Queen Anne's Body in Stuart Court Sermons

Abstract

This article aligns the 1605, 1606, and 1609 court sermons of Lancelot Andrewes with Ben Jonson's Masque of Blackness and Masque of Beauty (performed in 1605 and 1608, respectively) in order to argue that both genres politicize James VI and I's domestic life by commenting on Queen Anne's political and domestic roles. Scholars have examined the ways in which Anne's performance in the court masques allowed her to claim a sense of authority and agency over her body. Recent research on sermons has demonstrated how they were another form of court entertainment, more akin to masques and plays than we might expect, and that the sermon genre often commented on ongoing political and domestic situations in the Stuart court. Yet, scholars have not considered how the masques prompted a response from another popular court genre, the sermon. In placing these two genres—sermon and masque—alongside one another, I argue that Andrewes's patriarchal downplaying of the woman's body in the Biblical Nativity narrative is actually a response to Jonson's masques, rather than the normative touchstone of early modern understandings of gender and maternity. Considering Andrewes's view of the female body as a contrast to Jonson's display and celebration of the female body reveals multiple models for understanding maternity in the early modern period.