Bomin Kim. “Making Time their king” - The Christmas Culture and Politics of the Early Modern Inns of Court in Thomas Middleton’s Masque of Heroes pp. 265~293 ( 29 pages)

Abstract

This article investigates the cultural work done by Thomas Middleton’s Masque of Heroes in the context of Christmas culture and politics at the early modern Inns of Court. Christmastide at the Inns of Court was a season reserved for the cultivation and exercise of the younger Inns of Court men’s aristocratic cultural capital by means of revels and Christmas commons. The custom of Christmas keeping by the junior constituencies came under increasing pressure of their governors to suppress or circumscribe the seasonal junior autonomy. By making the end of Christmastide the subject matter of his Christmas masque, Middleton aesthetically mythologizes this major source of intramural political tension at the Inner Temple whereby the ambiguity of his allegorical masque allows for an imaginative and imaginary room for contending parties to come to an agreement on Christmas in and through the masque itself. 
  
Key words
  
 Thomas Middleton (1580-1627), Masque of Heroes (1619), non-courtlymasque, Inns of Court, Inner Temple, Christmas commons, revels