Theater Reform and the Masque in Marvell's Upon Appleton House

Abstract

The signature scene shifts, pastoral settings, and perspectival instabilities of Andrew Marvell’s Upon Appleton House squarely align the poem with the theatrical tradition of the court masque, a tradition that was effectively moribund at the at the time of the poem’s composition in 1651.  The influence of the masque on Upon Appleton House (and other Marvell works) has been widely noted, but the significance of his poem in the longer history of English theater—specifically, in the discourse of theatrical reform—has not been fully considered.  In Upon Appleton House, Marvell not only applies the strategies and techniques of the masque, but he also engages with ideas central to the ongoing debate between opponents and defenders of the stage.  As such, his poem anticipates the reforms and innovations attempted by William Davenant, Richard Flecknoe, and others who campaigned to revive theater in Interregnum England.  However, Marvell’s appropriation of masque theatrics is not tethered to the goals of reform.  His poem is distinctly the product of the post-regicide, pre-Protectorate imagination, when the theaters are shuttered, dramatic performance is driven underground, and the fate of the Commonwealth is precarious.  Accordingly, his method is not to establish a mode of theater palatable to republican interests, but instead to defamiliarize theatrical representation in a way that responds to the uncertainty of the moment.