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The first part of the study draws together information from many sources to give a picture of Davenant’s overall importance to theatrical history. The first chapter gives an overview of his life and work before the Restoration and discusses how he came to be so influential, although he had no connections with the theatre; how and why he came to write plays and eventually court masques; and how current events affected the kinds of plays and masques he wrote and their content. It describes the professional companies, the theatre and the stages for which Davenant wrote and shows his experience of staging plays led to him having some managerial knowledge of the contemporary commercial theatre.
The second chapter discusses the court masques and the neoclassical intentions behind them. It suggests that a masque was a multimedia occasion to which Inigo Jones introduced the art of perspective, light, and choreographed movement to convey the theme. His moving pictures were a language in themselves and were conveying the same kind of moral or philosophical lessons assumed for the works of the artists who produced paintings, statuary, or architecture. It was the totality of the subject or the invention of the masque that mattered. It is suggested that this showed Davenant that painted settings could give a similar totality to drama. The probable Italian sources he used and the methods Inigo Jones devised to present the masques on temporary stages are discussed, and it is argued that in doing so, he contrived the ways in which the English theatre would present painted scenes for another hundred years. Davenant wrote four masques with Jones and John Webb and was in an extraordinarily good position to learn the arts of theatrical presentation and the kind of equipment necessary. The published texts of Davenant’s masques show that he understood that the visual interpretation of the underlying meanings of the court masques could implicitly enhance and influence the perception of the content shown before it; that is, he realised how the integration of the visual interpretation of a text could enhance and influence the aural, and that, therefore, plays presented with scenery could gain in meaning and comprehension.