Rethinking royal spectacle in Elizabethan and Jacobean England

La tesi prende in esame gli intrattenimenti regali offerti a Elisabetta I, a Giacomo I Stuart e sua moglie Anna, in un periodo tra 1559 e il 1613. A quel tempo, varie forme di spettacolo venivano impiegate per celebrare ed intrattenere il sovrano, sia all’interno della corte che fuori. Considerando la diffusione di questi ‘spettacoli regali’ come un fenomeno che ha fortemente caratterizzato entrambi i periodi, scopo precipuo di questo studio sarà quello di indagarne lo sviluppo dall’epoca Elisabettiana a quella Giacomiana concentrandosi soprattutto sull’analisi del complesso rapporto fra ‘script’ e ‘testo spettacolare’. Fulcro dell’indagine saranno gli intrattenimenti organizzati in occasione della cerimonia d’entrata nella capitale del sovrano, come pure quelli allestiti durante i soggiorni estivi in provincia, ossia presso alcune città, le Università e le dimore della nobiltà. Attraverso la disamina congiunta di differenti tipologie di testo, fra le quali, ‘scripts’, lettere, dispacci e estratti da resoconti storici coevi, ciascun capitolo si propone di analizzare vari intrattenimenti, singolarmente o in gruppo, ponendo particolare attenzione al loro contesto ‘spettacolare’, al fine di tracciarne le modalità performative che li caratterizzano e individuare le diversità o corrispondenze nel passaggio da un’epoca all’altra. Partendo dal presupposto che questi intrattenimenti espongono il sovrano come ‘oggetto visibile’ e fulcro della performance ideando una ‘messa in scena’ intimamente legata a questioni ideologiche e politiche, l’indagine si offre inoltre di esaminare la complessa trama di riferimenti e allegorie che hanno contribuito a creare una sofisticata simbologia del potere regale attraverso la rappresentazione su vari scaffolds urbani e regionali di questa particolare categoria di spettacoli rinascimentali.

This thesis focuses on the outdoor entertainments staged before Queen Elizabeth, King James Stuart and his wife, Queen Anne, over a period of fifty years. This was a time when different pageant shows were mounted to celebrate and entertain the monarchs, both inside and outside the court. The aim of this study is to trace the development of royal pageantry in Elizabethan and Jacobean England by investigating the complex text/stage relationship pertaining to such multifaceted forms of spectacle. Special attention will be paid to civic ceremonies, entertainments on progress, at the Universities and at aristocratic country houses. Although these performances took place within a broader entertainment culture and were organized for diverse occasions, they were set up as ‘shows in progress’ which had at their centre a royal guest who often figured as both spectator and performer. The focus is on a variety of ceremonial events, whose analysis first aims at shedding light on the structure of their textual accounts in order to understand how these ‘shows’ were staged and identify their performative features. By gathering together different textual accounts, such as printed publications of urban processions, outdoor shows and court masques, as well as dispatches, letters, and historical records, each chapter undertakes a close reading of one particular royal spectacle with the aim to reconstruct its staging by drawing attention to its performative context. Since these ‘royal triumphals’ are especially concerned with the notion of sovereign power, special emphasis will be laid on the type of iconography which is textually inscribed in the entertainment script and visually displayed through its performance by concentrating on the relationship between of verbal text and visual display. A focus on these issues allows to build up a picture of the staging of these outdoor performances in the transition from Elizabethan to Jacobean entertaining culture, by highlighting their different or equivalent stage practices.