Pressing intent: printed pamphlets for James I's royal entry into London (1604)

Powell, Theresa (2018) Pressing intent: printed pamphlets for James I's royal entry into London (1604). Masters thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

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Abstract

The royal entry of King James I to London in 1604 was a monumental event hosted by the City of London to welcome the ruler ceremoniously to his new realm. The City was primarily responsible for the planning and execution of the event for which they hired some of the foremost dramatists, poets, and artists of the period. Adorned with pageantry and spectacle, the ceremony followed the conventions of the early modern royal entry tradition. Unlike previous English entries, however, the 1604 triumph was memorialized and publicized in three separate printed pamphlets: The Magnificent Entertainment by Thomas Dekker (London: Thomas Man the Younger, 1604); B. Jon: His Part of King James, His Royall and Magnificent Entertainement by Ben Jonson (London: Edward Blount, 1604); and The Arches of Triumph by Stephen Harrison (London: John Sudbury and George Humble, 1604). Through an analysis of the textual and paratextual aspects of the three pamphlets, this thesis examines how the printed records of James I’s London entry communicated politicized messages that are reflective of each writer’s relationship with the City, the Crown, and the Court. The thesis argues that the pamphlets played an instrumental role in the authors’ self-fashioning and in the positioning of their works in the contemporary print market. Moreover, the three pamphlets together reveal the diversification of the pamphlet genre and the emergence and proliferation of new forms of print media at the beginning of the seventeenth century.

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