ABSTRACT
The mid-seventeenth century 'traditional' country activities such as morris dancing became highly politicised. Promoted by the Court in an attempt to emphasise a community of mirth and the continuity of 'olde England', such pastimes were opposed by Puritans as ungodly. Poets resurrected the earlier court Hermeticism of the masque. This chapter discusses the main direction of recent Marvell criticism in its recognition of how many of the poems reflect a culture destabilised by civil conflict - a world turned upside down. The movement from meadows to woods suggests the transition from antimasque to main masque in Stuart court entertainments: the scenes in the meadows, moving tableaux of disorder, change as though by 'Engines strange' controlled by the wondrous machinery of an Inigo Jones. Entertainments at court had created a fusion between Caroline ideals and actual social conditions, a model for social betterment that displayed the transcendent mind of the king as the surest pattern for national renewal.
