Culture de cour et idéologie : de l’usage de la pastorale dans le masque Pans Anniversarie de Ben Jonson (1621)

• Main Author: Guillaume Forain
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Institut du Monde Anglophone 2003-04-01
• Series: Etudes Epistémè
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/episteme/8177

Pans Anniversarie is the only instance of a pastoral masque at the court of James I. If we take for granted that it was performed before the French and Spanish ambassadors early in 1621, at the beginning of the Thirty Years’ War, Pan’s Anniversarie takes on an political meaning : it heralds James’ decision not to send any troups to rescue the Protestants on the Continent ; it was used to remind the English that they are not to interfere with foreign policy, which is part of the king’s prerogative. The masque revolves around a contrast between Arcadia (the court) and Boeotia (war-like Protestants), two worlds with their own sets of political and aesthetic values (peace vs. war, pastoral vs. burlesque). James I is Pan, extolled by the Arcadians for « the Musique of his peace. » Pan’s Anniversarie harnesses pastoral to the ideology of an authoritarian monarchical power and makes it the symbol of a new court culture, severed from its popular roots and allegedly mirroring the court’s unity. In this, it appears as a forerunner of Carolean court culture, although Jonson seems to anticipate the political risks of such an exclusive form of art.