The Stuart Court Masque and Political Culture.

From the library of Prof. Wolfgang Haase, long-time editor of ANRW and the International Journal of the Classical Tradition (IJCT). - Slighly rubbed jacket, otherwise very good and clean. Includes review of the book. / Leicht beriebener Umschlag, sonst sehr gut und sauber. Beiliegend Rezension zum Buch. - Court masques were multi-media entertainments, with song, dance, theatre, and changeable scenery, staged annually at the English court to celebrate the Stuart dynasty. They have typically been regarded as frivolous and expensive events. This book dispels this notion, emphasizing instead that they were embedded in the politics of the moment, and spoke in complex ways to the different audiences who viewed them. Covering the whole period from Queen Anne�s first masque at Winchester in 1603 to Salmacida Spolia in 1640, Butler looks in depth at the political functions of state festivity. The book contextualizes masque performances in intricate detail, and analyzes how they shaped, managed, and influenced the public face of the Stuart king-ship. Butler presents the masques as a vehicle through which we can read the early Stuart court�s political aspirations and the changing functions of royal culture in a period of often radical instability. - Martin Butler is Professor of English Renaissance Drama at the University of Leeds. He is the author of Theatre and Crisis 1632�1642 (Cambridge, 1984), and has edited Cymbeline (New Cambridge Shakespeare, 2005) and The Tempest (2007). He is a General Editor, with David Bevington and Ian Donaldson, of The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson. ISBN 9780521883542