ABSTRACT
The Masque of Blackness written by Ben Jonson was perhaps the first Charles Stuart court masque to make a significant impact. Several of the court theatres held over a thousand people, who were admitted by ticket under the fiction that these were invitations from the king james. Thomas Campion, composer as well as poet, created a series of masques which emphasised what might be called the ‘psychological’ rather than the ritualistic, and Samuel Daniel, whose Vision of Twelve Goddesses was the very first Jacobean court masque, was more philosophical and speculative than Jonson. In 1621 Jonson’s longest masque, The Gypsies Metamorphosed was presented with courtiers, not professional actors, in the grotesque antimasque. William Davenant’s masques demonstrate how the form may intervene in ongoing political debates, and how the court may nudge and advise the supreme monarch, as well as mediate between different court factions.
