Burlesque Ballet, a Ballad and a Banquet in Ben Jonson's The Gypsies Metamorphos'd (1621)
Burlesque Ballet, a Ballad and a Banquet in Ben Jonson's The Gypsies Metamorphos'd (1621)
In summer 1621, George Villiers, then Marquess of Buckingham, invited the king and an exclusive circle of courtiers to inaugurate his newly restored countryside residence Burley-on-the-Hill in Rutland, Lincolnshire. On this occasion, he commissioned Ben Jonson with a masque, The Gypsies Metamorphos’d, in which he himself and various friends performed as dancing, pick-pocketing and palm-reading gipsies. The Gypsies Metamorphos’d was a risqué piece which experimented with innovative features, some of them outrageous. In particular, Jonson and his collaborators drew upon French-style ballet and banqueting fashions which they combined with traditional English music and song. This essay explains the reason for these artistic choices.
Keywords: Ben Jonson, burlesque ballet, ‘Gypsies Metamorphos'd’ (1621), influence of French Court Ballet, the English Masque
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