fays, ten boys dressed up à l’antique. They formed circles which were directed at James, the rightful, if recently established, heir to Arthur’s British throne: let your nimble feet Tread subtle circles, that may always meet In point to him; and figures, to expresse The grace of him, and his great empresse. That All, that shall to night behold the rites, Perform’d by princely OBERON, and these knights, May, without stop, point out the proper hayre Design’d so long to ARTHURS crownes, and chayre.³⁶

The performance must have consisted of round, winding formations in the course of which the boys frequently turned to face the presence. As Jonson writes, not only the ‘points’, the boys’ position at a specific moment, but also the ‘figures’, the overall patterns of the choreography, were directed at the king and queen. This frontstage focus visualized what the text said about James: ’Tis he, that stayes the time from turning old, And keepes the age up in a head of gold. That in his owne true circle, still doth runne; And holds his course, as certayne as the sunne. (ll. 350–3)

As perfect emblems of time halted, youthful dancers pursued circles (symbolizing eternity) in a course projecting to the ageing sun offstage. Est quod ducerat orbem. Toying with opposites (‘running still’), Jonson evoked the royal mystique. The boys, or fairies, served as a prelude to Henry-Oberon’s entry. The appearance of the courtly ensemble was acoustically distinguished from the previous ones: while ‘other instrumentes’ had been provided for the satyrs and fairies, musicians now strummed twenty lutes.³⁷ In contrast to the satyrs’ trochaic lines, iambic pentameter couplets prevailed once the masquers had emerged.³⁸ According to an eyewitness, the prince was accompanied by thirteen ‘famous dancers of the Court’. They performed ‘two ballets intermingled ³⁵ John Peacock, ‘The Stuart Court Masque and the Theatre of the Greeks’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 56 (1993), 183–208, at 204. ³⁶ ll. 361–8, in HS vii. 353. Further line references to Oberon will appear in the text. ³⁷ HS x. 521, on payments for 20 lutes and instruments for satyrs. The eyewitness saw ten lutes only (HS x. 522). The cast indicated by payments may be more accurate. ³⁸ Peacock, ‘Stuart Court Masque’, 204.

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with varied figures and many leaps, extremely well done by most of them’.³⁹ Monsieur Confesse and Jeremy Herne had devised these dances.⁴⁰ From their earliest co-productions, Jonson and Jones were interested in reproducing a heroic male costume type based on classical models. In Hymenaei (1606), the lords wore bodies ‘cut to expresse the naked, in manner of the Greeke Thorax’.⁴¹ For the 1611 production, Inigo Jones’s designs portray the prince in Roman profile, wearing a headpiece with white and scarlet plumes, a scarlet cloak and trunks, and a scarlet band across the golden thorax. The short, tight military costume flatters his shapely body and eminently muscular legs (see Fig. 15). This was, of course, Jones’s idealizing work, inspired by Tempesta’s Twelve Caesars, or the design simply anticipated the effect of stockings padded with cotton wool; as Stephen Orgel remarks, ‘this young man has not been lifting weights for the last six months’.⁴² A l’antique as Henry’s armour was, the black mask he wore during performance departed from classical tradition.⁴³ It made him look enigmatic, but also served as a visual code for the Prince of Wales according to Jacobean masquing conventions. His leonine shoulderpieces were a dramatic shorthand for the Herculean hero, used in many court masques. The colours of black and bright blood added to a vivid, if not aggressive appearance, which must have made a sensational impact under artificial lighting. As John Peacock has argued, the shoulderpieces added an animal-like touch to the civilized Roman gear and thus became part of a wider strategy to present a satyric theme in Oberon. It replicated the etymology of ‘faery’ from Greek feras, satyr, included by Jonson in the margins of the masque text.⁴⁴ Feras also resonates, one might add, with the Latin ferus or ferox, ‘wild’, ‘courageous’, ‘cruel’; the former word was also poetically used as a noun for ‘animal’. The expression magna minorque ferae denoted the bear constellations (ursa). These associations become compelling if we consider the emphasis on blackness and animal features in festivities which marked crucial phases in Henry’s life. On the occasion of Henry’s baptism in August 1594, an evening entertainment saw ‘a Black Moore, drawing . . . a triumphal chariott’. Originally a tame lion was supposed to have drawn the chariot, but its ‘presence might ³⁹ HS x. 522. ⁴⁰ BL MS Add. 24023, warrant, 27 Apr. 1611 o.s., fol. 5v. ⁴¹ ll. 593–4, in HS vii. 229–30. ⁴² S. Orgel, ‘The Spectacles of State’, in Richard C. Trexler (ed.), Persons in Groups: Social Behavior as Identity Formation in Medieval and Renaissance Europe (Binghamton, NY, 1985), 101–21, at 107. Peacock argues for a costume inspired by Tempesta’s Domitian and Caligula; I think not Caligula but Titus. SDIJ, 282, 286. ⁴³ An eyewitness noticed the colours of his costume and mask. HS x. 522. ⁴⁴ Peacock, ‘Stuart Court Masque’, 207.

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Figure 15. Inigo Jones, final design of Oberon’s suit, in Oberon (1611). Orgel and Strong, no. 70; Simpson & Bell, no. 52. The Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth. Reproduced by permission of the Chatsworth Settlement Trustees. Photograph: Photographic Survey, Courtauld Institute of Art.

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have brought some feare to the nearest, or that the sight of the lights and torches might have commoved his tamenes[s]’, and instead a ‘Black Moore’ was employed to bring forth the contraption.⁴⁵ Similarly, for his coming-ofage masque, Henry planned to use a real animal for a spectacular appearance on horseback. James turned down this idea; whether because he disliked the military connotations of such an entry, or he feared for his son’s safety, is unknown.⁴⁶ Horses were occasionally employed in indoor spectacles on the Continent. At a Parma wedding in 1628, live animals were lowered from the flies for an onstage jousting in the Teatro Farnese.⁴⁷ Horses were nervous: the one which carried the Grand Turk in the Ballet de la douairière de Billebahaut (1626) committed, in the words of a contemporary eyewitness, an ‘embarrassing indignity’ during the ballet.⁴⁸ Unsurprisingly, such stunts remained exceptional. If Jonson is to be believed, Henry eventually contented himself with a chariot drawn by two white bears which were, as a wise precaution, safeguarded by fairy attendants. Jonson’s version of the event coincides with the presence of two small polar bears in the beargarden on Bankside; they had just arrived as a gift to the royal menagerie from the Muscovite Company. Jonson’s text at least indicates that they were indeed used.⁴⁹ The inclusion of actual animals must have tempered the quasi-ethereal effect of the finale (‘here be formes, so bright, and aery’, l. 429). Endowed with animal parts like a shaman, Henry subdued dangerous predators (the bears). Yet the masque gestured at a higher authority in the audience, James, whom it addressed as a divine creator. Throughout the masque, music and movement bridged the gap between opposites. The satyrs capered to cornets, all-round instruments which could be employed for antimasques as much as for noble entries. The dances remained ⁴⁵ Anon., A True Accompt of the . . . Baptism of . . . Prince Henry Frederick (1603; repr. 1687), cited from Bernadette Andrea, ‘Black Skin, the Queen’s Masques: Africanist Ambivalence and Feminine Author(ity) in the Masques of Blackness and Beauty’, English Literary Renaissance, 29/2 (1999), 246–81, at 263. ⁴⁶ Roy Strong, Henry, Prince of Wales, and England’s Lost Renaissance (London, 1986), 138, 170. Walls, 314, refers to a 1608 horse ballet for a Medici wedding which might have served as a model. ⁴⁷ Frederick Hammond, Music and Spectacle in Baroque Rome: Barberini Patronage under Urban VIII (New Haven, 1994), 205. ⁴⁸ Michel de Marolles, Les Mémoires de M. de M., Abbé de Villeloin (1656–57), cited from David J. Buch (ed.), Dance Music from the Ballets de Cour 1575–1651 (Stuyvesant, NY, 1993), p. xvi. ⁴⁹ The traditional claim that actors in furs played Henry’s bears is complicated by the fact that Jonson’s printed text mentions the animals, while an eyewitness account of the performance (HS x. 522–3) does not. Accounts are subjective: the spectacular transformation of the statue into Hermione in The Winter’s Tale is a notoriously absent scene in Simon Forman’s notes. On the polar bears, see B. Ravelhofer, ‘ “Beasts of Recreacion”: Philip Henslowe’s White Bears’, English Literary Renaissance, 32/2 (2002), 287–323; Teresa Grant, ‘Polar Performances: The King’s Bear Cubs on the Jacobean Stage’, TLS 5176 (14 June 2002), 14–15.

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vivacious: after saltatio satyrica, the fairies’ measures were still quite lively and irregular, and even Oberon’s knights engaged in jumps, though intermingled with orderly figures.⁵⁰ Rather than pitting antimasque against masque proper, the choreographies offered a wild ‘antemasque’ and a transition via the ‘lesser’ fairies. Their figures focused beyond the stage on James as a civilizing force in the auditorium. Within the world of illusion, satyrical overtones permeated costumes, movements, and architecture (Peacock draws our attention to the rustic elements of Oberon’s palace). Caroline masques usually exorcized antimasque elements from their courtly apotheosis in the final scenes.⁵¹ Here, however, the satyrs stayed on for much of the performance, surrounding Oberon and his skipping crew. In Greek satyrica, John Peacock argues, a dramatic chorus of satyrs represented noble action in a serio-comic manner. Oberon’s structure was therefore ‘not only a reproduction of the earliest format of Greek drama but a metaphor of its development from a primitive to a more refined condition’, visualizing ‘not just the outcome but the process of change’.⁵² The masque made a powerful statement about the connectedness of wilderness and civilization and the ultimate royal control of nature. As in Queenes, where Anne absorbed the powers of hags and ancient queens, the dances of Oberon teased out analogies between moving groups rather than establishing insurmountable contrasts. Oberon was a multimedia spectacle of transition which embraced human and animal performers, architecture, music, text, costumes, and dances. These various elements of the performance commented upon each other. During performance, the choreographer’s increasingly refined variations of satyric leaping were archaeology live on stage. After the event, the forest of Jonson’s margins with its prolific explanations of saltatio satyrica opened a serio-comic window into the classical past.

CONCLUSION Jonson’s attitude to theatricality is still under debate. This concerns in particular the question of how the layout of Jonsonian texts may reflect the author’s views of performance; here, any discussion must consider the possible impact of ⁵⁰ Walls notes the cornets and wonders whether the fairy dance emphasized ‘an intermediate zone between antimasque and main masque’ (317, 320). ⁵¹ Stephen Orgel notes a ‘delicate indecorousness’ and sense of progression rather than antithesis. The Jonsonian Masque (1967; repr. New York, 1981), 72, 84. ⁵² Jonson used Casaubon’s definition of satyrica. Peacock, ‘Stuart Court Masque’, 198, 204.

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printers and their staff on Jonson’s printed plays and masques.⁵³ Recent studies of early modern drama have emphasized to what extent the ‘book’ itself may represent ‘theatre’.⁵⁴ Yet, with regard to the masques in folio, Joseph Loewenstein insists on ‘text as antitheater’. At the same time, however, he recognizes that ‘the typography of these texts achieves something analogous to the semiotic dazzle of a masque performance’.⁵⁵ It is true that Jonson expurgated some names of collaborators, stage directions, scene descriptions, and the like from the 1616 folio edition of his masques. He complained about the ‘Misteryes | Of many Coulors’, and the extravagant approach to ‘Attyre the Persons as noe thought can teach | Sense, what they are’.⁵⁶ From a quarto volume quickly issued close to the event itself, readers might expect minute particulars concerning the performance. In folio texts, Loewenstein points out, the actual occasion of the performance lost importance.⁵⁷ Yet we should, perhaps, distinguish between ‘anti-occasional’ and ‘anti-theatrical’ literature. In a verbal sense, certain names and actions were forgotten; from a visual point of view, Jonson’s texts gained dramatically. In folio, Jonson turned his masques into timeless performances. Both Queenes and Oberon emphasize Jonson’s talents as multimedia artist and collaborator with professionals from different disciplines. The interplay of text and other facets of performance on a masquing night suggest that Inigo Jones cared for more than special effects; in turn, Ben Jonson clearly had fun with the ‘mighty shows’ he later deplored so forcefully.⁵⁸ Satyric Oberon in black and scarlet proved a stunningly successful fusion of design, dance, and poetry. In Queenes, too, word and colour delicately complemented each other when the shades of Artemisia’s costume, at first so visible on stage, later became written history in Jonson’s margins. Jonson’s translation of Horace’s De Arte Poetica dwelt on ‘the turnes, the colours, and right hues | Of Poëms’, as if lines were beautifully dressed performers turning on the page.⁵⁹ We should remember Jonson’s synaesthetic understanding of ‘colour’ as both visual category and meter, so delightfully ⁵³ For a summary of current research see Kevin Donovan, ‘Jonson’s Text in the First Folio’, in J. Brady and W. H. Herendeen (eds.), Ben Jonson’s 1616 Folio (Newark, Del., 1991), 23–37. Peter M. Wright, ‘Jonson’s Revision of the Stage Directions for the 1616 Folio Workes’, Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England, 5 (1991), 257–85. Evelyn B. Tribble, Margins and Marginality: The Printed Page in Early Modern England (Charlottesville, Va. and London, 1993). ⁵⁴ Julie Stone Peters, Theatre of the Book 1480–1880 (Oxford, 2000). ⁵⁵ Loewenstein, ‘Printing and “The Multitudinous Presse” ’, 180, 186. In Ben Jonson and Possessive Authorship (Cambridge, 2002), he argues for antitheatrical marginalia, which squeeze ‘most theatrical reference off the page’ (pp. 155–6). ⁵⁶ ‘An Expostulacion with Inigo Jones’, ll. 46–7, 54–5, in HS viii. 404. ⁵⁷ Loewenstein, ‘Printing and “The Multitudinous Presse” ’, 186. ⁵⁸ For Jonson’s visual poetry, see A. W. Johnson, Ben Jonson: Poetry and Architecture (Oxford, 1994). ⁵⁹ ll. 126–7, in HS viii. p. 311.

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realized in his last masque, Chloridia, where (as the text metaphorically insisted) flowers sprang up under the rhythm of Henrietta Maria’s dancing feet. In Queenes and Oberon, stage and text were at once bookish and lively. In performance, the masquers’ dances unfolded before an audience like a ‘misterious map’, a moment of magic which invited onlookers to explore the spectacle in their imagination.⁶⁰ On the page, the speeches and songs spread yet again before the readers’ eyes. As undisputed architect of the text, Jonson set accents and proportions. Anxious to keep columns Jonson split up words in his holograph copy of Queenes.⁶¹ In print, the marginalia of the early masques encase the main text just as a proscenium arch might have framed court masques. The main text is given typographic eminence, while the smaller letters of the margins shrink into the background. Looking at the page, readers accustomed to the tricks of perspective could have made out a perspective design. They could have enjoyed the illusion that the main text was larger and therefore ‘closer’ to the eye than the small and therefore distant letters of the margins. Jonson’s editions (and manuscripts) offer an erudite textual and highly visual key to the meaning of his entertainments. Margins and main text invite dynamic reading, with a reader’s eyes zooming in and out. To disqualify margins as ‘chatter’ seems to close one’s eyes to their immensely visual, sensual nature. In print or manuscript layout, Jonson’s text not only has a frontstage focus, it allows us to peer behind the scenes into the mythical past, and even replicates sound and movement. Tiniest details are of consequence here. Accents on syllables, inserted in the author’s very own hand in the manuscript of Queenes (‘àround’), duplicate musical and bodily rhythms. They lift dance movements above the occasion. In that sense, the script for Queenes is a choreography. In the printed 1616 folio, dramatic lines demand the reader’s attention as if they were spectacular dancers, looming large before the backdrop of the sourcework. That aspect of Jonson’s art has been expunged from modern editions which insist on standardized layout and spelling and prune accents or even marginal commentary. It is a much-reduced Jonson we find in the latest academic publications.⁶² Modern publishing with all its capacities still struggles with the adequate representation of early modern multimedia artists.

⁶⁰ Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue, l. 220, in HS vii. 487. ⁶¹ e.g. ‘cr | ow’. HS vii. 270, and reproduction of BL MS Royal 18.A. XLV, fol. 7v, following p. 291. ⁶² The accents appear exclusively in Jonson’s holograph fair copy of the masque (BL MS Royal 18.A. XLV). They are not reproduced in any early or (except for Herford and Simpson) recent modern editions.

9 Historical Costume, Historical Dancing: Coelum Britannicum While the Thirty Years War raged on the Continent, Thomas Carew’s court masque Coelum Britannicum (1634) extolled domestic peace under Charles I and Henrietta Maria. The enmities with France and Spain had ended; between 1629 and 1635, England experienced a period of prosperity. Within the smaller circle of the court, Charles took the opportunity to establish a rigid protocol and initiate household reforms.¹ An expression of ‘Pax Carolana’ and in line with Charles’s crusade against loose manners and sloppy administration, Carew’s masque expressed a specifically Caroline revival of courtly values based on historical example. Coelum Britannicum rushed its audience through a crash course in classical mythology, its scenes passing Rome and Britain’s dark ages on the way to Windsor Castle, seat of Charles’s much-cherished Order of the Garter. The cast replicated the epic sway of Inigo Jones’s stage designs: ancient warriors gave way to a new order of neo-classical grand masquers, led by Charles, a second St George, in person. The heavens themselves welcomed the king and queen as the new fixed stars of a reformed universe, and Olympus yielded to their superior example. Even though Carew’s masterpiece has attracted its fair share of comment, its use of costume and movement remains unresolved. Looking at these neglected aspects, the present study investigates how dance and costume may represent history in Coelum Britannicum. THE COSTUMES By far the most intriguing figure in the spectacle, Momus, a satirical presenter and carping critic, took the audience through the first half of the evening. He governed the initial set of antimasques, wearing ‘a long, darkish robe all wrought ¹ Kevin Sharpe, The Personal Rule of Charles I (New Haven, 1992), 65–75, 211–13.

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over with poniards, serpents’ tongues, eyes, and ears; his beard and hair parti-coloured, and upon his head a wreath stuck with feathers, and a porcupine in the forepart’.² Drawing on Cesare Ripa’s ‘Capriccio’ and ‘Discordia’, Jones designed a bipartite pattern in beard and coiffure to visualize a character with contrary opinions.³The eyes, ears, and tongues on the robe referred to the iconography of ‘rumour’. The spiky decor of the headgear, however, represented an innovation. Because of its quills, the porcupine was a common symbol for satire: The Satyre should be like the Porcupine, That shoots sharp quilles out in each angry line, And wounds the blushing cheeke, and fiery eye, Of him that heares, and readeth guiltily.⁴

Yet the headpiece recalled historical contexts closer to home as well. As John Adamson suggests, a heraldically literate audience might have identified the ‘porcupine in the forepart’ with the coat of arms of the Elizabethan paragon of courtly virtue, Sir Philip Sidney. Throughout the masque Adamson observes a subtle dialectic between a Caroline heroic ideal and an older chivalric stereotype, associated with an anti-Habsburg, anti-Spanish, and anti-Catholic attitude. Sidney, the Protestant icon who died fighting Spain, perfectly exemplified the concept.⁵ His obsequies count among the most sumptuous and well-documented funeral processions in early modern England. In 1587, Sidney’s coffin, armour, and his famous porcupine helmet were paraded through the streets of London. Soon after, illustrations of the event circulated in print, popularizing the Sidney myth. In 1635, the old John Aubrey remembered the impressive designs commemorating the pageant ‘as if it were but yesterday’.⁶ The celebrated porcupine object itself has lost a few quills over the centuries but still is on display at Penshurst Place, the Sidney family seat in Kent (see Fig. 16). ² Coelum Britannicum, in D. Lindley (ed.), Court Masques (Oxford, 1995), p. 168, ll. 94–7. ³ The Poems of Thomas Carew, ed. R. Dunlap (Oxford, 1957), 277. Discordia is a woman with a burning torch, a multicoloured dress, bloody bandages, and snaky hair. Capriccio is a youth with feathers in his cap, a multicoloured costume, spurs, and bellows; which represents diversity of action, a readiness to praise virtue and castigate vices. Yassu Okayama, The Ripa Index: Personifications and Their Attributes in Five Editions of the Iconologia (Doornspijk, 1992), 31, 64; Cesare Ripa, Iconologia, introd. E. Mandowsky (Hildesheim and New York, 1970), 48–9, 104–5. ⁴ Joseph Hall, Virgidemiarum: First Three Bookes (London, 1598), satire 3, ll. 1–4. ⁵ J. S. Adamson, ‘Chivalry and Political Order in Caroline England’, in Peter Lake and Kevin Sharpe (eds.), Culture and Politics in Early Stuart England (Basingstoke, 1994), 161–97, at 169, 172. ⁶ Sidney’s corpse lay unburied for a long time (as Prof. Barton has reminded me). The pageant only materialized when Sidney’s father-in-law, Walsingham, finally footed the bill. Theodore de Bry (1528–98), The Funeral of Sir Philip Sidney, 34 plates. Aubrey in 1635, remembering seeing the illustrations as a boy. Bodl. Library, MS Aubrey 6, fol. 82a. I am grateful to Dr Kate Bennett for this reference.

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Figure 16. Sir Philip Sidney’s funeral helmet. Penshurst Place. By kind permission of Viscount De L’Isle from his private collection.

If a swipe at Elizabethan heroism in Momus’s appearance seems vestigial, it was substantiated in his jokes about the English defeat of the Spanish Armada and his declaration that all war paraphernalia be banished from the Olympian Star Chamber.⁷ This clear-out of martial mementoes, Adamson argues, had its parallels in the Caroline court. After unsuccessful naval campaigns in the ⁷ Coelum Britannicum, p. 176, ll. 392–405.

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1620s the government was wary of reminiscences of Elizabethan triumphs, especially that of 1588. The famous Armada hangings at Whitehall proved a constant embarrassment until Charles had them removed to the comparatively unglamorous summer residence at Oatlands, which did not even have a great hall.⁸ With disparaging remarks by a dominant character, Coelum Britannicum deflated military glory so that the domestic virtues of Charles, the family man, might shine the better. The shift towards a Caroline concept of chivalry culminated in the final scenes with a group of heroic masquers led by the king. ‘Pace forth thou mighty British Hercules’, the chorus gushed as the dancing guardians of Caroline peace reminded the nation to whom it owed its halcyon days.⁹ Sidney had felt ambiguously about courtly spectacle, which yielded pleasure yet encouraged idleness and flattery. His Arcadia books (published in 1590 and 1593) portrayed, in David Norbrook’s words, ‘an effeminate ruler’ who neglected his military responsibilities in favour of entertainments.¹⁰ Like the observer in the New Arcadia, who frowned at the lush feasts, waterworks, and artificial birds in the Banqueting House of King Basilius,¹¹ Momus was a critic who could not take the masque quite seriously. He questioned the efforts courts made to reform (‘We have had new orders . . . too strict to be observed long’).¹² As Martin Butler explains, Momus projected doubts about Caroline government in the audience; by voicing scepticism, he eased tensions in a controlled manner and built ‘a bridge between the “British Hercules” and his less dazzled observers’.¹³ The composite emblematic appearance of Momus expressed therefore a range of meanings between subtle Sidneian allusion and straightforward satire. It distanced Stuart from Tudor politics by making fun of a Protestant scion; Momus alerted spectators to the fact that times had moved on since 1588. At the same time, quasi-Sidneian scepticism about spectacle ⁸ Adamson, ‘Chivalry’, 169, 173. The Poems of Thomas Carew, commentary, 277–8, 281. Simon Thurley, The Royal Palaces of Tudor England: Architecture and Court Life 1460–1547 (New Haven and London, 1993), 60, 65. ⁹ Coelum Britannicum, p. 188, l. 891. ¹⁰ David Norbrook, ‘The Reformation of the Masque’, in D. Lindley (ed.), The Court Masque (Manchester, 1984), 94–110, at 96. Duke Basilius dotes on his people yet suffers from a mind ‘corrupted with a prince’s fortune’ (bk. I). He has trouble with putting on his ‘armour long before untried’ (bk. II). Philip Sidney, The Old Arcadia, ed. K. Duncan-Jones (Oxford, 1985), 5, 109. ¹¹ In The New Arcadia (1590, 1593, and subsequent editions), the lodge is, as Pyrocles reports, complemented by a ‘banqueting house’, with waterworks and artificial birds, where Basilius (now a ‘prince’) hosts lavish entertainments which intoxicate his company (bk. I). The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia, ed. V. Skretkowicz (Oxford, 1987), 86. Sidney could have seen such formal lodges on the Continent (commentary, 523–4). ¹² Coelum Britannicum, p. 171, ll. 210–11. ¹³ Martin Butler, ‘Politics and the Masque: The Triumph of Peace’, Seventeenth Century, 2/2 (1987), 117–41, at 135.

