Masques of Difference

Download or read book Masques of Difference written by Ben Jonson and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Masques of Difference presents an annotated edition of four seventeenth-century entertainments written by Ben Jonson for the court of James I. These masques reflect both the confidence and the anxieties of the English aristocracy at a time when notions of monarchy, empire, and national identity were being radically redefined. All four masques reflect the royal court's self-representation as moral, orderly, and just, in contrast to stylized images of chaotically (and exotically) "othered" groups: Africans, the Irish, witches, and the homoeroticised figure of the Gypsy.