Pluy und the Eng1i.h Gentleman Eurly Seventeenth Centwy

in the

PATRICIA - ANN LEE *

HE early seventeenth century was a period in which gentility, or the lack of it, was still a matter of deep and sometimes passionate concern. In theory there were still only two kinds of men in England, those who were gentle and

those who were not, just as Richard Mulcaster had pointed out a generation earlier. Of course the gentility (including the nobility) constituted only a tiny segment of the total population. But numbers were not in themselves important. What mattered was that this group, however small, included almost everyone who counted politically and socially in the nation.

The problem, of course, was to decide who they were. I t should have been easy. A system of degrees of honor and title did exist. It progressed by regular and apparently well-defined steps from the state of simple and unadorned gentility to the most elevated reaches of the peerage. The peers enjoyed a status defined by law or at least by legally defined privileges, but in this they were unusual. Below them lay a more amorphous group of baronets, knights, esquires, and simple gentlemen, where legal distinctions were more difficult to draw and theoretical ones often contradictory.

T

+ T h e author is Assistant Professor of History at Skidmore College.

* T h e gentility, as that term is used here, included the nobility as well as the untitled gentry. The English noble was first of all a gentleman. Titles and honors might raise him in dignity above the baronet, knight, esquire and simple gentleman, but they did not make him different in quality. T h e basic distinction in England was between those who were gentle and those who were not, rather than between noble and commoner. As to the actual number of individuals involved, probably fewer than nine of every hundred Englishmen could properly have been called gentlemen, perhaps two in three hundred were knights or baronets, and only one in forty thousand of the population was a peer. These estimates have been made largely on the basis of seventeenth-century statistician Gregory King’s figures, with some reference to those of Sir Thomas Wilson for the beginning of the period. See Gregory King, Natural and Political Observations and Conclusions upon the State and Condition of England, 1696 (London, 1810), 48-49 and “The State of England (1600) by Sir Thomas Wilson” (Camden Miscellany, XVI, 3rd. ser., LII,

Richard Mulcaster, Positions (London, 1581), 198.

1936), 1-43.

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Play and the Gentleman The truth was that it was easier to see who the gentleman

was in real life than to explain his status in theoretical terms. A man might base his claim to gentility on birth, on education, or on certain kinds of office-holding. But in the last analysis he was a gentleman because he lived like a gentleman, because he thought of himself as a gentleman, and because he was accepted by others of the gentle group. He was a man who could, as another Elizabethan writer put it, live idly and without manual labor and “beare the port, charge and countenance of a gentle- man. . . .”3 Gentility was more than rules or definitions. A whole system of education, a style and texture of life were implicit in that single term. And nowhere was that style more evident than in the gentleman’s leisure activities.

“We eat, and drink and rise up to play and this is to live like a gentleman,” a courtier of the period is supposed to have remarked, concluding, “for what is a gentleman but his plea- sure?’I5 It was quite literally true. A gentleman was indeed distinguished by his amusements - that is the reason his amuse- ments could be and often were such an important matter. This fact helps to explain the time, effort, and money so willingly lavished upon them. For example, fencing, riding, even dancing, were skills which required not only self-discipline and application but professional instruction, while masques and other entertain- ments could involve complex preparations and vast expenditure.

There were other and less formal gentlemanly pastimes, of course. From gambling to the elegant interplay of well-bred flirtation lay a whole range of amusements only to be learned from other members of the gentle group. But whether it was

a Harrison’s Description of England in Shakspere’s Youth, ed. Frederick J. Furnivall [New Shakspere Society, Series VI, No. 81 (London, 1878), I, 128.

4 Any discussion of this subject would be incomplete without acknowledging an indebtedness to Lawrence Stone’s detailed examination of the aristocracy. See particularly Chapter I, “The Peerage in Society,” T h e Crisis of the Aristocracy: 1558-1641 (Oxford, 1965), 21-64. T h e English Gentleman has of course a massive literature of his own. This includes a number of specialized works such as Ruth Kelso’s T h e Doctrine of the English Gentleman in the Sixteenth Century (Urbana, Illinois, 1929) which also extends into the early years of the seventeenth century, and John E. Mason’s Gentlefolk in the Making (Philadelphia, 1935) which discusses English courtesy literature between 1531 and 1774. But it also branches out into works on manners and polite conduct, and of course on education. Among shorter specialized works J. €3. Hexter’s brilliant essay, “The Education of the Aristocracy in the Renaissance,” reprinted in Reappraisals in History (New York and Evanston, 1961), should certainly be mentioned. Almost all these works touch upon the subject of the gentleman’s arniisements, but rarely do they deal with play as a significant exprcssicn of the gentlemanly ethos.

