The masque had a brief but splendid life as the dominant mode of entertainment at the early Stuart court, and it has increasingly come to be recognized as a genre offering a fascinating insight into the culture and politics of the early seventeenth century. This selection of 18 masque for Charles I, performed just before the outbreak of civil war. It also includes examples of entertainments performed on royal progresses, as well as one domestic masque.

Elizabeth put her linguistic skills to excellent use when she became Queen. Although she never left England, she wrote extensively to correspondents abroad, and her extant foreign correspondence ranges from the ceremonial to the religiously committed to the intimate and emotionally vulnerable. The relationships Elizabeth forged through these texts were of central importance to the diplomacy and politics of the period. This volume presents a study of the correspondence as well as newly edited texts and translations of nine of Elizabeth's holograph letters in foreign languages.

This is the first edition ever of the Queen's correspondence in Italian. These letters cast a new light on her talents as a linguist and provide interesting details as to her political agenda, and on the cultural milieu of her court. This book provides a fresh analysis of the surviving evidence concerning Elizabeth's learning and use of Italian, and of the activity of the members of her "Foreign Office." All of the documents transcribed here are accompanied by a short introduction focusing on their content and context, a brief description of their transmission history, and an English translation.

The editor extensively reconstructs the political and cultural circumstances in which the masques were performed for the French ambassador at the king’s behest.

Europa Triumphans represents the chronological and trans-European range of the court and civic festival. These festivals are considered not simply as texts, but as events, and are introduced by groups of scholars, each with a specialist knowledge of the political, social and cultural significance of the festival and of the iconography, spectacle, music, dance, voice and gesture in which they were expressed.

This is an annotated source bibliography of over 2,800 European court festival works. It allows access to many rare accounts of court festivals. Extensive indexes provide ruler's name, court name, territory, type of entertainment performed, composers and artists. There are numerous cross-references.

This book combines the 1549 text describing the king of France's ceremonial entry into the city of Lyon early in his reign with a detailed, scholarly introduction by Richard Cooper.

The vast wardrobe of Queen Elizabeth I is legendary: in her own time some of the richly embroidered gowns were displayed with other treasures to dazzle the eyes of foreign visitors to the Tower of London.

Provides an introduction to the rich treasury of source material available to students of early modern history. During this period, political development, economic and social change, rising literacy levels, and the success of the printing press, ensured that the State, the Church and the people generated texts and objects on an unprecedented scale. This book introduces students to the sources that survived to become indispensable primary material studied by historians.