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prepared the audience (or at least literate onlookers who knew the New Arcadia) for a Caroline redefinition of heroic virtue at the end of the masque. Sidney was both a role model and an authority from which the Caroline court needed to emancipate itself. Carew and Jones visualized these conflicting aims in a sartorial statement, particoloured garments, and an ambiguous headpiece. With the exit of Momus, the spectactle moved from doubtful to assertive mode. The scene changed into a mountain with underwood; Mercury announced Britain’s ‘naked, ancient, wild inhabitants’. These were followed by the ancient Scots and Irish.¹⁴ In Coelum Britannicum, the dialogues spoken during performance left the audience uncertain as to who these ‘inhabitants’ were. We do not know whether the masque booklet, complete with dialogues and scene descriptions, and published in 1634, would have been available on the night itself in the Banqueting House. Period or regional costume might have been the only means of signposting the nationality of the ancient tribes.¹⁵ Sadly the costume designs for this group are lost. Contemporary sources could have directed Inigo Jones towards a distinctive visual representation. John Speed’s Theatre of the Empire of Great Britain (1611) showed a ‘wild’ Irishman with a roundhead haircut, wrapped in a knee-length cloak and armed with a javelin. Another illustration depicted a nude Highlander in a cloak, his haircut similar to the Irishman’s. Contemporary texts described the Picts as ‘redshanked’ barbars ‘painted with martial spots’.¹⁶ Elizabethan illustrations of ancient tribes presented blue-skinned Pict warriors with long hair and moustache, and animal motifs painted on shoulders and breast.¹⁷ In the early modern period, antiquity had a colour: ‘Albion’ signified whiteness (as the Latin origin of the name suggests), whereas blackness might refer to Ethiopia but also Britain’s so-called dark ages (see Chapter 7).¹⁸ ¹⁴ Coelum Britannicum, pp. 186–7, ll. 823, 830–1. ¹⁵ The booklet is mostly written in the past tense and has the character of a retrospective account. It describes details which would have been redundant for audiences during performance, such as the colours of the torchbearers’ costumes. ¹⁶ Parts of Speed’s title age reproduced in OS i. 174. ‘False redshanked Picts’, Thomas Hughes, The Misfortunes of Arthur, Act III, Scene iii, in Certaine Devises and Shewes (London, 1587), 28; ‘ruder Picts (painted with Martiall spotts)’, in The Divine Weeks and Works of Guillaume de Saluste, Sieur du Bartas, ed. Susan Snyder (Oxford, 1979), ii. 491, ‘The Vocation: The First Part of the Third Day of the Second Week’, l. 70. ¹⁷ See illustrations from Theodore de Bry’s America (1590). A. Hadfield, ‘Bruited Abroad: John White and Thomas Harriot’s Colonial Representations of Ancient Britain’, in David J. Baker and Willy Maley (eds.), British Identities and English Renaissance Literature (Cambridge, 2002), 159–77. ¹⁸ Philippa Berry and Jayne Elisabeth Archer, ‘Reinventing the Matter of Britain: Undermining the State in Jacobean Masques’, in Baker and Maley (eds.), British Identities and English Renaissance Literature, 119–34, at 131–2.

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Sartorial anachronism in grotesque entries encouraged a comical reading, as with the Welshman who appeared in slashed Tudor gear in Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue (1618), and the Scots and Irish in their sixteenth-century breeches in Salmacida Spolia (1640).¹⁹ In practice, a ‘naked’ tribal costume might have consisted of a ‘skin coat’, a flesh-coloured body suit (the Pict’s outfit might have imitated blue body painting). Such skin coats served the pragmatic purpose of warming actors, since masques often took place in January or February in poorly heated venues. In a symbolic sense, masque designers employed them as a shorthand for ‘nakedness’ to represent characters whom early modern audiences considered pre-civilized. With its quarrelsome nude warriors, Carew’s masque gave life to the martial tribes of chroniclers and engravers, showing British pre-history in moving images. Coelum Britannicum certainly set out with an eclectic representation of Britain’s past, given the conspicuous absence of the ancient English (who would have been represented by ‘Saxons’ according to early modern histories).²⁰ England came into the picture at a later point when the scene changed into a tableau of nations on a huge mountain. This coincided with a progress in social order and sartorial fashion. The tribes had turned into monarchies. A far cry from struggling natives, the kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland formed an aloof ensemble, calmly seated, ‘richly attired in regal habits appropriated to the several nations’.²¹ This scene prepared the arrival of Charles and his grand masquers. During performance, audiences heard that these were ‘British worthies’, ‘a troop of heroes’, and ‘the pride | Of three famed kingdoms’.²² What they saw was something different. While audiences had been able to distinguish the kingdoms by their national ‘habits’, the colours of Charles’s ensemble now cancelled out any reference to the origins of the dancing ‘heroes’. Viewers saw not representatives of three different kingdoms but one uniform group escorted by noble youths with torches (see Fig. 17). Carew’s booklet explained the cast: [they were] richly attired like ancient heroes, the colours yellow, embroidered with silver; their antique helms curiously wrought, and great plumes on the top; before them a troop of young lords and noblemen’s sons bearing torches of virgin wax; these were apparelled after the old British fashion in white coats embroidered with silver, girt, and full gathered, cut square-collared, and round caps on their heads, with a white feather ¹⁹ Salmacida Spolia, in OS ii, p. 767, no. 422; Welsh dancers in OS i, pp. 276, 292, nos. 94, 95. ²⁰ Histories such as William Warner’s epic Albions England (several Elizabethan and Jacobean editions) identified the ancient English with the Saxons and the Welsh with the Britons. ²¹ Coelum Britannicum, p. 187, ll. 837–8. ²² Ibid., p. 188, ll. 884–90.

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Figure 17. Inigo Jones, design for a masquer (an ‘ancient hero’) in Coelum Britannicum (1634). Orgel and Strong, no. 289; Simpson & Bell, no. 201. The Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth. Reproduced by permission of the Chatsworth Settlement Trustees. Photograph: Photographic Survey, Courtauld Institute of Art.

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wreathen [sic] about them. First these dance with their lights in their hands, after which the masquers descend into the room and dance their entry.²³

With the scarcity of verbal clues during performance, colours and patterns became all the more important. The torchbearers, boys in white and gold, replicated the colours of the Genius of Britain (a character on stage during their dance). Their Tudor costumes, especially the caps, would have been interpreted by an audience as dated (see Fig. 18).²⁴ Not only in order of dramatic appearance, but also in size, age, and historical outfit, these young dancers appeared as a prelude to fully grown grand masquers. Here heroic virtue found its fullest expression, Mercury explained: heroic virtue For which antiquity hath left no name, But patterns only, such as Hercules, Achilles, Theseus.²⁵

Mercury indulged in interesting wordplay here, for ‘patterns’ alluded to both models in human conduct—Hercules, Achilles, Theseus—and costume models: one of the meanings of ‘pattern’ in seventeenth-century usage was the traced outline of a garment or a sewn prototype (see Chapter 5). In talking about ‘patterns’ of Herculean virtue, Mercury prepared the audience for antique heroism, reincarnate in the masquers, and prompted them as to what kind of fashion to expect—a creation with neo-classical elements for the ‘British Hercules’. Mercury, the ambassador of this new heroic order, wore a flame-coloured suit and a white mantle, underlining by his appearance his message that the ‘bright blaze’ of the Stuart court had kindled the heavens with its aspiring flames.²⁶ As if to fulfil his announcement, the grand masquers replicated his colours. They were dressed in aurora, yellow, and white as the colours of the new heroic code.²⁷ Jones’s draft of an aristocratic performer, possibly Charles himself, shows a plumed classical helmet. The bell skirt partly imitates Roman military gear and partly the balletic French tonnelet (see Pl. 3). In the same way as the text addressed Charles as ‘British Hercules’, the embossed leonine ²³ Ibid., p. 188, ll. 895–902. ²⁴ Aubrey, for instance, writes that bonnets were an Elizabethan fashion. The Worlds of John Aubrey, ed. Richard Barber (London, 1988), 163. ²⁵ Coelum Britannicum, p. 181, ll. 617–20. ²⁶ Ibid., p. 167, ll. 33, 55, 57. ²⁷ Keith Sturgess assumes that Charles’s costume was ‘aurora’ while other masquers wore yellow suits. Jacobean Private Theatre (London and New York, 1987), 196. Yet ‘aurora’ and ‘yellow’ were conflated in masque records. The text mentions yellow for all masquers; the bills refer to both colours; Jones’s design affirms ‘yellow’.

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Figure 18. Inigo Jones, design for a torchbearer (final design) in Coelum Britannicum (1634). Orgel and Strong no. 286; Simpson & Bell no. 206. The Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth. Reproduced by permission of the Chatsworth Settlement Trustees. Photograph: Photographic Survey, Courtauld Institute of Art.

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shoulderpieces (a visual shorthand for this character) alluded to the Greek demigod and expressed strength as well as self-control. The slashed sleeves and skirt were en vogue in the 1630s, but they also harked back to Continental military history, the landsknechts of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century who invented the fashion. The heeled shoes with roses, the haircut, the falling collar, and cuffs corresponded with contemporary Caroline fashion and therefore established some degree of sartorial identification with the audience.²⁸ With their light colours, grand masquers and their attendants would have been especially visible on stage. The text seconded their dazzling appearance with light imagery. These costumes signalled a departure from the dark jests and colours of Momus. Carew’s lines extolled the visual appearance of the new British heroes, while they passed over that of the ancient tribes, whom they thus made literally pale into insignificance. The flaming performance superseded the ‘infamous lights’ of Jove’s decadent Olympus. Charles was to take over and shine With dazzling beams and spreading magnitude, . . . . . . . the bright pole star of this hemisphere²⁹

while Henrietta Maria, ‘diffused’ about the king, shared the glory of his light. Text and textiles marked Charles’s knights as the true heirs of the British past and heroic candidates for the new heavens, displaying the new era in the colours of the sunrise.

THE DANCES Coelum Britannicum was a dynamic, technically competent masque. A scene change took place during an extraordinarily quiet moment, the soliloquy of a character—an effect rarely attempted in court masques, as loud music usually glossed over creaking machinery during such operations.³⁰ Jones’s and Carew’s choice not only revealed confidence in flawless technical support but an interest in visual dynamics. Smoothly, text and scene locked into each other in a display of seamless continuity. Furthermore, the spectacle offered a rich variety ²⁸ Therefore the grand masquers represented neither straightforward heroes in ‘antique helms’ (Adamson, ‘Chivalry’, 174), nor a combination of Roman and Ancient Briton (Sturgess, Jacobean Private Theatre, 196). ²⁹ Coelum Britannicum, p. 168, ll. 78, 83–4. ³⁰ The scene change occurs when Momus begins to ‘discourse the politic state of heaven’, at which point a sphere with stars, borne up by Atlas, is discovered (ibid., p. 170, ll. 169–74).

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of dance genres and movements such as falling, walking backwards, or rising affectedly on tiptoe; although no choreographies have been preserved, the printed text yields useful kinetic information, as when Mercury loftily commanded the sign of the crab to leave the zodiac: Drop from the sky, into the briny flood, There teach thy motion to the ebbing sea; But let those fires that beautified thy shell Take human shapes, and the disorder show Of thy regressive paces here below.

The ‘Crab’ performer turned word into movement, duly dancing in ‘retrograde paces, expressing obliquity in motion’.³¹ Among the grotesque balletic entries, country dances, gypsy rounds, and mock battles entertained the audience. William or Henry Lawes composed the music. Only the names of the aristocratic dancers in the cast, among them Charles himself, have been recorded. These, it appears, were conspicuously good-looking and expert at dancing. Keith Sturgess describes Lord Wharton as ‘a handsome twenty-one year old with fine legs and the inclination to show them off to best advantage’.³² In these years, several professionals received payments from the royal coffers. Jeremy Herne (Héron?), known from so many Jacobean masques, was still around. He and the king’s dance teacher Sebastian La Pierre had just handled the antimasques for The Triumph of Peace, which had taken place shortly before Carew’s masque.³³ Henrietta Maria’s dancer and Charles’s instructor Montagut participated in masques; so did William La Pierre, a specialist in travesti roles. Apart from these regulars, Bocan received the substantial gift of £200 in February 1634, which may hint at his involvement in Coelum Britannicum that month.³⁴ The masque must have marshalled many talents, given its twelve entries with at least twenty-eight choreographies. Experts must have collaborated in the devising of figures and tunes; skilled professionals from both Henrietta’s and Charles’s households probably covered the more challenging solo parts in person. The inventive, funny manner in which dances complement the text hints at the knowledge and experience of a team. Coelum Britannicum made intelligent use of early modern dance genres such as the mock combat. In the grotesque part of the masque, blind Fortune ³¹ Ibid., p. 174, ll. 309–16. ³² Sturgess, Jacobean Private Theatre, 208–9. ³³ Walls, 166. ³⁴ Nichols, iv. 1042. PRO E403/2191, debenture books, 1631–2, fol.1r, pp. 30, 42, 54; Easter to Michaelmas 1632, pp. 114, 132. E403/2192, 1633–4, fols 1v, 28rv, 59v. Holman, 176. Walls, 223.

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commanded a battle of ‘warlike squadrons’.³⁵ An anonymous plot outline from 1638 described it as ‘a scirmachye or umbratique fight performed by Souldiers to Martiall Musique’.³⁶ Fortune’s antimasque was later superseded by ‘a more grave antimasque’ of Picts, Scots, and Irish, who danced ‘a Pyrrhica’.³⁷ At the time Caroline dancing masters were preparing Coelum Britannicum, mock battles fell into three categories: social dances, dramatic dances (often in the context of a festival), and actual military exercise. In the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, when the diversity of such martial representations had reached its height, the boundaries between these genres became blurred at times, as will be shown. Charles’s professionals were able to choose from a copious range of options. The Italian barriera was a social dance popular all over Europe. It imitated a fight between several groups in a mannerist style. A late version taught at a Roman Jesuit school is preserved in Ercole Santucci’s ‘Mastro da Ballo’ (1614). It involved a minimum of four dancers in couples. The parties engaged in various stylized skirmishes. The initial two passages, a very small proportion of the entire choreography, convey a good idea of its complexity. The couples dance together a riverenza semigrave in four double beats, and two continenze, one to the left beginning with the left foot, the other to the right with the right foot, and letting the hand go, pretending to kiss it, both turn in a circle to the left and dance a spondeo, and a dattile, always starting with the left foot. Then they change place, take hands as usual and do the abovementioned riverenza semigrave. . . . In the second part, they begin the passage together, with two passi puntati semigravi, one with the left, the other with the right foot, and four passi lunghi, and once having arrived in this manner at the end of their trajectory, the gentleman does a seguito ordinario, leading the lady in a turn to the left, and turning himself to the other end of the ballroom, they dance a corinto to the right, beginning with the right foot. After that, they do two continenze, one to the left with the left foot, and one to the right with the right.³⁸

This sophisticated dance in eleven parts involved some fourteen different steps and challenged a dancer’s memory. Idiosyncratic small jumps such as the dattile (dactyl) attested to the choreographer’s attempt to raise the prestige of his art to that of literature. The terminology paid homage to verse meter but may also have alluded to the rhythm of antique battle dances. The Idaean dactyls in ³⁵ Coelum Britannicum, p. 182, l. 666. ³⁶ This referred to Greek skiamachia (shadow battle), and Latin umbra (shadow, or illusion), and hence meant ‘mock battle’. Cited from The Poems of Thomas Carew, 275. ³⁷ Coelum Britannicum, pp. 186–7, ll. 829–31. ³⁸ Ercole Santucci, ‘Mastro da Ballo’ (1614), MS, Carina Ari Library, Stockholm, 428–33; after the Roman choreographer Oratio Martire; my trans.

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Lucian’s well-known dance treatise Peri Orcheseos, for instance, inspired steps taught by Renaissance masters during fencing lessons (needless to say, experts such as Santucci or Martire had no idea what their antique models looked like but fashioned ‘dactylic’ steps according to contemporary neo-classical notions). Santucci’s Barriera required no weapons. Dancers at most clapped each others’ hands, transferring the imagined combat from objects to pure movement.³⁹ Italian barriera compositions seem ornate, abstract, and difficult. As social dances, they sought to be inclusive rather than aggressive or efficient. The most detailed description of an early modern battle dance fought with actual weapons derives from a sixteenth-century French source. Thoinot Arbeau’s Orchésographie (1588?, 1589, reissued 1596) featured a combat of four so-called ‘buffens’ or ‘matachins’ with cardboard helmets and bells tied to their legs. They danced to a special tune in duple time, employing gestures such as feinte (the dancer leaps on both feet, sword in hand but without striking), estocade (he thrusts his sword forward to strike that of his companion), taille haute (he strikes at his companion downward from the right to the left), and revers bas.⁴⁰ Certain elements of Arbeau’s mock battle—such as the bells, or the thrusting and crossing of weapons—may attest to a widespread popular tradition. The bells, for instance, were also characteristic of early modern morris dancing, and Ben Jonson’s The Gypsies Metamorphos’d (1621) refers to the morris ‘jingle’.⁴¹ We do not know, however, whether Orchésographie was read in Carew’s England. English mock battles of the early modern period are poorly documented in comparison to Arbeau’s detailed choreography. In a 1641 masque at Knowsley, dancers disguised as ‘fasting days’ fought a group of ‘holidays’ in ‘a Matichine, with postures of strugling and wrestlinge, the fastinge dayes carrying att last ye hollidayes out upon theire backs’.⁴² In the ‘Antick’ by the Levant trader and amateur dramatist Robert Bargrave, four male dancers fought each other to obtain the favour of a woman (probably played by a man as well): ‘2.d part A fights with B: & C. with D. as for the Wench :A: kills B. & then C. as at single rapier :2d. time: A kills D: & trampling over them all as Conqueror, runns to the W. then all up & dance as before’.⁴³ In contrast to the previously described models, Bargrave’s laconic three-liner dispensed with the intricacies of individual ³⁹ Lucian, Peri Orcheseos [The Dance], ed., and trans. A. M. Harmon (London, 1936), v. 232–3. ⁴⁰ Thoinot Arbeau, Orchesography, ed. Julia Sutton (New York, 1967), 183–95. ⁴¹ For early definitions of ‘morris’, see John Forrest, The History of Morris Dancing, 1458–1750 (Cambridge, 1999), 5–7, 152. ⁴² R. J. Broadbent, ‘A Masque at Knowsley’, Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, 77 (1925), 1–16, at 9. ⁴³ Bargrave, Diary, 98.

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steps and concentrated on basic pantomime instead. Its rusticity has much in common with morris dancing as still practised today at folk festivals: several dancers wearing bells at their feet court a ‘bearded lady’, they clash their batons, kill each other, and are miraculously resurrected.⁴⁴ A ‘linked’ battle dance was very popular in Europe between the fifteenth and the seventeenth century, and still survives in folklore. In the early Stuart period, it was practised especially in Scotland. In this dance type, four to twenty-odd male dancers clasped each other by their swords or sticks. They practised various geometrical figures such as stars, chains, circles, or roses; performers passed under raised weapons, jumped over them, struck them together, and often elevated a leader on linked properties.⁴⁵ In May 1590, the city of Edinburgh celebrated James and Anne in this manner. Two groups of swordsmen and highland dancers performed at the royal palace while James and Anne watched from a window. The glovers’ guild from Perth danced for both James and Charles; for the latter, the skinners performed in July 1633 what they had rehearsed for a full month: his Majestie being thayre set upon the wall next the wattir of Tay, quhair uppone was ane fleeting staige of tymber cled about with birks, uppone the quhilke, for his Majestie’s welcome and entrie, threittine of our brethrene of this our calling of Glovers with green cappis, silwer strings, red ribbons, quhyte shoes and bells about thair leggis, shewing raperis in thair handis, and all uther abulzement, dauncit our sword daunce, with mony difficile knottis, fyve being under and fyve above uppone thair shoulderis, three of theme dauncing through thair feet and about them, drinking wine and breking glasses—Quhilk (GOD be praisit) wes actet and done without hurt or skaithe till any. Quhilk drew us till greit charges and expensis amounting to the sowme of 350 merks, yet not to be rememberit because graciouslie accepted, be our sovereine, and both estatis to our honour and great commendation.⁴⁶

This was a difficult presentation on a timber island in the river Tay. Armed with what might have been rapiers, the men practised complicated interweaving ⁴⁴ e.g. at the folklore festival in Broadstairs, Kent, in the mid-1990s. ⁴⁵ Stephen D. Corrsin, Sword Dancing in Europe: A History (Enfield Lock, 1997), 1–3, 6–7, 85–6. Madeleine Inglehearn, ‘Swedish Sword Dances in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, Early Music, 14/3 (1986), 367–72. Violet Alford, Sword Dance and Drama (London, 1962), pt. II. ⁴⁶ Henry Adamson, The Muses Threnodie, or, Mirthful Musings on the Death of Mr. Gall, ed. James Cant (Perth, 1774), app. 2, pp. 118–19; cited from Corrsin, Sword Dancing, 87, 89. Inglehearn interprets the ‘rapiers’ as ‘shearing rapers’; ‘abulzement’ might derive from Fr. habillement (‘Swedish Sword Dances’, 368, 372). Alford mentions a traditional Glovers’ dance costume in the Perth Museum, described by Sir Walter Scott as ‘trappings of green and red satin and its 250 little bells’ (Sword Dance, 65–6). She suggests it represents ‘the one surviving costume’ from early 17th-cent. performances but provides no evidence.

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figures (‘knots’), sitting on each other’s shoulders and passing under each others’ feet. Bells tied to the legs made sure that they were not only seen but heard. The Caroline period provided further examples close to military drill. William Barriffe’s Mars His Triumph (published in 1639) described a spectacular battle between Christian knights and Turks, acted with great applause before an audience of London citizens in the Merchant-Taylors’ Hall in October 1638. Another work by the same author, the best-selling compendium Military Discipline (numerous editions between 1635 and 1706), dealt with the ‘Exercise of the Foot in their Motions, with much variety: As also diverse and severall formes for the imbatelling small or greater Bodies’, as the title page of the enlarged second edition (1639) explained. Soldiers learned to move after specific beats of the drum. The practice aimed not at extolling the elegance of individual performers but the efficiency of a group: ‘Geometricall proportion, gives both life, and being, to orderly discipline, consider that all parts of the body, ought to be answerable. Wherefore seeing that the joyning of Files and Rankes produceth greater Bodies; it is necessary that a true proportion should be kept from the beginning.’⁴⁷ Barriffe emphasized the quick reaction to military commands and seamless ensemble manoeuvring; rather than impressing an audience (a pleasant side effect) the exercise was supposed to increase mobility. Barriffe’s efforts kinetically established a larger anatomy, a collective body whose proportions and synchronized movements qualified the many-footed leviathan for battle. Many graphs depict formations; abbreviations denote types of soldiers and directions. Apart from star-, triangle-, diamond-, and fortress-shaped patterns (reminiscent of the figured dances in court ballet), Barriffe even included sequential illustrations, such as the trajectory of marching soldiers: Distance of place, and motions of the Body, are that part of the Art Military, used for the instruction, and disciplining [of ] foot Souldiers: whereby to fit and enable them, to the quick, true and orderly performance, of all formes, and figures of Battaile, as may best suit with the time, number, place, and discretion of the Commander. And may rightly be divided into these five generall heads, (viz.) Distance, Facings, Doublings [of ranks and files], Countermarches, and wheelings, which have (not unaptly) bin compared to the five vowels: For as without one or more of the vowels, no word can be spelled, so without one or more of these, neither form, nor action can be performed.⁴⁸

The battle is a text. Although Barriffe defined his creations as dances, he described no steps but only formations and the spatial relation of groups to ⁴⁷ William Barriffe, Military Discipline: Or the Yong Artillery Man (London, 1639), title page, and ch. 5, pp. 15–16. ⁴⁸ Ibid., ch. 8, p. 27.

