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Inigo Jones and the Use of Scenery at the Cockpit-In-Court
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 July 2009
Extract
One aspect of Inigo Jones's work that has received little attention is his dual approach to staging at the Stuart court. The growing popularity of the masque and the important part Jones played in directing and moulding the form are well known. The Caroline masque in particular was a glittering and prestigious vehicle for Jones's experimentation with scenery and scenic devices, and one which displayed his creativity to the best possible advantage. With the emergence of recent works such as Orgel and Strong's Inigo Jones: The Theatre of the Stuart Court, which concentrates almost wholly on the masque, it could be assumed that after Charles I ascended the throne in 1625, all of Jones's theatrical energies were directed towards scenic displays and his gradual approach towards fully perspective scenery.
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- Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 1978
References
1 The plans for the renovations may be seen in the Jones/Webb Collection in the Library of Worcester College, Oxford.
2 Wickham, Glynne, “The Cockpit Reconstructed,” New Theatre Magazine, 7 (Spring 67), 35Google Scholar.
3 The identification of plays performed at the Cockpit-in-Court comes from three main sources: a King's Men warrant for payment for performances at Court between 5 November 1630 and 21 February 1630/1, a further warrant for plays performed between 26 March 1638 and 7 January 1638/9, and notations in the Office Book of Sir Henry Herbert, Master of the Revels.
4 See particularly Freehafer, John, “Inigo Jones's Scenery for The Cid.” Theatre Notebook, 25, No. 3 (Spring 1971), 84–92Google Scholar. I have taken issue with Freehafer in “A Note on the Use of Scenery at the Cockpit-in-Court,” Theatre Notebook, 26, No. 3 (Spring 1972), 89–91Google Scholar.
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6 Wickham, Glynne, Early English Stages, II, Pt. II (London, 1972), 120Google Scholar. See also Orgel, Stephen and Strong, Roy, Inigo Jones: The Theatre of the Stuart Court (Berkeley, 1973), I, 7Google Scholar.
7 An example is the sixteenth century engraving, A Ballet at the French Court, reproduced in Early English Stages, I, Plate XXVIIGoogle Scholar.
8 Leacroft, Richard, The Development of the English Playhouse (London, 1973). p. 75Google Scholar.
9 Orgel and Strong, II, 794–95. No. 450 is reproduced in Figure 3; the dimensions of Nos. 448 and 449 are identical.
10 Ibid., II, 786.
11 Ibid., II, 724–27. Simpson, Percy and Bell, C. F. partially catalogued the Chatsworth Collection in 1924 in Designs for Masques and Plays at Court (1924; rpt. New York, 1966)Google Scholar. The corresponding numbers are:
12 Bell, Hamilton, “Contributions to the History of the English Playhouse I—On a Plan by Inigo Jones,” The Architectural Record (March 1913), p. 267Google Scholar.
13 Bentley, VI, 281, n. 1.
14 Freehafer presents a brief survey of the range of opinion in “The Cid,” 84–86. He himself has gone further in claiming not only that this design was fitted into the central doorway of the Cockpit-in-Court, but that it was executed for “The Cid,” a two-part play based on the works of Corneille and Desfontaine (ibid., passim). However, there is no evidence to support the contention that the first part of The Cid was acted at the Cockpit-in-Court before the Restoration, or that the second part was indeed ever acted.
15 Orgel and Strong, II, 787–88.
16 Simpson and Bell, p. 118.
17 Freehafer, “The Cid,” 90.
18 See Adams, John Quincy, The Dramatic Records of Sir Henry Herbert (1917; rpt. Gloucester, Mass., 1960), pp. 76–77Google Scholar.
19 Orgel and Strong, II, 725.
20 Freehafer claims that design No. 209 was one of the scenic units for the Cockpit-in-Court production of Aglaura on 3 April 1638 (“The Italian Night Piece and Suckling's Aglaura,” JEGP, lxvii [1968], passim)Google Scholar; Simpson and Bell comment on the “perplexing” format of the design (p. 116). Orgel and Strong classify the upper section as belonging to Luminalia and the lower drawing as representing the “five virtuous abstractions which appear at the end of Albion's Triumph (II, 475). Freehafer identifies several other scenic designs especially created for Luminalia as having been used for Aglaura (“The Italian Night Piece,” passim).
21 As cited in Bentley, V, 1202. Hall, in a prologue to Harding's Sicily and Naples, also comments on the elaborate costumes and refers to a performance at the Second Blackfriars: there is a further reference in the prologue to Brome's The Antipodes.
22 Aubrey's Brief Lives, ed. Dick, Oliver Lawson (London, 1960), p. 290Google Scholar. The Lives were set down in manuscript between 1669 and 1696; the first printed edition based on the manuscript was by Andrew Clark (Oxford, 1898.)
23 Rosenfeld, Sybil, in A Short History of Scene Design in Great Britain (Oxford, 1973), p. 33Google Scholar, assumes that the references to scenery for Aglaura were for the Blackfriars production.
24 McKerrow, R. B., “The Elizabethan Printer and Dramatic Manuscripts,” The Library, 4th Ser., 12 (December 1931), 270Google Scholar.