SOURCE: McGee, C. E. “‘Strangest consequence from remotest cause’: The Second Performance of The Triumph of Peace.” Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England 5 (1991): 309-19.

In the following essay, McGee discusses the political and financial details of a performance of The Triumph of Peace produced by the City of London, noting that it reflects and illuminates tense relations between Charles I and the city.

From Enid Welsford's The Court Masque (1927) to David Lindley and R. L. Smallwood's The Court Masque (1984), critics of the masque have worked, as many masquers danced and claimed they lived, within the sphere of the monarch.¹ Even masques performed neither at court nor in the presence of royalty—Comus for instance—found their way into such studies, as if the union of masque and court were indissoluble. Few would object to the match: the vast majority of these entertainments, whether at court or in the...