Ben Jonsons Masques free essay sample

Analyzes four courtly entertainments of 17th Cent. poet. Pageantry, form, purpose, dance, story line, characters, action, antimasques. Ben Jonson was the leading writer of courtly masques, the hybrid entertainments, part poetry and part spectacle, that flourished at the courts of James I and Charles I. Jonsons principal innovation in the genre was his development of the antimasque. The antimasque was an opening section of the performances featuring slightly relaxed decorum and providing a contrast with the elevated tone of the masque proper. To be acceptable, a formal innovation as important as the antimasque had to meet a great variety of demands that Jonson and his audience placed on this fragile art form. Though they were undeniably meant as entertainment, masques were designed to praise the sovereign, to confirm the legitimacy of the existing social order and to teach aristocratic audiences by entertaining them. It was a highly artificial and almost ephemeral form in