Poets, Patronage, and the Prince’s Court

This chapter examines Prince Henry’s emergent court during the years 1603 to 1612. It traces the development of a court culture that drew upon the contingent spheres of London publishing and public theatre to express the interests and ambitions of the prince’s circle. Both the patronage of writers and the establishment of libraries are presented as priorities of the court in its formative years. Shakespeare’s tragicomedies, all written in this period, respond to the interests in exploration, colonization, British identity and heritage being strongly advanced at Henry’s court; though unlike Jonson, Shakespeare appears not to have written for Henry. After Henry’s death, Protestant pastoral, having, in the Jacobean age, briefly found a court with which it could sympathize, is seen to change into an opposition poetry.