"Unmasking Queen Anna". Teatralità e potere in "The Vision of the Twelve Goddesses" di Samuel Daniel

The present essay focuses on the role of Queen Anna in the staging of Samuel Daniel’s masque The Vision of the Twelve Goddesses (1604). Anna’s will to affirm her own political identity has been analyzed in relation to the peculiar use that she made of the masque as a means to convey, both symbolically and allegorically, not only entertainment or art, but the idea of herself and her own court. Through modes of representation involving her figure on stage, she aimed at producing precise expectations and reactions, conveying messages half-way between a marked obsequiousness to the King, and the attempt at affirming a new political vision, subtly constructed on herself and on her son Henry (the king-to-be).