Sir William Davenant, the Court Masque, and the English Seventeen ...

Preface

Methodology

This is new work in that it uses dramaturgical and scenographical analyses of selected plays and masques, against known theatrical history, to discover how the staging of painted settings was organised from c. 1605 to c. 1700. This kind of investigation into the links between masque staging and the staging of plays has not been done in quite this way before. It follows a chronological argument to conclude that the developments towards verisimilitude in the drama on the scenic stage and the changes in theatrical conventions which followed in presentations by the Duke’s Company, were due in part to Davenant’s imaginative use of certain of the physical components of masque staging, especially the sliding shutters in a theatre with a forestage. Whereas the development of operatic spectacle, which occurred in parallel, derived in part from the use by the King’s Company of the techniques for engineering the spectacular effects of the transformation scenes of the masque stage. The various analyses of stage action in masques and plays, which are included throughout the study, are undertaken from the point of view of someone faced with preparing a practical production of the play in the theatrical circumstances presumed to have been prevailing at the time.