6 Maurice Ashley, England in the Seventeenth Century (3rd. ed.; Baltimore, Maryland, 1961), 18.

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The Historian formal or informal, “play” was potentially a serious business. It was important because it was useful, and not the least important of its uses was the unparalleled opportunity which it afforded for the display of specialized skill and prowess. In a deeper sense, it might also be a significant expression of the gentlemanly ethos.

Play as an important expression of culture has received some attention in recent years, but not nearly as much as i t deserves. Johan Huizinga’s pioneer work is now more than a quarter- century old, yet it remains one of the most helpful and imagina- tive guides to research in this area. Huizinga set out to examine the essential qualities of play and the play spirit. He did not attempt to deal with all aspects of play, for it was its social manifestations which primarily interested him. But he did isolate certain qualities by which play of the most serious and significant kind is to be distinguished. According to Huizinga,

Play is a voluntary activity or occupation executed within certain fixed limits of time and place, according to rules freely accepted but absolutely binding, having its aim in itself and accompanied by a feeling of tension, joy and the consciousness that it is “different” from “ordinary life.” 7

Much of this is of course bound up in another quality which Huizinga recognized as basic to play activity, that is its tendency to create order. In fact he went so far as to say that play itself is order.8

Huizinga also pointed out the tendency of play to encourage the development of continuing social groups based on the play activity and stressing the special position of the player-partici- pants.g The gentility of the early seventeenth century was just such a group, and its characteristic forms of play tell a great deal about the view which it held of itself. Through play the gentility proved itself, dramatically demonstrating its special qualities and position.

Sometimes a specific amusement seems too trivial to bear any great weight of meaning. There were endless ways in which gentlemen could play, and not all corresponded to Huizinga’s somewhat sedate and serious conception. Yet even some of the

‘Roger Caillois in Man, Play, and Games, trans. Meyer Barash (New York, 1961) has examined Huizinga’s theory and pointed out some of its omissions and weaknesses, as well as developing a theory of his own. His own contribution is most valuable in regard to the game-competition aspect of play,

Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens: a study of the play-element in culture (Boston, Mass., 1955). 28.

BIbid., 10. ’ Ibid., 12-13.

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Play and the Gentleman more frivolous ones helped to reveal and to strengthen the gentleman’s idea of himself. The diversions of London furnish many such illustrations. Indeed merely to participate in the fashionable life of the metropolis was to join in a particularly complex and sophisticated form of play. The city had a pattern of its own, there were rituals to be learned, and even a costume - costly, elegant and subject to change with every breeze of fashion.

Huizinga has remarked upon the importance of rules in the play-concept. “All play has its rules,” he wrote and added that “they determine what ‘holds’ in the temporary world circum- scribed by play.”1° The city and the court constituted such a world and the laws of fashion in dress and manners were as binding as any other play rules. There were complaints of course. “The very first suit of apparel, that ever mortal man put on, came neither from the mercer’s shop, nor the merchant’s ware- house . . . [Adam was] great in nobody’s books for satin and velvets. The silkworms had something else to do in those days than to set up looms and be free of the weavers. . . .”ll Other writers lamented that young men were ruining themselves to buy the latest finery, spending “in boundless and immoderate riot, what their provident Ancestors had so long preserved. . . .” l2

Yet the game of fashion went on with unabated enthusiasm and gentlemen continued to parade their manners and their finery at court, in theatres, and in such incongruous showplaces as the center aisle of St. Paul’s Cathedral.

Huizinga suggested that all higher forms of play are either “a contest for something or a representation of something.” l3 If so, the game of fashionable life was surely closer to the latter, an attempt to act out in reality the kind of gentlemanly ideal Van Dyck and other artists depicted on their canvases. But play it clearly was, with its own rules, its own rewards. Other rules, comparably rigid and equally binding, governed many of the gentleman’s other city amusements, and most of his country ones as well - that is to say a broad sector of his life.

Play was also a preparation for a man’s role in life. Richard Brathwait made this point when he commended dancing and fencing to the gentleman’s attention, “the one to accommodate him for the Court, the other for the Campe.”14 Hunting, for

l0Itrid., 1 1 . llThornas Dekker, T h e GULF Home-book, reprinted from the edition of 1609

Richard Brathwait, The English Gentleman (3rd. ed., rev.: London, 1641). 186. Johaii Huizinga, Homo Ludens, 13 (italics in the original).

with notes by J. N . Uristol (London, 1812), 37-38.

”Richard Brathwait, T h e English Gentleman, 114 (italics in the original).

