<?page no="0"?> SPELL Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 31 Drama and Pedagogy in Medieval and Early Modern England Edited by Elisabeth Dutton and James McBain <?page no="1"?> Drama and Pedagogy in Medieval and Early Modern England Edited by Elisabeth Dutton and James McBain <?page no="2"?> SPELL Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature Edited by The Swiss Association of University Teachers of English (SAUTE) General Editor: Lukas Erne Volume 31 <?page no="3"?> Drama and Pedagogy in Medieval and Early Modern England Edited by Elisabeth Dutton and James McBain <?page no="4"?> Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http: / / dnb.dnb.de abrufbar. Publiziert mit Unterstützung der Schweizerischen Akademie der Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften. © 2015 · Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH + Co. KG Dischingerweg 5 · D-72070 Tübingen Das Werk einschließlich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung außerhalb der engen Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes ist ohne Zustimmung des Verlages unzulässig und strafbar. Das gilt insbesondere für Vervielfältigungen, Übersetzungen, Mikroverfilmungen und die Einspeicherung und Verarbeitung in elektronischen Systemen. Gedruckt auf säurefreiem und alterungsbeständigem Werkdruckpapier. Internet: www.narr.de E-Mail: info@narr.de Umschlagabbildung und Einbandgestaltung: Martin Heusser, Zürich Foto: Maud Fasel Printed in Germany ISSN 0940-0478 ISBN 978-3-8233-6968-4 <?page no="5"?> Table of Contents Introduction 11 Sarah Brazil (Geneva) Doctrinal Orthodoxy and the Dramatic in Liturgical and Secular English Drama 17 Alexandra F. Johnston (Toronto) Didacticism in the York Cycle: “In Worde, in Werke” 37 Camille Marshall (Geneva) Doubting the Middleman: Mediated Instruction and Divine Authority in the Towneley Mystery Plays 53 Olivia Robinson (Oxford) Feminizing the Liturgy: The N-Town Mary Play and Fifteenth- Century Convent Drama 71 Tamás Karáth (Budapest) Staging Concerns of Inquisitorial Procedures in The N-Town Plays 89 John J. McGavin (Southampton) Plays on the Move 111 Stephanie Allen (Fribourg) Ulysses Redux (1591) and Nero (1601): Tragedia Nova 131 Alan H. Nelson (Berkeley) Shakespeare and Southwark 159 Robert Stagg (Southampton) Shakespeare’s Rhythmic Education 173 <?page no="6"?> Lynn Enterline (Vanderbilt) Drama, Pedagogy, and the Female Complaint: or, What’s Troy Got To Do With It? 185 Oliver Morgan (Geneva) Intervention in The Tempest 211 Michelle O’Callaghan (Reading) “Jests, stolne from the Tempels Revels”: the Inns of Court Revels and Early Modern Drama 227 Effie Botonaki (Athens) Teaching and Contesting Royal Obedience: The Case of the Stuart Court Masques 253 Perry Mills (King Edward VI School, Stratford-upon-Avon) and Alex Mills (King’s College London) In the Company of Edward’s Boys 275 Notes on Contributors 295 Index of Names 299 <?page no="7"?> General Editor’s Preface SPELL (Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature) is a publication of SAUTE , the Swiss Association of University Teachers of English. Established in 1984, it first appeared every second year, was published annually from 1994 to 2008, and now appears three times every two years. Every second year, SPELL publishes a selection of papers given at the biennial symposia organized by SAUTE . Nonsymposium volumes are usually collections of papers given at other conferences organized by members of SAUTE , in particular conferences of SANAS , the Swiss Association for North American Studies and, more recently, of SAMEMES , the Swiss Association of Medieval and Early Modern English Studies. However, other proposals are also welcome. Decisions concerning topics and editors are made by the Annual General Meeting of SAUTE two years before the year of publication. Volumes of SPELL contain carefully selected and edited papers devoted to a topic of literary, linguistic and - broadly - cultural interest. All contributions are original and are subjected to external evaluation by means of a full peer review process. Contributions are usually by participants at the conferences mentioned, but volume editors are free to solicit further contributions. Papers published in SPELL are documented in the MLA International Bibliography. SPELL is published with the financial support of the Swiss Academy of Humanities and Social Sciences. Information on all aspects of SPELL , including volumes planned for the future, is available from the General Editor, Prof. Lukas Erne, Département de langue et littérature anglaises, Faculté des Lettres, Université de Genève, CH -1211 Genève 4, Switzerland, e-mail: lukas.erne@unige.ch. Information about past volumes of SPELL and about SAUTE , in particular about how to become a member of the association, can be obtained from the SAUTE website at http: / / www.saute.ch. Lukas Erne <?page no="9"?> Acknowledgements We would like to offer sincere thanks to everyone who has worked to make this volume possible. Keith Hewlett has been an outstanding copy-editor and we are grateful for the extraordinary care he has devoted to the manuscript throughout. We are grateful also to Professor Lukas Erne, the general editor, for his guidance and advice. We offer sincere thanks to the numerous anonymous friends and colleagues who read and reviewed contributions and offered precise and very helpful suggestions. And most of all, we are grateful to the authors themselves for the work published here. In each and every case, reviewers’ suggestions were met positively and constructively and the volume is considerably stronger for the spirit of collaborative learning that the process entailed. <?page no="11"?> Introduction It is almost fifty years since Emrys Jones articulated the symbiotic link between pedagogy and drama, “Without humanism, in short, there could have been no Elizabethan Literature: without Erasmus, no Shakespeare” (13). In the intervening period, scholarship has certainly supported Jones’ aphorism, but it has also produced a more complicated picture of educational transmission, with a greater emphasis on a wider supporting cast of both pedagogues and writers. This volume of essays, which draws both inspiration and material from the conference of the Swiss Association of Medieval and Early Modern English Studies, held in the University of Fribourg in September 2014, seeks to continue that trend and also aims to help develop the temporal range of the links between teaching and drama more widely. It might not seem immediately obvious, but as with all editors, we spent a considerable amount of time pondering the title of this volume and settled upon one that, we hope, fairly describes the contents of the text presented here. Whilst we hope that our temporal tags will be accepted, viewed as broad descriptors rather than precise and non-porous structures, the focus of our work has really been to animate and explore the work of our titular connectives - the apparently simple “and” with which the themes and periods are joined together. There would not, we might argue should not, ever be a single, correct way of organising related but disparate essays and our hope is that we have selected and presented work so as to help and encourage an inclusive and productive approach. Drama and pedagogy might usefully be seen to be related in numerous ways. Drama can be used to teach, just as it can be used to present the activity of teaching, and also to raise questions about what should be taught. It can represent pedagogy, both explicitly and implicitly, by carrying the textual traces of educational practice. And it can serve as a way Drama and Pedagogy in Medieval and Early Modern England. SPELL: Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 31. Ed. Elisabeth Dutton and James McBain. Tübingen: Narr, 2015. 11-15. <?page no="12"?> Introduction 12 of considering, representing, and defining educational institutions. All of these relationships are considered within the essays presented here, often in combinations, and whilst this is a cohesive volume of essays, it is also one in which authors can be seen to be in dialogue and debate about precisely how these connections should be understood. As for the second “and”: we certainly do not wish to impose the delusion of a straightforward positivist teleology from Medieval to Caroline literature. But there are, of course, important differences between periods broadly defined as medieval and early modern and it is evident at first glance that the essays here display a distinction between those that relate to (predominantly) religious and those that relate to (predominantly) secular didacticism: it would have been unhelpful, we think, not to have observed that difference. Under the surface, however, we hope to have included essays that draw upon a shared interest in the different ways in which drama and pedagogy relate so that the volume as a whole offers insight from across a wide historical span. In her essay on didacticism in the York Cycle, Alexandra Johnston provides an argument for how the plays present Christ as an internal expositor, guiding the assembled audience as to how they should interpret the drama before it, in much the same way as Oliver Morgan’s essay presents a pedagogical Prospero, with Miranda and Caliban performing the role of students. Whilst Christ’s didactic reliability is never in doubt, Camille Marshall’s essay explores the complicated role of those mediating religious messages more widely in medieval drama and considers the propriety and reliability of their instructional role. The wider focus of the audience here is useful for an insistence on dramatic context. How plays might be considered as performing different functions within different contexts is a question explored by John McGavin’s piece, which follows Patient and Meek Grissill across pedagogical bounds in the formation of a methodology capable of dealing with “migratory drama.” By another route: in detailing the civic ownership of the York plays, Johnston’s argument facilitates important links to be made with the didactic aspirations of church authorities and posits the city’s Augustinian Friary as a possible locus of production, a rich connection of institution and didactic message. The link between drama and a religious educational, and institutional, context is also evident in Olivia Robinson’s essay on The N-Town Mary Play, which explores shared implications of the “female transmission” of Latin liturgical text into both the eponymous text and a vernacular play produced by Burgundian nuns. And, with a connection of performance context and teaching, Effie <?page no="13"?> Introduction 13 Botonaki’s essay considers how Caroline masques, whilst accommodated to their performance space, were used to teach as well as praise the royal members of their audience. In tackling issues of orthodoxy and heterodoxy in dramatic performance, Botonaki’s essay can be purposefully linked to Sarah Brazil’s argument about the performance of Christ’s Resurrection across a number of vernacular cycle plays and how dramaturgical decisions reflect doctrinal controversies concerning the Eucharist. Tamás Karáth’s engagement with the records of legal proceedings, which he reads alongside “inquisitorial” scenes from the N-Town plays, has much in common with the archival pedagogical work presented by Alan Nelson here. As the editor (and co-editor) of REED volumes for Oxford, Cambridge, and the Inns of Court, Professor Nelson has done as much as anybody to invigorate and facilitate research between pedagogy and drama, and his essay, presenting evidence from St. Olave’s and St. Saviour’s parishes, Southwark, is a contribution to our knowledge of a significant theatrical district and particularly its grammar school. Extending the valuable work of her recent monograph, Shakespeare’s Schoolroom, Lynn Enterline’s essay explores the pedagogical and rhetorical contexts from which female complaints, considered here in a range of epyllia and Marlowe’s Dido, Queen of Carthage, derive their compositional source. And with a similar enquiry into the textual traces of grammar school curricula, an intensively studied corpus of works held in common by early modern dramatists, Robert Stagg argues for the many echoes of Lyly’s Grammar across Shakespeare’s works. More broadly, in institutional terms, Stephanie Allen considers how two prominent Oxford University playwrights, William Gager and Matthew Gwinne, used core Arts texts, as well as broader literary and dramatic material from London and beyond, to experiment with tragicomedy. In demonstrating the sophistication, but also relevance, of early modern academic drama, Allen complicates both simplistic critical conceptions of university plays as well as the relationship between academic and professional theatre. And, continuing an institutional link, Michelle O’Callaghan’s essay suggests that the frequent relationship inferred between theatre and the Inns of Court, that the latter provided a number of prominent playwrights and a ready audience, can also be developed into a more complicated two-way relationship of compositional influence. As O’Callaghan argues, an “aggressive intertextuality” in plays produced for Jacobean boys’ companies includes material derived from masculine pedagogical Revels culture at the Inns of Court. <?page no="14"?> Introduction 14 With boys’ companies in mind, the easiest decision of all was to give the final words, as was the case at the Fribourg conference, to Perry Mills. Perry’s work reminds us that, above all, drama exists to be understood on its own terms as drama. This is not at all to exclude meditative and closet texts, but to argue that they too should be “performed” as dramatic works, rather than prose or poetry that just happens to be organised and presented in a particular way on the page. Perry’s essay, cowritten with his son Alex, an alumnus of Edward’s Boys, provides considerable and fascinating insight from the founding director of what has quickly become England’s leading boys’ company. Just as academics have benefitted hugely from the numerous works that the company have so far performed, so too, as Perry argues here, the boys from Shakespeare’s school have themselves developed and learned much more than just their lines through the process. Alex Mills is also the “cover model” for the volume. The picture was taken during rehearsals for a performance of Gager’s Dido in Oxford in 2013, directed by Elisabeth Dutton, and the play was restaged in Fribourg as part of the “Drama and Pedagogy” conference. More information about the play, its staging, and its place within our wider project can be found at www.edox.org.uk. Elisabeth Dutton and James McBain <?page no="15"?> Introduction 15 Reference Jones, Emrys. The Origins of Shakespeare. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977. <?page no="17"?> Doctrinal Orthodoxy and the Dramatic in Liturgical and Secular English Drama Sarah Brazil This essay considers the representation of Christ’s Resurrection in two very different dramatic forms: liturgical and secular. The liturgical concerns the Easter morning Visitatio Sepulchri, while the secular involves the plays from York, Chester, Towneley and N-Town, whose extant textual forms stretch across the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The times at which both performances were initially crafted situate them in two very different moments of Christian worship, and throughout this essay I demonstrate that the Eucharistic controversies which raged from the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries had a significant impact on how the moment of Resurrection was or was not staged in English drama. The doctrinal changes are particularly notable in the case of the Easter celebration of the Resurrection, as not only does the actual moment of revivification come to be staged, but the body of Christ, which was absent in order to signal Resurrection in earlier forms of worship such as the liturgical Visitatio, becomes a central feature to the late-medieval mode of celebration. This corporeal insertion is furthermore contextualised in terms of its wider resonance within secular English drama, with its connection to the Eucharist elicited. This essay seeks to explore the significant differences in the representation of Christ’s Resurrection found in the liturgical Visitatio Sepulchri, instigated in the tenth century, and the secular English Resurrection plays, the texts of which are dated between the fifteenth and sixteenth Drama and Pedagogy in Medieval and Early Modern England. SPELL: Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 31. Ed. Elisabeth Dutton and James McBain. Tübingen: Narr, 2015. 17-36. <?page no="18"?> Sarah Brazil 18 centuries. 1 The purpose of this comparison is to assert the impact that the changes in Eucharistic doctrine, most emphatically realised in the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, had upon two very different forms of drama that at their instigation are separated by four centuries in which crucial theological changes occurred. The central divergence in the plays’ respective presentation of the event, I will argue, is the movement from a moment in which the celebration of the Resurrection relied on the discovery of an empty tomb on Easter morning to a time when bodily presence was central to the proof of Christ’s defeat of death. This development, which occurred in iconography from the twelfth century and drama after 1215, marks a major rupture from the Gospel narratives and Resurrection iconography from approximately the fourth century onwards. Text and image, in both of these instances, foreground the corporeal absence of Christ as being the principal mode of expressing the Resurrection. In order to demonstrate the changing centrality of the body of Christ in the post-Fourth Lateran Council world, and its consequential impact upon English secular drama, both of these media, as well as the changes in the Eucharistic doctrine, will be outlined. Beginning with the canonical Gospels’ account of the Resurrection, it is important to note that none of the Evangelists record the moment of Resurrection and use other narrative devices to declare its occurrence after the event itself. The reluctance to narrate this event is particularly evident in the Gospel of John because another Resurrection narrative - that of Lazarus - is included in the text (John 11: 44). Jesus’s own revival is, as in the other Gospels, left to inference, signs and divine mediation. In the three Synoptic Gospel accounts, varying numbers of angels announce the Resurrection to a similarly diverse number of women who attend the corpse of Christ, while in the Gospel of John the discarded grave cloths are signs that must be interpreted by Mary Magdalene and the two apostles present. Crucial to all four accounts, however, is that the women who approach the tomb find it evacuated of bodily remains. While the understanding of what has occurred ranges from joy to a 1 Dating is an intrepid issue for the secular plays, and performance dates differ significantly from those of the texts themselves. The York and Chester Cycles are thought to have begun in the late-fourteenth century. The manuscript containing the fullest version of York is from the late-fifteenth century, while the majority of the manuscripts which contain the Chester plays are from the sixteenth century. The N-Town manuscript is a compilation, and none of the extant play-texts have external performance records, leaving it impossible to pin down such details. One date is included in the Purification play, and this is 1468, and scholars do place the manuscript in the late-fifteenth or earlysixteenth centuries. Towneley is another such work, and its extant form, like the majority of the Chester manuscripts, is from the sixteenth century. <?page no="19"?> Doctrinal Orthodoxy and the Dramatic 19 question of theft in the case of the solo Mary Magdalene, an empty tomb is at the centre of all accounts. Iconography, too, was a reluctant participant in the early representations of the Resurrection. Indeed, before the second century, no Resurrection iconography is attested. The centrality of the Resurrection, which by the time of the First Council of Nicaea and the proclamation of the Nicene Creed in 325 had been cemented in doctrine, can be traced back to Paul, who, writing in the mid-first century, bases the entirety of Christian faith on this event: “And if Christ be not risen again, your faith is vain, for you are yet in your sins” (1 Corinthians 15: 17). But between the middle of the first and second centuries, neither Easter celebrations nor Christological beliefs featured this Pauline position on the Resurrection, but instead propounded the importance of the Incarnation and Crucifixion (see Vinzent 77). This sudden inclusion of the Resurrection within Christian belief and celebration is attributed to the controversial theologian Marcion of Sinope (85-160), who was eventually declared a heretic and excommunicated from the Church for his radical beliefs. As Markus Vinzent demonstrates, Marcion is a crucial figure in the development of Christian belief and the emergence of the body of literature now termed the New Testament. Vinzent convincingly argues that it is solely because of “Marcion’s rediscovery of Paul . . . [that] Christ’s Resurrection [regained] a place in the memory of Christianity” (111). Marcion is believed by scholars to be responsible for instigating the sorting of Christian texts into a canonical format, and the initial use of the term “New Testament” is attributed to him (see Vinzent 77-191). Prior to the Edict of Milan in 313, in which the Roman Emperor Constantine protected Christians from persecution, iconography of the Resurrection, when it did begin to emerge, predominantly took the form of symbols. A prime example of this Resurrection symbolism is found on a fourth-century sarcophagus preserved in the catacomb of Domitilla, Rome. The sarcophagus contains the Chi (X) Ro (P), the so-called “sacred monogram,” composed of the first two letters of Christ’s name in Greek, placed on top of a cross and surrounded by a Roman wreath. Below this, two guards sleep. While the monogram stands for Christ, the wreath signals his triumph over death, with the cross emphasising this further. The guards are typically ineffective and powerless and the tomb is not shown in this scene - the sarcophagus making its addition unnecessary. This image contains a common fusing of Christian and Roman symbolism, and declares the Resurrection to be a victory over death. <?page no="20"?> Sarah Brazil 20 After the fourth century the “Women at the Tomb” scene came to dominate iconography, taking over from another indirect iconographic form known as the traditio legis. In this earlier convention, Robin Margaret Jensen argues, the images which “show Christ transcendent and enthroned or seated on an orb certainly are representations of the resurrected Christ, and frequently include heavenly backgrounds (new Jerusalem, cloud-streaked skies) to emphasise the point” (162). The Women at the Tomb, meanwhile, takes its model from the initial discovery of the empty tomb in the Gospel narratives, and regularly features an angel, a cloth and commonly both as mediating forces of the miraculous event. A fifth-century ivory diptych from Rome is an example of the transition between these two conventions. The top panel shows the empty tomb and sleeping guards, while two women bow at the feet of a haloed man holding a scroll sitting in front of the doors of the tomb in the panel below. The identity of the male figure is unclear, as Jensen explains: This particular composition has been thought either to represent the angel announcing the resurrection to the two Marys (Mary Magdalene and “the other” Mary, Matthew 28: 1-8), or a visual conflation of that event with Jesus’ subsequent appearance to the two women (Matthew 28: 9-10). The confusion is due to the fact that the young man has a halo and holds a scroll, more appropriate for Christ than an angel. (162) The scroll and seated position of Christ seem to be residual elements of the traditio legis, yet the presence of the women moves the scene closer to the Gospel accounts, and closer to the general trend developing during this period. Bodily absence comes to be a pervasive feature of this iconographic form. This can be further seen in the sixth-century mosaic at Ravenna, dated to before 526, which has all the typical features of the Women at the Tomb iconographic convention (Devonshire Jones 499). An empty tomb, female attendants and an angel, seated and with a halo, populate the scene, with the angel delivering the message of Christ’s Resurrection to the two women. The iconographic dominance of the empty tomb, which began to emerge in the third century and prevailed until the twelfth, presents the viewer with the opportunity to experience presence in the face of absence. The lack of bodily presence, as encountered by pilgrims at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, was (and continues to be) for many Christians a sustaining point of their faith. Colin Morris observes the power of this shrine: “All other graves were venerated because of the presence of holy remains; but that of Jesus was important precisely because his body was believed not to be there” (8). This power <?page no="21"?> Doctrinal Orthodoxy and the Dramatic 21 translates to iconography, but whereas veneration at the tomb requires the confrontation of sheer absence, artistic renderings frequently communicate Resurrection through other devices such as angels and cloth, as in the Gospel narratives. Common to both forms of devotion, however, is that Christ’s body is necessarily absent. Corporeal absence is also integral to the tenth-century liturgical Visitatio Sepulchri (henceforth Visitatio), or “Quem quaeritis,” a sung monastic re-enactment of the early morning discovery of the empty tomb that was enacted on Sunday morning of the Easter weekend, and followed several other integral liturgical ceremonies of the Easter events. The earliest extant version of the text is recorded in the Regularis Concordia (London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius A. iii), a monastic agreement drawn up by Bishop Aethelwold of Winchester, which outlined common monastic practices in England based on the rule of St. Benedict. David A. Bjork argues that a Frankish monk composed the Visitatio during the ninth century and that soon after it “enjoyed nearly universal circulation within the Frankish realm,” although there is no firm evidence to specify the place or time of composition (51). As with the iconographic form of the “Women at the Tomb,” which had by this point prevailed for almost five centuries, the Visitatio, and indeed the entire liturgical celebration of Easter, depended on Christ’s body being elsewhere in order to be meaningful (see Kolbiaka; Flanigan). The significance of this corporeal absence begins on Good Friday with the ceremony of the Depositio crucis, which features a cross wrapped in linen then carried to the altar and concealed behind a veil. The purpose of this procession is to evoke the carrying of Christ’s body to the tomb, with the cross here standing for the corpse of Christ and the altar for his sepulchre. At the instigation of the ceremony in the tenth century in England, the cross was deemed the most fitting object and symbol of Christ’s body, and was thus ritually wrapped and placed in the area of the altar designated as the tomb. The Regularis Concordia proceeds to detail the Elevatio, the early Sunday morning unwrapping and removal of the cross from its resting place, which takes place without the presence of witnesses. The text shows that this is to occur before the bells of Matins are rung, but the instructions for the Elevatio are scant in comparison to the two main liturgical sequences that buttress it at either end. Only monastic presence is required at this point, and the cross is transferred from the place where it has been watched to one that will be out of sight for the onlookers of the Visitatio. The next time the altar/ tomb will be seen the cross will have disappeared, leaving only the cloth behind. Before that, however, the angel and women - the main actors in <?page no="22"?> Sarah Brazil 22 the drama of the Visitatio, with their parts performed by monks or priests - must sing their antiphonal exchanges. The angel sits in waiting for the women, who enter the Church searching for the tomb. Upon meeting, the angel will question the women’s purpose in searching for Christ in such a place, and his Resurrection, as foretold, will be triumphantly announced: Angel: Quem quaeritis in sepulchro, o Christicolae. . . Women: Ihesum nazarenum crucifixium, o celicola . . . Angel: Non est hic surrexit sicut praedixerat. Ite nuntiate quia surrexit a mortuis. Women: Alleluia. resurrexit Dominus. (Regularis Concordia, Cotton Tiberius A. iii, fols. 21r-v) An integral feature of the Visitatio is that the Resurrection is explained through and understood by the empty tomb. Non est hic - he is not here - is an utterance which defines the Easter celebration. The evacuation of Jesus’s body from the tomb is one of the most crucial aspects of the angel’s declaration, as Resurrection is initially secured by this very fact. In the sung exchange, Resurrection is entirely connected to corporeal absence, and it explains and qualifies the validity of the angel’s announcement. The last key feature of the performance is the angel’s revelation of the altar/ tomb, which, up until this moment, is still concealed by a veil that covers the shroud, and in turn once covered the cross. The sight of the cloths further develops and expands on the meaning of this empty tomb, and just how necessary it is for Jesus not to be present at this moment: When he [the angel] is saying this he should stand up and lift the curtain and show them the place which is empty of the cross. Only the linen cloth, in which the cross had been wrapped, has been put there. When they have seen this, they should put down in the same sepulchre the thuribles which they had been carrying, and take up the shroud, and stretch it out in the direction of the clergy, and, as if they were showing that the Lord had risen and was no longer wrapped in it, they should sing the antiphon: “The Lord has risen from the sepulchre, [he who hung on the cross for us, alleluia]”. They should place the cloth over the altar. (Regularis Concordia, fols. 21r-v, trans. Sheingorn 22; my emphasis) As the text indicates, displaying the cloths, which are decisively detached from the body of Christ, is the final means through which the Resurrection is communicated to the congregation. The concluding antiphon sung in praise and celebration of the Resurrection is thus contingent on <?page no="23"?> Doctrinal Orthodoxy and the Dramatic 23 these cloths. They visually confirm the separation from the corpse they once wrapped, and in doing so confirm its continual existence outside this place of death. The Visitatio, recorded in this English manuscript in 970, lies between two significant eucharistic controversies. The first of these was between two monks from the monastery at Corbie, Radbertus and Ratramnus, in the ninth century, and the second was instigated by Berenger of Tours in the eleventh century. The impact of each controversy on the celebration of the Resurrection, however, was vastly different. The first controversy developed from the divergent opinions held by Radbertus and Ratramnus about what the Eucharistic host signified, and the relation this held to Real Presence. Radbertus, following the teachings of Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, argued that Real Presence meant that the historical body of Christ was to be found in the consecrated Eucharist. He sent a treatise on the Eucharist to King Charles the Bald (d. 877) between 843-844 to this effect, in which he argued that “the sacrament that the king received . . . was holy food and drink, the source of eternal salvation, because it contained the very body born of Mary in Bethlehem and crucified in Jerusalem” (Chazelle 205). Ratramnus, a decade later, also sends his own treatise to Charles, writing that “while the Eucharist is indeed Christ’s body and blood, its contents are spiritual, not physical, and thus different from the incarnate blood and flesh” (Chazell 206). His own understanding of Real Presence followed the teachings of Augustine, and as William R. Crockett outlines, Ratramnus is disputing how this notion is interpreted: Ratramnus is not denying the real presence here, but reaffirming the Augustinian tradition that the body of Christ is present in the Eucharist not to the senses but to the mind and to faith. The elements are perceived by the senses, but the reality that they image is only received by faith. (109) The conflicting positions held by the Church Fathers Ambrose and Augustine on eucharistic matters had co-existed for centuries and continued to do so after the Radbertus/ Ratramnus debate. Indeed, it is notable that the Visitatio was produced some time after this first controversy, yet does not seem to bear any significant marks of it. It was not until the second controversy, which began with the objections of Berenger of Tours against Radbertus’ own writings on the matter that the issue of the Eucharist really came to a head, heralding “some of the greatest changes in the theology of the Eucharist in the history of Western Christianity” (Macy 365). Berenger’s objections to the Real Presence <?page no="24"?> Sarah Brazil 24 as formulated by Radbertus were based on Augustinian teachings as well as Ratramnus’s divergent position. Gary Macy outlines: Berenger’s position was straightforward. The body and blood present in the sacrament cannot be the same historical body of Jesus. The historical body of Jesus must take up space and be seen, felt and tasted as a human body. This body can only exist in heaven. The presence on the altar is the spiritual body of Christ. Furthermore, the bread and wine must continue to exist as bread and wine since they are symbols that point to the spiritual presence of Christ. (371) Berenger’s dissention, however, was considered tantamount to “denying the reality of the presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and thus undermining the efficacy of the ritual” (Macy 371). Papal authorities did not tolerate this and Pope Leo IX (1048-1054) condemned Berenger’s teachings at the Council of Rome in 1050, while Gregory VII (1073- 1085) forced him to sign two separate oaths accepting the now orthodox position on the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist (see Crockett 109-113). While Ratramnus was able to propose a more spiritual, non-literal interpretation of the Real Presence two centuries before, by the time Berenger uttered his own objections, the theological climate had altered significantly. The changing significance of the term corpus Christi is one method of tracing such theological developments. Before the mid-twelfth century, this term had two particular referents: the historical body of Christ and the Church. The Eucharist, meanwhile, was referred to as corpus Christi mysticum. After this point in time, however, this latter term designated the Church, while the Eucharist came to be designated as either corpus Christi or corpus verum. Andrew Louth observes the significances evident in this verbal shift: First of all, the direction of signification is reversed. Whereas traditionally the celebration of the Eucharist had disclosed (or pointed to) the realization of the church (the celebrating community) as the Body of Christ, so that the church is the hidden meaning of the Eucharist, with this change the Eucharist, the consecrated host, becomes the hidden meaning of the church, and becomes an object of devotion, or adoration, in itself. (123-24) The complexities of the arguments that became increasingly staunch in the wake of Berenger’s objections to the Real Presence of Christ’s incarnated body in the Eucharist are too dense to explore in detail within the scope of this work. But what Louth makes clear is that during this <?page no="25"?> Doctrinal Orthodoxy and the Dramatic 25 later eucharistic controversy, the body of Christ was taking up a position of centrality that was previously held by the institution of the Church, and was becoming integral to doctrine and worship throughout Western Christendom in a very literal sense. The shifting significance of the Eucharist can also be traced through the changing role of the priest in relation to the celebration of the sacrament in the Mass. The decision made during the Gregorian Reform in the late-twelfth century, which decreed that only an ordained priest could preside over the sacrament, invested the priest with a level of power he had not hitherto enjoyed in relation to the Eucharist. Previously, members of the congregation and even women had shared the capacity to consecrate the host. But these changes, as Macy clarifies, quickly and irreparably altered the power dynamic related to the act of consecration: “The official position quickly became so firmly entrenched that it was understood to have been the perpetual understanding of the Church. This enhancement of power of the priesthood could not help but also enhance the power of the Eucharist” (366-70). This movement towards a more official procedure, performed by one deemed to have a privileged power to do so, was a defining feature of late-medieval Christian worship, and its influence grew beyond solely celebrating and memorialising the Crucifixion. In the midst of these significant changes to the practice of the Mass, the Resurrection, which had been defined principally by the corporeal absence of Christ, came to be deeply entwined with the Eucharist. Eamon Duffy explains that the new eucharistic theology present in the prayers said during the Mass in the late-medieval period contained a dual celebration of the Crucifixion and Resurrection when the host was elevated: Linked firmly to the death of Christ on the altar of the cross, [the prayers] nevertheless emphasized the glorious and risen character of the body on which the devotee gazed. The prayers invoked Christ not only by his death but by his resurrection, by the descent of his spirit, by his coming again in glory. (119-20) An image included in Duffy’s discussion shows just how intimately the Crucifixion, remembered in the Eucharist, and the Resurrection, were in the Mass. The image is from a Sarum Primer in 1497 and shows the Mass of Pope Gregory. The lifting of the chalice coincides exactly with the emergence of Christ from the tomb, flanked by two angels who aid his evacuation from the space where his dead body was laid to rest. The placement of one image upon the other similarly reinforces the prox- <?page no="26"?> Sarah Brazil 26 imity suggested between the two momentous events in the life of Christ, and both are understood through his corporeality. In tandem with these immense theological developments, Resurrection iconography also experiences significant changes. A major shift particularly evident from the twelfth century is that a new artistic convention begins to replace the “Women at the Tomb” scene. From this period onwards, the moment of Resurrection starts to be shown in iconography and initially presents a fully clothed Christ emerging from the tomb, displaying the body from the waist up, as in the case of the Resurrection miniature from the Lewis Psalter (Philadelphia, Free Library, Lewis E 185, fol. 16v), produced in Paris between 1225-1240 (Figure 1). The image that was to dominate late-medieval iconography, however, is of a different order again. This featured a dynamic body mid-action, usually stepping out of the tomb onto the backs of the ever-ineffective soldiers and striding towards the onlooker. Even more radically different, and marking this art as particularly affective for the viewer, is that the body of this Christ bleeds profusely, as in the case of the Holkham Bible (c. 1327-1335, fol. 34v) and the Litlyngton Missal (1383-1384, Westminster Abbey MS 37, fol. 95v) (Figures 2 and 3). The difference in time between the production of the two images also evinces a development in this iconographic style, as while the Holkham Christ’s wounds are visible and manifold, the Litlyngton’s shows blood streaming forth from wounds on the right side of the chest and the hands of its Christ. Such increased attention on the vulnerable, bleeding aspect of the resurrected Christ in the late-fourteenth century emphasises the importance of this type of divinity at this particular moment. David Morgan argues that “the emergence of a devotional piety that stressed the human, corporeal aspect of Christ more than the triumphalist, post-Resurrection character of the earlier Middle Ages” (61) accounts for the shift from the earlier iconographic forms to an emphasis on the pain endured by the incarnated Christ. Sarah McNamer also observes equivalent changes in the depiction of Christ’s body at the same historical moment in Crucifixion iconography, which had previously presented the Christian god as triumphalist: Images of the crucifixion in devotional literature and art before the eleventh century typically depict Christ as triumphant saviour: even on the cross, he is regal in bearing, clothed and crowned, victorious over death, aweinspiring. But by the thirteenth century, a different image has begun to dominate, and it will do so until the Reformation: naked, disfigured, covered with blood, Christ had become a vulnerable human victim, one for whom the meditator could and should feel compassion. (2) <?page no="27"?> Doctrinal Orthodoxy and the Dramatic 27 Although these moves to a more affective mode of artistic expression must be considered, so too must the theological changes that dictated that Christ’s incarnated body was literally present during the celebration of the Mass. The Crucifixion always had a body to contend with, whereas one is forcibly inserted into Resurrection iconography. By the twelfth century, however, these movements were working side by side, although the precise details of this development are difficult to ascertain. The English secular drama that emerged in the late-fourteenth century, and continued in some instances well into the sixteenth century, broke radically from the previous forms of performing Christ’s Resurrection. The liturgical drama, Richard Beadle observes, provided no precedent for depicting the body leaving the tomb (2, 364), yet three of the four extant English plays (York, Chester and Towneley) feature such an event. A shaping force, at least in relation to the York and early Chester Cycles, was the establishment of the feast of Corpus Christi in 1311 (occurring on the first Thursday after Trinity Sunday), which was dedicated to honouring the Eucharist, and followed in the wake of the aforementioned theological developments. Unlike the liturgical drama, where bodily absence and an empty tomb were part of the incontrovertible proof for the continual presence of Christ, the majority of the secular plays relied on a bodily presence closely related to eucharistic presence to verify the occurrence of Resurrection. In the York Resurrection of Christ, the dynamic shifts to such a sizable degree that the whole and phenomenologically present body of Christ emerges from the tomb, possibly walking silently through the audience. 2 Signalled not by the utterance of dialogue, but by a single stage direction, “Tunc Jesus resurgente,” this play departs radically from older modes of signification. 3 The impact that the changes in eucharistic doctrine had upon secular performances is particularly notable in the case of the York Resurrection, primarily because the extant play-text has overt links to the feast of Corpus Christi, as well as the fact that the play drew on liturgical drama and displayed a keen knowledge of its contents (see Coldewey 28). In saying this I do not mean that secular and liturgical 2 This is how Meg Twycross chose to stage the York Resurrection of Christ in March 1977, and while no evidence for the staging exists outside of the single stage direction, it remains a strong possibility. See Twycross (273-96). 3 While Beadle does question the function of this stage direction, he also surmises: “The singing of Christus resurgens (by two angels) accompanies the Resurrection in the Towneley, Chester, and Cornish versions of the episode, and it would be surprising to learn that it was not part of the original conception at York as well” (371). <?page no="28"?> Sarah Brazil 28 drama were part of a continuum or that the development of either was predicated upon the other, but that the language of certain parts of the York Resurrection is extremely close to that of the Visitatio. 4 Richard Beadle, the editor of the York plays, supports this view and states that the dialogue in the section where the women encounter the angel is “closely modelled on that of the ‘Quem quaeritis’ section of the much older Latin liturgical Visitatio Sepulchri plays” (Vol 2, 365). The plays’ connection to liturgical frameworks is further supported by King, who clarifies that it was not biblical history that dictated the structure of the Cycle, but liturgical temporality as defined by the Church (31). While the York Resurrection play displays a close familiarity with the liturgical text, the secular play departs from the liturgical in many aspects of its performance. The moment at which the Visitatio culminated in the celebration of the Resurrection was when the “women” lifted the cloth before the congregation, emphasising that it no longer contained the corpse it once wrapped. But between 970 when the Visitatio was recorded in England, and 1377, the earliest possible date for the staging of the York Corpus Christi play, much had changed in the way Christians celebrated their god. The witnessing of Christ’s resurrected body is also crucial to the meaning of the York Resurrection, as it provides incontrovertible evidence in a play where there is a sustained attempt to contain that body before and after the event. The conspiratorial exchanges between Annas, Caiphas and Pilate focus on how they can retain power over Christ’s body. When they fail to keep the body in the tomb, they switch techniques and attempt to corrupt the truth of the Resurrection by making the soldiers swear that a large group seized the body: “Thus schall the sothe be bought and solde / And treasoune schall for trewthe be tolde” (Beadle, The York Plays ll. 451-52). The attempt to contain the body of Christ on two fronts is termed by Sarah Beckwith a “double retention,” but despite all conspiratorial efforts this is utterly undone by introducing Christ’s body into the dramatic action, making the audience witnesses to the truth and reasserting the veracity of the Resurrection (81). The body thus conveys proof of Christ’s defeat of death in a new way, far removed from its liturgical predecessor. The Chester and Towneley plays feature the presence of Christ’s body in a different manner again, and include a Christ who not only steps out of the tomb but one who also directly addresses the audience. 4 Scholarship on medieval drama has long since abandoned the teleological model of drama that was proffered by E. K. Chambers in 1903 (see Flanigan; King). <?page no="29"?> Doctrinal Orthodoxy and the Dramatic 29 The Towneley Christ delivers the more ample monologue, but both are clear in their emphasis on the link between the resurrected body and the Eucharist. Not only did the elevation of the Eucharist make direct links to the Resurrection in the Mass then, but these resurrected Christs unequivocally link their bodies back to eucharistic bread, suggesting a sustained reciprocity in the meaning of both bodies. The first stanza in the Chester Christ’s speech sees him declare himself “prynce of peace,” announcing that peace will be bestowed in exchange for the cessation of sinning. Repentance is the means by which access to his body is granted: and yf they will of synnes sease, I grant them peace trulye and therto a full rych messe in bread, my owne body. (Lumiansky and Mills, The Chester Mystery Cycle ll.166-69) This is not the only reference to the Mass and the presence of this Christ’s body in the bread either, and the following stanza iterates the connection between resurrected body and eucharistic bread, premising the salvific function the bread performs upon the believer: I am verey bread of liffe. From heaven I light and am send. Whoe eatheth that bread, man or wiffe, Shall lyve withowt end. And that bread that I you give, Your wicked life to amend, Becomes my fleshe through your beleeffe And doth release your synfull band. (ll. 170-77) The centrality of the bread to redemption and the possibility of resurrection for all Christians are here evinced, and the clearly common source between Towneley and Chester sees the Towneley Christ present a similar eucharistic focus (Stevens and Cawley, TheTowneley Plays l. 344). The overtly corporeal language in both, with the extended section in Towneley emphasising the numerous wounds that this Christ has suffered (“And therefore thou shall understand, / In body, hede, feete, and hand, / Four hundredth woundys and v thowsand / Here may thou se” (ll. 291-92), focuses attention, and particularly the sight of the audience upon this resurrected body, the presence of which is crucial to the <?page no="30"?> Sarah Brazil 30 meaning of this event. 5 This walking, talking and injured Christ proves to them without doubt that the Resurrection has occurred. The N-Town plays, by contrast, are the only secular plays which do not focus their Resurrection play around the moment Christ emerges from the tomb. While Christ’s body is staged in its transition between dead and revivified in the two Harrowing of Hell plays (33 and 35), and in the latter briefly addresses the audience once resurrected, this is not done in a manner equivalent to the other plays, or the prevailing iconography, where witnessing the Resurrection is integral to the affirmation of the event. Instead of an actor presenting the body of Christ exiting the tomb in order to prove the veracity of this central tenet of Christian faith, N-Town points to it indirectly through this sequence of plays, and then announces this moment in play 36, The Announcement to the Three Marys; Peter and John at the Sepulchre. In doing so, the N-Town plays are comparable to both the Gospel texts and the liturgical drama in underscoring the importance of discovering the empty tomb, but correlations cannot be made much further beyond this point. In play 36, the need for an actor’s body is notably lacking in the N- Town portrayal of the Resurrection, but this does not fully exclude the corporeal from the language of this play. The cloth is back in a central place, and while the three Marys need it to be interpreted by the angel who sends them on their way convinced that the Resurrection has occurred, John, like his counterpart in the Gospel of John, sees the empty tomb and the grave cloths of Christ and further glosses their meaning as proof of Resurrection: The same sudary and the same shete Here with my syth I se both tweyn. Now may I wele knowe and wete That he is rysyn to lyve ageyn. (Spector, The N-Town Play ll. 135-38) Christ’s literal body is absent from this play, and Resurrection is here, like in the Visitatio, to be understood by the disconnection between the grave clothes and Christ’s corpse. His body is, however, present throughout the play in another capacity. Both the women and angel insist on the wounds of the deceased and resurrected body to such an extent that it cannot but cause the audience to meditate upon the blood 5 Stevens and Cawley note in relation to the Towneley play: “The monologue of the risen Christ, which is not in the corresponding York play, was apparently inserted into the Towneley play. It belongs to a type of medieval religious lyric known as ‘Appeals to Man from the Cross’” (602). <?page no="31"?> Doctrinal Orthodoxy and the Dramatic 31 that has been shed for their sake. Marie Salomé’s language is particularly visceral, and recalls the grievous wounds caused by the nails and the spear which penetrate Christ’s body as the women approach the tomb: The naylis gun his lemys feyn, And the spere gan punche and peyn. On tho woundys, we wold have eyn: That grace now God graunt us. (ll.29-32) Of particular note is the wish to see these wounds again - to have “eyn” them, with this language of sight directing the audience to visualise an image of a resurrected body they would have been all too familiar with from iconography. Even without an actor’s body marked with signs of torture, the N-Town play features a post-death body of Christ in a way that the liturgical drama did not imagine. In the case of the N-Town plays, which do not choose to include the moment of Resurrection in its sequence of plays encapsulating the key moments surrounding the event, corporeality is still integral to the understanding of Christ’s defeat of death. Departing significantly from the Easter liturgical performances and the dominant iconographic form up until the twelfth century, the body is, in all of these secular plays, essential to their articulation of Resurrection. Before the doctrinal changes in relation to the Real Presence of Christ in the consecrated Eucharist, which raged on between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries, bodily absence was a necessary aspect of Gospel narratives, iconography and liturgical drama linked to Christ’s Resurrection, with the empty grave part of the indisputable proof of his continual presence. When it comes to the English secular drama, which extended from the late-medieval period into the Early Modern, however, the audience encounters an actor staging a body that could not have been conceived of in liturgical drama. As is the case with early English drama, episodes regularly vary significantly from one play to another in their presentation, and thus we find in the N-Town Resurrection a performance at times more akin to the Gospel narratives than its fellow productions in York or Chester, although it is very much of its time in terms of its use of affective language and imagery. The conclusion then is that changes in the doctrine of the Eucharist affected the manner in which drama related to the body of Christ, and in the case of York and the early Chester Cycle, which unlike N-Town had significant links to the celebration of the Eucharist, the audience saw Christ emerge from the tomb, and was assured of his glorious defeat of death via a body which moved and bled, and occasionally talked, before their eyes. <?page no="32"?> Sarah Brazil 32 Figure 1: Lewis Psalter: Image courtesy of The Rare Book Department, Free Library of Philadelphia, Lewis E 185, fol. 16v-17r. <?page no="33"?> Doctrinal Orthodoxy and the Dramatic 33 Figure 2: Holkham Bible, © The British Library Board, BL MS Add. 47682, c. 1327-1335, fol. 34v <?page no="34"?> Sarah Brazil 34 Figure 3: Litlyngton Missal, Westminster Abbey MS 37, 1383-1384, fol. 95v © Dean and Chapter of Westminster <?page no="35"?> Doctrinal Orthodoxy and the Dramatic 35 References Beadle, Richard, ed. The York Plays: A Critical Edition of the York Corpus Christi Play as Recorded in British Library Additional MS 35290. Early English Text Society, S.S. 23 and 24. 2 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009-2011. Beckwith, Sarah. Signifying God: Social Relation and Symbolic Act in the York Corpus Christi. