Masque and Opera in England, 1656-1688

Andrew Walkling

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317099697
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

Masque and Opera in England, 1656–1688 presents a comprehensive study of the development of court masque and through-composed opera in England from the mid-1650s to the Revolution of 1688–89. In seeking to address the problem of generic categorization within a highly fragmentary corpus for which a limited amount of documentation survives, Walkling argues that our understanding of the distinctions between masque and opera must be premised upon a thorough knowledge of theatrical context and performance circumstances. Using extensive archival and literary evidence, detailed textual readings, rigorous tabular analysis, and meticulous collation of bibliographical and musical sources, this interdisciplinary study offers a host of new insights into a body of work that has long been of interest to musicologists, theatre historians, literary scholars and historians of Restoration court and political culture, but which has hitherto been imperfectly understood.

A companion volume will explore the phenomenon of "dramatick opera" and its precursors on London's public stages between the early 1660s and the first decade of the eighteenth century.

Part I
“Their greatest gallantry imaginable”

Masques, balls, and “recreational” acting at court

1 Balls and the growth of Shrovetide entertainments

One of the defining characteristics of the pre-Civil War Stuart masque, a form that had itself grown out of the semi-theatrical masquerades and balls enjoyed by courtiers and their monarchs during the Tudor era, was the presence of courtly “recreational” performers on stage. Charles I and his queen Henrietta Maria famously assumed the mantle of masquers-in-chief in the grand productions of the 1630s, thereby putting the ultimate seal of approval on this type of activity. But an equally significant component of the form involved the participation of the court’s most youthful denizens, as can be seen, for example, in the masques and “barriers” (masque-like displays of military prowess) created for Henry, Prince of Wales—who appeared in Ben Jonson’s Oberon, the Fairy Prince in 1611, aged sixteen—and his surviving younger brother Charles—whose first masque performance was at the age of seventeen, in Jonson’s Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue in 1618. With the latter man grown to adulthood and (seemingly) securely established on his throne, it was the turn of his own son and heir to lead a troupe of young compatriots onto a court stage. On 12 September 1636, at the tender age of six, the future Charles II took the lead role of Britomart (a possible echo of the female Knight of Chastity in Book III of Spenser’s The Faerie Queene) in a masque-like entertainment at Richmond Palace.¹ While modest in comparison with the great Whitehall extravaganzas mounted by Inigo Jones, this anonymous piece not only marked the elevation of the young Charles to his rightful position as Prince of Wales, but also reinforced the place of children as legitimate performers in these types of court entertainments.

1 The King and Qveenes Entertainement at Richmond. After Their Departvre from Oxford: In a Masque, presented by the most Illustrious Prince, Prince Charles Sept. 12. 1636 (Oxford: by Leonard Lichfield, 1636); for a typeset facsimile, see W. Bang and R. Brotanek, eds., The King and Qveenes Entertainement at Richmond Nach der Q 1636 in Neudruck (Materialien zur Kunde des älteren Englischen Dramas, ser. 1, vol. 2: Louvain: Uystpruyst; Leipzig: Harrassowitz, 1903; rpt. Vaduz: Kraus, 1965). For a discussion, see John H. Astington, “The King and Queenes Entertainement at Richmond,” Records of Early English Drama Newsletter 12/1 (1987): 12–18. The antimasque portion of this entertainment was reprinted as “WILTSHIRE TOM, An Entertainment at Court” in Francis Kirkman, The Wits, or, Sport upon Sport, part 2 (London: Francis Kirkman, 1673), 26–32; Charles Coleman’s song “Did not you once, Lucinda, vow,” which concluded the antimasque, resurfaced in 1684 in the third pageant of the annual Lord Mayor’s Show: see Thomas Jordan, London’s Royal Triumph for the City’s Royal Magistrate (London: John and Henry Playford, 1684), 15.

