Hill, T (2010) “To prune and dress the Tree of Gouernment”: Political Contexts of the London Lord Mayors’ Shows. In: Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting, 8-10 April 2010, Venice, Italy.
Abstract
The starting point of my paper is that the Lord Mayor’s Shows were, by definition, political events, grounded in the values of a city that was, in Philip Withington’s words, “elitist, elective, pragmatic, patriarchal, and more often than not committed to civil and godly reformation.” These values were often opposed to those of the court. Although civic pageantry was undeniably drawn towards the assertion of unbroken continuities, it was capable of responding to more immediate concerns, such as the accession of James I, the failure of the Spanish match in 1623, and fears of civil war in 1639. The London represented in mayoral pageantry was therefore a more complex, fractured entity than many have assumed. By discussing works by Middleton, Dekker, Heywood, and Munday, my account of these shows will demonstrate the ways in which they engaged with a range of political issues in the pre–Civil War period.
| Item Type: | Conference or Workshop Item (Paper) |
|---|---|
| Subjects: | D History General and Old World > DA Great Britain |
| Divisions: | School of Writing, Publishing and the Humanities |
| Date Deposited: | 17 Aug 2014 21:14 |
| Last Modified: | 15 Aug 2021 09:36 |
| URI / Page ID: | https://researchspace.bathspa.ac.uk/id/eprint/3186 |
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