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001. Bjork, David A. “On the Dissemination of Quem quaeritis and the Visitatio Sepulchri and the Chronology of Their Early Sources.” Comparative Drama 15 (1981): 46-69. Chazelle, Celia. “The Eucharist in Early Medieval Europe,” in A Companion to the Eucharist in the Middle Ages. Eds. Ian Christopher Levy, Gary Macy and Kristen Van Ausdall. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Coldewey, John C. “From Roman to Renaissance in Drama and Theatre,” in The Cambridge History of British Theatre, Volume 1. Eds. Jane Milling, Peter Thomson and Joseph W. Donohue. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Crockett, William R. Eucharist: Symbol of Transformation. Collegeville: Pueblo, 1989. Devonshire Jones, Tom, Linda Murray and Peter Murray, eds. The Oxford Dictionary of Christian Art and Architecture. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Duffy, Eamon. The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400-1580. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992. Flanigan, C. Clifford. “Quid Quaeritis, O Clerici? A Review of Some Recent Scholarship on the Medieval Latin Music Drama.” ROMARD 52-53 (2014): 35-60. Jensen, Robin Margaret. Understanding Early Christian Art. London: Routledge, 2002. King, Pamela M. “The York plays and the feast of Corpus Christ: a reconsideration.” Medieval English Theatre 22 (2000): 13-32. ―――.The York Mystery Cycle and the Worship of the City. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer. 2006. Kolbiaka, Michal Andrzej. This is My Body: Representational Practices in the Early Middle Ages. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999. Louth, Andrew. “The Body in Western Catholic Christianity,” in Religion and the Body. Ed. Sarah Coakley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. <?page no="36"?> Sarah Brazil 36 Lumiansky, R. M. and David Mills, eds. The Chester Mystery Cycle. 2 vols. Early English Text Society, S.S. 3 and 9. London: Oxford University Press, 1974-1986. Macy, Gary. “Theology of the Eucharist in the High Middle Ages,” in A Companion to the Eucharist in the Middle Ages. Eds. Ian Christopher Levy, Gary Macy and Kristen Van Ausdall. Leiden: Brill, 2012. McNamer, Sarah. Affective Meditation and the Invention of Medieval Compassion. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010. Morgan, David. Visual Piety: A History and Theory of Popular Religious Images. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1999. Morris, Colin. The Sepulchre of Christ and the Medieval West. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Regularis Concordia (London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius A. iii). Sheingorn, Pamela. The Easter Sepulchre in England. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1987. Spector, Stephen, ed. The N-Town Play: Cotton Vespasian D. 8. Early English Text Society, S.S. 11 and 12. 2 vols. London: Oxford University Press, 1991. Stevens, Martin and A. C. Cawley, eds. The Towneley Plays. 2 vols. Early English Text Society, S.S. 13 and 14. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. Twycross, Meg. “Playing the Resurrection.” In Medieval Studies for J. A. W. Bennett. Ed. P. L. Heyworth. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982. 273- 96 Vinzent, Markus. Christ’s Resurrection in Early Christianity and the Making of the New Testament. Farnham: Ashgate, 2011. <?page no="37"?> Didacticism in the York Cycle: “In Worde, In Werke” Alexandra F. Johnston This essay analyses the York Plays, the only English “Creation to Doomsday” Cycle that comes down to us in a manuscript dating from as early as the fifteenth century. It argues that it is part, on the one hand, of the didactic campaign to educate the laity in the stories and doctrines of the faith initiated by Archbishop Thoresby in the fourteenth century and, on the other, through the revision of the Passion Sequence in the 1420s, part of fifteenth century “affective piety” literature. Christ himself interprets the scripture as his own Expositor before the Passion and after the Resurrection but, in the Passion sequence, becomes the silent centre of the action in his sacrificial “werke” for the redemption of fallen humanity. The essay shows that the action of the entire sequence of episodes is tied together through repeated actions and the patterns of language, especially the repeated lyrics of praise. It argues that although the cycle was produced by the city and performed by the guilds, the text was written by and then monitored by some group in the city, perhaps the Austin Friar, who, like a modern college, had a continuous scholarly tradition over generations of brothers. Over the last fifty years, our understanding of Biblical drama in England has changed radically. What was once a settled genre - the multi-episode Corpus Christi play - has vanished under a half century of new scholarship and we are now left with only one such play with a manuscript that was compiled while the play still reflected the social and religious values of late medieval Catholicism - the York Cycle (see Beadle, “The York Corpus Christi Play” and Johnston, “An Introduction to Medieval Eng- Drama and Pedagogy in Medieval and Early Modern England. SPELL: Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 31. Ed. Elisabeth Dutton and James McBain. Tübingen: Narr, 2015. 37-51. <?page no="38"?> Alexandra F. Johnston 38 lish Theatre”). The last fifty years has also advanced our understanding of the complexity of the social and religious values of the period, particularly in northern England (see Pantin; Hughes, Pastors and Visionaries; Watson; Duffy; Palliser). We now know that the plays at York are part, on the one hand, of the didactic campaign to educate the laity in the stories and doctrines of the faith and, on the other, an effort to provide the laity with a framework of meditative spirituality that would allow them to draw closer to the human reality of such figures as Christ and the Virgin Mary but did not lead them into heresy. The first campaign grew from the fourth Lateran Council and was specifically focused in the north of England by John Thoresby, archbishop of York 1352-73, who re-issued John Pecham’s Ignorantia Sacerdotum (a late thirteenth century tract based on the decrees of Lateran IV) and had it translated into English as the Lay Folk’s Catechism by John Gaytrick, a monk of St Mary’s Abbey, York (Pantin 193-4). The second major influence was the “affective piety” movement that grew from Franciscan spirituality and was omnipresent in the vernacular literature of England in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. By the end of the fourteenth century, the excesses of this movement had alarmed conservative prelates such as Thomas Arundel, who was archbishop of York from 1388-96 and the archbishop of Canterbury (with a period of exile during the struggles between Richard II and Henry Bolingbroke) from 1396-1414. Arundel was not entirely opposed to the meditative life (indeed he associated himself with the Carthusian house of Mount Grace north of York in 1409) but he was implacably opposed to Lollardy (see Watson). However, through his association with Mount Grace he knew of Nicholas Love, prior of Mount Grace from 1409 to c. 1421. Love translated and adapted Meditationes Vitae Christi (a seminal text in the “affective piety” movement) into what is arguably the most influential English version - The mirrour of the blessyd lyf of Jesu Christ. Arundel, as archbishop of Canterbury, sanctioned this text, seeing in it a text that was on the one hand anti-Lollard but on the other hand in the main stream of affective spirituality. The city of York was still the “second city of the realm” with a strong guild structure and civic pride that was enhanced by the declaration of the city as a county in its own right by Richard II in 1396 when he visited it(see Dobson). It was the ecclesiastical centre of the north with its impressive Minster and many religious houses, including an important Augustinian friary and the Benedictine St Mary’s Abbey. The book lists of the Friary (see Humphreys) and the Abbey (see Sharpe et al.) survive and we have enough external evidence to have a good idea <?page no="39"?> Didacticism in the York Cycle 39 of what the Minster owned. These three libraries provided rich source material for the playwrights, from the writings of the Church fathers, particularly Augustine, many classical texts, contemporary sermons and other vernacular works (see Johnston, “The York Cycle and The Libraries of York”). This is the local context out of which the York Cycle emerged in the late fourteenth century. The religious of the north, both secular and monastic, were active participants in the didactic and affective piety movements. The city council, the producer of the play, was dominated by the Mercers’ Guild whose guild records refer to themselves not simply as Mercers and Merchants but also as the Guild of the Holy Trinity. Like many other commercial and craft guilds, the York Mercers, however anxious they might have been to be seen as the civic oligarchy, were also dedicated to acts of piety and charity. It is in this context that we must accept the 1399 statement that the play was “en honour & reuerence nostresignour Iesu Crist & honour & profitt de mesme Citee” [“in honour and reverence of our Lord Jesus Christ and for the glory and benefit of the . . . city”] (REED: York 11 & 697). The figure of Christ dominates this cycle, teaching the people of York to live their lives “clene haly/ In worde and in werke” (Beadle, The York Plays 21/ 31-2). 1 It is Christ himself who interprets the word as his own Expositor before the Passion and after the Resurrection and, in the Passion sequence, becomes the silent centre of the action - in his sacrificial “werke” for the redemption of fallen humanity. Only twice does he falter, overcome by human frailty - once in the Garden of Gethsemane as he pleads that the “cup” would pass from him and once on the cross when he cries: Heloy, heloy! My God, my God full free, Lama zabatanye? Wharto forsoke þou me In care, And I did neuere ille Ϸis dede for to go tille: (36/ 213-219) But even here in his moment of greatest physical agony he answers his own question, “But be it at þi will”. Richard Beadle has called this play “conceptually subtle” expressing the audience’s “commitment to the duties of being both a citizen of York and a soul in Christ” (Beadle, 1 All citations from the plays are from this edition. <?page no="40"?> Alexandra F. Johnston 40 “The York Corpus Christi Play” 100). I would like to suggest that the play was, indeed, conceived, written and revised to teach each member of the audience to be “a soul in Christ.” But how can I make such a claim in the light of the history of the plays? The first record evidence for the play comes from a rental of space to house a pageant wagon in 1377. 2 In his new edition of the cycle, Beadle has changed his earlier dating of the surviving manuscript of 1463-1477 to 1476-7 (Beadle, The York Plays xii-xviii; see also Beadle, “Richard Lancaster”). New evidence of the political activities surrounding Richard Duke of Gloucester in the mid 1470s has led him to favour the later date, making the gap between the first record and the text close to a century. We have a list of the pageants from 1415, the Ordo Paginarum, that gives us the basic shape of each episode at that time. We also have guild evidence that indicates a major revision, particularly of the Passion sequence in 1422. Other revisions are also attested to by erasures and additions to the Ordo (REED: York 16-26, 702-711). Despite this clear evidence of constant revision, I believe the manuscript, as we have it, is a highly sophisticated, unified, poetic whole and arguably one of the greatest literary achievements of the English fifteenth century. The moment when Christ first falters in his humanity, the scene in Gethsemane, is foreshadowed by a pattern of characters from the beginning of the cycle and echoed in the episodes after the Resurrection. Noah is reluctant to build the ark - he is too old and feeble, Abraham is confused by the command to sacrifice Isaac after the promise that his seed would people the earth, Moses claims no one will accept him as a leader, Joseph, like Noah, feels his age as does Simeon. John the Baptist is discouraged in his work, the pilgrims to Emmaus have lost all hope and Thomas will not believe. Each situation is slightly different but the playwrights have carefully structured each story so that, after very human reluctance or disbelief, the central character enters into a trusting relationship with God, accepting the proposition that if the call of God is answered, God himself will help his willing servant. The faith taught by the York Cycle urges members of the audience to engage in the “lif activ” and in this pattern of didacticism we have exempla of the difficulty inherent in fallen man striving to do the will of God followed by the assurance that God will help his servants. “Kynde of man,” as Christ says to John the Baptist, “is freele” (21/ 83). 2 REED: York, 3. The dating of that entry in the edition is one year out - we did not adjust the date which falls between 1 January and 24 March from Old Style (using the calendar year March 25-March 24) to modern practice as we should have done. See p. xliii. <?page no="41"?> Didacticism in the York Cycle 41 But it is not only the repeated action that ties these plays together; it is the pattern of language. This is particularly true of the old men - Noah, Joseph and Simeon. Each feels the weight of age and weariness but when each submits to the will of God each feels the weight lifted. In his prayer of thanksgiving Noah says: Ful wayke I was and all vnwelde My werynes is wente away (8/ 93-94) When the angel tells Joseph he has not been a cuckold and commissions him to care for Mary he prays: Nowe, lorde God, full wele is me That euyr þat I þis sight suld see, I was neuer ar so light (13/ 282-4) And when he takes the child from Mary, suddenly afraid of Herod’s wrath in the Flight into Egypt episode, he says: Are was I wayke, nowe am I wight My lymes to welde ay at my wille I loue my maker most of might . . . I haue oure helpe here in myn arme (18/ 219-21; 224) And Simeon, when he hears the child is being brought to the temple, cries: Nowe am I light as leyf on tree, My age is went, I feyll no fray, Methynke for this that is tolde me I ame not olde. (17/ 345-8) There are also little touches - so subtle that they are easily missed. When God comes into the Garden after the Fall, Adam, with whom he had walked and talked, cries in misery “I here þe, lorde, and seys the noȝt” (5/ 139). Sin has cut him off from companionship with God. Thirty-four episodes later, in that other garden, Mary Magdalen does not recognise the gardener whom she thinks she is talking to as the risen Christ until he shows her the wounds that have bought her salvation. Then she cries: <?page no="42"?> Alexandra F. Johnston 42 Mi lorde Jesu I knowe nowe þe Ϸi woundes þai are nowe wette. (39/ 80-1) But perhaps the most obvious of the repeated patterns in the cycle that cause the great sense of unity and direction is the sequences of lyric praise of God, Christ and the Virgin Mary that echo across the pageants. It begins with the familiar liturgical hymn of praise, the Sanctus sung by the angels after their creation (1/ 49sd). When God places Adam and Eve in the Garden, Eve asks him what they should do, to which he replies: For þis skyl made I ȝow þis day, My name to worship ay-whare; Louys me, forþi, and louys me ay For my making, I axke no mare. (3/ 65-8) God made man to love and praise him but after the Fall and before the Incarnation, although the patriarchs are thankful and the released children of Israel sing the great hymn of thanksgiving, Cantemus Domino as they follow Moses towards the promised land, there is no lyric praise. It is with the entry of God into the world that the lyrics begin. As soon as the baby is born with Mary, alone on the wagon with her child, says, Hayle, my lord God, hayle prince of pees, Hayle my fadir, and hayle my sone; Hayle souereyne all synnes to sesse Hayle, God and man in erth to wonne. Hayle, thurgh whos might, All þis worlde was first begunne, Merknes and light. (14/ 57-63) to be followed by Joseph when he comes in from the cold: Hayle, my maker, hayle Crist Jesu, Hayle, riall kyng¸ roote of all the right, Hayle, saueour. Hayle my lorde, lemer of light, Hayle, blessed floure. (14/ 108-112) The Kings present their gifts to the Christ child with a stanza of lyric praise each and then Simeon and Anna Phanuel (in a pageant that was not registered until 1567 that shows considerable linguistic difference <?page no="43"?> Didacticism in the York Cycle 43 from the rest of the cycle) also have long lyrics of praise and welcome. Welcome is also mixed with praise as Christ enters Jerusalem as that episode ends with 56 lines of praise followed by the stage direction “Tunc cantant.” These lyric outbursts of praise and love reappear in the Marian sequence when Gabriel opens the Death of Mary play with the second annunciation: Hayle! myghfull Marie, Goddis modir so mylde! Hayle! be þe roote of all reste, hayll be þou ryall, Hayle! floure and frewte noȝt faded nor filyd, Haile! salue to all synnefull; . . . (45/ 1-4) The next play, The Appearance of our Lady to Thomas, combines the motif of despair reversed and lyric praise. Thomas opens the play: In waylyng and weping, in woo am I wapped, In site and in sorowe, in sighing full sadde (46, 1-2) But 130 lines later, when he recognises the Virgin, he bursts into 12 lines of lyric praise that end, Haile! pereles in plesaunce, Haile! precious and pure, Haile! salue þat is sure, Haile! lettir of langure, Haile! bote of bale in obeyesaunce. (46, 139-145) picking up even within the lyric the “despair reversed” motif. The transcendent beauty of these hymns of praise in the plays before the Passion sequence and after the Resurrection, make their brutal parody in the Passion sequence all the more difficult for the audience to endure as the soldiers beat Jesus at the end of the Second Trial Before Pilate: Aue, riall roy and rex judeorum Hayle, comely kyng þat no kingdom has kende. Hayle, undughty duke, þi dedis ere don, Hayle man vnmyghty þi menȝi to mende. III Miles Hayll, lord without lande for to lende, Hayll, kyng, hayll knave vnconand. IV Miles Hayll, freyke without forse to fende Hayll, strang , þat may not wele stand To stryve. <?page no="44"?> Alexandra F. Johnston 44 I Miles We! Harlott, heve vp thy hande, And vs all þat þe wirschip are wirkand Thank vs, þer ill mot þou þryve. (33/ 408-419) This clear pattern of ritual praise and its parody point to a fundamental dichotomy in the approach of the episodes of the Passion sequence and the episodes that precede it and those that follow it to the figure of Christ. Before the Conspiracy begins and after the Resurrection, the York Christ is a man of words - he is the Word made Flesh - a teacher of great persuasion and patience. But in the Passion Sequence, as Herod cries, his “langage is lorne” (31/ 90). It is in his actions, his submission to the will of God, that he teaches by example. In the Ministry sequence, Christ himself is the expositor who explains the necessity of the Baptism to John, who exhorts man to follow his example, who chides the angel of the Temptation pageant for his oversimplification of the problem of sin. This Christ is a “leche” to sick souls, a great teacher and a man of humble dignity. This is a God of forgiveness and of love, a God of reason and of patience, a “myrroure for man,” an example for all men to follow. To respond to the exhortation to follow this Christ is relatively easy because he manifests the characteristics most admired in man. There is little awesome or remote in this God. Even the great experience on the Mount of Transfiguration is carefully prepared through gentle teaching. Yet he is a man of authority over the living Baptist, the dead Moses and Elias, the ministering angel and, most importantly, over Satan himself. This teaching Christ re-emerges in the final episodes of the cycle. He reminds the pilgrims to Emmaus that all that had occurred, including the Resurrection, had been foretold by the prophets (40/ 130-136). He calms the fears of the disciples in the Upper Room just as he had calmed the fears of the disciples on the Mountain of the Transfiguration and at the end of that episode he commissions the disciples just as he had commissioned John the Baptist: My brethir, fonde now forthe in fere, Ouere all in ilke a contre clere, My rising both ferre and nere, And preche it schall ȝe And my blissyng I giffe ȝou here And my merȝe. (41/ 193-198) But it is in the Ascension play we see most clearly the skilled teacher of the Ministry sequence. We see him first praying an intercessory prayer <?page no="45"?> Didacticism in the York Cycle 45 of compassion and understanding asking the Father to “hallow them” - the disciples. Christ shows that he knows that the way of life that he has been preaching is not only difficult but can only be accomplished with the help of God. Like the ordinary people in the earlier episodes of the cycle they can succeed only if, as John the Baptist said, they have made themselves God’s “wonnyng stede” - his “dwelling place.” He then turns to the disciples and first reproves them for their “wane-trowing” (43/ 83). They at least have seen the risen Christ. They must believe that, as he is risen, so shall all men rise and stand before him at the judgment. As he did in the John the Baptist pageant, he adopts a device of a medieval preacher and moves on to his second “skill” or point (43/ 113) emphasising that as man was lost in the fall, so Christ has bought him, to bring him “agayne to blisse” (42/ 119) and to confound the devil. “Ϸe þirde skille” (42/ 121) is that he shall come again to judge the world. But until that day, they are to preach the gospel “Tille ilke a creatoure liffand” (42/ 131) casting out devils and healing the sick. But, as is the case in all these episodes, it is clear that it is not only the disciples assembled on the pageant wagon who must teach and heal, but all believers. This is once again an exhortation to the people of York to an active Christian life. These didactic patterns of events and language become more and more obvious the more one reads or sees the play. But, as I have suggested, Christ does not teach only with words. In the Passion sequence he says very little and, when he does, they are particular words of power. There is another key phrase that occurs in two episodes, the Sacrifice of Isaac and the Baptism “in worde, in werke.” Beadle gives, as the first definition of “werke,” “deeds or actions.” At the centre of this play, it is Christ’s “werke” - his willing submission to judicial torture and murder - that brings home to the audience the abundance of God’s grace. In the two great lyrics from the cross, he emphasises to the crowd before him on the streets of York that his sacrifice has been for them: Al men þat walkis by waye or street, Takes tente ȝe schalle no trauayle tyne Byholdes my hed, myn handis and my feete, And fully feele nowe, or ȝe fine, Yf any mourning may be meete, Or myscheue measured vnto myne (35/ 253-58) With bittirfull bale haue I bought Ϸus, man, all þi misse for to mende. On me for to looke lette þou noȝt, <?page no="46"?> Alexandra F. Johnston 46 How baynly my body I bende. No wighte in þis worlde wolde haue wende What sorrowe I suffer for thy sake. Manne, kaste [m]y kyndynesse be kende, Trewe tente vnto me þat þou take, And treste (36/ 183-91) After the Resurrection, not only does the risen Christ again emerge as a teacher and a man of words, he also displays his wounds reminding them of his “bittirfull bale.” As we have seen, it is when she sees his “woundes” that “are nowe wette” (39/ 81) that Mary Magdalen recognises him in the Garden and Thomas believes because he sees the “blode of price,” “þis blessed blode” (41/ 181, 184). These “images of pity” continue through the final episodes of the cycle to culminate as Christ begins his great Judgment speech: Here may ȝe see my woundes wide, Ϸe whilke I tholed for your mysdede. Thurgh harte and heed, foote, hande and hide Not for my gilte, butt for youre nede (47/ 245-48) But the speech that begins with the evidence of the magnitude of God’s grace ends with the Judgment in the humble terms of Matthew 25 - the basis of the Seven Acts of Corporal Mercy. The saved and damned in the York Cycle are not prelates or kings, as they are in Chester, they are simple folk dressed only in shirts and hose. Once again the lesson being taught is that it is when the ordinary people, like the audience, will face judgment, they will be judged for whether they fed the poor, gave them water, welcomed the stranger, clothed the naked, visited the sick or comforted the prisoner. The York Cycle is neither flamboyant nor curious. If we look to find in it the twisted violence of the Towneley Pilate or the bucolic quickwittedness of Mak, we look in vain. York’s great strength lies in its simplicity. As pageant wagon trundled after pageant wagon the good news of the Christian faith unfolded before the audience. The stories and the images were familiar to the people of York from the annual performance of the play. Because of this, each episode implies them all. In Adam’s fall is implied the second Adam’s sacrifice and in Christ’s condemnation to death is implied Abel’s murder. Through the figure of Christ the audience is taught how to live in a right relationship with God, how to see that men and women like themselves could be granted <?page no="47"?> Didacticism in the York Cycle 47 forgiveness and to experience the agony of God as he suffered for them. But who were these playwrights that I have been referring to so casually? We cannot know for certain but some years ago I made a suggestion that I have no reason to withdraw (Johnston, “The York Cycle and the Libraries of York” 370). We know that the city, as producer, kept a close watch on the play and it was by permission of the city council that episodes changed hands or were amalgamated (REED: York Appendix 6 “Pageants in the Corpus Christi Play”). But the ruling oligarchy of the city were merchants and did not have, themselves, the learning and poetic skill demonstrated in the text. Whoever first wrote the play, there must have been a stable community within York, one with the continuity and institutional memory for whom the text of the play was of sufficient importance to undertake the responsibility for overseeing the revisions, carefully monitoring the patterns of the poetry, and ensuring that the basic structure and theology remained intact. This is especially important when we consider the striking difference in the portrayal of Christ in the Passion Sequence from the rest of the cycle. We know that in the 1420s there was a major revision of that sequence and we cannot escape the major shift in the treatment of the character of Christ in those plays. Yet the longer sequence is enhanced rather than destroyed by the great emphasis on the suffering of Christ - an emphasis that has more in common with the “affective piety” movement than with the Biblical didacticism in the plays before or after the Passion Sequence. The two threads of lay piety have been skilfully woven together so that the York Christ, as he presents himself as a “mirroure for man” “in worde and in werke,” can be both teacher and suffering servant. Also, in the Passion Sequence there is more non Biblical material than elsewhere in the cycle - particularly material from the popular Gospel of Nicodemus. In my paper on the libraries of York, I suggested that the community that monitored the text was the Augustinian Friary with its important library, a tradition of scholarship carried out in their studium concursorium that provided training for the brothers at the level of a university, with scholars and preachers such as John Waldeby, John Erghome, William Bewick and John Bedford as teachers. The Friary was part of the life of the city. Its house stood beside the Guildhall near the end of Coney Street - a location that made involvement with the city inevitable. One of the station lists for the plays that survived from the fifteenth century provides evidence of the friary renting a station along with its neighbour the Hospital of St Leonard. The Corpus Christi Guild, the most popular <?page no="48"?> Alexandra F. Johnston 48 fraternity in a city of fraternities, established an altar in the Friary church in honour of the Real Presence of Christ in 1470-71. Over the years, nine Augustinians became members of the Guild of Corpus Christi. No other religious house, not even St Mary’s Abbey, was as involved with the city as the Austin Friary. They were intimately concerned with the cultivation of the spiritual lives of the people among whom they lived and served. Moreover, again and again as I have sought the origins of particular interpretations of scriptural passages dramatised in the cycle, I have found them in works in the Friary library (Johnston, “The York Cycle and the Libraries of York” 366-8). They also possessed a copy of the Gospel of Nicodemus (Humphreys 69 [item 285c]). For many years it was assumed that the York plays somehow evolved from a procession of pageants related to the feast of Corpus Christi established in York in 1325. There have been suggestions that the Guild of Corpus Christi must have somehow played a role in the development of the cycle but the Guild had its own dramatic tradition (See Johnston, “The Plays of the Religious Guilds of York” 55-90).It is the historians who have shown us the way. I believe, with Professor Barry Dobson, the deliberate single creation of the York Cycle which he reached by weighing carefully the evolving relationship between the city and the guilds between 1325 and 1377 (see Dobson). Jonathan Hughes in his expansive study of York in the second half of the fourteenth century has insisted that the plays were “written by clergy of the diocese and probably supervised by the York Minster clergy” (Hughes, “Thorseby, John”). But such a heterogeneous group of individuals could not have sustained the revisions that we know took place through the two hundred years. I believe that the play sequence was conceived in the third quarter of the fourteenth century by men primarily caught up in Thoresby’s biblical didacticism and created by one or more learned teachers and poets. Once the play was written, an arrangement was made with the guilds and the city council to produce it annually during the feast of Corpus Christi. I believe that the Austin Friary, a community like a modern college with continuous traditions over generations of scholars, took control of the text and, at some time not long after the Ordo Paginarum was written down in 1415, undertook to “bring it up to date” perhaps inspired by Love’s newly approved Mirrour of the blessyd lyf of Jesu Christ by altering the Passion Sequence to strengthen the “affective” impact of the suffering of Christ. Other changes were, of course, made over the years as well. From the erasures and additions in the Ordo of the pageants in the Nativity sequence, it is clear changes were made at some time between 1415 and 1476 and we know from the Mercer’s In- <?page no="49"?> Didacticism in the York Cycle 49 denture of 1433 what changes were made in that play in the 18 years between the Ordo and the Indenture. Yet the integrity of the patterns of episode and language are maintained. The York Cycle is like a great and intricate tapestry worked over again and again not to obscure its basic simplicity of design but to people it with countless ordinary men and women whose frailty and “wan-hope” sets the tender majesty of God the Son in bold relief. It does not shock or terrify us. Even the brutality of the Passion is inevitable from the nature of man. The York playwrights did not seek to frighten their audiences into repentance or entertain them with comic devils or contemporary asides. Instead they chose the simpler approach of reasoned didacticism adding little to the already dramatic story of the scriptures and detracting nothing from it. Because of this, critics have too often been led to consider individual episodes as dull or pedantic, lacking that spark of humour or excitement found in other medieval plays. But, in York, we do not have a fragment, we have a complete cycle loved and laboured over by men of faith and intelligence for perhaps over one hundred years before it was committed to the manuscript that we have. Because of the astounding coherence of the themes and motifs that appear again and again strengthening and reinforcing one another, it must be considered as a whole, not as the sum of its parts. <?page no="50"?> Alexandra F. Johnston 50 References Beadle, Richard. “The York Corpus Christi Play.” The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre, 2nd edition. Eds. Richard Beadle and Alan J. Fletcher. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. 99- 124. ―――, ed. The York Plays: A Critical Edition of the York Corpus Christi Play as recorded in British Library Additional MS 35390. Early English Text Society, S.S. 23 and 24. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. All citations from the plays are from this edition. ―――. “Nicholas Lancaster, Richard of Gloucester and the York Corpus Christi Play.” The York Mystery Plays: Performance in the City. Ed. Margaret Rogerson. York: York Medieval Press, 2011. 31-52. Dobson, R. B. “Craft Guilds and City: The Historical Origins of the York Plays Reassessed.” The Stage as Mirror. Ed. Alan E. Knight. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1997. 91-105. Duffy, Eamon. The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England c.1400-c.1580. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1992. Hughes, Jonathan. Pastors and Visionaries. Woodbridge: Boydell, 1988. ―――. “Thoresby, John (d. 1373).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Humphreys, K. W., ed. The Friars’ Libraries. Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues. London: British Library, 1990. Johnston, Alexandra F. “The Plays of the Religious Guilds of York: The Creed Play and the Pater Noster Play.” Speculum 50 (1975): 55-90. ―――. “The York Cycle and the Libraries of York”. The Church and Learning in Late Medieval Society: Essays in Honour of Barrie Dobson. Harlaxton Medieval Studies XI. Eds. Caroline Barron and Jenny Stratford. Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2002. 355-370. ―――. “An Introduction to Medieval English Theatre.” The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre, 2nd edition. Eds. Richard Beadle and Alan J. Fletcher. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. 1-25. Palliser, David. Tudor York. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979. Pantin, W. A. The English Church in the Fourteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1955. Records of Early English Drama: York. 2 vols. Eds. Alexandra F. Johnston and Margaret Rogerson. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979. <?page no="51"?> Didacticism in the York Cycle 51 Sargeant, Michael G. Nicholas Love’s Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ: A Full Critical Edition Based on Cambridge University Library Additional MSS 6578 and 6686 with Introduction, Notes and Glossary. Exeter: Exeter University Press, 2005. Sharpe, R., J. P. Carley, R. M. Thomson and A. G. Watson, eds. English Benedictine Libraries. Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues. London: British Library, 1996. Watson, Nicholas. “Censorship and Cultural Change in Late-Medieval England: Vernacular Theology, the Oxford Translation Debate, and Arundel’s Constitutions of 1409.” Speculum 70 (1995): 822-864. <?page no="53"?> Doubting the Middleman: Mediated Instruction and Divine Authority in the Towneley Mystery Plays 1 Camille Marshall As narratives in which God gives instructions, orders and blessings, the Old Testament mystery plays offer the ideal platform for dramatists to explore late medieval concerns on unorthodox transmission. These issues appear most vividly in the Towneley plays of The Murder of Abel and The Sacrifice of Isaac, in which characters doubt divine intermediaries, the (supposed) transmitters of the Word of God. The aim of this essay is to demonstrate how the Towneley dramatist(s) portrayed the doubt of the characters and manipulated that of the audience in order to draw their attention towards the need to question religious instructors’ authority. I will thus consider the suspicious or dissenting Towneley characters through the lens of late medieval anti-heresy mandates and antitheatrical polemics to uncover how the plays strived to maintain the hierarchy of religious instruction, but also show that the reception of the play itself, with its actors and props serving as intermediaries to devotion, also requires a careful reading. These two issues instigated by doubtful characters will not only be shown to bear a strong relevance to the plays’ initial production context but also that of the sixteenthcentury manuscript’s reception, an unavoidable consideration for any study of the Towneley plays. 1 I would like to thank Professor Denis Renevey, my colleague Diana Denissen, the anonymous reviewer, as well as the editors of this volume who have all kindly accepted to read this essay and have provided detailed and insightful comments that have helped improve and refine its argument. All shortcomings remain my own. Drama and Pedagogy in Medieval and Early Modern England. SPELL: Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 31. Ed. Elisabeth Dutton and James McBain. Tübingen: Narr, 2015. 53-70. <?page no="54"?> Camille Marshall 54 The widespread concern and discussion of who was entitled to speak, teach, or interpret the Word of God emerges in late medieval English scriptural drama, and perhaps most vividly in the Old Testament plays of the Towneley collection. The biblical episodes on which these performances base themselves are replete with divine orders, tests, instructions and warnings that might be delivered by God Himself, or by an appointed messenger. Naturally then, it is in the treatment of the interactions of these middlemen - intermediaries between Man and God - with their addressees that we may uncover the reflection of coeval issues of authorized transmission. Indeed, mediated divine instruction is often questioned and its reception problematized because of an uncertainty towards its provenance and coincidentally of the lingering possibility that dissenting or unorthodox voices are at its origin. The Towneley plays of The Murder of Abel (Play 2) and The Sacrifice of Isaac (Play 4) offer particularly striking illustrations of this process and demonstrate that any polarized and direct equation of faith with blind obedience should be moderated within their reception context, strongly pregnant with the strives to limit the spread of heresy. Yet, through the portrayal and manipulation of doubt within the play-texts and their performance, they also show the need to keep one’s scepticism in check and not reject the intermediary completely, which might apply to the way in which the audience is to receive religious drama itself. While it is indeed possible and often positive to distinguish the actor from represented divinity, doubt should not override the reception and obliterate the play’s devotional agenda as a whole. This point was also a crucial issue in the sixteenth-century context in which the Towneley manuscript was produced, and I will show how the exploration of doubt gains a renewed instructional potency years after the plays’ inception. I would thus argue that the instructional agenda of the plays studied here is purposefully aimed towards the redefinition of the authority that various means of religious instruction hold, as well as towards the detection, avoidance and perhaps reporting of religious dissenters. These of course include unlicensed preachers and other categories of religious nonconformists condemned in Archbishop Arundel’s 1409 Constitutions, but might be viewed to extend to the reformed Christians when reading the plays from the perspective of their later compilation context. The differential responses to direct or mediated divine instruction are most manifestly portrayed in the Towneley play of The Sacrifice of Isaac. As is traditional of this particular episode, Abraham receives two instructions from God, which are to offer his only begotten son Isaac in a ritual offering, as well as the merciful retraction and counter- <?page no="55"?> Mediated Instruction and Divine Authority 55 instruction to put an end to the projected sacrifice and kill a ram in his son’s stead. Whereas one would undoubtedly assume that the latter of the two orders is the easiest for the patriarch to accept and execute, this is in fact far from true in the Towneley version of the episode. Indeed, Abraham is quick to confirm that his Lord’s “bidyng shall be done” (l. 76), and confirms his intentions in the subsequent stanza, even as the emotional toll of the act dawns on him. Conversely, when an angel appears to interrupt the sacrifice nearer the end of the play, there is a long process of mental, and even physical, struggle, of doubt and questioning, before Abraham accepts to lower his sword. From lines 257 to 270, Abraham uses each of his four speech turns to assure himself of the legitimacy of the divine message: Angelus. Abraham! Abraham! Abraham. Who is ther now? War! let me go! Angelus. Stand vp now, stand! Thi good will com I to alow; Therfor I byd the hold thi hand. Abraham. Say, who bad so? Any bot thou? Angelus. Yei, God; and sendys this beest to thyn offerand Abraham. I speke with God latter, I trow, And do [and] he me commaund. Angelus. He has persauyd thy mekenes And thi good will also, iwis. He will thou do thi son no distres, For he has graunt to the his blys. Abraham. Bot wote thou well that it is As thou has sayd? Angelus. I say the ‘yis.’ Abraham. I thank the, Lord, well of goodnes, That all thus has relest me this. (ll. 257-272) With the back-to-back enquiries on the divine messenger’s identity and on the source of the instruction, Abraham demonstrates that he will not submit to just anybody. Furthermore, he expresses his scepticism with this second-hand order that stands in contraction with the direct order he had recently received from God and requires one last statement from the messenger that expresses his personal confidence in his understanding of the order for all doubts to finally be relieved. As the patriarch had already demonstrated his willingness to go through with the sacrifice and had thus succeeded in his test, the passage above does not question his blind faith and obedience in divine instruction, but more clearly <?page no="56"?> Camille Marshall 56 questions his blind faith in mediated instruction. This authorial intention appears more clearly still in the addition of the scene in which God instructs the angel to descend and revoke the order (ll. 233-48) by which the audience, but not Abraham, witnesses the chain of command. With the unequivocal knowledge of the divine instruction’s legitimacy, the audience may be tempted to consider Abraham’s tenacious doubts in a critical or mocking light. However, another passage in the pageant shows the negative outcome of a lack of transparency in the source of divine instruction. The play is indeed particular in yet another respect in that it is the only extant English mystery play in which Isaac never accepts his death and can thus be considered to fail in his part of the divine test. Right up until the angelic intervention, Isaac repeatedly begs his father for mercy, expresses his terror and incomprehension and tries to change his fate. Where the other English mystery plays on the same episode also insist on Isaac’s fear in the face of death (much more than the biblical narrative, in which neither Abraham’s nor Isaac’s feelings receive a mention), they nevertheless all portray his acceptance as soon as he understands that it is God’s will. He may even express gratitude to have been honoured in this way as in the N-Town pageant (ll. 145-6), or keep his father’s resolve from wavering as in the Chester version (ll. 315-16). These pivotal moments of acceptance can however only take place after the revelation that the sacrifice is required by God. In the Towneley pageant, the reason for Abraham’s actions remain hidden to the child and the divine order is not only implicitly omitted but also directly misrepresented. Indeed, Abraham never names God as the instructor and the dramatist goes so far as to have the father insistently present the sacrifice as his own will saying that “[s]ich will is into myne hart went” (l. 170), “it may be as I haue ment” (l. 174), and insisting on his paternal prerogative (“That I say may not be denyde; / Take thi dede therfor mekely” ll. 180-1). However obedient Isaac has been earlier in the play, he cannot accept the order to sacrifice himself because this in fact does overextend his earthly father’s entitlement, at least in the late medieval context of the episode’s reception. 2 While Rosemary Woolf holds the Towneley version as “dramatically inferior” because the omission obscures Isaac’s typological relationship to Christ, and “[t]he moral strength of the story, which is also its dramatic backbone, is sacrificed to a slightly sentimental naturalism” (806 n. 4), I can 2 While classical Roman law conferred the power of life and death to the head of the household, this changed even before the rise of Christianity and late medieval fathers were in no way sanctioned to kill their offspring. See Reid (70-74) for further considerations on the limits of paternal power. <?page no="57"?> Mediated Instruction and Divine Authority 57 only disagree in considering how the dramatist’s choice poignantly serves to emphasize what Isaac is unaware of. The audience feels more uncomfortable throughout the play because of his refusal and Abraham is clearly at fault here for not presenting himself as what he truly is: a mere mouthpiece of God’s will. This is his only actual shortcoming. Indeed, the audience knows from having seen God speak that Abraham is true in what he orders. However, it is clear from the other collections’ versions of the episode that the only proof of legitimacy needed in this instance was the stating of divine provenance. In failing to produce this, he is the sole obstacle in Isaac’s proving of his faith and demonstrates the consequences of obscuring the chain of citation. This “chain of citation” and the issues of its required unambiguity can but remind us of the issues linked to medieval preaching, as best explored by Claire Waters. 3 While the jump from these dramatic episodes of sacrifice to the domain of preaching may seem quite a drastic leap, one can only but admit that Abraham’s unrelenting questioning of the angel finds particular resonance in the words of Robert of Basevorn in his Forma prædicandi (c. 1320): “It is not sufficient for someone to say that he is sent by God, unless he manifestly demonstrates it, for heretics often make this claim” (qtd. in Waters 13). Furthermore, Abraham’s failure to make explicit the hierarchy of his own chain of command to his son is in contradiction with the words of Christ himself (“My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me” John 7: 16) and the basis for the practice of preaching. As Waters reminds us, medieval preachers, like the divine messengers of the Old Testament, were “a bridge between divine and human” (1) and thus: The insistence that a teacher’s words are valid only insofar as they mark his connection to God requires the speaker’s displacement of himself. . . . [H]is disowned speech marks the preacher’s personal authority and righteousness and also his claim to be “him whom God has sent,” his official and lineal authorization by the church. (26) This equation of the authorization by God and the Church was utilized most forcefully from the late fourteenth century onwards in the ecclesiastical struggle against unorthodox preaching. Concerns of inadequate preaching appear more explicitly in the Towneley play of The Murder of Abel, which may, to a certain extent, then serve as a key for the reading of the play of The Sacrifice of Isaac. Although 3 While Waters focuses on female preachers, her discussion illuminates issues of wider concern. <?page no="58"?> Camille Marshall 58 the sacrifice episode that leads to the infamous fratricide is not originally one of instruction or preaching (Genesis 4 does not mention any order to make the offerings), all extant English versions add the intermission of either an angel, Adam or Abel who ask for the sacrifice to be performed and instruct on the process of and reasons for its execution. In the Towneley episode, Abel reminds his brother of the requirement to tithe (ll. 74-5), which gives the character of Cain the space to respond to this second-hand instruction. His reaction is famously vehement as he bursts out: “How! let furth youre geyse; the fox will preche. / How long wilt thou me appech / With thi sermonyng? ” (ll. 86-8). In comparing Abel to the preaching fox, Cain is using a well-known proverb that suggests that his brother is a false preacher, either unauthorized to preach, or preaching with ill intent, one whose aim is to harm his audience. 4 The tradition of Reynard the Fox, although sparse in written texts prior to Caxton in England, abounds in visual culture. 5 More specifically, images of fox-preachers are numerous in wood carvings or painted glass in churches throughout the country so that the audience of the play would undoubtedly be familiar with representations of a fox in clerical garb, often speaking from a pulpit to a congregation of birds, as well as with the associated scenes of the fox making off with one unsuspicious audience member in his mouth. Varty and his impressive body of evidence have shown that this theme is very seldom represented in “secular surroundings” (78) and can thus be considered to have served as a clerical tool for the edification of potentially gullible parishioners. Indeed, these scenes are a warning against the cunning of ill-intentioned and false clerics, who could either be members of the regular clergy fallen into sin, or known heretics who were not authorized to teach and preach their unorthodox views, lest they should infect their audience with their beliefs. The fox imagery was but one of the many implements of spiritual safeguard. Particularly from the late fourteenth century onwards, which coincides with the first decades of English mystery play performance 4 I would also argue that the likening to the preaching fox is possibly furthered by calling out Abel’s “disguise.” Although the MED does not list “geyse” as a variant of the noun “gīse”, it is included in its verbal form (s. v. gīsen, 2). In their notes to the play, Stevens and Cawley translate the line as “Let out your geese; the fox wants to preach,” albeit noting how the Towneley line departs from the more common proverb “whanne þe fox prechyth, kepe wel ȝore gees” (vol. II, 443). 5 The only two texts preceding Caxton are Chaucer’s Nun’s Priest’s Tale and The Fox and the Wolf. Of course, Reynard flourished in Flanders circa 1150, as well as in twelfthcentury Old French and Middle High German texts, some of which undoubtedly travelled to the British Isles (Varty 23-7). <?page no="59"?> Mediated Instruction and Divine Authority 59 history, important measures were taken in an attempt to limit, detect and punish heretics, as it was believed, not without reason, that heretical views were partly spread through public sermons. 6 One of the orthodox clergy’s actions was to prevent the unlicensed from preaching. Thomas Arundel’s Constitutions of 1409 are probably the most famous document created to this effect, in which it is repeatedly stated that no-one preach the word of God unless authorized to do so and able to provide assurance of this, but this text is merely one of the many statutes on the matter issued since the 1380s throughout most English dioceses. 7 One of Arundel’s earlier anti-heresy mandates from a time in which he was still bishop of Ely (1382) in fact better expresses how laypeople played as big a role as religious authorities in checking preachers’ authorizations: . . . mandamus quatinus omnibus et singulis subditis nostris ecclesiasticis et secularibus vtriusque sexus ex parte nostra interdicatis et inhibeatis, interdici et inhiberi efficaciter faciatis quibus nos etiam tenore presencium interdicimus et inhibemus ne aliquos ad predicandum in eorum ecclesiis capellis oratoriis cimiteriis ciuitatibus villis seu plateis aut locis aliis sacris seu prophanis admittant . . . aut eos predicare permittant nisi tales sunt de quorum admissione littera seu licencia nostra speciali legitime constiterit. . . . each and every one of our subjects, ecclesiastical and secular of both sexes should on our behalf prevent, just as we ourselves in the present document prohibit you to admit or permit, anyone to preach in their churches, chapels, oratories, cemeteries, cities, villages, or other places whether sacred or profane, unless they are constituted by a letter of admission or our special license. (Qtd. and transl. Forrest 65) In relation to this passage, Ian Forrest, who has produced an invaluable historical study on lay involvement in the fight against heresy, notes that although we might not expect just anybody to check licenses and take prohibitive actions, “the range of places listed [above] would extend the category of ‘persons in authority’ [and responsible for the documentary 6 Clearly the scope of this chapter does not permit a full account of religious heterodoxy across the period and so I have limited the consideration to those elements that are pertinent to my discussion of the plays. 7 Nicholas Watson’s 1995 study was of course a pioneering piece of scholarship that brought a better understanding of this legislation’s impact, especially on matters of fifteenth-century vernacular theology. Since then, the numerous essays in the After Arundel volume edited by Vincent Gillespie and Kantik Ghosh have however contributed to nuance Watson’s argument. <?page no="60"?> Camille Marshall 60 check] from abbots, abbesses, rectors, and patrons to, possibly, village elders, manorial officials, churchwardens, and so on” (66). It is partly because the detection relied on the laity that the “signs of heresy had to be simplified. This was achieved through licensing, which made suspicion subject to a simple documentary check” (Forrest 60). The parishioners who did not possess such authority nevertheless needed to be sensitized to the issue since an unlicensed preacher excluded from one locus could simply move to another. Moreover, fault did not only lie with the heretical preacher: those who listened to him/ her also risked major punishments. 