Fabulous Females’ Voices and Civic Spectacle: Immateriality and Power in Early Modern Edinburgh

The welcome into Edinburgh organised for King Charles I in 1633, included a number of fabulous female characters, mentioned as costumed performers, sculptures, and painted images in the official text memorialising the celebration. They included mythological and allegorical figures, personifications, and embodiments of geographical features (e.g. Minerva, the Parcae, Honour, Caledonia). This paper proposes to reconstruct the likely appearance of these insubstantial text-based figures through a parallel with comparable depictions in Scottish and non-Scottish visual culture (urban and courtly festivals, emblem books, painted ceilings). This will position these Scottish ladies within an international network of instantly recognisable female peers, but it will also highlight meaningful local interpretations. This paper also explores being fictional and unreal as the structural and most significant common denominator to all the female figures appearing in 1633, a characteristic not shared by their many historically-based male counterparts. The femininity of these figures, being largely devised, crafted, financed, and even performed by men, could be seen as superficial. However, their removal from the constraints of reality made these female characters versatile, untouchable, and even likable vehicles of potentially unwelcome or controversial communications –fabulousness being foundational to their role as effective politicised tools in the 1633 performance.