Historians and literary scholars now recognize and build upon the insights they offer each other in understanding early modern political and literary culture by relying on sources and methodologies previously considered separate domains. This dissertation furthers this interdisciplinary methodology through an analysis of the significant Jacobean court ceremonies and their accompanying festivities from roughly 1603 to 1613. These major events of state usually entailed the production and publication of religious and literary works and descriptions of the ceremonies which expressed various attempts to define the significance of the event. It is argued here that the significance and meaning of Jacobean ceremonies were deeply contested along political, religious, and ideological lines.

During James's coronation, John Whitgift and Thomas Bilson urged the king to protect episcopacy in England at the same time they disagreed with each other on the nature of the Church of England. Despite earlier interpretations, Henry's investiture as Prince of Wales, Ben Jonson's Prince Henries Barriers, and Samuel Daniel's Tethys Festival reflected a temporary alignment of James's political goals and Henry's ideology. Daniel Price delivered six sermons before the court in the month between the prince's death and his funeral that argued for the continued importance of the protestant cause ideology, denounced the ascendancy of the crypto-Catholic Howard faction, and decried the appearance an anti-Calvinist strain of theology in the universities. At the marriage of Princess Elizabeth and Frederick, elector Palatine, Thomas Campion's Lords Maske called attention to James's intentions for the marriage, while John King's sermon pointed to the dangers of a Catholic union and highlighted a protestant cause interpretation of the event. Both George Chapman's Memorable Masque and Francis Beaumont's Masque of the Inner Temple also linked the wedding to the protestant cause ideology, but Chapman expressed concerns about James's fiscal policies and the rise of court favorite Robert Carr, Viscount Rochester. Finally, Anthony Maxey closed the week-long celebration with a Lenten sermon that espoused an anti-Calvinist ideology, exposing precisely the sort of "threat" warned against by Price and King.