A Theater of Diplomacy. Ellen R. Welch
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political “friendship” of a monarch toward a particular ambassador.57 The underlying assumption was that the king’s personal touch represented the highest kind of favor an ambassador could desire. But that reasoning was incomplete, as Le Fèvre de la Boderie’s rejection of the invitation reveals. A demonstration of the king’s favor only mattered insofar as it took place before an audience. Indeed, as Le Fèvre de la Boderie describes it, the public sign of friendship conferred by an invitation to the masque had two audiences: the public of other dignitaries at the London court who would “judge” it and the larger audience of “the whole of Christendom” who would hear about it through dispatches and correspondence. The ambassador’s focus on the spectators of his relations with the king makes it unclear, when he uses the word “spectacle,” whether he refers to the masque itself or to the display occasioned by his presence in the audience.
Le Fèvre de la Boderie’s masters back in France shared his view that the public display of his relationship with the English king was paramount. In fact, they took an even more radical approach to analyzing the theatrical dimension of diplomatic relations with the English court, interpreting the non-invitation itself as a kind of theater. Secretary Villeroy echoed the king in warning Le Fèvre de la Boderie that the affair may not have been as straightforward as he seemed to believe. The whole scandal, he suggested, may have been a “ruse”; he advised that “they sought an argument with us.”58 Henri IV himself chimed into the discussion, advising his ambassador that while he approved of his efforts to defend the public dignity of the French state, it was also important to moderate his displays of displeasure. He wrote that it was necessary to “demonstrate” the correct amount of offense in response: “I esteem that you should show that I shall have just occasion to be offended, but without stirring this up any more than that, or making any more of a fuss, which is perhaps what they want.”59 Neither Henri IV nor Villeroy explained any political motives for a potential quarrel between France and England, adopting a strategy of concealment such as Francesco Guicciarini described in the Ricordi. Effectively, they were asking Le Fèvre de la Boderie to perform a role without knowledge of the script. Lacking access to such “backstage” insights, the ambassador improvised within the sphere of political representation provided by the public occasion of the masques to maintain at least the appearance of good relations between the French and English crowns.
The awkward rhetorical and performative contortions required to keep up appearances become clear in Le Fèvre de la Boderie’s accounts of the (temporary) resolution to the non-invitation incident. Rather than host the French ambassador at a private dinner, James instead invited him to a different semipublic event: a masque organized by the king himself in celebration of the marriage of his favorite courtier, John Ramsay, Viscount Haddington (a Scot), to Elizabeth Radcliffe (an Englishwoman). The Haddington Masque was performed on February 9, 1608, with a script by Ben Jonson, designs by Inigo Jones, and music by Alfonso Ferrabosco.60 The performance celebrated the marriage and optimistically projected an image of Anglo-Scottish political union through vibrant depictions of love and fertility.61 The printed “Description of the Masque” vividly evokes the opening set design featuring a “high, steep, red cliff, advancing itself into the clouds,” upon which were “erected two pilasters, charged with the spoils and trophies of Love … and overhead two personages, Triumph and Victory, in flying postures and twice so big as the life.”62 The action begins “on the sudden, with a solemn music, a bright sky breaking forth, … two doves, then two swans with silver gears, drawing forth a triumphant chariot in which Venus sat,” while Graces toss garlands into the audience.63 The reader of the pamphlet imagines a pompous spectacle that first draws the eye upward to be dazzled by ingenious machines, then down to the ground to witness mythological figures declaiming high verse and masquers in silver and carnation costumes, feathers and jewels on their heads, dancing with “elegancy and curious device.”64
None of this magnificence appears in Le Fèvre de la Boderie’s dispatch recounting the event. He described it simply as “meager.” In his report to Secretary Villeroy after the performance, Le Fèvre de la Boderie declined to comment on the content of the masque or his experience of it: “I tell you nothing of the quality of the ballet, nor of those who danced it, because it seems to me that one is not so anxious to know it.”65 Presumed lack of interest on the part of an ambiguous “one”—the king, perhaps?—rhetorically sanctioned his choice to remain silent about the masque itself. He wrote: “I shall assure you merely that they won’t play me again like this last time, and that is what I must principally desire.”66 The language of “play” and trickery here operates in a similar way to the ambiguous “spectacle” in his earlier correspondence. The diplomatic theatrics take center stage, supplanting the real entertainment in the ambassador’s discourse.
Renegotiating Intimacy and Publicity Through the Queens’ Entertainments
Le Fèvre de la Boderie was incorrect in thinking that the London court would avoid replaying the same drama in the future. The following year, as the Christmas season approached, the court again scrambled to address thorny problems of precedence in distributing invitations to the masque organized by the queen for the festive season. As Sillery de Puisieux wrote to Le Fèvre de la Boderie: “It appears from the discourses and conversation of the King of Great Britain, his Council and Treasurer, that there is at present no greater or more important affair on the table than this beautiful ballet that puts everyone in such discomfort.”67 The new Venetian ambassador, Marc’ Antonio Correr, described how each diplomat struggled to secure an invitation to the masque, and the implicit recognition that went along with it, in a January 9, 1609, dispatch to the doge and senate: “The Spanish and Flemish Ambassadors are now maneuvering to be invited to the Masque. They declare it would be a slight to the Embassy-Extraordinary if it is left out. On the other hand the French Ambassador, who was omitted last year, which produced some sharp words from his Most Christian Majesty, now declares that he will withdraw from Court if he is not invited.”68 The French ambassador objected to the requirement to play this game at all. As he reported to Secretary Villeroy in a January 1609 letter, he sent a message to James via Lord Salisbury to the effect that “the favors that ambassadors receive from the princes in whose courts they serve should be purely free, and received rather than requested.”69
To move beyond this diplomatic impasse, the French court stepped in with an appropriately theatrical gesture: they staged their own ballet, organized by the queen and hosted by finance minister Maximilien Béthune, duc de Sully, and his wife at their private dance hall in the Arsenal in Paris, and particularly invited the English ambassador George Carew, his wife, and the vice-count of Cranbourne to view it as honored guests.70 (Other ambassadors enjoyed a less prestigious, second performance of the ballet in Marguerite de Valois’s palace.)71 This invitation placed the English court in the French one’s debt, more or less forcing the royals to reciprocate by hosting Le Fèvre de la Boderie at the Masque of Queens a few weeks later.
The diplomatic exchange of entertainments between the French and English courts set in motion another frenzied exchange of correspondence. The discourse generated by this second phase of the “incident” shines a more focused light on issues of intimacy and publicity in relations between diplomats and sovereigns, due to the dynamics of reciprocity, the centrality of women as patrons and hosts, and the participation of the ambassadors’ families as honored guests. Although Le Fèvre de la Boderie previously dismissed the rhetoric of personal or “private” favor, this new wave of correspondence recuperated it and reconciled it to the public, theatrical orientation of the diplomatic struggle for prestige.
The queen’s ballet seems tailor-made to resolve Le Fèvre de la Boderie’s predicament. Very likely, though, the ballet would have taken place even if the French ambassador in London was not being threatened with exclusion from the masque there. Ballets regularly featured in Carnival festivities in Paris. Moreover, the French court, like the English one, habitually signaled favor to ambassadors by inviting them to ballets. Even if the court did not specifically plan the ballet to address the masque incident, however, its performance had a tangible effect on French diplomatic relations with Britain and transformed the language used to discuss and publicize that relationship.
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