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The Historian example, with its rigors of early rising and hard riding over rough country in all weathers, was supposed to prepare a man for war. Riding and fencing also served the same purpose. Most gentlemen would probably have agreed with courtesy-writer Henry Peacham, who explained that sports and exercises were designed to make the gentleman “ennabled for command and the service of . . . [his] Countrey.”16

Play was also used to emphasize the social distinctions which separated the gentleman from other men. There was an obvious difference between suitable amusements and rough and tumble ones like casting the stone and the bar which were “fitter . . . for a Citizen’s prentice, & a countrey Clowne, then for anie Gentleman.”1° There had even been attempts to embody such differences in law. Certain recreations such as bowls and tennis were to be reserved to those of gentle status or at least of sub- stantial worth. This was one manifestation of a general spirit of exclusiveness in which the gentility strove for a more assured identity. The same spirit had shown itself in other efforts, such as those to restrict education or the ones designed to regulate styles and richness of dress. l7 All were abortive or unsuccessful perhaps because they were not really needed. Certainly in the case of play-activities there was a far more effective limitation in the specialized training required for gentlemanly amusements and in the expense which they involved.

15 Henry Peacham, The Compleat Gentleman (London, 1627). 186. lE James Cleland, The Scottish Academy or, Institution of a Young Noble Man

(London, 1611), 225. *’ Restrictions were of many kinds, as government had experimented with

sumptuary legislation to limit richness of dress, of food, service and the like, according to degrees of honor and wealth. By the early seventeenth century, how- ever, this apprcach was gradually being abandoned. (The matter is examined in detail by F. E. Baldwin in Sumptuary Legislation and Personal Regulation in England Uohns Hopkins University Studies in History and Political Science, Vol. XLIV, No. 31 (Baltimore, 1926.) A like impulse was perceptible in education. At the beginning of the century, for example, attempts were still being made to limit admission to the Inns of Court to those who were well-born. The significance of play activities led to efforts to regulate them as well. Tudor efforts to discourage the lower orders from gentlemanly sports and to encourage the ar t of archery, were no doubt largely military in inspiration. But the desire to preserve and sharpen social distinctions was also present. This impulse toward exclusiveness showed itself even in such minor incidents as the request which a gentleman named Thomas Bedingfield made to the Council for a monopoly of places of public amusement in London, These were houses in which dice, cards, tennis, bowls, and other games were played, and which were possible centers of public disorder. Bedingfield proposed to regulate them and it is noteworthy that he specified that “none but gentlemen, and merchants or such as he entered in the book of subsidies at €10 in land or goods shall be suffered to play a t such houses.” (Great Britain, Public Record Office, Calendar of State Pafiers, Domestic Series, 1592, ccxliii, 58.)

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Play and the Gentleman It is clear that gentlemanly play often implied more than

thoughtless pleasure-seeking. Many forms of amusement were significant precisely because they were able to reinforce and emphasize social distinctions. This is evident in a passage describing the Duke of Newcastle’s way of life. After picturing his magnificent style of living, his entertainment of the King and Queen and of his private friends, as well as the splendor of his ordinary housekeeping, the Duke’s secretary explained:

His pleasures included horses, chiefly horses of manage [i.e. manege]; his study and art of the true use of the sword; his magnificent buildings. These were his chief pleasures. For other delights, as those of running horses, hawking, hunting, &c., his grace used them merely for society’s sake, and out of a generous and obliging nature to please others. 18

Plainly, recreation could be a serious business and as much a matter of duty as of pleasure.

Nothing has yet been said about the court. Actually, the court did not establish the basic patterns of play activity since these sprang from the very nature of the gentle group. I t did, however, modify the form and fashion of amusements, particularly those which centered about the court and in London. It could scarcely have been otherwise since the court held such a special position in relation to the gentility. Access to it was regarded as one of the traditional privileges of the gentleman, just as service to the state and monarch was one of his traditional responsibilities.

Of course, actual contact with the royal family was severely limited, the innermost circle of intimacy being reserved to a privileged few. With the accession of Charles I, the court had become more restrained in its character and also considerably more private, echoing the disposition of the new ruler. Still, there were many areas - from the Presence Chamber to the Privy Gardens at Whitehall, the Cockpit, Tiltyard, and Tennis Court -where gentlemen and would-be gentlemen could meet and mingle with the courtiers.1g They could also watch the i r Majesties dine in public, they swelled the crowd at masques, and

lRThe writer was John Rolleston. The material is cited from Margaret, Diichess of Newcastle, Life of William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle, ed. C . H. Firth (London, 1886), Ixvi-lxvii.

l0In fact, the more public areas of the royal residences were accessible to almost anyone - particularly to anyone with fine clothes and the air of a gentleman. Such a one was Dekker’s impecunious gallant who “dared not but only irpon the privilege of handsome clothes presume to peep into the presence.” (Thomas Dekker, The Guls Hornebook, 114.)