8 It is clear from these examples that laymen were considered to be crucially instrumental in the detection and reporting of suspected heretics. It would then make perfect sense that the mystery plays were put to contribution to help encourage suspicion on the part of the lay audience of the plays who were also the potential audience of authorized or unauthorized sermons. Studying the Towneley Murder of Abel in this light will reveal just how much it is devoted to fighting dissenting religious views and might well be an additional pawn in the anti-heretical game. While Abel is in no way practising what Claire Waters labelled “explicit preaching, that is preaching in the strictest definition (from a pulpit, wearing the clerical garb, and speaking in a codified manner at a specific point in Mass) (17), Cain nevertheless accuses his brother’s “preaching” of being ill-intended and thus rejects his words and his authority. Importantly, Abel does not instruct his brother to offer just any generic sacrifice, but rather tithes (l. 75). With this transformation to the biblical source, the brothers dispute a matter that was much more relevant to the audience’s everyday obligations as well a major point of religious contention. The audience should have been able to recognize that Cain is presenting heretical views in his rant about tithing: Wyclif famously advocated against giving tithes or paying any other dues to members of the clergy if one judged that they were undeserving of them. Lollards of course denounced the wealth of clergymen and some are known to have withheld their tithes in order to 8 As the following extract from Archbishop William Courtenay’s statute of 30 May 1382 demonstrates: “. . . ne . . . aliquem predicantem audiat vel ascultet seu ei faueat vel adhereat publice vel occulte sed statim tanquam serpentem venenum pestiferum emittentem fugiat et euitet sub penan excommunicacionis maioris” (qtd. in Forrest 64); “. . . one should not listen, attend, nor support such preaching, be it public or private, but immediately flee and avoid the snake’s poison as it is emitted, on pain of major excommunication” (translation mine). I should also make clear that there is no direct correlation between a lack of license and condemnation as heretic, however suspicion would be raised and the inquisitional process might arise from this. <?page no="61"?> Mediated Instruction and Divine Authority 61 rather give them to the poor. 9 In the Towneley play, to avoid an act of charity from redeeming his character, Cain presents himself as the needy man who cannot spare his goods in order to give them to God. By including God in the reciprocal economics of tithing and asserting that He has not performed any act that would justify an offering (ll. 97-131), Cain however goes one step further in the debate on priests being deserving or not of tithes. The ploughman seems incapable of envisaging a hierarchy in which God is beyond such considerations and indeed conflates Him with the body of priests as he says that his “farthyng is in the preest hand / Syn last tyme [he] offyrd” (ll. 106-7). This accusation of keeping his past offering for themselves occurs in the middle of his arguments against God, and without any distinction; all are the same kind of culprits to Cain. Again, part of the criticism of Lollard practices such as the translation of Holy texts was based on the reduced lay need for the clergy that it entailed, which also lead to a reduced hierarchy in the access to salvation. For Cain, whom the audience has already seen as being unable of having any control over his servant Garcio, this is but one instance in which he is clearly himself confused with hierarchy, although in this case religious. Thus, as Cain develops his argument throughout the play, the audience finds confirmation of the negative preconceptions they would have of the character from their prior religious and cultural knowledge, and from the obvious vulgarity he manifests from his very first lines. However, when he attacks Abel’s “preaching” and therewith posits his brother as the dissenter, the audience may be destabilized and brought to question their pre-established judgments in the subsequent disputative to and fro, in which Cain is given more space to systematically debunk Abel. In fact, both the shepherd (Abel) and the ploughman (Cain) are biblical symbols of members of the Godhead, preachers or, more simply, good Christians. 10 But which preacher, which Christian, is the audience member to follow when each of them is being discredited in turn? For instance, both invalidate the other’s words in significantly and identically dismissing them as “vayn carpyng” (ll. 92, 99), which is also the phrase used to warn Lucifer in the Towneley play of Creation (2 Bonus Angelus: “I reyde ye sese of that ye sayn, / For well I wote ye carpe in 9 For instance, see Hudson for the account of Lollard Thomas Ploman of Sizewell’s reallocation of tithes to the poor (152). 10 See Luke 9: 60-2, John 10: 1, 15: 1, Ecclesiasticus 18: 11-13, or Isaiah 40: 11. <?page no="62"?> Camille Marshall 62 vayne” ll. 114-15). 11 Cain further uses “jangyls waste” (l. 136) and questions Abel’s sanity in order to discredit his discourse by holding him “mad” and “woode” (ll. 150, 161). And thus Cain’s repudiations of Abel’s authority are in fact the more overriding of the two. When prompted by Cain’s objections, one might be lead to wonder what grounds Abel actually has indeed to sermon his older brother on tithing, especially in the light of the late medieval licensing debate. For instance, the York play on the same episode opens with an angel instructing the two brothers on the matter whereas the Chester version has Adam explain this to his sons. There is always some hierarchical removal in these other texts, thus highlighting that, once again, the Towneley collection is quite peculiar in having Abel assume this position of instructor on his own authority. If Cain’s rejection could be in part justifiable then, the audience could not however deny the ploughman’s fault when he fails to recognize God and His authority when He appears after the performance of their offerings. It is crucial to note how, with the very first lines He speaks, the character of God confers his authorization to Abel. Where the biblical source (“Why art thou angry? and why is thy countenance fallen? ” [Gen. 4: 6]) does not even point to Abel as the target of Cain’s anger, the Towneley God’s question “Cam, whi art thou so rebell / Agans thi brother Abell? ” (ll. 293-4) is more specific. One traditionally “rebels” against an established authority, which, in this instance, God is attributing to Abel. With this intervention, one could then say that God brings Abel the required authorization for his “preaching” to be lawful. And just as it was the case for God and Abraham, the audience is given visual proof through His appearance to be sure of this. Unlike Isaac who would comply as soon as the Lord is even mentioned, Cain does not recognize the divine authority however, nor does he in fact recognize God, both figuratively and literally. After the divine character has spoken, Cain comically questions His identity: 11 Although the group of Towneley pageants is now recognized as a composite cycle, with plays gathered from York, Wakefield and other towns in their vicinity, this verbal echo between the two plays can still be considered to be significant, especially when looking at other occurrences of the phrase in the collection. Indeed, the collocation “vayn carping” is only otherwise used by Noah’s wife about her family’s talk of the upcoming Flood (Play 3, l. 520) and by a tortor to Jesus (Play 22, l. 482). Peter also tells Mary Magdalene that she “carpys waste” (Play 28, l. 7) when she gives first news of the Resurrection. These are all instances in which the interlocutor is accused for spreading, what is considered to be, aberrant beliefs. See below for further discussion of the composite nature of the collection and the implications thereof. <?page no="63"?> Mediated Instruction and Divine Authority 63 Whi, who is that hob ouer the wall? We! who was that that piped so small? Com, go we hens, for parels all- God is out of hys wit! (ll. 299-302). While he does not actually fail to recognize God altogether, as demonstrated by the fourth line of this passage, the first line playfully points at how God was to be recognized and perceived in the context of the mystery plays. This Hob over the wall or, in other words, a commoner (“Bob”) standing on a bit of scaffolding, was indeed what was before the audience’s eyes. In this case where God neither directly (naming) nor indirectly (mentioning elements of his curriculum vitae) states His identity, the audience can only count on the presence of a gilded mask and perhaps some particular dress to infer that this character stood for God Almighty. 12 As new characters came into play, audience members would have surely often felt some doubt in identifying them, an uncertainty that Cain voices in this instance. However, this doubt would only be temporary, as the costume, context, and speech should lead the audience to quickly be assured of the character’s identity. It is Cain who actually demonstrates yet another failing in this instance: that of not being able to read the signs before him, and thus, in a way, of being a bad audience member. Thus, just as he is incapable of understanding the hierarchy between priest and God in the context of the economics of tithing, Cain seems confused by the relationship between actor and character and what is owed to each. This is indeed a delicate distinction to be made, especially for the mystery plays that were, for the most part, performed by members of the community, in the streets, and with a flourish of anachronisms that brought the texts closer to the audience’s everyday lives. Whereas these elements have precisely been recognized as aspects that allowed for an increased form of identification and affective religious devotion, there was some fear that they might encourage idolatry and direct the audience’s love and prayers towards false, empty, signs; this is one of the reproaches made by the Tretise of Miraclis Pleyinge. Although its stance probably does not reflect popular views, this anti-dramatic treatise written between 1380 and 1425 is an extremely precious testimony of the arguments brought forth by both the supporters and detractors 12 Many records of dramatic activity in England prove that is was customary for God, but also Christ, as well as the angels, to wear a gilded mask. See Meg Twycross’s and Sarah Carpenter’s very thorough study of masks in medieval and early Tudor England, especially the chapter on mystery plays, 191-232. <?page no="64"?> Camille Marshall 64 of medieval devotional drama. 13 Indeed, the author first lists the uses that the plays’ advocates traditionally invoked before systematically debunking them. The first point of contention is with the use of the plays for devotion, which the Tretise writes off as it could only lead to fake devotion. In the course of the text, the author compares the performances to the episode of the golden calf of Exodus (e. g. ll. 637-43), and thereby clearly brings forth the accusation of idolatry: Therefore as the wickidnesse of the misbileve of hethene men lyith to themsilf, whanne they seyn that the worshiping of theire maumetrie [idols] is to the worshipe of God, so mennus lecherye now on days to han ther owne lustus lieth to hemself whanne they seyn that suche miracles playing is to the worschip of God. For Crist seith that folc of avoutrie [heretics] sechen siche singnys as a lecchour sechith signes of verey love but no dedis of verrey love. So sithen thise miraclis pleyinge ben onely singnis, love withoute dedis, they ben not onely contrarious to the worschipe of God-that is, bothe in signe and in dede-but also they ben ginnys of the devvel to cacchen men to byleve of Anticrist, as wordis of love withoute verrey dede ben ginnys of the lecchour to cacchen felawchipe to fulfillinge of his leccherie. (ll. 192-206) The author of this treatise exposes criticism on several levels: beyond the fact that the performance is done for pleasure alone, s/ he also states that the performance is only capable of bringing signs to the stage. In Saussurean terms, one would rather say that only the signifier is performed and by extension worshipped, and never the signified. Thus s/ he considers that the audience is continually at risk of directing their devotion to false signs and incapable of holding both signifier and signified in their mind in order to extend their devotion beyond the immediacy of the performance. These considerations unjustly discredit the playgoer’s natural abilities to contemplate several levels of signification and reality simultaneously. Meg Twycross discusses this very phenomenon from the first-hand experience of staging the York Carpenters’ Resurrection of Christ. Not only does she explain how the audience and actors may share the play-space without completely breaking the dramatic illusion (275), but she also 13 The Tretise is contained in a single manuscript (British Library MS. Add. 24202, fols 14 r -21 r ), alongside other Wycliffite texts. Its dialect has been located to the East Central Midlands but any other information is conjectural. Even the nature of the “miraclis” that it opposes is highly debated and probably refers to a broad range of performance types, including the mystery plays. See Davidson’s edition for further discussion. <?page no="65"?> Mediated Instruction and Divine Authority 65 explains that mystery plays often openly recognize the limitations of their mimesis, without signalling to the audience that they are empty signs: The effect it seems to have in our present context is that the audience are invited into a kind of complicity with the players, in which they behave as if they were taking the illusion for reality, while at the same time reserving the right to remember that it is only illusion. But there would be no point in this game if it were not also accepted that the illusion represents a historical and spiritual reality which is vitally important to both actors and audience. (276-7) The instances in which the more non-naturalistic, physical aspects of the performance are brought to light can thus be considered as reminders for the audience of the multivalence of the experience. Whereas Cain is clearly represented as a bad team player in “this game” of semiotics, other Towneley plays show us characters who are fully capable of managing the multilayered theatrical signs with propriety. A well-known example of this occurs in the Second Shepherds’ Play, in which the Christ child is adored by the shepherds in His double nature of “derling dere, full of Godhede” (l. 728). At once the “sufferan Savioure” that “all thing has wroght” (ll. 719, 720) and the “yong child” (710), the shepherds do not fail to make reference to His third identity in the context of the performance by addressing Him as a “mop” (l. 1046). In addition to being a term of endearment, this also means a doll, which was no doubt what was used in the performance rather than a live baby. 14 While the reference is similar to God as a “hob ouer the wall,” this play shows the audience how to correctly respond to the theatrical sign. In a way, these processes posit the actor as an explicit intermediary, the signifier to what is ultimately being portrayed, and is thus not dissimilar to the intermediaries of divine instruction studied above. Both defy any straightforward acceptance or recognition in order to signal the necessity of caution to the spectator. While it is generally accepted that both Shepherds’ plays as well as the Murder of Abel are the work of the Wakefield Master, the similar idiosyncratic use of doubt for this purpose in the Towneley Sacrifice of Isaac pageant might be used to support the claim made by Gardner as early as 1971 that this piece was also, as it is now accepted for the Murder of Abel, revised by the Wakefield Master (227-8). Whether this can ever be confirmed or not, I would actually 14 The same reference is made in the First Shepherds’ Play (l. 673); the double entendre of “mop” was first noted by Sophie Oosterwijk. <?page no="66"?> Camille Marshall 66 suggest that the interest in these themes does not belong to this dramatist alone, but can be traced to the Towneley collection as a whole. Doubt in intermediaries, in signs, or in the direct apparition of the divine presence is indeed emphasized more than in any other cycle. 15 As it is now widely recognized however, the Towneley plays are not a “cycle.” Rather, they constitute a composite compilation of plays from different dates and origins, and it is precisely through the consideration of their possible compilation context that we might uncover why doubt in intermediaries finds such pride of place. Although scholarship on this collection still has long ways to go, the leading scholars in the field agree that the plays originated from various locations in West Lancashire and East Yorkshire, and that they in no way constitute the cycle of Wakefield in any comparable manner to what the York plays were to the city of York for example. In terms of dating, it would seem that some of the earliest pageants, including the six that were in fact borrowed and adapted from the York cycle, were created in the early fifteenth century, while the plays by the Wakefield Master are most often dated to the latter half of that same century. The copying of the single manuscript, Huntington Library MS HM1, was dated around 1553-8 by Malcolm Parkes (reported by Palmer 96). The selection of plays itself, the compilation process, could have taken place at any time in the interval, but there is a very strong chance that it was during the English Reformation, for the use of a recusant patron. If contemporary to the manuscript production, then this was during the brief return of Catholicism that occurred with the reign of Queen Mary. 16 15 There is no place to make such a wide demonstration in the context of this essay, but I may briefly give a few more illustrations of the singular importance of doubt to the Towneley narratives beyond the four plays already mentioned here: the Noah play (play 3) is the only version in which Uxor’s resistance is explicitly linked to her disbelief of the coming of the Flood; the Adoration of the Magi play (14) has Herod uniquely question the kings’ sanity for basing their belief on a star and needs the confirmation of books for proof of what they prophesize; whereas the Doubting Thomas play (28) is developed like no other version. 16 Theresa Coletti and Gail McMurray Gibson make a strong case for the collection being created on the occasion of the 1556 wedding of John and Mary Towneley, members of one of the most prominent recusant families of the area, that have owned the manuscript at least from Christopher Towneley’s lifetime (1607-74). For the most recent scholarship on the Towneley manuscript, see the chapter by Peter Meredith in the Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Literature, as well the article by Barbara Palmer. A collection of essays on the Towneley manuscript commissioned and edited by Meg Twycross is forthcoming and will undoubtedly shed new light on the circumstances of the collection’s production. <?page no="67"?> Mediated Instruction and Divine Authority 67 The concerns of those for whom the Towneley plays were collected were thus those that pertained to the Reformation, rather than the Lollards and their “premature Reformation” as Anne Hudson has famously put it. However, some of the similarities in both movements would undoubtedly explain why plays that expressed concerns specific to the earlier, would be attractive for inclusion in a recusant collection. 17 Religious intermediaries were obviously at the centre of both reformative movements, and a Catholic mid-sixteenth century audience/ readership would definitely have been sensitive to attacks such as those formulated by the Towneley Cain. They would have witnessed the struggles to demonstrate that Catholicism was the “true” religion first of all, and secondly that the clergy and its hierarchy were legitimate and necessary to their access to salvation. Moreover, Cain’s deconstruction of the theatrical sign of God almighty might also have had the interest that Catholicism and the Mass was criticized during the Reformation for its over-reliance on signs, images, and theatricality. Many studies have shown how liturgy and drama are indeed indissociable, 18 and similar to the actor who can only be taken as the signifier of the religious truth s/ he seeks to portray, “[s]acraments were conventionally described as signs of sacred things, the visible signs of an invisible grace” (Beckwith 60). As when faced with the theatrical sign, the church-goer is meant to play along, to believe that the bread that may seem unchanged has indeed become something else through the miracle of transubstantiation. Scepticism has led the Lollards and then the Reformers to challenge this: just as the Almighty cannot be seen in Bob on his scaffolding, there is little reason to believe that He actually descends in a baked good; a sceptical move that effected major religious turmoil. Doubt then had a double instructional purpose, which took effect in two different periods of the plays’ reception: that of initial composition and of compilation. I hope to have demonstrated how, in the two episodes of sacrifice, this idiosyncratic exploration of doubt was instrumental in teaching the mystery play audience that they could and should question the authority of those who claimed to instruct matters of faith. Doubt was not only performed by actors and witnessed in the charac- 17 The degree to which Lollardy has actually paved the way for Protestantism has variously been defended and contested through the years. Richard Rex offers a useful summary of this scholarly debate in his study of the Lollards (see esp. 115-42). 18 For the relations and interplay of liturgy and drama in the specific context of English scriptural drama, see for example Penny Granger (esp. 4-35) in relation to the N-Town plays, and Sarah Beckwith or Pamela King (Worship of the City), who focus on the York cycle. <?page no="68"?> Camille Marshall 68 ters, but was caused to be felt by the audience members themselves. Thus, momentary uncertainty as to which character is presenting the accepted religious viewpoint or more simply which character an actor is meant to embody can be considered part of the didactic scheme at play: it respectively taught to try and discern orthodox from unorthodox claims as well as to bear in mind that the performance at hand is a cumulation of signs that need to be correctly deciphered in order for the performance to be effective. Whether both The Sacrifice of Isaac and The Murder of Abel are the work of the Wakefield Master or not, it would seem that such vivid attention paid to these concerns might well be the reason for their inclusion in the Towneley collection. The plays in this manuscript, read or performed in a changed religious climate, will then not only have instructed their audience, but strengthened them in the “Old Faith” by reasserting the legitimacy of religious hierarchy and imagery, so long as they were properly deciphered. In the transition of a set of medieval plays into the early modern period, it would then seem that doubt insured part of their continued relevance. <?page no="69"?> Mediated Instruction and Divine Authority 69 References Beckwith, Sarah. Signifying God: Social Relation and Symbolic Act in the York Corpus Christi Plays. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001. Coletti, Theresa, and Gail McMurray Gibson. “The Tudor Origins of Medieval Drama.” In: A Companion to Tudor Literature. Ed. Kent Cartwright. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. 228-45. Davidson, Clifford, ed. A Tretise of Miraclis Pleyinge. Kalamazoo: Western Michigan University Press, 1993. Forrest, Ian. The Detection of Heresy in Late Medieval England. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005. Gardner, John. “Idea and Emotion in the Towneley Abraham.” Papers on Language and Literature 7: 3 (1971): 227-41. Gillespie, Vincent, and Kantik Ghosh, eds. After Arundel: Religious Writing in Fifteenth-Century England. Turnhout: Brepols, 2011. Granger, Penny. The N-Town Play: Drama and Liturgy in Medieval East Anglia. Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2009. Hudson, Anne. The Premature Reformation: Wycliffite Texts and Lollard History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988. King, Pamela. “Spatial Semantics and the Medieval Theatre.” Themes in Drama 9: The Theatrical Space. Ed. James Redmond. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. 45-58. ―――. The York Mystery Cycle and the Worship of the City. Rochester: D. S. Brewer, 2006. Meredith, Peter. “The Towneley Pageants.” In: The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre. 2nd ed. Ed. Richard Beadle and Alan J. Fletcher. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. 152-82. Oosterwijk, Sophie. “Of Mops and Puppets: The Ambiguous Use of the Word ‘Mop’ in the Towneley Shepherds’ Plays.” Notes and Queries 44: 2 (1997), 169-71. Palmer, Barbara. “Recycling ‘the Wakefield Cycle’: The Records.” Research Opportunities in Renaissance Drama 41 (2002), 88-130. Reid, Charles J. (Jr). Power over the Body, Equality in the Family: Rights and Domestic Relations in Medieval Canon Law. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2004. Rex, Richard. The Lollards. New York: Palgrave, 2002. Stevens, Martin and A. C. Cawley, eds. The Towneley Plays, Vol. I: Text, Vol. II: Commentary and Glossary. Early English Text Society, S.S. 13 and 14. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. Twycross, Meg. “Playing ‘The Resurrection.’” Medieval Studies for J. A. W. Bennett. Ed. P. L. Heyworth. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981. 273-96. <?page no="70"?> Camille Marshall 70 ―――, and Sarah Carpenter. Masks and Masking in Medieval and Early Tudor England. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002. Varty, Kenneth. Reynard, Renart, Reinaert: And Other Foxes in Medieval England: The Iconographic Evidence. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1999. Waters, Claire. Angels and Earthly Creatures. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004. Watson, Nicholas. “Censorship and Cultural Change in Late-Medieval England: Vernacular Theology, the Oxford Translation Debate, and Arundel’s Constitutions of 1409.” Speculum 70: 4 (1995): 822-64. Woolf, Rosemary. “The Effect of Typology on the English Mediaeval Plays of Abraham and Isaac.” Speculum 32: 4 (1957): 805-25. <?page no="71"?> Feminizing the Liturgy: The N-Town Mary Play and Fifteenth-Century Convent Drama Olivia Robinson This essay sets two fifteenth-century vernacular plays which each incorporate key Latin citations from the liturgy alongside one another: the N- Town Mary Play and a piece of convent drama from fifteenth-century Burgundy. The Mary Play’s incorporation of the Latin Magnificat, recited by Mary and translated into English by her cousin Elizabeth, dramatizes female “ownership” and transmission of the Word of God, and the power of the female voice to teach and transmit key theological concepts; recent critical approaches to N-Town have also emphasized the importance of seeking northern continental analogues in its features, given the play’s likely East Anglian provenance. I respond to both of these critical strands by comparing the Mary Play’s “feminized” use of the Latin liturgy to the liturgical citations incorporated into a vernacular Nativity play composed and performed by nuns. I explore the ways in which each play makes careful use of the Latin liturgy as a dramatic tool, and I discuss how and why particular liturgical citations have been incorporated into the dramatic script. I argue that translation of the liturgy into the vernacular can be read as a self-conscious use of the on-stage female voice to comment on its significance as an act of worship. This essay began as an attempt to think through ways in which a littleknown and understudied convent play might help us to shed new light on certain aspects of one of the best-known plays of the medieval English dramatic canon, the N-Town Mary Play. The uniqueness of the Mary Play, in the context of the N-Town collection, has been long-established: the compiler of N-Town appears to have sourced his dramatic material from a variety of different places, and thus includes individual plays with Drama and Pedagogy in Medieval and Early Modern England. SPELL: Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 31. Ed. Elisabeth Dutton and James McBain. Tübingen: Narr, 2015. 71-88. <?page no="72"?> Olivia Robinson 72 a variety of formal features, implied staging and cast requirements, and effects (see, e.g., Spector, N-Town). Experiments using performance have confirmed that the Mary Play in particular stands out among the N- Town collection for its very small cast, the way it sets its action within particular enclosed spaces and moments, creating a particular “intimacy of tone” and its probable integration of sung liturgy alongside its dialogue (see Smout, Dutton and Cheung Salisbury 95). 1 A further aspect of the Mary Play’s uniqueness, of course, lies in its overwhelming and sustained focus on female protagonists: particularly St Anne, Mary herself, the Daughters of God, and Elizabeth. When surveying possible analogues (dramatic and non-dramatic) for the Mary Play, Granger has noted that the continent, particularly the Low Countries, may have produced more appropriate material than elsewhere in England: the cultural links established through trade between East Anglia and parts of Burgundy in the late fifteenth century may well have been stronger than those between East Anglia and other, more geographically distant regions of England (150). Whilst Granger concludes that the particular Marian plays from Brussels which she examines alongside the Mary Play do not - at least at the level of their use of liturgy - bear a significant resemblance to the N-Town play (163-4, 171), the possibility of using surviving northern European drama as a fruitful counterpoint to the Mary Play may still allow for new insights into processes of composition and desired effects. The play which I propose to read alongside the Mary Play here also hails from the Low Countries, from a Carmelite convent in the town of Huy (in modernday Belgium). This play dramatizes the narrative of the Nativity: it has, therefore, no narrative overlap with the contents of the Mary Play (nor am I attempting to suggest that it could be seen as a direct “source” for that play); but it shares with it a central focus on liturgical citation as a compositional and performative technique, and on specifically femalevoiced devotion and performance. There has been a large amount of scholarly work on the relationship of women to medieval drama throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, both in terms of the depiction of female characters in plays and in terms of evidence for women’s involvement in dramatic production (see e.g. Normington, Gender and Medieval Drama; Twycross, “Transvestism”; Stokes, “Women and Mimesis”). However, Normington has 1 I use the term “collection” rather than “cycle” to refer to the N-Town plays deliberately: it seem clear that the plays, although Biblical, were not composed or performed as a coherent “cycle” in the same way as those from, e.g., York. <?page no="73"?> Feminizing the Liturgy 73 nonetheless noted as recently as 2013 that this work is quite often inexplicably and routinely marginalized: “it remains usual for medieval theatre to be excluded from feminist theatre studies volumes. [. . .] The Cambridge Companion to the Actress manages to obliterate the whole of medieval drama” (“Faming of Shrews” 120). It is still, she implies, a common misconception among scholars of medieval literature more generally (if not among medieval theatre specialists) that theatre and performance in the Middle Ages was an exclusively male space (see Niebrzydowski). Part of my aim here, then, is to take two plays which feature contrasting explorations of the ways and the things that women could teach through drama, focusing particularly on Biblical narrative and the liturgy, in order to explore the impact which attention to a critically marginalized piece of convent drama might have on our reading of a well-known play. Surviving in a single manuscript dated to the end of the fifteenth century as part of the N-Town collection of plays, the Mary Play is a unique English dramatization of the conception and early life of the Virgin Mary, including key moments such as her marriage to Joseph, the Annunciation and the Visitation. The Mary Play thus blends together seamlessly Biblical and apocryphal material comprising what was commonly known and thought about the life of the Virgin - it opens with a scene prior to Mary’s birth centring on St Anne and Joachim, neither of whom appear in the canonical Gospels. 2 It culminates, however, in an extended and rhetorically intricate quotation of a long passage from the Gospel of Luke: Luke 1: 46-55. It is this final scene that I want to focus on particularly - the Visitation, when the Virgin Mary visits her cousin Elizabeth whilst pregnant with Jesus. Elizabeth is at this point also pregnant with John the Baptist, and their meeting is given a privileged space at the close of the Mary Play, during which the two women join together to recite the Magnificat, Mary’s speech of praise from Luke 1, in full. Their performance of the Magnificat alternates between Latin, recited by Mary, and vernacular paraphrase, recited by Elizabeth: MARIA: For þis holy psalme I begynne here þis day: Magnificat anima mea Dominum, Et exultauit spiritus meus in Deo salutari meo ELIZABETH: Be þe Holy Gost with joye Goddys son is in þe cum Þat þi spyryte so injouyid þe helth of þi God so. 2 For possible sources for the Mary Play, see Spector, N-Town, Commentary 436-467. <?page no="74"?> Olivia Robinson 74 MARIA: Quia respexit humilitatem ancille sue. Ecce enim ex hoc beatam me dicent omnes generaciones ELIZABETH: For he beheld þe lowness of hese handmayde, 3e. [L]o, ferforth for þat, all generacyonys blysse yow in pes. MARIA: Quia fecit mihi magna qui potens est, Et sanctum nomen eius. ELIZABETH: For grett thyngys he made, and also myghtyest And ryght holy is þe name of hym in vs. (Spector, N-Town, Mary Play: The Visit to Elizabeth, ll. 81-93). It has been justly observed that this sequence, which proceeds for another eight stanzas after the first three cited above, is one of the “dramatic and emotional highlights of the play” (Granger 113), focusing the spotlight squarely on the two pregnant female characters and their intermingled voices. It serves a particular, and a particularly sophisticated dramatic purpose. Mary’s introductory words before she begins her first line of Latin make this plain: “þis holy psalme I begynne here þis day” (l. 81, my emphasis). Her insistent use of proximal deixis - “here þis day” - and a present tense verb - “I begynne” - serves to superimpose her first and originary recitation of the Magnificat, as it is recounted in Luke’s gospel - “þis holy psalme” - onto the spatial “here” and the temporal “now” or “today” of the audience, forcibly underlining and actively performing the relevance and ever-present-ness of the “past” Biblical moment in the present space and time. Barr has discussed the ways in which the poet of the so-called “Digby lyrics” insistently deploys “words such as ‘now,’ ‘this,’ ‘here’ and ‘we’ [in order to] situate [himself . . .] and his audience in a present world in which they are all co-participants” (316). The creator of the Mary Play, I suggest, turns Mary into a figure whose words, at this moment, create a similar co-participatory “world,” a fusion of the past-ness of the events of Luke’s Gospel with the present time and space. Mary thus also specifically echoes and repeats a movement which is made by the Latin text of the Magnificat itself, for the very text of Mary’s Magnificat, as she utters it in Luke 1, already insists upon the present-ness of past utterance in a slightly different way. As Granger notes, the Magnificat as presented by Luke deliberately lexically recalls and reworks a section of the Old Testament, I Samuel 2: 1-10 (112), Hannah’s song of <?page no="75"?> Feminizing the Liturgy 75 triumph at her long-desired pregnancy: a peculiarly appropriate instance of typological connection between Old and New Testament, given that Mary very literally embodies the fulfilment of the Old Testament with the New, and the moment of transition between the two. This is an embodiment upon which the N-Town Mary Play lingers: at the moment of conception, Mary describes the “schapp of chyldly carnalyté” which Jesus immediately assumes in her womb (Spector, N-Town, Mary Play: Salutation and Conception l. 295). Her description of this process foregrounds her own role in providing outward, fleshly clothing or covering to God Himself, so that He may be born into the human world. 3 In N- Town, then, Mary’s role as the figure who physically creates, or even is the hinge between the Old Testament and the New, as Jesus is held in her body, is made clear for an audience. Onstage, within the performance of the Magnificat, her utterance performs this hinge. It layers up Old Testament, New Testament, and the present-day time and place. The idea of sophisticated and intricate typological connections between Old Testament and New is thus mobilized by the play, and the impact and relevance of these connections in the present world of the audience is performed. One of the two possible conclusions to the Mary Play alludes explicitly to the temporal shifts that the audience has experienced here. Contemplacio, a commentator-character who is clearly contemporary with the audience, and who has offered them a running commentary on the Biblical action throughout the Mary Play in a series of “asides” which introduce and close particular episodes, notes that “Magnificat and Benedictus / First in þat place þere made wern” (Spector, N-Town, Mary Play: The Visit to Elizabeth ll. 172A-73A). Contemplacio’s particular use of the term “place” here implicates a further layer of spatio-temporal complexity, one which is peculiar to late-medieval theatrical techniques. As is well-known, the N-Town Mary Play makes use of locus and platea staging, in which, to quote Janette Dillon: a locus always represents, for a given stretch of time, a specific location [while] the platea is essentially fluid and frequently non-representational. It is not tied to the illusion, to the fictional places where the drama is set, but is often predominantly an actors’ space, a space in which performance can be 3 McMurray Gibson discusses in detail the ways in which Mary is read and presented iconographically as “crafting the garment of flesh and human mortality for the still embryonic Word” (164). Granger suggests that Mary’s Latin here renders her role as “physical channel . . . of God” particularly clear, in the context of places where Latin and English are used together elsewhere in the manuscript (114). <?page no="76"?> Olivia Robinson 76 recognised as performance rather than as the fiction it intermittently seeks to represent. (4-5) The N-Town Mary Play makes use of a series of fixed, Biblical loci (e.g. the temple, Mary and Joseph’s house), which exist within a fluid platea or playing-space signifying a multitude of different times, places and spaces, as actors traverse it, and which includes the audience. As Dutton has noted of medieval Biblical drama, locus and platea staging can contain “heavy theological significance . . . The locus would keep a historical Christ remote in time and space from his audience . . . Christ in the platea is Christ in the same time and space as the audience, offering the audience contact with a present divinity” (393). Habitually, then, we might read a locus such as Elizabeth’s house as securely separated from the audience: a past space and time existing within the Biblical narrative, played out in front of a watching audience existing in the medieval present. Contemplacio’s voice speaks to the audience in their present from the platea or “place,” a space and time which he shares with them. For the actors playing Mary and Joseph, the platea has signified (at this moment in the narrative) the journey between their house and Elizabeth’s. Indeed, the appropriate stage direction notes “et sic transient circa placeam,” (“and they travel around the place”), prior to their arrival with Elizabeth, making specific use of the term “place” to denote the platea (Spector, N- Town: Mary Play, The Visit to Elizabeth ll. 22-23) (See Dillon 5). The locus and platea seem to be securely restricted to their respective functions here. But the ensuing utterance of the Magnificat - and the temporal fluidity that its introduction creates - potentially disturbs these boundaries: Mary and Elizabeth are no longer (or no longer only) in the fixed space and time of Elizabeth’s house, within a re-played narrative of the events of Luke’s gospel. They are simultaneously, as we have seen, in the space and time of the audience; for the duration of the Magnificat, the locus that was Elizabeth’s house, almost becomes the platea - or, at least, it takes on some of its “fluid” qualities, as Biblical and present times and places are, in the onstage recitation of the Magnificat, momentarily collapsed. Even as Contemplacio’s use of the term “place” reminds us of this, however, his concluding words also serve to reassert the difference between then and now, locus and platea. For the Magnificat is located specifically by Contemplacio in a space whose physical distance from the audience is performed linguistically (“þat place . . . þere,” rather than this place here), and whose temporal “past-ness,” as unique originary moment, is also underlined by use of the adverb “first” and the past tense of the verb “to be” (“first . . . made wern”). This has the effect of firmly tempo- <?page no="77"?> Feminizing the Liturgy 77 rally reinstating the “here and now” at the close of the play, de-layering or disentangling the past narrative of the recitation of the Magnificat in Luke’s gospel from the present time and place of the audience. Contemplacio’s closing speech, with its pointed reference to “þat place . . . þere,” reasserts the habitual role or function of the platea: he speaks directly to the audience from the platea and uses this space to locate them unambiguously at a distance from what they have seen and heard. His punning use of the word “place” to do so, however, simultaneously draws their attention to the way in which the word “place” is now, in this particular speech, being used to signify something more like locus - the past “place” within the play where the Magnificat was sung - while the locus of Elizabeth’s house then, for the duration of the singing, almost became the “place.” The presence of the “first” Magnificat in contemporary, medieval England is, of course, made more pointed by its translation by Elizabeth into English. Not only does Mary recite the Magnificat: Elizabeth provides a running English gloss on her words, expounding their significance confidently and assuredly in a move which must surely have had some profound implications for a non-Latin literate audience. As is often noted, Elizabeth’s interventions are not precise translations of the Latin - they are rather more loose paraphrases, sometimes conceptualized as awkward or tortuously unskilled translations. Their unusual and often counterintuitive structure and syntax is in part due to the dramatists’ desire to rhyme the Latin and the English within each stanza (cf. Spector, N-Town, Commentary 465 and Wellesley on the manuscript scribe’s use of braces to highlight these inter-lingual rhymes). However, this metrical constraint also allows Elizabeth to be imagined as engaging in interactive discussion with Mary rather than simply producing an exact parroting back or repetition of her words: “by the holy ghost with joye Goddys son is in þe come”; “for þat all generacyonys blyss yow in pes” (Spector, Mary Play: The Visit to Elizabeth ll. 84 and 89, my emphasis). It also calls into being a particular, and particularly idiosyncratic, English style and syntax, allowing us to read Elizabeth’s gloss as something distinct from the usual style and structure of vernacular speech within the play, a kind of non-English English or a particular English which calls attention insistently to its own role as performed Magnificat-gloss. 4 In 4 For an alternative reading of Elizabeth’s English gloss as “halting,” “puzzling” and lacking in “semantic felicity” when compared to the Latin, to which it is subordinate, see Wellesley, whose reading foregrounds the insufficiency, as accurate translation, of Elizabeth’s utterances. As will become clear, I here read her words from a slightly different perspective. <?page no="78"?> Olivia Robinson 78 this reading, I view Elizabeth’s words as something akin to a “foreignizing translation”, as discussed by Venuti, which deliberately “deviate[s] from native norms to stage an alien reading experience [. . .] disrupting the codes which prevail in the target language” (Venuti 548). As such, Elizabeth performs a bridging role between Latin Magnificat and non- Latin-literate audience member: her words are comprehensible in English, but also intimately interwoven with Mary’s Latin, through the intricate rhyme scheme and through a resultant, very particular structure and tone which bespeaks their alterity, linking them to the Latin. Elizabeth’s English contributions to the Magnificat, then, are not just a replication but also (appropriately enough) a magnification, or an addition to the Latin text. Indeed, Mary specifically notes that the Magnificat is “seyd betweyn us tweyn” (Spector, N-Town, Mary Play: The Visit to Elizabeth l. 127, my emphasis), suggesting that Elizabeth’s voice, and the vernacular gloss she provides, have an integral role to play in the transmission of the whole. Mary’s words explicitly unify text and gloss into a shared, rather than a divided utterance, and neither part of that utterance is here figured by Mary as subordinate to the other. Mary and Elizabeth’s creation of a double-voiced and yet complete or unified Magnificat also, of course, has resonances with the antiphonal performance of liturgical worship. Penny Granger has described this scene brilliantly as “a macaronic double act which simultaneously transforms the [Magnificat] into a teaching aid, and, on page and stage, mirrors monastic antiphonal performance” (112-13). Female characters are here given the authority to speak the words of the Bible and to expound them in the vernacular in a format which bears a striking resemblance not only to the way in which transmitting scripture often involved copying text and gloss together, but also to the way in which male clergy would have routinely uttered the Latin liturgy - antiphonally, using a kind of call and response technique. As Granger notes (116), the manuscript presentation of this scene makes this plain through changes in script. The Latin and English move back and forth from a textura script for Mary’s Latin to the more usual anglicana script for Elizabeth’s English, creating visually different voices for each. 5 Recent commentators have stressed the extent to which N-Town in particular functions as a reading manuscript as well as a manuscript that could be used for performance, or provides a record of performance (see e.g. Granger 116, 5 On the ways in which textura script can be read as privileging Latin over the anglicana vernacular, reinforcing the difference in status between the two utterances, and for a detailed description of the changes in script, see Wellesley. <?page no="79"?> Feminizing the Liturgy 79 182-83) - and the enactment of the different languages on the page is a prime example of this. This feminized Magnificat recalls more than only its Biblical moment, then - for the Magnificat is also a central part of the liturgy, the canticle sung daily at the office of Vespers. As Spector notes, the fact that Mary and Elizabeth continue after the end of the Biblical text with the Gloria patri clearly “shows the influence of the liturgical version of the Magnificat,” and therefore also acts as a reminder to the audience that they must connect this song not just with its originary moment in Luke, but also with its daily repetition by the clergy as part of the liturgy (N-Town, Commentary 465). Again, Mary articulates this for the audience: after she and Elizabeth have finished, she notes that the Magnificat is “ever to be songe every day, amonge us at oure evensong” (Spector, N-Town, Mary Play: The Visit to Elizabeth ll. 129-30). This moment is extraordinary in that, briefly, Mary seems to step away from her role within the play and speak in a tone like that of Contemplacio, addressing the audience as one of them, perhaps even as the actor rather than the part (“us,” “oure evensong”). Once again, it is deixis which performs this movement: the “us” and “oure” which Mary utters situate her spatially and temporally, for the duration of her words, with the audience. The Mary Play’s Magnificat, then, functions also as an educative tool for those in the audience who are non-Latin-literate about the rituals and processes of the Latin liturgy. Audience members are enabled to connect a key part of the liturgy to its source in the Biblical narrative, and provided with a vernacular gloss - this is new knowledge provided by the play which they can transport into their next encounter with the Magnificat in church. The connection to the church liturgy could have been facilitated by the use of music: most commentators suggest that Mary’s Latin verses would probably have been performed as sung liturgy rather than spoken out loud. Elisabeth Dutton, in 2010, engaged in a performance of the Mary Play designed in part to test the ways in which using song as well as dialogue could work on stage, and suggests that song is an integral part of the design of this play (see Smout, Dutton and Cheung Salisbury). As Granger notes, the N-Town Magnificat provides a radical onstage moment - a liturgical chant paraphrased and “performed by women outside the confines of a male dominated Church,” and a return of the song to its “scriptural context” (134). How does this compare to the use of the liturgy in my second example - a short scene from a late fifteenth-century Nativity play found in Chantilly, Musée Condé MS 617? This manuscript, and the selection of vernacular plays it contains were copied and - I have argued elsewhere - <?page no="80"?> Olivia Robinson 80 actively shaped and performed by the nuns within a Carmelite convent in the now-Belgian town of Huy (see Robinson). This scene makes a fascinating counterpoint for thinking about the Biblical and liturgical citation undertaken by the female characters in N-Town. The nuns who made this play manuscript and performed this play make sophisticated use of the liturgy throughout, but especially at the quite solemn and dramatic moment at which the Star appears to the Magi and they journey to offer gifts to the baby Jesus. This moment is marked by a rare stage direction clearly involving some kind of prop: “l’estoille se doit moustreir” (“the star must show itself,” Cohen 18-21). The dialogue between the Magi which immediately follows the appearance of the star is then peppered with repeated quotations from the liturgy, in Latin, a feature which occurs nowhere else in this otherwise vernacular play: L’estoille se doit moustreir. JASPAR Hoc signum magni regis est eamus et inquiramus eum et offeramus ei munera aurum, thus et mirram. [. . .] JASPAR A II ROY Puis mes signeur, que c’est vostre volenté de mire luy offeraie asseis Adorate Deum etc [. . .] MELCHIOR Volentire, sire roy de Saba d’enchens luy ferai offrande Adorate Deum etc BALTHASAR Et puis que del enchanse l’offert ly aueis, de mon or a grant planté luy voraie de bon cuer presenteir puis comencherons a retourneir. Omnes de Saba etc The use of Latin citation from the liturgy in this scene falls into two categories. The first, and most straightforward, is the addition of the incipit of a particular liturgical chant, followed by the abbreviation “etc.” There are three of these additions, and the manuscript presents them clearly as in some senses additional to the vernacular verse speeches uttered by the characters in this scene: they are located in the right hand margin of the folio, one after each Magus has formally detailed the gift that he will give to Jesus (see Figure 1). The first two are the same - <?page no="81"?> Feminizing the Liturgy 81 “Adorate Deum etc,” attached to Jaspar and Melchior’s speeches - while the last, Balthasar’s “Omnes de Saba etc,” seems to serve both to conclude his declaration and to accompany the movement within the playing space which would symbolize the journey of the Magi to the Holy family - when one of the Magi next speaks, immediately after “Omnes de Saba etc,” it is to Joseph, suggesting that by this time, they have moved to them. The second category of liturgical citation is more difficult to disentangle, however: Jaspar’s words upon seeing the star appear. This utterance is represented differently from the three liturgical incipits in the manuscript: rather than being placed in the right hand margin, abbreviated and used to close a vernacular speech, it is written out in full, in Latin, in the writing column, where speech normally sits. However, it is not laid out exactly like the vernacular speech in the manuscript, as it is not in verse, and the copyist seems to have been aware of this, lineating it as prose within the space of the writing column (see Figure 2). Analysis and comparison of these two types of liturgical citation yields some fascinating evidence for the ways in which the liturgy was transformed by these playwrights into a potent dramatic tool. The three liturgical citations which are inserted in abbreviated form at the end of each Magus’s vernacular speech can be easily identified from their given incipits. The words “Adorate Deum” form the incipit to more than one liturgical chant, but by far the most likely in the context of the play is the chant that is used as an antiphon in the office of Matins on the feast of the Epiphany. 6 “Omnes de Saba” is easier still to identify: it is most often used as one of the responsories from the same office, Matins on the feast of Epiphany, “Omnes de Saba venient aurum et thus deferentes et laudem domino annuntiantes alleluia alleluia.” 7 This chant is ultimately taken from Isiah 60: 6: the prophecy made that the Magi would come and honour Jesus. Both of these liturgical borrowings, therefore, are absolutely accurate, or appropriate, in terms of the events being depicted on stage. As we saw in the Mary Play, they too serve both to move the liturgy outside the church office, embedding it into a different kind of event and a different context, and to underline very precisely the Biblical and temporal significance of liturgical worship. The choice of “Omnes de Saba” creates this effect in a particularly complex way, because of its Old Testament roots in Isaiah. By electing 6 The CANTUS database provides the following as the master-chant for this antiphon: “Adorate dominum alleluia omnes angeli ejus alleluia.” Several of the indexed manuscripts provide “deum” in the place of “dominum” for this chant. For the identification of this and other chants, see the CANTUS database. 7 I cite the CANTUS database’s master-version of the chant here. <?page no="82"?