ABSTRACT
Like Dekker, Shakespeare, and Jonson in their carnivalesque plays, Milton in his courtly entertainment Comus and Herrick in his collection of poems Hesperides appropriate numerous elite and popular festive customs. Monarchical, aristocratic, and elite circles in seventeenth-century England attempted to quash the riotous and rebellious dimensions of festivities that can lead to social and economic transformations for the lower ranks. In this way the era of Charles I exhibited the decline of carnivalesque egalitarianism that Milton protests and Herrick supports. Despite the ethnically and racially exclusive practices among Twelfth Night and Mardi Gras krewes established by the mid-nineteenth century in New Orleans, repeated performances of these two plays focusing on a Jew or Moor attracted diverse audiences. In post-Civil War New Orleans, the Mistick Krewe of Comus and the Twelfth Night Revelers appropriated Renaissance canonical texts as part of their conservative, repressive efforts to reinforce the status quo favoring the elite, white establishment.
