Interaction: the City’s Social Life

Abstract

By the end of the seventeenth century, most royal courts across Europe had an established and regular calendar of daily activities and entertainments, as well as the annual round of major feast days and anniversaries. This daily or weekly schedule focused on the various elements of the ruler’s routine: rising (lever) and retiring (coucher) for the day, religious devotion (mass or religious service), dining, conducting state business, receiving guests and various pleasurable diversions, for example hunting, gambling and attending entertainments, like the theatre or masked balls. Individual courts placed different value on the symbolic importance of these events and, correspondingly, the amount of time, money and effort spent on them. Once again, the French court at Versailles represents a particularly regimented, representational example; the Habsburg court at the Hofburg in the middle of Vienna was a less extensive establishment in a different context, but had a similar approach to this daily routine.1 The same basic outline can be seen in other examples across the continent during the eighteenth century, such as the Bavarian court in Munich.2 However, the perceived extravagance of such court entertainments led to a reaction against them, principally at Frederick William I’s court in Berlin.3 Yet, even at otherwise financially conservative courts, like the Hanoverian court in London, these occasions were deemed important as a means to gather the court’s prime movers and their participation was expected as a result.4