Creating Entertainments for Prince Henry's Creation (1610)

In exploring the dramatic entertainments that center on Prince Henry's becoming Prince of Wales in 1610, one could begin with a question: how does a culture create the "creation" of a Prince of Wales? We may refer to the official ceremony as the "investiture," but most commentators in 1610 referred to Henry's event as the "creation." Certainly Daniel Price, Henry's chaplain, had this in mind when he preached a sermon in Westminster Abbey on Trinity Sunday, 3 June, the day before the ceremony; for he took Psalm 51:10 as his text, and he translated it as "Create in me a new heart."¹ The entire sermon focused on the processes of creation and the renewal of a right and constant spirit. I will argue that Henry's "creation" came about partly through dramatic entertainments that in 1610 surrounded the actual ceremony in Parliament. I will pay particular attention to the river pageant on the Thames, devised by Anthony Munday, as the most public of the consciously planned dramatic entertainments.

But first the English culture had to create the narrative and "liturgy" of the actual investiture ceremony. No royal son had been created Prince of Wales since 1504, when Henry, son of Henry VII and later himself Henry VIII, at the age of thirteen experienced the official installation. Only the monarch could bestow the titles Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester, but Robert Cecil insisted that Parliament play a role also. Pauline Croft has pointed out the extensive research that began, under the auspices of Cecil, to determine exactly how one "creates" a Prince of Wales.² Croft reports, "On the afternoon of Thursday 15 February 1610, Robert Cecil, earl of Salisbury addressed a joint committee of the Lords and Commons, assembled for the fourth session of James I's first parliament."³ Cecil had many motives, including trying to cajole Parliament into providing more financial resources for James and the royal family—a perennial problem. But he also broached the subject of Henry's "creation." Henry, now sixteen years old and heir apparent to the throne, had himself begun agitating for more formal recognition. Certainly his many supporters envisioned a vigorous and possibly militant role for him, enhancing an emerging pan European Protestant agenda. England had thus waited a long time for a male heir apparent, this one imported from Scotland.⁴ With the new title and revenues, Henry would establish his own royal household, one that exhibited an orderliness and discipline unknown to James's management style. The court readied itself to launch Henry in this official, public way with due ceremony and ample entertainment.

One could say that 1610 belonged to Prince Henry; certainly, looking back from his untimely death in November 1612, the year 1610 looks all the more important. If we view the year in terms of drama, we can see it bookended by two masque or tilting entertainments written by Ben Jonson: Speeches at Prince Henry's Barriers (6 January 1610) and Oberon (1 January 1611). These entertainments, full of romance elements, celebrate Henry in idealizing, myth-making ways. They do not, however, specifically or immediately connect to the investiture, despite Stephen Orgel's claim that the Barriers "celebrated the investiture," and that Oberon "was composed for the investiture of King James's eldest son, Henry, as Prince of Wales."⁵ But they unmistakably reflect the court's preoccupation with Henry's emerging power. Martin Butler has written convincingly about Oberon and generally about how we might understand these strange and complex court entertainments in terms of what they represent politically.⁶ I choose for the purposes of this paper to focus on the drama most closely connected to the actual time of the investiture, 4 June.

While organizers researched historical records in order to create the "creation" and searched for money, two events helped decide, at the least, the date of the ceremony. As Leeds Barroll has noted, from July 1608 to November 1610, the public playhouses remained largely closed because of the plague.⁷ Occasional opportunities occurred, of course, during which performances might be...