A Theatre of Diplomacy. International Relations and the Performing Arts in Early Modern France

Abstract

In this broad-ranging, clearly argued and deeply research monograph, Ellen R. Welch demonstrates that ‘taking metaphors seriously’ matters. When early modern diplomats described their actions and settings using the language of theatre, they were approximating their court experience using a frame of reference that would have been understandable to their addressees. At the same time, the fact that this rhetorical approach was widespread indicates that it was not a matter of capricious fancy on the diplomats’ part, but rather, that a continuity was perceived to exist between the two domains of performance and diplomacy. It is to Welch’s great credit that she parses different types of writing with distinctive approaches: this book demonstrates that for the deep impact of the ‘linguistic turn’ in the field of history, it is still a separate endeavour from literary criticism. The volume is articulated in a theoretical introduction and eight chapters covering the chronological span from 1565 to 1714; Welch is equally at ease with the sixteenth as with the early eighteenth century, demonstrating a rare range and abilities that set her scholarship apart. Chapter 1 dwells on the 1565 entertainment in Bayonne organized by Catherine de’ Medici and Charles IX to the benefit of the Spanish queen. Chapter 2 utilizes a brouhaha that occurred in 1608 when the French envoy to the British court was excluded from court entertainment to explore the actions and reactions of individual diplomats. In Chapter 3, Welch studies ballets built around ethnic or proto-national figures in the 1620s and 1630s, while Chapter 4 explores the messages conveyed by the stagings at Richelieu’s Palais Cardinal in the years 1639–42. Chapter 5 pinpoints the functions and contents of performances that took place during the Congress of Westphalia, which marked the end of the Thirty Years War and is considered to be a watershed in diplomatic history. The scope of the entertainment and the self-presentation of the French monarch form the core of Chapter 6, which focuses on Louis XIV’s performance, emphasizing how audiences took it in, rather than its intended meaning for the French nobility at court. Likewise, Chapter 7 shows the potentials and hazards of attempting to utilize performances to engage non-European audiences while presenting them to French and Western European ones. Lastly, Chapter 8 concerns the shift of diplomacy away from the court and to public places such as the Paris Opéra, at the end of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth century. For each of the events Welch examines, she offers necessary, succinct explanations of their historical and cultural frames, which additionally serves to bolster her argument, alongside her analysis and judicious citations from the so-called primary texts. Throughout, she shies away from any teleological reading: there is nothing unavoidable or inescapable about the transformation from courtly entertainment to Opéra performance, but continuities and modifications that Welch analyses in depth.