Abstract
On January 6, 1617, the popular team of Inigo Jones and Ben Jonson presented their masque, A Vision of Desire, at court.1 While of academic interest to students of Jacobean theater and the settlement of Virginia— since the audience included the Powhatan “princess,” Pocahontas, and her planter-husband, John Rolfe—this occasion actually had the greatest ramifications for English history, especially the history of empire, and, correspondingly, sheds light on the nature of the political world of Jacobean England. In the first instance, the masque provided the backdrop for the elevation of George Villiers to earl of Buckingham, an important step in the development in the continuing emergence of this new court favorite. It also constituted part of the itinerary of the “Indian princess” and her consort on their successful tour to drum up support for the flagging Virginia Company. But, secondly, the timing of Buckingham’s creation and the appearance of the Virginians may not have been coincidental since both the establishment of the new favorite and the resurgence of the Jamestown colony were policies favored by Anna of Denmark, queen of “Great Britain,” and members of her political and literary circle, a group then ascending to power.
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Notes
Wesley Frank Craven, The Dissolution of the Virginia Company: The Failure of a Colonial Experiment (Gloucester, MA.: Peter Smith, 1964 [1932]);
Kenneth M. Andrews, Trade, Plunder and Settlement: Maritime Enterprise and the Genesis of the British Empire, 1480–1630 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984).
Richard Cust and Ann Hughes, eds., Conflict in Early Stuart England (London: Longman, 1989).
Kevin Sharpe, ed., Faction and Parliament: Essays on Early Stuart History (London and New York: Methuen, 1978);
Linda Levy Peck, Court Patronage and Corruption in Early Stuart England (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1990).
Conrad Russell, Parliaments and English Politics, 1621–1629 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979).
Leeds Barroll, Anna of Denmark, Queen of England: A Cultural Biography (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), pp. 14–35.
Barroll, Anna of Denmark, pp. 36–73; Barroll, “The Court of the First Stuart Queen,” in Linda Levy Peck, ed., The Mental World of the Jacobean Court (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 191–208;
Barbara K. Lewalski, “Lucy, Countess of Bedford: Images of a Jacobean Courtier and Patroness,” in Kevin Sharpe and Steven N. Zwicker, eds., Politics of Discourse: The Literature and History of Seventeenth-Century England (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1987), pp. 52–77;
Barbara K. Lewalski, “Enacting Opposition: Queen Anne and the Subversions of Masquing” and “Exercising Power: The Countess of Bedford as Courtier, Patron, and Coterie Poet” in idem, Writing Women in Jacobean England (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), pp. 15–43, 95–123. 8. The observation of Edward Somerset, earl of Worcester, quoted in
Michael Brennan, Literary Patronage in the English Renaissance: The Pembroke Family (London and New York: Routledge, Chapman & Hall, Inc., 1988), p. 104.
Roger Lockyer, Buckingham: The Life and Political Career of George Villiers, First Duke of Buckingham, 1592–1628 (London and New York: Longman, 1981), pp. 19–20.
Cf. J. D. Alsop, “William Welwood, Anne of Denmark and the Sovereignty of the Sea,” Scottish Historical Review, 59 (1980), 171–74 (quotation at 172).
Cf. Michael Braddick, “The English Government, War, Trade, and Settlement, 1625–1688,” in Nicholas P. Canny, ed., The Origins of Empire, vol. 1 in Wm. Roger Louis, ed., The Oxford History of the British Empire, 5 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 286–308.
Cf. Michael Braddick, “The English Government, War, Trade, and Settlement, 1625–1688,” in Nicholas P. Canny, ed., The Origins of Empire, vol. 1 in Wm. Roger Louis, ed., The Oxford History of the British Empire, 5 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 286–308.
“A Complete List in Alphabetical Order of the Adventurers to Virginia,’ with the Several Amounts of their Holdings,” 1618[?], Susan Myra Kingsbury, ed., The Records of the Virginia Company of London, 4 vols. (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1933), 3: 79–90.
Although calling them “subversive” may be a step too far, cf. Barbara Kiefer Lewalski, “Anne of Denmark and the subversion of masquing,” Criticism, 35 (1993), pp. 341–56.
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© 2003 Carole Levin, Jo Eldridge Carney, Debra Barrett-Graves
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Roper, L.H. (2003). Unmasquing the Connections between Jacobean Politics and Policy: the Circle of Anna of Denmark and the Beginning of the English Empire, 1614–18. In: Levin, C., Carney, J.E., Barrett-Graves, D. (eds) “High and Mighty Queens” of Early Modern England: Realities and Representations. Queenship and Power. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-10676-6_4
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