'The problem in the middle': Liminal space and the Jonsonian masque (Ben Jonson, Inigo Jones)

My dissertation focuses on the court masques of Ben Jonson and the ways in which they functioned both socio-politically and aesthetically in the courts of James I and his successor Charles. I attempt to resolve the debate between Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones (Jonson's main collaborator and one of the most powerful architects and theater designers in England in the Renaissance) as to what was most responsible for the masque's existence, the text of the former or the set and design of the latter (the masque's "soul" or its "body," in Jonson's words), through the use of a provocative theoretical term developed by the anthropologist Victor Turner in his book The Anthropology of Performance, liminality. Turner defines this term as "...a betwixt-and-between condition," a space between two positions or spaces---eras, phases of life, conditions of existence, and so on (101). Theater criticism has traditionally been founded on the assumption of separation, of a disconnection between actor and audience, stage and seats; but as I suggest here, such an assumption is at least in part invalid. I argue that actual theatrical performance, specifically in this case the court masque, is in a perpetual state of liminality, belonging wholly to neither the stage nor the audience that observes it---it exists in the margin between them. Against the backdrop of the masque, I extend my argument along two main lines: first, the continual shifting and undercutting of physical space which the masque represents in its staging and performance, and second, the dislocation of class and political space which results from the masque's enactment. Filtered through the concept of liminality, these areas of the masque represent a shift from traditional theatrical practice to that highlighted by Stephen Orgel and others, in which the boundaries of aesthetics and performance are increasingly stretched, weakened and finally made illusory at best. It is the ways in which this change is enacted---ways for which both Jonson and Jones are equally, if oppositionally responsible---that make up the substance of this work.