ABSTRACT
The most egregious intertangling of politics and theatre in the seventeenth century came with the production in August 1624 by the King’s Men at the Globe Theatre of Thomas Middleton’s A Game at Chess. From Elizabethan times, the city’s civic government had come into conflict with the Privy Council, not least over the matter of the theatre’s continuance: these theatricalised festivals deepened inevitably political paradox. Along the way, the Guild which sponsored him provided a lavish show of pageantry and entertainment: the 1613 show, for instance, cost no less than £1300, enough to rebuild the burned-down Globe Theatre. William Rowley enlisted his frequent collaborator, Middleton’s help and the two created the highly experimental The World Tossed at Tennis, a political squib, which proved impossible as a royal masque but was performed successfully at the Swan Theatre by the Prince’s Men, whom Rowley led.