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The Historian of course they joined vicariously in royal celebrations and other splendid occasions.

T o be a gentleman in London was to have or claim some association with the court, that most privileged of play groups. There were some who lamented the effects of its influence on amusements. And in literature as no doubt in real life, those “moathes of the court,” the courtier-gentlemen, tended to be unpopular.20 But as a center of culture and elegant pleasure the court also had its defenders. When Nicholas Breton wrote an imaginary dialogue contrasting the merits of the court and the country, he weighted his arguments in favor of the country gentleman. Yet the courtier was allowed to have his say and one of the strongest arguments he could offer was the richness and refinement of courtly life as shown in its amusements. He particularly delighted in its

Excellent Musique and admirable Voyces, Mas ues and Playes, Dauncing and Riding; deuersity of Games, Ielightful to the Gamsters Purposes; and Riddles, Questions and Answers; Poems, Histories, and strange Inuentions of Witt . . . rich Apparell, precious Jewells . . . sweete Creatures and ciuill Behauior. 21

Surely this was the place in which the magnificence, the pageant- quality of gentle life was most perfectly represented.

The splendid ceremony, the chance of intimate association with the monarch, the prestige of attendance at court, and the hope of financial reward combined to draw gentlemen from their country manors. But the London season lasted only part of the year and even courtiers, and the greatest of magnates, returned periodically to their rural properties and country pleasures. In the country as in the city, therefore, the gentility needed to find suitable means of expression through play.

There are many descriptions of country life in the period. Lucy Hutchinson is one of those who give a glimpse of some of its sober but not unattractive pursuits. John Hutchinson, her husband, was a man who loved music and himself performed upon the viol. He fenced, hawked, and enjoyed all kinds of shooting. Something of a connoisseur, he delighted in paintings, engravings, sculpture, and in “curiosities.” And it is pleasant to hear that like many another country gentleman, he took great joy in his land, in “planting groves, and walks, and fruit-trees,

!a Barnaby Riche, Fmltes, faults, and nothing else but faultes (London, 1606), 55. Nicholas Breton, The Court and Country (London, 1618). n.p.n.

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Play and the Gentleman in opening springs and making fish-ponds. . . .”22 Of course much of this does not fall within Huizinga’s idea of significant play, being closer to what Thomas Fuller cal led “a second Creation . . . the breathing of the soule which otherwise would be strifled with continual1 businesse.” 23

Yet there was play in Huizinga’s sense of the term. Hunting was one such activity. Probably the most popular of country sports, it was also generally approved as gentlemanly amusement. Not the least of its attractions was its convenience and accessibility. I t could be followed as easily by a simple country squire as by a great magnate like Newcastle or indeed by the king himself. Of course like most sports it demanded a certain expertise. Each aspect had its own methods and vocabulary but these had become somewhat simpler over the years. For example, it was no longer necessary to know and use such terms as the six designations for the male red deer, from the hind calf of one year to the hart of six. The complicated and gory ceremonial of breaking up the kill was also less followed, although the honor of cutting the stag’s throat was still customarily reserved for the most important person present . There were other skills but less ceremony in the humbler forms of hunting. Fox-hunting as a sport scarcely existed as yet. Foxes were hunted but less for amusement than as destructive vermin. 24

Hunting was gentlemanly play, but its pleasures could be enjoyed by many who were not gentlemen at all. Interestingly enough some attempts were made to rectify this situation. In Tudor times, for example, the keeping of greyhounds had been limited to freeholders worth El0 or more. There were also game laws, but enforcement in this period was spotty and not always strict. 26 Yet although hunting was popular and some kind of hunting was available to almost everyone, in its more elegant aspects it remained one of the distinguishing forms of gentIemanly

I t is true that some elements of play might be present even Play*

Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson, Governor of Nottingham by his Widow Lucy, ed. Julius Hutchinson, rev. with add. notes by C. H. Firth (London, 1885), I, 32-33. John Hutchinson (1615-1654) was a gentleman of Nottinghamshire. He served the Parliament during the Civil War and was appointed governor of the town and castle of Nottingham. One of the judges in the King’s trial, he also signed the death warrant.

“Thomas Fuller, The Holy State (Cambridge, 1642). 183. zLDodgson H. Madden, The Diary of Master William Silence: a study of

Shakespeare and of Elizabethan sport (London, 1897), 19n., 32-33. pLI Not until 1671 were freeholders worth less than €100 and leaseholders worth

less than €150 deprived of the right to hunt even on their own land. See Christina Hole, English Sports and Pastimes (London, 1949), 21.

