TOPICAL ALLUSIONS ON STAGE. ELIZABETHAN COURTLY SPECTACLES AND THE ANTIMASQUE.

Abstract

This dissertation aims at exploring the origins of the Stuart antimasque in the Elizabethan age. The antimasque is a literary device which firstly appeared with the Jonsonian masques in the 1610s, where it took the form of an episode featuring elements of ‘opposition’ to the main masque. Throughout the years, the form of the antimasque underwent a development, and started being concerned with topical allusions, as shown by the curious line of evolution represented by Hymenaei, Love Restored and Mercury Vindicated, by Ben Jonson. It is exactly this connection of the antimasque with topical allusions that links the Stuart antimasque with the early ‘antimasque-like’ aspects in the Elizabethan age. This thesis intends to demonstrate that these latter were not to be found in the Elizabethan masks, but they were rather present in some other kind of entertainments performed at court in front of the Queen. The period in which courtly spectacles started containing ‘antimasque-like’ aspects corresponds to the last two decades of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, when the issue of the succession to the throne was causing deep anxieties in England. The four spectacles this dissertation takes as example of court entertainments containing ‘antimasque-like’ aspects related to the current socio-political situation are The Lady of May, Sappho and Phao, Endymion and Summer’s Last Will and Testament: if, on the one hand, they aim to give a positive image of the Queen, on the other, they also express the anxieties of the age. This thesis finally demonstrates that this dialectic, which is typical of the antimasque, was not restricted to the Elizabethan courtly spectacles, but there were influences on the public stage, the most significant of which are to be found in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, by William Shakespeare.