ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the elusive place occupied by the state and its agents in critical models of an early modern public sphere. The idea of public diplomacy, especially in the early modern period, would seem to be a contradiction in terms: diplomacy is traditionally associated with the Arcana imperii, the secrets or mysteries of state, which by definition must be withheld from public scrutiny. George Chapman's Monsieur D'Olive, offers the most extended treatment of the cultural effects stemming from the diplomat's arrival on the political stage. Early modern state formation is seldom analyzed in reference to the concurrent emergence of a variety of publics in the early modern period. The protocols of diplomacy are often intended to enable domestic culture to replicate itself abroad, providing for an extension of state authority and national culture in the form of the protected extra territorial space of the embassy.
