Blood and Canvas: English Court Theatre and the Dawn of the Civil War

Blood and Canvas: English Court Theatre and the Dawn of the Civil War Author: Barbara Ravelhofer
Forthcoming in 2013.
 
What motivated a Member of Parliament to slash a Rubens painting in 1644? The reign of Charles I and Queen Henrietta Maria saw a flourishing of great art, but also acts fueled by anti-iconic sentiment. As a patroness of baroque splendour in theatre and the arts, Henrietta Maria provides an excellent focal point to study both iconophile as well as iconoclastic impulses in the lead-up to the Civil War. To her admirers, she was like Revelation’s woman clothed with the sun when she appeared on stage; her horrified detractors, however, believed themselves in the presence of the scarlet whore of Babylon.

Based on a wide range of archival evidence, Blood and Canvas traces the logistics of Henrietta Maria's theatrical productions and highlights their aesthetic, quasi-religious impact on contemporary onlookers. Transcriptions of key documents will be accompanied by illustrations of architectural structures, costumes and sets.

ISBN Paperback: 978-1-909254-49-7
ISBN Hardback: 978-1-909254-50-3
ISBN Digital (PDF): 978-1-909254-51-0
ISBN Digital ebook (epub): 978-1-909254-52-7
ISBN Digital ebook (mobi): 978-1-909254-53-4
Barbara Ravelhofer is Reader in English Studies at Durham University and Research Associate at the Centre for History and Economics, Cambridge. She has published on English drama, medieval and Renaissance dance, European court culture and Romantic poetry. Her book The Early Stuart Masque (2006) and her edition of Louange de la danse (2000), a 1620s treatise, are concerned with theatre practice at the French and early Stuart court.