> Olivia Robinson 82 to place this particular liturgical citation here, the nuns have created a precise and deliberate dramatic effect - the on-stage Magi are seen fulfilling Isaiah’s prophecy and performing the appropriate liturgical worship simultaneously. In the second category of liturgical citation, that which takes the form of Jaspar’s speech to the other Magi in response to the star, the nuns move beyond embedding liturgical citation into their dramatic script. Rather, they show themselves to be capable of confidently remodelling the liturgy to suit their particular dramatic needs. I have already noted that Jasper’s words are not presented in the same way as the chants I just discussed. They are copied out in full rather than abbreviated: “hoc signum magni regis est, eamus et inquiramus eum, et offeramus ei munera: aurum, thus et mirram” (“here is the sign of a great king, let us go and enquire after him, and offer him gifts: gold, frankincense and myrrh”). This does, in fact, represent another very appropriate liturgical citation, once again from the Feast of the Epiphany - it is part of the antiphon sung either side of the Magnificat during the office of Vespers. However, it is extremely hard to track down as such - because it is actually only half of that antiphon, the second half - so the incipit with which it would begin in its complete, liturgical sense is missing. The full antiphon reads as follows: “Magi videntes stellam dixerunt ad invicem hoc signum magni regis est eamus et inquiramus eum et offeramus ei munera aurem thus et myrrham” (“the Magi, seeing the star, said to one another, here is the sign of a great king, let us go and enquire after him, and offer him gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh”). 8 What the nuns have done here is clearly to chop the chant in half so that only the appropriate “direct speech” - i.e. what the Magi actually said to one another - is part of their play. This makes sense - within the context of the play, Jaspar should be speaking as a Magus, not narrating as though he were outside the play what happened in the past tense, which is the function fulfilled by the first, deleted part of this antiphon. I would argue that the reason that the now-halved antiphon is written out in full in the manuscript in the unusual way that we have noted is the very same reason that it now takes a certain length of time to recover it for someone relying on a database. The individuals performing this play knew their liturgy very well indeed, and could instantly find the right chant just from the conventional incipit. If the opening words of a particular chant were absent, however, it would probably be considerably more difficult to recall. A new incipit could, in theory, be created for the trun- 8 Again, I cite the CANTUS database’s master-chant. <?page no="83"?> Feminizing the Liturgy 83 cated chant, so that it could be presented in line with the conventional incipits, in the right margin. However, doing this could potentially open up more confusion, for if a new incipit were created for the half-cited antiphon by using its opening words - “Hoc signum etc,” for example - it would risk duplicating the incipits of chants which already exist, and which would inevitably be recalled by a performer steeped in this kind of liturgical shorthand. There is in fact a full liturgical chant whose incipit is “Hoc signum”: “Hoc signum crucis erit in caelo cum dominus ad judicandum venerit,” but this is an unrelated chant most usually sung during Matins on the feast of the inventio crucis - the finding of the true cross - so it would be liturgically inappropriate for the Epiphany narrative being played out on stage. This play, then, suggests a convent production milieu peopled by female playwrights, actors and scribes (on which see further Robinson) who are extremely liturgically adept, and also very confident about modifying and re-deploying the Latin text of the liturgy in order to create particular and designed dramatic effects, demonstrating their full ownership of the offices they celebrated on a daily basis. In this, it resembles the Mary Play, whose compositor(s) were also deeply interested in moving sections of the liturgy outside Church worship, embedding them in pieces of vernacular drama to create more complex and nuanced appreciation of what it might mean for individuals to perform Biblical narrative - particularly that relating to the life of Christ - in a present-day space and time. Johnston, in 2010, suggested that we might look to monastic institutions potentially to provide us with the missing production or composition contexts for at least some of the N-Town collection’s component parts, including the Mary Play. The brief comparisons that I have been able to draw here between the Mary Play and the Huy convent Nativity may support this assertion: they certainly reveal some intriguingly comparable approaches to embedding liturgical citation within vernacular drama. Like the N-Town Mary Play, the Huy Nativity employs Latin liturgy as a way of conveying and exploring complex ideas about Biblical temporalities, and the acute temporal significance of liturgical worship. In both plays, too, this temporal significance is articulated in a particularly feminized context, and is performed upon the manuscript page by copyists, as well as through the mouths of female actors and characters. Of course, this discussion does not prove that the Mary Play originated in a convent, nor did it set out to. It does, however, illustrate an intriguing overlap in compositional technique and potential performance effects between a little-studied convent play and “the most ‘liturgical’ of <?page no="84"?> Olivia Robinson 84 the medieval scriptural dramas” (Smout, Dutton and Cheung Salisbury 95). <?page no="85"?> Feminizing the Liturgy 85 Figure 1: Chantilly, Musée Condé MS 617, fol. 6r (Reproduced with the kind permission of the Musée Condé, Bibliothèque et archives du château de Chantilly) <?page no="86"?> Olivia Robinson 86 Figure 2: Chantilly, Musée Condé MS 617, fol. 7r (Reproduced with the kind permission of the Musée Condé, Bibliothèque et archives du château de Chantilly) <?page no="87"?> Feminizing the Liturgy 87 References Barr, Helen. “This Holy Time: Present Sense in the Digby Lyrics.” After Arundel. Ed. Vincent Gillespie and Kantik Ghosh. Turnhout: Brepols, 2011. 307-323. CANTUS (<http: / / cantusdatabase.org>, accessed 2 February 2015). Cohen, Gustave, ed. Mystères et moralités du ms. 617 de Chantilly. Paris: Champion, 1920. Dillon, Janette. The Cambridge Introduction to Early English Theatre. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2006. Dutton, Elisabeth. “Secular Medieval Drama.” The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Literature in English. Ed. Elaine Treharne and Greg Walker. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Granger, Penny. The N-Town Plays: Drama and Liturgy in Medieval East Anglia. Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2009. Johnston, Alexandra. “Playmaking in Bury St Edmunds: An Argument by Analogy.” Research Opportunities in Medieval and Renaissance Drama XLIX (2010): 28-39. McMurray Gibson, Gail. Theater of Devotion: East Anglian Drama and Society in the Late Middle Ages. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989. Niebrzydowski, Sue. “Secular Women and Late Medieval Marian Drama.” Yearbook of English Studies 43 (2013): 122-139. Normington, Katie. Gender and Medieval Drama. Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2004. ―――. “Faming of the Shrews: Medieval Drama and Feminist Approaches.” Yearbook of English Studies 43 (2013): 105-20. Robinson, Olivia. “Mystères as Convent Drama.” Les Mystères: Studies in Genre, Text and Theatricality. Ed. Peter Happé and Wim Husken. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2012: 93-118. Smout, Dutton and Cheung Salisbury. “Staging the N-Town Plays: Theatre and Liturgy.” Research Opportunities in Medieval and Renaissance Drama XLIX (2010): 80-109. Spector, Stephen, ed. The N-Town Play. Early English Text Society, S.S. 11 and 12. 2 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991. Stokes, James. “Women and Mimesis in Medieval and Renaissance Somerset (and Beyond).” Comparative Drama 27 (1993): 176-196. Twycross, Meg. “Transvestism in the Mystery Plays.” Medieval English Theatre 5: 2 (1983): 123-80. Venuti, Lawrence. “Translation as Cultural Politics: Regimes of Domestication in English.” Textual Practice 7: 2 (1993): 208-23. Reprinted in: Weissbort, Daniel and Astradur Eysteinsson, eds. Translation - Theory <?page no="88"?> Olivia Robinson 88 and Practice. A Historical Reader. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006: 546-57. Wellesley, Mary. “Evyr to be songe and also to be seyn: The Performing Page of the N-Town Visit to Elizabeth.” Pecia 16 (forthcoming). <?page no="89"?> Staging Concerns of Inquisitorial Procedures in The N-Town Plays Tamás Karáth The Norwich heresy trials (1428-31) preserved the unique documentation of the hearings of sixty persons accused with heretical charges. The records evince the notary’s involvement in the idiosyncrasies of the accused. John of Exeter’s personal interest in the spontaneous vernacular expressions of the suspects reflects on the deeper psychology of the hearings. Fifteenth-century East Anglian culture provides both legal and non-legal testimonies of similar interests in the inquisitorial potentials of obtaining truth. The N-Town Plays post-dates the burgeoning production of new inquisitorial materials of the 1420s, yet its unique focus on public fame, accusation, and trial situates the plays in this pedagogical interest. The legal discourse of the plays is not overtly polemical with heterodoxy; its inquisitorial concerns rather explore the limitations and inefficiencies of an inquisitorial situation. This essay argues that N-Town’s engagement with the psychology and pedagogy of inquisitorial procedures is similar to John of Exeter’s involvement in the conflicting biases during a staged process of questioning. N-Town ultimately challenges the dialogic mode of acquiring truth by representing the distortions of personal integrity and of truth in different situations of questioning. A recent collection of studies, The Culture of Inquisition in Medieval England, co-edited by Mary C. Flannery and Katie L. Walter, discusses medieval inquisition as social and cultural discourses that “penetrated the latemedieval consciousness in a broader sense, shaping public fama and private selves, as well as affecting the construction of deviancy, sexuality and gender, rhetoric, narrative form and literary invention” (2). The edi- Drama and Pedagogy in Medieval and Early Modern England. SPELL: Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 31. Ed. Elisabeth Dutton and James McBain. Tübingen: Narr, 2015. 89-110. <?page no="90"?> Tamás Karáth 90 tors of the volume indicate new possibilities of research that intersects epistemology, law, pedagogy, literature and religion (1-7). This essay explores the discourses of heresy and law in the fifteenth-century East- Anglian N-Town Plays in the context of a series of close contemporary large-scale heresy trials in the same region. The extant records of the Norwich trials of 1428-31 have preserved not only the legal protocols and the occasional abuses of the inquisition of the day, but also the notary’s attempts to reconstruct a Lollard idiom. The two central sources of this paper, an episcopal inquiry into heresy and a dramatic text, are intricately related to pedagogy. The practices of the church to detect heresy became immediately pedagogical propaganda to instruct the laity. The legal procedures of the church courts, such as public trials, excommunications, penitential processions and performances, abjurations, purgations, let alone public executions, were performed in ways that imitated and used the potentials of civic drama (Forrest 137). Forrest labels this important aspect of the ecclesiastical pedagogy of communicating knowledge of the new procedures against heresy to the lay as judicial drama (Forrest 113). He concludes that the church’s channels of communication and modes of instruction were inherently indebted to civic drama: The form of ecclesiastical propaganda most closely associated with civic drama was the procession, which demanded extensive participation, and thus attention from the laity. Because of the popularity and frequency of civic, liturgical, guild and parochial processions, the episcopacy was able to manage and manipulate familiar forms of communal activity in support of current and pressing problems. Indeed in some cases it is difficult to differentiate the scheduled procession from the exceptional, but in these cases its effectiveness as propaganda may be increased rather than diminished. Processions could be used to draw attention to new legislation against heresy or to heresy investigations, and to realize the dramatic potential of abjurations and penances. (137) Yet the practices that were sought to be transmitted through various semi-dramatic and performative channels were themselves under constant pedagogical revision. John A. F. Thomson and Anne Hudson have pursued the development of inquisition strategies. They have observed that the similar sets of condemned heretical views in the extant episcopal enquiries can also be ascribed to the use of formulaic lists of questions, the first extant examples of which were “devised, one by a jurist, another by theologians, for the discernment of heretics, apparently about 1428 under the zealous direction of archbishop Chichele” (Hud- <?page no="91"?> Staging Concerns of Inquisitorial Procedures 91 son 21; Thomson 224). The circulation of such schematic lists of questions in later trials also attests to a constant endeavour of canon lawyers and notaries to adapt legal situations to local conditions, on the one hand, and to develop the ways of efficiently identifying heresy in the suspects on the other (Forrest 109). Thus the pedagogical role of such documents is at least twofold: as “confidential” records of the inquiring authorities, they can reveal some of their anxieties over the limits of the inquisitorial methods, while as documents prepared with the aim of restoring social order, they also prepared the way for the public and propagandistic use of the recorded event. The juxtaposition of the extant records of the Norwich heresy trials and the N-Town compilation will illustrate two related strategies contradicting the overall mechanisms of the fifteenth-century pedagogical propaganda of the church in England. The personal engagement of John of Exeter, notary of the Norwich trials, displays a unique interest in the ways in which language constructs collective identities and expresses power relations, social status and the self. While John’s endeavour may also serve to more precisely identify the clues of heterodoxy in the language of the suspects, the very deep involvement in the idiosyncrasies of the Lollards necessarily develops empathy that precludes the demonization of the heretics for the sake of propaganda. N-Town deconstructs the stereotypes of the depravity of Lollard language, whose manifestations were widespread in contemporary sources: The lollard was being constructed as an example of the false speaker, or “illtongued” man, who, according to the Aristotelian physiognomic work Secretum secretorum, could be recognized because his “lower lippe lolle outward.” The pride of heretics created in them an imbalance that led to anger and inconstancy in their speech and actions. Thomas Netter advised his readers to let their Wycliffite opponents “rage and ridicule.” They would not prevail because “truth was not in their mouths.” In the same vein Friar Daw says to his Wycliffite interlocutor: “in thi frensy thou fonnest more and more! ” The image of the raging heretic was popular with polemicists, and was often expressed in extrapolations from the wolf in sheep’s clothing metaphor. (Forrest 160-61) N-Town’s focus on the nature of public fame and inquisition situates the plays in the pedagogical interest of John of Exeter without becoming overtly polemical. The compilation indeed reverses the conventional value judgment of orthodox authority and heterodox depravity, and represents heresy as the exclusive attribute of Christ. At the same time, it ascribes corruption to the institutions of jurisprudence and empowers <?page no="92"?> Tamás Karáth 92 anti-Christian authorities to hunt heretics. An obvious, but not exclusive, interpretation of this perversion may be that justice and heresy are elusive, which enabled the scribe-compiler (to use Alan Fletcher’s term [164]) to reflect on the corrupt practices of contemporary courts. A telling sign of one of the revisers’ keen eye on the theme of heresy is a revised and partly illegible passage in the first great monologue of Herod in the pageant of the Magi (Play 18). This very first reference to heresy in the plays has been reconstructed by Douglas Sugano as follows: H ERODES R EX I shall marryn tho herytykys that belevyn a mysse, And therin sette there sacrementys. Fallse they are I say! Ther is no lorde in this werde that lokygh me lyke, iwysse; For to lame herytykkys of the lesse lay, I am jolyere than the jay! (N-Town 18.73-7) 1 Sugano’s reconstruction of the textual gaps of the above passage on the basis of the revisions by a later hand associates Herod’s speech with other references to heretical depravity in N-Town. This reading is entirely in line with the characteristics of the pompous and intimidating monologues of other abusive authorities of the plays, such as Caiaphas, Annas and their legal assistance. Inquisition and heresy hunt become the prerogatives of the persecutors of Christ. The instigators of the Conspiracy in Passion Play I coalesce in their unison of menacing heretics. Annas vindicates the exclusive jurisdiction over heretics and claims an ironically exaggerated omnitudo potestatis for himself: “Yf any eretyk here reyn, to me ye compleyn. / For in me lyth the powere, all trewthis to trye, / And pryncypaly, oure lawys, tho must I susteyn” (N-Town 26.170-2). A variation of this claim appears in Caiaphas’s speech: 1 The four-line passage contains several illegible words, and is also revised by a later hand. Sugano reconstructs the revised text; Stephen Spector edits the text that is recoverable from the original layer: “I xall marryn þo men þat r . . .yn on myche, / And þerinne sette here sacrementys sottys . . . say! / Þer is no lorde in þis werde þat lokygh me lyche. / For to lame l . . . of þe lesse lay . . .” (The N-Town Plays, notes to lines 18.73-7). Katherine S. Block also edits this version of the main text and gives the revised readings by the second hand in her notes: “[Note to line 73: ] The latter part of this line has been altered in the second hand to (þo) heretykys (þat) beleuen a-mysse.” She further notes that the obscure word in line 76, “altered by the reviser to heretykkys, may be lo[ve]rys or le[ve]rys” (Ludus Coventriae 153-54). <?page no="93"?> Staging Concerns of Inquisitorial Procedures 93 CAYPHAS I, Cayphas, am jewge with powerys possible To distroye all errouris that in oure lawys make varyawns. All thyngys I convey be reson and temperawnce, And all materis possyble, to me ben palpable. (26.211-4) Although the arch enemy of his power is identified with “errouris” that make “varyawns” in laws, the canonical distinction between heterodoxy by ignorance (error) and by the obstinate denial and rejection of orthodox faith was not consistently maintained in contemporary legal sources and speculations either (Leff 1-2; Forrest 15). Reginald Pecock, Bishop of Chichester, tried for heretical charges and forced to publically recant, defines error and heresy as synonyms: “an errour or heresye is not þe ynke writen, neiþir þe voice spokun, but it is þe meenyng or þe vndirstondyng of þe writer or speker signified bi þilk ynke writen or bi þilk voice spokun” (qtd. in Forrest 16). The preambles of the abjurations of the Norwich heresy trials often introduce the views in which the suspects were found contrary to the Church with the formula “doctrinas erroneas et hereticas admisisse” [to have embraced erroneous and heretical doctrines] and its English counterpart “afermed opin errours and heresies” (cf. e.g. Tanner 52 and 56). The menaces of Annas and Caiaphas find a specific target only in the speeches of the legal entourage of the two bishops. Lynn Squires observes that the stage directions describe the two doctors of Annas and the two lawyers of Caiaphas in terms of the conventional array of fifteenth-century ecclesiastical and lay judges (208). The furred hoods and caps of the two doctors and the striped robes of the lawyers, Rewfyn and Leyon, permit Squires to identify them as judges and sergeants-atlaw: “The council scene as a whole is carefully constructed so as to impress the audience with a show of contemporary power: the costumes and characters represent the range of authority in a late medieval town” (208). The conspirators and the actual executors of the bishops’ plot readily translate Annas and Caiaphas’s universal and general raids on heretics into a concrete target by hereticising Christ: “ REWFYN He [Jesus] is an eretyk and a tretour bolde / To Sesare and to oure lawe, sertayn! ” (N-Town 26.309-10). The first doctor of Annas proposes Christ’s dual punishment by hanging and burning, which echoes the terms of the statute De haeretico comburendo of 1401, declaring that heretics perpetrate treason, and consequently sanctions their crime with hanging and burning at the stake: “Let hym [Jesus] fyrst ben hangyn and drawe / And thanne his body in fyre be brent” (N-Town Plays 26.319-20). Finally, Gamaliel, one of the soldiers arresting Christ in the episode of the Betrayal (Play 28), anticipates the judicial verdict before the ensuing trial <?page no="94"?> Tamás Karáth 94 scenes by the announcement of Christ’s guilt, again in terms of De haeretico comburendo: “Lo, Jhesus, thu mayst not the cace refuse! / Bothe treson and eresye in thee is fownde” (N-Town Plays 28.113-4). The sequence of the two Passion Plays - a later addition to the plays - constructs the Passion narrative as a monumental preparation of an inquisition against heresy in Passion Play I, whose court trial takes place in Passion Play II. Jesus and his disciples are constantly identified as perpetrators of orthodoxy, and consequently, Jesus is condemned as a heretic. In the pageant of the Announcement to the Marys, Mary Magdalene’s lament evokes the absent Christ with the phrase “bowndyn in brere” [bound in briar] (N-Town Plays 36.40), which ambiguously signifies Christ’s crown of thorns, as well as the common humiliation of fifteenth-century heretics before their execution: they were “surrounded by briars as they were being burned at the stake” (N-Town Plays, note to line 36.40). The post-resurrection part of the plays represents a symbolic purging of Christ, in which the heretical charges are dropped and turned against those who made ill use of public defamation. The pageant of Cleophas and Luke and the Appearance to Thomas (Play 38) is the only instance of the heretical discourse of N-Town, which detaches the notion of heresy from Christ: “ THOMAS For be my grett dowte, oure feyth may we preve / Agens all the eretykys that speke of Cryst shame” (N- Town Plays 38.387-8). The “legal plot” of the plays is embedded in this heretical discourse, but it does not stage a dramatic clash between forces of orthodoxy and of heterodoxy. As a matter of fact, the legal design of the plays consists of several subplots with different dominant themes. Christ’s life and Passion are conceived as a series of legal challenges. The unique Parliament of Heaven pageant, concluding with the victory of “the case” of Mercy and Peace, contextualizes the heavenly debate in a court of conscience scene with appropriate legal terminology: PAX Therefore, mesemyth best ye thus acorde; Than hefne and erthe, ye shul qweme: Putt bothe youre sentens in oure Lorde. And in his hygh wysdam, lete hym deme. This is most syttynge, me shulde seme. And lete se how we fowre may all abyde. That mannys sowle, it shulde perysche, it wore sweme, Or that ony of us fro othere shulde dyvyde. <?page no="95"?> Staging Concerns of Inquisitorial Procedures 95 VERITAS In trowthe hereto I consente; I wole prey oure Lorde it may so be. JUSTICIA I, Ryghtwysnes, am wele contente, For in hym is very equyté. (N-Town Plays 11,121-32; emphasis added) [. . .] FILIUS I thynke the thoughtys of Pes and nowth of wykkydnes. This I deme, to ses youre contraversy. (11.137-38; emphasis added) The earthly life of Christ pursues the motif of legal challenge. The first subplot consists of plays where the defamed or accused party is not Christ. Following the spectacular divine arbitrations of the Mary Play (especially in Play 8: Joachim and Anne, Play 10: Marriage of Mary and Joseph and Play 11: The Parliament of Heaven), the scribe-compiler inserted the unique pageant of The Trial of Mary and Joseph. In this pageant the Bishop overhears the conversation of detractors and summons both Mary and Joseph to purge themselves. While the process from defamation to summoning and inquisitorial questioning stages contemporary practices, the pageant ends with a miraculous (and rather anachronistic) divine arbitration: an ordeal by a magic potion, which reveals truth that cannot be elicited by the legal methods of inquisition. Similarly, the pageant of The Woman Taken in Adultery is conceived in terms of public defamation and false accusation. Following Jesus’ opening monologue, the scribe [Scriba] is determined to reveal Jesus’ hypocritical disguise by appropriating Annas and Caiaphas’s concerns with the destruction of laws, as well as by slandering him in a rather debased and condescending manner: SCRIBA Alas, alas! Oure lawe is lorn! A fals ypocryte, Jhesu, be name - That of a sheppherdis dowtyr was born - Wyl breke oure lawe and make it lame! He wyl us werke ryght mekyl shame! His fals purpos - if he upholde - All oure lawys he doth defame! That stynkynge beggere is woundyr bolde! (N-Town Plays 24.41-48) The Pharisee [Phariseus] joins the scribe and proposes a framework for countering Christ’s teaching to put shame on him. But ultimately, the accuser [Accusator] presents the precise scheme of confronting Jesus with a prostitute caught in flagranti. The low language of the accuser denigrating the woman cannot conceal his indulgence in the erotic fantasies which still show both the prostitute and her sexual services attractive: <?page no="96"?> Tamás Karáth 96 ACCUSATOR Herke, Sere Pharysew and Sere Scrybe: A ryght good sporte I kan yow telle! I undyrtake that ryght a good brybe We all shul have to kepe councell: A fayre yonge qwene hereby doth dwelle, Both fresch and gay upon to loke, And a tall man with her doth melle. The wey into hyr chawmere ryght evyn he toke. Lett us thre now go streyte thedyr, The wey ful evyn I shall yow lede, And we shul take them both togedyr Whyll that thei do that synful dede. (24.65-76) The display of verbal violence and obscene slander of the conspirators represents the harshest registers of low language, which evokes at the same time the more moderate, though equally insulting, language of the accusers of Joseph and Mary in the pageant of The Trial of Mary and Joseph: SCRIBA Come forth, thu stotte! Com forth, thu scowte! Com forth, thu bysmare and brothel bolde! Com forth, thu hore and stynkynge bych clowte! How longe hast thu such harlotry holde? PHARISEUS Com forth, thu quene! Come forth, thu scolde! Com forth, thu sloveyn! Com forth, thu slutte! We shal thee tecche with carys colde, A lytyl bettyr to kepe thi kutte! (24.145-52) ∗∗∗ DETRACTOR 2 Ya, that old shrewe Joseph - my trowth I plyght - Was so anameryd upon that mayd That of hyr bewté whan he had syght, He sesyd nat tyll he had her asayd! DETRACTOR 1 A, nay, nay, wel wers she hath hym payd! Sum fresch yonge galaunt she loveth wel more That his leggys to her hath leyd. And that doth greve the old man sore! DETRACTOR 2 Be my trewth, al may wel be, For fresch and fayr she is to syght, And such a mursel - as semyth me - Wolde cause a yonge man to have delyght! [. . .] <?page no="97"?> Staging Concerns of Inquisitorial Procedures 97 DETRACTOR 2 That olde cokolde was evyl begylyd To that fresche wench whan he was wedde! Now muste he faderyn anothyr mannys chylde And with his swynke, he shal be fedde. DETRACTOR 1 A yonge man may do more chere in bedde To a yonge wench than may an olde. That is the cawse such a lawe is ledde, That many a man is a kokewolde. (14.82-89 and 98-105) Just as the N-Town playwright operates with linguistic codes to identify the depravity of the detractors and plotters, the notary of the Norwich heresy trials, John of Exeter, seems to have been engaged in the reconstruction of a linguistic identity of the accused and, ultimately, in the exploration of the potentials of language use in the heresy trials. In the period of 1428-31, John Alnwick, Bishop of Norwich, orchestrated the hearings of a large group of Lollard suspects of Norfolk and Suffolk. The extant documentation of the legal procedure contains fifty-four cases of at least sixty persons, recorded by the episcopal notary John of Exeter (Tanner 8). John Foxe, who undoubtedly had access to more materials, reports double this number in Book 6 of his Acts and Monuments (Tanner 8). Shannon McSheffrey’s and Maureen Jurkowski’s calculations of the persons involved in the investigations consider also “individuals directly implicated by the testimony of others,” but reach different conclusions: they put the number of suspects at 83 and 127 respectively (Jurkowski 122). The dimensions of the Norwich heresy investigations can only be compared to those attested by the courtbook of the investigation of Bishop John Longland in the Lincoln diocese almost a century later in 1518-21 (Hudson 38-40, 129). The Norwich heresy trials were instigated by the activity of the “recidivist” William White and his followers in Kent, who established a network in Suffolk and Norfolk (Aston, “William White” 469-97; Aston, “Bishops and Heresy” 77; Hudson 33). After the initial activity of William Alnwick, who presided over the majority of the hearings, the bishop’s absence becomes conspicuous in the second phase of the trials, in which many hearings were conducted by his vicar general William Bernham. By the later phase of the trial series (1430-1), Alnwick must have been detained by his participation in the trial of Joan of Arc in Rouen. The documentation of the Norwich trials survives in a unique manuscript, which is not a courtbook. London, Westminster Diocesan Archives, MS B.2 contains copies of original notes, depositions and recantations in an arrangement without any apparent scheme (Tanner 2). My <?page no="98"?> Tamás Karáth 98 investigation of the manuscript concluded that the dynamism of the exigencies of the inquisitorial process determined when and where the material of a suspect could be filed. 2 The unfinished documentation preserved the enfolding narrative of an unprecedented heresy trial series, in which John of Exeter occasionally also acted on behalf of his superiors and took the lead in a few (legally dubious) hearings. But even when his task was restricted to playing the second violin in the quest for heretics, he relentlessly observed the language and behaviour of the suspects. Steven Justice’s study of the interrelations of inquisition, speech and writing in the case of the Norwich heresy trials concludes: I have not tried to claim that John of Exeter was sympathetic to the heretics. My argument is stranger: that he did not particularly pay attention to them as heretics, and that the boredom of scribal work drove him to record their words; that this sort of detached curiosity could produce a record historiographically more usable than either a hostile or a friendly account, because so little under ideological pressure, or indeed any pressure less vagrant than the need to occupy the mind; that a chink in the armature of institutional power is the banality of so much of its work. (Justice 318) While Justice believes that John’s motivation to record the spontaneous vernacular expressions of the accused was sheer boredom and a fundamental need to occupy one’s mind, the notary’s personal involvement in a few private conversations with the Lollards contradicts the assumption that he acted out of a sense of blind duty. Some of the hearings were also conducted by the notary privately, either in circumstances of faceto-face conversations with the suspect (John Burrell, 5 and 10 July 1429) or with a few witnesses in John’s home (William Colyn, 23 Oct 1429). But besides these exceptional episodes whose scenarios were obviously arranged by the notary, his apparent interventions in the testimonies of the suspects also seem to derive naturally from the notary’s personal zeal. The few passages that permit us to reconstruct his methods of keeping record of the hearings uncover the deeper psychology of the hearings and the notary’s personal interest in the manifestations of different perceptions and expressions of truth. John’s sensitivity to the idiosyncrasies of the Lollards appears in both explicit and implicit ways. The more obvious case is illustrated by the macaronic testimonies of Margery Baxter and John Burrell. 2 I am grateful to the European Society of the Study of English (ESSE), whose postdoctoral bursary allowed me to carry out research on the manuscript in the collections of the Westminster Diocesan Archives. <?page no="99"?> Staging Concerns of Inquisitorial Procedures 99 Margery’s is one of the most complex cases of the trials; she was summoned to the episcopal court on two occasions; her husband, William Baxter of Martham, also figures among the major suspects (Tanner 41-51). The records make it clear that the publica fama of the couple was compromised by their alleged connections with William White, who had been burnt for heresy in 1428 in Norwich (Aston, “William White” 71- 100; Hudson 33-4). The first hearing of Margery on 7 October 1428 was concluded with the ordering of her public flogging in front of Martham parish church and at the market of Acles, as well as her performance of public penitence in Norwich Cathedral on Ash Wednesday and Maundy Thursday of the following year (Tanner 43). Her case was, however, reopened on 1 April 1429, and was retried with the involvement of three witnesses whose depositions against Margery also survive in the manuscript. The records do not contain her punishment. Her state as a relapsed heretic should have incurred dual execution by hanging and burning according to the statute De haeretico comburendo (1401) in vigour at the time of the heresy trials. There is, however, no extant record proving her second conviction and eventual execution (Tanner 22; Thomson 123). In the second hearing of Margery, John of Exeter inserts several English passages in the deposition of Johanna Clifland, quoting sentences from her private conversations with Margery. These macaronic passages thus occur as a reported speech within a reported speech, doubly distanced from John’s authority, but in a crucial moment of the trials when a suspect’s relapse into heresy had to be proved. The macaronic passages of Johanna Clifland’s deposition evoke vivid episodes of Margery’s hostility to oaths and the veneration of images: [I]psa Johanna Clifland dixit quod die Veneris proximo ante festum Purificationis Beate Marie ultimum Margeria Baxter, uxor Willelmi Baxter, wright, nuper commorantis in Martham Norwiciensis diocesis, sedens et suens cum ista iurata in camera eiusdem iuxta camenum in presencia istius iurate ac Iohanne Grymell et Agnetis Bethom, servencium istius iurate, dixit et informavit istam iuratam et servientes suas predictas quod nullo modo iurarent, dicens in lingua materna: “dame, bewar of the bee, for every bee wil styngge, and therfor loke that ȝe swer nother be Godd ne be Our Ladi ne be non other seynt, and if ȝe do the contrarie the be will styngge your tunge and veneme your sowle.” (Tanner 44; emphasis added) [The same Johanna Clifland said that on the following Friday before the latest Feast of the Purification of the Virgin Mary, Margery Baxter, wife of William Baxter, carpenter, recently living in Martham of the Diocese of Norwich, was sitting and sowing in her chamber at the fireplace with this <?page no="100"?> Tamás Karáth 100 witness, and in the company of this witness, as well as of her servants Iohanna Grymell and Agnes Bethom told her and her servants before mentioned not to swear under any circumstances, saying in her mother tongue: “Dame, beware of the bee, for every bee stings, and therefore, look that you swear neither by God nor by our Lady or by any other saint; and if you do the contrary, the bee will sting your tongue and poison your soul.”] 3 Immediately following Margery’s cautions against the bee, Joan relates another episode, quoting again Margery’s vernacular: Et tunc dicta Margeria [. . .] dicens in lingua materna, ‘lewed wrightes of stokes hewe and fourme suche crosses and ymages, and after that lewed peyntors glorye thaym with colours, et si vos affectatis videre veram crucem Christi ego volo monstrare eam tibi hic in domo tua propria.’ (Tanner 44) [And then the said Margery … said in her mother tongue: ‘ignorant carvers hew and shape such crosses and images, and afterwards ignorant painters glorify them with colours. But if you wish to see the true cross of Christ, I will show it to you here, in your own house. (translation mine)] At this point, the records insert a small narrative of the witness’s consent to seeing the true cross and Margery’s performing the embodiment of the Cross by reaching out her arms. This vivid episode is an anecdotic gem with suspense, surprise, and a dramatic exchange of words between Margery and Joan. Although incursions against the veneration of images are the most frequently quoted heretical views in the trials (Tanner 11), Margery’s very personal revolt against images makes her opposition a memorable episode of the hearings. The uncommon and unusual expressions of personal discontent and zeal also suspend John’s routine work of recording the standard grievances of the suspects in John Burrell’s case. Like Margery, he was summoned to court also on two occasions (18 April 1428 and 5 July 1428), and his case was concluded with his public recantation on 9 December 1430, extant in the records. The English insertions into the Latin text of his trial are more restricted in length than those in Margery’s case. Moreover, unlike in Margery’s records, the notary rather signposts John Burrell’s unorthodoxy with recording the untranslatable puns disgracing certain devotional practices. The pun on the name of the shrine and the Virgin of Walsingham, Norfolk, also appears in Margery’s and John 3 Translation mine. Anne Hudson considers “wright” as an alternative surname of William Baxter/ Wright (138, 182). I interpret it as an occupational indicator. <?page no="101"?> Staging Concerns of Inquisitorial Procedures 101 Skyllan’s cases (Tanner 47 and 148), which suggests that they had a wider currency among the Lollards: “Item peregrinaciones nullo modo sunt faciende ad Mariam de Falsyngham nec ad Thomam Cantuar’ nec ad aliqua alia loca nisi tantum ad vicinos indigentes.”(Tanner 74) [Also, pilgrimages should in no way be done to the Mary of Falsyngham, to Thomas of Canterbury or to any other sites, unless they are in the close vicinity. (translation mine)]. 4 The frequent marginal notes on the pages of John Burrell’s case further indicate the interests of the investigators to use all evidence of content as well as expression and style against other suspects (Tanner 73-76, notes). A marginal sign [: ~] can be found next to another pun in Burrell’s case, which comments on the Lollard rejection of fasting: “nullus homo tenetur ieiunare [. . .] quia talia ieiunia nunquam erant instituta ex precepto divino sed tantum ex ordinacione presbiterorum, for every Fryday is fre day.” (Tanner 74) [noone is bound to fast. . ., because fasts were never established by divine commandment, but only by the ordinances of priests, and because Friday is free day (translation mine)]. Finally, John of Exeter also records a vernacular passage in John Burrell’s examination, probably not for the curiosity of the suspect’s expression but for the fact that it quotes the Bible: Item dicit quod idem frater suus docuit istum iuratum precepta Dei in lingua Anglicana, et quod in primo mandato continetur quod nullus honor est exhibendus aliquibus ymaginibus sculptis in ecclesiis per manus hominum, ne likened after hem in hevene above ne after hem that be in water benethe erthe, to lowte thaym ne worsshipe thaym. (Tanner 73) [Also, he said that the same brother taught this same suspect God’s Commandments in the English language, and also that the first Commandment says that no carved images made by men’s hands should be worshipped in the churches, nor the likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, nor of those things that are in the waters under the earth should be praised or worshipped. (translation mine)] 5 4 In the case of Margery Baxter, the witness Johanna Clifland relates that Margery imparted to her her aversion to pilgrimages, quoting the same pun: “ipsa [Margery] nunquam iret peregre ad Mariam de Falsyngham” (Tanner 47) [Margery would never go on pilgrimage to the Mary of Falsyngham]. John of Exeter recorded a whole list of abusive puns in the case of John Skyllan: “Also that no pilgrimage shuld be do to the Lefdy of Falsyngham, the Lefdy of Foulpette and to Thomme of Cankerbury, ne to noon other seyntes ne ymages” (Tanner 148). 5 The translated biblical verse (Ex 20: 4) comes from the Douay-Rheims 1899 American edition. The verse is only partially blended into the Latin with some syntactic confusion. <?page no="102"?> Tamás Karáth 102 Besides the macaronic excerpts of the records, many other instances of the trials suggest that John of Exeter was constantly revising both the Latin documents and the English recantations, containing reminiscences of the suspects’ utterances. The more idiomatic phrasing of a handful of the English recantations illustrates the efforts the notary took to register some collective characteristics of the suspects’ use of the vernacular. 6 Nonetheless, John also found that a meticulous interest in the linguistic decoding of Lollard reasoning may also frustrate the goals of the hearings. The paradox of John’s records is his simultaneous involvement in, and distancing from, what he identifies as a Lollard idiom. As soon as he grasps the linguistic identity of his opponents, he obfuscates their language (and his own translation from one idiom into the other) probably in order not to sound like them. An example of this is John’s reluctance to translate literally “every trewe man and woman being in charite” (Tanner 57; Justice 302). In John Skylly’s case, the Latin says: “quilibet homo existens in vera caritate” [whichever man being in true faith] (Tanner 52). But in the Godeselle couple’s later hearings, the notary renders the same phrase as “quilibet fidelis homo et quelibet fidelis mulier” [whichever true man and whichever true woman] (Tanner 61 and 67). In John Kynget’s English denunciation, the notary’s oscillations between the positions of biased distance and objective involvement found a way to record the authentic expression of the suspect without appropriating the speech marker of the Lollards: “[John Kynget believed that] the sacrament of Baptem, whyche the heretikes calle the shakelment of Baptem, doon in water in the fourme custimed in the Churche is of none availe ne to be pondred” (Tanner 81, emphasis added). What is common in the Norwich heresy trial records and the N-Town staging of hereticizing procedures is the suggestion that morality and immorality determine language use, and the ability of making good decisions in legal scenarios is ultimately bound to awareness of language and recognition of language codes, which can be taught and practiced with pedagogical insistence. The various trial scenes preceding the legal plot of Passion Play II stage different situations of victimization and institu- The Middle English fragment literally says that images should not be likened to anything that is above in heaven or in the waters beneath the earth. The original verse reads: “Thou shalt not make to thyself a graven thing, nor the likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, nor of those things that are in the waters under the earth.” 6 These are the cases of John Skylly, John Kynget, Richard Flecher, John Reeve, Hawisia Moone, John Skyllan, William Hardy, William Bate and Thomas Moone, corresponding to case numbers 5, 13, 14, 22, 28, 29, 30, 31 and 35 in Tanner. <?page no="103"?> Staging Concerns of Inquisitorial Procedures 103 tional abuses, all of which exploit the dramatic potentials of language. The overall theme that unites the several threads of the legal discourse and trial scenes is language. The N-Town Plays has also provided a rich store for the study of the reflections on language and the identity of its users in late medieval drama. Plummer concluded that the very drama of N-Town originates from the competing claims to control language: [S]everal critics have taken note of the importance of language as a theme in the religious drama of late medieval England: the work of Paula Neuss and Kathleen Ashley on Mankind and that of Martin Stevens of the Wakefield plays has helped to make us more keenly aware of these dramatists’ selfconsciousness about language. [. . .] The author of the N-Town Passion Play I shares with some of his colleagues a marked interest in language as a theme, though he differs from the author of Mankind and the Wakefield author in the use he makes of it. For the N-Town author, language is not so much an indicator of a character’s spiritual state - though that is no doubt also true - as an arena of conflict. [. . .] Christ and Satan struggle over the power to name, and thus to structure, the world. The conflict is thus not primarily between good words and evil words, though there are examples of both, but between Christ and Satan themselves over control of language, not merely what is said but how it means. (313 and 315) My suggestion beyond Plummer’s interpretation is, however, that language not only constitutes an arena for conflict and a power struggle for control, but that the corrupted authorities of inquisition, persecution and judgment are united in their desperate endeavour to find out the linguistic identity of their opponents. Language is construed not only as a theme which helps the playwright to translate legal opposition into a clash between wicked/ immoral language and a pure and taintless expression of the defamed, but it becomes also a tool that could provide a safer code and strategy for the identification of heretics than their vague pronouncements of intentions. Although The N-Town Plays stages a perverted inquisition whose orthodoxy falls short of the doctrines of the Church, the desire of the persecutors to obtain a key to the language of the “sect of Christ” serves to identify the fictitious stage characters of Annas, Caiaphas and other representatives of the institutional jurisdiction as soul mates of John of Exeter, the notary of the Norwich heresy trials. The N-Town Plays subtly surveys the struggles of the inquisitorial authorities to prevent the appearance of unfounded or hasty judgments, as well as to create the conditions of a legally self-explanatory situation in which the utterances of the suspect would automatically incur the sanc- <?page no="104"?> Tamás Karáth 104 tions for heresy. Ian Forrest’s statements about the general dilemmas of medieval inquisition can very relevantly be applied to the N-Town heresy hunters: Historians of heresy, like their inquisitorial forerunners, set themselves a difficult task if they wish to discover intention. More knowable are the methods used by inquisitors to narrow down the potential margin of error, remaining aware that pronouncements of heresy could never be definitive judgements. Judgement of final guilt or innocence belonged solely to God. On earth it was mankind's responsibility to protect the peace of the church by punishing the most dangerous examples of heresy, and tolerating those who could not be punished without causing scandal equal to the damage done by the crime itself. The requirement for justice, to balance punishment with equity, meant that the whole canonical system was predicated upon indeterminacy and careful interpretation. (16) The corollary of this pervasive uncertainty, in the overall design of The N-Town Plays, is the view that instead of interpreting heresy as a momentary and situational expression of intention, it should be defined as an essential part of the person’s identity that must find an individual and idiomatic expression. The N-Town playwright uses the theme of language to dramatize the double frustration of inquisition. On the one hand, their pedagogical attempts at eliciting truth from Christ fail in crucial moments, as the dialogic model of dramatic discourse prevalent in the trial scenes is inherently alien from the monologic discourses of the revelation of truth (cf. Fitzhenry 22-3). Very conspicuously, the sufferers of legal abuses - Mary, the adulterous woman and Christ - are shown mostly silent or low-key in front of their accusers. The revelations of truth are rather bound to monologic modes of expression that take the form of quasisermons or recitations of liturgical texts, which ultimately proves the failure of inquisitorial process in obtaining truth. On the other hand, the inquisitorial authorities are frustrated by their own assumption that there must be a sectarian and collective characteristic of the heretics’ use of language, which could be grasped as a code to their identities. The plays construct a frame of interpretation which shows inquisition as a quest for the collective linguistic identity of the “heretics.” The playwright does not experiment with creating a fictitious idiom for Christ and his disciples (and in this respect he is not at all comparable to John of Exeter, who actually recorded the markers of Lollardy in the suspects’ language). Nevertheless, he attributes such claims to inquisition and sug- <?page no="105"?> Staging Concerns of Inquisitorial Procedures 105 gests that their pedagogical tools are insufficient to find out whether a collective idiom of the heretics exists, let alone to elicit it. This frame of interpretation is established already in the pageant of Moses, which interprets the fifth Commandment (the prohibition of killing) with the fatal consequences of wicked speech: The fyfft comaundement byddyth all us: Scle no man, no whight that thu kyll. Undyrstonde this precept thus: Scle no wyght with wurd nor wyll. Wykkyd worde werkyht oftyntyme grett ill, Bewar therfore of wykkyd langage. Wyckyd spech many on doth spyll. Therfore of spech beth not owtrage. (N-Town Plays 6.131-8) The counterpart of this caution is Demon’s Prologue in Passion Play I, which not only instigates wicked speech, but also explicitly sets the Commandments at naught and evokes the triumph of perjury at assize courts: DEMON Loke thu sett not be precept nor be comawndement, Both sevyle and canoun, sett thu at nowth; Lette no membre of God, but with othys be rent. (N-Town Plays 26.93-5) [. . .] Seyse nere sessyon, lete perjery be chef. (26.114) The playwright constructs the linguistic identity of detractors and abusers of law in various ways. The detractors of the pageant of The Trial of Mary and Joseph deploy the style of popular contemporary erotic and vulgar poems mocking the trials and joys of marriage: DETRACTOR 1 Such a yonge damesel of bewté bryght And of schap so comely also Of hir tayle ofte tyme be light And rygh tekyl undyr thee, too! (N-Town Plays 14.94-7) […] DETRACTOR 1 A yonge man may do more chere in bedde To a yonge wench than may an olde. That is the cawse such a lawe is ledde, That many a man is a kokewolde. (14.102-5) The “Accusator” of the pageant of The Woman Taken in Adultery uses harshly abusive language for the woman (cf. N-Town Plays 24.145-52 qtd. <?page no="106"?> Tamás Karáth 106 above). Demon in his harangue introducing Passion Play I boasts with aureate language, Latinate vocabulary and Latin refrains: Whan the soule fro the body shal make separacyon, And as for hem that be undre my grett domynacyon, He shal fayle of hese intent and purpose, also. Be this tyxt of holde remembryd to myn intencyon: “Quia in inferno nulla est redempcio.” (26.44-8) [. . .] Byholde the dyvercyté of my dysgysyd varyauns, Eche thyng sett of dewe naterall dysposycyon, And eche parte acordynge to his resemblauns, Fro the sool of the foot to the hyest asencyon. (26.65-8) The tyrants and plotting leaders of the plays are identified with menaces. In spite of the diversity of stylistic registers and gestures of the abusers of law, they are united in their common and sincere wish to find out the “language code” of their opponents. The quest for heresy is transfigured into a quest for the expression of the identity of the group who are collectively labelled as heretics. The pageant of the Conspiracy with Judas (Play 27) in Passion Play I, takes an ironic turn when after agreeing on the details of the conspiracy with Judas, one of the plotters realizes that they cannot seize Christ as they cannot distinguish him from his disciples: LEYON Ya, beware of that, for ony thynge! For o dyscypil is lyche thi mayster in al parayl, And ye go lyche in all clothyng, So myth we of oure purpose fayl. (N-Town Plays 27.321-4; emphasis added) Leyon’s anxiety recasts the opponents into a sectarian group whose “parayl” means more than the dresses and habits of Jesus and his disciples. In his farewell speech to the disciples, Jesus extends the meaning of dresses to words, virtues and behaviour as part of the expression of their collective identity: JHESUS The gyrdyl that was comawndyd, here reynes to sprede, Shal be the gyrdyl of clennes and chastyté: That is to sayn, to be contynent in word, thought, and dede, And all leccherous levyng, cast yow for to fle. And the schon that shal be youre feet upon Is not ellys but exawnpyl of vertuis levyng <?page no="107"?> Staging Concerns of Inquisitorial Procedures 107 Of youre form-faderys, you beforn. With these schon, my steppys ye shal be sewyng. And the staf that in youre handys ye shal holde Is not ellys but the exawmpyls to other men teche. (N-Town Plays 27.417-26; emphasis added) The girdles, the shoes and the staff that are supposed to be worn and carried by all the disciples as signs of their newly avowed way of life in the imitation of Christ become symbols of their commonly shared words, language, deeds, virtues and teaching. But this collective identity to be manifested in speech is only in its making. It does not yield to Caiaphas’s impatient questioning: “And what is thi dottryne that thu dost preche? / Telle me now somewhath, and bryng us out of doute / That we may to othere men thi prechyng forth teche” (N-Town 29.131-3, emphasis added); nor does it seem to be shared by Christ and the disciples in the qui-pro-quo on the way to Emmaus. But finally, in this pageant, the playwright restores not only the correct interpretation of heresy (N-Town Plays 38.387-8 quoted above), but transforms multi-vocal language into a unison of Christ, which is the language (meaning language, message and conversation in the context) the inquisitors were desperately looking for: JHESUS Qwat is youre langage to me ye say That ye have togedyr, ye to? Sory and evysum ye been alway - Youre myrthe is gon. Why is it so? (N-Town Plays 38.45-8; emphasis added) [. . .] LUCAS For dowte of Pylat, that hygh justyce, He was slayn at the gret asyse Be councell of lordys, many on. Of suche langage - take bettyr avise In every company ther thu dost gon. (38.108-12; emphasis added) [. . .] CLEOPHAS Trewly from us ye shal not go. Ye shal abyde with us here stylle! Youre goodly dalyaunce plesyth us so, We may nevyr have of yow oure fylle! We pray yow, sere, with herty wylle: All nyght with us abyde and dwelle, More goodly langage to talkyn us tylle And of youre good dalyaunce more for to telle. (38.169-76) <?page no="108"?