Examines the masques and court festivals staged between 1603 and 1640, demonstrating how they reflected and influenced the Stuart kingship.

The Renaissance court masque, traditionally an entertainment of music, dancing, pageantry, and spectacular scenic effects was transformed by Ben Jonson into a serious mode of literary expression. Because its flexibility provided a forum for his dramatic imagination, Jonson was able to resolve and transcend the satiric vision that was in many ways the substance of his drama. He instructed as well as applauded his courtly audience and, with the aid of the great theatrical designer Inigo Jones, brought unity to the diverse elements of the masque, infusing them with a moral and poetic life. In early 1969, Yale University Press published The Complete Masques, the first one-volume edition and the most carefully edited and annotated text available. A modernized version, the 576 page Complete Masques includes the faithful reprinting of Jonson’s own glosses and notes, translated and annotated, as well as explanatory notes which offer the most detailed critical commentary ever undertaken. This abridged collection contains the most important of the works included in the large edition, and Mr. Orgel’s introduction which discusses Jonson’s development of the masque in relation to Inigo Jones’s development of the illusionistic stage. Mr. Orgel is associate professor of English at the University of California at Berkeley.

A 1998 collection which takes an alternative look at the courtly masque in early seventeenth-century England.

"Death proves them all but toyes": Nashe's unidealising show / Elizabeth Cook -- "In those figures which they seeme": Samuel Daniel's Tethys' festival / John Pitcher -- Music, masque and meaning in The tempest / David Lindley -- Sounding to present occasions: Jonson's masques of 1620-5 / Sara Pearl -- To that secure fix'd state': the function of the Caroline masque form / Jennifer Chibnall -- The reformation of the masque / David Norbrook -- The present aid of this occasion': the setting of Comus / John Creaser -- Location and meaning in masque, morality, and royal entertainment / Helen Cooper -- The French element in Inigo Jones's masque designs* / John Peacock -- Dryden's Albion and Albanius: the apotheosis of Charles II / Paul Hammond.

The masque had a brief but splendid life as the dominant mode of entertainment at the early Stuart court, and it has increasingly come to be recognized as a genre offering a fascinating insight into the culture and politics of the early seventeenth century.This selection of 18 masque for Charles I, performed just before the outbreak of civil war. It also includes examples of entertainments performed on royal progresses, as well as one domestic masque.Court masques were extravagant multi-media happenings, imbued with often arcane allegorical programmes by writers and designers, and frequently commenting on tipical political issues. In this, the most substantial available selection, readers are offered the annotation necessary for understandingthe complexities of the individual texts.Under the General Editorship of Michael Cordner, of the University of York, the texts of the plays have been newly edited and are presented with modernized spelling and punctuation. In addition to the detailed notes there is a scholarly introduction, making this edition invaluable to students ofRenaissance drama and court culture.