Of course neither the young Prince of Wales nor his masque-loving parents had long to savor such diversions, given the advent of civil war and the ultimate collapse of the Stuart regime. But the young scion of the dynasty, in exile on the Continent from October 1651, did find occasional opportunities throughout his twenties to witness similar sorts of entertainments at the courts of his more fortunate royal and noble hosts. On 6 August 1653, while sojourning in Paris, Charles accompanied his younger brother, the Duke of Gloucester, to see a ballet performed for the court of his cousin Louis XIV at the Jesuit college of Louis-le-Grand in Paris.² And on 14 April 1654, Francesco Buti’s comedy Le Nozze di Peleo e di Teti, with interpolated masque entries by the composer Carlo Caproli del Violino, was presented in Paris, with “the late Queen of England, the titular King of Scotland [i.e. Charles], and the titular Dukes of York, and Glocester” in attendance.³ Indeed, Charles’s younger brother James (aged twenty) was an active participant in the production, performing as one of “twelve Fishers of Corrall” alongside “The Duke of Anjou the Kings onely brother” and a number of other young French lords.⁴ The text associated with James’s appearance referred specifically to the plight of the English royal family:

T’is not for me to fish for Corrall here,
I to another Coast my course must steer,
A fatall ground
Which Seas surround.
There I must fish upon an angry Main,
More then two Crowns and Scepters to regain. (p. 8)

Charles and James’s nine-year-old younger sister Henriette Anne (later Duchesse d’Orléans) also appeared in the performance, “representing the muse Erato, which fell to her by lott” (p. 2). Her text was similarly political, announcing that

2 Jean Loret, La Muze Historique, letter 4: 29 (9 August 1653); see J. Ravenel and Ed. V. de la Pelouze, eds., La Muze Historique ou Recueil des Lettres en Vers Contenant les Nouvelles du Temps Écrites a son Altesse Mademoizelle de Longueville, Depuis Duchesse de Nemours (1650–1665) (4 vols.: Paris: P. Jannet, 1857–78), 1: 395 (lines 105–68). I am grateful to Judith Rock for having brought this reference to my attention. All dates given in this paragraph are in “New Style,” i.e. ten days ahead of those in England.

3 As reported in The Weekly Intelligencer of the Common-VVealth 332 (16–23 May 1654), 262. For discussions of this performance, see Per Bjurström, Giacomo Torelli and Baroque Stage Design (Uppsala Studies in the History of Art, New Series 2; Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell, 1961; 2nd ed., 1962), 160–75, and Susan Wiseman, Drama and Politics in the English Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 127–30. Two or three days later, Charles and his mother called upon the French king and his mother “at the Louvre, and after supper,” were “entertained with a [sic] pleasure of a Mask” (Weekly Intelligencer, 263).

4 See James Howell’s contemporaneous English translation of the work, The Nvptialls of Pelevs and Thetis. Consisting of a Mask and a Comedy, [F]or the The [sic] Great Royall Ball, Acted lately in Paris six times By The King [i.e. Louis XIV] in Person. The Duke of Anjou. The Duke of Yorke. with divers other Noble men. Also By The Princess Royall Henrette [sic] Marie. The Princess of Conty. The Dutchess of Roqvelaure. The Dutchess of Crequy. with many other Ladies of Honour (London: Henry Herringman, 1654), 7.

My Innocent and young aspect,
Inspires both pitty and respect;
And he who loudly would complain
of Princes falls and Peoples raign,
Of angry starrs, and destiny,
Let him but cast his eyes on me. (p. 2)

While the English king-in-exile continued his politically driven peregrinations, departing Paris only three months after the performances of Le Nozze and setting up his court at Cologne, James remained in France, where he continued to attend balls and other entertainments.⁵ In a letter to Charles dated 21 January 1656, Henry, Lord Jermyn noted in a postscript, “I send you the maske from Benserade. The duke of York can give you a good account of it; for he fayles it not at every dancing.”⁶ In 1658 (having relocated once again, this time to Bruges) the future monarch joined his siblings at the Antwerp lodgings of William Cavendish, Marquess (later Duke) of Newcastle on 27 February for a performance of a sumptuous masque prophesying Charles’s imminent restoration.⁷

