01 MW5 CAC 15049 COIRO HC-S126
The masque is a theatrical form that became enormously popular in the early seventeenth century. Performed at court and other elite spaces, masques entailed elaborate sets, gorgeous and provocative costumes, hours of dancing, and much consumption of alcohol and decadent food. While the masque itself staged extravagant praise of the monarch, each masque was motivated by a perceived disturbance: including emerging ideas about race, colonial encounters with India and the new world, censorship, political corruption, and sexual scandal. Reading these short theatrical pieces thus gives us a window into a culture undergoing major challenges and changes, a time we can recognize as “early modern.” The cultural prominence of the masque ends with the traumatic rupture of the English civil wars and the theatrical trial and execution of Charles I, but we will find the masque’s influence in many later forms: opera and Broadway musicals; New Orlean’s Mardi Gras krewes; half-time shows and stadium tours. I am sure we will discover yet more examples of its afterlife over our semester together.
We will read Shakespeare’s The Tempest with its embedded masque and Milton’s A Maske Presented at Ludlow Castle (aka Comus), but also many other fascinating works you probably have not encountered in other courses.
Seminar members will write a series of short memos, some creative. Their final project will be 10-12 page essay built on a memo or memos they wrote earlier in the semester.