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each other. Dancers did not individually time their movements but a commander, visibly in view, shouted instructions. Barriffe’s combats were not simply an exotic distraction. Like Britannia Triumphans (1638), the court masque which celebrated Charles I as victorious military leader, Mars His Triumph and Military Discipline responded to strategic realities (see also Chapters 4 and 10). Barriffe’s work resembled a new-style—perhaps new model army?—manoeuvring handbook with theatrical trappings. In the 1640s, ornate steps were unlikely to increase the firepower of a battalion. Barriffe’s no-nonsense books illustrated the future of the mock battle. To what extent did the choreographies in Coelum Britannicum correspond to antics such as Barriffe’s, Arbeau’s, or Santucci’s? Fortune’s mock battle in the first part of the masque was a ‘representation of a battle’ between ‘warlike squadrons’; this seems to rule out mannerist elements as they could be found in Italian social dances of the period and hints at a serious staged combat with strong pantomimic elements. The past clicked into focus with the appearance of the ancient British tribes. Promptly the text turned to learned historical diction and termed their performance a ‘grave’ ‘pyrrhic’ antimasque. Unpolished as they were, the British tribes deserved some respect, for they prefigured the perfections of the Stuart court, as Mercury insisted, turning to Henrietta Maria: But first behold the rude And old abiders here, and in them view The point from which your full perfections grew.⁴⁹

Accredited with ancient virtue, Carew’s naked combatants represented the unspoilt martial roots of the Caroline court. With a ‘pyrrhic’ dance, Carew’s text indicated to the informed reader a genre associated with warlike virtues and ‘pure’ ancient rites; allusions most appropriate to visualize the concern for Olympian reform in the masque. It also fits into the politics of the king’s Declaration to His Subjects, Concerning Lawfull Sports, issued in 1633 and 1634, which extolled ‘Morris-dances’ and demanded that the ‘common and meaner sort of people’ should be enabled to use ‘such exercises as may make their bodies more able for Warre, when Wee or Our Successours shall have occasion to use them’.⁵⁰ ‘The classicism of the seventeenth century’, John Forrest writes, ‘sought an origin for morris in classical antiquity, the commonest hypothesis being that it was invented by Pyrrhus, son of Achilles’.⁵¹ The term ⁴⁹ Coelum Britannicum, p. 186, ll. 820–2. ⁵⁰ The Kings Maiesties Declaration to His Subiects, Concerning Lawfull Sports (London, 1633), 8, 11. This was based on a similar declaration by James I in 1618. ⁵¹ Forrest, Morris Dancing, 5.

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‘pyrrhic’, an extremely rare word, proves that Carew had archaeology for the educated on his mind. It smacked of the grammar school, where early modern students of Latin learnt that the pes pyrrhichius consisted of two short beats.⁵² If Coelum Britannicum cultivated textual archaeology, why should it have stopped short of movement archaeology? Teaming up with the choreographer(s), Carew and Jones must have devised something appropriate for Britain’s ‘wild inhabitants’. The emphasis on ancient purity and simplicity excludes demotic antics à la Bargrave or the mannerist barriera genre. More likely seems a combat with figures in the ‘linked’ style and passages in the double-time pes pyrrhichius. The strong Northern associations of ‘linked’ repertoire could have helped an audience to identify Picts and Scotsmen—especially given the absence of verbal clues. The ‘linked’ tradition had a history of royal performances: it gestured back to the Northern celebrations for James and Charles, and thus affirmed English links with Scotland. The sword dances at Edinburgh and Perth in 1590, 1617, and 1633 were in all likelihood activated once more in 1634. In seventeenth-century England, mock battles occurred during popular festivals, barriers, tournaments, or in civic spectacle. Barriffe’s books, however, already signalled a departure from dance towards new-style manoeuvring. Charles’s dancing master Montagut regarded the pyrrhic dance as a historical phenomenon.⁵³ Carew and his collaborators created something noble yet passé. The ancient inhabitants of Britain were dancing something which belonged to the past, just as they themselves did. Torch dances had been employed in European entertainments since the Middle Ages. They fulfilled the practical purpose of illuminating a performance or group of dignitaries in dimly lit spaces. Moving lights accentuated geometric formations in a relatively dark environment. They were also employed as a visual formula irrespective of lighting conditions: a theatrical shorthand, torches in performance—or illustration—indicated night-time, an indoor space, a high-ranking person, or a high-profile event.⁵⁴ Arbeau’s Orchésographie and Italian dance books of the later sixteenth century included instructions for torch dances. Music for this repertoire appeared in Praetorius’s ⁵² For ‘pyrrhic/pirrhic’, LION yields only two hits for the period 1550–1700 (all literary genres). One is ‘Pyrrhica saltatio, or the Pyrrhic Dance’, in the commentary of Samuel Pordage’s translation of Seneca’s Troades (London, 1660), on Act III, Scene iii, p. 63. The pes pyrrhichius occurred in classical and patristic literature, e.g. in St Augustine’s De musica, bk. I, ch. 1, where it is duple time. ⁵³ Barthélemy de Montagut, Louange de la danse, ed. B. Ravelhofer (Cambridge, 2000), 105. ⁵⁴ Claudia Schnitzer, Höfische Maskeraden (Tübingen, 1999), 90. A. Dessen and L. Thomson, A Dictionary of Stage Directions in English Drama, 1580–1642 (Cambridge, 1999), 233–4.

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Terpsichore (1612) and French collections of the period. Torchbearers had been a consistent feature since Tudor revels, as Anne Daye has shown: vizarded escorts lighted performers to the masquing hall and contributed to the pretence that noble, enigmatic visitors had arrived from a distant or imaginary location.⁵⁵ Torch dances added a festive note to Elizabethan pastorals. In The Old Arcadia, some shepherds bore lights while others joined hands for rustic brawls.⁵⁶ English torchbearers were often young men. In the Unton painting children took the roles; in Coelum Britannicum the boys were between 9 and 14 years old.⁵⁷ Initially torchbearers just accompanied dancers; from 1613 onwards, however, they performed ballets in their own right. Masques celebrating the Palatine wedding involved spectacular stunts with devices burning at both ends. Such practices were long known on the Continent, where Italian choreographers devised torch dances even for noble ladies.⁵⁸ According to recent studies of early modern stage lighting, the torches of Coelum Britannicum represented symbolical properties. It has been proposed that they were not even lit since sufficient illumination came from other sources.⁵⁹ Carew’s court masque, Daye argues, was the last to employ torchbearers, for the genre was going out of fashion in the Stuart period. The noble youths had a nostalgic rather than practical purpose within Jones’s centralized stage setting and lighting effects: Carew deployed his torchbearers as a symbol of Britain’s glorious past, returning them to their core function of honourable escort. Their dance must have seemed traditional by then, having been around for twenty years. This was the thrust of the whole, declaring to the nation that all the ancient virtues were still present in the court and government. How poignant that the last use of torchbearers in England should return them to their first milieu of the Tudor marching entry, gentle youths giving state and glory to distinguished masquers.⁶⁰

With the boys’ performance, Coelum Britannicum resurrected a dance genre which the audience associated with Tudor entertainments and the early Jacobean court, and the historicizing costumes reinforced this effect. ⁵⁵ Anne Daye, ‘Torchbearers in the English Masque’, Early Music, 26/2 (May 1998), 246–62. ⁵⁶ Sidney, The Old Arcadia, 50–1. ⁵⁷ B. Ravelhofer, ‘ “Virgin Wax” and “Hairy Men-Monsters”: Unstable Movement Codes in the Stuart Masque’, in David Bevington and Peter Holbrook (eds.), The Politics of the Stuart Court Masque (Cambridge, 1998), 244–72. Daye thinks that torches were too heavy for girls. Yet girls carried in each hand a wooden stick with a heavy candle (altogether about 1.5 m high) for several minutes during recreations of 15th-cent. torch dances, at the Landshut festival, Germany, 1997. ⁵⁸ See Ch. 3, above, on Cesare Negri’s dance Austria Felice. ⁵⁹ R. B. Graves, Lighting the Shakespearean Stage, 1567–1642 (Carbondale and Edwardsville, Ill., 1999), 20. ⁶⁰ Daye, ‘Torchbearers’, 258, 261.

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This raises questions about the dancing style of the grand masquers who followed the young torchbearers. Their costume, partly Caroline, partly pseudo-Roman, clearly distinguished them from their escort. Did they also move differently? Earlier in the masque, Momus cryptically referred to the ‘modern French hospital of oratory’, a mere counterfeit, an arrant mountebank, for though fearing no other tortures than his sciatica, he discourses of kings and queens with as little reverence as of grooms and chambermaids . . . I mean that fellow who to add to his stature thinks it a greater grace to dance on his tiptoes like a dog in a doublet than to walk like other men on the soles of his feet.⁶¹

Carew might have sniped at Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac (1595–1654), a noted stylist and language reformer whose back pains confined him to a stiff gait; his Lettres (1624– 54; one of several English translations in 1634) showed little respect for the English monarchy. The ‘dog in a doublet’ was proverbial for pride and vanity.⁶² Carew could, of course, have made fun of a specific rhetorical style, yet the phrase ‘walking on tiptoe’ strongly suggests a joke about movement. During the first two decades of the seventeenth century not only French language reformers such as Guez de Balzac and François Malherbe sought to improve the French language, which ultimately led to Richelieu’s founding of the Académie Française in 1635. In the same period French choreographers working in England proposed a reform of the English dancing floor. Montagut, in the service of the Duke of Buckingham and later Charles and Henrietta Maria, advocated a new French style with pliés, relevés on tiptoe, and turnouts of the feet, as did de Lauze, who first sought employment with Buckingham and later concluded his career as dancer in the household of Louis XIII. Carew (and his choreographers) were probably having fun with an emerging French ballet style popular at court. It makes sense that Momus, a champion of the ‘old’ ways, should sneer at the newfangled slides and pliés of the Caroline aristocracy. In contrast to the Tudor torchbearers with their old-fashioned buskins, Charles and his dancers wore a French tonnelet and contemporary footwear with heels, an appearance associated with French danse noble. Engaging in danse noble (or rather, its forerunners as taught by Montagut and his colleagues), grand masquers could have contributed to the variety in the kinetic vocabulary of the masque. Their movements, it is argued here, emphasized the antiquated ⁶¹ Coelum Britannicum, p. 170, ll. 151–7. ⁶² Ibid., commentary, 264. The Poems of Thomas Carew, commentary, 278. Guez de Balzac was member of the Académie Française, founded in 1635.

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character of the preceding dance and signalled a departure from Tudor customs. The choreographies for the grand masquers showed that only Charles’s ensemble had really arrived in the present.

CONCLUSION The effect of Carew’s half-ironic, half-nostalgic spectacle on courtly observers must have been similar to that of seeing a high-tech performance of an Elizabethan pastoral. Coelum Britannicum responded to a Caroline taste for anachronistic drama. In a period when perspective scenery on flat wings had become standard, Henrietta Maria’s Florimène (1635) was acted before threedimensional settings in the sixteenth-century Serlian tradition. The Lyly revival in the 1630s resulted in Jonson’s unfinished Sad Shepherd (1636), where flat wings joined trees and other moveable properties as they had been employed in Jacobean masques and Tudor plays.⁶³ Britannia Triumphans (1638) amused its audience with a pseudo-medieval mock romanza. With dated dance genres and historicizing costume accessories, Coelum Britannicum offered an affectionate, and overall a respectful presentation of English history but yet retained a sense of distance, highlighting the superiority of the Caroline reign. A production in which dance and text, fashion and setting complemented each other so well suggests that stage and costume designer, writer, and dancing master(s) developed text, setting, and choreography in a continual process of mutual fine-tuning. Coelum Britannicum does not reflect at all the modern notion that authors, in this case Carew, first wrote the text and then passed instructions on to the rest of the team. The situation must have resembled the preparations for Italian entertainments. Here, writers often adjusted their texts during rehearsals according to the requirements of music and dance. Working on the ballet Tirsi e Clori in 1615 and asked to set it to music, Monteverdi wrote that his tunes were open to discussion, and that, if his patron wished so, ‘the present words . . . can easily be changed’.⁶⁴ ⁶³ See Anne Barton’s and Eugene Giddens’s forthcoming edition of The Sad Shepherd in the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson. ⁶⁴ Letter to Annibale Iberti, 21 Nov. 1615, in The Letters of Claudio Monteverdi, ed. Denis Stevens (Oxford, 1995), 98. See also Iain Fenlon, ‘The Origins of the Seventeenth-Century Staged ballo’, in Fenlon and Tim Carter (eds.), Con che soavità: Studies in Italian Opera, Song, and Dance, 1580–1740 (Oxford, 1995), 13–40, at 30–1.

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Coelum Britannicum examined, as Jennifer Chibnall observes, ‘the process of constructing a mythology for the Caroline court’.⁶⁵ This process did not simply manifest itself in stage design and text but involved the moving cast. In contrast to Albion’s Triumph (1632), which pitted the civilized grand masquer against the backward captive king of a hostile nation in the same scene, Carew’s unrefined, tribal casts successively cleared the stage. A sense of progression became thus much more obvious. Instead of a blunt contrast visualizing military subjection, the costume and movement language in Coelum Britannicum evoked British history as a natural evolution, an impression further deepened by a scene change which smoothly unfolded during a quiet moment of soliloquy. Power came to Stuart rule by default, not through a brute application of force. The costumes and dances led the audience through visual archeology, gently progressing from embattled, multicoloured warriors and quaint torchbearing pages to the civilized ballets of identically dressed heroic grand masquers. Both ‘ancient heroes’, as the text insisted, and modern, as the audience was able to see, the grand masquers were ruled by a ‘British Hercules’ who had redefined classical history in British terms. Movements were perceived and instrumentalized as a mute rhetoric. They provided additional clues how to read characters onstage. If only because of audience expectations, it would have been fatal for choreographers to ignore the associations early modern dance genres doubtless had. As Raymond Anselment points out, Carew’s peaceful presentation of the three kingdoms in Coelum Britannicum provided an alternative to destructive war.⁶⁶ Reform was best achieved without violence; Carew’s ‘New-Yeare’s Gift to the King’ (1631) praised the king as a friend of ‘bloodlesse Trophies’.⁶⁷ John Adamson has stressed how energies and resources formerly spent on tournaments were channelled into new expressions of Caroline grandeur in an emancipation from earlier festive culture.⁶⁸ Coelum Britannicum affirmed the Caroline move towards reformed ceremony. A response to the carnage devastating the Continent, Charles’s masques at the very most tolerated mock battles, which they relegated to the antimasque domain. A sophisticated new French style which had been adopted by leading courtiers could have represented an unaggressive but firm Caroline court. Possible charges of effeminacy or decadence ⁶⁵ Jennifer Chibnall, ‘ “To That Secure Fix’d State”: The Function of the Caroline Masque Form’, in David Lindley (ed.), The Court Masque (Manchester, 1984), 78–93, at 85. ⁶⁶ Raymond A. Anselment, ‘Thomas Carew and the “Harmelesse Pastimes” of Caroline Peace’, Philological Quarterly, 62/2 (1983), 201–19, at 214. ⁶⁷ The Poems of Thomas Carew, p. 90, l. 30. ⁶⁸ Adamson, ‘Chivalry’, 177.

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were counterbalanced by finely selected glimpses into British martial heritage, which showed the Caroline court as a logical, superior contemporary solution for the kingdom. The kinetic economy of the masque slowed down from hectic battle action to civil slides. With the prospect of Windsor in the final scene, the point of apotheosis was reached and the royal pair made ‘motion cease’. At this point Carew’s text broke down the boundaries between different media in an exultant praise of ‘moving tune’ and ‘tuneful footing’.⁶⁹ In this masque a polynational, many-footed cast danced as many different styles as it wore. Only by scrutinizing the diversified media of spoken dialogue, printed text, moving and still images, and the various audiences each of them addressed, do we begin to understand the crucial importance of dance and costume as supplementary theatrical vocabulary. Coelum Britannicum demanded advanced fashion and movement literacy from its spectators. Often the text spoken during performance included no clue as to the identity of the characters, and audiences had to infer from costumes and gestures what the scene was about. The finer Sidneian allusions may have been lost on many guests. Yet simple clues such as period costume and balletic concepts familiar all over Europe (such as torch dances) supplemented textual information, appealing even to less informed spectators with a flawed command of English. Coelum Britannicum returned to an old Stuart utopia, as James had imagined it in a speech before Parliament in 1607. Here he envisaged a union of the nation similar to that under the twin kingdom of the Scots and Picts, ruled by love, ‘Irish, Scottish, Welsh, and English, divers in Nation, yet all walking as Subjects and servants within my Court’.⁷⁰ In 1618, William Drummond had celebrated Stuart rule: even the martial ancient Picts would have willingly submitted themselves under its loving sceptre. Under the Stuarts, the island should regain its ancient name, Britain.⁷¹ Parliament had strongly objected to James’s vision, not least on the terminological grounds that the kingdom of ‘England’ might lose to the kingdom of ‘Britain’. Charles’s ill luck with the Picts of his time is well known. Yet Caroline masques emphasized the idea of ‘Britain’ by their titles alone: we look in vain for a Saxonia Triumphans. Coelum Britannicum offered a sophisticated answer to juggling different national identities. The adjective ‘English’ occurs nowhere in this masque. Instead,

⁶⁹ Coelum Britannicum, p. 192, l. 1023; p. 189, ll. 918, 920. ⁷⁰ A Speach to Both the Houses of Parliament, 31 Mar. 1607. King James VI and I, Political Writings, ed. Johann P. Sommerville (Cambridge, 1994), 161–2, 169. ⁷¹ William Drummond’s panegyric to the king, Forth Feasting (Edinburgh, 1617 [1618]).

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Carew’s multimedia spectacle showcased conspicuous Britishness, when national varieties were finally resolved in ideal British masquers. Costume and movement visualized a process of civilization which culminated in the union— a perfect future, briefly enacted in February 1634 as a historical and cultural fait accompli.

10 Global Spectacle: An English Masque at Constantinople In the time of Moses a famous mimic, named Hamám, mimicked all his miracles before Pharaoh, to the great pleasure of the Pharaohites, but to Moses’s anger. One day Moses, not being able to bear it any longer, prayed unto the Lord that he should punish this mimicking fellow. The Lord spake then to Moses, and said to him: ‘It is you, my Speaker, that he is imitating, who are my prophet; what you say is truth and not error, therefore I am rather pleased with his imitation, which is a true and good one, for which I have destined to him Paradise.’ It is on the ground of this legend that it is decided in many books that the faith of the imitator is a true one. If, therefore, it is lawful to imitate believing and virtuous men, it is quite the opposite with the imitation of the infidels and wicked, because as the Qur’an says; ‘Who makes himself like unto some men belongs to them.’ Evliyg Çelebi (1611–82)¹

The elaborate choreographies which transformed Stuart court masques into unforgettable events have not left a trace. For a very faint idea of that lost repertoire we must leave London and turn 1,500 miles south-east into the Ottoman Empire. The only notations for English theatre dances before 1700 survive in, of all places, the travel diaries of a secretary of the Levant Company.² Robert Bargrave (1628–61) came from a musical and polyglot family and had studied at Oxford before he accompanied the merchant James Modyford to the

¹ Narrative of Travels in Europe, Asia, and Africa, in the Seventeenth Century, by Evliya Efendi, trans. Joseph von Hammer[-Purgstall], 3 parts in 2 vols. (London, 1834–50), i/2. 241. ² Bodl. MS Rawl. C 799, for the masque see fols. 22v–29v. Bargrave, Diary. The masque has been discussed and partly transcribed by Michael Tilmouth in ‘Music on the Travels of an English Merchant: Robert Bargrave (1628–1661)’, Music & Letters, 53/2 (1972), 143–59, and John Ward in ‘Newly Devis’d Measures for Jacobean Masques’, Acta Musicologica, 60/2 (1988), 111–42.

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Near East.³ The voyage to the Ottoman Empire was the first trip abroad for the 19-year-old apprentice. Between 1647 and 1652, Bargrave lived in Istanbul, then called Constantinople or Konstantiniyye (the old name will be retained throughout to distinguish the city from its modern equivalent),⁴ where he composed a wedding masque for the daughter of the English ambassador in about 1650. Intended for performance in the garden of an Ottoman dignitary, the entertainment was cancelled in the end; yet its author kept a meticulous record of poems, tunes, and choreographies among notes on the Ottoman way of life. This ensemble represents a singular piece of evidence in the history of English dance and drama. It also provokes questions about English theatre culture in an Eastern context. How would Bargrave’s masque have gone down with a Muslim audience? What was the attitude towards performance in early modern Istanbul? I have used Bargrave’s masque as an opportunity to discuss wider questions about Western European and Ottoman cultures of dramatic representation. This chapter is therefore divided into three sections. The first looks at select representations of the European and the ‘oriental’ in certain forms of early modern spectacle, notably ballet; examples include stage Turks in French ballet de cour, and Muslims as both characters and audience in English civic and courtly entertainment. The second section moves on to Bargrave’s masque itself. Why did he write it? The choreographies in his unusual diary are framed by a narrative which tells us much about Bargrave’s daily work, Anglo-Ottoman relations in general, and the way Europeans treated each other abroad. To understand the occasion of the wedding masque, we will have to know more about these relationships. What did Bargrave know about the cultural practices in Constantinople, and how does his diary reflect these? This question leads to the final section, a brief glance at Ottoman theatre culture in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

THE OT TOMAN EMPIRE IN EUROPEAN ENTERTAINMENT CULTURE In the mid-seventeenth century, the Ottoman Empire represented a weakened but still formidable military and substantial economic power, inviting ³ Bargrave’s mother was Elizabeth Dering, Sir Henry Wotton’s niece. His father played the viola da gamba; relatives lived in Italy and the Netherlands. Tilmouth, 144–5. On the family see n. 2, above, and Stephen Bann, Under the Sign: John Bargrave as Collector, Traveller, and Witness (Ann Arbor, 1994). ⁴ Istanbul may be a contraction of Greek eis tin polis (to the city). Under Ottoman rule the name Konstantiniyye was current. Jason Goodwin, Lords of the Horizons: A History of the Ottoman Empire (London, 1999), 55.

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admiring comparisons to ancient Rome. It stretched from Baghdad to the Crimea, and from Athens to Belgrade and Budapest. Instead of a monolithic Islamic state, Europeans found, in the words of the writer Jason Goodwin, ‘a Turkish empire, but most of its dignitaries and officers, and its shock troops, too, were Balkan Slavs. Its ceremonial was Byzantine, its dignity Persian, its wealth Egyptian, its letters Arabic’.⁵ German observers were bemused by its ‘strange government’, neither ‘a monarchy, an aristocracy, a democracy or triumvirate’.⁶ By necessity a flexible structure, the Ottoman Empire held together many nationalities and religions. Jews, Christians, and Muslims coexisted relatively unrestricted by authorities at a time when Western countries looked back on inquisition trials, witch-hunts, and thirty years of religious warfare. Visitors thought that seventy-two languages were spoken in the Empire, most of them daily in the capital.⁷ Constantinople was at least three times the size of London.⁸ English commerce with the Sublime Porte, historians believe, exceeded that of other European countries in certain areas such as wool or silk, and under Elizabeth I, ships brought goods prohibited by papal edict, such as scrap lead and metal (from razed ecclesiastical buildings), to Constantinople.⁹ European rulers regularly fantasized about Muslim countries in courtly spectacle and the public theatre. In England alone, statistics cite as many as seventy-one dramatic works on the topic between the early sixteenth century and 1660.¹⁰ In the German Empire, tournaments included masked ‘Ottoman’ combatants known by their moustache and crooked nose (see Fig. 19). This facial stereotype characterized stage Turks in many kinds of European spectacle. The French court production Grand bal de la douairière de Billebahaut (Grand Ballet of the Dowager of Bilbao) (1626), danced in the Grande Salle du Louvre and later repeated before the citizenry in the town hall of Paris, provides a noteworthy example of an Ottoman entry.¹¹ Bocan, the famous choreographer who had contributed to English court masques, was involved in this ballet but it ⁵ Goodwin, p. xiv. ⁶ Peter Meienberger, Johann Rudolf Schmid zum Schwarzenhorn als kaiserlicher Resident in Konstantinopel in den Jahren 1629–1643 (Frankfurt, 1973), 125, secret report by the imperial resident Johann Rudolf Schmid, 8 June 1651; my trans. ⁷ Bargrave, Diary, 121. ⁸ 600,000–750,000 in the 17th cent. Halil Inalcık and Donald Quataert (gen. eds.), An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire 1300–1914 (Cambridge, 1994), 493. ⁹ Ibid. 482, 503 (statistics for silk vary). S. A. Skilliter, William Harborne and the Trade with Turkey, 1578–1582 (Oxford, 1977), 22–3. ¹⁰ Linda McJannet, ‘Bringing in a Persian’, Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England, 12 (1999), 236–67, at 240–1. ¹¹ M. McGowan, L’Art du ballet de cour en France, 1581–1643 (Paris, 1963), 149–53. Designs of oriental entries reprod. in Marie-Françoise Christout, Le Ballet de cour au XVIIesiècle (Geneva, 1987), 124, 130–2.