> Tamás Karáth 108 N-Town’s engagement with the language of inquisitorial procedures and the linguistic characteristics of detractors is similar to John of Exeter’s involvement in the conflicting biases and truths during a staged process of questioning that must obey strict rules of choreography. The concerns of the scribe-compiler of N-Town ultimately challenge institutional inquisitions and the dialogic mode of acquiring truth by exploring the distortions of personal integrity and truth in different situations of questioning. <?page no="109"?> Staging Concerns of Inquisitorial Procedures 109 References Manuscript London, Westminster Diocesan Archives, B.2/ 8 (The Norwich Heresy Trials) Published Sources Aston, Margaret. “William White’s Lollard Followers.” Catholic Historical Review 68 (1982): 469-97. ―――. “Bishops and Heresy: The Defence of the Faith.” Faith and Fire: Popular and Unpopular Religion, 1350-1600. Ed. Margaret Aston. London: The Hambledon Press, 1993. 73-93. De haeretico comburendo (1401). Text: Statutes of the Realm, 2: 12S-28: 2 Henry IV. http: / / www.ric.edu/ faculty/ rpotter/ heretico.html (9 October 2014) Fitzhenry, William. “The N-Town Plays and the Politics of Metatheater.” Studies in Philology 100 (2003): 22-43. Flannery, Mary C. and Katie L. Walter, eds. The Culture of Inquisition in Medieval England. Westfield Medieval Studies 4. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2013. Fletcher, Alan J. “The N-Town Plays.” The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre. Ed. Richard Beadle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. 163-88. Forrest, Ian. The Detection of Heresy in Late Medieval England. Oxford Historical Monographs. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Hudson, Anne. The Premature Reformation: Wycliffite Texts and Lollard History. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988. Jurkowski, Maureen. “Lollardy and Social Status in East Anglia.” Speculum 82 (2007): 120-52. Justice, Steven. “Inquisition, Speech, and Writing: A Case from Late Medieval Norwich.” Criticism and Dissent in the Middle Ages. Ed. Rita Copeland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. 289-322. Leff, Gordon. Heresy in the Later Middle Ages: The Relation of Heterodoxy to Dissent c. 1250-c. 1450. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1967. Ludus Coventriae, or The Plaie Called Corpus Christi. Cotton MS. Vespasian D. VIII. Ed. Katherine S. Block. Early English Text Society, E.S. 120. London: Oxford University Press, 1922. <?page no="110"?> Tamás Karáth 110 The N-Town Plays. Ed. Douglas Sugano. Kalamazoo, Michigan: Medieval Institute Publications, 2007. Plummer, John F. “The Logomachy of the N-Town Passion Play I.” The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 88 (1989): 311-31. Squires, Lynn. “Law and Disorder in ‘Ludus Coventriae’.” Comparative Drama 12 (1978): 200-13. Tanner, Norman P., ed. Heresy Trials in the Diocese of Norwich, 1428-31, Edited for the Royal Historical Society from Westminster Diocesan Archives MS. B.2. Camden Fourth Series 20. London: Offices of the Royal Historical Society, 1977. Thomson, John A. F. The Later Lollards, 1414-1520. London: Oxford University Press, 1965. <?page no="111"?> Plays on the Move 1 John J. McGavin Focussing on John Phillip’s The Comedy of Patient and Meek Grissill, but using the non-pedagogical Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis by Sir David Lyndsay as a control, this essay explores the migratory potential of pedagogical drama; the methodological challenges which this poses to an understanding of historical spectatorship, and the rewards of viewing the drama of this period from the point of view of its “consumers.” In particular, it suggests ways in which a critical response can be developed to cope with plays that have moved between different institutional auspices such as grammar school, choir school, and court, and are extant finally in print form. It argues that, although learning as a process; the importance of ethical gender relations; folly, and dramatic self-reflexivity all constitute enduring features of this genre’s content and style, they have varying values dependent on the context of performance. Consequently the critical challenges of migratory drama should first be addressed with respect to the history of single plays rather than genres, since it was the capacity of the play to meet the real or imagined needs of the consumer at the point of reception which determined its suitability. It suggests that Phillip’s Comedy needs to be revalued according to such criteria. 1 I am grateful to Professor Elisabeth Dutton and Professor Indira Ghose for inviting me to speak at the Swiss Association of Medieval and Early Modern Studies conference on “Drama and Pedagogy,” and to Professor Greg Walker for discussing the essay’s contents. Drama and Pedagogy in Medieval and Early Modern England. SPELL: Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 31. Ed. Elisabeth Dutton and James McBain. Tübingen: Narr, 2015. 111-129. <?page no="112"?> John J. McGavin 112 There is very little certain about John Phillip’s Comedy of Patient and Meek Grissill, licensed for publication by Thomas Colwell in 1565 and 1568 (Gildenhuys, A Gathering of Griseldas 76-152). Perhaps it, or some of its contents, started life in Radcliffe’s school theatre at Hitchin, between 1538 and 1552. The idea that Griselda would make a suitable topic for pedagogical drama certainly seems to have had its origins in that period with Radcliffe. Perhaps the published Comedy of the 1560s was the play performed in 1559 by St Pauls’ Boys, under the guidance of Sebastian Westcott, for Queen Elizabeth at Nonsuch palace, with John Phillip and John Heywood present, as recorded by Henry Machyn (206). Perhaps it contained work by both Phillip and Heywood - stylistically that seems highly likely. Perhaps the link between Radcliffe’s version and a later one was provided by Heywood’s having been Radcliffe’s neighbour. Precise dating of the composition of the published play also remains tendentious. Politick Persuasion’s opening speech refers to the weathercock of old St Pauls catching his leg as he falls from heaven. Chambers, Harbage and Schoenbaum thought that this suggested the spire was still standing when the play was written. They argued that this would place composition closer to the 1559 performance, the spire having come down, struck by lightning, on 4 June 1561. 2 But this concatenation proves nothing since the opening speech is manifestly ludicrous, and would have made just as much sense as a foolish reference to a landmark now gone. If anything, one is suspicious about such a textual reference to the spire having appeared coincidentally before its collapse. The readers of the 1565 and 1568 published text could only have enjoyed the spire reference in hindsight, and if, as has been suggested (Potter, “Tales” 19), the published text was intended for future adoption by schoolmasters, their pupils would have understood the reference in terms of folly rather than as literal. The problem is that there is not enough detail to pin anything down, but enough connection between the details to suggest that one is looking at an originally pedagogical play migrating between contexts and, as it does so, changing in form, authorship, style, function, auspices and intended audience. Like “Grandfather’s knife” it has had the handle changed twice, the blade changed three times but it is still, for what that’s worth, “Grandfather’s knife” or, in this case, the “Griselda” play. 2 I have drawn for many of the preceding details on Faith Gildenhuys’s careful review of the scholarship, though she remains agnostic about “whether or not Grissill was the play performed at Nonsuch.” (46). <?page no="113"?> Plays on the Move 113 A possible history for the published play, therefore, is that it started life in one kind of school, Radcliffe’s grammar school, and was then developed in a different kind, the choir school. Whatever its narrower pedagogical function there, it was then thought suitable for court performance, and finally, in printed form and probably with additional changes, since the published frontispiece describes it as “newly compiled,” it was aimed at a different market - that of readers, some of whom could well have been schoolmasters who, it was hoped, would then readopt it for practical classroom use. Of course, this is only one possible history, but the notion of the play as having a history was itself important at the time. The phrase “newly compiled” is an interesting one as it signals not just the printed play’s modernity but also its previous existence; it is not novelty which is being promoted by the publisher, but rather the “updating” of material still considered valuable. The eventual purchaser of Phillip’s play was to get a sense of immediate value but also of continuity with the past. The process of change was itself being commodified. The critical problems posed by this play’s apparent theatrical mobility are exemplary of the wider challenges facing the critic of sixteenthcentury drama - in particular, its paradoxical need for, and resistance to, historicisation. There was “a lot going on” in the formative years of the Griselda play’s history - between Henry’s Act of Supremacy and Elizabeth’s early reign - and, as with this play, one wants to map other drama with some precision onto the course of events so as to judge how, and how far, it engaged with the society which produced and consumed it. In general, the known civic identity of biblical drama, the dateable playhouses of the commercial theatre, the specifically pedagogical demands of school or university, and the regional political forces which shaped court or great house interludes all properly urge the critic to understand plays in relation to the moment of their creation, and their original institutional auspices. This pressure towards specificity has proved critically rich through major practice-based research projects on Heywood’s Play of the Weather in Hampton Court, and Sir David Lyndsay’s Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis in Linlithgow, both led by Greg Walker and Tom Betteridge. 3 The Heywood play emerged from this process as best understood in relation to the religious politics of the Henrician court of 1529- 3 These research projects, and the resources associated with them, can be found online at http: / / stagingthehenriciancourt.brookes.ac.uk/ about/ index.html and http: / / www.stagingthescottishcourt.org/ <?page no="114"?> John J. McGavin 114 33. The demand that one historicise where one can is given added impetus by the evidence of probouleutic plays like Gorboduc, and other Inns of Court drama, that they were indeed aimed at commenting with various degrees of overtness on specific current political topics - though spectators might differ in what precisely they thought the play was saying to them (Hunt, “Dumb Politics” 549-50). But this is only one template for the drama of the time, and we must be careful not to let it obscure others. Roughly contemporary with Gorboduc, at least as regards publication, was Nice Wanton, probably a school play, evidently not tied to larger historical circumstances, and capable of fitting into a number of different reigns from the late Henrician to the early Elizabethan, and there are others like this (McGavin, “Nice Wanton” 248-9). Phillip’s own play on Griselda seems to fit this pattern. Indeed the mid-century appears particularly susceptible to producing plays with migratory potential. The Walker-Betteridge performances of Lyndsay’s Satyre, so unlike Phillip’s pedagogical play in many respects, showed a drama moving successfully across the years between diverse spectator groups and different modes of reproduction: in this case from an indoor court performance (1540) to two very different outdoor communities, one provincial (1552 Cupar), one national with a regal audience (1554 Edinburgh), and eventually, like Phillip’s play, into the wider realm of national print publication (1602), where readers disconnected from performance, and far removed from the play’s original political environment, were almost certainly looking to the work to satisfy needs different from those of the original spectators. In his major catalogue of British Drama from 1533 to 1642, Martin Wiggins revealingly has a “Best Guess” category for the date of composition of many plays. It is surely possible that the plays’ dates are lost not simply because of the lacunae characteristic in records at this time or because official notification, such as in the Stationers’ Register, was lacking, but because the people who used plays - the playwrights, actors and spectators - did not consider them time-bound, even if they had or in context could acquire an immediate topicality. At present, critical readings of plays up to the advent of commercial theatre are intimately bound up with views on when they might have been composed, but there is something to be learned from the difficulties one faces in this regard. Attempts to argue specific historical reference can feel strained when scholars try to assert a topical application (usually through a kind of allegory) for a play which seems to make perfect sense without it. Ursula Potter acknowledges this when claiming that Phillip’s Comedy <?page no="115"?> Plays on the Move 115 could have been taken as an attempt to exonerate Elizabeth’s mother, Anne Boleyn: she argues this could only have applied when the play was performed in Elizabeth’s court (“Tales” 19). At such moments the critic may well be in line with what an original spectator could have thought in a particular context, but that is different from suggesting that the play itself sought to promote such a response or requires this interpretation. And, if true, such a claim may be relevant to only a part of the play’s history. The middle decades of the sixteenth century constituted a period of recycling, revision, or reinvigoration of older cultural materials. The danger for modern critics lies in viewing the products of such processes with the benefit of hindsight, seeing in them advance or retrospection in respect of broader cultural or historical movements, when, as experienced, such plays had a quite different temporal significance to that with which they are now invested. They constituted interventions in people’s lives, reshaping their memories, appearing to address their present problems, and offering models of the future that they could take away from the cultural event. They were objects in use, and in respect of mid-sixteenthcentury drama were in use by members of a society with no known or even predictable end for its rapid changes. To summarise, even where there are fairly certain dates for aspects of dramatic production, they tend to show how the drama of this period is hard to “fix,” in terms of date of composition, auspices, authorship, the degree and timing of alterations and versions, whether indeed one play is a version of a known other or is a separate play altogether, whether the play before us is the same play as that which is referred to in the records, and sometimes even doubt about the date of print publication. The question the critic has to ask therefore is not “how does one historicise such a play with certainty? ” but “does anything useful follow from the occasions when one cannot do this? ” Pedagogical drama adds its own nuance to the problematic of historicising plays. In one sense, there is no form of drama more in need of precise historicisation than this, for its school context is one in which past examples, present behaviours and future social needs are all closely imbricated. The teacher’s responsibility to imagine the likely future in order to prepare the pupil for it makes the school play potentially a touchstone for understanding society’s development. At the same time, however, it is the schoolmaster’s own past experience that determines the curriculum. We know that there is an inbuilt tendency to time-lag in such things, and the schoolmaster’s capacity to predict what lies ahead may not be greater than anyone else’s. In any case, the pressure of times <?page no="116"?> John J. McGavin 116 past, present and future in the schoolroom does not demand direct engagement with the world outside, for pedagogical drama also has to meet the specific, recurring needs of participant-spectators who do not age with history but in a sense remain young - as any lecturer will realise when faced again with the new first year intake. The earliest extant drama we can associate with the humanist schools seems to the eye of the historian to be both inside and outside the specifics of historical movements. One reformist strand of it followed Erasmus, and can easily be seen as an attempt on the part of schoolmasters to urge their students along paths which we now know did indeed shape the larger history of the country. But the other strand, from about the late 1520s onwards, seems to have been much more determined by the immediate adolescent needs of the pupils - needs which were not part of a broader historical movement but were determined by the nature of a school itself, and are renewed with every new class of young men. Usually classical in content, this strand looked at male and female relations, and worked through the ethics of love and enmity, victimisation, guilt, error, criminality, and revenge in an overtly gendered, often familial and domestic, and not necessarily amatory, context: the earliest examples seem to have been John Shepreve’s lost translations of Euripides’s Hecuba, and Seneca’s Hercules Furens, in which male violence prompted by a vengeful goddess is visited on the man’s innocent family. The same constellation of issues characterised George Buchanan’s choice of classical and biblical topics for his continental school plays and translations, Jephtha, The Baptist, Medea, and Alcestis, developed from the late 1520s through to the early 40s. It is also surely no coincidence that the Pynson and Thynne editions of Chaucer’s works appeared in this very same period of educational development, he having been long associated with an ethical approach to gender relations - one recalls Gavin Douglas’s remark that Chaucer was “ever woman’s friend,” and that Douglas, translator of Virgil’s Æneid (where he made the remark) was himself one of the early sixteenth-century humanists. There are many examples similar to the plays of Shepreve and Buchanan which, taken together, constitute an educational tradition of gender-focussed drama, which attempted, amongst other things, to construct a body of ethical reference for young men about to leave tutelage for a world where they would meet women over whom they would have some authority, but with whom they might also embark on married relations. It was also a dramatic tradition whose concerns could find receptive audiences in different venues and under different auspices. It was thus one of the forces which made pedagogical drama potentially migra- <?page no="117"?> Plays on the Move 117 tory, and was indeed a core element in Phillip’s play of Griselda. When, in the early-seventeenth century, the young Scottish aristocrat, Drummond of Hawthornden, sought to educate himself in current thoughts on gender, he could acquire this second-hand knowledge because elements of the tradition had moved beyond the school or university room into court plays, and eventually into the commercial theatre from which he took his excerpts. As Lynn Enterline has brilliantly shown in her recent book, it also eventually reactivated, for the boys who had acted in these heavily gendered plays, unresolved issues of identity, thereby setting up a complexity of spectator response which Shakespeare could exploit (2). This essay argues, then, that alongside trying to understand plays in their specifically historical context, which is necessary for any nuanced study of historical spectatorship, one should develop a critical account of the characteristics which permit some (though not all) plays to move between contexts, so that the extant texts, which are frequently the printed version, can be viewed as the vestiges of a string of events past, and these published versions as themselves intended for future uses which one might infer from the characteristics of the text itself. In the second section of this paper, I wish to address the question of what constitutes appropriate critical appreciation of such material, concentrating on John Phillip’s Comedy of Patient and Meek Grissill, and suggesting which features of the play might have helped it to be successful in different contexts and for different audiences. My emphasis will therefore be on spectatorship. The only version of “Grandfather’s knife” that modern critics have indubitably available is the final version of the play, and so one might want first to consider Phillip’s play in its published form as it would have been received by its purchasers. The published text does seem to envisage practical performance, the stage directions occasionally lapsing into instructional mode: “Here let there be a clamor . . .” (SD 55). It also seems possible that the announced doubling scheme in the printed version is designed to give a prospective schoolmaster a sense of how many main actors he would need. The advertisement that it can be done “easily” with eight actors only makes complete sense if it is the main roles that are being described, so that the schoolmaster could think about whether he had the resources to cover these core elements, he having plenty of pupils to cover the lesser roles. The large number of parts, and of female parts, the importance of music and the fact that the text gives the name of the tune so that it could be re-performed, not to mention the content and style of the play as a whole, all suggest that the pub- <?page no="118"?> John J. McGavin 118 lished version would be suitable for aiming at a schoolmaster market. But that does not mean that schoolmasters were the only envisaged market for a publisher hoping to make money from sales. It is a fair assumption that the Comedy’s eventual readership was expected to include single purchasers acquiring it for private reading possibly in a family context and, if this was the case, one is required to ask what imagined tastes and desires this publication was intended to satisfy. Gildenhuys describes the play’s concern with gender as “timely,” but when she justifies this, it is with reference to the plays of the next generation - Spanish Tragedy, Titus Andronicus and Hamlet (39-40). The publisher of Phillip’s Comedy, however, had no sense of what was around the corner, and could not figure the tastes of his readership in those late- Elizabethan terms. Rather, he was aiming at readers whose experience of school was in the past, and whose understanding of gender had been formed in adolescence by the pedagogical tradition of the previous 25 years, though their own personal circumstances had now changed. That tradition had created the market for the published text, and while this was a school play which the publisher thought might become one again, it also had an alternative trajectory: to satisfy those who had already been at school, and who could now revisit topics and styles, theatrical challenges and no doubt painful memories, with a mixture of nostalgia, recognition, and some self-congratulation - for the demonstrably learned style of the play offered the educated reader a chance to reaffirm their sense of themselves as educated: reading the play would have restaged for them the kinds of issue which they already knew, and in a style for which they had been prepared. My present account, therefore, models the relationship between the reader of the published play and the memories of their own schoolroom experiences as possibly recuperative, safe, commercially controllable by the individual, and therefore to a degree emotionally manageable. This is not offered in opposition to the model which Enterline proposed, when she argued that, “Shakespeare’s affectively charged returns to early school training in Latin grammar and rhetoric are so emotionally powerful precisely because these personifications reenact, or reengage, earlier institutional events, scenes, and forms of discipline that were not fully understood or integrated when they occurred” (2). Not only do I find her account convincing, I think it could coexist, even within the same person, as the model I am suggesting, though my focus is on a much earlier generation of educated men. The “reading” experience of the published Comedy was probably conducted in circumstances where the social aspirations linked to education <?page no="119"?> Plays on the Move 119 had been in part satisfied for the readers - they could also be satisfied anew and vicariously through the established high status situation of the male protagonist Gautier (equivalent to the traditional legend’s Walter). For this play was speaking to men who were beyond the years treated in Wit and Science: the male at the centre of the play was not now the schoolboy finding his lessons tedious; now he was a man embarking on marriage and exercising authority, a man whose enemies were to be found not in his books but in his entourage and in popular prejudices about what women are like. The play appears to envisage readers who might share or recognise Gautier’s stage in life, even if they did not possess his social status. Whatever its origins or intermediate versions, this final printed version aims at two specific demographics with different intentions: schoolmasters and already educated men. Gildenhuys’s insight that, in the play, “Walter’s entrance into the world of power is elided with his entry into sexuality and the world of desire and anxiety” (18) makes two different kinds of sense when we consider it in terms of the intended use of the published text: the schoolmaster could use it with respect to the adolescent pupil to continue a long-established tradition of nuancing the ethics of gender, but the mature reader could see it as speaking to, and in a sense respectfully acknowledging, his own stage in life. The Preface to the published version promised female patience and children’s obedience, but the play also carried advice on the ethics of married relations, and the dangers of common misogynist characterisations of women, which the educated man could appreciate, and which would continue the education he already knew. This is the kind of multiple value which lies behind the migratory potential of pedagogical drama: although it might emerge first to address specific schoolroom needs, it could be used in different ways, in different contexts, to satisfy different spectators, and, increasingly, spectators who had been prepared by its own pedagogical practices. If one can find such diversity of value even in respect of the final printed version, perhaps it is also possible to discern in it the features which would have made this play suitable for earlier migration between contexts, serving the different needs of pedagogy, court display and publication. I believe that it is, and that, broadly speaking, these features fall into three main categories (1) transferable ethics and aspirations (2) a style which could serve different functions and create pleasure for different audiences (3) self-reflexivity which focuses the spectators’ attention on the dramatic medium itself. <?page no="120"?> John J. McGavin 120 Firstly, whatever we might now think about the play’s ideological assumptions, we cannot avoid the conclusion that this play is about propriety within gender relations in a familial, social and, it is implied, national context. It is not just a treatise about women, but rather about attitudes. It looks at decorum in personal relations in a way which would suit the play’s educational origins; would delight court spectators with its affirmation of what virtues uphold the state, one of which is acknowledgement of the rights of birth status, and it provided a broad-based account of propriety in family life for the reader of the printed edition. In these different ways it builds upon, and qualifies, the substantial pedagogical tradition which focussed on male and female crimes and revenges, errors and catastrophes, now offering to different kinds of spectator a more optimistic model of failure and success, which they could appreciate in their own terms. This is a transferable ethos which has its roots in the play’s commitment to exploring the widest range of personal, familial, and social relations consistent with the outlook of the spectators and the potential in the story - relations of service, blood, community, marriage - in order to show how all must be covered by the natural and reasonable ethic of mutual obligation. This extends, for example, to Gautier’s praise of those ladies who cared for him when a child and youth: “Wherefore Nature doth urge me still to show your worthy praise, / Shown largely to me, youthful wight, in these my tender days” (575-6), and to his courtiers: “Most gratefully I yield you thanks for this your taken pain. / If God permit to length my life, I will requite again” (559-60). The play contains a widow and a widower, women in service, on the brink of marriage and the brink of death, courtiers who are trustworthy and one who is not, poor and rich, the individual and the populace, a young man in control of servants, at the onset of governmental responsibility, and at the age for marriage. For the schoolboy seeking to make his way in the world, and for the Elizabethan court after the turmoil of the previous decades, and later for the private purchaser and reader, this play offers a secure set of values which exist within a lightly reformist environment but which are independent of it: mutual obligations, prompted by Nature, supported by Reason, authorised by traditional values like Faithfulness, assisted by the measured outlook implied by Sobriety (another time-honoured virtue), generalised across family and society - the play affirms these as the grounds of personal success and social cohesion: inclusivity round a firm ethical pattern. It is a perfect play for the mid-century, when not having a pattern had been the prevailing experience. To a degree it corresponds with Lyndsay’s contemporary Satyre, which is also widely in- <?page no="121"?> Plays on the Move 121 clusive and, though the Satyre counsels reform of clerical institutions and unlike the Comedy is angry in its tone, it is also looking for a way of stabilising and renewing society around civic values of equity without looking for major disruption in the form of a major break from Rome or a full doctrinal Reformation. Lyndsay’s Satyre and Phillip’s Comedy also share that mixture of older morality forms with new moral imperatives directed at the spectator that mark mid-century drama, whether pedagogical or not. Lyndsay’s Lady Sensualitie is not exactly a vice - her intention is not to damn the soul or bring down the nation - she just is what she is, and it is the failings of men in how they view her that cause the problem. This shift towards locating moral challenge in the spectator may itself have been driven by the pedagogical tradition. While the attraction of theatre to school may have been its methodological training in memory, language, imagination, deportment, and performativity, it was also training its pupil spectators to recognise what they saw as ethically complex and demanding. Victor I. Scherb has argued that moral discrimination was developed in boys as a capacity to distinguish between good and bad forms of entertainment in the same play (271-97). But ethically-charged spectatorship seems to have emerged also as a reflex of the schoolroom’s interest in gender, and it is that tradition that Phillip exploits. The name of Phillip’s vice figure, Politick Persuasion, also suggests a very broadly envisaged audience - it may sound especially suitable for the 1559 courtly spectators, and he certainly operates in the environment of Gautier’s court, but actually such a name is deeply generic: try to identify a vice of the previous 80 years’ drama who could not have been characterised at some point as “politic persuasion” - that’s what vices do: they persuade you in ways which they present as politic. So this vice, while institutionally appropriate to the court performance, was also broadly relevant to adolescents or pupils in education, representing the influences they should resist; and for a general readership it had its meaning specified by the narrative action: as a name for someone who promotes the common prejudices about women and men that the play is seeking to undermine. The meaning of the name is thus re-definable relative to the context of performance, having broad allegorical value, local institutional relevance, and narrative specificity. This is a vice whose name already anticipates many audiences, stretching beyond the context of original composition and of performance. In the same way, his promotion of rancour, backbiting, gossip, and prejudicial attitudes to women would fit many contexts. <?page no="122"?> John J. McGavin 122 But Politick Persuasion is suitable in another way for migration between audiences, because, while he is vicious, he’s not solely a Vice, but firstly a representative of that institutionally-transferable, and universally feared, horror - Folly. And here one finds another parallel with Lyndsay’s mid-century Satyre, which ends in an extended theatrical assertion by Folly that he is present in all institutions and individuals, including, of course, the spectators enjoying his behaviour. Politick’s powers of persuasion may be ambiguously poised between claims for virtually allegorical capacity and arguments which prove less persuasive in practice. But his entry into the play, with a Skeltonically chaotic account of his journey, characterised by stylistic and social indecorum, strange metamorphoses, rapid changes of direction, sudden unexpected ascents and descents, and an aimless progress which ends in the playing space which he cannot identify, “Good Lord, where am I now? ” (2), indubitably links him to Folly. It is an unsettlingly enjoyable introduction to the play’s world, preparing us for the unexpected twists and turns of feeling and fortune which the play seems to revel in, and the rather motiveless course of action which Gautier adopts. But Politick’s failures in social and rhetorical propriety, and his absence of a consistent goal, make him an ideal bogeyman for diverse audiences, representing what must be avoided by those who are being taught decorum, and those who already live within its demands, whether they are of the school, the court, or society at large. The fear which Politick Persuasion represents to all of these groups is, in fact, social disappearance. His is a deliberate and signalled departure from the play, 350 lines before the end, at the very point where the final test of Griselda with its happy conclusion is still to be played out: “Fare ye well, all, I will be packing” (1649). What characterises this as an easily migrated pedagogical play is that it conceives of its vice as folly - and inutility, a lack of future, as the end of both. No particular group of auditors is required; all can be touched by this fear. The second group of features to permit this play’s transfer between contexts is stylistic. Rather than going down the route of political allegory, which the story of Griselda suggested to Phillip’s anti-Henrician contemporary, William Forrest, (Gildenhuys, Gathering 39), the Comedy of Patient and Meek Grissill comes over as an educational pattern book or primer of different types of theme, action, character, and songs, fully exploring a wide emotional palette, a rollercoaster of desire, frustration, pity, ruthlessness, and rapid transitions from grief to joy or from anxiety to relief (e.g., 1219-26; 1306-24). The characters comment explicitly on these, permitting us to see what part they are playing, such as when Gautier describes himself, “Well, as one pensive, devoid of consolation, <?page no="123"?> Plays on the Move 123 / I will rest me here some tidings to hear” (1313-14), or announces his love of Grissill to her father, “What living wight more than myself abideth Cupid’s ire? / Such is the force of ardent fire that boils in secret breast, / So severe is the darted wound with which I am oppressed,” and so on (634-6). Emotions are clearly identified, the rhetoric through which they are expressed is demonstrated, and the ethical problems which impel them are carefully delineated. Just as Politick Persuasion mutates from fool to vice before our eyes at the moment when he says “I will not cease hunting as a hound doth for his prey” (104), so the devices by which emotion is created are laid bare for us in affective rhetoric which is deictic and self-identifying. We might now think of this as rather stagey, and functional only at the rhetorical level, but the contemporary spectator was obviously expected to find affect in what might appear to a modern spectator only as its signals. The assumption is that rhetorically enacted grief - “Ah, Grissill, now mayest thou complain, infortune thine, alas. / Thy tender days in deadly dole, thou now must learn to pass” (474-5) - is convincing evidence of grief and, with the occasional addition of song such as her lament sung “to the tune of ‘Damon and Pythias’” (SD 486), could be enough for the spectators to feel the emotion. The theatrical “language” of feeling is being created for the boys and spectators in a protracted display of decorum which matches the play’s emphasis on decorum as an ethical good. Shakespeare later makes fun of this staginess, and of the “boiling breast” metaphor that Gautier used, but in the schoolroom of the 1550s the pupil was being given a compendium of the means by which feeling might be publicly signalled and an identity theatrically performed. Perhaps this is where the recent mirror neuron theory of spectatorship makes most sense 4 - as an explanation of how it is that pedagogically ostensive, self-conscious, rhetorical displays of feeling might in the collaborative context of theatrical spectatorship nonetheless carry an emotional charge for the audience. It is also, of course, possible that this form of drama helped some of the court spectators to learn dramatic communication and so enrich their spectatorship. Display is also precisely what would make this an appropriate play for migration to another context: what is necessary for education in the schoolroom can function as implicit flattery in the court. The play is a demonstration piece - showing off the skills of the boys to the court - a large scale version of the schoolboy orations at royal visitations. There is 4 There have been various recent versions of this approach but two significant booklength studies are those of Amy Cook and Jill Stevenson. <?page no="124"?> John J. McGavin 124 a flamboyant and regular contrasting of styles, songs (of very differing kinds, tones, content, and tunes), brief and extended asides and semiasides (language which the other character can only partly hear); there is playing with homophone statements, dialogue, monologue, and debate; biblical, proverbial, inkhorn, classical, and idiomatic language is deployed, all within a matrix of learning. Range is the key to this play’s approach. That must be why there is a brief scene of quarrelling lackeys (521-42), whose language displays a low-life predisposition to swearing and contention - it has little other point than to contribute to range and offer stylistically extravagant stage business, pleasurable in itself, and perhaps a promise of future fun when these boys, no doubt chosen for their aptitude, grow up a bit. The choir school seems to exist as an institution for migrating what was once instructional so that it can fulfil exhibitionist and complimentary functions in court performance. The published version of the play then assumes that it can go back to its practical educational purposes. But the individual reader of the book could also have felt something akin to the flattery which flamboyant skill would have provided to the court spectator. He could have felt the self-esteem of reading such an emphatic reminder of past exercises, reflecting on his acquisition of education, and his familiarity with a range of styles, as those who have acquired a new language revisit their own achievement even as they access new material through it. My final point concerns theatrical self-reflexivity. The subject matter, a woman whose virtues are tested by her being brought to believe, wrongly as it turns out, that her children have been killed and that she is to be replaced by a younger wife, was ideal for directing the attention of the spectators towards the dramatic medium itself and towards their enjoyment of it. This focus was suitable for many different contexts of consumption. In brief, for a school, it offered the opportunity to “act” falsehoods on stage; to the courtly spectator it offered the pleasure of affect nuanced by an appreciation of artifice, and for the reader it offered the pleasures of imagined feeling, where anxiety is always under the control of the reader. The main body of the story involves action which some of the characters believe to be true and others know to be false. Rhetoric is consequently a means to true expression of feeling for some but an exercise in counterfeiting by others. Different kinds of acting are thus happening on stage: pretence within the plot by Gautier and his servants, but acting in the usual sense by Griselda and the others towards the audience. Drama shows this inbuilt fascination with exploiting its own status as <?page no="125"?> Plays on the Move 125 artifice from late in the fifteenth century (Wisdom is an example). The staging of pretence, usually through the assumed characters, names and costumes of vices, was common, and could take on reformist functions when it involved clerical garb, implying the falsehood of real clerics. Lyndsay was still using it in this way in the 1550s. In Phillip’s play, however, it is internalised, a part of the given subject matter, and the forensic process is employed to test character. But if the device had its attractions from tradition, it had specific value in context. A pedagogical production, as we have seen, is alert to its own processes - indeed mastering the processes is part of the teaching, and this play demonstrates and flaunts the signs of process, the most fundamental of which is “feigning.” The tale of Grissill allowed the schoolmaster an extended exercise in different kinds of pretence, and this is explicitly pointed out when Politick Persuasion turns to the audience to comment on Diligence’s capacity to create a credible threat towards the children: “Body a God! This is a Dick for the nonce, by the Rood! / He’ll do’t, he, and he say the word” (1134-5). The play seriously enacts the rhetoric of feeling before the testing of Grissill, with that studiedness that suggests the needs of a school play, but then, during the testing, it enacts this rhetoric again as intra-diegetic pretence. The pupils and spectators are implicitly challenged to consider if these things are distinguishable. Gautier erred in taking on Politick Persuasion because he took the name “Politick Persuasion” for the thing. The play proceeds to show on a much larger rhetorical scale how the word may be taken for the reality. The artifice and truth of drama are thus both present, and the instructive and pleasurable are mixed. Surprisingly, however, the lesson to be learned is not the narrow one that Gautier should have looked a bit more deeply into things to distinguish the true from the false when he employed Politick Persuasion. One associates that kind of learning with the earlier moral interludes (and with Shakespeare). The Comedy’s message is quite different: feigning and not feigning can be impossible to distinguish, and it is essential to the ethical core of the play that this is the case. Griselda’s virtue cannot be proved without her failure to separate appearance from reality, word from actuality: through falsehood her truth is proved. In this respect the play is completely self-reflexive, because its underlying message is that the artifice of drama can reveal truth - a message to reassure all who engage with the form - schoolmasters, schoolboys, courtiers or readers. There is elegance in the way Phillip exploits internal pretence to defer to, empower and flatter his spectators through the knowing position into which they are put. Knowing what is false enables them to feel <?page no="126"?> John J. McGavin 126 more deeply the affective power of moments like Grissill’s or the Nurse’s lamentation, because for the spectator “feigning” is located elsewhere. The plot’s demands and the drama’s own generic fashions work together in a playful way: the killing of the children off stage, which in humanist drama (though not medieval) would have taken place off stage for aesthetic reasons, here has to take place off stage because it is not happening at all, and the playwright cleverly draws the audience’s attention to this overlapping of affect and artifice: “Nay, stay thy hand, good friend! Convey her out of place, / For nature will not let me see her slain before my face. / . . . Therefore from out our sights, I pray thee hastily do wend.” (1167-8, 1170) The conclusion to the play has slightly rough edges if closely scrutinised (the daughter seems strangely undisturbed by finding that her proposed wedding was a fake) but such analyses are really inappropriate because the play demands that theatrical logic prevail, and that characters’ unstated feelings are less important than their stated ones. The aim is to bring the spectator finally into a condition of compassionate patronage of Grissill: knowingly feeling for her, sharing her joy, but also retaining a sense that one is the author of that joy because one has known the truth of the matter all along. It is a particularly courtly, but also an intrinsically aesthetic, delight which affirms the status of any spectator as a spectator. Lyly was outrageously playing with just this theatrical desideratum when he promised to the spectators of Gallathea that the happy romantic ending which they wished, but could not expect because the play’s lovers were both girls only pretending to be boys in the plot, could nevertheless be achieved by turning one of the girls back into a boy off stage after the play was finished. His resolution wholly integrated the spectators’ desires, the practicalities of performance, and the logic of fiction because, of course, both these fictional girls were being played by boys anyway, and the spectators were thus allowed to resolve the matter in their own minds by deciding which of the lovers should, in effect, revert to their non-theatrical gender, and which would, by remaining a girl, extend the world of fiction into the real world beyond. Though Gallathea’s resolution represents an extreme case of playing with the fictionality of theatre, it was adumbrated a generation before in the mid-century techniques of Phillip’s comedy - another school play which transferred to court and then to publication. As a coda to this account of migratory drama, one might consider a scene from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In it Theseus chooses among the possible entertainments for his nuptial night (V. 1. 42-76). The Battle of the Centaurs, a sung poem, is rejected not for its genre <?page no="127"?> Plays on the Move 127 but because he himself had already told the story to Hippolyta in honour of his ancestor, Hercules - thus an important member of the audience had already heard a more authoritative version and so probably wouldn’t take pleasure from this one. “The riot of the tipsy Bacchanals, Tearing the Thracian singer in their rage” is rejected as an old “device,” and here it may be the theatrical realisation of content that is old hat: when you’ve seen how one group of Bacchanals can act tipsy and tear a poet to bits, you’ve seen them all. The “keen and critical” satire of “The thrice three Muses mourning for the death Of Learning, late deceased in beggary” doesn’t fit the happiness of the occasion. Such audiences evidently judged possible entertainments in a context nuanced by the accidents of occasion or personal experience, and any of these accidents might prevent performance in the new venue. Theseus is, however, revealingly intrigued by the proffered mechanicals’ play of Pyramus and Thisbe. While its oxymoronic advertisement of tedious brevity and tragical mirth may seem risible evidence of the performers’ inadequacy, that is not how Theseus takes it, musing instead, “How shall we find the concord of this discord? ” What Theseus is looking for is something very specific to the formalities of the medium rather than to its historical context: a play which sets up a difficulty and finds the means to resolve it: the spectator’s pleasure will be in the process of discovery. Ethical content is not an issue for Theseus; neither are the auspices under which it was composed, though this one does sound like a school play which, like Phillip’s Comedy, has been exported from the school room, and is now about to migrate to court, albeit with the intermediary stage of having been acquired by a manual worker; nor is Theseus interested in the performers as yet. What is of primary interest to him is the capacity of art to resolve the complexities which it sets up. Theseus’s first reaction to the advertisement shows that for him, and one imagines, for Shakespeare’s contemporaries, drama could be appreciated (not necessarily but possibly) in ways which did not depend upon moral content, educational value, or the original auspices of composition, but on its own formal processes. This is a sensibility which has become receptive to drama moving from one context to another. And it may well have been developed by such migrations over the previous seventy or so years, pedagogical plays having been prominent instances. When Theseus’s first thoughts about Pyramus and Thisbe were about its capacity to resolve its discords, he was responding as a potential spectator, free to look to his own desires, rather than concern himself (as his Master of Ceremonies, Philostrate, seems bound to do) with the route by which the play had come to him. I would argue that it was the <?page no="128"?> John J. McGavin 128 migratory potential in pedagogical drama that made that a possibility for him and, more importantly, for the Elizabethan spectators who were watching him decide. <?page no="129"?> Plays on the Move 129 References Cook, Amy. Shakespearean Neuroplay: Reinvigorating the Study of Dramatic Texts and Performance Through Cognitive Science. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Drummond, William, of Hawthornden. Hawthornden MSS, vols. VII and VIII. Drummond Miscellanies. National Library of Scotland MS 2059 and MS 2060. Enterline, Lynn. Shakespeare’s Schoolroom: Rhetoric, Discipline, Emotion. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011. Hunt, Alice. “Dumb Politics in Gorboduc.” The Oxford Handbook of Tudor Drama. Ed. Thomas Betteridge and Greg Walker. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. 547-65. Machyn, Henry. The Diary of Henry Machyn, citizen and merchant-taylor of London, from AD 1550 to AD 1563. Ed. John Gough Nichols. Camden Society (1848). Repr. New York: AMS, 1968. McGavin, John J. “Nice Wanton, c.1550.” The Oxford Handbook of Tudor Drama. Ed. Thomas Betteridge and Greg Walker. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. 246-61. Phillip, John. The Comedy of Patient and Meek Grissill. Ed. Faith Gildenhuys. A Gathering of Griseldas: Three Sixteenth-Century Texts. Publications of the Barnaby Riche Society, 6. Ottawa: Dovehouse, 1996. Potter, Ursula. “Tales of Patient Griselda and Henry VIII.” Early Theatre 5.2 (2002): 11-28. Scherb, Victor I. “Playing at Maturity in John Redford’s Wit and Science.” SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 45. 2 (2005): 271-297. Shakespeare, William. The Complete Works of Shakespeare. 3rd edn. Ed David Bevington. London: Scott, Foresman and Coy,1980. Sharratt, P. and P. G. Walsh, eds. George Buchanan Tragedies. Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1983. Stevenson, Jill. Performance, Cognitive Theory, and Devotional Culture: Sensual Piety in Late Medieval York. New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Walker, Greg, ed. Medieval Drama: An Anthology. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000. Wiggins, Martin, ed. British Drama 1533-1642: A Catalogue. 3 vols. [vol. 1: 1533-1566]. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. <?page no="131"?> Ulysses Redux (1591) and Nero (1601): Tragedia Nova Stephanie Allen Two early modern university plays, Ulysses Redux (1591) and Nero (1601) by the Oxford contemporaries William Gager and Matthew Gwinne, testify to a tradition of self-conscious experimentation with the possibilities of mixed genres on the academic stage. Gager and Gwinne published their plays under the generic label tragedia nova, a lucid designator that signals their revision of the structure, sensibility and outlook of classical tragedy against the context of Italian poetics and responses to Aristotle. Gager’s Ulysses Redux engages the tragicomic theory presented in the Pastor fido (1590) and Il verrato (1588) of Giovanni Battista Guarini, but infuses Italian tragicomedy with grotesque violence, and a de casibus emphasis on cyclicity and human frailty. Gwinne’s Nero follows the same narrative pattern as Gager’s play, and repeats many of the earlier playwright's innovations, but in its proliferation and exaggeration of Senecan devices pushes tragicomedy into the realm of parody. By writing tragedia nova, both Gager and Gwinne participate in a process of acute theorisation on the nature and purposes of a mixed genre. Their dramatic writings may thus appear innovative, experimental vehicles of contemporary research, challenging the received understanding of academic drama as conservative, derivative pedagogical projects. A 1584 entry in Oxford University’s Register of Congregation and Convocation records a peevish letter sent to the University by Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester and Chancellor of the University. Conveying the Queen’s irritation at a series of “abuses” that had taken place at the University, Dudley complained of the dangerous disruption professional theatre com- Drama and Pedagogy in Medieval and Early Modern England. SPELL: Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 31. Ed. Elisabeth Dutton and James McBain. Tübingen: Narr, 2015. 131-157. <?page no="132"?