SOURCE: "The Politics of the Jacobean Masque," in Theatre and Government Under the Early Stuarts, edited by J.R. Mulryne and Margaret Shewring, Cambridge University Press, 1993, pp. 87-117.

In the following essay, Parry describes the political purpose and theatrical techniques of Jacobean masques, focusing on the works of Samuel Daniel and Ben Jonson.

Irving Ribner describes the difference between Shakespeare and the Jacobean dramatists:

The most important writer of tragedy in the Jacobean era, of course, is William Shakespeare. Not only do such plays as Othello, Lear, Macbeth represent the highest reaches tragedy has attained in any age by the perfection with which they mirror a vision of man's relation to his universe, but the plays of Shakespeare served also as models for his Jacobean contemporaries to emulate. Beaumont and Fletcher, Heywood, Webster and Ford all reveal the influence of their master. But Shakespeare, while he taught his...