Jonson's Jacobean Masques and the Moral Imagination

Abstract

In the six decades since T. S. Eliot observed of Ben Jonson's court masques the artistry of spectacle was no longer fully appreciated, we have learned a good deal about the complexity of a genre once easy to dismiss as excessive flattery of princes who ought to have been spending time on state affairs instead of spending on entertainment money they did not have. We better understand, for example, Jonson's skillful handling of such formal restrictions as a king who stayed a spectator, and the need to include dancing. We better understand the contributions to the masque of the scenic designer Inigo Jones. And we have had traced for us the ways the structure and content of Jonson's masques generally, and in some cases specifically, reflect the political concerns of the day.' That the performance of a masque was a state occasion of some importance is attested to by the frequent disputes between ambassadors to James's court over precedence at those expensive evenings. Masques were meant to demonstrate the ruler's generosity and authority, to show off the magnificence of that great name Britannia, this blessed isle (Blackness 216).2 It is worth remembering, however, James is praised in Jonson's masques for his virtue as well as for his power, and to Jonson the context of a masque was moral as well as political. Looking back at over twenty years of writing for the court in the introductory remarks to his first Caroline masque, Jonson granted primary importance to the great claim of his age about the moral seriousness of literature, acknowledging the importance of royalty only in a parenthesis: