Evaluation of Internet Resources
Used in Teaching and Research
American Society for Theatre Research
Review of Florimène Website
Name of Site: Florimène at the Court of Charles I
Date of review: February 16, 2002
Name of reviewer: Patrick M. Finelli, Ph.D.
URL: http://www.videoccasions-nw.com/history/florimene/flori1.html
Author: Jack Wolcott (Professor), Betsy Byng, Chris Legrand and other students at the University of Washington
This website is the result of an early experiment in hypertext initiated in 1988, years before browsers made web pages possible. Hence, it was designed as a tutorial using IBM Storyboard and then adapted for the web environment. There is a "legacy" downloadable DOS program that leads you through the features of the auditorium and stage for two acts of this Stuart Court Masque designed by Inigo Jones. This program is offered as "freeware" for use by faculty and students, but many may find it difficult to run under the latest Windows platform. However, the material on the site itself is more than adequate to give the student an idea of staging practices in the Jacobean and Stuart Court Masques. The site includes scans of original drawings and CAD reconstructions that very clearly illustrate the spatial relationships of setting and court audience.
The introduction includes a general description of the Court Masque illustrated with an example of the dispersed medieval decor featured in Samuel Daniel's The Vision of the Twelve Goddesses (1604). Since the plans do not survive, Wolcott bases his assumptions on the evidence from the Ballet Comique de la Reine produced by Catherine de Medici at the Salle du Petit Bourbon in 1581 as an example of how this might work. Italianate staging began in England with Inigo Jones's designs for Ben Jonson's Masque of Blackness (1605).
Wolcott has redrawn Jones’s original plan of the banquet hall at Whitehall with a CAD plan showing proxemic relationships of the audience, the royal dais and the “degrees” for the courtiers. He provides dimensions for the stage and shows the spacing of wings, borders and backshutters. Terms are highlighted as hypertext linked to more detailed definitions. Wolcott further explains John Webb’s sectional view with his own CAD rendering of the apotheosis seating location.
This is one of the sites assigned to my online students as a supplement to readings in the textbook and other primary source evidence including pictures on my own class website of costumes, cloud machines, glories and scenic drawings by Inigo Jones. Florimène helps the students to understand more clearly the production practices and innovations of Inigo Jones and the Court Masque.
This website is an early example of how historical research may be combined with contemporary CAD technology to illuminate our understanding of production practice. Perhaps the next step would be to take the simple plans that Professor Wolcott and his students have created and animate them so that we could get an idea of the spectacular “a vista” changes and transformations that characterized the artistry of Inigo Jones.
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