> Stephanie Allen 132 panies presented to the academic population: large gatherings of people were spreading sickness, encouraging the younger students to spend more money than they could afford, and endangering the scholars’ morals by making them spectators of the “manye lewde and euill sportes” depicted on the stage. Dudley instructed the University to ban drama from its precinct, and threatened that any students caught in attendance at plays would be punished or imprisoned. Explicitly exempt from this decree, however, were the “tragedies commodies & other shewes of exercises of learninge in that kinde” written and performed by the students and scholars of the University; the production and performance of these “commendable and greate furderances of learninge” should not just be continued, but in fact increased (REED: Oxford 195). Modern scholarship has tended to reproduce the distinction Dudley makes between haughty, pedagogical academic drama on one hand, and the subversive energies of the professional theatre on the other. In a reversal of Dudley’s hierarchy, however, this has been to the detriment of university drama, which is repeatedly dismissed as derivative, turgidly rhetorical or simply poor. One reason that university drama may appear predictable and derivative is that it has been considered primarily as an extension of classroom exercises in rhetoric, one crystallisation of a tradition of humanist dramatic pedagogy with its roots in Erasmus and Vives - and with aims and interests quite separate from the drama of the popular stage. Frederick Boas, for example, concluded his seminal study of academic drama with the assertion that: “(The university stage) continued . . . to fulfil two distinct though allied educational functions; it was a handmaid both to scholarship and to rhetoric”; but this conclusion encompassed the idea of the inferior artistic quality of university plays, conveyed everywhere in his book (Boas 349). More recently, Philip Ford and Andrew Taylor stated that “(university plays) offered the opportunity to put into practice the final two divisions of rhetoric, memoria and prountiatio or actio, but they also delivered stories with a clearly moral message . . .” (Ford and Taylor 7), while the contributors to Jonathan Walker and Paul D. Streufert’s volume Early Modern Academic Drama all place pedagogy and university politics at the centre of their studies. In fact, in his essay in the volume, Eric Leonidas pointedly opposes the purposeful, experiential knowledge demonstrated in the Inns of Court revels to the “traditional rhetorical practices” and “recitation” of the academic drama performed at other educational institutions (Leonidas 115-116). Modern scholars rarely make the explicit assertions of inferiority found everywhere in the work of the early twentieth century critics, but the nar- <?page no="133"?> Tragedia Nova 133 rowly-conceived pedagogical paradigm that defines and limits their interest in university drama reinforces a conception of the genre as dull and inferior. The simplistic pedagogical view has undoubtedly been valuable in clarifying the official purpose and aims of academic drama; but it is beginning to look reductive, based on an uncritical acceptance of the polemic of early modern defenders of the tradition, though the terms of their defence, as “exercises of learning” have become the grounds for their condemnation. Lynn Enterline’s recent book, which explores actio as the porous boundary between academic stage and classroom, has challenged the idea that classroom roots necessarily spring into uninteresting plants, for much of what we admire in Shakespeare may be traced to the exercises of the Tudor classroom. What is more, the documentary evidence collected in the Oxford volumes of the Records of Early English Drama facilitates the comparison of better-known performed or printed academic plays with those that exist only in manuscript, and speculation about the contents of those that have been lost. Contrary to expectations, these records testify to a huge variation within a tradition that encompasses plays as diverse as Leonard Hutten’s Bellum Grammaticale (1581), a burlesque comedy that takes as its characters the Latin parts of speech; Matthew Gwinne’s Nero (1603), a sprawling, 5,000-line dramatisation of the iniquity and excess at the court of the Roman emperor Nero, or Thomas Goffe’s Orestes (1613-1618), in continual dialogue with professional plays such as Hamlet, Macbeth and The Spanish Tragedy. In these plays, what might be identified as pedagogical or didactic elements vie for prominence with, and are everywhere destabilised by, a ubiquitous satiric or parodic spirit. Frequently, in fact, one senses that the methods of dramatic pedagogy have become the butt of the joke: for example, in the deliberately heavy-handed incorporation of the rules of Latin grammar into Hutten’s Bellum Grammaticale. 1 Developing our understanding of academic drama therefore requires that we interrogate and refine our sense of the interests at its centre, and particularly of its own attitude to its ostensible pedagogical concerns. 1 Much of the humour in Hutten’s play arises from its characters’ comically laboured rehearsals of Latin grammatical rules, such as where _, a _, addresses his master Amo, the king of the verbs: “ut si Poeta comparetur / cum viribus tuis, nihil est. Nam que sunt superbissima ex / nominibus tantum habent sex singulares satellites, et totidem / plurales” (If the Poet is matched against your powers, he’s nothing. For even the proudest of the nouns have only six singular servants and the same number of plural ones) (Hutten, Bellum Grammaticale 41; translation Dana F. Sutton). <?page no="134"?> Stephanie Allen 134 The relationship between two plays by the Oxford playwrights William Gager and Matthew Gwinne begins to suggest the terms of this reconsideration, indicating the special status of the university stage as a site not just for education, but also for experiment and innovation. Documentary evidence suggests the value of reading the two playwrights’ work together: as contemporaries at Oxford, Gwinne and Gager worked together on a number of specifically dramatic projects. Both were on the committee that prepared the entertainment for Elizabeth’s last-minute progress to Oxford in 1592 (Shenk 20), and they wrote dedicatory poetry for each other’s playsfinally, both Dana Sutton and James Binns identify clear references in the epistle to Nero to Gager’s part in the controversy over the propriety of academic drama that dragged through the 1590s at Oxford (Binns, “Seneca and Neo- Latin Tragedy”; Gwinne). Both Gager’s Ulysses Redux (1592) and Gwinne’s Nero (1603) were published under the generic label tragedia nova, a lucid designator that, as I will argue, signals their interest and investment in contemporary poetics and critical debates. Recent scholarship on Gager and Gwinne has gestured toward the importance of this label, but has stopped short of attempting to define it: James Binns, for example, comments that “the prefaces to (Gwinne’s) tragedia nova, Nero . . . and his comedy, Vertumnus, are full of interest” (Binns, Intellectual Culture 133), while Sarah Dewar- Watson opens her discussion of Gager’s Aristotelianism with the observation that “On the title page of the printed text, Gager styles his version a ‘Tragedia Nova’” (Dewar-Watson 24). This essay will therefore seek to define tragedia nova, through an investigation of the similarities in sensibility, purpose and form that link two plays so outwardly different as Gager’s tragicomic adaptation of Books XIII-XXIV of Homer’s Odyssey, and Gwinne’s 5,000-line chronicle play on the reign of the despot emperor Nero. Working from the premise that academic drama could be a vehicle for the reception, exploration and communication of critical ideas, I will argue that, by writing tragedia nova, both Gager and Gwinne participate in a process of acute theorisation on the nature and purposes of a mixed genre, shaped by an engagement with Aristotle’s Poetics mediated by contemporary Italian critical theory. Their dramatic writings may thus appear innovative, experimental vehicles of contemporary research, rather than conservative pedagogical projects. <?page no="135"?> Tragedia Nova 135 I. Tragicomedy in Ulysses Redux William Gager, 1555-1622, was a poet, scholar, clergyman and the bestknown Oxford playwright of the Elizabethan period. His Ulysses Redux transforms the narrative of the final books of the Odyssey into a five-act tragicomic play. It opens upon Ulysses washed up on the beach of his homeland, Ithaca, where he meets the goddess Minerva. The goddess changes his appearance into that of an old beggar, and engineers a meeting with his son, Telemachus. After revealing his identity to Telemachus, Ulysses returns to his palace, where a gang of suitors have gathered, diminishing the king’s fortune and competing to marry his faithful wife Penelope. Ulysses lives among the suitors in disguise while he plots his revenge, which is vividly enacted in the play’s final act. Before the eyes of the audience, the king slaughters the young men, and executes the treacherous members of his own household who have allowed and aided them. Two lively prologues to Ulysses Redux introduce the experiments in genre that characterise Gager’s project. The first, addressed “Ad Criticum,” conjures to the stage a stock carping critic, who attacks the play for breaching the rules of generic decorum. The play cannot be a tragedy, the critic rails: Quia, inquis, et materiae quadam mendicitate peccet, dictioneque plerumque comica est; et risum in Iro movet, quod in tragaedia nefas est, atque adeo piaculum; et vere tragico affectu vacat (quis enim aut procorum, id est hominum improborum interitu suspiret, aut meretricularum suspendio illachrymetur? ). Postremo, quia laetum habet exitum. (Gager 22) Because, you say, it offends in the poverty of its plot, and its language is mainly comicand it raises laughs against Iris, which is forbidden in tragedy, and is even a sin. And really, it lacks tragic pathos (for who is going to weep either at the destruction of the Suitors, who are wicked men, or the hanging of the little whores? ). Finally, because it has a happy ending. As we will see, Gager’s imagined detractor here rehearses a specific set of criticisms, recently levelled at a controversial tragicomic dramatist. The Prologue answers his opponent with a studied carelessness that everywhere disguises sophisticated critical specifications. Equivocating upon the question of what to call his “sive tragediam, sive fabulam, sive narrationem historicam, sive quicquid eam dici ius fasque est” (tragedy, or fairy-tale, or historical story, or whatever it is right and proper to call it), Gager anticipates the whimsical Polonian catalogue of “tragedy, <?page no="136"?> Stephanie Allen 136 comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragicalhistorical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral” that would speak for Shakespeare’s fascination with genre some years later. He agrees that there might be truth in the attack, since he writes according to a “slightly freer and more relaxed [paulo liberior ac pene dissolutior] method,” and dismisses questions of generic propriety as inconsequential nit-picking, superfluous to the crucial demand that a play entertain its audience: “emoriar si amem lites, saltem criticas, id est futlies, id est tuas, critice” (I will die before I enjoy a squabble, or at least, a squabble to do with criticism, which is to say a pointless one - which is to say one of yours, critic). But both these claims are exposed as false throughout Gager’s prologues, where bombast and aggression mask a point-for-point refutation of the charges levelled at the text, and elaborate theorising on the nature and purpose of a dramatic form that mixes elements from comedy and tragedy. Gager identifies the model for his mixed form in the Homeric source-text, everywhere emphasising his faith to the original: “mihi vero, quoad licuit, Homeri vestigiis insistere, nunquamque a boni senis quasi latere discedere, religio fuit” (It was certainly my obligation, as much I was able, to follow in Homer’s footsteps, and, as it were, never to leave the good old man’s side). The Odyssey is explicitly identified with a complex plot and low register; the man who carps at “the lowliness of my plot and diction” [materiae dictionesque humilitatem], Gager asserts, does not criticise him, but rather Homer himself (Gager 22). Indeed, the Greek poet emerges from Gager’s prologue as a master of the tragicomic mode. Though this view of Homer is unfamiliar to his modern reader, precedents for it stretch back far beyond the Renaissance: the scholia of antiquity comment on several scenes they find tragicomic in the Iliad and Odyssey, including Andromache laughing through her tears when her son fears Hector in his helmet, and Eurycleia’s half-tearful, half-happy discovery of Odysseus’s scar. Aristotle, meanwhile, viewed Homer as both a tragic and a comic poet, capable of mixing grave and amusing elements (Epps 26). By the time of the Renaissance, this notion of Homer’s poems as generically hybrid, pervaded by elements from comedy, had separated into two distinct strands; both of which, I would argue, are present in Gager’s prologues. The first, drawing on pseudo-Homeric texts like the Margites, Cercopes and The Battle of Frogs and Mice, and the narrative shared by Book 9 of the Odyssey and Euripides’s satyr-play Cyclops, observed ironic, satirical qualities to the Iliad and Odyssey (Wolfe 162). The second strand of interpretation of Homeric comedy available to Gager, more <?page no="137"?> Tragedia Nova 137 relevant to Gager’s project, formed alongside the rehabilitation of Aristotle's Poetics at the turn of the sixteenth century, and the reconsideration of the sanctioned genres against its dictates. Sarah Dewar-Watson discusses how the Poetics, newly available in the Latin translation of Valla (1498) or the first authoritative Greek version, the Aldine edition of 1508, challenged a critical orthodoxy, based on the flawed attempts of Aquinas and, later, Averroes to reconstruct Aristotle’s text, that tragedy must end in calamity, a turbulentia ultima, and because of this must be diametrically opposed to comedy (Dewar-Watson 15-16). In the Poetics, Aristotle made a heavily qualified suggestion that a second type of tragedy, with a happy ending, could exist. His model for this form was Homer’s Odyssey: Second is the kind of composition which is said by some to be the best, that is, one that has a double composition like the Odyssey, and which ends with opposite fortunes for good and bad characters. It is held to be the best, because of the weakness of the audience, since poets follow that audience, and write according to what pleases them. But this is not the pleasure proper to tragedy, but rather to comedy (. . .). (Epps 26). In the sixteenth century, Aristotle’s distinction between the two types of tragedy was taken up by Italian poetic theorists attempting to find classical precedent for a new dramatic form gaining in popularity on the vernacular stage. Scholars including Giovanni Battista Pigna, Carlo Lenozi and Gerardus Vossius commented on comic or romance elements in the Odyssey (Weinberg 1.445 and 2.824), while Giovanni Battista Giraldi Cinthio used the passage from Aristotle and the precedent of Homer to sanction the mix of comic and tragic in his own dramatic creations. In his essay On the Composition of Comedies and Tragedies (1543) Giraldi Cinthio looked to the Poetics to claim the necessity of tragedia di lieto fin or tragedia mista, “tragedy with a happy ending” or “mixed tragedy,” agreeing with Aristotle that a tempered, softened form was more pleasing to the tastes of an audience than tragic terror: this type of tragedy is “in its nature more pleasing to the spectators because it ends in happiness.” It was in conformity with the custom of his times and as a concession to his spectators, Cinthio argued, that he composed his own tragedies with happy endings: Atile, Selene, Antivalomeni and others (Gilbert 219-220). Like Aristotle, Cinthio located the origin of tragedia di lieto fin in the Odyssey. The Poetics refuted the contemporary critical fashion for reading the Odyssey as a fundamentally comic text; and in fact, Cinthio concludes, “Critics fell into this error because they were of the <?page no="138"?> Stephanie Allen 138 opinion that there cannot be a tragedy which ends happily” (Gilbert 224). A tradition of French and Italian plays that transformed the narrative of the Odyssey into the stuff of dramatic tragicomedy, including Giovanni Falungi’s Ulixe Patiente (ca. 1535), Giambattista della Porta’s La Penelope (1591), J. G. Durval’s Les Travaux d’Ulysse, Tragecomedie tirée d’Homere (1631), and Charles Boyer’s Ulysse dans l’Isle de Circe (1649), suggest the pervasiveness of Cinthios reading of Homer. In an essay on the early modern reception of the character of Penelope, Tania Demetriou makes a significant case for Gager’s contact with this Italian tragicomic tradition via Giambattista della Porta’s La Penelope, a play whose attention is focused, primarily, on its heroine’s battle to preserve her faith to her absent husband. Demetriou finds a number of direct verbal and interpretive echoes of della Porta’s play in Ulysses Redux, suggesting the “direct influence” of the Italian tragicomedy upon the Latin university play (Demetriou 12). Here, I would like to suggest a second possible point of contact between Gager and the Italian tragicomic tradition: the debate surrounding the Pastor Fido of the scholar Giovanni Battista Guarini (1538-1612). Guarini composed Il Pastor Fido, a pastoral tragicomedy, between 1580 and 1585, and it circulated widely in manuscript upon its completion before publication in 1590. Debate about the work’s tragicomic form began in earnest long before its publication; Bernard Weinberg records letters and publications by the scholars Lionardo Salviati, Giason Denores and Ciro Spontone, criticising the work both overtly and obliquely, as early as October 1586 (Weinberg 2.1074). The interest the play held in English academic circles, meanwhile, is suggested by the performance of a Latin translation, Pastor fidus, at Cambridge sometime between 1602 and 1605 (Norland 505). In 1588, Guarini published an anonymous reply to his critics, under the title of Il Verrato. Much more than a polemical treatise, the work is a detailed guide to the nature and purpose of tragicomedy. Though Guarini went on to defend his play in print twice more, in 1593 and 1601, the date of the first performance of Ulysses Redux, in February 1592, limits Gager’s possible knowledge of Guarini’s work and the controversy surrounding it to the Pastor Fido itself, and the first Verrato. <?page no="139"?> Tragedia Nova 139 II. William Gager and Giovanni Battista Guarini Guarini’s play and treatise address the same questions as those that Gager’s prologues place at the centre of his programme of tragedia nova. Briefly, the Verrato centres on the argument that tragedy in its ancient moulds is no longer necessary or desirable for a modern audience. The passions of pity and fear are taught and controlled by the words of scripture, and the only kind of tragic actions now acceptable are those which give pleasure. Guarini asks: “Che bisogno habbiam noi hoggi di purgar il terrore, & la commiserazione con le Tragiche viste? hauendo i precette fantassimi della nostra relligione, che ce l'insegna con la parola Evangelica? ” (What need have we of purging terror and pity through tragic sights today, since we have the sacred word of our religion, which teaches us to do this through the word of the Gospel? ) 2 (Guarini 29). The poet’s imagination must be free to invent new forms in response to changing contexts and sensibilities. Crucial to Guarini’s vision for tragicomedy is a sense of the genre as an organic whole, a new creation born out of two ancient genres, but subject to its own rules, operating according to a different world-view, and with a clearly-defined and separate moral purpose. When tragedy and comedy are brought together, they engage in a process of mutual redefinition, each tempering the now-inappropriate excesses of the other, but leaving untouched the “precetti universali,” innate poetic rules drawn from nature that cannot be changed (Guarini 13). Tragicomedy works as follows: prende dall’una le persone grandi, non l’azione; la favola verisimile ma non vera; gli affetti mossi, ma rintuntazzi; il diletto non la mestizia; il pericolo non la morte. Dall’altra il riso non dissoluto, le piaceuolezze modeste, il nodo finto, il riuolgimento felice, & sopra tutto l’ordine Comico. Le quali parti in questa guisa corrette, vorrei sapere, perche non possano star insieme in vna fauola sola, quand’elle massimamente sono condite col lor decoro, & con le uqalita del costume che lor conuengono. It takes from one the great persons, but not the action, the plot which is verisimilar, but not true, the passions which are aroused but blunted, pleasure but not sadness, danger but not death. From the other, laughter which is not dissolute, moderate pleasures, a fictional plot, a happy reversal, and above all the comic order. I should like to know why these parts, corrected 2 This translation is from Bernard Weinberg, A History of Literary Criticism 2.1074. Unless indicated, all translations will be from this volume. <?page no="140"?> Stephanie Allen 140 in this manner, should not be able to exist together in a single plot when they are seasoned to the maximum with their proper decorum and with the qualities of character which are appropriate to them. (Guarini 17; Weinberg 2.1080) Tragicomedy, then, emerges from Guarini’s definition as a bright, polished form that eschews tragic catharsis in favour of the pleasures of a complex plot. Throughout the two prologues to Ulysses Redux, Gager’s critical specifications correspond repeatedly and closely to the theory of tragicomedy espoused in the Verrato: the prologues are profuse with references to the most distinctive features of Guarinian tragicomedy, clues to prepare the learned audience to expect an engagement with the Italian theorist. First, Gager rehearses Guarini’s claim that a mixed form pleases its audience more than the stark horrors of tragedy, stating that his method will not please the learned [doctissimis] so much as the unskilled [imperitis], and predicting that the critic will be scandalised at his play’s composition, since it was composed not according to the standard of the Ars Poetica, but rather to suit popular taste. Second, Gager’s critic complains that the play lacks “tragico affectu”, and that it has a happy ending (Gager 22). Here he echoes Guarini, who had banished pathos from the tragicomic universe, stating its fundamental incompatibility with laughter, and had specified a happy ending (Guarini 29). Both authors find classical precedent for tragicomedy in the large number of Greek and Roman tragedies with happy endings: Guarini calls on the authority of Aristotle and the precedent of Euripides and Sophocles (Guarini 14v). Gager finds comic elements in a catalogue of classical works: Homer’s Odyssey is joined by the whole Euripidean corpus as well as selected plays of Sophocles and Seneca (Gager 22). Gager echoes the terms of Guarini’s discussion of the “ordine comico,” the tragicomic plot constructed out of multiple trials, twists, revelations and marvels. Guarini located the all-important pleasure of tragicomedy in this plot, opposing the genre to tragedy, whose pleasure lies in the emotions it raises through the imitation of action (Guarini 17). This distinction reappears in Gager’s prologue “Ad Academicos” as the speaker demands the attention of his audience, since “toto filo pendet historico magis, / rebusque gestis, quam gravi affectu altius exaggerato” ([it] rather depends on the thread of the story, and the things that are done, rather than on grave and deeply exaggerated pathos). In a final reference to Guarini, who was vehemently criticised for mixing high and low characters and language, Gager contends throughout both prologues that his play will transform tragedy by modifying its diction, <?page no="141"?> Tragedia Nova 141 and infusing it with a “lower” register traditionally associated with comedy. Ulysses is described in the address to academics as “prope pedestre dolens / sermone” (grieving in an almost everyday language), and “ponet ampullas miser” (discard[ing] tragic bombast). Gager’s language is explicitly opposed to that of his tragic predecessors: “nihil audietis grande, nil Sophoclis stilo / Senecaeve scriptum” (You will hear nothing grand, nothing written in the style of Seneca or Sophocles) (Gager 30). In two prominent and programmatic prologues, then, Gager makes repeated reference to the defining features of Guarini’s tragicomic project. But, as I will show, Gager engages Guarini only to challenge and ultimately revise the Italian scholar’s definition of tragicomedy; and it is by means of the re-evaluation of the bright, polished certainties of the Pastor fido and Verrato that Gager constructs his darker, more brutal and primitive tragedia nova, a model for Gwinne to adopt and adapt in his turn. In the next part of this essay I will first identify Gager’s most important borrowings from and alterations to Guarini in Ulysses Redux, before turning to consider the role of Matthew Gwinne’s Nero in clarifying our understanding of tragedia nova. III. Ulysses Redux: Guarinian Tragicomedy? Most fundamentally, Gager modifies the providential shape of tragicomedy. 3 Il Pastor fido asserted a relationship between the certainties of the Christian faith and the structure of tragicomic narrative: the ordine comico, or complex plot about which tragicomedy is structured, subject- 3 It is worth distinguishing the tragicomedy created by Guarini and modified by Gager and Gwinne from an earlier tradition of tragicomedy developed by the Protestant writers Foxe, Grimald and Kirchmeyer, and discussed by Andreas Höfele as a response to a perceived need to adapt the classical authors, especially Terence, to Christian ends (127). This tradition was represented on the Oxford stage in 1541-2 by Nicholas Grimald’s Christus Redivivus, comoedia tragica, sacra & nova: for a thorough discussion see Elisabeth Dutton and my article “Seeing and Recognizing in the Sacred and New: The Latin Scriptural Plays of Nicholas Grimald” (forthcoming). Briefly, despite the outward similarities between the two traditions (most obviously, the identification of tragicomic redemption with the workings of Christian providence), they are subtly different in their purpose and concerns. The Protestant tragicomedy, closer to medieval religious drama in subject matter and dramaturgy, employs new Roman comic poetics as an innovation in staging Biblical narrative. Though it is heavily stylised, and set in an unfamiliar pastoral world, Guarini’s Christian allegory is comparable to this earlier tradition; but, as I will argue, the self-conscious and reflexive experiments in genre of Gager and Gwinne everywhere undermine any straightforward providential teleology, and resist moralising interpretation. <?page no="142"?> Stephanie Allen 142 ing its characters to trials, reversals of fortune and miracles, is enabled and ultimately resolved by a beneficent divine providence that ensures resolution and redemption at the play’s end. In a classic essay on Guarini, Arthur Kirsch perceives the Augustinian motif of the felix culpa as a central structuring conceit in his play. According to Kirsch, Guarini mapped his tragicomic plot onto “the great paradox of Christian experience” (Kirsch 11; see also Clubb 125-153), that joy and redemption can occur not just through suffering, but in part as a result of it. The wonder and delight that Guarini’s plot elicits from its audience are thus intimately linked to the assurance of Providence: seemingly desperate situations resolve into order and joy, and there are happy endings for even the play’s immoral characters. Gager invokes this providential frame only to recast it as a source of tension and ambiguity, replacing it with a scheme of retributive justice and moral didacticism inherited from humanist tragedy. Ulysses, whose triumph over his opponents is forecast from the play’s opening and lent divine sanction by the goddess Minerva, is so persistently described in a register of light and wonder that his homecoming gestures toward the Christian allegory of the Pastor fido. The Chorus, for example, beg him “lucem patriae, dux Ithacensis, / restituae tuae” (O Ithacan leader, bring back the light to your country) or name him “Ithacae lumen, patriaeque parens” (the light of Ithaca and father of the country) (Gager 50). The king’s happy ending, however, explicitly depends on his good nature: Minerva tells Ulysses that she champions him “namque me miseret tui / tam dura passi, tamque prudentis viri” (for I pity you, having suffered so much, such a wise man) (Gager 38). Gager applies providential redemption only partially and selectively: in Ithaca, transgressions are more grave, deliberate and persistent than in the green world of Arcadia, and divine favour must be won by virtue. Ulysses’s victory entails the vivid depiction of the consequences of sin, as the suitors are brutally murdered onstage. As the king says, setting about this slaughter, “proinde vobis merita pernities adest” (so then, your destruction is deservedly at hand) (Gager 126). Of all the features of the parent-genre tragedy, Guarini was most explicit in banishing ‘the terrible’ from his tragicomic universe. This included depictions of bloodshed or death, flatly rejected as incongruous with the aesthetic of the genre: a tragicomic narrative should bring its characters into danger without actually harming them (Guarini 17v-18v). Gager’s final act, by contrast, is horrifyingly bloody: the suitors are murdered onstage; Ulysses demands savagely that the swineheard Melanthius be butchered and fed to the dogs; the serving-woman Melantho is <?page no="143"?> Tragedia Nova 143 dragged onstage by a noose tied around her neck, and prepares for certain death in convulsions of grief (Gager 132; 136). This re-introduction of violence and bloodshed reifies the ambivalence that pervades the final act of Ulysses Redux, in which Gager’s audience views the play’s outcome with an uneasy double vision. The audience’s understanding of Ulysses’s revenge as just is cemented by the king’s repeated assertions to this effect, articulating the moral of his own story: “ut cuncta posteritas sciat / bonos manere gratiam, paenam malos” (may all posterity know that gratitude awaits good men, and punishment the wicked) (Gager 134). But simultaneously, even those characters sympathetic to Ulysses reflect our sense that the revenge is too harsh, shocking, and unremitting. Amphinomus begs for mercy on the grounds that he has not taken part in any act of wrongdoing; but despite conceding that “multi . . . te sceleris putem / esse innocentem” (I might think you to be innocent of many evils) (Gager 129), Ulysses executes him nonetheless. Philaetius, ordered to execute the treacherous serving-woman Melantho, wishes “miseri tui / utinam liceret! ” (If only I could take pity on you! ) (Gager 136). Gager’s characters thus conspire with the flouted expectations of the tragicomic genre to emphasise the scholar’s revisions to that model. Providential optimism in Ulysses Redux is always in tension with a moralising emphasis upon cause-and-effect that owes something to the De casibus tradition of tragic narrative. In tracing the parabola of the rise and fall of great and terrible men, and collapsing the great princes and tyrants of history and classical mythology into rhetorical exempla, Boccaccio’s De Casibus Virorum Illustris, and the tragic tradition it speaks to, have a levelling effect, emphasising the vulnerability of humankind and the cyclical nature of their miseries. Irresolution and cyclicity are also inherent in Homeric epic, of course, and the Iliad and Odyssey sit within a web of interconnecting myths whose threads stretch across the classical canon of poetry and drama. This emphasis upon cyclicity can be detected in the darkened final scene of Ulysses Redux, which depicts Ulysses’s victory as muted and inconclusive. All the elements of the joyful finale of the Pastor fido are present: the happy denouement is enabled by the Guarinian “credible miracle” of Ulysses’s accurate description of the bed-chamber; the faithful lovers are united, and their union restores safety and order throughout their world; the characters declare and perform the emotional affect of events: “praeclara coniunx, ecquis est flendi modus? ” (Most exemplary wife, is there a limit to our tears? ) (Gager 144). But this happiness is explicitly transient. The king’s final lines do not forecast joy and re- <?page no="144"?> Stephanie Allen 144 demption, but rather troubles to come worse than those he has already endured: et nos procorum gravior a patribus manet procella, non dum navis ad portum appulit. remedia nos, Telemache, meditemur malo. (Gager 144) And a graver storm is brewing for us from the suitors’ fathers, our ship has not yet reached the port. Telemachus, let us think of a remedy to this evil. The De casibus tradition thus surfaces to offer an alternative to Guarinian optimism and harmony: Gager hints at a future in which the dynamics of the play will be reversed, and Ulysses will be recast as sinner, and forced to atone for the slaughter we have witnessed. Tragedia nova begins to take shape as a version of Guarinian tragicomedy darkened in the places where it meets humanist tragic forms, its moderation and polish rejected and replaced with a drive towards the messy reality of fortune, moral didacticism and a desire to portray the stark extremes of horror and joy. As he qualifies its providentialism, Gager rejects the specification in the Verrato that the architectonic end of a genre born out of tragedy and comedy is purely comical; tragedia nova is tragicomic, with all the room for ambivalence and incongruity that word implies, all the way through (Guarini 29v; see also Weinberg 2.1080-1090). Implied by this redefinition of the architectonic end of tragicomedy, and his incorporation of extremes where Guarini had stressed “temperamento” and “temperatura,” is Gager’s comfort with a charge of generic monstrosity that Guarini had fought to deny (Weinberg 2.1082). Giason Denores, Guarini’s most vehement critic, attacked pastoral tragicomedy on the basis of its indecorous mix of the high and low characters proper to pure tragedy and comedy respectively, and the different plots and registers that those characters necessarily introduced. Denores condemned a mixed form as a “questo mostruoso, & disproportionato componimento, misto di due contrarie attion, & qualita di persone” (a monstrous and disproportionate composition, made up of two contrary actions and types of persons) (qtd. in Guarini 15). In doing so, he drew upon an old set of stereotypes for denigrating the new creations of artists that saw the imagination’s products as monstrous. Early modern models of cognition viewed the creative, artistic imagination with great suspicion. Writers on human physiology, inheriting a tradition from Aristotle and his scholastic interpreters, agreed on the process by which the imagination fashioned new products: it divided up the visual “images” of the world it had gathered by means of the five <?page no="145"?> Tragedia Nova 145 senses, and rejoined them in new combinations that never existed in nature. Pierre de la Primaudaye described this process of selection, anatomisation and reconfiguration, whereby the imagination “taketh what pleaseth it” and “addeth thereunto or diminisheth, changeth and rechangeth, mingleth and unmingleth, so that it cutteth asunder and seweth up again, as it listeth” (Primaudaye 155). If not properly controlled, this creative process could produce nightmarish new products, Frankenstein’s monsters sewn from opposite and inharmonious parts. As Puttenham had it, a disordered soul “doth breed Chimeres & monsters in mans imaginations” (Puttenham 29). In Sidney’s Defence of Poesy (1595), the power to combine and create anew elevated the poet to neardivine status; but he too numbered the monstrous among the imagination’s potential products, which included “heroes, demi-gods, cyclops, chimeras, furies and such like” (Sidney 248). In the prologue to his allegorical comedy Midas, published in the same year as Ulysses Redux and first performed before Queen Elizabeth on Twelfth Night, 1590 (Chambers 3.416), John Lyly demonstrated the applicability of this theory to the dramatic genres. He wryly explained that his play’s dual plot and incorporation of elements from different genres reflected and embodied a disordered world: “If wee present a mingle-mangle,” he asserted, “our fault is to be excused, because the whole worlde is become an Hodge-podge.” Lyly elaborated upon the nature of this “Hodge-podge” elsewhere in the prologue, describing a world in which the senses are subject to an onslaught of stimulation, and satiety is always giving way to contempt; where men of all trades, whether merchants, musicians or playwrights, must constantly create new products to respond to the ever-changing tastes of their customers: “there must be sallets for the Italian, picktooths for the Spaniard, pots for the German, porridge for the Englishman” (Sidney 153). As the quotation implies, the catalyst for this universal disorder is the convergence of foreign influences upon England, confusing and trivialising even as they beautify and enrich. Sketched by the pen of Lyly, for whom the profusion of witty invention was a constant source of delight and the subject of his most celebrated work, such a vignette is palpably ironic. But however insincerely, his characterisation of a mixed form as the emblem and product of worldly disorder, a “mingle-mangle” that forces opposite elements into discordant relationships, rehearses a commonplace of early modern poetic criticism most famously articulated by Sidney. In the Defence, Sidney railed against “that mungrell Tragy-comedie,” which indecorously “match(ed) hornpipes and funerals” (Sidney 248). In a prologue written <?page no="146"?> Stephanie Allen 146 for Meleager upon its publication in 1593, eleven years after the play was first composed, and, suggestively, only a year after Ulysses Redux was performed and printed, Gager too drew on this stereotype. In selecting from the available endings for the tale of the proud king Oeneus, Gager stated, he had excluded the transformation of Meleager’s sisters into birds, “ne omnis haec fabula in catastrophen potius prodigiosam, quam in exitum, effectumque vere tragicum quasi in piscem certe, turpiter atram desinat in volucrem, mulier formosa superne” (Lest this play should end with a freakish catastrophe rather than in disaster, and with real tragic effect, like a type of fish which filthily ends as a dark bird, being a beautiful woman above) (Gager 1.40). The three writers thus demonstrate a stock early modern response to a new profusion of generically-mixed poetic and dramatic forms; one which sought to cast them as careless, foreign and scandalously discordant affronts to classical generic orthodoxies. Ulysses Redux reifies generic monstrosity in its aesthetic, plot and characters. His grotesque bird-woman can usefully be read as an analogue for the contradictions inherent in the character of Ulysses, in whom Gager appears to take up as a challenge the criticism Denores had levelled at Guarini, that it is impossible that diametrical opposites of plot and language “possono esser congionte in uno istesso corporo, ne in una istessa compositione” (can be joined in one single body, or in one single composition) (Guarini 24v). Gager’s prologue to academics flaunts the contradictions Ulysses embodies: he is a noble king accustomed to tragic buskins [cothurnis], but in the play is transformed into a beggar and an old man [mendiculus / senexque]. The king is the centre and emblem of an aesthetic of monstrosity that pervades the play, and frequently subverts or darkens moments of distinctively Guarinian wonder. When in Act IV the band of suitors are unable to string Ulysses’s bow, they describe the disguised king’s ability to shoot as a “novi . . . monstri” (Gager 106). While Guarini’s characters forgive one another in the final scene of the Pastor fido, Ulysses instead creates a monster of his treacherous servant Melanthius, ordering that the boy’s lips, nose and ears be hacked off, his entrails be given to the dogs to eat, and the skin of the “frightful man” [immanis viri] be flayed (Gager 132). The grotesquely creative power of the king’s imagination is laboured at the play’s end, as he expresses a bloody desire to feast his eyes upon a scene of slaughter and the broken bodies of the suitors, painting repeated verbal pictures of the butchery he will later enact. For example, in the soliloquy that opens Act IV: <?page no="147"?> Tragedia Nova 147 praegestit animus latera transfixos humi videre stratos. aspicere mensas libet tabo fluentes, aspicere pateras libet verebro madentes (Gager 98) My spirit is so eager to see them laid out, their sides transfixed to the ground. It pleases me to see the tables running with gore, to see the plates dripping with brains. Ulysses’s monstrosity is perhaps most interesting in its relationship with his mendicitas, or state of itinerant poverty or beggarliness. The adjective medicus and its derivatives are applied to Ulysses nineteen times throughout the play, and transferred to the work itself in the first prologue, where Gager’s imagined critic complains that it “quadam mendicitate peccet” (offends in a certain poverty) (Gager 22). The word appears rarely in Classical Latin, but took on a specific significance in the thirteenth century, when it became associated with the orders of mendicant friars who travelled Western Europe, preaching and begging. The word is fascinating in its application both to Ulysses and, more broadly, to tragedia nova, implying Gager’s sense of his project as one of bringing to England something not just foreign, but also pitiful and denigrated. Gary Schmidt opens his study of hybrid literary forms in the Renaissance with the observation of a “general rule that saw cultural mingling and mixture as equivalent to contamination” (Schmidt 3), and hybrid genres as the symbol of that contamination, witnessed by the quotation from Lyly with which I opened. Schmidt draws on a range of modern anthropological and mythographical works to argue that the tricksterfigure in myth and literature is the semi-human analogue of this contamination, describing the “inherent paradoxes of hybrid tricksterfigures as mediators and subversive culture-heroes” (Schmidt 24). For Schmidt, trickster figures are created and defined at the borders where different genres and cultures meet; they are always hybrid, or in the terms of my essay, monstrous, marked with the scars of what has been left behind even as they express the creative joy and optimism of the new. Though of course, we must be wary of too firm an imposition of twentieth century mythography onto early modern academic drama, I believe that Ulysses’s multi-layered monstrosity, endless resource and marginalisation conspire to identify him with the trickster hero as defined by Schmidt. His Atreus-like tragic wrath and gruesome appetites, and his metatheatrical identification with the unfolding of plot as he is decorated in epithets of craftsmanship like “ingenuus faber” or “fraudum artifex” (Gager 34) identify him with an ancient tragic tradi- <?page no="148"?> Stephanie Allen 148 tion that the redemptive philosophy of Christianity has rendered unnecessary, and which has come to look excessive, brutal and crude. But his wretched mendicitas implies that the new form that has washed up on the shores of England to take the place of ancient tragedy is somehow lacking in dignity; as Gager himself asserts in the prologue: “nihil audietis grande.” Gager’s answer to Guarini’s contention that Scripture has replaced the role of tragedy in controlling the passions is muted and ambivalent. But on another level, a monstrous Ulysses is also a symbol for the “optimism and creative joy” that Ted Hughes associates with the trickster-figure and the new genres into which he is inscribed (Scammell 243). In the figure of the trickster, the monstrosity of a mixed form denigrated in criticism of vernacular drama and poetry is recast as a source of productive tension and inspiration. By means of anti-Horatian hybridity, I believe, Gager flaunts his cheerful sense of tragedia nova as a genre pervaded by contradiction, incongruity and even unease in defiance of classical strictures; a fittingly experimental product of the academic stage, where established rules and hierarchies can be challenged and redefined and the Ars Poetica can be ignored altogether in the name of innovation. IV. Matthew Gwinne’s Nero: nova monstra Gwinne’s Nero was written and published in 1603 but, a caustic dedication hints, rejected for performance on the university stage (Gwinne 3). Displaying Gager’s generic label, tragedia nova, on his title-page, Gwinne situated his play in the tradition created by his forebear; his selective reproduction, adaptation, and extension of the features of Ulysses Redux therefore develop our sense of what constitutes the genre. Nero follows Ulysses in parading its author’s interest in generic mingling, in locating the source of its quirks of plot and aesthetic in the persona of its titular character, in imposing a providential narrative upon a classical tale, and in infusing tragedy with happiness and comedy: thus, it reinforces my sense that those features are central to understanding what Gager meant by tragedia nova. Where Gwinne adds to Gager is in his depiction of the grotesque and his play’s generic monstrosity, coherent with his Neronian sources and depicted as congruent with the nature of the character at the centre of his play. Like Gager, Gwinne uses two inventive prologues to introduce the generic play that defines his work. The first takes the form of a dumbshow, in which Gwinne uses the pageantry of tragedy to manipulate <?page no="149"?> Tragedia Nova 149 audience expectation. Accompanied by “musica . . . tragica" Nemesis takes the stage accompanied by three furies; together, the goddesses proceed to four thrones, installing themselves “quasi praeses tragaediae” (as if presiding over the tragedy) where they remain throughout, vivid and foreboding presences. Valeria Messalina, the adulterous wife of Claudius, evokes a raving Bacchante as she leads the chorus in a dance across the stage, wearing tragic slippers, shaking a thyrsus, her hair hanging loose down her back. Her lover follows, his head wreathed in ivy. It is at the end of the second prologue that Gwinne introduces a departure from the tragic mode: (. . .) Sed nec in scena silet Xiphilinus ista, nec tacet Tacitus; nec est Tranquillus hic tranquillus: historicos putes Fieri poetas. (I.57) But Xiphilinus is not silent on the stage, and Tacitus is not quiet, or Tranquillus calm: you might think that historians had become poets. To be clear, Gwinne’s innovation in Nero is not in putting history on the stage, nor is it marrying tragedy and history. The play was written after the vogue for chronicle plays in the popular theatre, which had begun on the academic stage, with the great success of the Richardius Tertius of the Cambridge playwright Thomas Legge (1579); and both popular and academic chronicle plays drew on narratives and devices from mythological tragedy. Gwinne’s departure from the conventions of the genre lies in the inclusivity and consequent amorphousness of his play, which until its final scenes faithfully dramatises the account in Tacitus’s Annales (XIII-XVI) of the end of Claudius’s reign and most of Nero’s career as emperor, using Suetonius’s Life of Nero, Dio Cassius’s History, and the pseudo-Senecan Octavia as secondary sources. Notes in the margins of the printed play direct Gwinne’s reader to the relevant classical authorities, and the scholar flaunts his play’s bookishness in the dedication to Egerton: “ego tantummodo modos feci: ineptus tibicen in comoedia” (I, a foolish piper in the comedy, merely made the measures). Echoing Gager, then, Gwinne characterises his task in creating the play as one of selection, arrangement and decoration. But it is difficult to discern any dramatic logic or organising principle in the tragedy’s structure; it is a sprawling, unwieldy piece that flouts dramatic convention throughout. It is over 5,000 lines long in total; the final Act is over 2,000 lines, twice the length of the average Senecan tragedy. Over eighty characters oc- <?page no="150"?> Stephanie Allen 150 cupy the stage at different points, some walking on to participate in a single scene before disappearing from the action entirely. Structure, character and plot appear to be subordinated to the purposes of history rather than poetry. But despite the playful claims of the prefatory material, Nero cannot be classified as staged history; its inclusivity and faith to Tacitus are everywhere in conflict with an impulse towards what I would call blackly comic Senecan hypertragedy. Binns does not comment on the grim humour that characterises Nero, but does usefully draw attention to the play’s assault on sensibility in defining Gwinne as “trying to out-Seneca Seneca” (Binns, “Seneca and Neoclassical Tragedy” 228). For Nero heightens and exaggerates the already-stark world of Senecan tragedy, reproducing its distinguishing elements so many times over that the narrative framework creaks under their weight: the play swarms with ghosts, who open each act and appear repeatedly to strike fear into the living characters; passages of stichomythia are occasionally protracted to exchanges reaching seventy lines; sententiae are profuse. In a departure from Senecan convention, though, Gwinne positively revels in staging the lurid sex and violence detailed in his historical sources, especially Tacitus. Characters are beaten, stabbed, clubbed, poisoned, strangled and even stomped to death before the eyes of the audience; Nero engages in perverse sex acts with individuals ranging from his step-brother Britannicus to his mother; he demands that a young catamite be castrated and dressed up as a woman, to be his “wife” after the death of Poppea (V.viii.4262-5). For Binns, Gwinne’s dramatic endeavour is akin to that of the director of a modern horror movie, in “lovingly reproducing” the clichés of an old genre (Binns, “Seneca and Neoclassical Tragedy” 228); but this analysis does not quite explain the distinctly parodic feel that Nero’s drive to exaggeration, acceleration and excess creates. Another comparison with modern cinema might offer a different perspective. In a recent essay, Emma Smith applied the insights of cinematic genre studies to early modern revenge tragedy. Twentieth century film critics developed a narrative of the development of cinematic genres, according to which, as examples of popular and profitable genres proliferate, “both film-makers and audience grow increasingly selfconscious regarding the genre’s formal qualities and its initial social function.” As Smith summarises, film genres pass through: (. . .) a period of experiment during which conventions become established, then a classic stage when these established conventions are mutually understood by film artists and audiences. This point of equilibrium turns towards saturation, into an age of refinement during which the form is embellished <?page no="151"?> Tragedia Nova 151 with formal or stylistic details, and finally a baroque . . . stage, when the form and its embellishments are accented to the point where they themselves become the “substance” or “content” of the work. (Smith 30) The early modern genre onto which Smith maps this narrative is revenge tragedy, though she observes that the genre is already selfconscious in its adaptation of the structural and thematic apparatus of classical mythological tragedy. The exaggerated and amplified Senecan devices and themes in Nero at once belong to the final, reflexive stage of this teleology, even as they become the components of a genre that is new and distinct. The treasured but faded apparatus of popular neo- Senecan tragedy - its ghosts and murders, the dark energy of its rhetorical descriptions - is revived in burlesque form and placed at the centre of tragedia nova, in Gwinne’s hands a heightened and exaggerated tragic narrative that everywhere shades into parody. Nero follows Ulysses Redux in its qualified infusion of happiness into tragedy, both in the form of grim humour and in the ultimately positive outcome. Just as in Gager’s play, the happy ending is identified with the workings of providence; but Gwinne’s providential frame is loose and frail, striking his reader as the perfunctory rehearsal of a convention. The lusts of Messalina, the audience hears in the prologue, have placed the Roman court and state under a curse that works itself out in the “peritura magna” (great slaughter) (II.vii.1090) that escalates and gathers momentum throughout the play, with the despot Nero at its centre. The curse fizzles out in the moment of Nero’s death, depicted in the play’s final scene, and Nemesis asserts in the epilogue that “tam mali finis bonus” (a good end has been affixed to so much evil) (Epilogue 4994). Nemesis’s declaration puts Gwinne’s reader in mind of the paradox of the felix culpa; and indeed, though it is palpably looser, the play follows the same, basically tragicomic shape as Ulysses Redux, with suffering and depravity followed by a positive outcome and the restoration of peace. Just as in Ulysses, Gwinne drops hints to align the “good end” with Christianity; there is an abrupt shift in the play’s final lines, spoken by a chorus of Furies, from a pagan divine scheme to a monotheistic one: Hinc liberandi subditi. Opem precentur numina. Sic mangna stabunt, maximo Si fulciantur numini Sic munientur principes, Si muniantur numini. <?page no="152"?> Stephanie Allen 152 Sic protegentur subditi Si protegantur numini (Epilogue 4994; emphases mine) Hence subjects are to be freed, but may they pray for help from the gods Thus great things may endure, if they are supported by the great god. Thus princes may be defended, if they are defended by the god. Thus the oppressed may be protected, if they are protected by the god. In Ulysses, the application of the redemptive philosophy of Christianity to classical tragedy leads to contradiction and ambiguity; Christian morality established a standard of behaviour that the hero could not maintain, and the play’s end implied punishment to come. In Nero, redemption appears almost as an afterthought or convenient device: banishing the heavenly gods from the action of the play and installing the Furies as rulers, Gwinne creates Rome under Messalina’s curse as a topsy-turvy world outside the normal rules of morality and decorum: as Seneca commits Octavia to exile, he laments privately that “testare fugiens exules tecum deos” (as you flee, you may witness that the gods have joined you in exile) (IV.v.2731). The assurance of a didactic, Christian end in which tyranny is justly punished exempts Nero from the charge habitually levelled at Senecan tragedy, of being too pagan and immoral, and becomes a convenient catch-all scheme that allows Gwinne to direct his energy to the site of his real interest: depicting in lurid, grotesque detail the depravity of the reign of the despot emperor Nero. Divorced from the certainties of a providential scheme, or even the affirmation of beneficent gods of the sort one finds in Ulysses, death and ubiquitous corruption become levelling forces in Nero, undermining and implicating even the play’s “good” characters in its knot of dissolution and Senecan nefas. The ghost of Brittanicus, for example, a child and early victim of Nero’s debauched sexual appetites and lust for power, is refused entry to the abodes of the blessed on the grounds that: “sedes beatae non manent stupri reos; / matura te mors sustulit, stupro prius / pollutum ab illo” (The abodes of the blessed aren’t for the depraved; a timely death took you away, who had first been corrupted by that debauched sex act) (III.i.1311-2). The evil that centres on Nero infects all of the play’s characters, contributing to a pervasive sense of universal transgression and suffering heightened and pronounced from Ulysses Redux, and similarly understandable in terms of the De casibus tradition. Most distinctively, Gwinne amplifies Gager’s metapoetic aesthetic of monstrosity, raising horror and disorder to the level of a theme in Nero as it finds expression in a number of different forms and testifies to the centrality of generic monstrosity to tragedia nova. Bodies monstrous in <?page no="153"?