| Unlike chivalric romances in poetry and prose, plays depicting armored knights guided by a feudal code of chivalry were popular for only a brief period during the Renaissance. Yet this chivalric drama exerted an important influence in society, alternately supporting or undermining attempts by the monarch and nobility to employ chivalry as a means of consolidating their power. Quite popular during the 1570s and '80s, dramatic representations of chivalric romances in professional theaters correspond to the use of chivalry as ideological propaganda in Tudor festivals. In the late 1590s and early 1600s, however, chivalric drama became less romantic and more cynical, corresponding to the declining use of chivalric propaganda in courtly entertainments and the growing abuses at court. In spite of a brief revival of chivalric drama for Prince Henry, these plays disappear altogether from the English stage after his death in 1612. |