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Figure 19. Sixteenth-century tournament vizards: ‘Moor’ (right), ‘Turk’ (left). ‘Mohren- und Türkenmaske als Wechselvisiere’. Prague, 1557. Inv. no. B 69/B 62. Hofjagd- und Rüstkammer, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

is unclear whether he was responsible for this particular section.¹² The plot rehearsed the conventional idea of a ballet of nations, with groups of Ottoman and Persian characters representing Asia; the text was mostly produced by René Bordier, a poet who also belonged to the circle of Queen Henrietta Maria. The dancer Marais, much appreciated for his comic talent, played the Grand Turk with an enormous nose and a moustache. It was a sensational entry: Marais rode in, perched on a real horse, and accompanied by courtiers cross-dressing as ladies of the harem (the brother of Louis XIII being among them). The Qur’an was also brought on stage, carried by two boys, and followed by the ‘Prophet’ himself, impersonated by Sieur Barronnat as a figure with the stereotyped nose and a long white beard (see Fig. 20). Belligerent doctors of the Qur’an concluded the entry, declaring that they were ready to ‘deal blows where arguments did not prevail’.¹³ The colour green, then already associated ¹² Bocan certainly composed the branles for the ladies of the dowager of Bilbao. ¹³ ‘Nous commençons à coups de poing, | Quand nous cessons à coups de langue.’ Grand bal de la douairière de Billebahaut, in P. Lacroix (ed.), Ballets et mascarades de cour de Henri III à Louis XIV (1581–1652), 6 vols. (1868–70; repr. Geneva, 1968), iii. 167. Further page references will appear in the text.

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Figure 20. Daniel Rabel, design for ‘Entrée de Mahomet et ses Docteurs’, Grand bal de la douairière de Billebahaut (1626), Collection Hennin, QB 1626 51 B 8064. Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris.

with Islam, dominated Mohammed’s costume. The text mocked his divine foresight (‘je ne suis garant de rien’ (I can’t guarantee for anything), 164). In his verses the prophet submitted himself—and his followers—to the mercy of the French king in a gesture hardly in keeping with the political realities of 1626: Je rends tous les Turcs resjouïs, Et tant de force en eux j’assemble, Qu’au seul bruit du nom de Louis Il n’est pas un d’eux qui ne tremble. (I make all Turks rejoice, And I fill them with such force, That at the mere mention of the name ‘Louis’ There is not one of them who does not tremble.) (167)

‘Mohammed’ moved slowly; as the text commented, ‘you cannot really believe that he learnt to dance in Paris’ (161). Having thus established the inferiority of the prophet’s gait, the ballet culminated in the entry of Europe, ‘the centre of fine dancers’ (187). The logic of the argument would have suggested a corps

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de ballet from Paris at this point, yet, confusingly, Spanish vagabonds burst upon the dance floor and diverted the public with fast-paced, elegant sarabandes to the sound of guitars and ‘the sweet accent of their voices’ (‘la douceur des accents de leurs voix’, 187). The dancers turned out to be exiled Muslims from Granada seeking free passage in France, and Bordier’s text stressed that their art merited a friendly reception and a royal passport. If the Grand bal de la douairière de Billebahaut rehearsed certain anti-Islamic stereotypes these were not sustained throughout. A member of the royal family performed as a sultana; furthermore, the Spanish-Muslim ending, with its sweet foreign accents and exotic guitars,¹⁴ questioned the pre-eminence of Christian European theatre culture. Henrietta Maria had already left for England when the Dowager of Bilbao presented herself at Paris, but the taste for the exotic in French ballet de cour certainly became apparent in her English entertainments. As early as 1628, on a spa trip to Wellingborough, she planned a masque in which her ladies were to perform with turbans and swords.¹⁵ The queen rehearsed with her entourage near the so-called Red Well, where she had set up colourful tents. To locals, the arrangement must have appeared like a small summer camp of oriental lady soldiers. Did the Catholic queen playfully express her difference from English Protestantism by staging herself as a Muslim? If so, she demonstrated a clear preference for Persian rather than Ottoman subjects. ‘Persian figures were associated with majesty, authority, and wisdom’, Linda McJannet writes, as ancient Persia was regarded as ‘one of the four divinely sanctioned monarchies’ (together with the Assyrian, Graeco-Macedonian, and Roman empires).¹⁶ In Caroline drama, Persian plots often served as glamorous backdrops for love intrigues, setting the scene for oriental romance, as in Henrietta Maria’s Temple of Love (1635) and William Cartwright’s The Royal Slave, performed for the king and queen at Oxford one year later. Persians were also regarded as sun-worshippers.¹⁷ This tied in nicely with Henrietta Maria’s image of herself as a queen of light. ¹⁴ The OED lists Jonson’s The Gypsies Metamorphos’d (1621) as the first reference to ‘guitar’ in English; not widely known at that time, the instrument must have been thought suitably exotic for the gypsies. Walls, 274. See also James Tyler, ‘The Guitar and Its Performance from the Fifteenth to Eighteenth Centuries’, Performance Practice Review, 10/1 (1997), 61–70. ¹⁵ Bill, Michaelmas Quarter 1628, for a masque at Wellingborough, 12 Aug. 1628. PRO LR 5/65. We only know that the masque ‘should have taken place’ on 12 August. It could have been performed later after some delay; after all, costumes and properties had already been delivered. A performance would have had to take place before 23 Aug. (or within a few days thereafter), for on that day Buckingham was assassinated, which urged a return of the queen to London. ¹⁶ McJannet on Caroline drama, ‘Bringing in a Persian’, 242, 245. ¹⁷ Ibid., 254–5, 267.

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In The Temple of Love, Indian dancers, Brahmins, and noble Persian youths lined up before an Indian setting. Designs for the antimasquers were lifted straight from Rabel’s drafts for ballets de cour, among them one for the Grand bal de la douairière de Billebahaut.¹⁸ Henrietta Maria herself appeared as Indamora, the glorious Indian queen of Narsinga, who ‘with her beauty’s light’ kindled the fire of chaste love in her observers.¹⁹ Henrietta-Indamora’s dress was singular because it had been decorated with feathers on the sleeves and skirt—an innovation hitherto unseen in the designs for lady masquers; in addition her headgear departed from the customary plumage which so often billowed from the neo-classical headgear of Jonesian grand masquers. Henrietta Maria’s strange tiara of sky-coloured, watchet, white, and willow-coloured feathers recalled the New World.²⁰ In performance the audience was afforded an all-encompassing visual experience of the exotic, as the queen and her ladies appeared before an ‘Indian landscapt’ with ‘trees of strange form and colour’ and ‘strange beasts and birds’.²¹ At the time Henrietta Maria kept parrots, attended by Richard Scutt, one of her grooms of the chamber and pensioners, who was also in charge of props for her masques. These rare birds would have been associated with her, and it is tempting to imagine them integrated in Jones’s Eastern scenery.²² The queen had also chosen very particular colours for her gown: watchet, a light blue shade noted for its visibility, and isabella, a yellow tone, which was not used for any other courtly costume in a Caroline masque.²³ It has been argued that the queen’s self-display rehearsed the exotic as a trope of ‘renewal’, and the innovative elements in this masque—the choice of colour, deployment of accessories, scenic backdrop, and hints at exotic animals in the royal household—certainly confirm such views.²⁴ As Martin Butler has remarked about The Temple of Love, ‘the emphasis on remoteness and strangeness is conducive to a magical conception of kingship’.²⁵ The queen’s visible ¹⁸ SDIJ, 144–8. ¹⁹ ll. 26–7, 131, in OS ii. 600–1. Design based on an ‘African Indian Girl’ from Cesare Vecellio, Vecellio’s Renaissance Costume Book (New York, 1977), pp. 624–5, no. 315. ²⁰ Bill by Peter Lermitt, feathermaker, Lady Day Quarter 1634/5. PRO LR 5/66. Jacobean pageants and entertainments had established an iconographic tradition of the exotic by drawing upon accessories such as feathers; see Richmond Barbour, Before Orientalism: London’s Theatre of the East, 1576–1626 (Cambridge, 2003), 87–8. ²¹ ll. 365–7, in OS ii. 603. ²² In the 1630s, Scutt received £36.10s. per annum for keeping the parrots. NLW MS Wynnstay 179 for the accounts of 1635, fol. 13v. ²³ See Ch. 6, above. ²⁴ See Barbour, Before Orientalism, 87–8. ²⁵ Martin Butler, ‘Reform or Reverence? The Politics of the Caroline Masque’, in J. R. Mulryne and M. Shewring (eds.), Theatre and Government under the Early Stuarts (Cambridge, 1993), 118–56, at 143.

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magic, expressed in a bright, colourful costume, eclipsed with ease that of the false magicians who had roamed the antimasques, and illuminated the whole court during her dance. The final song released the audience with a promise: ‘may youthful blessings still increase’.²⁶ The Temple of Love created an exotic royal mystique, leaving the audience with wonder and hope. By eschewing anti-Islamic stereotypes, Henrietta Maria’s masques differ from other forms of spectacle of the period. Mock battles, for instance, pitted ‘Saracens’ against Christian knights. In seventeenth-century usage, a ‘Saracen’ was an Arab, or by extension a Muslim; another particularly prominent meaning, however, referred to courtly entertainment enjoyed on horseback, where a ‘Saracen’ was a Turk’s head tilted at with a lance. The word inspired English sartorial vocabulary: ‘sarsenet’ (or ‘sarcenet’) derived from pannus saracenicus (Saracen cloth).²⁷ This fine, soft silk material which came in many colours was an extremely popular choice for masque costumes. While a distinct Persian group had been favourably presented in Henrietta Maria’s masque, William Barriffe’s Mars, His Triumph (published in 1639) portrayed ‘Saracens’ as hybrid Turkish-Persian antagonists; they appeared dressed in Turkish and Persian dress and wielded scimitars, short Barbary guns, and Turkish daggers. Mars, His Triumph was performed in the Merchant Taylors’ Hall by gentlemen of the Artillery Garden, with the purpose of drilling London’s citizenry by way of an oriental military exercise (see also Chapter 9). The idea of Christians defeating ‘Saracens’ was conventional; Barriffe’s spectacle, however, stands out in its attention to what might be called ethnological detail. Barriffe’s production made an effort to replicate foreign sounds and gestures, and its printed version even included an illustration of an ensign with an Arabic motto. The ‘Saracens’ greeted their audience ‘after the Persian maner: putting their left hands upon the tops of their Turbants and Shashes, bowing their bodies forward, and so passed out at the garden doore’.²⁸ In the period, the Near East was invoked by instruments of Southern European rather than oriental provenance²⁹—in the 1626 ballet at the Louvre, we remember, the ‘Muslims from Granada’ used guitars. Barriffe’s battle, however, gathered momentum to the beats of Turkish drums and a ‘hideous noise making pipe’ made out of buffalo horn.³⁰ His strange orchestra represents rare early evidence for the use of actual Turkish ²⁶ l. 514, in OS ii. 604. ²⁷ Both terms OED, online reference. ²⁸ William Barriffe, Mars, His Triumph (London, 1639), 6. ²⁹ An early instance of Turkish instruments in Paris theatre is Georges de Scudéry’s Ibrahim (1643), which saw a band of ‘atabales’ (drums) and ‘hautbois à la turque’. John Powell, Music and Theatre in France, 1600–1800 (Oxford, 2000), 90–1. ³⁰ Mars, His Triumph, 2.

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instruments in Western music and drama. At the end of the skirmish, the Christians won, of course, but ‘the Turks found so good quarter and kind usage, that now they are all turned Christians, . . . and are now either Merchants or Shopkeepers for the most part’.³¹ In Barriffe’s fantasy, the cultural practices of the English cancelled out all religious differences. The ‘Saracens’ fought until they discovered the benefits of Western trade. The English sense of business was universally applicable. In his modest fashion, Barriffe could be regarded as an early advocate of economic globalisation based upon an ideal Western model. A similarly global stance was taken in Charles’s court masque Britannia Triumphans (1638). The masque’s theme of pirates has been regarded as an official excuse to levy ship money;³² the problem, was, however, quite real and loomed close to home. English trading expeditions were not only captured in the Mediterranean; at the time, the country itself experienced coastal raids by Dutch ships and even Muslim pirates from Northern Africa. By the end of Charles’s reign, pirate vessels were even known to cruise up the Thames for booty, a situation the government would control only more than a decade later.³³ In the months leading up to the court masque, a Moroccan embassy had arrived in London. The ambassador, Al-Qa’id Jawhar ibn’ Abd Allah, a Portuguese convert, had brought over 300 released English captives in his train, a gesture of good will which secured him immense public attention. Although polyglot, the envoy chose not to, or could not, speak English, as Charles was addressed in Arabic.³⁴ Significantly, Britannia Triumphans was attended by the Moroccan diplomat. As the Tuscan resident reported, he was treated with particular attention: Last Sunday the king performed his masque accompanied by fourteen young gentlemen, the first of the realm, and it went off very beautifully. Only the Moroccan ambassador was invited, and he sat in a separate box not very far from the queen’s state. The others were not invited . . . the French ambassador went, but as a private gentleman and servant of the queen. The Spanish ambassador could have gone incognito, but not wishing to he stayed at home and sent his staff.³⁵ ³¹ Mars, His Triumph, 48. ³² J. Harris, S. Orgel, and R. Strong, The King’s Arcadia: Inigo Jones and the Stuart Court ([London], 1973), 166, 179. ³³ Nabil Matar, Islam in Britain, 1558–1685 (Cambridge, 1998), 7. He cites Sir John Eliot, viceadmiral of Devon under Charles I, who said that the sea surrounding the British Isles ‘seem’d theirs’. By 1642, the number of Englishmen held captive by Muslims was estimated at 5,000. ³⁴ Matar discusses the visit in Islam in Britain, 43–4, and Turks, Moors, and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery (New York, 1999), 35–8. ³⁵ Diplomatic dispatch, 22 Jan. 1638. John Orrell, ‘Amerigo Salvetti and the London Court Theatre, 1616–1640’, Theatre Survey, 20/1 (1979), 1–26, at 23. The masque was performed on 17 Jan. 1638; the ambassador had arrived some time in Oct. 1637. See George Glover, The Arrivall and Intertainements of the Embassador, Alkaid Jaurar Ben Abdella (London, 1637).

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A slightly different version of events emerges from the notebooks of John Finet, Charles’s master of ceremony. Accordingly, neither the French nor the Spanish ambassador had been officially invited but were given the opportunity to attend in private.³⁶ With respect to the Moroccan guest, Finet seems to have offered an informal invitation (‘my intimation for their welcome to the same maske, if they should come voluntarily to it’). A large compartment ‘at the left hand behind his majestyes seate’ had been reserved for the occasion, but the Moroccan envoy and his staff were by mistake directed to another box, and ‘the king the next day condemned me for their placing so obscurely, though it were no fault of myne’.³⁷ Finet’s memoirs record the blunders in the arrangements for the evening yet they certainly prove Charles’s concern that Al-Qa’id Jawhar would be placed as prominently as possible. Indeed, the themes of Britannia Triumphans raise the question of whether the masque had been specially designed for the visitor. The guest may not have understood a word of the text; he was, however, accompanied by his interpreter and associate, one Mr Blake. Throughout the masque, verbal information complemented visual clues and stock characters. Having arrived with English captives freshly released from North African slavery, the ambassador could have ventured an informed guess as to the maritime motives of the proscenium arch, to which figures of ‘captives’ had been added.³⁸ The character of ‘Imposture’ referred to ‘grandsire Mahomet’ (l. 136), and in a ‘mock romansa’ a Christian knight defended his damsel from a stage Turk (the episode contains a joke about her ‘sarcenet dress’ in l. 421). On this occasion Inigo Jones drafted two figures of the stage Turk and opted for the version with the more prominent nose (see Fig. 21).³⁹ The text described the character as ‘a giant in a coat of mail, . . . in his hand an iron mace, a great roll of black and white on his head, a Saracen’s face with great black moustachoes’, and the Christian knight offended him with a reference to his ‘hooked-nose’.⁴⁰ The masque, and the mock-Spenserian ‘romansa’ in particular, have been regarded as a swipe at the ‘iconoclastic tendencies of Protestantism’. As Martin Butler notes, Inigo Jones had created antimasque costumes for Knipperdolling and John of Leyden, the Anabaptist leaders of Münster—characters ‘whose presence would have alluded to hysterical fears of popular communism and ³⁶ Ceremonies of Charles I: The Note Books of John Finet 1628–1641, ed. Albert J. Loomie (New York, 1987), 240, Jan. 1638. ³⁷ Ibid. 242. ³⁸ For Matar, these ‘captives’ alluded to actual English captives. Turks, Moors, and Englishmen, 73. ³⁹ OS ii, rejected design of ‘A Turk’, pp. 699–700, no. 378, showing a figure with a moustache and a straight nose, wearing a turban and carrying a club. ‘A Giant’, pp. 698–99, no. 375, design used in the masque. ⁴⁰ ll. 368–71, 414, in OS ii. 665.

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Figure 21. Inigo Jones, design for a ‘Giant’, in Britannia Triumphans (1638). Orgel and Strong, no. 375; Simpson & Bell, no. 295. The Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth. Reproduced by permission of the Chatsworth Settlement Trustees. Photograph: Photographic Survey, Courtauld Institute of Art.

apocalyptic millenarianism’.⁴¹ Given the specific audience and oriental features of Davenant’s production, this argument could be taken further: Britannia Triumphans expressed religious fears in a broad sense, presenting caricatures of both radical Protestantism and militant Islam. A visual rhetoric of containment informed the scenes and dances. With regard to the captives supporting the proscenium arch, the problem of piracy had been aestheticized in the spirit ⁴¹ Butler, ‘Reform or Reverence?’, 149–50.

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of Michelangelo. While these captives remained static, Charles and his ensemble of heroic masquers stepped forward in a mobile response to the world represented by the audience, among the latter the well-intentioned ambassador of a potentially hostile power. A collective performance may result in an enabling and reassuring experience, which, as has been argued, was the case in Britannia Triumphans (see Chapter 4, above). Assertive diplomacy in action, the courtly choreographies demonstrated effortless control. Temporarily, the Caroline court vindicated not only ‘distant seas infested with pirates’, but indeed celebrated, as the masque text firmly stated, ‘the glory of the western world’.⁴²

ANGLO-OT TOMAN INTERESTS AND BARGRAVE’S MASQUE

The Occasion Nine years after Britannia Triumphans, the glory had worn off, and Robert Bargrave crossed distant seas to secure English trading interests in difficult times. The Civil War complicated affairs for both diplomats and merchants abroad. The unstable situation in Whitehall threatened the legitimacy of diplomatic representatives, which had repercussions on English business, not least in Constantinople. Bargrave had travelled in the train of Sir Thomas Bendish, his wife, son, and five daughters. Bendish was to succeed Sir Sackville Crowe as the new English ambassador at the Sublime Porte.⁴³ A diplomatic victim of the Civil War, Bendish faced the uncomfortable situation that he had been accredited by both a deposed king (soon to be executed) and a new government of questionable authority. Sure enough, Crowe plainly refused to acknowledge his successor. Even worse, yet another contender—Sir Henry Hide, self-styled agent of Charles II—arrived in Constantinople to claim the post.⁴⁴ As Michael Tilmouth notes, Ottoman officials at once realized the lucrative ⁴² ll. 19–21, in OS ii. 662. ⁴³ I prefer the definition ‘English’ to ‘British’. As Clare Jackson reminds me, both are used interchangeably following the union of 1603 whereby James VI of Scotland also became James I of England. But until the political union of 1707, it is incorrect to use the term ‘British’ in a political sense, since there was no entity of that name. Seventeenth-century subjects (and diplomatic representatives) remained ‘English’, ‘Scottish’, ‘Irish’, etc. (letter, 4 Aug. 2003). ⁴⁴ For a brilliant analysis of the Bendish-Crowe-Hide affair, and the impact of the Civil War on Anglo-Ottoman relations, see Mark Charles Fissel and Daniel Goffman, ‘Viewing the Scaffold from Istanbul: The Bendysh-Hyde Affair, 1647–1651’, Albion, 22/3 (1990), 421–48. Goffman refers to Bargrave in Britons in the Ottoman Empire, 1642–1660 (Seattle, 1998) but hardly mentions the masque.

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possibilities in the friction between the various English would-be ambassadors. It cost the Levant Company a staggering £80,000 to establish Bendish, their preferred candidate.⁴⁵ Quite accurately, foreign observers held the opinion that the company had the power to make and break ambassadors. According to the Habsburg resident Schmid, an English ambassador’s business consists in nothing else than protecting the travelling merchants, both at the Sublime Porte and throughout Turkey, and in settling their differences. Throughout the orient, these merchants keep a considerable trade going, they exceed all other nations in riches and mighty, huge ships. From which the Turks greatly profit due to fees and customs; often a single English ship has to pay a fee of up to 60,000 dollars before it may discharge its freight. So much for that nation.⁴⁶

Given that it was Bendish’s main task to defend the interests of the Levant Company, members of the Company played a crucial role in the diplomatic relations with the Sublime Porte. Bargrave and his employer Modyford regularly joined Bendish at audiences, in particular concerning negotiations to free English slaves in the Ottoman capital.⁴⁷ The 1640s and 1650s were not particularly successful either from an Ottoman point of view. Bargrave lived in Constantinople under the rule of Sultan Ibrahim ‘the Mad’ (1640–8), who suffered a violent death after an uprising, and his successor Mehmed IV (1648–87); these years were dominated by galloping inflation, disastrous military campaigns, popular unrest, and a corrupt administration.⁴⁸ Bargrave dryly noted that all great officers were elected ‘not by the weight of theyr meritts but of theyr purses: Those again sell theyr under Offices; and thus from the Vezir to the meanest are all places bought & sold among them’⁴⁹—a method on which the Ottoman court had no monopoly, given the promotional practices of Stuart kings. High-ranking officers and dignitaries could expect quick and drastic demotions. Probably in the spring or summer of 1650, Bargrave was asked for an entertainment to celebrate the wedding of his master, Modyford, to Lady Abigail, Bendish’s daughter.⁵⁰ Political calculation might have led to the match. At the ⁴⁵ Tilmouth, ‘Music on the Travels’, 146. Bargrave, Diary, 20. ⁴⁶ Meienberger, Schmid, 229–30; my trans. Venetian lion dollars were a standard currency at the time. ⁴⁷ Bargrave, Diary, 84. ⁴⁸ Bugra Atsiz (ed.), Das osmanische Reich um die Mitte des 17. Jahrhunderts: Nach den Chroniken des Vecîhî (1637–1660) und des Mehmed Halifa (1633–1660) (Munich, 1977), 110. Goodwin, Lords of the Horizon, 174–6. ⁴⁹ Bargrave, Diary, 122. ⁵⁰ According to the masque text, Bargrave had noticed glances between the couple for the past two years (which places the event after 1649, given his acquaintance with both parties in 1647). He refers

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time the relationship between the ambassador and his Levant benefactors had cooled: the former’s policies had disappointed many English traders, who now considered withdrawing their support.⁵¹ In times of crisis, Bendish was well advised to establish family ties with Modyford, a brother of the governor of Jamaica and kinsman of the Duke of Albermarle as well as a wily merchant with excellent connections to the Sublime Porte.⁵² In these days, Belgrad, a village founded by Serbian expatriates not far from Constantinople, was a favourite summer retreat for both foreigners and Ottoman officials.⁵³ The English spent their time in a fair countryside palace with sumptuous gardens and forests, about six miles from the city, where, as Bargrave writes, ‘we had many pleasing divertisements, & sundry Priveledges graunted us by our noble Patron’. The wedding masque was probably composed in this garden and intended for performance on site. The host, one Mehmet Efendi, had generously left everything at the disposal of the English (‘the palace we commanded as our own’). Mehmet Efendi cannot be identified; but his position of chief military judge (Bargrave describes him as kadı asker of Rumelia and Anatolia) was extremely prestigious.⁵⁴ Only two chief judges held office in the Ottoman Empire at the same time, one responsible for the European part of the Empire, and the other for Anatolia. The mufti alone had superior legal authority. As the Habsburg agent at Constantinople put it, the judges joined ‘councils on matters of the Empire; they have the power to make the Sultan ratify decisions passed there, suffering no objection; they may even press him . . . to finance wars out of his personal treasury’.⁵⁵ Yet the prestigious position was extremely volatile at the time Bargrave wrote the masque: between 1649 and 1653 alone, five pairs of judges had been dismissed; they often met a violent end.⁵⁶ The fact that Bendish and members of the Levant Company were guests of one of the highest-ranking officials in the Empire reflects the excellent personal to Lady Bendish’s death (before Nov. 1649). The event’s springtime outdoors setting suggests spring or early summer 1650 (Bargrave, Diary, 80, 88–9, 91, 100). ⁵¹ Ibid., 20. ⁵² On Modyford’s family, see ibid., 21. ⁵³ The forest of Belgrad still exists north of Istanbul, but tracking the proposed site of the entertainment is hopeless, given the vague indications. ⁵⁴ Bargrave, Diary, 99–100. Mehmet Efendi must have been responsible for one district first, then the other. ⁵⁵ Meienberger, Schmid, 126; my trans. ⁵⁶ Vecîhî alludes to five pairs of judges, none of them a ‘Mehmet Efendi’. Bargrave’s Mehmet might be Memikzâde Efendi, kadı asker of Rumelia from 1649 to 1650, or Hocazâde Me’ûd Efendi, kadı asker of Anatolia in 1650 (see n. 48, above). In Britons in the Ottoman Empire, 181–2, Goffman refers to the summer house of the seyhulislam Bahai Mehmed Efendi, who had business with Bendish at the time. Yet as this particular official loathed Bendish he is unlikely to have been the friendly host.