37 1

The Historian in the less formal pleasures of the gentility. More significant, however, are those activities which exemplified not one or two but marly of the qualities of Huizinga's concept. This kind of play was characterized by its serious nature and often by its aesthetic content. In general it demanded time, quite frequently it required strenuous preparation on the part of the participant, and it often necessitated a considerable expenditure of money. Sometimes gentlemanly play was an individual activity such as riding, dancing, or fencing; in other instances it was a social one involving a group of persons, as it did in the case of court masques and ceremonies. A representative example of each will serve to show something of their qualities both as illustrations of play and as expressions of gentility.

The art of man&ge, the training and riding of the great horse, has already been mentioned. By the early seventeenth century this had become not only a system of horsemanship, but an activity which afforded spectacular opportunity for the display of gentlemanly prowess. On the technical side mankge consisted of two kinds of movements. One included all those gaits and exercises performed on the ground, the other was composed of movements such as the magnificent leaps of the capriole which were performed above the ground. All the elements of manege were based upon actions natural to the horse but disciplined, refined and stylized to bring them to the highest pitch of perfection.

Mankge was much more than a sport, it was a complicated and sophisticated art-form. Its first great modern exponent was a Neapolitan gentleman, Federico Grisone. His Ordini di Caval- care, published in 1550, remained one of the definitive works on the subject. English gentlemen were quick to see the possibilities of this new amusement. Grisone's work was already available in English by the 1560s when Thomas Blundeville translated part and freely adapted the remainder.27 But the influence of Italy was waning in this as in other fields and the next inter- nationally recognized master was a Frenchman, Antoine de Pluvinel. Pluvinel was a pupil of Pignatelli of Naples who in turn had been a pupil of Grisone himself. He was riding instructor

"The term mankge (and its variant spellings such as manage and manege) was used to refer both to the gaits and movements of a specially trained horse and to the riding school in which such training took place. I t might also refer to the process of training and riding such horses.

Thomas Blundeville wrote several books on horsemanship. A new books containing the arte of ryding, and breaking greate horses. . . . seems to have appeared first in 1560. Another, The fower chiefyst offices belonging to horsernan- shippe, incorporated the earlier work and added new sections around 1565-1566.

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Play and the Gentleman to Louis XI11 and founder of one of the first and probably the most famous of the polite academies of the period, a school in which manners and social graces were taught as well as riding.

I t was Pluvinel who made France the new center of mankge. His book, Maneige Royal, appeared in 1623. In England, where interest in manttge continued to be keen, this influence was reflected in the employment of French masters not only of fencing but also of riding. Such experts were chosen to instruct Prince Henry, the elder son of James I . By mid-century, however, England had produced a native master in the Duke of Newcastle, and an authoritative book in La Methode et Invention Nouvelle de Dresser les Chevaux which he published in 1653. I t is note- worthy that each of these masters of the gentlemanly art of manege was himself a gentleman.

These books and the interest which they represented have sometimes been regarded as trivial and even absurd. This is not only unjust but inaccurate. I t is true that manege was not, in the strictest sense of the word, useful. It did not serve any military purpose. Certainly, great horses were not employed for ordinary riding, the training was too difficult and expensive and the raw material both in horse and rider too rare for that. Con- temporary critics were also inclined to stress its impracticality, while devotees were at pains to refute such charges. “Some wagg perhaps will ask, what is a horse good for that can do nothing but dance and play tricks,” Newcastle wrote.28 For such persons he had only scorn, commenting, “If these gentlemen will retrench every thing that serves them for curiosity or pleasure, and admit nothing but what is useful, they must make a hollow tree their house, and cloath themselves with figleaves, feed upon accorns, and drink no th ing but water, for na tu re needs no greater support.” 29

Newcastle went on to explain that for kings, princes, and persons of quality manege was a noble and proper exercise. I t made them appear more dignified and graceful when they showed themselves to their subjects, or at the head of an army “so that the pleasure in this case is as useful as any thing else, besides the glory and satisfaction that attends it.”30 Other writers also recognized its value as a symbol of social status. Gervase Markham even announced that there could be no better recreation “either

** William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle, A General System of Horsemanship in all its nrnnrlres (London, 1743), 1, 14. This is a translation of the original edition which was in French and was published at Antwerp in 1653, while New- castle was in exile.

”Ibid., I, 14. Ibid.

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The Historian of health, or profit, or renowning of their own vertues, then [sic] the riding of great Horses, which in the verie action itself speaketh Gentleman to all that are performers or doers of the same. . . .

Indeed, it is difficult to imagine any exercise which could more completely fulfill the requirements of Huizinga’s concept of play. Its free and voluntary character hardly needs to be stressed. There was obviously no motive of material gain for the gentleman participants. In its practice it was distinct from the uses and requirements of everyday life, operating according to a set of rigid artificial rules both in the training of the animals and in the performance of horse and rider. Finally and most important of all, it was an activity which made order and created a new aesthetic reality of its own.

