The Tempest, The Winter’s Tale, and Dramatic Absolutism on the Stuart Court Stage

Abstract:When, during the 1611-12 entertainment season, Shakespeare’s The Tempest and The Winter’s Tale were staged for King James I and his court, they would have seemed to wade into the middle of an escalating, mythmaking war between the King and his ideologically adversarial son, Henry. The preceding year had seen Henry usurp the ceremonial stage’s legitimizing power, mounting a series of masques and spectacles that grew his neo-chivalric cult and promoted militant Protestant values detested by his father. 1611-12, then, was James’s opportunity to reestablish his supremacy: not only would Henry be excluded from the season’s sole masque and centerpiece, Ben Jonson’s Love Restored, but Jonson would explicitly condemn all challenges to the royally approved mythology and demonstrate the King’s absolute authority over the masquing space. In response, Henry turned to alternative means of advancing his cause, including portraits, poems, and histories, while James negotiated a Catholic match that would deal a crushing blow to his son’s supporters. These are the circumstances in which the Stuart court first saw The Tempest and The Winter’s Tale, and this essay argues that viewers could not have helped but relate the plays’ interrogations of spectacle and royal authority to their present political moment.