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

Clark and Kaufmann discuss the rivalry engendered between the two groups and the resulting satiric attacks by the professionals on the courtiers in plays such as Brome’s The Love-sick Court, c. 1633, which mocks the conventions of the neoplatonic drama of which the queen was so fond, and his The Court Beggar, 1639, which specifically satirises Davenant, Suckling, and Inigo Jones.³⁵

Davenant would have seen his plays presented without painted scenery at the Blackfriars and the Globe. The commercial productions in all the theatres open to the general public were shown on a more or less bare stage. (The possible exceptions, when court plays were involved, are discussed in the next chapter.) The location of the scene was given in the dialogue when it mattered to the action, and the action moved quickly from one scene to the next as the actors exited and others entered immediately. If the location changed, a character would mention it. As in Davenant’s Love and Honour, which is set in Savoy, the first scene begins in Milan, but the characters discuss their retreat to Turin, where the rest of the action takes place. Nevertheless, the stage might be partially furnished if it was necessary for the plot. It is known from Henslowe’s list of assets from 1598 that there were quite large stock property pieces such as thrones, tables, tombs, and beds (often with an occupant), which stage directions show would be carried on as required.³⁶ Costumes were important as indications of status, a king would be dressed as a king, a soldier would carry weapons, a beggar would be in rags. Nobles would often give their outmoded clothes to the theatres, and after the Restoration, Downes records that the king and the Duke of York gave their coronation robes for Love and Honour.³⁷

At this time, four companies were licensed by the Revels Office to play in London, and they seem to have kept consistently to this number: References to the four companies appear in the records of the Master of the Revels in 1623 and again in 1636. Gurr says that other companies might visit, but only the established four were in residence.³⁸