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

Chapter 1

Royalist Dramatist

An Ambitious Young Man

The son of an Oxford tavern keeper, William Davenant came to London from his home in Oxford in 1622, aged sixteen, after the deaths of his parents. He had little money and few prospects. Somehow, in twenty years, he became a dramatist whose plays were performed by the most prestigious company in London, made friends with nobility, and became a member of the royal court, where the king and the queen admired the masques he wrote for their entertainment and trusted him in commissions in their service. This chapter explores his progress from one to the other.¹

The family had many connections with the Merchant Taylors in the city of London, and his father, John Davenant, had expected him to be apprenticed to a trade. Instead, William somehow managed to be taken on as a page in the household of the Duchess of Richmond. This was the beginning of his surprisingly rapid rise into court circles and the base from which he managed not only to become a poet but also a dramatist and writer of court masques even though he had neither noble nor theatrical connections.