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The politics of opera in late seventeenth-century London

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 August 2008

Robert D. Hume
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To what degree does late seventeenth-century English opera contain politics? Some recent critics have assumed that political commentary conveyed by allegory is a pervasive feature of ‘Restoration’ masques and operas. Is this true? Quite a few political interpretations of particular works have been published but no one has systematically enquired to what extent allegory and/or ideology was presumed to be built into operas mounted in late seventeenth-century London. Theoretical statements of the time about opera are scant and contradictory, their authors disinclined to take up political issues. Some of the political content is glaringly obvious (the allegory in Dryde'ns and Grabu's Albion and Albanius); some of it is sharply disputed. How should we read a work like Dryden's and Purcell's King Arthur? Is it essentially a muddled adventure story? An expression of British nationalism rising above current politics? A piece of covert Jacobite propaganda?

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Articles
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Cambridge Opera Journal , Volume 10 , Issue 1 , March 1998 , pp. 15 - 43
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1998

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References

1 For the most important studies of allegory in opera in this period, see Price, Curtis A., ‘Political Allegory in Late-Seventeenth-Century English Opera’, Music and Theatre: Essays in Honour of Winton Dean, ed. Fortune, Nigel (Cambridge, 1987), 1–29,Google Scholar and Walkling, Andrew R., ‘Court, Culture, and Politics in Restoration England: Charles II, James II, and the Performance of Baroque Monarchy’, Ph.D. diss. (Cornell University, 1997).Google Scholar I am indebted to Dr Walkling for making a draft copy available to me some time ago. The gist of Walkling's approach - insistence on authorially designed covert allegory not explicidy present in the text and not confirmed by contemporary contextual evidence - is clearly stated in his ‘Performance and Political Allegory in Restoration England: What to Interpret and When’, in Performing the Music of Henry Purcell, ed. Burden, Michael (Oxford, 1996), 161–79.Google Scholar Virtually all modern commentators have taken ‘politics’ to mean references to kings, princes, and affairs of state. Obviously such allusions may be celebratory or critical, direct or covert. Where concealed allusion has been claimed, ‘allegory’ (in a general sense) has usually been seen as the vehicle.

2 For a lucid survey, see Brown, Howard Mayer's account in The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, 4 vols., ed. Sadie, Stanley (London, 1992), III, 671–5.Google Scholar

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6 A few titles have been omitted for a variety of reasons. Little is known about ‘The Queen's Masque’, performed at court in 1671, or the Ballet et Musique given there in 1674. Duffett's and Bannister's Beauties Triumph (1676) may have been performed only at a girls' boarding school. A Parley of Instruments (concert performance, 1676) and Grabu's Pastorelle (given at court in 1684) remain largely mysterious.Google Scholar

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13 The sparseness of new offerings in the public theatre between 1677 and 1690 was a result of exclusion crisis uproar, diminished competition after the theatrical union of 1682, and the staggering losses suffered when the run of Albion and Albanius was cut short by Monmouth's invasion in 1685.Google Scholar

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50 Public Record Office LC 5/147, p. 239 (order of 8 December 1686).Google Scholar

51 A play stressing the wisdom of entrusting the future of the country to ex-general George Washington is unlikely to make me ponder the wisdom of voting for a current military hero - but might have precisely that effect on a different member of the audience.Google Scholar

52 Dangerous Matter: English Drama and Politics in 1623/24 (Cambridge, 1986), Introduction and 14.Google Scholar

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54 ‘Personification vs. Allegory’, Enlightening Allegory, ed. Cope, Kevin L. (New York, 1993), 21–39, esp. 22. Maresca elaborates the point originally made by Rosemond Tuve - that ‘personification and allegory are not the same thing’, but virtually all students of opera have ignored this distinction and I have not tried to fight that battle here. For a brief overview of allegory in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century European opera, see die article on ‘allegory’ by Curtis Price in Opera Grove, I, 89–90.Google Scholar

55 Allegory: The Theory of a Symbolic Mode (1964; rpt. Ithaca, 1970), 7.Google Scholar

56 Dryden says in his preface that ‘The Subject of it is wholly Allegorical; and the Allegory it self [is] so very obvious, that it will n o sooner be read than understood.’ The Works ojJohn Dryden, vol. XV, ed. Miner, Earl and GufTey, George R. (Berkeley, 1976), 11.Google ScholarGerard Langbaine quotes and endorses this passage in An Account of the English Dramatick Poets (Oxford: L.L. for George West and Henry Clements, 1691), 152.Google Scholar

