ABSTRACT
The entertainment celebrating King James I’s ceremonial entry into London on 15 March 1604 provides a remarkable example of the complex competition-among institutions and individuals alike-for the authority to define and control the uses and meanings of London’s place. It was a climax and a turning point in the dramatic development of London’s civic pageantry because it includes mature character development and replaces static tableaux with dramatic action and dialogue, and also because the city employed the best dramatists then available to design the shows and write the scripts.1 But the royal entry pageant was also a turning point in Jonson’s career; through his employment on its production alongside his rival Thomas Dekker, he realized the potential to be gained by the application of theatrical methods of spatial representation to the overdetermined, ritualized places of London.