> Tragedia Nova 153 the sense implied by Denores pervade; Octavia identifies the hypocrisy inherent in Seneca’s position as both philosopher and flattering courtier by imagining Nero’s adviser as monster: “monstrum est philosophicus aulicus” (a philosophical courtier is a monstrosity) (IV.v.2719). After Poppea’s death, Nero makes orders that violate two bodies: Poppea’s corpse should not be cremated, as was the custom for Roman women, but rather stuffed with spices “more regnum” (like a king); her rotting flesh, Nero predicts, will smell sweeter than any spice (V.viii.4255). A few lines later, he orders that Poppea be remembered in another way: Ideoque similem, quam potest illi puer, Sporum exercari, et ducere uxorem volo. Pythagorae, ut uxor, ipse me subduam meo. (V.viii.4264-5) So that he resemble (Poppea) as much as a boy can, I want to castrate Sporus, and to regard him as my wife. I shall also submit myself to Pythagoras as though his wife. Nero’s unchecked imagination is endlessly, nightmarishly creative; his transgression of boundaries and creation of new monsters is at once repulsive and comically nonchalant. In a parallel manifestation of the play’s monstrosity, the emperor’s moral depravity is written onto his own nauseating body - as Epaphroditus comments upon his death, “Defecit, expiravit: en oculi rigent, / Extant in oris squallidi horrendum modum” (He has grown weak, he has died; look at the staring eyes, bulging terribly from his filthy face) (V.xiii.4790). Gwinne toys with generic monstrosity of the sort flaunted by Gager, as the play’s ghastly horrors are everywhere juxtaposed with comedy; in the final scene, Nero, having heard of a conspiracy against him by Vindex, girds himself up into tower of tragic wrath, promising that if the official finds fault with his emperor when positively disposed, “milvium, imo aquilam feret. / Feret leonem, mite qui non fert pecus” (He will bear me as a kite, no, as an eagle. He will bear me as a lion, who cannot bear me as a lamb) (V.xi.4535-6). But this vision of great anger is comically deflated: Nero’s real grievance with Vindex, he continues, is that the deputy insulted his skill on the lyre - and the emperor continues to demand, child-like, that his servant Epaphroditus praise his musical skill (V.xi.4814-5). Gwinne’s marginal notes direct his reader to the Apocolocyntosis of Seneca only twice, at lines I.i.86 and II.iii.724, where direct references to the treatise work to satirise Claudius; but much of the spirit of that lampoon, with its satire upon the grotesque body of the <?page no="154"?> Stephanie Allen 154 dead emperor as the physical manifestation of his depraved soul, 4 and its parodic deployment of tragedy, 5 is absorbed into Nero. Nero thus pushes the tendency of Ulysses towards comic deflation and blunt brutality firmly into the realm of satire. Its heightened aesthetic of monstrosity, reified in the gruesome productivity of the emperor’s mind, conveys the creative tension produced in the places where classical genres are brought together in outrageous new configurations. Alongside Gager’s Ulysses Redux, finally, the play poses more questions than it answers. Comparison with the “comedia tragica, sacra et nova” of Nicholas Grimald, for example, suggests that experiment with genre might be at the centre of the work of more than one generation of Oxford playwrights. In accommodating comic elements in tragedy, moreover, Gager and Gwinne anticipate the fashions of the popular stage, and, especially when considered alongside later writers such as Thomas Goffe, invite exploration of the interactions between the two traditions. This becomes all-the-more interesting when one considers that in writing and publishing tragedia nova, Gager and Gwinne participated in the development and refinement of ideas of literary composition and theory that were not part of the standard university curriculum, but rather taking place in professional works such as Sidney’s Defence. The tragedia nova of Gager and Gwinne, finally, is characterised by an uncompromising spirit of experiment, an interest in the new and unruly far removed from the sense of conservative tedium that a narrow pedagogical approach perpetuates. 4 For example, where Claudius parodies the death of Virgil’s Dido, defecating as Clotho cuts the thread of his life; “vae me, puto, concavi me” (4.3). The Saturnalian spirit of the play, and its inclusion of a character called Petronius who quotes occasional lines from the Satyricon furthermore suggests another example of Neronian satire - but from the quotations he chooses, it is unclear whether Gwinne might have had access to a manuscript of Petronius’s little-known Satyricon, or whether he knew it only in fragments. 5 In the Apocolocyntosis, for example, a cowardly Hercules feigns menace by adoption of the register and meter of tragedy; “et quo terribilior esset, tragicus fit et ait (. . .)” (And so that he might become more terrible, he made himself tragic). <?page no="155"?> Tragedia Nova 155 References Binns, J. W. “William Gager’s Additions to Seneca’s Hippolytus” in Studies in the Renaissance V.17 (Chicago, 1970) ―――. “Seneca and Neo-Latin Tragedy.” Seneca. Ed. C. D. N. Costa. London: Routledge, 1974. 205-33. ―――. Intellectual Culture in Elizabethan and Jacobean England: The Latin Writings of the Age. Leeds: Francis Cairns, 1990. Boas, Frederick S. University Drama in the Tudor Age. Oxford: Clarendon Press 1914. Chambers, E. K. The Elizabethan Stage. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1923. Clubb, Louise George. Italian Drama in Shakespeare’s Time. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989. De la Primaudaye, Pierre. The Second Part of the French Academie. Trans. Thomas Bowes. London, 1594. Demetriou, Tania. “Periphron Penelope and her Early Modern Translations”. The Culture of Translation in Early Modern England and France, 1500-1660. Ed. Tania Demetriou and Rowan Tomlinson. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2014. 86-112. Dewar-Watson, Sarah. “Aristotle and Tragicomedy.” Early Modern Tragicomedy. Ed. Subha Mukherji and Raphael Lyne. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2007. 15-28. Elliott, John R. Jr. “Plays, Players and Playwrights in Renaissance Oxford,” in From Page to Performance: Essays in Early English Drama, ed. John A. Alford. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1995 pp. 179-194 Enterline, Lynn. Shakespeare’s Schoolroom. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012. Epps, Preston H. The Poetics of Aristotle. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1970. Gager, William. The Complete Works. Ed. and trans. Dana F. Sutton. New York: Garland, 1994. Gilbert, Allan H. Literary Criticism: Plato to Dryden. New York: Wayne State University Press, 1962. Guarini, Giovanni Battista. Il Verrato, Ovvero Difesa Di Quanta Ha Scritto M.Giason Denores. Ferrara: Alfonso Caraffa, 1588. Gwinne, Matthew. Nero. Ed. and trans. Dana F. Sutton. Birmingham: The Philological Museum, 2012. http: / / www.philological.bham.ac.uk/ Nero (accessed 10 May 2015. Hughes, Ted. “Crow on the Beach.” Winter Pollen: Occasional Prose. Ed. William Scammell. New York: Picador, 1995. <?page no="156"?> Stephanie Allen 156 Hutten, Leonard. Bellum grammaticale ad exemplar mri alexandri humiiI. In Gratiam eorum, qui ameoniores Musas venerantur, Editum. Edinburgh: Gideon Lethgo, 1658. ―――. Bellum Grammaticale. Birmingham: The Philological Museum, 2008. http: / / www.philological.bham.ac.uk/ bellum/ (accessed 1 May 2015) Kirsch, Arthur. Jacobean Dramatic Perspectives. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1972. Leonidas, Eric. “Theatrical Experiment and the Production of Knowledge in the Gray’s Inn Revels.” Early Modern Academic Drama. Ed. Jonathan Walker and Paul D. Streufert. Farnham: Ashgate, 2008. 115-129. Lyly, John. Galatea and Midas. Ed. George K. Hunter and David Bevington. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000. Norland, Howard B. Neoclassical Tragedy in Elizabethan England. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2009. ―――. “Neo-Latin Drama in Britain.” Neo-Latin Drama in Early Modern Europe. Ed. Jan Bloemendal and Howard B. Norland. Leiden: Koninklijke Brill NV, 2003. 471-545. Puttenham, George. The Art of English Poesie. Ed. Edward Arber. Whitefish, Montana: Kessinger, 2010. Records of Early English Drama: Oxford. John R. Elliott Jr., Alan H. Nelson, Alexandra F. Johnston, and Diana Wyatt, eds. 2 vols. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004. Schmidt, Gary. Renaissance Hybrids. Farnham: Ashgate, 2013. Seneca, Lucius Annaeus. “Apocolocyntosis.” Seneca: Apocolocyntosis. Ed. P. T. Eden. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984. Shenk, Linda. “Gown Before Crown: Scholarly Abjection and Academic Entertainment Under Queen Elizabeth I.” Early Modern Academic Drama. Ed. Jonathan Walker and Paul D. Streufert. Farnham: Ashgate, 2008. 19-45. Sidney, Philip. “The Defence of Poesy.” The Oxford Authors: Sir Philip Sidney. Ed. Katherine Duncan Jones. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989. Smith, Emma. “Genres: Cinematic and Early Modern.” Shakespeare Bulletin 32.1 (2014). 27-43. Tucker Brooke, C. F. “William Gager to Queen Elizabeth” in Studies in Philology 29, 1932. 160-175. ―――. “The Life and Times of William Gager” in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 17, 1951. 401-431. <?page no="157"?> Tragedia Nova 157 Weinberg, Bernard. A History of Literary Criticism in the Italian Renaissance. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961. 2 vols. Wolfe, Jessica. “Chapman’s Ironic Homer.” College Literature 35, 2008. 151-18. <?page no="159"?> Shakespeare and Southwark Alan H. Nelson William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson attended grammar schools, but not universities. Both men were recognized by contemporaries as superior playwrights despite their lack of a university education. While grammar schools trained many a prospective playwright in reading, writing, and oral performance, the very schoolmasters who incorporated dramatic texts and even private dramatic productions into their classrooms, and the parish ministers who stood above them in authority, were often antagonistic to public playhouses and playgoing. Thus the relationship between pedagogy and drama was not inevitably supportive. Evidence for these observations is derived from the archives of St. Saviour’s and St. Olave’s parishes, Southwark, St. Saviour’s being home to the Bankside playhouses and bear-baiting arenas. Additional evidence is extracted from the published works of the same schoolmasters and ministers, and from articles in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004). While Elizabethan and Jacobean playwrights were typically products of both a grammar school and a university, at least two, and arguably the finest - William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson - were the product of a grammar school only ( ODNB ). 1 Grammar schools bore a complex relationship to drama: while they trained many a prospective playwright in reading, writing, and oral performance, the schoolmasters who incorporated classical play-texts and even private dramatic productions into 1 On the general subject of grammar schools and literacy, see Carlisle, Simon, Watson, and Cressy. Drama and Pedagogy in Medieval and Early Modern England. SPELL: Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 31. Ed. Elisabeth Dutton and James McBain. Tübingen: Narr, 2015. 159-172. <?page no="160"?> Alan H. Nelson 160 their classrooms, were sometimes enemies of public playhouses and playgoing. Implicit in any discussion of drama and pedagogy in the Early Modern period must be the King’s School in Stratford-upon-Avon. We know the names and characters of the schoolmasters active during Shakespeare’s childhood there, and even have contracts outlining their general responsibilities (Baldwin), but neither admissions lists nor the school’s rules and orders survive. The more we know about other schools from the same period, therefore, the more we can infer about Stratford’s King’s School. We may also ask whether the playwright served as an usher in a country school during his “Lost Years,” as reported by the Shakespeare “mythos.” Certain references to schools or schooling are incorporated into Shakespeare’s plays. The “schoolmaster scene” in Merry Wives of Windsor (4.1) is patently a fictionalized version of the author’s personal experience. Other pedagogical scenes are the music lesson in Taming of the Shrew (3.1), and the French-English lesson in Henry V (3.4). All these reveal Shakespeare as a devotee of the schoolboy humor which delights in salacious puns, however unjustified on strict linguistic grounds. To these three plays must be added Love’s Labour’s Lost as a general reflection on Elizabethan education. Though lacking a university education himself, Shakespeare had direct or indirect connections to the Inns of Court and to Cambridge University. His Comedy of Errors was almost certainly performed at Gray’s Inn in 1594, his Twelfth Night at Middle Temple in 1602. Additionally, his playing company, the King’s Men, performed twice annually at the Inner Temple from about 1607 onward (Nelson). Just before and just after the turn of the century, student playwrights of St. John’s College, Cambridge, commended Shakespeare by name in various parts of their Parnassus trilogy (Leishman, see Index). Outside the Shakespeare sphere of influence lay Dulwich College, founded by the ex-actor Edward Alleyn, a fine example of an Elizabethan/ Jacobean gentleman doing good and achieving immortality by founding a school ( ODNB ). Alleyn’s father-in-law Philip Henslowe was a governor of the Free School of St. Saviour’s parish, Southwark, even though his grasp on written English was tenuous, his knowledge of Latin and Greek non-existent ( ODNB ). St. Saviour’s parish was home to four playhouses - the Rose, the Swan, Shakespeare’s Globe, and the Hope and to a succession of bearbaiting arenas. Lying on the south side of the Thames, this parish, which included Bankside, extended westward from Borough High Street at the <?page no="161"?> Shakespeare and Southwark 161 southern foot of London Bridge about two miles up-river as far as Lambeth Marsh. St. Olave’s parish extended eastward about the same distance down-river, as far as Bermondsey. Together, St. Saviour’s and St Olave’s comprised the entirety of Thames-side Southwark (Rendle). (Two Southwark parishes, St. Thomas’s and St. George’s, lay south of the Thames). About a quarter of the male population of St. Saviour’s parish were watermen, who ferried customers to Bankside; a much smaller but not insignificant number were players or bear-wards (Website, under Vocations). William Shakespeare can be linked to St. Saviour’s parish through the Globe playhouse and documents from the legal history of its site (Chambers 2.414-19). His brother Edmund lived and was buried in the parish in 1607: it is reasonably assumed that William paid for Edmund’s burial in the church (now Southwark Cathedral), and for the tolling of a bell ( ODNB , Shakespeare, “Shakespeare and Stratford 1606-1608”). A tenuous connection between Southwark and Stratford-upon-Avon may be claimed on behalf of John Harvard, eponymous benefactor of Harvard College. John was the son of Robert and Katherine Harvard. Robert, a butcher, was a prominent member of St. Saviour’s parish, while Katherine was the daughter of Thomas Rogers, yeoman and alderman of Stratford. Thus Harvard University can claim a matrilineal connection through Southwark to Shakespeare’s home town. John Harvard’s schoolmaster at St. Saviour’s would have been Thomas Watkins to 1618, and Humphrey Franke thereafter. The usher, or under-master, was John Davidge, B.A., of Oriel College, Oxford. After grammar school John Harvard attended Emmanuel College, Cambridge, a notably puritan establishment ( ODNB ). Both St. Saviour’s and St. Olave’s parishes established free grammar schools in the early years of Elizabeth. The two schools survived in parallel until the mid-1890s, when they were legally conjoined. In 1963 the combined school moved from its home in dense and dirty Southwark to Orpington, Kent, where it now thrives as the Grammar School of St. Olave’s and St. Saviour’s. Usually called “St. Olave’s,” it is recognized today as one of the finest grammar schools in England (Carrington). The modern St. Olave’s retains the foundational charters of both schools and the early orders of St. Saviour’s school, while the governors’ books of both schools and property deeds of St. Olave’s are currently held at the Southwark Local History Library on Borough High Street. Each parish preserved vestry books and other documents from the years of greatest interest to early modern theater historians, 1560 to 1640: a minority of these are currently held at the Southwark Local His- <?page no="162"?> Alan H. Nelson 162 tory Library, a majority at the London Metropolitan Archives in Clerkenwell. William Ingram of the University of Michigan and I have built a website for St. Saviour’s parish, while an independent Canadian scholar, Ian Haste, has joined me in transcribing documents from St. Olave’s parish. St. Saviour’s documents cited in the course of this essay may be found online (designated as “Website”); references for documents from St. Olave’s parish will be given explicitly. My intention in the balance of my essay is to examine relations between the two Southwark grammar schools and local sites of public entertainment. The Free Grammar School of St. Saviour’s parish was founded in 1562 upon a bequest by the wealthy saddler Thomas Cure. While a still earlier school can be traced back to 1540, the school of 1562 had a fresh bequest, a fresh charter, and a new lease on life. The site of the school was ultimately fixed in Chequer Alley, near the foot of London Bridge, on the east side of Borough High Street beneath what is now London Bridge rail station (Victoria 174-81). Full transcriptions of the Governors’ Book and the parish Vestry Books, giving these and other details, are posted online, along with lists and thumbnail biographies of the schoolmasters and the under-masters, the latter better known as ushers. The Free Grammar School of St. Olave’s parish, founded in 1571, was situated near St. Olave’s Church (Victoria 181-5). The first Governors’ Book covers the years 1571 to 1650; the school is also mentioned in the parish Vestry Book. From these sources we learn that Christopher Ockland, who had served as schoolmaster of St. Saviour’s approximately 1562 to 1569, applied for the schoolmastership of St. Olave’s in 1571, but, his appointment delayed, withdrew his application in disgust ( ODNB ). A St. Olave’s vestry order of 1566 anticipated a school in which children were to remain untyll suche tyme that the sayd chilldren can be lerned to rede awrighte [sic: for “& wrighte”] sufficiently tyll they be abell to goo to servyce or ells otherwyse to goo to grammer, as their frindes shall thinke for them moost fetyst [=fittest] at that tyme. (Vestry Book, fol. 29 recto) The decision as to which children would leave school for service, and which would go into grammar, was to be made, theoretically at least, not by the school but by the friends . . . presumably the parents or sponsors . . . of the child. <?page no="163"?> Shakespeare and Southwark 163 Orders of 1571 reveal that pupils entered St. Olave’s school from the age of six as “petits” or “readers”; over time they would become “writers” and finally “grammarians” (Governors’ Book 3-7). Thus pupils first learned to read (in English); then to write; and finally to read and write in Latin, which requires the mastery of grammar. Pupils were also taught to “cast accomptes, and so to put them forth to prentice.” 2 Grammar school education was essentially free, though St Olave’s families were expected to contribute 6d, 8d, and 30d respectively as pupils progressed through the three levels. Families also contributed 20d for rods, brooms, and ink - rather hard to think that pupils had to pay for their own instruments of punishment. Older scholars were expected to arrive by 6 a.m. in the summer, 7 a.m. in the winter, and received stripes for lateness; younger pupils were allowed greater toleration and mercy. Morning sessions continued until 11 a.m., while afternoon sessions lasted from 1 to 5 p.m. Textbooks were to be in conformity with the Church of England and contributory to orthodox beliefs and morals. The schoolmaster and the usher both received £13-6-8 per annum; the schoolmaster was chiefly responsible for the older boys, the usher, for the younger boys. The schoolmaster was allowed to supplement his income by taking up to six private pupils, but was also required to help with the younger boys. Alternate orders, entered into St. Olave’s Vestry Book (fol. 35 verso), reveal that each child was to be provided by his sponsors, not by the school, with books, paper, pen, and ink, and was subject to expulsion for non-compliance, but only after the sponsors had been urged to provide better support. Scholars were to attend church at time of prayer; and were to supply candles for the winter months. Any pupil not from St. Olave’s parish was charged 30s, excepting four pupils from St. Saviour’s parish, who were admitted gratis. Pupils were to be examined from time to time so the governors could check on their progress; examinations were to be conducted by one or more of the churchwardens, and by the minister. Orders from 1614 for St. Saviour’s, which was less an elementary and more a pure grammar school than St. Olave’s, provide detail relevant to play-acting: “the highest forme shall declaim[,] and some of the inferior fourmes act a scene of Terence or some dialogue” (Victoria 179). 2 St. Olave’s Governors’ Book, 5. Stowe (106-7) cites references to the teaching of accounting: note 33: “to write and cast accounts, whereby their hands may be directed, and so they trained to write fair hands, and likewise not ignorant in reckoning and accounting”; note 35: “Writing and casting accounts with the pen and counters”; note 36: for “writing and cyphering.” <?page no="164"?> Alan H. Nelson 164 Thus the lower-form grammarians were to act out scenes of Terence, while the top-formers were to perform individual recitations. It is perhaps in the nature of the governors’ books, which focus more on finances than on rules and regulations, that we know more about the school privy than the school classroom, and much more about the school’s governors than about the school’s pupils. We do learn some details. A 1597 inventory for St. Saviour’s school lists, unsurprisingly: “the desk and seats that the children sit on” (Website, Governors’ Book). The governors of St. Olave’s School were concerned that the school should have enough light, for the health of all concerned; recently-buried bodies in a nearby burial-ground were an annoyance to the masters and pupils alike (Governors’ Book 70 verso; 87 verso; 109 verso). Special concern was expressed for the educational welfare of poor pupils; this concern is expressed more clearly over time, as at St. Saviour’s in 1627, when a scholarship given to a son of a minister was declared subject to transfer if a well-qualified but still poorer pupil should come along (Website, Governors’ Book 69). In the parish at large, a close connection obtained between schoolmasters and parish ministers - so close that it was resisted by the bishop of Winchester. Schoolmasters were not to perform ministerial duties; and when the controversial Robert Browne, founder of Brownism ( ODNB ), was appointed schoolmaster at St. Olave’s in 1586, he was made to promise: “ffyrste that you shall not entermedle your selfe with the minister or mynestrie of this parrishe” (Governors’ Book 10). Nevertheless, ministers, schoolmasters, and ushers were all graduates of Cambridge or Oxford, and all cooperated to prepare gifted boys for admission to the same universities. In several instances the top candidates from St. Saviour’s were the sons or nephews of ministers and schoolmasters. 3 This tight, recirculatory enterprise put pedagogy at the intellectual center of the parish. A mystery with Southwark as with Stratford-upon-Avon is why so few pupils are recorded on the admissions registers of Cambridge and Oxford colleges, or in university matriculation books. It is easier to trace admissions now that admissions lists for Cambridge and Oxford are online (Venn, Foster). A search for “Southwark” or “Stratford” as “Location” will result in some, but not many, hits. In the same vein, the col- 3 Mark Franke was the son of Humphrey Franke, schoolmaster 1618-37, while Benjamin Archer may have been a son and Ferdinand Archer was apparently a nephew of James Archer, minister 1614-41: see Website, under “Schoolmasters” and “Ministers.” <?page no="165"?> Shakespeare and Southwark 165 leges and universities of only about half of all ministers, schoolmasters, and ushers of St. Saviour’s parish are known, even though all were university-educated (Website, Ministers and Preachers; Schoolmasters and Ushers). One explanation is that the registers of many of the colleges are incomplete or missing for early years; also, many students avoided matriculation, some for reasons of conscience, as famously with John Donne ( ODNB ). Many ministers and schoolmasters of Southwark parishes attended puritan colleges, including Christ’s College and Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and Magdalen Hall, Oxford. A brief survey of the careers and published writings of these parish officers reveals a high degree of intellectual achievement, along with an inclination to puritanism and corresponding attitudes toward public entertainment. 4 (To forestall confusion it is necessary to understand that St. Saviour’s was authorized to have two ministers, neither of whom was superior to the other; so the tenures of the two ministers often overlapped). Christopher Ockland (Ocland), probably born in the 1540s, schoolmaster of St. Saviour’s 1563-69, was author of Anglorum proelia (“Battles of the English”), first published in 1580. Ockland’s Latin poem traces English history from Edward III to the death of Mary in 1558. Ockland’s poem went through seven editions to 1582, John Sharrock’s translation into English was published in 1585, and a final Latin edition was published in 1680. Ockland published Latin poems in praise of Elizabeth, and an anti-Catholic tract entitled The Fountaine and Welspring of all variance, sedition, and deadlie hate (1589). In several of his titles Ockland explicitly associates himself with the schools of Southwark and of Cheltenham. “Christopher Ocland’s is a sizeable œuvre that should not be overlooked. He was one of a number of schoolmaster Latin authors of the sixteenth century, but his importance stems from the high regard in which his historical verse was held, and for its long-lasting influence” ( ODNB ). Robert Crowley, born about 1519, and thus from the truly distant past, schoolmaster of St. Saviour’s 1569-71, was both an author and a printer. From about 1547 to 1588 he published some twenty titles. In his 31 Epigrams (1550), Crowley inveighed against bear-baitings at Paris 4 Information cited below for individuals from Christopher Ockland to Thomas Sutton, gathered in the St. Saviour’s Website under “Ministers” and “Schoolmasters,” derives from documents cited on the same website, supplemented by ODNB , Foster, and Venn, while information on publications is extracted from the Short Title Catalogue (see References). <?page no="166"?> Alan H. Nelson 166 Garden. A modern admirer calls him “the most significant poet between Surrey and Gascoyne” ( ODNB ). Thomas Brasbridge, schoolmaster of St. Saviour’s 1573-80, also a preacher and a practitioner of medicine, was born in 1536/ 7. Brasbridge published Abdias the Prophet (1574), based on a sermon given in Oxford; three editions of a commentary on the plague entitled The Poor Man’s Jewel (1578 to 1592), praising the herb Carduus Benedictus; and a schoolmasterly commentary on Cicero’s Offices (1586, 1592). Brasbridge was a man of puritan tendencies who in his post-Southwark years fought openly with Sir John Danvers of Banbury: on one occasion two of Danvers’s daughters attacked Brasbridge with their fists and with knives. Brasbridge was an enemy of maypoles, while Danvers seems to have been an embodiment of “Merry old England” . . . with fierce daughters. 5 Thomas Ratcliffe, minister of St. Saviour’s 1585-99, was author of A Short Summe of the Whole Catechisme . . . for the greater ease of the common people and Children of Saint Saveries in South-warke. First gathered by Mr. Thomas Ratliffe Minister of Gods word in Saint Saveries in South-warke. Published posthumously in 1619, the imprint carries a dedication signed “in Southwarke the 22. of October Anno 1592.” Ratcliffe’s tenure as minister overlapped with that of Edward Phillips, who served from 1588 to 1601/ 2. Henry Yelverton, a puritan lawyer, published Phillips’s sermons in 1605 under the informative title: Certaine godly and learned sermons: preached by that worthy seruant of Christ M. Ed. Philips, as they were deliuered by him in Saint Sauiors in Southwarke. And were taken by the pen of H. Yeluerton of Grayes Inne Gentleman , London: Printed by Richard Field for Cuthbert Burbie, and are to be sold at his shop in Paules church-yard at the signe of the Swanne, 1605. Richard Field was William Shakespeare’s countryman and printer/ publisher of Venus and Adonis (1593) and Rape of Lucrece (1594). A second edition of Phillips’s sermons was published in 1607. A Thomas Rawlings, professor of both medicines, was author of a medical treatise entitled Admonitio pseudo-chymicis (1610? ). While it may seem unlikely that this was the Thomas Rawlings who served as schoolmaster of St. Saviour’s in 1582, his profession may explain a mysterious injunction in the 1614 school orders, that the schoolmaster was “not to practize physick” (Victoria, 179). Perhaps the school had had it 5 The Banbury story occurs in The National Archives (Kew), SP 12/ 223/ 47. I am grateful to Alexandra F. Johnston for this reference. <?page no="167"?> Shakespeare and Southwark 167 with the likes of Brasbridge and Rawlings, both of whom did “practize physick.” Thomas Sutton, minister of St. Saviour’s 1614/ 15 to 1623, appeared much too late to have had any direct influence on Shakespeare; Sutton’s story nevertheless has Shakespeare connections. Born 1584/ 5, and thus Shakespeare’s junior by about twenty years, Sutton matriculated from Queen’s College, Oxford, in 1602. Having gained a reputation for his “smooth and edifying way of preaching,” Sutton preached at Paul’s Cross, London, 3 January 1612/ 13, denouncing the theater, usury, adultery, and corrupt lawyers. Published under the title Englands Summons (1613), Sutton’s sermon provoked a reply from Shakespeare’s fellow actor Nathan Field, “who argued that the Bible does not condemn acting and that Sutton’s criticism was disloyal because the king patronized the theatre.” Field’s response, which circulated in manuscript, not in print, was finally published in the nineteenth century (Halliwell). Sutton preached at Paul’s Cross again in 1616, publishing his sermon as Englands Second Summons: his target was Catholic polemicists, as he called on magistrates to “loppe and prune the corrupt and rotten branches, that infect and pester the Land, [and] to cut off the trayterous heads of Priests and Jesuites.” This was the first of many such attacks, the last occurring in June 1623. On 24 August of that same year, Sutton, having travelled north to his home town of Bampton on behalf of a free school he had helped to found there, was shipwrecked and drowned on his return to London by sea. His death provoked a response from the Jesuit priest Robert Drury, “who reportedly gloated that the sea had claimed Sutton because ‘he was not worthy the earth should receive him.’” On 23 October Drury was preaching at Blackfriars hall when the floor collapsed, sending him and about 40 of his auditors to their deaths. The incident provoked a number of pamphlets, including one by Thomas Goad : The dolefull euen-song, or A true, particular and impartiall narration of that fearefull and sudden calamity, which befell the preacher Mr. Drury a Iesuite, and the greater part of his auditory, by the downefall of the floore at an assembly in the Black-Friers on Sunday the 26. of Octob. last, in the after noone Together with the rehearsall of Master Drurie his text, and the diuision thereof, as also an exact catalogue of the names of such as perished by this lamentable accident: and a briefe application thereupon. This mass death of Catholics was, in the words of the dedication, one of “Gods extraordinary workes.” First among the slain, as listed in the “exact catalogue,” was “Master Drewrie the Priest.” It is impossible to overlook the fact that the Blackfriars gatehouse was purchased in 1613 by William Shakespeare, though he had apparently disposed of it <?page no="168"?> Alan H. Nelson 168 by the time of his death in 1616 ( ODNB , Shakespeare, “The Last Years”). The succession of highly literate and highly Latinate schoolmasters in the early years of St. Saviour’s school is reminiscent of Stratford, where the schoolmaster and Latinist John Brunswerd taught while Shakespeare was an infant ( ODNB ). Brunswerd, explicitly commended in Ludus Literarius, or the Grammar Schole (1612), by John Brinsley ( ODNB ), exemplifies the excellence and overqualification a schoolboy might easily discover in an Elizabethan schoolmaster. A wider study of ushers might provide context for the assumption that William Shakespeare could have served, with merely a grammar school education, as an usher in a country school ( ODNB , Shakespeare, “After School, and Marriage”). That would not have happened in the suburban parishes of St. Saviour’s or St. Olave’s, not only as a matter of policy, but because of the dire employment prospects for university graduates under Elizabeth and James. As today, numerous candidates applied for any open position; young men, some recently married, were desperate for employment. In February 1617/ 18, for example, seven candidates vied for the position of schoolmaster of St. Saviour’s; in 1638 the governors gave £4 for the “better relief” of a candidate who had been hired only to be rejected by the Bishop of Winchester (Website, Governors’ Book 46, 85). No schoolmaster or minister of St. Saviour’s was as radical as Robert Browne, appointed schoolmaster of St. Olave’s in 1586 ( ODNB ). Nevertheless, as noted, Robert Crowley explicitly attacked bear-baiting, Thomas Brasbridge was an enemy of maypoles, while Thomas Sutton attacked playhouses and players. It is no wonder, then, to discover the St. Saviour’s vestry challenging the very existence of professional plays and playhouses within the parish. The date is 19 July 1598: Imprimis it was ordered at this Vestry that a petition shall be made to the body of the Council concerning the playhouses in this parish, wherein the enormities shall be showed that comes thereby to the parish. And that, in respect thereof they may be dismissed and put down from playing. And that four or two of the churchwardens, Mr. Howse, Mr. Garlonde, Mr. John Payne, Mr. Humble, or two of them, and Mr. Russell and Mr. Ironmonger or one of them, shall present the cause with the collector of the Boroughside and another of the Bankside. (Website, Vestry Book) The parish ministers at this time were Edward Phillips and Thomas Ratcliffe. Maybe this petition was meant to stave off the construction of <?page no="169"?> Shakespeare and Southwark 169 the Globe Theatre. If so, it was unsuccessful. On 28 March 1600 the same Vestry moved to extract funds from the players’ “enormities”: Item it is ordered that the churchwardens shall talk with the players for tithes for their playhouses and for the rest of the new tan-houses near thereabouts within the liberty of the Clink and for money for the poor according to the order taken before my lords of Canterbury, London, and Master of the Revels. In effect, enormities would be tolerated, so long as they paid taxes. Another sign of an accommodation between the parish and its playhouses was the incorporation of Philip Henslowe and his son-in-law Edward Alleyn into St. Saviour’s Vestry. Henslowe was appointed vestryman on 8 July 1607, and one of the six school governors on 22 January 1609/ 10 (Website, Vestry Book, Governors’ Book), while Alleyn was appointed vestryman on 2 March 1607/ 8 (Website, Vestry Book). It is traditional for scholars to discuss drama and pedagogy as if each was “a Good Thing,” and as if together they were “a Very Good Thing.” 6 Pedagogy was good to a degree, obviously: the instruction in writing, reading, and grammar experienced by Shakespeare in Stratford, including the Latin lesson created by memory and imagination in Merry Wives of Windsor, gave him access to literary sources and models for his comedies, histories, and tragedies. What we learn about the grammar schools of Southwark may lead us to appreciate, by analogy, that Shakespeare likely attended grammar school from the age of 6 to the age at which other boys were preparing for admission to Cambridge or Oxford, and that he likely joined in performances of Terence (in Latin). Nicholas Rowe (1709) was evidently the first biographer to suggest that financial reverses of Shakespeare’s father would have jeopardized William’s attendance at the King’s School: “the want of his assistance at Home, forc’d his father to withdraw him from thence” (Honan 43, 58). But there is no evidence for Rowe’s conjecture, and it must always be remembered that free grammar schools were intended primarily for the poor, not for the rich. 7 Grammar-school teachers who were well-educated themselves, and allowed or encouraged the performance of Terence in their classrooms, 6 I allude to W. C. Sellar and R. J. Yeatman, 1066 and All That: A Memorable History of England, Comprising All the Parts You Can Remember, Including 103 Good Things, 5 Bad Kings and 2 Genuine Dates (London: Methuen and Co., 1930). 7 A search for the word “poor” in St. Saviour’s Governors’ Book (Website) will reveal many instances of selective benefits given to poor boys. <?page no="170"?> Alan H. Nelson 170 often looked on professional plays, players, and playhouses as promoters of social and moral “enormities.” That puritans might even inveigh against schoolmasters who stage plays is evident in an admittedly fictional complaint from the character Censure in Staple of News, written by Ben Jonson about 1625: . . . An there were no wiser than I, I would have ne’er a cunning schoolmaster in England . . . They make all their scholars play-boys! Is’t not a fine sight to see all our children made interluders? Do we pay our money for this? We send them to learn their grammar and their Terence, and they learn their play-books. . . . I hope Zeal-of-the-Land Busy and my gossip Rabbi Troubletruth will start up and see we have painful good ministers to keep school and catechise our youth, and not to teach ’em to speak plays and act fables of false newes in this manner, to the super-vexation of town and country . . . (Jonson 6.108) Ben Jonson and William Shakespeare, both ex-grammarians, profited from pedagogy without being diverted or stifled by it. In the words of the character William Kempe, in conversation with the character Richard Burbage, in the Cantabrigian Return from Parnassus (1605-6): Few of the uniuersity men pen plays well, they smell too much of that writer Ovid, and that writer Metamorphoses, and talk too much of Proserpina and Jupiter: why here’s our fellow Shakespeare puts them all down, aye, and Ben Jonson too. (Leishman 337) 8 8 I have modernized the text. It is unclear whether Ben Jonson joins Shakespeare in putting down all other playwrights, or whether he is also put down by Shakespeare. <?page no="171"?> Shakespeare and Southwark 171 References Baldwin, T. W. William Shakspere’s Small Latine & Lesse Greeke, 2 vols. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1944. Bankside (the Parishes of St. Saviour and Christchurch Southwark), Survey of London, vol. 22. London: London County Council, 1950. Carlisle, Nicholas. A Concise Description of the Endowed Grammar Schools in England and Wales, 2 vols. London: Baldwin, Cradock, and Joy, 1818. Carrington, R. C. Two Schools: A History of St. Olave’s and St. Saviour’s Grammar School Foundation. London: privately printed, 1971. Chambers, Edmund K. Elizabethan Stage, 4 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1923. Cressy, David. Literacy and Social Order: Reading and Writing in Tudor and Stuart England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980. Foster, Joseph. Alumni Oxonienses: the Members of the University of Oxford, 1500-1714. Oxford and London: Parker and company, 1891-92. See also website below. Halliwell, James Orchard, ed. The Remonstrance of N.F. . . addressed to a Preacher in Southwark, who had been arraigning against the Players at the Globe Theatre, in the year 1616. Now first edited from the original manuscript [TNA: SP SP 14/ 89/ 210]. London: privately printed, 1865. Jonson, Benjamin. The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson., ed. David Bevington et al., 7 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Leishman, J. B. The Three Parnassus Plays (1598-1601). London: Nicholson and Watson, 1949. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Cited throughout as ODNB . See also website below. Records of Early English Drama: Inns of Court. Alan H. Nelson and John R. Elliott, eds. 3 vols. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2010. Rendle, William. Old Southwark and its People. London, 1878. Shakespeare, William. The Riverside Shakespeare, 2nd ed., G. Blakemore Evans, gen. ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997. A Short-title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, and Ireland, . . . 1475-1640 compiled by A. W. Pollard and G. R. Redgrave, 2nd edition completed by Katharine F. Pantzer, 3 vols. London: Bibliographical Society, 1976-91. Simon, Joan. Education and Society in Tudor England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966. Stowe, A. Monroe. English Grammar Schools in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth. New York: Columbia University Press, 1908. <?page no="172"?> Alan H. Nelson 172 Venn, John, and John Archibald Venn. Alumni Cantabrigienses: A Biographical List of All Known Students, Graduates, and Holders of Office at the University of Cambridge, from the Earliest Times to 1751. 4 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922-27. See also website below. Victoria History of the County of Surrey, vol. 2. London: Victoria County History, 1905. Watson, Foster. The English Grammar Schools to 1660. New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1970. Manuscripts (see also St. Saviour’s Website below) St. Olave’s School Governors’ Book (SO/ I/ 1/ 1) St. Olave’s Vestry Book (SO/ I/ 1/ 2) Websites Foster: http: / / www.british-history.ac.uk/ source.aspx? pubid=1270 ODNB: http: / / www.oxforddnb.com/ St Saviour’s Website: http: / / www-personal.umich.edu/ ~ingram/ StSaviour/ (Alternatively, a link is provided on the website of the London Metropolitan Archives, Clerkenwell, London) Venn: http: / / venn.lib.cam.ac.uk/ Documents/ acad/ index.html/ <?page no="173"?> Shakespeare’s Rhythmic Education Robert Stagg Shakespeare’s education was thorough goingly rhythmic: it was busy with competing or complementary rhythms, many of which were found in Lily’s Grammar and all of which were complemented by a series of highly rhythmic pedagogical methods. Previous accounts of Shakespeare’s education have tended to focus on pedagogical and rhetorical structures rather than the rhythms that animated them, and in so doing they risk characterising Shakespeare’s adult writing as static and rigid. Shakespeare’s education was a cacophony masquerading as a harmony: while much has been written about the structures of discipline and repetition in Elizabethan schools, there has been little focus on the aural variety that enlivened those structures (a variety that often emerged in pedagogical practice even though it could be obscured in or by pedagogical theory). Yet Shakespeare’s education was busy with competing or complementary rhythms. Sixteenth century grammar school pupils were taught various rhythms - from prosodic rhythms to speech rhythms to the internal rhythms of Latin - in ways that brought these many kinds of rhythm into contact with each other. Sometimes the structures of Elizabethan teaching were themselves rather rhythmic. We should remember, then, that behind the pedagogical skeleton of rote learning and birching was a pupil’s heart - Shakespeare’s heart - beating, erratically, to different pulses. Previous accounts of Shakespeare’s education have focused on the structures and theories of Elizabethan pedagogy more than the rhythms animating them. Emrys Jones proposed that Shakespeare’s “dialogue me- Drama and Pedagogy in Medieval and Early Modern England. SPELL: Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 31. Ed. Elisabeth Dutton and James McBain. Tübingen: Narr, 2015. 173-183. <?page no="174"?> Robert Stagg 174 thod” (Jones 13), the deployment of in utramque partem arguments, came directly from his grammar schooling (or perhaps from lost years as a country schoolmaster). This “principle of rhetorical dialectic” was “clearly the product of academic rhetorical training in the writing of controversiae” (14), exercises at school whereby pupils wrote personified speeches or detached arguments in favour of such and such a logical position. If true, Jones’s argument would make the Henry VI plays - stiff with in utramque partem arguments and controversiae frames - one of Shakespeare’s finest achievements. Yet Jones backs away from this implication, calling such early plays “a schoolmaster’s attempt” (264), “less sensuously ingratiating” (29), better viewed “in retrospect as an immature King Lear” (265). He writes of 1 Henry 6 that it is “almost a copybook product of this rhetorical method” [the controversiae] in “the devising of situations which could be broken down into a structure of division and opposition and then treated with the utmost emotional force of which the writer was capable” (14). As the sentence progresses, so it unravels: it is the “utmost emotional force” of Shakespeare which matters more (to Jones at least) than the “structure of division and opposition” which bookends it. Yet the “utmost emotional force of which the writer was capable” is left mysterious and unexplained - what, we might wonder, is it? Did it also arise through Shakespeare’s education, and how? Something similar happens to Lynn Enterline in her study of Shakespeare’s Schoolroom, although she comes closer to identifying what Jones’s “utmost emotional force” might be. She begins, like Jones, by focusing on three rhetorical figures or structures she considers essential to Shakespeare’s development as a writer: in utramque partem, prosopopeia and ekphrasis (21). Again, Enterline finds that these figures become less important than what enlivens them: “the art of impersonation and description” is to be “judged by ‘liveliness’” (ibid). She cites pupils’ commonplace books in which the rhythmic delivery of rhetorical figures becomes as, or more, important than the figures themselves (38; Folger MS. L.e. 1189). By the end of the book she tellingly praises Shakespeare’s “ear” twice in two pages, first as “particularly canny” then as “fine-tuned” (123-4). And in her final pages, she introduces an interlude written by John Redford for performance in a school (151-2). Titled Wit and Science it features “a scene of pedagogical instruction” that “turns the beating of poetic meter into a literal beating” (151) - finally Enterline yields to the opaque force that has been behind all the arguments in her book up to this point, “a rhythmic enunciation” (152) [my emphasis]. <?page no="175"?> Shakespeare’s Rhythmic Education 175 Enterline finally recognises the particular salience of rhythm in Elizabethan education, in her example the rhythmically repetitive thudding of a birch. Let us take another instance. In sixteenth century grammar schools teachers tested their students in a back-and-forth interrogation called “opposing” (and although some of this was probably rote, William Kempe of Plymouth thought highly enough of “opposing” to call it Socratic [218]). Does the structure of “opposing” matter? In a way, yes, since Lynn Enterline rightly draws parallels between the pedagogical practice of “opposing” and the kinds of dramatic activity that were flourishing in sixteenth century schoolrooms and that would later flourish on sixteenth century stages. But Enterline does not recognise that the rhythm of “opposing” in practice is crucial to our understanding of its structure, of the thing itself. At what pace and pitch and in what tone did “opposing” take place? Only once we address these things can we appreciate what “opposing” really was - whether it was theatrical, dramatic or performative (or all or none of those things). Without knowing about the rhythmic content of rhetorical and pedagogical structures, especially when they were put into practice, we risk offering flat descriptions of what Shakespeare wrote later in life. Colin Burrow, for example, has discussed Hamlet’s famous question - “To be or not to be” - as an instance of the rhetorical quaestio, a trope found in William Lily’s grammar school textbook (Grammar 17; see below). He attends to the structure of Hamlet’s question without thinking about how that structure is rhythmically governed. How, for instance, are we to read the word “that” near the centre of Hamlet’s verse line? Is it an emphatic spondaic clincher (“that is the question”) or a stumbling unstressed stutter as Hamlet moves from question to statement with all the awkwardness such a movement might entail? Nor does Burrow consider how the rhetorical structure of Hamlet’s line is in itself meaningful, or contributive to meaning: if Hamlet has framed the question of (his) existence as a schoolboy trope, should we see this speech/ soliloquy as facility not profundity or as facility with profundity? The essential book of Shakespeare’s childhood, which Burrow draws upon for his criticism, was packed with the rhythmic variety and attention that later studies of it have lacked. After royal assent in 1540, Lily’s Grammar was used in every grammar school in England including the King Edward VI Grammar School in Stratford-upon-Avon. The Grammar was accepted as quickly as it was authorised (the only surviving note of dissent is a rather ginger remark to Elizabeth I by Richard Mulcaster, the headmaster of Merchant Taylors School, in which he advocates a “refining” of the Grammar [vij]). At Shakespeare’s school the first head- <?page no="176"?> Robert Stagg 176 master (William Smart, appointed 1554) was issued a contract specifying that schoolboys must be “ready to enter into the accidence [another name for Lily’s textbook] and principles of grammar” (Pearson 10). Lily’s Grammar devotes fifteen quarto pages to a discussion of prosody and rhythm. It might have seemed a little prescriptive in its definitions of grammatical and prosodical properties: “A Syllable is the pronouncing of one letter or more, with one breath,” a verb “betokeneth doing” and “An Adverb is a part of speech joined to the Verbs, to declare their signification” (n.p.). The prosody of Lily’s Grammar has tended to be read as rigidly quantitative; indeed its section on prosody is itself in Latin. But in wider rhythmic terms the Grammar displayed leniency and plurality. It introduced its charges to a wide range of Latin metres, from dactylic hexameters to iambic trimeters. It contained sections on the rhythms of the Latin language and, implicitly (see later), on the rhythmic relationships between different parts of speech. Even the terminology given above has some scope - a syllable, for example, can consist of “one letter or more” and a “breath” can be a capacious thing, encompassing a sudden noisy exhalation or a prolonged inaudible expulsion. Pupils were given room for rhythmic manoeuvre, sometimes a manoeuvre away from quantitative standards - especially if, like Shakespeare, they applied their own imaginative reach and stretch to the learning furnished by the Grammar. Schools taught the Grammar in ways that flexed Lily’s text, imbuing it with more rhythmic variety than it originally contained. When Henry authorised the Grammar in his sententia edicti, he made clear that his decree was “not to be understood as prescribing that whatever you will find written [in the Grammar] is, in the same order it is written and without delay, to be forced upon the delicate and fastidious intellects and tastes of boys continuously and without any discretion” (Gwosdek 8). Schoolmasters could “omit” parts of Lily’s Grammar as long as they “do not privately or in public follow or teach any grammar other than this one” (ibid). The Grammar was “in the hands of each one” of the grammar school masters “according to the capacity of your listeners” (ibid). Schoolmasters could draw out the rhythms already immanent in the Grammar and they could present or substitute their own. They could, for example, encourage their pupils to combine two discrete verse structures found in the Grammar or they could add a type of verse line not included by Lily. Some might have taught English rhythms too, including the poetry of Francis Quarles and George Sandys’s verse translation of Ovid (Watson 300). <?page no="177"?> Shakespeare’s Rhythmic Education 177 This pedagogical variety is reflected in the statutes of many grammar schools, especially those founded after 1540 (the year in which Henry VIII gave royal assent to the Grammar). Lots of schools made “versification” - a deliberately imprecise term - part of their raison d’être, as if under the influence of Lily’s rhythmic Grammar. There are clauses advocating or requiring “versification” or “versifying” in the statutes of East Retford (1552), Sandwich (1580), Durham (1593), Heath (1600) and Charterhouse (1627) schools (Watson 473-4). Lily’s Grammar was stocked with metres and verses that could be learned by heart, a process that the schoolmaster Charles Hoole trusted would “imprint a lively pattern of hexameters and pentameters” in the minds of his students (157). Shakespeare would have left school with Lily’s metres in mind, and in his mind - patterns of rhythm that could be deployed or diverted from in his adult writing. By placing a variety of prosodic rhythms close together in the Grammar, Lily allowed his readers to see how those rhythms might interact or combine. And all poetic forms or metres themselves combine a mixture of rhythms - as in Coleridge’s characterisation of the elegiac couplet “In the hexameter rises the fountain’s silvery column, / In the pentameter aye falling in melody back,” or in the way an iambic pentameter contains variations like foot inversions and hypermetricities that are subverting while maintaining its fundamental shape. Schoolmasters encouraged their pupils to combine metres and rhythms. In one prosody exercise, a schoolmaster would change some of the words in a piece of verse to take it out of correct quantitative metre (and sometimes, albeit often inevitably, putting it into another kind of metre). The first schoolboy to “return” the verse to its “true” quantities would win applause (Hoole 160). In The Taming of the Shrew, a disguised Lucentio “teaches” Bianca in a broken quantitative metre interspersed with hasty unmetrical English prose. When Bianca replies to Lucentio, she does so in a way that restores the quantitative metre so that “tis now in tune” and “construe[d]” in accordance with Lily (3.1.44, 3.1.40). We find Bianca behaving like a good grammar school boy. We also find what a mischievous young man (Lucentio; or perhaps a schoolboy Shakespeare) could see in one of Lily’s metres, as well as what Bianca more orthodoxly sees. In sixteenth century grammar schools, students were everywhere in a “readiness of making” (Grammar, “To The Reader”), composing verses to learn the rules and by extension to imagine prosodic life outside those rules. By experiencing the tensions within prosodic rules, or between different kinds of verse line, or between prosody and everyday speech, or between classical prosody and <?page no="178"?