It has been stated that the gaits and exercises of mankge were based on the natural movements of the horse. This is true, but in the same way that ballet disciplines human motion, so in manege the curvettings and prancings of a high-spirited animal were stylized and systematized by training. The program of the present-day Spanish Riding School of Vienna, the oldest surviving school of mankge, shows how prolonged and rigorous such training could be. In the Spanish Riding School the stallions begin work at the age of four and spend four years learning required move- ments on the ground. The more advanced and difficult airs above the ground need another two years of work. Such training requires a horse of superior strength and intelligence. I t also demands masters who are skillful and infinitely patient. Of course, the seventeenth century gentleman versed in the art of manitge was expected to train or at least understand and supervise the training of his mount. In theory at least, he did not merely ride a horse schooled by someone else.

Once both horse and rider were versed in the rules of this complicated and elegant game, they were ready to perform. Newcastle’s book was illustrated by a series of engravings which showed him putting his great horses through their paces. In one, he is shown displaying himself and his mount before an admiring audience of family and friends. Such exhibitions of art and prowess, the perfect cooperation of horse and man, and the reduction of lovely but uncoordinated motion into marvel- ously controlled order, completely realized the final requirement of Huizinga’s concept of play as an aesthetic experience and a social activity. The rider could not fail to be aware that he

11, 35.

” 31

a Grvase Markham, Countrey Contentments (London, 1615), Book I , Chapter

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Play and the Gentleman belonged to an exclusive group which was separated by its special knowledge and competence from the uninitiated. I t was not by chance that kings, princes, and other grandees so often had themselves portrayed on horseback. Visit a museum and you can see them still. They sit magnificently unconcerned as their great horses curvette sedately or rear back on their haunches in the levade. Certainly the noble riders would have agreed with gentleman-author Thomas Bedingfield that i t was necessary “to be instructed in those singularities and exquisite motions for pleasure, as well to delight the lookers on, and make proofe of the riders excellencie, as also thereby to shew the capacitie of the beasts.” 32

As mankge may be said to exemplify some of the personal and individual aspects of play, so the masque represents those that are communal and social. For the monarchy these were occasions for magnificent display which would enhance its prestige and emphasize its wealth and power. This was encouraged by the very nature of the masque, which was often little more than an elaborate compliment to the king, the queen, or some other important person. But the masque was also an important public ceremony of the court, a ceremony rich in opportunities for diplomatic maneuver, as indeed were most such formal occasions. Foreign ambassadors fought and intrigued for the precedence and marks of royal attention which would proclaim the power and eminence of the states they represented. Relative positions in the procession into the masquing room, seating arrangements at the performance, and the vital question of whether an ambassador was invited to a private supper with the king, all were subjects of intense diplomatic concern. Invitations to the Twelfth-night masque, the most important of the year, were particularly sought- after. On several occasions during the reign of James I, rivalry between French and Spanish representatives was so intense that (since they could not be entertained together) the masque itself had to be postponed. 33

Masquing had its practical side but it was aIso play, and a form of play characteristic of the Stuart courts of this period. Its roots lay in the pageants, mummings, and disguisings of an earlier time. Each of these had elements of the later masque - disguised performers in rich costumes, dancing, music, and

= T h e Art of Riding (London, 1584), n.p.n. The work was a translation of an Italian version of a book by the Spaniard Claudio Corte. The passage quoted is, however, from Bedingfield’s own introduction.

Mary Sullivan, Court Masques of James I : their inpuence on Shakespeare and the public thentres (New York, 1913), 2-4.

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The Historian sometimes even connecting dialogue. 34 Such performances were already being presented at court at the beginning of the sixteenth century but they were not, nor were they called, masques. The word, like many of the details of style and subject matter, seems to have been imported from Italy where, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, such amusement was immensely popular.

The first English mention of the masque as such may have been made in 1519 when a court festivity was described as a “niaskalyne” in the Italian style.35 In any case the masque differed from its earlier sources not just in name, but in the emphasis which it put upon old elements. Looking at the masque as an example of play, the most important change was the stress which was now put upon the revels. This was the portion of the prog-ram in which the masquers, having completed the main performance, took partners from the audience for social dancing. This in itself was not new. What was different was the fact that now these revels were usually integrated into the performance itself. At their conclusion the masquers did not simply disperse among the audience but concluded the entertainment in some formal way and withdrew, still in character.

