Abstract
Abstract The chapter considers women within elite courtly networks, from Mary Sidney and Lady Mary Wroth, to Aemilia Lanyer and Margaret Cavendish. All of these women writers draw on the court masque as a material and symbolic performance space for elite girls and women under the influence of Queen Anna of Denmark and Queen Henrietta Maria. Exegetically and poetically innovative in her masque-like depictions of the heavenly court, Mary Sidney evokes a sense of place for devotional purposes. Aemilia Lanyer strategically places her would-patrons as attendants on the main masque of Christ’s Passion. By purposefully misplacing masques in her prose romance, Mary Wroth uses courtly codes as self-fashioning and social critique. Margaret Cavendish’s nostalgic and utopian relocation of the masque transforms centre and periphery, displaying aristocratic virtues. Changing the place of the court masque, these women also change their own places in and beyond court culture.
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