Literary Criticism (1400-1800) | Campion, Thomas - David Lindley (essay date 1979)

David Lindley (essay date 1979)

SOURCE: Lindley, David. “Campion's Lord Hay's Masque and Anglo-Scottish Union.” Huntington Library Quarterly 43, no. 1 (winter 1979): 1-11.

[In the following essay, Lindley analyzes the masque Campion wrote for the wedding of James Hay and Honora Denny, a union of a Scotsman and Englishwoman, focusing on how the masque reflected the tensions and problems faced by the union of England and Scotland into Great Britain under King James I.]

When James VI of Scotland succeeded to the English throne, one of his most fervent ambitions was to see the two countries fully united in the single realm of Great Britain. To that end he forced his unwilling parliaments to devote a great deal of their time to the matter and encouraged, directly or indirectly, a substantial flow of propaganda which supported his endeavor.¹ It is not surprising, therefore, that two major court masques, Jonson's...

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