The politics of opera in late seventeenth-century London

Cambridge Opera Journal

Volumn 10, Issue 1, 1998, Pages 15-43

  Hume, Robert D ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 33751012875     PISSN: 09545867     EISSN: 14740621     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/s0954586700005310     Document Type: Article

References (64)

1. For the most important studies of allegory in opera in this period, see Curtis A. Price, 'Political Allegory in Late-Seventeenth-Century English Opera', Music and Theatre: Essays in Honour of Winton Dean, ed. Nigel Fortune (Cambridge, 1987), 1-29
2. and Andrew R. Walkling, 'Court, Culture, and Politics in Restoration England: Charles II, James II, and the Performance of Baroque Monarchy', Ph.D. diss. (Cornell University, 1997)
3. For a lucid survey, see Howard Mayer Brown's account in The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, 4 vols., ed. Stanley Sadie (London, 1992), III, 671-5
4. [Thomas Blount], Glossographia: or a Dictionary (London: Tho. Newcombe for Humphrey Moseley and George Sawbridge, 1656)
5. Handel and the Pastoral Tradition (Oxford, 1980), 112
6. The Restoration Court Stage (Cambridge, Mass., 1932), 177
7. See Paul D. Cannan, 'New Directions in Serious Drama on the London Stage, 1675-1678', Philological Quarterly, 73 (1994), 219-42
8. For discussion of the difference between the two theatres, see Hume, 'The Nature of the Dorset Garden Theatre', Theatre Notebook, 36 (1982), 99-109
9. 'Exotick but Rational Entertainments: The English Dramatick Operas', English Drama: Forms and Development, ed. Marie Axton and Raymond Williams (Cambridge, 1977), 133
10. See Judith Milhous, 'The Multi-Media Spectacular on the Restoration Stage', British Theatre and the Other Arts, 1660-1800, ed. Shirley Strum Kenny (Washington, 1984), 41-66
11. and 'Opera Finances in London, 1674-1738', Journal of the American Musicological Society, 37 (1984), 567-92
12. For a musicological (as opposed to financial) perspective on the specialness of the Dorset Garden operas, see Peter Holman, Four and Twenty Fiddlers: The Violin at the English Court 1540-1690 (Oxford, 1993), chapters 14 and 15
13. But Hark! More Harmony: The Libretti of Restoration Opera in English (Ypsilanti, 1971), 145
14. See Judith Milhous, Thomas Betterton and the Management of Lincoln's Inn Fields, 1695-1708 (Carbondale, 1979)
15. 'Production, Consumption and Political Function of Seventeenth-Century Opera', Early Music History, 4 (Cambridge, 1984), 209-96
16. Neal Zaslaw, 'The First Opera in Paris: A Study in the Politics of Art', Jean-Baptiste Lully and the Music of the French Baroque, ed. John Hajdu Heyer (Cambridge, 1989), 7-23, esp. 19-20
17. Tudor Drama and Politics: A Critical Approach to Topical Meaning (Cambridge, Mass., 1968)
18. Theatre and Crisis 1632-1642 (Cambridge, 1984)
19. Calendar of State Papers, Venetian, 1619-1621, 111
20. The play is lost. On this episode, see Philip J. Finkelpearl, '"The Comedians' Liberty": Censorship of the Jacobean Stage Reconsidered', English Literary Renaissance, 16 (1986), 123-38
21. Mastering the Revels: The Regulation and Censorship of English Renaissance Drama (Iowa City, 1991)
22. For the fullest and best survey, see Dale B. J. Randall's Winter Fruit: English Drama, 1642-1660 (Lexington, 1995)
23. Secret Rites and Secret Writing. Royalist Literature, 1641-1660 (Cambridge, 1989), 209-10
24. See, for example, Jennifer Chibnall, '"To that secure fix'd state": The Function of the Caroline Masque Form', in The Court Masque, ed. David Lindley (Manchester, 1984), 78-93
25. 'Politics and the Masque: Salmacida Spolia', in Literature and the English Civil War, ed. Thomas Healy and Jonathan Sawday (Cambridge, 1990), 59-74
26. 'Ben Jonson's Pan's Anniversary and the Politics of Early Stuart Pastoral', English Literary Renaissance, 22 (1992), 369-404; and the pieces cited in notes 36 and 38
27. 'Some Musical Aspects of the English Court Masque', Journal of the American Musicological Society, 1/3 (1948), 3-19
28. Criticism and Compliment: The Politics of Literature in the England of Charles I (Cambridge, 1987)
