challenges the still-influential view of Cary as a Catholic writer, arguing instead for her association with reform-minded men such as Spenserian John Davies and parliamentarians such as her father Lawrence Tanfield, who were defending the liberties of the subject when Cary was producing her drama. Opening up questions about the right to free speech and debate guaranteed by English common law, Cary’s Tragedy of Mariam (1613) allows quasi-legal arguments to multiply on either side until reaching a resolution by juxtaposing characters who scorn the common law with those who articulate its fundamental principles. For Members of Parliament, as for Mariam, freedom to speak one’s conscience was an inalienable right equivalent to owning property (or, in Mariam’s case, owning her body and independent lineage); in Mariam, as in Parliament, those rights are asserted in defiance of the royal prerogative to silence them.

This chapter discusses the nature of court dancing in England, placing it in the context of European court culture and changes across time. The chapter focuses especially on the court masque, with an emphasis on continuity and change from Tudor to Jacobean practice. The court dancer was at the heart of the performance, as a masque transformed social dancing into a theatrical performance: in other words, a ballet de cour. Elizabeth maintained the practice of masquing for seasonal celebration and significant hospitality. However, James I enhanced the genre to underpin and consolidate the new Stuart dynasty. Investigation of the Jacobean masque from the perspective of a dance historian reveals the efforts to make the dance entries more histrionic, leading to the professional antimasque, in order to convey more vividly the central message or moral of the masque to an audience of diplomats. In developing a new mode of pantomimic dancing, a rich vein of invention in dance emerged. The new form of mute expression was swiftly adopted by Shakespeare into plays after 1609; as other playwrights followed his innovation, the dance content of drama expanded.