Effaced History: Facing the Colonial Contexts of Ben Jonson's Irish Masque at Court

Smith, James M.

doi:10.1353/elh.1998.0015

Cited by 26 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 34 publications

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“…The masque demonstrates how the sunny beams of King James I's government work to civilize a pack of unruly Irish visitors to court by smoothing out their rough accents and removing their shaggy mantles. The masque roughly coincided with an Old English embassy from the Pale petitioning the Crown to prevent New English gerrymandering, and so can be read as a work of hospitality and threat at once: The king must be obeyed everywhere his rule shines (Smith, ).…”

Section: Desmondmentioning

confidence: 99%

Thorns and roses: The international dimension of ‘Old English’ literature in Ireland

Herron

2018

Literature Compass

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The amount of extant early modern "Old English" literature written in Ireland in English is scant and little referenced by modern scholars, and its historical and political dimensions are often ignored. This paper surveys the important place of the Old English community in early modern English and Irish letters. The modern, international, often Catholic, and renaissance dimension to Old English art, life, and letters in the Pale and beyond is emphasized. The Old English always looked beyond Ireland and England while directly or subtly referring to their own tumultuous affairs in their writing. Or guarda gl'Ibernesi appresso il piano: sono duo squadre; e il conte di Childera mena la prima, e il conte di Desmonda da fieri monti ha tratta la seconda. (Ariosto, Orlando Furioso X.87.5-8). Then come the Irish men of valiant harts … To fight; both neare and farre aloofe withal, And of these bands the Lords and leaders are, The noble Earls of Ormond and Kildare. (Harington, 1591, p. 78) Literature of the New English "Discourse Community" of colonial administrators, soldiers, and land owners that included writers such as , et al., is plentiful, and study of its relevance to Irish and Transatlantic political and literary history continues to expand: Who knows not Colin Clout? By contrast, the amount of extant published early modern "Old English" literature written in Ireland in English is scant, little referenced (outside of Richard Stanihurst's contributions to Holinshed), and its historical and political dimensions are often ignored (who knows Richard Nugent?). 1 Extended scholarship and scholarly editions have begun to appear, however. 2We might therefore reassess the place of the Old English in early modern Europe and Ireland, at just the time when Ireland reassesses its place in Europe in relation to post-Brexit-decision England. 3 Doing so leads one to stress

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Section: Desmondmentioning

confidence: 99%

Thorns and roses: The international dimension of ‘Old English’ literature in Ireland

Herron

2018

Literature Compass

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Kinds of Irishness: Henry Burnell and Richard Head

Rankin

2010

A Companion to Irish Literature

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Shakespeare's Accents

Massai¹

2020

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Non-Standard English (henceforth NSE) accents started to feature more prominently in mainstream Shakespearean productions in the early s. Since then, more directors have curated the voice as a significant aspect of the mise-en-scène and NSE accents have no longer been systematically relegated to comic roles as the default acoustic shorthand to personate the marginal and the uneducated.The impetus towards achieving greater acoustic diversity on the Shakespearean stage is generally linked to the pioneering work by poets, artists and writers who championed the use of regional accents in mainstream theatre, film and television in the second half of the twentieth century. This chapter argues that this pioneering work with regional accents has been reinforced all along by the steady rise of foreign Shakespeare on the English stage. A closer look at the steep increase in the number of foreign productions of Shakespeare that have either toured to, or that have been produced for, the English stage has highlighted a connection between the alienating, but also liberating, experience of hearing Shakespeare performed in a foreign language and the growing acoustic diversity deployed in English productions of Shakespeare aimed at English-speaking audiences.This chapter therefore identifies and discusses the correlation between the rise of regional and foreign accents on the English stage, starting with the acerbic response prompted by the first regionally inflected voices to be heard on the Shakespearean stage in the s. This chapter then focuses on key theatrical events, including festivals and anniversary seasons within which foreign Shakespeare featured prominently, showing how these events in turn provoked debate about the need for more acoustic diversity and the deployment of regional voices on the Shakespearean stage. Specific productions are granted more sustained attention than others, which are discussed only in passing, because they exemplify more clearly the benefits 

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Effaced History: Facing the Colonial Contexts of Ben Jonson's Irish Masque at Court

Cited by 26 publications

References 34 publications

Thorns and roses: The international dimension of ‘Old English’ literature in Ireland

Thorns and roses: The international dimension of ‘Old English’ literature in Ireland

Kinds of Irishness: Henry Burnell and Richard Head

Shakespeare's Accents

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