Given these activities, we might expect to see a spate of masques and other amateur theatrical entertainments at the English court once Charles II had regained his throne. Newcastle certainly did: his wide-ranging manuscript “advice” to the young monarch includes a section on “Your Majesties Devertisementes” in which he urges his former tutee to have regular masques (“Etalienes makes the Seanes beste, & all but your Majestie May have their Glorious Atier of Coper, which will Doe as well For two or three nightes, as silver, or Gold, & much Less charge”) and balls (to which Charles should “Invite The young Ladyes, & give them a banquett, & Drinke their welcome with thankes”).⁸ Newcastle continues:

I Should wish the firste time, That it is performed, to have all the Lordes, & their Ladyes, Sons, & Daughters, knights & gentle men, of qualety, & their Sons, & Daughters, Invited, to itt, & Every one to have ticketts From the Lord Chamberline for their Enterance, & the Lord Chamberline to bee very carefull, that none Else Enters, butt those that are Invited, to a voyd confution & Disorder[.]

5 See for example the report in Mercurius Politicus 297 (14–21 February 1656): 5970: “On the 16 the grand Balet, called Plyche [sic] or the Power of Love, was danced at the Louvre, in presence of the Queen, the Princesse of Orange, her brother the Titular Duke of York, their sister the little Princesse, Du[k]e Francis of Lorraine and his son Prince Ferdinand, with many other great Lords and Ladies.”

6 A Collection of the State Papers of John Thurloe, Esq. (London: for the Executor of Fletcher Gyles, et al., 1742), 1: 691.

7 See Calendar of State Papers, Domestic 1657–58: 296–97, 311 (Ashbee, 8: 135–36); unfortunately, no text for this production survives. I am grateful to Lynn Hulse for having originally provided me with this reference.

8 Bodleian Library, Oxford, Clarendon MS 109, transcribed in Thomas P. Slaughter, introd., Ideology and Politics on the Eve of Restoration: Newcastle’s Advice to Charles II (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1984), 60.

A second performance of each masque should be set aside for “the Ins of courte, & non Else,” and a third for “the Lord maior, Sheriffes, & all the Aldermen, with their wives, sons, & Daughters, with the principall merchants, & no other to come In.”

Yet the evidence for such events in the earliest years of the Restoration is exceedingly scanty. For the most part, the new king had to be content with attending presentations sponsored by his subjects and mounted beyond the immediate confines of his court. Some of these entertainments incorporated theatrical elements, such as the public pageants put on by the City of London to celebrate his return to England in May 1660, his coronation in April 1661, and the arrival of his new queen, Catherine of Braganza in August 1662.⁹ Others, while still theatrical, were more private: sometime in the spring or summer of 1660, Charles was entertained at Newcastle’s residence in London with a masque-like entertainment written by the Marquess himself, praising Charles and mocking the French culture in vogue at court.¹⁰ As early as April or May 1660, the cleric Anthony Sadler devised a somewhat overwrought “Sacred MASQUE … FOR His saCR...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of figures, diagrams, and music examples
• List of tables
• Acknowledgments
• Series editor’s preface
• Notes to the reader
• Introduction: Comparing apples and tomatoes: The problematics of Restoration masque and opera
• PART I “Their greatest gallantry imaginable”: Masques, balls, and “recreational” acting at court
• PART II “For such uses as the King shall direct”: Through-composed opera, foreign musicians, and the Royall Academy of Musick
• Appendix A: Transcription of National Archives, London, AO1/2053/28, ff. 4v–5r (costumes for 1667 court ball)
• Appendix B: Letters relating to Lord Sunderland’s court ballet, 1686
• Appendix C: Instrumental music associated with early operas and masques found in contemporary printed collections, 1662–c.1725
• Select bibliography
• Name index
• Subject index
• Works index