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contacts of English diplomats and traders with the Sublime Porte at the time. In turn, Mehmet Efendi’s generosity also elucidates how Ottoman dignitaries in an insecure position capitalized on connections with important foreigners. Mehmet Efendi hosted an ambassador who apparently offered military support to the Ottoman state and a bridegroom whose business swept substantial revenues into the badly depleted treasury.⁵⁷ A wedding as a public display of his special relationship with the English would have made sense from Mehmet Efendi’s point of view. Yet difficulties beset Bargrave’s lyrical attempts from the start. Rumours soiled Modyford’s reputation and Lady Abigail’s feelings about her suitor changed. The young author too struggled for kind words in his masque. Long after his Constantinople mission, Bargrave referred to ‘the Torture of a seaven yeers Servitude’ under Modyford who in his ‘studyed peevishness . . . plotted to torment mee’. The merchant exploited his apprentice (‘I had worne the Skinn off from my fingers & elbowes with incessant writing’). As Bargrave complained, ‘if sometimes I . . . was employing my spare time in Study or in musique to find me so, seemd very unpleasing to him’.⁵⁸ Not surprisingly, the wedding masque extols the qualities of Lady Abigail, while the bridegroom is relegated to conspicuous absence. As if to highlight the precariousness of the nuptial arrangements, Bargrave’s entertainment is framed by mayhem. In the diary, poems and tunes are tucked in between graphic descriptions of a plague epidemic, attacks by inebriate Turks, and the ‘gaunche’ (here people were thrust onto huge pointed hooks—exotic Ottoman torture methods were a staple ingredient in European travelogues).⁵⁹ Yet Bargrave left a valuable, detailed account of the scenes, music, and dances, as they were supposed to be performed. The spectacle falls into five parts: an epithalamium, a dialogue between Art and Nature, a duet of a forward lass and a backward lad, a ‘Masque for Fower persons to be habited like the :4: Seasons’, and an ‘Antick’. The masque concludes with an afterthought: a half-serious anti-epithalamium insincerely laments the cancellation of the event. Bargrave blames Modyford, whose ‘rotten Love fell fowlely off & defeated his Ladies beleefe’.⁶⁰ The author appears to have been relieved that Lady Abigail was spared an unpleasant husband. ⁵⁷ English ships were dragged off to the Candia expedition in 1649 despite Bendish’s (official?) protests; see Sir Paul Rycaut, The History of the Turkish Empire, From the Year 1623, to the Year 1677 (London, 1687), 83. According to Venetian reports in 1651, Bendish had offered thirty vessels against Venice. Goffman, Britons in the Ottoman Empire, 184. ⁵⁸ Bargrave, Diary, 87, 214, 216. ⁵⁹ Ibid., 87, 102. ⁶⁰ Ibid., 93, 97, 99.

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Music, Costume, and Dances Bargrave assembled his manuscript diary from copious notes or indeed a draft copy.⁶¹ Yet he may partly have relied on his memory, for lacunae occur in his masque text. In one choreography he briefly notes ‘figure forgotten’, and he leaves out an entire solo dance. There are also occasional slight errors in the music notation; thus, certain scores lack a beat or two to match the corresponding dance steps.⁶² More than once, Bargrave does not reveal how to arrive at certain figures (a flaw he shared with many of his professional colleagues). His description leaves out basic steps such as ‘single’ and ‘double’, as John Ward has pointed out;⁶³ even so, their absence from written instruction does not mean their absence in the actual dance. Bargrave may have relied on a shorthand system: thus, ‘lead up’ might mean, according to contemporary usage, ‘to lead up with a double or two chassés’. Such conventions could have allowed him to be brief yet specific. This brings us to the question of the purpose of Bargrave’s notes. As Tilmouth argues, Bargrave needed ‘to spell out every detail’ of the dances to his ‘emigré amateurs’.⁶⁴ Yet, as the dance chapters in this book have shown, performers at the time were likely to memorize their repertoire by doing rather than reading. Bargrave had little interest in leaving any reader with an exhaustive guide to his dances. He simply wished to keep a record for himself. In this case, abridged information was more than sufficient. The minimum cast required eight people: one musician, five dancers, and two boys. Dancers and boys may have doubled as singers. Bargrave could have taken care of the music; a competent viol player, he once even performed before the Master of the Chapel of Prince Matteo de’ Medici at Siena.⁶⁵ All dancing roles were probably designed for performance by a male cast, as balletic conventions of the time assigned grotesque parts to men. Tilmouth notes that the trading communities included few women ‘of a respectable sort’; generally, only ambassadors brought along female family members while merchants and their staff went abroad on their own.⁶⁶ A ‘woman’ was to participate in the ‘Antick’ but since this part involved an onstage birth, young Levant employees rather than one of Bendish’s five daughters must have stepped in. The initial epithalamium invokes Fame giving birth on the occasion of the wedding. Bargrave insists rather too pointedly on the fact that certain scandals ⁶¹ Ibid., 39; Brennan’s excellent commentary. ⁶² e.g., the penultimate dance of the seasons ought to have six bars instead of the five and a half in the second part, so as to conform with the choreography. Bargrave has also ‘forgotten’ a figure (ibid. 95–6). ⁶³ Ward, ‘Newly Devis’d Measures’, 136. ⁶⁴ Tilmouth, ‘Music on the Travels,’ 159. ⁶⁵ Bargrave, Diary, 63. ⁶⁶ Tilmouth, ‘Music on the Travels’, 148.

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(whose nature is not revealed) have now been wiped off Modyford’s record; the exhortation that the bride may find her future husband ‘ever constant, free, & kind’⁶⁷ rings hollow, given what we hear about his character elsewhere in the diary. Then follows a conventional dialogue between Art and Nature, to be sung by two treble voices. Bargrave mentions how he taught it to Lady Abigail (apparently, Modyford did not take, or was not offered, any classes with his employee). Later, a country wench and her admirer sing a dialogue, joined by a chorus. Again, this piece is presented to Lady Abigail only. The lass pleads to her lover ‘to the Italian Fuggi, fuggi’: Fond captivated Lover in vaine you seek to cover the silent fire of Love ⫽ Desire is in your brest: (contein’d) Griefs grow less revealed, but Fires increase concealed, which being pent, are violent most fierce when most restreind; Love clouded is a Poison, but disclosd, a Be’me [balm]; confess but in a Teare & it shall quench thy Flame: That but once related Thy Heat shall be abate’d, & I will lay my Charmes that it no more than warmes Ambition of Fruition in th’embraces of our armes.⁶⁸

‘Fuggi, fuggi’ literally means a ‘scramble or stampede’;⁶⁹ an impression borne out by the irregularity of the verse. Bargrave may have resorted to a widely popular Italian tune of the same name, to which the lines can be fitted. Fuggi, fuggi, otherwise known as Ballo di Mantova, was incorporated in the ‘balletto delle virtù’ in the Barberini opera Il Sant’Alessio (c.1631).⁷⁰ The tune was published as ‘Fugga, Fugga, or the Italian Rant’ in English music manuals for cittern and lute and as ‘Italian Rant’ in John Playford’s Dancing Master (1652 edn.). It was revamped in countless ballads.⁷¹ If Bargrave used the tune he faced more ⁶⁷ Bargrave, Diary, 89. ⁶⁸ Ibid. 92. ⁶⁹ Brennan’s explanation, ibid. ⁷⁰ Frederick Hammond, Music and Spectacle in Baroque Rome (New Haven, 1994), 197. ⁷¹ Supplement, Playford’s 1657 Dancing Master (3rd edn.), no. 31, ‘Italian Rant’. See Ward, ‘Newly Devis’d Measures’, 137–8, with music transcriptions; further, Ward, ‘Music for A Handefull of Pleasant Delites’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 10/3 (1957), 151–80, at 161.

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syllables than notes. This problem could have been solved in the flexible manner of a ballad singer who improvised new verses to well-known tunes. Sung to Fuggi, fuggi, the text—a multitude of words squeezed into a lively score— would have enhanced the thrusting, stampeding character of the music. Then follows what we might call the ‘Dance of the Four Seasons’. Here Bargrave dwells on the costumes of his protagonists. These rely on simple properties, such as flowers, fruits, and leaves, which might have been procured from Mehmet Efendi’s garden. Spring is supposed to be covered with grass and blossoming twigs; one wonders how the dancer could have peered through the disguise. Summer is envisaged with branches of fruits. These may drop when the dancer moves, therefore Bargrave advises that they be ‘ty’d so as not to fall’. Autumn wears parched leaves in a way that ‘some may fall off with dauncing’. Here the effect of loose decoration is intended: the falling leaves suggest wind. Autumn’s is a dynamic costume which moves by itself. Winter, by contrast, has been straitlaced, ‘his body in the barke of a Tree, one Arme standing up like a branch bound up in boughs, the other closs to his body; a cap of moss upon his head & face, with holes for his eyes: rotten Sticks standing up from his closs arme over his head: dry’d boughs or Barke upon his thighs, & Leafes on his Leggs’.⁷² Such a disguise would have impaired the dancer’s agility. In contrast to all other seasons, Winter could definitely not have moved his arms. The tight costume would have frozen the dancer’s movements and thereby characterized the role. Bargrave’s description betrays a concern with how costumes work in practice. He is anxious that all garments cover the performers entirely, for ‘No mans Face must be discernd, but as neer as may be all disfigurd into the shape of Trees’. Furthermore, the costumes not only suggest the role but determine the way dancers are moving. This effect is consciously intended by the designer: Bargrave regards costume itself as performance. This simple and yet deep understanding of what a theatrical dress may do for its wearer distinguishes Bargrave’s account from many texts for grand court masques. Ben Jonson or William Davenant mention the splendour of theatrical fashion but give little advice on how to wear it, or what problems might occur during performance. Next to a description of costumes, Bargrave produces tunes and their respective choreographies. His method is reminiscent of the way ‘measures’ or country dances of the time were noted down. Like other contemporary English sources, Bargrave restricts himself to a mostly verbal description of dances: Sp: & So: lead up, while Autumne enters, look back, & start & turne round: 2.d time :Sp: & So: lead towards :Au: & all turne backs triangulare :A: passes between Sp: & So: who ⁷² All costume descriptions in Bargrave, Diary, 94.

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changing sides all fall into a Triangle againe :2.o part 1:st time: Sp. faces :Au: while So: falls back; So: faces :A: while Sp: falls back: Spr: faces So: while :A: falls back; & turne again off into a triangle :2.d time :Sp. hands with So: & chace :A: who turnes his back; then So: & :A: chace Sp: then Sp: & A. chace Somer All falling off into a ranke:—s s a:⁷³

Playford’s first edition of country dances (1651) had included symbols for men and women and some select configurations of dancers. These usually indicate the dancers’ initial position in longways (couples lined up behind each other), a circle, or square. In Bargrave’s diary, we find a few very basic floor patterns, and abbreviations for dancers such as A, B, C, and D (see Fig. 22).⁷⁴ Bargrave records altogether five dance tunes, all of them in triple time. As has been shown, Bargrave’s terminology for the ‘Dance of the Four Seasons’ has much in common with country dancing and repertoire associated with the ‘measures’.⁷⁵ At least one of them, Spring’s solo dance, was composed by Bargrave himself. Their structure is simple: Bargrave relied upon a bipartite pattern, as common in country dances.⁷⁶ Winter dances a sarabande. This slowest dance of all reflects the costume and restricted movement of the dancer, and gives an apt impression of the season. Of Spanish origin, the sarabande had become fashionable in England during the Caroline period. With time it turned into a stately dance, usually in triple time with a long note on the second beat. In Bargrave’s version, the tune still retains much of a galliard rhythm, with a frequent emphasis on the fourth beat. The steps have nothing in common with sarabande choreographies, as they came to be preserved from the late seventeenth century onwards. Bargrave simply hijacked a tune and added some steps and rhythms of his own, a common practice among early modern choreographers.⁷⁷ For the ‘Antick’ of four men and a woman, Bargrave combines a Scottish melody with ‘any ranting tune’. Such rants were suitable for antimasques because of their vivid nature.⁷⁸ Bargrave’s final dance is also the most dynamic one. Its tumbling movements correspond with the abundance of quavers and ⁷³ Third dance of the seasons, first figure of Autumn’s dance, ibid. 96. ⁷⁴ John Playford, The English Dancing Master (1651), ed. H. Mellor and L. Bridgewater (London, 1984), 2, 3, 5. A, B, C, and D are the male dancers in the ‘Antick’. An S-squiggle illustrates the way dancers exchange their position (Bargrave, Diary, 95). ⁷⁵ See Ch. 2, above. ⁷⁶ Playford’s pieces frequently consist of a short part followed by another at least twice as long. Yet, unlike Bargrave’s creations, they often use multiples of four (4/8 bars in The Begger Boy, 4/12 bars in The Night Peece, 4/4/8/8 bars in Blew Cap). The Dancing Master, (1651 edn.), 2, 3, 5. ⁷⁷ Rainer Gstrein, Die Sarabande: Tanzgattung und musikalischer Topos (Innsbruck and Vienna, 1997), and Patricia Ranum, ‘Audible Rhetoric and Mute Rhetoric: The Seventeenth-Century French Sarabande’, Early Music, 1/1 (1986), 22–39, for a genre history. Two ‘Sarabands’ in Playford’s 1651 edn. (17, 28) have nothing in common with French-style sarabandes: their rhythm emphasizes the fourth instead of the second beat, and country dance steps and figures are used. ⁷⁸ Bargrave, Diary, 97. Tilmouth, ‘Music on the Travels’, 159. Ward, ‘Newly Devis’d Measures’, 137–8, for examples of ‘rants’.

Figure 22. Masque (1650?). Diary of Robert Bargrave. MS Rawl. C.799, fols. 27v– 28r. The Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.

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intervals up to a sixth or an octave. In contrast to previous dances, the choreography here discards conventional steps for the sake of pure pantomime. Ward thinks that the ‘Scotch tune’ could only have provided background music for the antics of the performers since it is ‘obvious’ that ‘the actions required . . . could not be performed in time with the music’.⁷⁹ Rehearsals suggest, though, that the movements Bargrave describes for each part of the music can be carried out in time if practised well.⁸⁰ In the first of the six mimic episodes, the four men pop their vizarded heads between their legs, which Bargrave calls ‘make an Owle’. When the woman tries to do the same, she becomes entangled in her skirt and trips up, causing the men to ‘flump doune together’. As a consequence, the second figure takes off in the horizontal position: the men lie on their backs and form a square. The woman rises and makes an arch, with her hands and feet ‘on all theyr brests’. She then falls down on two men, who then ‘beat’ on her breeches ‘as Smiths on an Anvile’. In the third figure, the four men court the woman, but she slights them; they fight a mock duel with a rapier, the victorious dancer, ‘trampling over them all as Conqueror’, runs off with the woman, all rise again. In the fourth figure, the woman is married to one of the men, the others acting as priest and attendants. In the fifth figure, the couple is bedded while two dancers feign to ring bells; the bride ‘minces as troubled somewhat by loss of maidenhead’. The dance concludes with a mock birth, for which Bargrave must have thought of recruiting two children as additional dancers in a truly Rabelaisian moment: ‘Men bring in W. great Bellied, hiding two naked boyes under her coats . . . B. doune on all fower, A kneeling behind him (to resemble a Chaire) C. & D. make her sitt doune . . . She sets her selfe in travell, & they officiat . . . the two boyes runn out from under her:—then the :4: daunce round the W. who nurses the boyes at each breast, & so runn all In:—’⁸¹

This scene recalls pregnant Fame, as invoked in the introductory epithalamium. Graphic jokes with grotesque bodies were a great favourite in Continental ballet at the time. The Ballet de la Foire Saint-Germain (1607) involved a similar entry.⁸² Jones’s antimasque designs include a woman hiding a child under her skirt.⁸³ Bargrave’s ‘Antick’ is the earliest known example of a detailed English pantomime-ballet instruction. Early Stuart masque texts part only reluctantly with ⁷⁹ ⁸⁰ ⁸¹ ⁸² ⁸³

Ward, ‘Newly Devis’d Measures’, 137. I am most grateful to Lieven Baert for studying and rehearsing with me the ‘Antick’. For all citations from the ‘Antick’ see Bargrave, Diary, 97–8. Tilmouth draws attention to the 1607 ballet (‘Music on the Travels’, 158). Unidentified ‘Lady in a Farthingale’, c.1615, in OS i, p. 266, no. 86.

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any precise information on dance movements. One of the more exhaustive sources, Ben Jonson’s Masque of Queenes (1609), mentions neither exact step or gestural sequences nor music. Bargrave’s theatrical composition, in contrast, includes this information with a complexity unparalleled in seventeenth-century English dance sources. In Britain, such efforts at notation and explanation were resumed much later with the dancing master and theatre producer John Weaver, whose History of the Mimes and Pantomimes (1728) praised the English capacity for dumb show and sought to restore a professional danced drama. As Weaver boasted, his comedy ballet The Tavern Bilkers (1702) was ‘the first Entertainment that appeared on the English Stage, where the Representation and Story was carried on by Dancing, Action and Motion only’. In The Loves of Mars and Venus (1717), gestures described emotions based on classical rules of mime—for the author, an ambitious performance not attempted since the times of Emperor Trajan (Weaver was given to self-aggrandizing comparisons).⁸⁴ Bargrave’s masque was economical in time, space, and performer and property requirements. All dances were relatively short. Including all repetitions, the ‘Dance of the Four Seasons’ could have been performed in about one minute for each part. The ‘Antick’ might have finished within less than two minutes (we might allow for an additional short pause to prepare the mock birth in the last scene). Hence, all the dances of the wedding masque might together have filled some eight to ten minutes. Bargrave needed little space to have his creations performed. Interpretations of early choreographies are admittedly open to variation; yet one plausible reconstruction of the ‘Dance of the Four Seasons’ showed that the dancers could have been no further than four steps away from each other at any time; used economically, a space of some 12 m2 might have been sufficient for staging.⁸⁵ The steps and gestures of the seasons were very easy. Bargrave could have trained household staff of average talent on the spot. The pantomimic ‘Antick’, however, required greater histrionic talents. From a theatre choreographer’s point of view, the dances seem very plain. Often dancers wait and watch while one of them finishes his solo. Furthermore, Bargrave never indicates where the audience was to be situated, and how the dancers should address it. Professional Continental treatises of the period made a virtue of emphasizing that theatrical dancers should ‘face the presence’. In comparison, Bargrave’s choreographies seem uninformed about the importance of frontstage focusing. Yet, plain as they were, Bargrave’s working methods may have approached those of English masque choreographers in other ways, such as: the free use of steps and ⁸⁴ Richard Ralph, The Life and Works of John Weaver (London, 1985), 8, 149–54, 738. ⁸⁵ My thanks to Lieven Baert for tracing the steps and figures with me.

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figures from any current social dance repertoire, and their combination with an appropriate, possibly pre-existing tune; the manner in which mime renders a dance more theatrical; and lastly, the precise timing of pure pantomime to a specific tune. All these methods leave some space for individual improvisation but provide a strictly choreographed grid. If Bargrave’s techniques are indicative of practices in early Stuart court masques, we must discard the notion that spontaneous grotesque performers were at liberty to dance as they liked. The informality of Bargrave’s piece matches the drastic humour of certain countryside festivities of the Jacobean aristocracy, such as Jonson’s notorious The Gypsies Metamorphos’d (1621), or the running masques in the early 1620s, which scandalized contemporary onlookers. Tilmouth considers Bargrave’s compositions as the ‘poor relations . . . to the opulent court entertainments’; yet he acknowledges them as rare examples of the antics displayed by the English on small-scale occasions, often improvised and hardly considered worth a written record.⁸⁶ More recent assessments notice a ‘proficiency in both composition and performance’.⁸⁷ In light of the history of theatre choreography, Bargrave’s masque merits indeed greater attention. It would be fascinating to know how the wedding masque could have worked in performance. If Bendish and Modyford were on such excellent terms with Mehmet Efendi during that time, a few Ottoman guests to the party had to be reckoned with. How, one wonders, would Bargrave’s demotics have struck such an audience? In particular, the cross-dressing woman-actor and the onstage birth raise questions about Muslim sensitivities. What might the Ottoman hosts have thought about their English guests and their strange pastimes? What kind of local theatrical culture—if any—did exist in seventeenth-century Constantinople, and would it have been compatible with Western ideas of play-acting?

DANCE AND THEATRE IN EARLY MODERN CONSTANTINOPLE Bargrave’s diary usually attests to the author’s keen ear and sense of spectacle. Long passages record the music and drama of the countries and regions encountered; for instance, Venetian opera: theyr Operas, (or Playes) [are] represented in rare musick from the beginning to the end, by Select Eunuchs and women, sought out through all Italy on purpose: whose ⁸⁶ Tilmouth, ‘Music on the Travels’, 158. ⁸⁷ Brennan, in Bargrave, Diary, 36.

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Persons are adornd as richly and aptly, as the best contrivers can imagine: theyr many various Scenes set out in rare painting, and all magnificent costlyness; intermixing most incomparable apparitions and motions in the aire and on the Seae [sic], governed so by Machines, that they are scarse discernable from the reall things they represent; having also most exquisit Anticks and Maskings Dances, and whatsoever elce beseeming, that Art and mony can arrive to. One Opera I saw represented about 16: severall times; and so farr was I from being weary of it, I would ride hundreds of miles to see the same over again.⁸⁸

Such scenes are missing in the Ottoman parts of the diary. Once, Bargrave described a public procession of the Sultan and his court. Silent officials and muted prayers created a solemn atmosphere. The traveller George Sandys (whose report Bargrave read) said that on such occasions ‘men were . . . folded in sleepe, and the world in midnight’.⁸⁹ Court protocol banned noise from receptions, when European emissaries were allowed to see the Sultan in profile only and conversation was conducted through the Grand Vizier. ‘To proceed from court to court’ was, as Goodwin memorably writes, ‘to experience a muffling of sound, from the filtered hurly burly of the outer court . . . to the quiet of the inner sanctum’.⁹⁰ There, no one dared as much as cough—rather in the manner of Jonson’s Morose in Epicoene, Suleyman the Magnificent (1521–66) had introduced ixarette, a sign language.⁹¹ Bargrave had little to say about Ottoman music. In his view, the members of Mehmed Efendi’s household did not sing but howled. Apart from that, he briefly mentioned ditties heard from the boats on the Bosporus.⁹² Other English travellers of the period reached similar conclusions. Henry Blount, cruising the Ottoman Empire in the mid-1630s, called the Turks the ‘most modern’ of all people yet dismissed their tunes: ‘through all those vaste Dominions, there runnes one tune, and for ought I hard [sic], no more, nor can ever man play that’.⁹³ Such remarks are reminiscent of certain early modern attitudes towards non-Western languages. Stephen Greenblatt has argued that many European humanists, churchmen, and explorers of that time qualified such languages as unsystematic noise, hardly above the level of that produced ⁸⁸ Bargrave, Diary, 237. Tilmouth thinks Bargrave saw Cavalli’s Artemisia, performed in 1656 (‘Music on the Travels’, 156). ⁸⁹ George Sandys, A Relation of a Journey Begun An. Dom. 1610, 2nd edn., facs. edn. (London, 1615; Amsterdam, 1973), 76. Bargrave, Diary, 86, 117. ⁹⁰ Goodwin, Lords of the Horizons, 52–3. ⁹¹ ‘Ixarette’, coined by the French diplomat Henry de Beauvau in 1605, derives from Turkish ‘iuaret’, ‘sign’. Gülru Neciponlu, Architecture, Ceremonial, and Power: The Topkapı Palace in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries (New York, 1991), 28. ⁹² Bargrave, Diary, 100, 121. ⁹³ Henry Blount, A Voyage into the Levant, facs. edn. (London, 1636; Amsterdam, 1977), 106.