The Elizabethan entertainments had often taken place out of doors, charming pastorals designed to amuse and surprise the Queen as well as to compliment her. Approaching the home of a noble host she was likely to be accosted by gaily dressed woods- men, surprise a band of dancing nymphs, or confront any of a variety of classical characters, all prepared to welcome her in appropriate verse. Probably the most attractive as well as the most significant quality of these performances was their casual yet sophisticated interweaving of the real world with an enchanted world of play. Such a presentation was The May L a d y which Sir Philip Sidney wrote to commemorate the Queen’s visit to Wanstead in 1578. These pastoral entertainments differed from the fully realized masque of later reigns not so much in spirit as in their brevity, informality, and lack of elaborate scenery and staging.

During the reigns of James I and Charles I, the masque reached its maturity as an art-form. This was partly the result of royal favor. Both Anne of Denmark and Henrietta Maria were enthu- siastic participants and patronesses. But its development was

a4 Masques were characterized by dancing, the heart of the Entertainment was a speech or speeches, but in many other respects they were very similar. Mumming was a much older activity in which disguised participants presented a pantomime performance.

an John Cunliffe, “Italian Prototypes of the Masque and Dumb Show,’’ PMLA, XXII (1907), 140-148.

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Play and the Gentleman also the outcome of that successful collaboration which joined the talents of scenic designer Inigo Jones and poet-playwright Ben Jonson. Between 1605 and 1634 more than two dozen of Jonson’s masques and entertainments were produced as well as others written by men like Carew and D’Avenant.36

The masque by this time had evolved a definite pattern. I t usually took place indoors in a theatre-like setting. After 1619 the newly rebuilt Banqueting House at Whitehall was sometimes used. When the audience had jostled itself into place, the curtain dropped, or rose, or was drawn aside to reveal the scene. Staging was elaborate and fanciful. Ships sailed on realistically billowing seas, clouds and triumphal cars moved across painted skies. Shells, mountains, and globes opened ingeniously to reveal the noble masquers. The story-line was slight, a mere thread to weave together the pageantry, the music, and particularly the dancing which was the chief interest of the production. After the dances of the masque proper came the revels in which masquers joined with the spectators, drawing them into the performance. Finally, at the end of the festivities the masquers recited their last speeches, danced a final measure and, mounting their clouds or chariots, withdrew.

These elaborate productions were expensive. A masque which would be performed once or at most twice, needed as many costumes and as much scenery as if it were to be presented many times. But conspicuous expenditure was not necessarily a disad- vantage in gentlemanly play, and distinguished performers could scarcely be expected to appear in makeshift settings. The Masque of Blackness of 1605 cost L3,OOO and the expense of this form of courtly amusement tended to rise rather than diminish over the yeam3i Of course, all costs were not borne by the crown nor all masques performed at court. Some were commissioned by private persons such as that which Sir Francis Bacon arranged to celebrate the marriage of the Earl of Somerset to Frances Howard (the recently divorced Lady Essex). Young John Milton also tried his hand at composing masques. The Arcades was a slight and delicate pastoral entertainment for the family of the Earl of Bridgewater. It was for this same family that, a few years later, he created a full-scale masque (subsequently to be called Cornus). Other productions were mounted by the univer- sities and Inns of Court. The masque given by the Middle

*‘Allardyce Nicoll has examined the development of the Stuart masque as an art form. He also includes a useful Appendix listing masques performed between 1603 and 1641. See Stuart Masques and the Renaissance Stage (New York, 1938).

G. P. V. Akrigg, Jacobean Pageant: or the Court of King James I (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1962), 151.

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The Historian Temple and Gray’s Inn to celebrate the marriage of James 1’s daughter to the Elector Palatine was gorgeous, elaborate, featured a wonderful torchlight procession, and cost f1,OSS. 8s. lld.38

Masquing, like manege, was an obvious and important symbol of social status for the participant. T h e masquers included not only gentlemen but nobles and on some occasions the monarchs themselves. James I did not care to appear as a performer but he did somewhat impatiently fulfill his obligations as spectator and patron. At the court of his son, however, the stately splendor and restrained spriteliness of this art-form found its perfect climate. Charles appeared as participant in masquings, first as prince and later as king, while his little queen showed a lively and continuing interest in such entertainments. As late as 1640, for example, both king and queen appeared in D’Avenant’s Salmacida Spolia.

The play element of the masque is of course obvious and strongly marked. If mankge was important as an expression of the prowess as well as the social distinction of the gentleman, the masque was even more significant for it was, in many ways, an expression of the spirit of noble life itself. This was no mere acting out by professionals of scenes in which the gentle audience joined vicariously. It is important to remember that it was not a case of gentlemen being portrayed in the guise of gods, of virtues, and the like, but of the well-born themselves portraying those characteristics and qualities.

