Performance and Political Allegory in Restoration England:What to Interpret and When

Abstract

Abstract Allegory is an essential component of the vocabulary of those of us who work with the texts, the drama, and a good portion of the music of the seventeenth century. Even a cursory familiarity with the high culture of the period will make clear both the extent to which allegory played a crucial role in many aspects of seventeenth-century public and courtly discourse and the multifariousness of allegorical expression-not to mention the widespread familiarity with particular kinds of allegorical symbols which prevailed at this time. In the context of allegory as a component of opera, Curtis Price’s article for The New Grove Dictionary ef Opera provides a useful starting-point. Price identifies three basic levels of allegorical expression that can be found in the operas of the seventeenth century: parable, mythological symbolism, and topical or political allusion. The first and second levels do not present any major interpretive problems: if a text uses parable to convey a moral or aphoristic message, that message can usually be understood with a minimum of difficulty. By the same token, mythological symbolism can be relatively easy to decipher, whether the purpose is to make a general statement about commonly held values or to pay respect to the author’s patron or another important personage. It is in the area of topical or political allusion that the problems of allegory become most apparent.