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by animals.⁹⁴ Yet, while it is important to acknowledge the vilification of non-Western sounds (whether music or spoken words), reactions were on occasion different. To return to the Ballet de la douairière de Billebahaut: here, a group of ‘Americans’ spoke in an incomprensible idiom and danced to a bizarre ensemble of bagpipes and gongs.⁹⁵ Such moments of musical drama built upon preconceived notions of foreign speech but at the same time registered a fascination with the exotic and a willingness to listen. Famous Western musicians appreciated oriental music. Long after Monteverdi had heard a kind of cittern played by an Arab in Mantua (‘thirty years ago’), he remembered its tremolo, which ‘gave a very pleasing effect. I have heard nothing more novel that was to my liking’.⁹⁶ In the same way, some evidence attests to the musical curiosity of Muslim travellers. Churches existed in the Ottoman Empire, yet the Qur’an forbade instrumental music in religious services. In a country whose Grand Viziers and military commanders bore the proud title ‘Breaker of the Bells of the straying and blasphemous nations’, Bargrave’s ‘Antick’—which included a pantomime mass with bell-ringing—might have confused a Muslim audience. As acoustic testimonies of infidel rites, no organs were to be heard in Constantinople (the solitary instrument left in Topkapı palace—a gift sent by Queen Elizabeth I in 1599—was destroyed six years later: its presence was considered unsuitable for the Sultan’s sacred apartments).⁹⁷ Not surprisingly, when the Ottoman traveller and chronicler Evliyg Çelebi ventured West, he struggled with explaining the effect of German church music: The organ is an old invention, and it is said that formerly David accompanied with it his psalms. It is generally found in the Franks’ country. There you find at every convent and church, a large organ with three hundred pipes, with two pairs of bellows, each moved by ten monks, and touched with the fingers. When it begins to sound in a mournful tone like that called Rohawi, the monks sing to it the verses of the psalter. They are in the habit of castrating young boys in order to preserve the purity of their voices. These boys are made to stand on the upper part of the bellows, with which they rise and descend, singing the verses of the psalter to a mournful tune, Rohawi, so that ⁹⁴ Stephen Greenblatt, ‘Learning to Curse: Aspects of Linguistic Colonialism in the Sixteenth Century’, in Learning to Curse: Essays in Early Modern Culture (New York, 1990), 16–39. ⁹⁵ As demonstrated in a design by Rabel, reproduced in Christout, Le Ballet de cour, 139. ⁹⁶ The Letters of Claudio Monteverdi, ed. Denis Stevens, rev. edn. (Oxford, 1995), 427: 2 Feb. 1634. ⁹⁷ Metin And, Istanbul in the Sixteenth Century (Istanbul, 1994), 73. Rycaut, The History of the Turkish Empire, ‘Of the Turkish Religion’, bk. II, pp. 67–8. William Lithgow, The Totall Discourse, of the Rare Adventures, and Painefull Peregrinations . . . to the Most Famous Kingdomes in Europe, Asia, and Affrica (London, 1632), 141–2. Goodwin, Lords of the Horizons, 136, 152. Demetrius Cantemir, The History of the Growth and Decay of the Othman Empire (London, 1734), pt. I, p. 256. Philip Mansel, Constantinople: City of the World’s Desire 1453–1924 (London, 1995), 46–7.

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the hearers are all enraptured. In Germany they have translated the psalter, from the Hebrew into their own language, of which the following is a specimen:—Sonderbarsten, Allerheiligsten, Allerseligsten, Jungfrau Maria Hilf auf den [i.e. most strange, most sacred, most blessed, virgin Mary help to the]. If they sing these words in the melancholy tune Rohawi, the effect is quite astonishing. This tune is so called from the town of Roha [Edessa], where David invented this instrument, which absolutely must be heard to have an adequate idea of it. There are a great number of Persian words in the German.⁹⁸

As a professional singer and Qur’anic chanter at the court of Murad IV, Çelebi was a highly skilled listener.⁹⁹ His definition of Lutheran psalm singing as an exercise in the melancholy Rohawi tune is flawed, given his ignorance of the appropriate acoustic grammar. Yet such responses demonstrate a creative effort to understand unknown aesthetic principles. In early modern Constantinople, theatrical display was part of weddings, circumcision ceremonies, guild processions, and festivities commissioned by rulers. People flocked to comedies, storytelling, wrestling, puppet plays, and shadow theatre, which unfolded ad hoc in public spaces such as inns, coffee houses, and open squares. From the sixteenth century onwards, the Tahtakale quarter, Constantinople’s very own Southwark, provided an amusement district with gambling dens, brothels, and a fair ground where one might see circus stunts and various other kinds of entertainment. Next to Hagia Sophia, the old Byzantine hippodrome (Atmeidan) turned into a public theatre on special occasions, complete with purpose-built platforms and boxes for dignitaries. Tents, canopies, or even floating rafts might complement these temporary structures; a mimarbauı, a kind of stage director or chief architect, might coordinate the construction of auditoria and decorations.¹⁰⁰ Bargrave’s diary mentions that people practised martial sports at the Atmeidan. A few puzzling references to acting add to the evidence (vestigial so far) of private theatre by foreign communities in Constantinople. Apparently, Bargrave represented ‘two or three Comedies, with the reward of great Applause’. This might well have been an embassy affair.¹⁰¹ Given the absence of any public playhouse until the eighteenth century, embassies maintained private theatres of their own in Pera/Galata, the foreign quarter. Plays by Corneille and Molière were performed under French auspices.¹⁰² ⁹⁸ Narrative of Travels, trans. Hammer, i/2. 226–7. Probably around 1638. ⁹⁹ On his career and concept of music, see Walter Feldman, Music of the Ottoman Court (Berlin, 1996), 22–3, 30–1. ¹⁰⁰ Metin And, A History of Theatre and Popular Entertainment in Turkey (Ankara, 1963–4), 18–22. Adam Wenner, Tagebuch der kaiserlichen Gesandtschaft nach Konstantinopel 1616–1618, ed. Karl Nehring (Munich, 1984), 90. ¹⁰¹ Bargrave, Diary, 34, 78, 119. ¹⁰² And, History of Theatre, 65–6.

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In the same manner as stage Turks crowded drama, ballet, and courtly spectacle in Christian Europe, Ottoman festivals often assumed propagandistic features touching on the relationship between Christians, Persians, and Turks. Sultans gladly re-enacted memories of past triumphs before an awed audience; the siege of Constantinople was, as it were, once more won on such occasions. According to a Western account, translated into English in 1635, one particular theatrical representation included the storming of a purpose-built Christian stronghold on wheels: live hogs represented the Christian party, and fake chopped-off heads added to the spectacle.¹⁰³ In 1582, Sultan Murad III (reign 1574–95) celebrated a legendary circumcision feast. As customary on such occasions, the various guilds and minorities participated in dramatic pageants with inventions of their own. The Christian community in Pera sent a troupe of 240 for a mock battle and twelve young men dressed up as dancing girls to honour the sultan.¹⁰⁴ Planned a year in advance, Murad’s circumcision feast included fireworks prepared with the assistance of one Edward Webbe, a captured English engineer.¹⁰⁵ With so many different groups involved, (reluctant) Western specialists among the technical support, and an audience which might have included both Western and Persian representatives, such occasions had a cosmopolitan flair. They were commemorated in manuscript treatises which, like their Western counterparts, included illustrations and detailed reports of participants, ceremonies and rich clothes. Muslim women had access to performances.¹⁰⁶ Nor were they secluded within the microcosm of Mehmet Efendi’s summer residence: Bargrave noted that the women and their families were intensely curious. Attended by eunuchs, they came to recreate themselves, ‘not contented unless they saw the Franks Chambers (by which name they call all western Christians), & there enterteining themselves & us, with Dauncing, Leaping, & roaring like wild persons let out of a Prison’.¹⁰⁷ Not only were these women allowed to leave their own private ¹⁰³ Michel Baudier, The History of the Imperiall Estate of the Grand Seigneurs, trans. Edward Grimeston (London, 1635), 85. ¹⁰⁴ ‘douze ieunes hommes sans barbe, habillez en femmes, menans vne espousee à la mode Perotte, & firent vn bal à leur vsance: comme lon dançoit au temps de Philippe de Macedoine, & Alexandre le grand, auec harpes & autres sortes d’instruments: puis de leur compagnie ballerent cent ieunes hommes Chrestiens, tous vestus d’ecarlatte, tenans chacun vn cimeterre nud à la main, à la mode ancienne des Grecs: à quoy le grand Seigneur print vn singulier plaisir’. Anon., Discours des triomphes, magnificences, et allegresses, qui ont esté faictes à la circoncision du Sultan Mehemet (Paris, 1583), 25–6. ¹⁰⁵ Mansel, Constantinople, 76. ¹⁰⁶ The French account mentions a female audience (Discours, 10). On cosmopolitan festival culture, see Derin Tercionlu, ‘The Imperial Circumcision Festival of 1582: An Interpretation’, Muqarnas, 12 (1995), 84–100, at 87, 89. ¹⁰⁷ Bargrave, Diary, 100.

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sphere and invade that of the English, they confidently displayed themselves in some kind of performance whose artistic nature remained arcane to Bargrave’s tastes. The Ottoman Empire of the early modern period had developed differentiated attitudes towards representation and imitation. Metin And shows that religious leaders tolerated dance and drama as long as certain rules were respected. Fatwas, sentences given on a matter of canonic law and delivered by muftis, were designed to restrict the nature of performance. Various fatwas of the mid-sixteenth and mid-seventeenth century referred to the stage: Players were forbidden to imitate members of other religions, e.g. Jews, Christians . . . out of respect for the other religion. Players who mockingly imitated a person holding a religious service were condemned; so were their audiences, considered to be disciples of the ‘religious man’. The representation of judges and schoolteachers was thought to belittle the profession and therefore also prohibited. Players were strictly forbidden to read passages from the Qur’an.¹⁰⁸

These religious restrictions were not so far removed from those imposed in seventeenth-century England. Here, reciting from a canonic text such as the Bible was not prohibited in itself but depended on the context. The Act of Abuses (1606) stipulated that no ‘person or persons do or shall in any Stage play . . . jestingly or profanely speake or use the holy Name of God or of Christ Jesus, or of the Holy Ghoste or of the Trinitie, which are not to be spoken but with feare and reverence’.¹⁰⁹ In theory, Ottoman fatwas respected other religions (a theme of no concern for English censors). Interestingly, they targeted audience behaviour as well. Viewers were regarded as active participants: the moment they watched an actor in the blasphemous role of a ‘religious or holy man’, they became his accomplices or even disciples. English companies might have found themselves in trouble if they staged controversial plays; but no playgoer was jailed for enjoying irreverent scenes or such notorious productions as the anti-Catholic Game at Chess. The condemnation of an audience which became immoral simply by looking at an immoral act remained, in England, the domain of anti-theatrical pamphleteers. ¹⁰⁸ And, History of Theatre, 12. And summarizes fatwas decreed by authorities from Ibn-i Kemal (d. 1534) to Yenis¸ehirli Abdullah Efendi (d. 1742). His references have been condensed in this citation. ¹⁰⁹ Act ‘to Restrain Abuses of Players’, cited from Richard Dutton, Licensing, Censorship and Authorship in Early Modern England: Buggeswords (Basingstoke, 2000), 87.

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How effectively theatre-related fatwas were enforced remains speculation. Some citizens of Constantinople clearly did not worry about becoming ‘infidels’ by watching a Christian rite. According to the Habsburg correspondent Schmid, curious Turks regularly filled churches: on solemn festive occasions large crowds of Christians and Turks flock to church; the ones out of piety, the others out of curiosity about the ceremonies. The latter, eager and yet ignorant as they are, ask many questions about all these residents and ambassadors. Once each one has been pointed out to them according to the seating order, the Turks think that the German Emperor ranks below the French King or the Doge of Venice because his resident sits beneath the others.¹¹⁰

For such Muslim audiences, a church service turned into theatre which revealed the power relations between European delegates. In Ottoman theatrical practice, the representation of religious themes was possible, especially if no mockery was intended. As Derin Terciogˇlu has pointed out, Muslim dignitaries actively participated in dramatic activities. In the 1582 circumcision feast, the mufti and the ulema played themselves in a pageant, pretending to read books while they moved on in a slow procession. The crowds heard Qur’anic chants by dancing Mevlevi dervishes.¹¹¹ Such performances were legitimate since these groups simply represented what they actually were. Crowd control rather than clamping down on acting for religious reasons seems to have been on the agenda of the Ottoman state. Ibrahim’s predecessor, Murad IV, had taverns and coffee houses razed and barber’s shops closed down to prevent the gathering of subversive elements. (Instead of actors, tobacco addicts suffered the imperial wrath. Murad exceeded King James in his dislike of smokers; the seventeenth-century historian Paul Rycaut claimed he had their arms sawed off.)¹¹² It is very odd that Bargrave left no record of local dancing during his five years’ stay in Constantinople, given the presence of thousands of professional performers, male and female, who were organized in guilds or companies (the same was true for actors; a precise distinction between actors and dancers is not possible for this period). Notably Armenians, Greeks, gypsies, and Jews joined such companies, while Turks often abstained for religious and moral reasons. Common repertoire included acrobatics, rope-dancing, disguises with masks, and the skilful handling of properties such as clappers, cymbals, and scarves. We know little about the actual dances but both male and female performers were admired by ¹¹⁰ Meienberger, Schmid, 234. ¹¹¹ ‘Imperial Circumcision Festival’, 93. ¹¹² Rycaut, History of the Turkish Empire, 28–32. Anno 1636.

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Western observers, and on occasion illustrations of such performances survive in early modern travel booklets (see Pl. 2). One of the most detailed descriptions derives from the diaries of the Venetian delegate Martin Sanuto, who watched an (in his view) suggestive performance of Turkish ladies in 1524: Then they began to dance in a most lascivious manner, with some movements of the head, crossings of the arms, poutings of the lips, with parted hair on the ground, and then again tossing it most gracefully to the front and the back; they beat the rhythm with some clappers in their hands, which achieved more than one admirable counterpoint, then, adopting some moresca-like turns, they delivered many beautiful capers in the manner of the schiavoni, with certain strong shoulder [movements] which was a pleasure to watch, and above all, with gestures and innuendo of a most lascivious kind, all performed in a manner which would have melted marble.¹¹³

Roles en travesti were practised by both sexes. Some dancing boys cultivated a feminine appearance by letting their hair grow or dressing like a girl (see Fig. 23).¹¹⁴ ‘Since Adam descended from Paradise on earth, never was there seen such a crowd of tempting boys than under Sultan Murad IV’, exclaimed Çelebi, surveying the local talent in 1638. He listed a total of twelve companies of dancers, fools and mimes in the capital, including overall 3,000 boy dancers; all of them specialized in comic or suggestive repertoire.¹¹⁵ Other genres included dances representing the seasons and mock battles. In fact, the word ‘matachin’ or ‘mattacino’, as battle dances were called in sixteenth-century Italian treatises and English masque texts, could have derived from Arabic motavaj-jihn or muta-wajjihin (‘maskers’ or ‘he with a mask’).¹¹⁶ ‘Islamic cultures’, Walter Feldman writes, ‘appear to have remained conscious of the potential of instruments to create frivolous and licentious music, especially in connection with erotic dancing’.¹¹⁷ Even so, sixteenth- and seventeenth-century sources suggest a rich Ottoman theatre culture in Bargrave’s time, which accommodated dancing, mime, music, masking, mock battles, fireworks, and pageants, and Qur’an recital as well as explicit jokes. ¹¹³ Diaries of Martin Sanuto, 28 Mar. 1524. Patrizia La Rocca, ‘ “Né altro fu fatto che balar”: La danza a Venezia attraverso i Diarii di Marin Sanuto (1496–1533)’, in A. Pontremoli and La Rocca (eds.), La danza a Venezia nel Rinascimento (Vicenza, 1993), 27–62, at 53–4; My trans. ¹¹⁴ And, History of Theatre, 26–7. ¹¹⁵ Narrative of Travels, trans. Hammer, i. 2, 240–1. Metin And, A Pictorial History of Turkish Dancing (Ankara, 1976), 141–2. Murad IV ruled from 1623 to 1640. Çelebi is sometimes a fanciful narrator. Even if numbers might be exaggerated, they certainly attest to the presence of many organized professionals. ¹¹⁶ And, Pictorial History, 11–12, 16–18, mentions seasonal dances since the 15th cent. and battle dances dating back to the 17th cent. ¹¹⁷ Feldman, Music of the Ottoman Court, 307.

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Figure 23. Ottoman dancing boys. Anonymous artist, c.1590s. Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. 8626, fol. 118. Bildarchiv der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek, Vienna.

CONCLUSION In the larger panorama of ‘Western’ and ‘oriental’ theatre, Bargrave’s modest entertainment almost shrinks into non-existence. Yet plain as its dances are, they contribute immensely to our understanding of English theatrical choreography before 1700. Bargrave experimented with Italian and Scottish tunes, and grafted French steps onto English country-dance patterns. Local nature played a role in Bargrave’s syncretic imagination, which invented songs referring to birds and performers dressing up in leaves and fruits. Had the entertainment been performed, the simple yet effective dances and costumes, and the catchy tunes could have appealed to a mixed Anglo-Ottoman audience, possibly even Turkish women, as the female members of Mehmet Efendi’s household were free to meet the guests. The English holiday in Mehmet Efendi’s summer residence contradicts the traditional view that foreigners bonded in a hostile and inscrutable Ottoman environment.¹¹⁸ Far from huddling together in a ghetto, traders and diplomats ¹¹⁸ Typically, Meienberger speaks about a ‘Schicksalsgemeinschaft’ of Westerners in a hermetic alien world (Schmid, 63). This view has been criticized by Fissel, Goffman, and Matar.

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sought allies among the Ottomans. In a fierce competition for goods and influence, Europeans often feared their fellow Christians more than the Turks.¹¹⁹ Significantly, Bargrave recorded no festivity shared with representatives of another European country, while he emphasized unpleasant encounters with English and French traders. Ottoman officials capitalised on such troubles. Mehmet Efendi, the obscure patron in these days, and most likely the host of the entertainment, lived in dangerous times which might see his removal from office—or worse—from one day to the next. Understandably, he cultivated English diplomats and traders. Ambassador Bendish, for his part, faced authority problems, which he sought to redress by marrying his daughter to a merchant and emphasizing excellent personal ties to an Ottoman chief judge. Travel accounts of the early modern period have attracted much critical interest; the point of view taken is, however, usually that of the English traveller.¹²⁰ Bargrave’s astute diary is sadly typical in its negligence of nonWestern music and drama. This chapter has sought to restore some balance by providing brief glimpses from an Ottoman point of view. In both the East and the West, dramatic forms approached foreign cultures by music, movements, devices, and costume. Such efforts frequently turned into unsavoury propaganda, as when pigs and hostile stage Turks joined the cast, yet on occasion performances were also prompted by simple curiosity, or the sheer pleasure of revelling. Given the differentiated attitudes to dramatic representation in early modern Constantinople, ambassador Bendish could have invited Muslims to a wedding masque without having to fear a clash of civilizations. Bargrave’s riotous masque is far removed from the frosty hauteur of Topkapı Palace and the extravaganzas of the early Stuart court. And yet, it draws our attention to informal Anglo-Ottoman encounters, and the possibilities of communication by drama on a private level.

¹¹⁹ Fissel and Goffman, ‘Viewing the Scaffold’, 444, 447. ¹²⁰ As in I. Kamps and J. G. Singh (eds.), Travel Knowledge: European ‘Discoveries’ in the Early Modern Period (Basingstoke, 2000). K. Parker (ed.), Early Modern Tales of Orient: A Critical Anthology (London, 1999). Andrew Hadfield, Literature, Travel, and Colonial Writing in the English Renaissance, 1545–1625 (Oxford, 1998). For a rare departure from this pattern see Nabil Matar (ed.), In the Lands of the Christians: Arabic Travel Writing in the Seventeenth Century (London, 2003).

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Conclusion Nostalgic at the point of performance, late Caroline masques anticipated the decline of the very culture they celebrated with forced optimism. The last court production, William Davenant’s Salmacida Spolia, addressed Charles and Henrietta Maria as if they had already become monuments, forever present in the memory of the people: ‘Live still, the pleasure of our sight’.¹ Davenant’s text implored viewers to ‘learn to love through the king’s optics’; yet the realities of staging demanded that other viewpoints needed to be taken into consideration as well. The hypertrophy of optimistic colours and the unprecedented numbers of courtly dancers moving in concord revealed a masque which had lost its magic. Salmacida Spolia was a well-dressed corpse. Thirteen years after Salmacida Spolia, its flexible author offered a comprehensive theory of political spectacle to the new regime.² A Proposition for Advancement of Moralitie, by a New Way of Entertainment of the People (1653) proclaimed ‘lastingnesse of Government’ as ‘the principall work of Art’. As Charles’s former court poet hoped (against better knowledge), spectacle might educate the public to become worthy subjects: their Eyes might be subdu’d with Heroicall Pictures and change of Scenes, their Eares civiliz’d with Musick and wholsome discourses, by some Academie where may be presented in a Theater severall ingenious Mechanicks, as Motion and Transposition of Lights, to make a more naturall resemblance of the great and vertuous Actions of such as are eminent in Story; without any scandalous disguising of men in womens habits, . . . there can be no better way then by bringing all into the channell of Morality; for the scandalous and extravagant parts being cut off, there will remaine an entire body, full of grace and proportion, able to allure and overcome the variety of Spectators: This will be the great commander of mindes, and like Hercules in the Embleme draw all by the Eares.³

Davenant’s concept, which Timothy Raylor has aptly called ‘opera and obedience’, reflected contemporary concerns about the didactics of dramatic ¹ l. 475, in OS ii, 734. ² [W. Davenant], A Proposition for Advancement of Moralitie (London, 1654), published, in fact, at the end of 1653. Newly edited in James R. Jacob and Timothy Raylor, ‘Opera and Obedience: Thomas Hobbes and A Proposition for Advancement of Moralitie by Sir William Davenant’, Seventeenth Century, 6/2 (1991), 205–50. ³ A Proposition, app. I, p. 245.

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representation, notably the processes of learning by pleasure and leisure. His proposition anticipated what modern learning psychology calls ‘multimedial encoding’, that is, memory mechanisms which enable learning via multiple pathways.⁴ Speech, machinery, action, music, and disguised performers— including not a few scandalous ‘men in women’s habits’—worked together in masques, seeking to command the mind. Davenant’s concept rehearsed, in technically upgraded form, a notion derived from ancient rhetoric—that imagines agentes, striking moving images, were particularly memorable.⁵ Early Stuart masques appealed to the five senses. Misunderstandings, jampacked auditoria, and technical shortcomings inevitably clouded their realisation. Assertive producers did not spare the audience: in Salmacida Spolia, spectators needed eagle eyes and advanced emblem reading skills to identify the small grasshopper squatting on the proscenium arch as ‘Affection to the Country’. We will never know how individuals responded to such sophistication. No eyewitness account comes anywhere near the subtle interpretations offered in modern criticism. Indeed some early observers openly declared their ignorance: the Earl of Worcester, who had seen Samuel Daniel’s The Vision of the Twelve Goddesses (1604), promised to send the Earl of Shrewsbury the printed account of the masque because he felt unable to explain in his own words that ‘w[hi]ch [those] wyser than myself doe not understand’.⁶ Yet masques operated on multiple levels. Through diversified mediation in both performance and publication, they reached a large audience, making it possible to enjoy the event in different ways. ‘Ludit istis animus, non proficit’—above all, a masque should please, Samuel Daniel claimed.⁷ Watching ⁴ Yadin Dudai, The Neurobiology of Memory (Oxford, 1990), 147–8, 267–9. ⁵ ‘If we set up images that are not many or vague, but doing something; if we assign to them exceptional beauty or singular ugliness; if we dress some of them with crowns or purple cloaks, for example, so that the likeness may be more distinct to us; or if we somehow disfigure them, . . . so that its form is more striking’. Anon., Rhetorica ad Herennium, ed. and trans. Harry Caplan (Cambridge, Mass., 1954; repr. 1989), 208–13, (III. xvi. 29–xix. 32), 220–1 (III. xxii. 37). Ad Herennium saw twenty editions between 1470 and 1569. Detlef Thiel, ‘Schrift, Gedächtnis, Gedächtniskunst: Zur Instrumentalisierung des Graphischen bei Francis Bacon’, in J. J. Berns and W. Neuber (eds.), Ars memorativa: Zur kulturgeschichtlichen Bedeutung der Gedächtniskunst 1400–1750 (Tübingen, 1993), 170–205, at 189. Frances Yates, The Art of Memory (1966; repr. London, 1992). ⁶ ‘Whereas youer Lo. saythe youe wear never perticulerly advertised of the Maske, I have been at 6d. charge with youe to send youe the booke, which wyll inform youe better then I can, having noted the names of the Ladyes applyed to eche Goddes; and for the other, I would lykewyse have sent youe the ballet, yf I cowld have got yt for money; but these bookes, as I heare, are all cawled in, and in truthe I wyll not take uppon mee to set that down which wyser then myself doe not understand.’ Letter, 2 Feb. 1604, Nichols, i. 317. ⁷ Samuel Daniel, The Vision of the 12 Goddesses (London, 1604), sig. Br.

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Salmacida Spolia, uninterested spectators could simply admire magnificent costumes, count the number of antimasque entries, or spot prominent courtiers; Latinate and Italianate connoisseurs, on the other hand, might have mused over allegorical settings and the moribund title of the masque, which evoked, apart from the pretty nymph Salmacis, also corpses (salma) and killing (occidere).⁸ In publication, masques were once more dramatized in a different medium. Additional information compensated for the loss of spectacular action onstage.⁹ Salmacida Spolia includes a song to be printed only, not delivered during performance.¹⁰ For Jonson, the perfect masque evolved on the page. The visual beauty of the 1616 Folio no longer sounded to a ‘present occasion’. Sumptuous margins mediated historical perspective to the eye. Lines presented themselves in beautiful formations, geometric ballets on paper. When Jonson took to the pen, dynamic accents made the words themselves dance. Lifted from occasional circumstance, Jonson’s paper spectacles were not antitheatrical but timeless performances. Unsurprisingly, therefore, Jonson is often perceived as a master-producer of masques. According to one recent study, Jonson was some kind of dominant ‘circus entertainer’, cracking the whip over predatory actors and designers.¹¹ This might be true if we consider masques in the printed medium, but a closer look at rehearsals, preparatory teamwork, and performance conditions gives us a different impression. The Masque of Queenes or, much later, Coelum Britannicum showed how brilliantly a text might unfold during the event once a collaboration succeeded. On the reverse side, a poet’s concept was at the mercy of dancers, musicians, designers, suppliers, craftsmen, and tailors. On masquing nights, early modern audiences may not have been able to draw upon a full explanatory masque text; in which case only the lines to be spoken were available during performance. Dance and costume represented media to fill the information gap. Producers employed various balletic styles, among these genres which a foreign audience, Gabaleoni and his peers, could have recognized. As no ⁸ Italian salma means ‘corpse’; Latin occidere means ‘to kill’. ⁹ For masque books as records, see Joseph Loewenstein, ‘Printing and “The Multitudinous Presse” ’, in Jennifer Brady and W. H. Herendeen (eds.), Ben Jonson’s 1616 Folio (Newark, Del., 1991), 168–91. ¹⁰ l. 325, OS ii. 733. ¹¹ He ‘attempted to discipline the ephemeral; as a circus entertainer with his performing lions, he could show the fierce, dangerous power of visual and aural beauty while demonstrating the superior power of the hand that holds the whip’. P. A. Skantze, Stillness in Motion in the Seventeenth-Century Theatre (London, 2003), 47.

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choreographies have survived (except for Bargrave’s wedding masque), and reports may be ambiguous, this book cannot deliver unimpeachable facts about the precise dances performed in early Stuart masques. Based on the available evidence, it has instead ventured a range of plausible propositions. The repertoire ranged from popular Elizabethan heritage to early versions of French danse noble, and possibly also included pure pantomime in antimasques, if we can generalize from Bargrave’s admittedly very plain ‘Antick’. On stage, dancing was a highly professionalized activity even if practised by courtiers. With an English court whose best performers had, since Tudor times, chosen from Spanish, French, Italian, and local repertoire, and a cosmopolitan presence of visitors, dance could have assumed the function of a non-verbal lingua franca, facilitating audience participation. Dance was not affected by language boundaries, hence the suitability of certain movements or widely current genres to characterize figures on stage. A diversified movement vocabulary, deployed in distinctive sections of the masque, complemented the verbal and scenic vocabulary of the court masque. The medium of dance offered rich possibilities for typecasting nationalities, gender, or even such abstract notions as history, especially if a choreography was supported by an appropriate character costume. Apart from the popularity of certain genres such as courantes, galliards, or ‘measures’, the recognition factor of dance music was often high, since dancing masters and composers loved to work popular tunes and motifs into their scores. Even enthusiasts of a less professional calibre were infatuated with foreign music, as Bargrave’s choice of a melody current in Italian Jesuit opera demonstrates. Dance encouraged acoustic and muscular bonding: appealing to collective memory, it might have brought audiences together in a common musical and choreographic repertoire. The current critical preoccupation with the disciplining features of courtly dancing has sidelined these enjoyable, enabling, and integrating aspects. (Perhaps the subtlest form of discipline came, as Davenant knew, by pleasure and leisure?) Thanks to the multimedia nature of dance the fantasy of a masque appeared real and material: audiences could immerse themselves into sounds and touch the illusion when they joined performers on the dance floor in the revels. As doubting Thomas found out, to touch is to believe. In Tudor courtly spectacle, pageant cars and similar devices were often dismantled by the crowds and single pieces carried off as a souvenir— a practice stifled only with effort in the early Stuart period. The beautiful settings of Jacobean entertainments remained untouched, yet in banquets laid out for guests at the end of a masquing night, audiences readily overthrew tables in an act of ersatz vandalism.

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Dancer and design complemented each other. Certain balletic styles turned dancers into living architecture, when limbs moved so as to project depth. Architects did not devise extravagant scenes for connoisseurs only but pragmatically reckoned with the presence of performers. With time, designers and choreographers developed a taste for maximum effect in limited space, when mass scenes filled the stage or aerial ballets took place on cloud machinery. The stage became human. Formations on the dance floor such as Jonson’s ‘curious Squares, and Rounds’¹² could often be seen from all sides and projected to all sides. Such circumstances qualify the current emphasis on how masques visually privileged the monarch’s gaze by way of their choreographies and perspective scenery. (Even the assumption of orthodox linear perspective is misleading, given that in practice very few early modern artists adhered to a strictly linear principle, and Jones and Webb manipulated vanishing points in Caroline stage designs to appeal to a wider audience.) For Keir Elam, a powerful movement discourse with a range of fixed meanings is absent in Western theatre, with the possible exception of an Elizabethan repertory of ‘manual’ signs.¹³ In masques, we catch a glimpse of a diversified movement culture which distinguished styles and cared about optimal visibility. The rich variety of dance types in masques indicates that, for masque producers and many members of the audience too, an understanding of movement went beyond John Bulwer’s grammar of gestures. In the scientific discourse of the early seventeenth century, movement meant life, as in the circulation of the blood. In the theatre, early Stuart masques discovered movement as an art expressive in itself. Not only dancers’ names, such as Montagut’s, have now sunk into oblivion. Queen Anne’s silkman Henshawe has been called an unsung artistic hero of the age.¹⁴ This book has sought to restore some respect for the enormous contribution by the hidden workforces behind a courtly spectacle, such as lighting staff, tailors, and craftsmen. Over the years, teams within Charles’s and Henrietta Maria’s households developed working routines and personal ties. Thanks to their efforts, masques established compromise formulae to control expenditure and yet convey a public image of conspicuous consumption. Current assumptions concerning the circulation of outfits in English theatre do not apply to masques. Here, a great number of custom-made garments were ¹² The Masque of Beauty (1608), l. 302, in HS vii, 191. ¹³ Keir Elam, The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama (London, 1980), 69. ¹⁴ R. Malcolm Smuts, ‘Art and the Material Culture of Majesty in Early Stuart England’, in Smuts (ed.), The Stuart Court and Europe (Cambridge, 1996), 86–112.

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built up from scratch, specially devised for performance under artificial illumination. Trial periods with test costumes became standard practice. A choice among different recycling and storage systems complicates the picture. As repositories of cultural memory, costumes signposted the nature of a character. Visually impressive, they were well suited to awe or amuse spectators. Inigo Jones drew upon conventions familiar to guests from other European courts. His choice of colours and properties facilitated a quick understanding of a performer’s role and status, all the more important given the adverse performance conditions. Ideally, audiences were also expected to pick up on minutiae: this involved recognizing period or exotic fashion, and even making sense of odd couture such as feather tiaras or Elizabethan ruffs combined with Roman armour. Tiniest details such as the height of a heel made a difference. Early Stuart audiences had to infer layers of meaning from layers of fabrics and properties. Far from simply optimizing the appearance of dancers on stage or making costumes more practical, other concerns such as courtly decorum and contemporary tastes played into the design. As a rule, costumes flattered the dance movements of male masquers. Costumes for aristocratic women had to prevent a misreading of female performance as licence, and thus were often complemented by a precautionary text (spoken and printed). This does not mean that theatrical fashion cast lady masquers into all-submissive roles; rather, patrons such as Anne and Henrietta Maria tested the accepted frameworks of dramatic display. Their garments elevated them to splendid isolation, and established a female heroic code. Costumes of that type cocooned lady masquers in plumed helmets, farthingales, ruffs, and armours, protection which might, perhaps, turn into empowerment. As an enquiry into the artistic precision of masques, the present work is a tribute to early studies by Allardyce Nicoll, Enid Welsford, and Lily Campbell. The courtly stage drew upon a kinetic and sartorial vocabulary which complemented word, music, and scenery. This subtle, complex vocabulary represents an as yet under-explored dimension of early modern performance culture. It should be investigated more seriously alongside the practices in the public theatre (the preferred area of current research).¹⁵ Productions experimented with hyper-realistic features (for instance, real animals on stage), and at the same time flaunted deliberate illusionism (for instance, cities painted in perspective ¹⁵ e.g. J. Gil Harris and N. Korda (eds.), Staged Properties in Early Modern English Drama (Cambridge, 2003), and Tiffany Stern, Rehearsal from Shakespeare to Sheridan (Oxford, 2000).

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on flat wings). The strangely hybrid courtly stages of the early Stuart period were part of a masque’s visual rhetoric to express wonder, designed to perplex the mind.¹⁶ We are reminded of Shakespeare’s work, where uncertainty solicits suspense. The romances play with different levels of realism—in The Winter’s Tale, stage bears might be real, statues come to life, and narrators announce unlikely leaps in time. Shakespeare’s sonnets tilt the imagination into endless loops: They that have power to hurt and will do none, That do not do the thing they most do show, Who moving others are themselves as stone, Unmovèd, cold, and to temptation slow— They rightly do inherit heaven’s graces, And husband nature’s riches from expense; They are the lords and owners of their faces, Others but stewards of their excellence.¹⁷

The contrast between being and showing, moving and stillness adopts an aesthetic which we recognize from a masque situation. The riddle on the ‘face’ runs on forever in the mind: is the ‘face’ a surface only? how can one ‘own’ a face? is it a property, a mask which might conceal something different? Perhaps the paradoxical visual appeal of masques kept audiences in suspense, too, leading to lasting memories. Jonson famously said about the magnificent performance of Hymenaei (1606) that it was impossible to capture in words ‘that spirit it had in the gliding by’. Yet, not wanting to ‘defraud the Reader of his hope’, he courageously continued with a sketch of an elusively alluring event.¹⁸ Having come to the end of my attempt my hope is that none of my readers will feel defrauded of theirs. The capacity of movements and costumes to tell a story should ideally be matched by a capacity of books to show costumes and movements. Masques encouraged performers, spectators, and, at last, readers, to dream. A Leviathan composed of many nations danced in many styles and colours. This was once a living spectacle, and we must not lose our sense that it was beautiful.

¹⁶ Which they did. For a fine discussion see SDIJ, 162–6. OS i. 24. ¹⁷ Sonnet 94, ll. 1–8. I follow Kirby Farrell’s interpretation in Shakespeare’s Creation: The Language of Magic and Play (Amherst, Mass. 1975), 21–3. ¹⁸ ll. 578–81, in HS vii. 229.

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Index Abercrombie, Abraham 35 Adamson, Henry, The Muses Threnodie 220 n. 46 Adamson, John 208–9, 210 n. 8, 216 n. 28, 227 Addison, Joseph 172 Albert, archduke of Austria 81 Alexander, Gavin 130 n. 20 and 22, 131 n. 24 Almain 72 Al-Qa’id Jawhar ibn’ Abd Allah, Moroccan ambassador 104–6, 238–9, 241 Altieri, Joanne 95 n. 88 Amsterdam 184 And, Metin 254 n. 97, 255 n. 100 and 102, 257 Angers 61 animals in entertainments 201, 203, 236–7 Anne of Denmark, queen of England 62, 76, 109, 119, 130, 143, 159, 220, 267 as performer and masque sponsor 1, 116, 125, 132, 140, 144, 147, 149, 152, 173–8, 188, 194, 197, 199, 268 Anselment, Raymond 227 Arbeau, Thoinot 28 n. 2, 109 n. 33, 116 n. 62, 222 Compot et manuel kalendrier 50 Orchésographie 28, 50–1, 98 n. 6, 110, 219, 223 Archer, Jayne 173, 211 n. 18 Archilei, Vittoria 119 Arden, Goditha 178–9 Aristotle 67 Arnold, Janet 9, 126–7, 141, 143 Artemisia, queen of Caria 195–6 Artemisia, queen of Halicarnassus 196 Arundel, count and countess of 77 Ashbee, Andrew 10 n. 22, 29 n. 7, 61 n. 120 Ashmole, Elias 39 Astington, John 84 n. 60 and 62, 134 n. 40, 135 n. 46, 142 n. 71, 146, 163 n. 26 and 29, 164 Aubrey, John 208, 214 n. 24 Auchmouty, John 35 Augustine, St, De musica 223 n. 52 Aylmer, G. E. 138 n. 54, 139 n. 58, 140 n. 61, 152 n. 106 and 109 Ayton, Robert 140 Bacon, Francis Device for the Gray’s Inn Revels 6 ‘On Masques and Triumphs’ 166–7 Baert, Lieven 9, 80 n. 51, 89 n. 71 and 72, 100, 249 n. 80, 251 n. 84 bagpipes 254 Bakhtin, Mikhail 71

ballet de cour 33, 76, 84, 103, 105, 113, 132, 171, 178, 188, 197, 231, 235–6 ballet burlesque 56, 63, 66, 71 n. 17 Balet comique de la Royne, see Beaujoyeulx, Balthazar de Ballet de la délivrance de Renaud 4 Ballet de la félicité 59 Ballet de la foire Saint-Germain 250 Ballet royal de la nuit 180 Ballet de la prospérité des armes de la France 59 Ballet des fées de la forest de Saint Germain 113 n. 50 Ballet des infatigables 113 n. 50 Ballet du château de Bicêtre 169 Grand Bal de la douairière de Billebahaut 113, 203, 232–6, 254 Grand Bal de la Reyne représentant le soleil 180 Balon, Jean 166 Banqueting House, Whitehall 1, 23, 76–7, 90, 143, 147 n. 91, 163, 211 Bardi, Giovanni de’ 161 Bargrave, Robert 45–9, 71–2, 266, 219–20, 223, 230–2, 241–61, 266 Barish, Jonas 21 n. 24, 158 n. 4 Baroni, Leonora 162 barriera 218–19, 222–3 Barriffe, William Mars His Triumph 221–2, 237–8 Military Discipline 221–2 Barroll, Leeds 9, 187 n. 1 Barronnat, sieur 233 basse danse 16, 27, 110 n. 39 Bassompierre, François de 56 Batchelor, David 157 n. 3, 159 Bawcutt, Nigel 135 n. 47 Bayle, Pierre, Dictionnaire 31, 172 Beauchamp, Pierre 27 Beaujoyeulx, Balthazar de, Balet comique de la Royne 34, 79–82, 180, 197 Beaumont, Francis The Knight of the Burning Pestle 65 n. 134 The Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray’s Inn 3, 73 Bedford, Lucy Countess of 167 Bells 254 Bendish, Abigail 242, 244, 246 Bendish, Thomas 241–3, 261 Berry, Philippa 173, 211 n. 18 Blois 61 Blount, Henry 253

310 Bocan 52, 61–2, 72, 73 n. 25, 75, 98, 113, 217, 232 Bodley, Thomas 35 Boisrobert, François Le Métel de, Florimène 89, 226 Bologna 31 Bonetti, Rocco 35 Bordier, René 233, 235 Bosseley, John 45 Bracesco, Virgilio 33 Brainard, Ingrid 38 brando 2 branle 2, 20 n. 23, 39, 41, 50, 53, 60, 74, 192, 224, 233 n. 12 branle de Poitou 64, 73 branle des hermites 50 Brantôme, Pierre de Bourdeille, seigneur de 34 Brathwaite, Richard, The English Gentlewoman 192 Braunschweig 51, 53 brawl, see branle Bray, Thomas, Country Dances 43 Brennan, Michael 245 n. 61, 246 n. 69, 252 n. 87 Bridgewater, earl of see Egerton, family Britland, Karen 9, 160 n. 17, 178 n. 39 Brooks, Lynn 32 Browne, William, The Masque of the Inner Temple [Ulysses and Circe] 41 Bry, Theodore de 208 n. 6, 211 n. 17 Bryce, Judith 118 Buch, David J. 76, 98, 105 n. 21, 115 n. 59 Buckingham, George Villiers, first duke of 44, 53–6, 61, 64, 68–9, 75, 107–8, 110, 116, 128, 140, 154, 176, 225, 235 n. 15 Bulwer, John 267 Buontalenti, Bernardo 22, 90, 161 Busino, Orazio 3, 22–5, 90 n. 74, 177 Butler, Martin 128 n. 14, 147 n. 88, 210, 236, 239, 240 n. ‘Butler Buggins Manuscript’ 39 Caesar, Caius Julius 174 Callot, Jacques 84–5 Cambridge 35, 127, 153 Campbell, Lily 268 Campion, Thomas 1 The Lord Hay’s Masque 130, 170 n. 2 The Lords’ Masque 62, 161–2, 167 n. 49, 170 n. 2, 177 n. 38 The Somerset Masque 1–4, 76, 170 n. 2 canario 23, 115 Canova-Green, Marie-Claude 8 n., 17 n. 8 Cappello, Bianca, grand duchess of Tuscany 109 capriole (capriola) 69, 82, 116–17 Carew, Thomas 181

Index Coelum Britannicum 22, 62, 125, 133–4, 146–7, 150–3, 155, 165, 167 n. 49, 207–18, 222–9, 265 ‘A New-Yeare’s Gift to the King’ 227 Carlell, Lodowick 140 Carleton, Dudley 74 n. 28, 116 n. 64, 174–5, 177 Carlisle, James Hay, earl of, and viscount Doncaster 128–9, 131, 139, 170, 177 Carnarvon, Anna Sophia countess of 74 Caroso, Fabritio 23–5, 28 n. 2, 72, 98–9, 109–10, 116 n. 62, 118 Il Ballarino (and dances from this collection) 25, 30, 35, 72, 109 Nobiltà di dame (and dances from this collection) 25 n. 36, 30–1, 72, 109, 112–13, 115 n. 60 and 61 Carr, Robert, earl of Somerset 1 Cartwright, William, The Royal Slave 45, 145, 235 Casaubon, Isaac 204 n. 52 Castiglione, Baldassare, Il Cortegiano 21 Cavalieri, Emilio de’ 7, 81–2, 90, 119 n. 75, 164 Cavendish, Margaret and William, see Newcastle Çelebi, Evliyg 230, 254–5, 259 Cely, George 17 censorship 257, 263 Chamberlain, John 3 n. 4, 35, 55, 76 n. 38, 107 n. 28, 154 n. 121, 159 Chapman, George The Memorable Masque (The Masque of the Middle Temple and Lincoln’s Inn) 131, 160, 176 Charles I, king of England 45, 57, 62, 68, 89, 91, 107, 145, 150–3, 207, 217, 220, 223, 228, 238, 241, 263 Declaration to His Subjects, Concerning Lawfull Sports 222 household of 137–9, 151–2, 217, 225, 267 as prince of Wales 33, 55, 75–6, 197 as masque sponsor and performer 75, 95, 102–4, 143, 150–3, 167–8, 169, 176, 210, 212–13, 222 Charles II, king of England, and prince of Wales 45, 154, 241 Charles V, king and emperor of Germany 18 Chibnall, Jennifer 227 Christian IV, king of Denmark 61 Christie, William 100 Christina, queen of Sweden 175 Christout, Marie-Françoise 113 n. 52, 169 n. 56, 177 n. 36, 178 n. 41, 232 n. 11, 254 n. 95 Cicero 67 circumcision feasts 256, 258 Cleland, James, Hero-Paideia 39–40 Cohen, Sarah 120 Collins, Mary 100 Colonna, Deda 100 Compasso, Lutio, Ballo della gagliarda 30

Index Confesse, Nicolas 61, 75, 201 conspicuous consumption 267 Constantinople 231–2, 241–4, 252, 254–6, 258, 261 acting and dancing guilds 258–9 theatres and props 255–6, 258 women and drama 256 attitudes to drama and music 257–9 Contarini, Alvise 56 n. 107 and 110 Contarini, Pietro 22 Corago, Il 87, 161, 165, 169 coranto, see courante Corneille, Pierre 255 cornets 199 courante 2, 20, 23, 39, 41, 51, 60, 73, 74, 110, 115–16, 266 Cordier, Jacques, see Bocan Correr, Marc’ Antonio 76 n. 43 Corseilles, M. 88 costume 57 colours 125, 134–5, 139, 147, 159–60, 166–8, 201, 211, 233, 236, 263, 268 cost 130–1, 149–55 cross-dressing 173, 259, 263–4, 177–9, 217, 245, 256, 259–60, 263–4 for dancing 77, 111–12, 117, 131, 137, 140, 147, 165–6, 168, 171, 179, 195, 225, 247–8, 268 emblematic or symbolic 160, 167–8, 176, 180–4, 195, 208–10, 214 footwear 60, 77, 111–15, 140, 166, 171–2, 177, 196 designing, recycling and storage 125–49, 155–6, 268 test costumes 134–5, 268 type-casting 114, 146, 154–5, 159, 166–8, 170, 268, 171–3, 175, 177, 201, 211–12, 231–3, 239 Cotton, Robert 166 country dances 20 n. 23, 37, 41–9, 56, 63–4, 73, 111, 116 n. 62, 217, 247–8 Crofts, Cicely 140 Crowe, Sackville 241 Cuquelson [Kückelsom], Alexander 61 dance: antimasque 28, 64, 70–1, 87, 109, 190–2, 197, 200, 203, 217, 219, 222, 227, 244–5, 247–52 and architecture 77, 83, 94, 206, 267 composition and rehearsal 15–16, 71–7, 98–9, 110–11, 251 dance professionals 18, 29, 33, 51–2, 56–7, 59, 61, 64, 69–70, 82, 89, 98, 113, 116–17, 119, 149, 170, 217, 265 dancing schools and teaching 21, 35, 44–5, 61, 75

311

danse horizontale lettered or geometric dance 18, 34, 40, 43, 79–83, 99, 102–3, 105, 110, 196–7, 221, 265, 267 danse noble 60, 63, 77, 97, 107–8, 225, 266 English, Irish, and Scottish repertoire 36–49, 63, 65, 110, 115–16, 266 French repertoire 49–64, 72, 107, 110, 115–16, 171, 225, 227, 266 Italian repertoire 28–36, 63, 72, 108, 110, 115–16, 218, 223–4, 266 length of theatre dances 80–1, 251 masque proper and courtly dance 69, 71, 83, 87, 97, 101, 103, 105–7, 197, 204, 214, 225–7, 241; see also danse noble and danse horizontale performance space 23–4, 82, 84, 86–90, 95, 212, 251, 267 representation of dance 27, 43, 53, 248 Spanish repertoire 32–3, 55, 107, 266 typecasting by dance 55, 65 dance music: 23, 76, 98, 224, 260, 266 antimasque 70–1, 190, 193, 197–8, 199, 203, 245–50 composition 27, 71–3 main masque 190, 199–200 Daniel, Samuel Tethys’ Festival 125, 130, 147, 149 n. 96, 164 Vision of the Twelve Goddesses, The 3, 130, 143, 160, 168, 177, 264 Davenant, William 247, 266 Britannia Triumphans 75, 102–6, 157, 161–2, 167 n. 49, 222, 226, 238–41 Jeffereidos 62 Luminalia 57, 74 n. 31, 75, 89, 133, 160, 163, 180–2 A Proposition for Advancement of Moralitie 105, 263–4 Salmacida Spolia 19, 263–5, 74 n. 31, 75, 77, 83, 86–7, 88 n. 69, 90–2, 94–6, 110, 137, 146, 160, 167–8, 173, 181, 183–4, 212, 263–5, The Temple of Love 75, 146, 132, 161–2, 167 n. 49, 169, 235–7 The Triumphs of the Prince d’Amour 87–8, 113–14, 167 n. 49, Davies, John, Orchestra 21 Daye, Anne 9, 19, 71 n. 16, 190 n. 9, 224 Denbigh, Susan countess of 140 Derby, Alice, countess-dowager of 171 n. 5 Diobono, Pompeo 33–4 Dolmetsch, Mabel 19, 100 Dresden 17, 143, 173 Drummond, William, Forth Feasting 228 Dudley, Ann 72 Dudley, Robert, earl of Leicester 109, 149, 154 Dürer, Albrecht 16 duretto 73

