Creating Entertainments for Prince Henry's Creation (1610)

Authors

David M. Bergeron

Abstract

In lieu of an abstract, the first paragraph of the essay follows:

In exploring the dramatic entertainments that center on Prince Henry’s becoming Prince of Wales in 1610, one could begin with a question: how does a culture create the “creation” of a Prince of Wales? We may refer to the official ceremony as the “investiture,” but most commentators in 1610 referred to Henry’s event as the “creation.” Certainly Daniel Price, Henry’s chaplain, had this in mind when he preached a sermon in Westminster Abbey on Trinity Sunday, 3 June, the day before the ceremony; for he took Psalm 51:10 as his text, and he translated it as “Create in me a new heart.”¹ The entire sermon focused on the processes of creation and the renewal of a right and constant spirit. I will argue that Henry’s “creation” came about partly through dramatic entertainments that in 1610 surrounded the actual ceremony in Parliament. I will pay particular attention to the river pageant on the Thames, devised by Anthony Munday, as the most public of the consciously planned dramatic entertainments.

Notes

¹See the published text of his sermon, Daniel Price, The Creation of the Prince (London, 1610). E. K. Chambers, in The Elizabethan Stage, 4 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1923), 4:72, mistakenly cites the Stationers’ Register entry for the sermon as if it were the entry for the complete text of the investiture, The Order and Solemnitie of the Creation of … Prince Henrie.

Recommended Citation

Bergeron, David M. (2008) "Creating Entertainments for Prince Henry's Creation (1610)," Comparative Drama: Vol. 42: Iss. 4, Article 3.
Available at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/compdr/vol42/iss4/3