Civic Pageantry in Early Modern London: Contexts and New Research Methodologies: Book Review: Civic Performance. Pageantry and Entertainments in Early Modern London. Edited by J. Caitlin Finlayson and Amrita Sen. AbingdonNew York: Routledge, 2020

Civic Performance: Pageantry and Entertainments in Early Modern London offers a collection of studies that may prove interesting to a wide variety of readers, showcasing different aspects of Lord Mayor's Shows and royal pageants; from textual analysis, iconography, and spatial studies to material and financial concerns. [...]she throws Heywood's pamphlet and the corresponding mayoral show into relief with the immediate cultural context, and concludes that these were the exception rather than the rule, as they presented an idealized urban cosmopolitan space, where concerns of the ancient livery and the new trade companies (that of the Drapers and the new East India Company) could be reconciled. The instructive analysis of iconographical, political, and literary dimensions is coupled with a historical overview of Anglo-Dutch relations in the period, and the study comments on more general issues of national identity and the instability of authorship in festival books as well. Besides providing a clear historical account, it addresses the different and often controversial duties of Lord Mayors as political leaders partly independent from the ruling power, and discusses how the relationship between City and Crown was negotiated in symbolic terms during their inauguration on Lord Mayor's Day (Feast of Saints Simon and Jude, 29 October) and in the Shows, even if there is "no evidence that Elizabeth I, James I, or Charles I ever attended a Lord Mayor's Show" (104).