The Queen and the Cockpit: Henrietta Maria's Theatrical Patronage Revisited

This article will take a fresh look at Queen Henrietta Maria's patronage of the commercial theatre, and, in particular, her patronage of the companies that bore her name, which operated first at the Cockpit playhouse and later at Salisbury Court. Recent work by Rebecca Bailey and Karen Britland, among others, has demonstrated that the queen consort's patronage of drama extended beyond the masque and plays staged at court such as Arténice, Florimène and The Shepherds' Paradise, encompassing the promotion of commercial plays at court and the support of dramatists such as James Shirley and William Davenant. However, the queen's household accounts, which are gradually coming to scholarly attention through the work of Britland, Martin Butler, Barbara Ravelhofer and others, suggest that her financial backing of these companies was greater than has been assumed, and that she continued to support her players after they were reconstituted at Salisbury Court in 1637. Taking as its starting point a payment of 100 marks by the queen to Queen Henrietta Maria's Men in 1630, the essay will explore in detail the company's relationship with the court in the late 1620s and early 1630s, drawing on prologues, epilogues and the paratexts of printed plays to revisit the court performances of dramas such as Thomas Heywood's The Fair Maid of the West and Love's Mistress and Marlowe's The Jew of Malta. In doing so, it will explore new questions about the queen's personal and political involvement in commercial theatre.