29. See particularly Martin Butler, 'Early Stuart Court Culture: Compliment or Criticism?' The Historical Journal, 32 (1989), 425-35
30. Jonson's Gypsies Unmasqued (Durham, NC, 1975)
31. '"We are one mans all": Jonson's The Gipsies Metamorphosed', Yearbook of English Studies, 21 (1991), 253-73
32. Stephen N. Zwicker, Lines of Authority: Politics and English Literary Culture, 1649-1689 (Ithaca, 1993)
33. and David Bywaters, Dryden in Revolutionary England (Berkeley, 1991), are among those most inclined to believe in very specific connectives
34. Susan J. Owen, 'Interpreting the Politics of Restoration Drama', The Seventeenth Century, 8 (1993), 67-97
35. 'Politcal Interpretations of Venice Preserv'd', Modern Philology, 85 (1988), 345-62
36. See particularly Wallace's classic articles on the subject, 'Dryden and History: A Problem in Allegorical Reading', English Literary History, 36 (1969), 265-90
37. and '"Examples Are Best Precepts": Readers and Meanings in Seventeenth-Century Poetry', Critical Inquiry, 1 (1974), 273-90
38. See Annabel Patterson, Fables of Power: Aesopian Writing and Political History (Durham, NC, 1991)
39. For an excellent account of the 'application' principles involved, see Alan Roper, 'Drawing Parallels and Making Applications in Restoration Literature', Politics as Reflected in Literature (Los Angeles, 1989), 29-65. Roper's essay is the best attempt to date to extend our understanding of the kind of seventeenth-century reading described by John Wallace
40. Joseph Spence, Observations, Anecdotes, and Characters of Books and Men, 2 vols., ed. James M. Osborn (Oxford, 1966), II, 638
41. Public Record Office LC 5/147, p. 239 (order of 8 December 1686)
42. Dangerous Matter: English Drama and Politics in 1623/24 (Cambridge, 1986), Introduction and 14
43. Allegory: The Theory of a Symbolic Mode (1964; rpt. Ithaca, 1970), 7
44. and Betty Edwards, Drawing on the Artist Within (New York, 1986), 173
45. Price, 'Political Allegory', esp. 4-5
46. 'Dido and Aeneas: Questions of Style and Evidence', Early Music, 22 (1994), 115-25
47. Ariane, Psyche, Albion and Albanius, The Grove and The British Enchanters. Price offers allegorical readings of none of the masques in Table 2
48. See Christina Bashford, 'Perrin and Cambert's "Ariane, ou le marriage de Bacchus" Re-examined', Music and Letters, 72 (1991), 1-26
49. For the best analysis to date, see Paul Hammond, 'Dryden's Albion and Albanius: The Apotheosis of Charles II', in The Court Masque, ed. Lindley, 169-83
50. Henry Purcell and the London Stage (Cambridge, 1984), 270-1
51. For a caustic (and in my opinion accurate) account of the job of adaptation, see Andrew Pinnock, 'Play into Opera: Purcell's The Indian Queen', Early Music, 18 (1990), 3-21
52. See Bruce Wood and Andrew Pinnock, '"Unscarr'd by turning times"? The Dating of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas', Early Music, 20 (1992), 373-90
53. and Price, 'Dido and Aeneas: Questions of Style and Evidence'
54. Wood and Pinnock argue for a date c. 1684 on stylistic evidence; Price demolishes the stylistic argument and prudently refuses to speculate about the date without additional evidence. Price's argument is a model of rigorous logic and careful use of historical evidence. Andrew R. Walkling has added further objections in '"The Dating of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas?": A Reply to Bruce Wood and Andrew Pinnock', Early Music, 22 (1994), 469-81
55. The Works of John Dryden, ed. Walter Scott, vol. VIII (London and Edinburgh, 1808), 111
56. For largely non-political readings, see particularly Joanne Altieri, 'Baroque Hieroglyphics: Dryden's King Arthur', Philological Quarterly, 61 (1982), 431-51
57. David Charlton, '"King Arthur": Dramatick Opera', Music and Letters, 64 (1983), 183-92
58. J. M. Armistead, 'Dryden's King Arthur and the Literary Tradition: A Way of Seeing', Studies in Philology, 85 (1988), 53-72
59. For divided readings, see Price, Henry Purcell and the London Stage, Chapter 7
60. For a Jacobite reading, see David Bywaters, Dryden in Revolutionary England, 75-93
61. Henry Purcell and the London Stage, 292-5
62. John Dryden and His World, 448-9
63. Zaslaw, 19
64. 'Political Allegory', 28