312

Index

Edinburgh 220, 223 Egerton, family 133–4, 146–7, 155 Elam, Keir 267 Elizabeth I, queen of England 18, 29, 40, 101, 109, 127, 129, 135, 142, 151, 195, 232 Elizabeth Stuart, princess of England 62, 73, 130 Elyot, Thomas, The Governour 21, 110 Emeraud, Anthoine 52–3 Entertainment at Richmond, The 65 entrée, see entry entry 28, 70, 80, 87, 190–1, 199–200, 203, 214, 224, 232–4, 250 Escorial 18, 91 n. 78 Esquivel, Juan [de Navarro], Discursos sobre el arte del dançado 32–3, 110 Essex House Masque, The 129 Evelyn, John 45 Fane, Mildmay, see Westmorland, second earl of Farington, William 150 Farrell, Kirby 269 n. 17 fatwas on drama 257–8 Feldman, Walter 255 n. 99, 259 Feuillet, Raoul Anger 27 Finet, John 56 n. 109, 77 n. 47, 90 n. 74 and 75, 239 Fissel, Mark Charles see Goffman, Daniel Flora, La, see Florence, intermedi Fletcher, John, The Faithful Shepherdess 144 Florence, intermedi 63, 86, 103, 111–12, 197 La Flora 161 Il giudizio di Paride 84, 87 n. 64 La liberatione di Tirreno 84–5, 87 n. 64 Le nozze degli dei 161 La Pellegrina 17, 72, 81–2, 90, 113, 119, 164–5, 173 Florio, John 177 n. 34, Forrest, John 219 n. 41, 222 Francalanci, Andrea 89 n. 72, 100 Franko, Mark 9, 66, 71 n. 17, 98 n. 5, 99 n. 11, 100, 115 n. 58, 119 n. 76 Frederick V, elector palatine 52, 73 French kit, see pochette Frías, Manuel de 33, 55 Friedrich Ulrich, duke of Braunschweig 51–2 Gabaleoni, Giovanni Battista, agent of Savoy 1–5, 172, 265 Gaffoyne, Jasper 29, 35 galliard 2, 15, 25, 30–1, 39, 41, 63, 68, 74, 115–16, 266 Gard, Simon de la 61 Gaultier, Jacques 61 Germain, Thomas 74 Giles, Thomas 41, 75, 188, 197 Giudizio di Paride, Il, see Florence, intermedi

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, Theory of Colours 157, 159 Goffman, Daniel 241 n. 44, 243 n. 56, 244 n. 57, 260 n., 261 n. 119 gong 254 Gonzaga, dukes of Mantua 22, 160 Gonzaga, Eleonora, queen of Hungary 119 Goodwin, Jason 231 n. 4, 232, 242 n. 48, 253 Goring, George 56 Gorla, Thérèse de, Marquise du Parc 117 Gough, Melinda 9, 160 n. 17 Gower, John, Confessio Amantis 37 n. 44 Graves, Robert 162 n. 24, 163, 167 n. 47, 224 n. 59 Greenblatt, Stephen 253 Greene, Thomas 105 Greenwich 128 ‘Gresley Manuscript’ 36–7 Grootenboer, Hanneke 92 n. 81, 94 n. 85 Guez de Balzac, Jean-Louis, Lettres 225 guitar 61, 235, 237 ‘Gunter Manuscript’ 38 Hall, Joseph, Virgidemiarum 208 Hamilton, marchioness of 178 Hammond, Frederick 29 n. 4, 166, 203 n. 47, 246 n. 70 Hampton Court 145 harps 65 Harington, John 161 Hay, James, see earl of Carlisle Heath, Robert 69 Heidelberg 62 Henri III, king of France 33 Henri IV, king of France 18, 119, 179 Henrietta Maria, queen of England 45, 53, 63, 77, 86, 102–4, 109, 113, 126, 145, 148–9, 151, 207, 216–17, 222, 235 household of 52, 56, 64, 135–41, 143, 151–2, 164, 178, 217, 225, 267 as patron and sponsor of masques 56, 62, 89, 119, 132–5, 139–41, 143, 155, 178, 188, 233, 235–6, 268 as performer 75, 86, 89, 95, 110, 114, 136, 160, 167–9, 179–84, 263 Henry VII, king of England 20 Henry VIII, king of England 28–30 Henry Stuart, prince of Wales 35, 62, 69, 116, 127, 161, 169, 176, 177, 197, 199, 201–3 household of 42 n. 124 Henshaw(e), Ben 140, 267 Henslowe, Philip 124 Herbert, Henry, master of the revels 41, 44, 61, 125–6, 141, 144 n. 78 Herbert, Mary 155 Herbert, William, third earl of Pembroke 2 Herne, Jeremy 75, 188, 191, 201, 217

Index Heywood, Thomas, The Golden Age 145 Hibbard, Caroline 9 Hide, Henry 241 Hofstadter, Douglas 96 Holeman, Robert 39 Holland, earl of 56 Hollander, Anne 170, 172 Holles, family 131 Holles, Denzel 127, 129 Holles, Francis 129 Holles, John 127–9, 131, 155 Holles, John (the younger) 127–9 Holman, Peter 9, 61 n. 120, 62 n. 123 and 126, 217 n. 34 Hoskins, John 148 Howard, Frances, countess of Essex and Somerset 1 Howard, Skiles 9, 19–20, 71 n. 17, 97 n. 1 and 3, 112, 115 n. 59, 192 n. 13 Howell, James 57 Hudson, Jeffrey 62, 74, 148, 159 Hudson, Richard 72 n. 23 Hughes, Thomas, The Misfortunes of Arthur 211 n. 16 Huntingdon, countess of 76 Hutchinson, Lucy 131 n. 28 Ibrahim, sultan of the Ottoman Empire 242, 258 imagines agentes 264 Inns of court 24, 37–9, 41, 46, 64, 73, 146, 152, 166, 173 ‘Instruction pour dancer’ 8, 53, 60 Isabella Clara Eugenia, infanta of Spain 81 Istanbul see Constantinople James I and VI, king of England and Scotland 74, 101, 107–8, 127–8, 151, 159, 197, 200, 203, 220, 223, 228, 241 n. 43, 258 Jesuit ballet and opera 18, 31, 72, 161, 218, 266 jig 21, 65 Johnson, Anthony 158 Jones, Ann Rosalind 9, 124, 126, 149, 154, 156 Jones, Pamela 82 n. 55 Jones, Inigo 8, 142–4, 158, 162, 169, 267–8 stage designs 84, 88–92, 94–6, 197–8, 207, 216–17, 224, 236, 240, 264 costume design 21, 132–7, 146, 148, 158, 160–1, 165–7, 168, 170–1, 178–83, 196, 201–2, 211, 213–15, 236, 239–40, 250 Jonson, Ben 43, 247 ‘An Expostulation with Inigo Jones’ 146, 205 Barriers 176 Chloridia 57, 74, 132, 134, 139 n. 56, 141, 152, 160, 206 Conversations with William Drummond of Hawthornden 158 Discoveries 5

313

The Entertainment at Theobalds 162 n. 24 The Entertainment at Welbeck 152 Epicoene 164, 253 For the Honour of Wales 144 The Fortunate Isles 138, 144, 167 n. 49 The Gypsies Metamorphosed 44, 176, 219, 235 n. 14, 252 The Haddington Masque 75, 170 n. 2 Horace, His Art of Poetrie 205 Hymenaei 5, 110, 119–20, 130–1, 166–7, 170 n. 2, 177 n. 38, 201, 269 The Irish Masque 35, 65 Love Freed from Ignorance and Folly 62, 76 Love Restored 76, 100–1 Love’s Triumph Through Callipolis 65, 139 Love’s Welcome at Bolsover 152 Masque of Augurs, The 76 n. 39, 150 The Masque of Beauty 110, 168 n. 52, 267 The Masque of Blackness 130, 173–7 The Masque of Queenes 40–1, 76, 130, 132, 146, 150, 152, 162 n. 24, 167 n. 49, 168, 177, 187–99, 206, 250, 265 Neptune’s Triumph for the Return of Albion 75, 144 News from the New World Discovered in the Moon 76 n. 39, 150 Oberon 64, 69, 74–5, 145, 169, 176, 199–206 Pan’s Anniversary 15–16, 144 Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue 3, 22–5, 69, 74, 83, 90 n. 74, 106, 108 n. 30, 134, 144, 167 n. 49, 169, 172, 176, 205, 211 The Sad Shepherd 226 Time Vindicated 41, 44, 134, 137, 167 n. 49, 178 The Vision of Delight 75, 150 Works (1616) 205–6, 265 Juno and Hymenaeus 74 Killigrew, Thomas 139 Knowles, James 33 n. 25 Knowlton, Jean Elizabeth 43 n. 74, 65 n. 131, 71, 73 n. 26, 190 Kyd, Thomas, The Spanish Tragedy 188 Lancelot, Francine 100 Lancre, Pierre de, Tableau de l’inconstance 192–3 Landi, Stefano, Il Sant’ Alessio 72, 246 Lapierre (La Pierre), Guillaume (William) 178, 217 Lapierre (La Pierre), Sebastian 61, 75, 217 Lauze, F. de, Apologie de la danse 53–5, 59–60, 69, 77, 99, 110, 225 Lawes, Henry 45, 217 Lawes, William 45, 217 Lewalski, Barbara Kiefer 199 Liberatione di Tirreno, La, see Florence, intermedi Lindley, David 9, 40, 95, 127 n. 11, 190, 197

314

Index

Linthicum, Mary 9, 126, 154 n. 119 and 120 Lippe, Rudolf zur 9, 97 n. 2 and 4, 104 n. 18, 171 n. 4 Lockyer, Roger 107 Loewenstein, Joseph 190 n. 7, 205 London 17, 19, 21–2, 25, 35, 57, 59, 61–4, 138, 140–2, 153, 161, 208, 221, 230, 232, 237–8, Louis XIII, king of France 54, 59, 119, 132, 161, 225, 233 Louis XIV, king of France 59–60, 172 Louvre 18, 132, 232, 237 Lucian, Peri Orcheseos 219 Lully, Jean-Baptiste 7, 62, 70, 98, 100, 161 Lupi, Livio 30 lutes 1, 29, 52, 73, 76, 190, 200, 246 Lutij, Prospero 30 Lyly, John 226 McGinnis, Katherine 30, 32 n. 20, 33 n. 26 and 27, 34 n. 31 and 32 McGowan, Margaret 79, 113 n. 50 and 51, 119 n. 74, 132 n. 34, 192 n. 15, 232 n. 11 MacIntyre, Jean 142, 144 McJannet, Linda 232 n. 10, 235 McManus, Clare 9, 20, 109 n. 33, 111 n. 43, 115 n. 57 and 59, 144, 197 McNeill, William 106 Madrid 22, 33, 55 Maisse, Andre Hurault, sieur de 29 Malherbe, François 225 Malvezzi, Cristofano 16 n. 6, 82 n. 57 Mantegna, Andrea 22 Marais (the dancer) 233 Marguerite de Valois, queen of France 113 Marlowe, Christopher, Dr Faustus 193 Marsh, Carol 42, 45 Marston, John, The Entertainment at Ashby 171 The Malcontent 74 Martire, Oratio 218 n. 38, 219 Mascall, Leonard 142 Masque of Flowers, The 73, 166, 173 masques audience behaviour and performance conditions 3–4, 22–5, 66, 73, 131, 239 reactions to 1–4, 22–5, 106–7, 119, 125–6, 150, 172, 174–7, 210, 264 rehearsals and preparation 73–7, 137–8, 235; see also dance and costume special effects, lighting and stage machinery 1–2, 87–9, 104, 160–9, 181, 198, 216–17 texts vs. performance 4, 97–100, 119, 264–5, 189–91, 198, 204–6, 211–12, 214, 223, 226, 228, 239, 265 Massé, Marie-Geneviève 100 matachin (mattacino) 219, 259

Matar, Nabil 238 n. 33 and 34, 239 n. 38, 260 n., 261 n. 120 Maynard, John 129, 178 ‘The Masque at York House’ 55 measures 29, 38–41, 47–9, 64, 72, 74, 192, 247–8, 266 Medici, Catherine de’, queen of France 34 Medici, Cosimo II de’, grand duke of Tuscany 86, 94 Medici, Maria de’, queen of France 18, 56, 109, 113–14, 119 Medici Matteo de’, prince 245 Mehmed IV, sultan of the Ottoman Empire 242 Ménestrier, Claude-François 161–2 Mersenne, Marin, Harmonie Universelle 61 Michelangelo (Buonarroti) 241 Middleton, Thomas The Black Book 131 n. 28 A Game at Chess 257 No Wit, No Help Like A Woman’s 4 The World Tost at Tennis 6, 106 Milan 18, 20, 25, 29–30, 32, 34, 64 Milton, John 162 Apology against a Pamphlet 171 Comus (A Masque at Ludlow Castle) 133, 147, 155, 174 Minkowski, Marc 100 Mirabella, M. Bella 109 n. 32 mock battle 218–23, 227, 228, 237, 250, 259 Modyford, James 230, 242–6, 252 Mohammed (the prophet) 233–4, 239 Molière 70 n. 14, 117, 255 Montagu, Robert 61 Montagu, Walter, The Shepherds’ Paradise 84 n. 61, 140, 144, 146, 164, 178 Montagut, Barthélemy de 53–61, 64, 75, 77, 99, 110, 217, 223, 225 ‘Louange de la danse’ 8, 53–5, 60–1, 68–9, 116 Montaigne, Michel de 33–4, 99, 177 n. 34 Monteverdi, Claudio 7, 22, 254 Tirsi e Clori 80, 226 moresca 28–9, 259 morris dance 42, 219–20, 222 Motte, de la, family of dancers and musicians 51–2 Munich 31 Murad III, sultan of the Ottoman Empire 256 Murad IV, sultan of the Ottoman Empire 255, 258–9 music 145, 158, 190, 252, 254, 265; see also dance music exotic/oriental 235, 237, 253–5, 258 musicians 65, 76, 123, 133 French 18, 51, 60, 98, 152 Italian 30

Index Naples 30–2, 118 Negri, Cesare 18, 28 n. 2, 30, 33–4, 81, 99, 116 n. 62 Le gratie d’amore (and dances from this collection) 32, 80–1 Nuove inventioni di balli 35 Nevitt, Thomas 129–31, 155 Newcastle, Margaret Cavendish, duchess of 21, 117, 152 n. 111 Newcastle, William Cavendish, first earl and duke of 152 The Christmas Masque 77 The Country Captaine 159 ‘The Little Book’ 154–5 The Varietie 70 n. 13 Nevile, Jennifer 18 n. 15, 23 n. 30, 82–3, 89 Nicoll, Allardyce 268 Norbrook, David 149–50, 155 n. 124, 210 Nosseni, Johann Maria 143 Nozze degli dei, Le, see Florence, intermedi Oatlands 57, 128, 135, 137, 210 organ 254 Orgel, Stephen 9, 88 n. 69, 104 n. 19, 107 n. 27, 126, 128 n. 13, 132 n. 30, 133 n. 38, 148, 149 n. 96, 154–5, 170 n. 2, 174 n. 21, 179 n. 45, 187 n. 1, 195 n. 22, 201, 204 n. 51 Orrell, John 9, 75 n. 35–6, 90 n. 76, 91–2, 94, 96, 162 n. 20 Ovid 132, 194 Oxford 39, 145, 235 Padua 35 Pagitt, Justinian 15 Palermo 30 Palladio, Andrea 86 Paluello, Lodovico 33–4 pantomime 46, 65 Parigi, Alfonso 90 n. 76 Parigi, Giulio 84, 90 Paris 4, 17, 20, 31, 33–4, 51–4, 59–60, 62, 70, 128, 166, 172, 232, 234–5 Parry, Graham 3, 198 passamezzo 23 ‘Pattricke Manuscript’ 42–4, 46 pavane 15, 39, 53, 110 n. 39, 115 Payne, Ian 24 n. 35, 38, 192 n. 17 Peacock, John 9–10, 91 n. 77, 94 n. 84, 126, 132 n. 34, 158, 162 n. 20, 180 n. 52, 200 n. 35 and 38, 201 n. 44, 204 Pellegrina, La, see Florence, intermedi Penshurst Place 208–9 perspective stage design 267; see also Jones, Inigo, stage designs Perth 220, 223 Perugia 31 Philip II, king of Spain 18

315

Philip III, king of Spain 30 Philippe, Gérard 169 pipe 237 Plato, The Republic 157 Playford, John The (English) Dancing Master 15, 42–9, 111, 140 n. 62, 246, 248 Pliny (Plinius Secundus, the Elder) 174 Pocahontas 3 pochette 76 Pordage, Samuel, Troades 223 n. 52 Pory, John 131, 166 Pozzo, Andrea del 92–4, 96 Praetorius, Michael, Terpsichore 8, 24, 51–3, 73, 223–4 Pruiksma, Rose 59 n. 118 Prunières, Henri 4 n. 11 Prynne, William, Histrio-Mastix 68, 111, 193 psalter 254 Pure, Michel de 4 n. 10, 70, 111, 161 Puttenham, George, The Arte of English Poesie 158 Quintilian 67 Rabel, Daniel 22, 132, 177 n. 36, 189, 234, 236, 254 n. 95 Racan, Honorat de Bueil, seigneur de, Artenice 114 Ramsey, John, ‘Practise for Dauncinge’ 15, 24–5, 39, 116 n. 63 Raylor, Timothy 57 n. 113, 105 n. 20, 128 n. 16, 129 n. 18 and 19, 263 recitative 29 revels 2, 23, 28, 30, 39, 41, 43 n. 74, 44–5, 53, 64–5, 73, 103, 107, 116, 128, 175, 224, 266 Revels Office 141–4, 164 Rhetorica ad Herennium 264 n. 5 Richelieu, Armand-Jean du Plessis, cardinal de 225 Richmond 65, 135, Rinuccini, Pierfrancesco 161 Ripa, Cesare, Iconologia 188, 208 Romano, Giulio 29 Rome 3, 18, 22, 162, 166, 207, 218, 232 Rospigliosi, Giulio, Chi soffre speri 162 Rousset, Christophe 100 Rudolf II, king and emperor of Germany 18, 30 Ruggle, George, Ignoramus 127 n. 11 Running Masque, The 154, 178 Rycaut, Paul 244 n. 57, 258 Sabol, Andrew 3 n. 5, 23 n. 29 and 31, 24, 53 n. 98, 71 n. 15 and 16, 73 n. 26, 80 n. 52 Saint-Hubert, Monsieur de 161, 165 Salusbury, Thomas: ‘The Chirk Castle Entertainment’ 43 A Masque at Knowsley 219

316

Index

Saluste, Guillaume de, Sieur du Bartas, The Divine Weeks and Works 211 n. 16 Salvetti, Amerigo 56 n. 108, 75 n. 35, 161, 162 n. 20, 238 Sandys, George 253 Santucci, Ercole, ‘Mastro da ballo’ 8, 30–2, 34, 60, 99, 116 n. 62, 218–19 Sanuto, Martin 259 sarabande 18, 65, 235, 248 Saslow, James 82 n. 56, 90 n. 73, 113 n. 48, 173 n. 13 Saumur 61 Savoy 1–2, 33–4, 56, 75 n. 36, 81 n. 53 Schmid, Johann Rudolf 232 n. 6, 242–3, 258 Schmitt, Jean-Claude 67 n. 1 Schnitzer, Claudia 143 n. 74, 173 n. 14, 223 n. 54 Schreiber, Roy 127, 128 n. 12, 138, 139 n. 55 Schwartz, Kathryn 194 Scouloudi, Irene 61 n. 120 Serlio, Sebastiano 90, 226 Sforza, Ippolita 118 Smialkowska, Monika 198 Smith, William 28 Servi, Constantino de’ 1, 18, 161 Shakespeare, William 149, 153 All’s Well That Ends Well 123 Hamlet 188 A Midsummer Night’s Dream 192 n. 13 Othello 174 Richard II 92 Sonnets 269 The Tempest 141 Twelfth Night 25 The Winter’s Tale 29, 145, 203 n. 49, 269 Sharpe, Kevin 95, 151 n. 105, 207 n. Shirley, James The Ball 36, 70 n. 13 The Constant Maid 4 The Traitor 4 The Triumph of Peace 65 n.136, 76, 88, 146, 152, 157, 163, 165, 167 n. 49, 217 Shrovetide Masque, The 134, 140–1, 178 Sidney, Sir Philip 208–9, 211, 228 The Arcadia 210–11, 224 Sidney, Robert, first earl of Leicester 129–31, 149, 155 Skantze, P. A. 265 n. 11 Smuts, Malcolm R. 267 n. 14 Somerset House 56, 84, 135 Sommi, Leone de’ 160–2 Southern, Richard 88 n. 69 spagnoletta 23–5, 73 Sparti, Barbara 9, 30 n. 11 and 14, 31 n. 15–19, 72 n. 23, 89 n. 72, 100 Speed, John, Theatre of the Empire of Great Britain 211 Spenser, Edmund, The Faerie Queene 21

Spilman, John 130–1 stage fury 188–9 stage machinery, see masques stage Turk 59, 155, 203, 221, 231–5, 237, 239, 256 stage Christian 221, 239, 256 Stallybrass, Peter 9, 124, 126, 149, 154, 156 Stern, Tiffany 268 n. Stokes, James 38 Stokes, William 45 Stow, John 39 Stravinsky, Igor 99 Strong, Roy 9, 126, 128 n. 13, 133 n. 38, 148, 149 n. 96, 154–5, 159, 161 n. 19, 168 n. 53, 176 n. 30, 179 n. 45, 195 n. 22, 203 n. 46 Stuart, Arbella (Arabella) 62 Stuart, Mary, queen of Scots 34 Stubbes, Philip 111 Sturgess, Keith 144, 214 n. 27, 216 n. 28, 217 Sturt, John, see Pozzo, Andrea del Suleyman the Magnificent, sultan of the Ottoman Empire 253 Sutton, Julia 9, 113 n. 47 sword dance 220–1, 223 tabor and pipe 190 Tedeschie, Lucretia de’ 29 Tempesta, Antonio 201 Tercionlu, Derin 256 n. 106, 258 Tertullian 158 theatres Blackfriars Theatre 146 Merchant Taylors’ Hall 163, 221, 237 Red Bull Theatre 145 Teatro Farnese, Parma 203 Teatro Olimpico, Vicenza 86, 169 see also Banqueting House Tilmouth, Michael 230 n. 2, 231 n. 3, 241, 242 n. 45, 245, 248 n. 78, 250 n. 82, 252 Tomlinson, Sopie 9, 178 n. 39 torch dance 223–5, 227–8 Townshend, Aurelian Albion’s Triumph 113, 139, 146, 163, 167 n. 49, 169, 227 Tempe Restored 19, 74, 88, 134, 136–7, 139, 148, 167 n. 49, 173, 178–80 Tradescant, John 148 Trumbull, William 130 Tuke, Thomas, A Discourse against Painting and Tincturing of Women 174 Turin 1, 81 n. 53 Valle, Pietro della 31 Vane, Henry 58 Vecellio, Cesare 236 n. 19 Veevers, Erica 9, 160, 168, 179, 180 n. 50, 181 n. 55 and 57

Index Venice 3, 17, 20, 22–3, 25, 30, 35–6, 56, 65, 112–13, 161, 175, 177, 244 n. 57, 252, 259 Vienna 18, 119, 233, 260 Villiers, Mary 18–19 Vinci, Leonardo da, 95 violins and violinists 2, 17, 29–30, 33–4, 51–2, 61–2, 64, 76, 80, 89, 98, 197 Vitruvius 198 volta 7 n. 18, 20, 28 n. 3, 109, 115, 116 n. 62 Vondel, Joost van den, 184 Vostet, Jean, Almanach, 51; see also Arbeau, Thoinot Walls, Peter 9, 23 n. 30, 72, 84 n. 62, 199 n. 34, 204 n. 50, 217 n. 33 and 34, 235 n. 14 Ward, John 9, 15 n. 2, 38, 42, 46, 71–2, 73 n. 26, 230 n. 2, 245, 246 n. 71, 248 n. 78, 250 Warner, William, Albions England 212 n. 20 Watanabe O’Kelly, Helen 17 n. 8 Weaver, John 251 Webb, John 90–1, 94, 96, 267 Weckherlin, Georg Rodolf 77, 79, 132, 188 Wellingborough 235 Welsford, Enid 9, 268

317

Westmorland, Mildmay Fane, second Earl of Candy Restored 94 Wentworth, Thomas, first earl of Strafford 57 Whitehall 1, 3–4, 8, 18, 76, 91, 128–30, 135, 141, 143, 146, 149, 160, 210, 241 Whitelocke, Bulstrode 76, 157, 165, 175 n. 28 ‘Willoughby Manuscript’ 38 Wilson, David R. 24 n. 35, 38 Windsor Castle 207, 228 Winkler, Klaus 73 n. 25 women professional artists 82, 117, 119, 162, 178 as dancers and performers 60–1, 107–20, 131, 177–9, 181, 194, 196–7, 224 Wotton, Henry 128 n. 15, 231 n. 3 Wright, Thomas, The Passions of the Mind 67–8 Württemberg, court of 79 Wynne, Richard 140–1 Yates, Frances 105, 264 n. 5 York House 55 Zamet, Sebastiano 18 Zenobia, queen of Palmyra 195

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