The Politics of the Stuart Court Masque (review)

202 Reviews point that 'Spenser's View is a work of m a n y secrets, and of course we cannot know just which of them it was that m a d e it an inconvenient text for official purposes'. The interchanges between Irenius and Eudoxus are sifted thoroughly and found to be laden with a rich, i f ambivalent, ore of meaning. Paradoxically, he finds in Spenser's View 'a powerful literary intelligence struggling to tell the secret truth of Ireland: that truth is not to be had there'. Baker concludes that whatever the View m a y have held for its destined readers, the Privy Council, in the 1590s, T>y the 1650s it had become a sharp instrument in a war between nations'. The third chapter, 'British Poetics', turns to another figure involved in the expression of attitudes towards the Irish and the Scots, Andrew Marvell. The two poems Baker adduces to his purpose are 'An Horatian O d e upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland' and "The Loyal Scot.' These two eminently dateable poems (1650 and 1670 respectively) record Marvell's stance at significant political moments. Although Baker says much that is insightful, his argument here seems somewhat strained. Whereas the question of incipient or inherent Britishness is central to our understanding of Henry V and A View of the Present State ofIreland i t is peripheral to the 'Horatian Ode' and 'The Loyal Scot'. Baker does not convince us otherwise, looking obliquely for nuances and silences rather than addressing the larger issues. Nevertheless the points are well made and give a sense of h o w the politics of Britishness had developed and changed half a century on. Christopher Wortham Department of English University of Western Australia Bevington, David and Peter Holbrook, ed., The Politics ofthe Stuart Cou Masque, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998; cloth; pp. xiv, 335; 20 b / w illustrations, 5 musical examples; R.R.P. £40.00. This collection of essays by British, American and Australian scho concentrates in large part on the masque during the reign of James I. A unifying revisionist commitment underlies the collection, which may Reviews 203 be encapsulated in the proposition that earlier criticism of the masque has been reductive in its view of the form's politics. Following Stephen Orgel's seminal exposition of the masque as an enactment of monarchical power, N e w Historicists have tended to emphasise the sole authority of the monarch in determining a masque's ideological and political allegiances. Too often the result has been, as Martin Butler notes, to efface the heterogeneity and complexity of the form, until all that we see at work is '"domination dominating"'. While not denying the existence of monarchical imperatives, the editors insist that 'the court masque needs to be viewed as a diverse expression of conflicting arenas of interest within the court culture, rather than as primarily a symbolic ceremony vital to the reproduction of monarchical power'. Freed from the burden of evincing a seamless ideological whole, masques emerge as the site of contestation and negotiation between court factions and members of the royal family. In short, this collection is part of a larger trend to modify the totalising claims of some earlier New Historicist criticism, especially where the well-worn subversion/ containment paradigm has been granted an irresistible correspondence to the masque and antimasque. Peter Holbrook's satisfying readings of masques by Daniel and Jonson encapsulate exactly this process of complex ideological negotiation. For instance, in The Masque of Queens Jonson had not only to propound James's pacifism but accommodate the Queen's Spanish sympathies, as well as her desire for a statement of 'the worth and dignity of women'. Indeed, Anne's influence on the masque is asserted by several contributors w h o challenge, not before time, the traditional view of her as frivolous. Instead, she is revealed as an astute political operator w h o manipulated the masque for the advancement of her female circle. Another masque which bore the imprint of, Anne, The Masque of Blackness, is at the centre of Stephen Orgel's elegant contribution. Orgel too displays a delicate sense of ideological negotiation, especially in...