As with any theatrical performance or indeed any work of art, an important quality of the masque was its attempt to organize and give meaning to some aspect of life. But the ordinary drama or comedy also preserves a certain distance, however slight, between the audience and what is happening on the stage. No matter how involved the watchers become in the performance, they do not confuse themselves with the players. In the masque, however, no such distance existed. This was the implication of the revels which followed the formal dances, and in which masquers and audience mingled. The deliberate bridging of the abyss which divided the realm of pretence, presented by the entertainment, from the reality of the audience, is highly signi- ficant. The action of the masquers did more than merely draw some spectators into the performance. Instead, by their action the performance with its artificial order was extended until it became coequal with the audience, became for the moment and

A. Wigfall Green, The Inns of Court and Early English Drama (New Haven, 1951), 105.

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Play and the Gentleman place universal and real, thereby merging play and reality. 3Q

Milton’s masques, or Jonson’s, or indeed any of these produc- tions also emphasized the aristocratic exclusiveness and the familial quality of the gentleman’s world. The masque was the enter- tainment of a private group, a group which might be as small as a noble family or as Iarge as the royal court. Masquing was one of the play activities of the gentle class which helped to stress its difference from common life.

Manege and the masque were outward manifestations of the gentleman’s innermost view of himself. Such play was a clear expression of the gentlemanly ethos. But play may offer an insight into the concept which the gentleman had of his world, in other words, of reality. In this regard it is important to note that many of the characteristic and important forms of gentlemanly play in this period were marked by the will to achieve order- and that order implies a measure of control on the part of the orderer. Play such as mankge and the masque rearranged aspects of real life in order to create a clearer and more coherent reality of its own. The masque, for example, pruned away the disorderly variety of court life. I t shaped an aesthetically and intellectually satisfying whole which could merge with absolute reality.

All play activities balance delicately between the opposing qualities of order and spontaneity. Different amusements combine the two in varying proportions. But the proportions seem to differ not only from one activity to another, but also (and more significantly) from one period to another. Play of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries is, for example, strikingly different from modern play because of the high degree of order or structure which it contained. This does not mean that there was no spontaneous unstructured play in the ear l ie r period, or that spontaneity was completely absent from even such highly struc- tured play as mankge or the masque. I t is significant, however, that in many of the most important forms of gentlemanly play, the proportion of order, structure, and discipline was very great indeed.

In addition to all its other qualities, play must be voluntary and must give pleasure or it is not play at all. Yet many forms of sixteenth and seventeenth century play are so highly ordered and disciplined that, to twentieth century tastes, they appear to

“This problem is discussed by Orgel, although without special reference to its play aspect. He does point out that Jonson viewed the masque as a real or potential reflection of court life. He suggests that, in his words “the central problem Jonson faced in the masques was to establish the court dramatically within the symbolic world of his spectacle.” Stephen Orgel, The Jonsonian Masque (Cam- bridge, Mass., 1965), 81.

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The Historian be rather work than amusement. The difference may well lie in the psychology of the society from which each form of play originally sprang. Today, living in a society which is disciplined by the clock, the calendar, and all the complicated machine- oriented apparatus of the twentieth century, man tends to seek rest and recreation either in the casual, spontaneous activity which is often denied him elsewhere, or as a sedentary onlooker to the activities of others. In the society of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries there was, despite the hierarchy of church and state, much less externally imposed order in daily life. There were few clocks and men were not yet disciplined to live by them. There were as yet no factories in which men would be harnessed to the rhythm of the machine. There was also comparatively little external discipline in society, no effective professional bureaucracy of any size, no local police, virtually no standing army. In other words there were few means by which the true weight of central authority could be brought to bear upon the individual. The forces which gave form and order to society were still largely informal, being chiefly those of family, neighborhood, and class.

Life in this period was still prone, if not to chaos, at least to disorder. Rest and pleasure were therefore to be found not in more disorder, more spontanei ty , but in regularity and discipline. Indeed in this as in other areas, the great theme of life and thought seems to be the search for order. Within this framework it is not surprising to find men attempting to order and structure the disorder of their real world in the artificial world of play.

Of course, the gentleman of that time, as of any century before our own, would have been unlikely to probe the psycho- logical or philosophical depths which lay beneath his amusements. This does not mean, however, that he undervalued the importance of those pastimes. He recognized their usefulness, not just for the pleasure and relaxation they offered, but as a mark of social status. In few circumstances was the gentleman as clearly and conspicuously a member of his class as when he was at play. This was due in part to the lavish expenditure which many of these activities r equ i r ed and partly to the opportunity which they afforded for the display of highly cultivated social and physical skills. But it is also true that in play the gentleman found an almost unparalleled opportunity to act out his deepest beliefs about who and what he was. A gentleman was indeed known by his pleasures.

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