57 For the picture and analysis of the duck/rabbit, see Gombrich, E. H., Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation (1960; 2nd rev. edn, Princeton, 1972), 5,Google Scholar and Edwards, Betty, Drawing on the Artist Within (New York, 1986), 173.Google Scholar

58 If, for example, the interpreter has decided that Dryden's King Arthur ‘is’ James II, and that Oswald ‘is’ William III, one should not totally evade the difficulty posed by the fact that, historically speaking, James did not defeat William. The allegorical interpreter may declare this an instance of ‘wish fulfilment’; the reader is then entitled to decide how plausible or satisfying this explanation seems.Google Scholar

59 Don Sebastian was revived occasionally into the 1750s and performed as late as 1794. King Arthur was the smash hit of the season at Goodman's Fields in 1735–6 and continued to play with success into the 1780s.Google Scholar

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61 The date of Part 2 is undeterminable.Google Scholar

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64 Ariane, Psyche, Albion and Albanius, The Grove and The British Enchanters. Price offers allegorical readings of none of the masques in Table 2.Google Scholar

65 See Bashford, Christina, ‘Perrin and Cambert's “Ariane, ou le marriage de Bacchus” Re-examined’, Music and Letters, 72 (1991), 1–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

66 For the best analysis to date, see Hammond, Paul, ‘Dryden's Albion and Albanius: The Apotheosis of Charles II’, in The Court Masque, ed. Lindley, , 169–83.Google Scholar

67 The automatic identification of protagonist and reigning monarch is one of the fundamental assumptions in John Buttrey's oft-cited but unpublished Cambridge dissertation of 1967, ‘The Evolution of English Opera between 1656 and 1695: A Re-investigation.’ This view has proved surprisingly influential but has never yet been systematically reconsidered.Google Scholar

68 Price (‘Political Allegory’, 9) calls this ‘Shadwell's covert message’, but I think the term poorly chosen. There is nothing subversive or anti-royalist here; Shadwell's message could legitimately be called ‘indirect’, but it seems quite open.Google Scholar

69 Henry Purcell and the London Stage (Cambridge, 1984), 270–1.Google Scholar

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72 See note 1, above.Google Scholar

73 See Pinnock, Andrew, ‘ “Unscarr'd by turning times”? The Dating of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas’, Early Music, 20 (1992), 373–90,Google Scholar and Price, ‘Dido and Aeneas: Questions of Style and Evidence’. Wood and Pinnock argue for a date c. 1684 on stylistic evidence; Price demolishes the stylistic argument and prudendy refuses to speculate about the date without additional evidence. Price's argument is a model of rigorous logic and careful use of historical evidence. Walkling, Andrew R. 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.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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75 Henry Purcell and the London Stage, 292–5.Google Scholar

76 John Dryden and His World, 448–9. Winn supplies an extended analysis in ‘When Beauty Fires the Blood’: Love and the Arts in the Age of Dryden (Ann Arbor, 1992), 273–302, in which he expresses his belief ‘that Dryden revised by turning specifically partisan allegory into something much more thoughtful: at its best, King Arthur asks probing questions about the links between sex and power in Dryden's world’ (275).Google Scholar

77 ‘English Traditions in Handel's Rinaldo’, Handel Tercentenary Collection, ed. Sadie, Stanley and Hicks, Anthony (London, 1987), 125. Price makes a very convincing argument for the possibilities of both Hanoverian and Stuart readings of an Italian opera on a classical subject.Google Scholar

78 Zaslaw, 19.Google Scholar

79 ‘Political Allegory’, 28.Google Scholar

80 Many friends have generously given me helpful comments, corrections, suggestions and objections. I want to express my particular gratitude to Paul D. Carman, Jackson I. Cope, Don-John Dugas, Phillip Harth, John T. Harwood, Kit Hume, Matthew J. Kinservik, Lowell Lindgren, Nancy Klein Maguire, Judith Milhous, C. A. Prettiman, Curtis Price, Alan Roper, Amy Elizabeth Smith, Richard Strier, Andrew R. Walkling and James Anderson Winn. I dedicate this essay to the memory of John M. Wallace, whose work on seventeenth-century ‘allegorical’ reading remains fundamental to the field.Google Scholar