wife illustrated Anna’s power over him and thus displayed his weakness as both a husband and a king.52
The French ambassador’s portrayal of the incident as a domestic matter appears strategic. It certainly stands in contrast to the interpretation provided by his diplomatic peers. Venetian ambassador Zorzi Giustinian, for example, emphasized the political motivations for French and English actions. He described the French ambassador’s offense as related to “this undecided question of precedence.”53 Meanwhile, his dispatches from that January suggest covert political agendas that might explain the dis-invitation. As he noted in a relation to the Venetian senate, the English were trying to engineer an alliance with Spain, sealed through a marriage of Prince Charles to the Infanta.54 As was characteristic for Venetian ambassadors, Giustinian depicts himself through these interpretations as a skilled analyst of the political scene, providing rich context and a broad angle from which his vicarious audience in the senate could view and interpret events. In contrast, Le Fèvre de la Boderie’s mapping of the political onto the domestic may be read as a (conscious or unconscious) interpretive strategy to negate the suspicion that any deeper political cause—or any fault of his own—lay at the root of his non-invitation. He cast himself as wronged victim of Anna’s caprice and James’s weakness.
The ambassador’s emphasis on the conjugal nature of the dispute also calls attention to the importance of both public and private stages for diplomatic representation. Ambassadors’ deductions about the emotional and affective life of the sovereign had an important place in diplomatic practice. As Lucien Bély notes, “In political systems where power was incarnated by men and women chosen by God—hereditary monarchy—it was above all necessary to be informed as to their personality, health, and will.”55 Part of diplomats’ task as “honorable spies” was to hunt for clues about the sovereign’s state of mind and relationships. No clear boundary divided personal from political relationships.
Yet ambassadors’ writings show that an important distinction remained between public and private representation of those relationships. Diplomats’ understanding of this distinction is illustrated by Le Fèvre de la Boderie’s reaction to James’s proposal to hold a private dinner for the French ambassador as a way to compensate him for missing the ballet. Le Fèvre de la Boderie protested: “There was no proportion between a dinner the King would give me and the honor the ambassador would receive by intervention in the ballet; for one is a private action, and the other a spectacle and public solemnity…. All the spectators would be the judges of this action and would publish it throughout the whole of Christendom.”56
The key difference between a “private action” (une action privée) and a “public solemnity” (une solemnité publique) pertains to the question of who is watching. James offered the private dinner to reassure the French ambassador of his personal commitment to their relationship and to the relationship between their kingdoms. Historian William Roosen borrows the sociopsychological term “stroking” to characterize these gestures of intimacy and political “friendship” of a monarch toward a particular ambassador.57 The underlying assumption was that the king’s personal touch represented the highest kind of favor an ambassador could desire. But that reasoning was incomplete, as Le Fèvre de la Boderie’s rejection of the invitation reveals. A demonstration of the king’s favor only mattered insofar as it took place before an audience. Indeed, as Le Fèvre de la Boderie describes it, the public sign of friendship conferred by an invitation to the masque had two audiences: the public of other dignitaries at the London court who would “judge” it and the larger audience of “the whole of Christendom” who would hear about it through dispatches and correspondence. The ambassador’s focus on the spectators of his relations with the king makes it unclear, when he uses the word “spectacle,” whether he refers to the masque itself or to the display occasioned by his presence in the audience.
Le Fèvre de la Boderie’s masters back in France shared his view that the public display of his relationship with the English king was paramount. In fact, they took an even more radical approach to analyzing the theatrical dimension of diplomatic relations with the English court, interpreting the non-invitation itself as a kind of theater. Secretary Villeroy echoed the king in warning Le Fèvre de la Boderie that the affair may not have been as straightforward as he seemed to believe. The whole scandal, he suggested, may have been a “ruse”; he advised that “they sought an argument with us.”58 Henri IV himself chimed into the discussion, advising his ambassador that while he approved of his efforts to defend the public dignity of the French state, it was also important to moderate his displays of displeasure. He wrote that it was necessary to “demonstrate” the correct amount of offense in response: “I esteem that you should show that I shall have just occasion to be offended, but without stirring this up any more than that, or making any more of a fuss, which is perhaps what they want.”59 Neither Henri IV nor Villeroy explained any political motives for a potential quarrel between France and England, adopting a strategy of concealment such as Francesco Guicciarini described in the Ricordi. Effectively, they were asking Le Fèvre de la Boderie to perform a role without knowledge of the script. Lacking access to such “backstage” insights, the ambassador improvised within the sphere of political representation provided by the public occasion of the masques to maintain at least the appearance of good relations between the French and English crowns.
The awkward rhetorical and performative contortions required to keep up appearances become clear in Le Fèvre de la Boderie’s accounts of the (temporary) resolution to the non-invitation incident. Rather than host the French ambassador at a private dinner, James instead invited him to a different semipublic event: a masque organized by the king himself in celebration of the marriage of his favorite courtier, John Ramsay, Viscount Haddington (a Scot), to Elizabeth Radcliffe (an Englishwoman). The Haddington Masque was performed on February 9, 1608, with a script by Ben Jonson, designs by Inigo Jones, and music by Alfonso Ferrabosco.60 The performance celebrated the marriage and optimistically projected an image of Anglo-Scottish political union through vibrant depictions of love and fertility.61 The printed “Description of the Masque” vividly evokes the opening set design featuring a “high, steep, red cliff, advancing itself into the clouds,” upon which were “erected two pilasters, charged with the spoils and trophies of Love … and overhead two personages, Triumph and Victory, in flying postures and twice so big as the life.”62 The action begins “on the sudden, with a solemn music, a bright sky breaking forth, … two doves, then two swans with silver gears, drawing forth a triumphant chariot in which Venus sat,” while Graces toss garlands into the audience.63 The reader of the pamphlet imagines a pompous spectacle that first draws the eye upward to be dazzled by ingenious machines, then down to the ground to witness mythological figures declaiming high verse and masquers in silver and carnation costumes, feathers and jewels on their heads, dancing with “elegancy and curious device.”64
None of this magnificence appears in Le Fèvre de la Boderie’s dispatch recounting the event. He described it simply as “meager.” In his report to Secretary Villeroy after the performance, Le Fèvre de la Boderie declined to comment on the content of the masque or his experience of it: “I tell you nothing of the quality of the ballet, nor of those who danced it, because it seems to me that one is not so anxious to know it.”65 Presumed lack of interest on the part of an ambiguous “one”—the king, perhaps?—rhetorically sanctioned his choice to remain silent about the masque itself. He wrote: “I shall assure you merely that they won’t play me again like this last time, and that is what I must principally desire.”66 The language of “play” and trickery here operates in a similar way to the ambiguous “spectacle” in his earlier correspondence. The diplomatic theatrics take center stage, supplanting the real entertainment in the ambassador’s discourse.
Renegotiating Intimacy and Publicity Through the Queens’ Entertainments
Le Fèvre de la Boderie was incorrect in thinking that the London court would avoid replaying the same drama in the future. The following year, as the Christmas season approached,