> Robert Stagg 178 English verse, Shakespeare may have hit upon something rhythmically rich, strange, and new. The Grammar also provides, intentionally or otherwise, a consideration of (Latin) prose rhythm. In Much Ado About Nothing Claudio is thundering about his forthcoming marriage to Hero. Benedick tries to assuage his anger: CLAUDIO: O, what men dare do! What men may do! What men daily do, not knowing what they do! BENEDICK: How now! Interjections? Why, then, some be of laughing, as, oh, ha, he! (4.1.17-20) Benedick’s reply can be understood without recourse to the Grammar: if Claudio is going to make a fuss and interfere with the wedding then he should do so by laughing not shouting. Turning to Lily, the Grammar tells us “An interjection is a part of speech which betokeneth a sudden passion of mind under an imperfect voice” (7). In the light of this definition, Shakespeare prompts us to see Claudio’s remarks as both “sudden” (like those of a Leontes? ) and “passion[ate]” (like those of a Christ? - an ironic comparison of Benedick’s? ). Shakespeare wants us to attend to the rhythms of Benedick’s “Interjections.” Read through Lily, “[O]h, ha, he! ” is a blend of three different interjections. Primarily Benedick suggests that Claudio should laugh - in the Grammar, “Hah, ha, he” (ibid). But there are also notes of “Scorning” (“Hui”) and “Sorrow” (“Heu, hei”) audible in Benedick’s proposed “Interjections”, notes that we can only hear in a good actor’s viscously textured performance or via Lily’s Grammar. The rhythm of Benedick’s laughter is deepened and broadened by rhythms present in the Grammar, specifically the rhythmic quality of Lily’s catalogue of interjections. We hear Benedick scorning Claudio and sorrowing with him; we hear Claudio hurt and hurtful. Shakespeare uses the rhythmic potential of Lily’s Grammar to actuate the speech rhythms of his plays. As in Much Ado the Grammar frequently puts English and Latin into a relationship, often one of suggestive rhythmical juxtaposition. One of the ways in which such juxtaposition becomes suggestive is in the pedagogical structure of “double-translation” (Ascham 268). In this exercise pupils were given lines from a classical text, typically Ovid or Virgil. They would then translate the classical text into English. Once this was done the classical text was taken away and the pupil would have to translate (and/ or remember) the classical text back into its original Latin. Elizabeth I’s tutor Roger Ascham liked the exercise because it made the young mind “very attentive, and busily occupied in turning <?page no="179"?> Shakespeare’s Rhythmic Education 179 and tossing itself many ways” (287). Ascham implies that teachers should value the torsions of the pupil’s mind as well as the accuracy of the pupil’s translation, and that double-translation fostered rhythmical multiplicity (turning and tossing). In Arcadia, Tom Stoppard makes light of the double-translation exercise (in all the available senses of the phrase “makes light”: that he jokes about it, and brings light to it, and finds it enlightening). Thomasina Coverly is hopelessly translating lines from Plutarch into very clunky English before her tutor reveals Shakespeare’s superior rendering of those same lines (35-6). Here is (some of) Shakespeare’s version of Enobarbus’s famous hymn to Cleopatra: ENOBARBUS: I will tell you. The barge she sat in, like a burnish’d throne Burned on the water: the poop was beaten gold; Purple the sails, and so perfumed that The winds were lovesick with them. The oars were silver, Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made The water which they beat to follow faster, As amorous of their strokes. For her own person, It beggar’d all description. She did lie In her pavilion - cloth-of-gold, of tissue - O’erpicturing that Venus where we see The fancy outwork nature (2.2.197-208) Shakespeare’s lines come via Thomas North’s prose translation of Plutarch. In North, the description of Cleopatra’s ship is much more straightforward: “the poop whereof was gold, the sails of purple, and the oars of silver” (Wilders 139). Compare Shakespeare’s whimsically mannerist “the poop was beaten gold; / Purple the sails, and so perfumed that / The winds were lovesick with them. The oars were silver”. One of the most obvious changes made by Shakespeare is his syntactic and prosodic - therefore rhythmical - reversal of North’s “the sails of purple” (iambic rhythm) into Enobarbus’s “Purple the sails” (trochaic rhythm). Shakespeare takes a prose phrase with a smooth iambic rhythm, one which could therefore be said to “fit” well at the start of a verse line, and flips it into a new metre. It is a metre that catches the ear very slightly by surprise through that initial reversed foot at its opening. In this one tiny change to the syllabic energy of the line, we see Shakespeare reading North’s prose rhythms in the way that he might have read a school text for double-translation or versifying. He hears the es- <?page no="180"?> Robert Stagg 180 sential flow and jar of the prose sentence and either replicates or manipulates it in his verse-version. Sometimes Shakespeare competes with the source he versifies. North’s laborious phrase introducing Cleopatra (“And now for the person of her self”) is clipped short (“For her own person”) so that Shakespeare can introduce a mocking edge as he moves to the end of and over the verse line: “For her own person / It beggared all description.” That “description” is principally North’s prose description, now seen as bathetic (and visually bathetic, since we drop from one verse line down to another). Shakespeare’s “beggared” is funny and telling: he has beggared North’s description by stealing it, and by stripping it, in both acts bestowing his own rhythmic and prosodic wealth upon the original prose. Shakespeare’s ability to compress existing rhythms is also something he learned at school. Many schoolmasters gave their students poems of seven or eight verses and told them to reduce the poems to four or five verses while preserving their metre (Watson 295). This schoolboy exercise in compression helps to explain the extraordinary tightness of Shakespeare’s verse and language; the way one word can unfurl or be coaxed or tortured into multiple meanings and applications, especially when combined with a sometimes coiled, coagulated syntax and metre. Consider how editors have tended to paraphrase Hamlet’s “dram of evil” crux by first paying tribute to its fundamental effectiveness (as in Arden 3, “the general meaning is clear”) and second by expanding two and a half verse lines into many more sentences, even paragraphs, of circumlocutory prose gloss. Shakespeare can pack rhythms tight or let them loose, and those tight and loose rhythms can play alongside or inbetween each other - as they did in Lily’s Grammar and its teaching. When dramatising scenes of education, Shakespeare foregrounds rhythmic matters at least as much as he does structural or tropological ones (we have already seen him doing so in the tutoring scene from The Taming of the Shrew). In Act 4 Scene 1 of The Merry Wives of Windsor we find a young boy named Will being taught by a Welsh schoolmaster named Sir Hugh Evans. (At the Stratford grammar school, a young boy named Will Shakespeare was probably taught by a Welsh schoolmaster named Thomas Jenkins). Act 4 Scene 1 has the mishearing (by Mistress Quickly) or mispronunciation (by Will) of the Latin “pulcher” as “polecats” (24-5). Here Shakespeare might be alluding to a remark made by Lily in his section on “Prosodia.” Lily opens that section by defining “Prosodia” as “the last part of Grammar” that “teacheth the right pronunciation of words, or the tuning of syllables in words, as they are pro- <?page no="181"?> Shakespeare’s Rhythmic Education 181 nounced” (n.p.). The phrase is ambiguous and its meaning depends, appropriately enough, on prosodic stress. Does “as they are pronounced” refer to the “right” pronunciation of words and syllables or their actual everyday pronunciation (“as they are pronounced”)? Shakespeare exploits the double meaning to comic effect in Act 4 Scene 1 of Merry Wives, exposing the gap between “the right pronunciation of words” and the way “they are pronounced,” stressing Lily’s phrase until it snaps in two. So even if Shakespeare’s dramatised schoolrooms at first seem like an echo chamber full of “an inhuman parroting of sound” (Wallace 78), of inert structures and minimal variation from those structures, Shakespeare shows how an intelligent schoolboy can run rhythmic rings around his schoolmaster. But even the liveliness of the schoolroom’s competing rhythms does not mean that Shakespeare relished every day at school. Many of the schoolboys he dramatises are bored and indignant, “whining” and “creeping like snail / Unwillingly to school” (As You Like It 2.7.145-7). By contrast, most scholars want Shakespeare - like them - to have enjoyed or employed his education. For example, Lynn Enterline (who describes herself as a “lifelong student” on her Vanderbilt University webpage) lists Shakespeare’s keen schoolboys on page 9 without mentioning any of his more resentful schoolboys until one example in a bracket on page 15. Yet even those resentful pupils are written about in terms of rhythm. The “whine” of the schoolboy in As You Like It calls attention to the rhythmic resources of the voice and the way a single word or syllable can be dragged out by its speaker, rather as musicians do through melisma; and the creep of the schoolboy plays upon the double meaning of the word “foot” (as something anatomical and prosodical). It is the rhythmic effects of Shakespeare’s education that seem to have lingered in his mind, constituting his “career-long fascination [with] contemporary pedagogy” (Enterline 9). The rhythms Shakespeare learned from Lily’s Grammar appear again and again in his adult writing, as do the rhythms of double-translation and versification exercises. Shakespeare versions the Grammar as rhythmically raucous, full of “Interjections” and intersecting verse lines. In some ways it was. For the young Shakespeare it opened up new verse and prose rhythms; and if it didn’t open up those rhythms Shakespeare found ways to find them, prising open existing rhythms in order to prize them the more. Shakespeare’s schoolroom was a place of rhythmic density and delight: of verse lines jostling against each other, of rhythmically charged call-andresponse between teacher and pupil, of poetry written and chanted, of <?page no="182"?> Robert Stagg 182 pulses vibrating against patterns, of systems directing and divagating syllables, and all of this giving rhythmic rise to a Shakespearean style that would eventually fly. <?page no="183"?> Shakespeare’s Rhythmic Education 183 References Ascham, Roger. The Schoolmaster (1571) in The English Works of Roger Ascham, ed. James Bennett. London: R. and J. Dodsley, 1761. Burrow, Colin. “Shakespeare and humanistic culture” in Shakespeare and the Classics, ed. Charles Martindale and A. B. Taylor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Enterline, Lynn. Shakespeare’s Schoolroom: Rhetoric, Discipline, Emotion. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012. Gwosdek, Hedwig, ed. Lily’s Grammar of Latin in English. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Hoole, Charles. A New Discovery of the Old Art of Teaching Schoole (1660) and The Masters Method, Or The Exercising of Scholars in Grammars, Authors, and Exercises; Greek, Latine, and Hebrew (1659). Menston: Scolar Press [facsimile], 1973. Johnson, Samuel. “Preface to Shakespeare” (1765) in Johnson on Shakespeare, ed. R. W. Desai. London: Sangam Books, 1997. Jones, Emrys. The Origins of Shakespeare. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977. Kempe, William. The Education of Children in Learning (1588) in Four Tudor Books on Education, ed. Robert Pepper. Gainsville, Florida: Scholars’ Facsimiles and Reprints, 1966. Lily, William. A shorte introduction of grammar (1567), ed. Vincent J. Flynn. New York: Scholar’s Facsimiles and Reprints, 1945. Mulcaster, Richard. Positions (1581), ed. Robert Herbert Quick. London: Longmans, Green, and Co, 1888. Pearson, Richard. King Edward VI School Stratford-upon-Avon: Shakespeare’s School - History and Alumni. Kings Lynn: Biddles Ltd, 2008. Shakespeare, William. Antony and Cleopatra, ed. John Wilders. London: Arden, 1995. ―――. Hamlet, ed. Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor. London: Arden, 2006. ―――. The Complete Works, ed. Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor. 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005. Stoppard, Tom. Arcadia. London: Faber and Faber, 1993. Wallace, Andrew. Virgil’s Schoolboys: The Poetics of Pedagogy in Renaissance England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Watson, Foster. The English Grammar Schools to 1660: their Curriculum and Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1908. <?page no="185"?> Drama, Pedagogy, and the Female Complaint: Or, What’s Troy Got To Do With It? Lynn Enterline This essay reads the connection between female complaints in Tudor minor epics and Marlowe’s Dido, Queen of Carthage in light of rhetorical practices shared by two educational institutions: grammar schools and the Inns of Court. By the time a former schoolboy came to London for legal training or to write for the stage, the ability to entertain a hypothetical proposition and invent a speech in response to it - a necessary forensic skill - was intimately tied to early school training in prosopopoeia, the habit of inventing speeches for ancient characters. These paired practices granted Rome’s female characters (Ariadne, Scylla, Salmacis, Oenone, Dido) a remarkable English after-life - giving dramatists and lawyers a cast of characters with which to critique the social claims made by the educators who promised to give them cultural capital. I read cross-voiced complaints in epyllia by Thomas Lodge, Thomas Heywood, and William Shakespeare in light of ethopoiea (“character-making”) and the proto-dramatic practices implicit in legal training. Placing the institutional satire in these complaint poems alongside the meta-rhetorical preoccupations of Dido, the paper traces a recognizably Tudor form of discontent: skeptical imitations of epic that undercut normative, enddriven representations of nationhood and masculinity from within the genre thought to consolidate these identities and from within the institutions that most benefitted from upholding them. Commenting on Shakespeare’s corrosive depiction of Troy in Troilus and Cressida, Rosalie Colie once remarked that it is worth considering further why Shakespeare launches an attack on the source of European literature. Which prompts the immediate question, “why? ” Such a question Drama and Pedagogy in Medieval and Early Modern England. SPELL: Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 31. Ed. Elisabeth Dutton and James McBain. Tübingen: Narr, 2015. 185-209. <?page no="186"?> Lynn Enterline 186 becomes even more pressing when one remembers that Shakespeare was hardly the only Elizabethan author to satirize “the matter of Troy” and the venerable ancient tradition of epic poetry. The following pages will not address Troilus and Cressida specifically. But as I give an account of the many important connections among Tudor drama, the institutions of humanist pedagogy, and passionate speeches delivered by ancient female characters with grievances to air, I will discuss several other pugnacious reactions to Troy. And, by way of the extended cultural fictions of translatio imperii, my argument also bears on emergent conceptions of English nationhood in relation to imperial Rome (see James). This article takes its cue from Colie’s observation and the many questions arising from it and has three, interrelated sections. The first concerns prominent rhetorical practices bridging two educational institutions: the humanist grammar school and England’s “third university,” the Inns of Court. All the writers I engage - Thomas Lodge (Lincoln’s Inn), Francis Beaumont (Inner Temple), John Marston (Middle Temple), Thomas Heywood, Christopher Marlowe, and William Shakespeare - were former grammar schoolboys who put their classically honed rhetorical skills to use in London. Some went to university and some did not. But each drew on the cultural capital of early training in ancient rhetoric to pursue a career as a poet, dramatist, and/ or law student at the Inns. Indeed, some worked as all three. With a shared horizon of expectations and habits established early in all-male grammar schools, these writers show considerable familiarity with one another’s work as well as an avid interest in taking up epic material in new and often contentious ways. But the intertwined stories of the female complaint, dramatic soliloquy, Troy, and contemporary pedagogy cannot be told exclusively in relation to the stage. And in telling it, one of the things I hope to suggest is that the pervasive critical tendency to separate “popular” drama so decisively from academic, and dramatic writing from rhetorical invention (Latin and vernacular) - as well as from other genres of poetry - produces anachronistic and misleading accounts of literary production as well as of the shifting terrain of social distinction in sixteenth-century century Britain. The second section therefore focuses on rhetorical tropes and transactions that derive from humanist educational practice, cross generic boundaries, and blur received distinctions between “elite” and “popular” culture. This section examines a learned, classicizing, yet provocative genre that was made possible only by contemporary pedagogy and was, for a few years at least, arguably almost as interesting to both law students and commercial playwrights as was the drama: I am, <?page no="187"?> Drama, Pedagogy, and the Female Complaint 187 of course, referring to the so-called Elizabethan “minor” epic, or epyllion. A short-lived but intense vogue for minor epics began when Thomas Lodge, a law student at Lincoln’s Inn, published Scillaes Metamorphosis (1589). It sparked a rapid series of sexually explicit narrative poems written by lawyers and playwrights alike; all the authors discussed here tried their hand at writing minor epics. Leaning heavily on Ovidian imitatio, epyllia are filled with speeches about love and grief that sometimes sound like dramatic soliloquies, sometimes like legal arguments, and sometimes like both. If we adopt a trans-institutional perspective on moments in minor epics and stage plays in which a female speaker struggles to represent a terrible grievance suffered - that is, if we read female complaints in light of rhetorical practices that carried over from grammar school training to the Inns of Court - we see that the so-called Elizabethan “minor epic” was a far from minor literary event. Rather, this brief but lively poetic mode has much to reveal about the institutional parameters of dramatic ethopoeia (“character-making”) in the Tudor period as well as the classicizing terms that shaped its volatile representations of sexuality and gender. The third and final section moves from the epyllion’s critique of Troy to the first play of another minor epic poet, Christopher Marlowe. In reading the Tudor vogue for ventriloquizing female complaint across genres, I hope to show that by disrupting the teleological drive of the imperial epic in Dido, Queen of Carthage, Marlowe’s play engages in a similar critique of the claims made for the civilizing efficacy of an education in ancient rhetoric. Taken together, the female complaints surveyed in the pages that follow tell us a good deal about contemporary pedagogy’s unintended consequences as well as the uneasy rhetorical foundations of Tudor masculinity. 1. From schoolroom to courtroom Tudor poets, playwrights, and audiences often crossed between legal and theatrical circles: dramatists made trial scenes central to their plots; Inns of Court law students staged plays and wrote poems to one another as gestures of friendship (see Shannon, Winston). The numerous socio-rhetorical intersections between grammar school pedagogy and legal education largely derive from the fact that a career in the law was one of the most important humanist school masters had in mind when “training up” young Latin orators for what they claimed would be the good of the commonwealth. As Joel Altman and Emrys Jones pointed out in the 1970s, early training in the forensic skill of being able to argue <?page no="188"?> Lynn Enterline 188 “on either side of a question” did more than help young Latin students develop an aptitude necessary to a career in the law; it also had a profound effect on sixteenth-century drama (see Altman, Jones). Constituting what Altman called a Tudor “habit of mind,” in utramque partem exercises did not ask students to arrive at an answer, but rather to practice the kind of mental flexibility and verbal ingenuity necessary for arguing proor cona difficult position effectively. As they both argued, and Neil Rhodes’s work on the “controversial plot” recently reminds us, such proto-legal training goes a long way toward explaining why plays in the period so often revolve around divisive moral, social, and political dilemmas without offering any clear solution (see Rhodes). And as T. W. Baldwin documented, Erasmus formulated one of the earliest, and most pervasive exercises for learning this skill: Latin schoolboys were to invent in utramque partem arguments about the question, “whether to take a wife or not take a wife? ” Which question, of course, is the one that inaugurates both Shakespeare’s sonnet sequence and Venus’s attempt to persuade Adonis to love her in his first epyllion. A more advanced, detailed version of the same exercise appears in the most popular rhetorical manual used in grammar schools across England for at least 150 years. In Reinhard Lorich’s translation of Aphthonius’s Progymnasmata, the final chapter is De legislatio; and the first example offered for a student’s imitation required him to argue about the merits of a law that allows someone to kill an adulterer caught in the act. The entire matter is structured as a proand condebate between two imaginary speakers who argue for the benefits and limitations of such a law (Aphthonius 320-3). With respect to my interest in the rhetorical conditions of Tudor masculinity, it is hardly insignificant that both these standard, proto-legal educational exercises were framed in terms of questions about marital and sexual relations. Erasmus’s topic presumes that a young man might well be inclined not to marry unless properly persuaded; Aphthonius’s, that he might have very good reasons for such reluctance. In Shakespeare’s Schoolroom, I extended the point about the literary effects of in utramque partem training by drawing attention to other discursive practices that permeated early and late school exercises - practices which were, I believe, still more important and widespread in their literary and cultural effects (Enterline, Shakespeare’s Schoolroom, passim). These exercises inaugurated what I called “habits of alterity” in schoolboy subjects, by which I mean to designate the numerous grammatical and rhetorical lessons that gave humanist imitation a performative dimension (which I mean in a theatrical sense as well as in J. L. Austin’s, that the goal was learn how to “do things with words”). That is, school archives <?page no="189"?> Drama, Pedagogy, and the Female Complaint 189 indicate that a series of exercises across the curriculum required Latin schoolboys to become adept impersonators. Among the most influential - yet to my mind, unpredictable - of the school’s characteristic language games was to require a young boy to learn Latin, and eventually to learn the rhetorical techniques necessary to humanist definitions of eloquence, by adopting the voice of someone else. In any number of lessons designed to “train up” young gentlemen in Latin rhetorical skill so that they might contribute directly to “the good of the commonwealth,” humanist masters made prosopopoeia - the Roman practice of giving a voice to historical and legendary characters - central to school training. A survey of increasingly standardized school texts suggests that over the course of their education, schoolboys were required to adopt a series of personae: from Tudor vulgaria, which offered a (proto-lyric) series of firstperson sentences for translation in the early forms, to more advanced lessons in letter-writing and inventing dialogues in later forms, a student was required to imitate the voices of others - a requirement that unleashed the potential for future invention across a range of literary genres (see Enterline, Shakespeare’s Schoolroom 33-61). And with specific pertinence to the epyllia and plays discussed below, Aphthonius’s widely used rhetorical manual, the Progymnasmata, instilled a lesson in ethopoeia by asking would-be orators to memorize and then invent speeches according to the following formula: “what X would say on Y occasion.” These exemplary speeches were uttered by a familiar set of Ovidian women in highly distressing circumstances: Niobe, Hecuba, Andromache, Medea. Though Roman theorists like Quintilian were careful to warn against prosopopoeia’s tendency to blur the distinction between oratory and acting - here we might remember the intriguing aside in Hamlet about Cicero’s rival, Roscius, who “was an actor in Rome” (2.2) -Tudor masters were far less cautious. Indeed, they quickly brought impersonation from written page to embodied performance: so-called “first boys” were asked to deliver speeches “without book”; first boys were also asked to make public declamations on set themes at the beginning of the year and on examination days; and all the boys were required to take to the stage, impersonating both male and female parts. Mandated in ordinances in many of the schools newly founded or refounded across England - and clearly highly valued by London masters like Richard Mulcaster at Merchant Taylors’ - theatricals were part of the humanist curriculum not for the love of drama, but because schoolmasters thought play acting offered excellent instruction in the rhetorical techniques of pronuntiatio and actio. As one master put it, theater is a “frivolous art,” but it helps discipline the “babbling mouths” of <?page no="190"?> Lynn Enterline 190 children; and nothing is “more conducive to fluency of expression and graceful deportment” (Enterline, Shakespeare’s Schoolroom 41). As one schoolboy notes in his commonplace book, actio is “eloquence of the bodye” (Folger MS V.a.381: 98). A classroom notebook kept by a sixteenth-century boy at the Westminster School records a schoolmaster’s advice to the class about a school play they had just seen. Clearly impressed with the performance, he instructs students to copy the players’ example; the master imagines that the combined effect of theatrical performance and imitation will be to create a radiating social and educational force: I think you have derived this benefit besides others, that what must be pronounced with what expression, with what gestures not only you yourselves learned, but are able also to teach others (if need be). For there should be in the voice a certain amount of elevation, depression, and modulation, in the body decorous movement without prancing around, sometimes more quiet, at others more vehement, with the supplosion of the feel accommodated to the subject. (Baldwin 328) In Shakespeare’s Schoolroom I argued that because imitation was the backbone of humanist pedagogy, and because it was so closely allied to impersonation in the school’s every day life, one unintended consequence of humanist training was to reveal that familiar roles - such as “a boy,” “a man,” “a woman,” “the master,” “the lord,” “the father,” and “the mother” (all of which commonly appear in school textbooks) - might in fact be socially scripted parts. The performative dimension of imitation meant that for some boys, at least, these scripts became de-familiarized enough that they might seem available even to those not born into them (see Sullivan). Despite the evident power of their interaction, we have not yet assessed in utramque partem training and prosopopoeia together in sufficient depth. But Tudor epyllia require us to think them together: extended exercises in classical impersonation, most Elizabethan epyllia also turn on a controversial topic of debate: for example, between “love” and “lust” in Venus and Adonis; or the distinction between “wanton” and “obscene” poetry in Marston’s Metamorphosis of Pigmalions Image (see Enterline, Rhetoric of the Body, esp. Ch. 4). It is hardly surprising that legal historians have not paid much attention to habits of personification. But this habit did reach beyond grammar school education: at least one Tudor legal manuscript, written in response to the succession crisis, outlines a theory of property by staging it as a dialogue between fictional speakers (see Brooks). Latin schoolboys were often asked to perform in <?page no="191"?> Drama, Pedagogy, and the Female Complaint 191 public by inventing speeches based on hypothetical scenes or to speak as if in the voice of a hypothetical character: Corderius’s Dialogues instilled a series of familiar, daily interactions by asking boys to imitate imaginary conversations; Erasmus’s recommended practice in letterwriting required similar kinds of hypothetical impersonations and circumstances. In the case of Aphthonius, schoolboys were required to memorize and invent speeches according to the proposition, “the words Hecuba would say at the fall of Troy.” Later, young law students were obliged to argue hypothetical cases in “moot” court; and these public performances were subject to community judgment. To put my point another way: grammar school training required students to practice writing and public speaking as if in someone else’s voice, a habit with obvious benefits for a dramatist. But this social and rhetorical performance relied on a young man’s ability to entertain an hypothesis about situation and character. To become eloquent, Latin students were required to spend a good deal of time speculating about virtual scenarios and a given character’s likely reactions to them. It seems to me that such habits would benefit not only future playwrights but also law students because at the Inns they would be called upon to invent and weigh propositions, hypotheses, and probable evidence in the public performances that constitute a moot court. 1 In short, by the time a Tudor gentleman came to London for further legal training or to write for the stage, the ability to entertain a hypothetical proposition and invent a speech in response to it was intimately tied to prosopopoeia, the habit of inventing speeches for ancient characters. Such rhetorical practices granted many of Rome’s literary characters (male and female) a remarkable English after-life, ensuring that at least some of them would leave the page to acquire a palpable, if phantasmatic, force in the lives of Tudor gentlemen. One final aspect of the grammar school’s discursive and disciplinary regime anticipated the educational milieu of the Inns - and once again, it took place as a public performance. A description of daily life written by a student at the Westminster school (ca. 1610) delineates how far proto-legal rhetorical skills permeated proximate grammar school social relations. And it also suggests that a young orator’s public performance also had a juridical dimension, inflecting his experience of the school’s horizontal and hierarchical relations as well as its forms of discipline. 1 Here I am trying to extend Lorna Hutson’s important argument about intellectual history - the influence of Cicero’s description of probability and character - into the realm of educational and institutional practice (see Hutson). <?page no="192"?> Lynn Enterline 192 The text was written by one of the “first boys,” which meant he was poised between ranks, between being student and monitor, supervised and supervisor: These Monitors kept them [the younger boys] strictly to speaking of Latine in theyr several commands; and withal they presented their complaints or accusations (as we called them) everie Friday morn: when the punishments were often redeemed by exercises or favours shewed to Boyes of extraordinarie merite, who had the honor (by the Monitor monitorum) manie times to begge and prevaile for such remissions. (Enterline, Shakespeare’s Schoolroom 36) Elsewhere I analyzed the affective dimensions of this communal scene - being judged by “feare or confidence in their looks” - as one that reveals the internally fractured conditions of schoolboy subjectivity (Enterline, Shakespeare’s Schoolroom 34-7). I argued that such a scene might unleash a theatrical form of “internal audition” in which an interpersonal scene of judgment is internalized, taken inside as an intrapersonal dialogue with one’s own inner monitor. But with respect to the next step of a legal education, this scene of a weekly “trial” involving all parties is equally remarkable. It suggests that at school, a combination of public performance, judgment, and legal role-playing informed interactions between future lawyers and poets. The “favor” of making a plea is a reward granted only to boys “of extraordinary merit”: social success at school required one to argue on behalf of others, to register public “complaints” and “accusations” so that punishment or “remission” can be meted out accordingly. Such a disciplinary regime for rhetorical training ensured that the performance and judging of imitative acts established an early, close alliance between proto-dramatic and proto-legal training. Beyond training in such specific techniques of forensic rhetoric as in utramque partem argumentation, the school’s juridico-theatrical staging of judgment - the memory of pleas advanced and of punishment thereby meted out or avoided - insured a strong alliance between drama and the law in the later work of former schoolboys. Small wonder that London’s playwrights were fond of writing plays that revolve around staged trial scenes and that law students made drama central to their collective social lives at the Inns. Most important for my purposes: small wonder that both were drawn to write minor epic poems that revolve around such language games as the plea, the accusation, and the complaint. Each of these forms carries in it echoes of educational experiences that extend from grammar schools through the Inns. <?page no="193"?> Drama, Pedagogy, and the Female Complaint 193 2. Female Complaint The epyllion is a largely neglected genre that when studied, is usually noted for speeches that sound proto-dramatic. But it is historically and culturally more accurate (and revealing) to remember that minor epic speeches and dramatic soliloquies both stem from early training in prosopopoeia. If I had to choose one word to epitomize what epyllia reveal about the effects of Tudor education on the connections between between law and literature in the period, it would be “complaint.” Signifying an “expression of grief, a lamentation,” “a statement of injury or grievance laid before a court or judicial authority for purposes of prosecution or of redress; a formal accusation,” and a word frequently used in the title of medieval and early modern “plaintive poems,” 2 the complaint is a significant discursive, rhetorical, and legal site for exploring the penchant among classically educated Tudor writers - lawyers and dramatists alike - to write as if they were speaking in the voices of very unhappy women. For example, Thomas Heywood responded to Thomas Lodge’s inaugural epyllion by significantly revising the letter from Oenone to Paris in Ovid’s Heroides: in his 1594 Oenone and Paris, Heywood impersonates the speeches of both ancient lovers, and does so as if they were conducting an in utramque partem argument over “the matter of Troy.” His Paris responds to Oenone’s accusation that he has abandoned her for Helen as if she were bringing a legal case against him: in order to “plead his excuse” in answer to what he calls her “just complaint,” Paris prefaces his response by saying, “Let me see if I can clear me.” It is an odd posture for a former lover, but Paris’s impulse to mount a case in his own defense reminds us that these Ovidian “female complaint” poems were born from male forensic habits of mind. Indeed, one might justly give new titles to epyllia to mark their proximity to legal cases: Scilla v. Glaucus, Oenone v. Paris, Lucrece v. Tarquin, and Venus v. Adonis are titles that would do justice to their evident institutional appeal. I have been calling epyllia pugnacious, by which I mean that they put their authors’ classically honed skills on display in provocative erotic stories that hardly comport with the high-minded civic aims of humanist schoolmasters or the legal profession. I can begin to illustrate what I mean with brief reference to The Rape of Lucrece. As William Weaver documented, Shakespeare’s Lucrece shows all the signs of trying to 2 OED Online, 1, 2 a and b, 5, and 6. A search of “complaint” as a title word in Early English Books Online turns up 85 such poems published between 1450 and 1600. <?page no="194"?> Lynn Enterline 194 mount a forensic argument in defense of her complaint of rape against Tarquin (see Weaver). Mindful of two contemporary educational institutions, Lucrece refers directly both to grammar school instruction and legal practice when she despairs of finding the rhetorical power she seeks: Out, idle words, servants to shallow fools, Unprofitable sounds, weak arbitrators! Busy yourselves in skill-contending schools, Debate where leisure serves with dull debaters; To trembling clients be you mediators: For me, I force not argument a straw, Since that my case is past the help of law. (1016-1022) Though the poem could not have been written had its author not attended one of those “skill-contending schools” and imbibed the habits of prosopopoeia and in utramque partem debate, Lucrece dismisses the verbal facility necessary to both the schools and a legal education. For his part, Shakespeare’s narrator repeatedly labels her discourse a “complaint” - until Brutus’s final call to action, at which point the word’s meaning shifts still further away from the sense of a personal lament toward that of a speech made to spur action in the legal-political sphere: By all our country rights in Rome maintain’d, And by chaste Lucrece’s soul that late complain'd Her wrongs to us, and by this bloody knife, We will revenge the death of this true wife. (1838-1841) Like Heywood, Shakespeare impersonates the voices of both male and female parties to the dispute. But in the characters of both Oenone and Lucrece, both authors are also practicing what Elizabeth Harvey aptly calls the Tudor habit of “cross-voicing,” a term that deliberately echoes and reconfigures theatrical “cross-dressing” (see Harvey). I still use her term because it suggests how important it is to think across languages, genres, and genders to understand the after-effects of Tudor pedagogy. In addition, Lucrece’s rhetorically self-conscious attack on schools, debaters, clients and lawyers suggests that we must also think across the institutions of rhetorical training. In Shakespeare’s hands, Lucrece turns orator and her own defense lawyer - a rhetorically self-conscious speaker meditating on the difficulty of representing her “case.” She invokes historically specific grammar school exercises - holding “disputation with each thing she views” and worrying, in turn, that she will become a <?page no="195"?> Drama, Pedagogy, and the Female Complaint 195 “theme for disputation” in the future - only to remind us that even a lawyer’s rhetorical skill cannot save this particular client. More pugnacious still is the unhappy pun in the stanza’s concluding couplet, “I force not argument a straw / Since that my case is past the help of law.” Reflecting in Lucrece’s voice on rhetoric’s limitations, as well as the institutions in which it was taught, Shakespeare confronts us with a disturbing pun on legal “case” and (as Merry Wives of Windsor’s Mistress Quickly would no doubt loudly object) the “case” as female genitalia. And lurking behind both meanings is yet another: the grammatical sense of a noun’s “case” in Latin, the language required for learning any of the rhetorical skills on display in this poem. As Shakespeare’s tri-partite pun suggests, writers of epyllia show a decided preference for sexually provocative material as well as a tendency to draw explicit comparisons between rhetorical and sexual matters. These choices call into question the specific form of cultural capital bequeathed on them by a grammar school Latin education. Georgia Brown argued that this group of minor epic poets in the 1590s promoted themselves as a “generation of shame” by way of a deliberate triviality and excessive verbal ornamentation that stands against the culturally privileged tradition of masculine epic (see Brown). If viewed from the perspective of educational training, such choices suggest that these minor epic authors were also styling themselves against their moralizing, civic-minded schoolmasters and assumptions about devotion to public good that informed both their pedagogical agenda and a future legal career. This overt poetic posture could, in short, double as poetic self-advertising and as institutional critique. Their decided preference for imitating stories from Ovid poses complex questions. But for the purposes of this argument it is important to remember that humanist theorists and schoolmasters showed a decided preference not just for epic, but for epic in its Virgilian form, as the best exemplar for molding a boy’s conduct. 3 Latin training began with Aesop in the first form, but the fifth and sixth largely revolved around epic - both Virgil’s and Ovid’s. The ubiquitous Lily’s Grammar aptly captures humanist partiality: in the lesson on the impersonal verb, boys learned “Oportet me legere Virgilium,” “it is good for me to read Virgil.” Suspicion always clung to Ovid - some of his poetry was 3 The following two pages are a condensed version of my argument about the critical potential of minor epics in Shakespeare’s Schoolroom (74-80). <?page no="196"?> Lynn Enterline 196 banned altogether - but Virgil required no defense. 4 Subject to Lily’s maxim, “it is good for me to read Virgil,” schoolboys were drilled in the performative as much as scholarly art of imitatio and imbibed a system of training built around an ideal of devotion to the commonwealth like that of Virgil’s Aeneas. Given the resonance between the Aeneid’s teleology of public duty and the school’s announced goal of fashioning gentlemen for the good of the commonwealth, there is something unexpected about the results of its training: poems and plays written by former schoolboys at the turn of the sixteenth century rarely followed anything like the model of the Aeneid. Rather, Latin training encouraged an outpouring not of epic poetry, but of epyllia with a distinctly Ovidian, erotic cast. Here it is worth noting that Elizabethan jurists and common lawyers often attributed the foundation of British common law to Troy and the translation of empire to Rome and then London. Nearly a century later, in 1682, another influential legal theorist would dismiss that attribution as “a story patched up out of Bard’s songs and Poetick fictions” in the hope of raising “the British name out of Trojan ashes” (Raffield 107-8). But despite Troy’s cultural prestige in the institutions of sixteenthcentury education, writers of epyllia pointedly avoid Virgil’s theme of translation imperii and his plot of epic masculinity; they preferred, instead, to investigate questions of sexuality, emotion, and desire. Indeed, many minor epics do more than turn away from Aeneas’s precedent. They ask us to listen to the voices of wronged and abandoned women like Dido - female characters from the ancient past whose complaint about ill treatment reflects rather poorly on the educational program that dubbed Virgil “the prince of poets” and Aeneas the exemplar for masculine civic virtue. With respect to the enthusiasm for minor epics, it is worth remembering that the story that launched this vogue - Lodge’s version of Scylla and Glaucus - is the one that opens Ovid’s obvious interruption of Virgil’s plot of empire. Competing with Virgil’s end-driven narrative of masculine duty - and ignoring his dark hints that the end (Rome) may repeat the violence and betrayals of the beginning (Troy) - Ovid constantly derails Virgil’s plot in Books 13-15. He converts martial ac- 4 See Watson’s general discussion of humanist preferences. Thomas Wolsey wrote that a good curriculum requires students to imitate Virgil, “the first among all poets.” In The Governour, Thomas Elyot recommends imitating him especially because, like Homer, he is “like to a good nurse.” Ovid is a necessary evil: he helps “for understanding other authors” but by contrast to Virgil has “little learning . . . concerning other virtuous manners of policy.” <?page no="197"?> Drama, Pedagogy, and the Female Complaint 197 tion to rhetorical debate; and when Troy falls, it falls in half a line. In place of Aeneas’s tears, Ovid represents female despair: first Hecuba’s, then Aurora’s for her dead son - a nymph who “has no time to be moved” by the city’s fall. Also, Lodge plucks Scylla out of Virgilian context. In the Aeneid, a prophecy names Scylla as a dangerous place the Trojans must pass to find the Sibyl and get directions to Rome. But in Ovid’s hands, a barrier figure - a place - is personified as a nymph with an intriguing romantic past. Her story begets yet another love story, and Scylla’s metamorphosis results from a third unrequited passion (Circe’s). Only after a rhizomatic chain of erotic disappointment does Ovid return to Virgil’s plot. And of course, we return to it with Dido. The resonance between Virgilian teleology and the school’s civicminded agenda means that in selecting Ovid’s version of Scylla as his model, Lodge’s poem carried a certain bite with respect to the claims made for the social efficacy of a Latin education. Lodge and the writers who quickly lined up to imitate him happily displaced the Aeneid’s plot of epic masculinity; and in so doing, they called into question the institutional and pedagogical telos of civic duty that gave Virgil’s imperial epic pride of place. For example, in both their minor epics, Heywood and Marlowe replicate Lodge’s gesture of invoking only to interrupt the endgame of masculine civic duty. In Oenone and Paris, the nymph foretells the “fatall ende to Troy” if Paris does not forsake Helen; she then invites Paris to turn his back on that fate - “that burning fire-brand” of Troy and its “thousand mourning widows”- by embracing her “in these verdant meadows” (16-17). Oenone’s verdant pastoral pleasure is an aesthetic and erotic antidote for the terrible pressure Virgil’s gods bring to bear on Aeneas to fulfill Troy’s destiny. Hero and Leander similarly tells an erotic story that, while set near the site of the Trojan war, has nothing to do with the privileged epic narrative that excises female desire from the business of nation building. The poem opens “On Hellespont,” with two cities standing “opposite”; but rather than evoke Troy and the “fateful” ends associated with the Hellespont, Marlowe tells us instead that the waters were “guilty of True-love’s blood.” And even that amatory plot remains incomplete. From the poem’s first line, we know the love affair ended badly. But Marlowe never narrates that tragic end - an evasion I would argue is deliberate - and gives us, instead, a fragment that offers as much of a formal and erotic challenge to epic teleology as does Ovid’s penchant for derailing the story of a second Troy with meta-rhetorical digressions about female desire (see Enterline, “Elizabethan Minor Epics”). <?page no="198"?> Lynn Enterline 198 But there is a further inter-textual engagement with Ovid’s poetry in Lodge’s epyllion that attracted other writers to follow suit. And it is one that reinforces the ideological counter-narrative implicit in impersonated female complaints. As I’ve argued elsewhere, Lodge’s poem directly satirizes grammar school pedagogy (Enterline, “Elizabethan Minor Epics”). Later, in 1602 Francis Beaumont (member of the Inner Temple), shows his appreciation for such institutional satire in his epyllion - but shifts focus from schools to law courts, those halls full of / “Crooked Maenanders, infinite delayes.” 5 Lodge opens Scillae’s Metamorphosis by undermining a male-male teacher-student relationship as a failed lesson in emotional control based on what the narrator should have learned about eternal change from reading Ovid’s Metamorphoses and “schoolmen’s cunning notes.” And yet the all-male milieu of sixteenth-century education is soon left behind: in the final stanzas, it is Scilla’s pain that preoccupies the narrator; her “piteous” lament constitutes the poem’s final “lesson.” Clearly alluding to Ovid’s Ariadne from the Heroides - another text commonly read and imitated at school - Lodge concludes his poem with a veritable chorus of female complaint. When Scilla runs along the shoreline crying out for Glaucus, “all the Nymphs afflict the air with noise.” And the narrator’s grief, too, seems to “melt” into Scylla’s: “Rue me that writes, for why her ruth deserves it.” Scilla’s woe acquires the kind of embodied, affective, and animating force that might make any rhetorician envious: “For every sigh, the Rocks return a sigh / . . . Woods, and waves, and rocks, and hills admire / The wonderous force of her untam’d desire.” Nature itself is tamed by her “untam’d” desire. From such transfers of affect between speaker and audience, yet further passions emerge: Lodge produces an allegorical parade worthy of Spenser - “Furie and Rage, Wan-hope, Dispaire, and Woe”- and these 5 Salmacis and Hermaphroditus expands the rhetorical dimension of epyllia Beaumont is imitating by inventing a lengthy judicial plot to preface the Ovidian story. By turns a self-declared devotee of “sweet-lipt Ovid” who hopes to turn his audience “halfe-mayd” with “reading” his erotic poem and a poet interested in finding a wise “statute” that will allow him to find a good patron, Beaumont varies the poems preceding him by moving the forensic-erotic complaint from humans to the gods. Two elaborate digressions precede Salmacis’s encounter, both of which imagine scenes in which the gods bring erotic grievances against one another. The first takes satiric aim at the idea of earthly justice: Astrea having fled the earth, hears the erotic complaints of both Venus and Jove. But even divine plaintiffs cannot access her court except by passing through “a spacious hall / full of darke angles and hidden ways, / Crooked Maenanders, infinite delayes” and a guard who insures that “none must see Justice but with an emptie purse.” The second digression underlines the forensic dimension of the first, as Bacchus pleads “his cause of griefe” against Phoebus, who intervened in his attempt to seduce/ rape Salmacis. <?page no="199"?> Drama, Pedagogy, and the Female Complaint 199 personifications “assail” their subject, leading Scilla “captive” to the island where she turns into “that famous Isle,” “a hapless haunt” for weeping. Even after Scilla is gone, the narrator remains afflicted with her emotion: he sits “A-lonely” like the captive Scilla “with many a sigh and heart full sad and sorry.” At times uniting subjects and at others exceeding them, the passionate complaints in Lodge’s epyllion enable the poetic speaker to represent himself as an effective poet only by blurring the distinctions necessary to received categories of gendered identity. In Oenone and Paris, Heywood picked up on Lodge’s echo of Aridane’s lament. Heywood concludes the debate between his protagonists with Oenone’s “lament,” a “well of woe” that fills fifteen stanzas. Like Scilla and Ariadne before her, Oenone goes to the water’s edge to call out, “Yee ragged cliffs . . . rocks, and clowdy mountains,” “streams, wells, brooks, & lovely fountains” (128-9). Her dilemma (abandoned by the water’s edge) and rhetorical and emotional predicament (no human audience) clearly draws upon and amplifies Lodge’s earlier scene. Where Scilla beats “the weeping waves that for her mourned” and “Echo herself” answers, “returning” only “words of sorrow, (no love) / . . . Then fie on hope: then fie on hope” (115-117), Heywood’s Oenone amplifies the choral fantasy by projecting voices onto the inanimate world, asking rocks to “Howl, & Lament” alongside her cries (131). A year before Heywood published his epyllion in dialogue with Scillaes Metamorphosis, Shakespeare had also picked up on Lodge’s allusion to Ariadne’s echoing woe. When Adonis leaves Venus alone in the woods, the narrator introduces a simile that removes her to the water’s edge: “after him she darts, as one on shore / Gazing upon a late embarked friend” (817-19). And what Venus hears, like Ariadne and Scilla before her, is only the sound of her own echo. And now she beats her heart, whereat it groans, That all the neighbor caves, as seeming troubled, Make verbal repetition of her moans; Passion on passion deeply is redoubled: “Ay me! ” she cries, and twenty times, “Woe, woe! ” And twenty echoes twenty times cry so. (829-834; emphasis mine) It is worth considering the possible institutional reasons that Ovid’s Ariadne should prove so memorable to all three poets. First, to “make verbal repetition” was exactly what Tudor schoolmasters, following Erasmus’s theory of imitatio, required of young boys. Perhaps the outpouring of echoing female complaint, and of implied universal sympa- <?page no="200"?> Lynn Enterline 200 thy, is as much a reenactment as a critique of the foundational principle of humanist pedagogy. Second, Ariadne’s lament is a programmatic one on Ovid’s part. Like Orpheus, whose song moves rocks and trees, and Philomela, whose last words claim a power to “move the rocks and trees to pity,” Ariadne’s responsive shoreline revisits one of his favorite dreams about language - the dream of a voice that can “move” even the most obdurate audience and is capable of animating the inanimate. When Ariadne runs down the shoreline after Theseus’s ship, her voice brings the landscape to life: “And all the while I cried out ‘Theseus! ’ along the entire shore, and the hollow rocks sent back your name to me (reddebant nomen); whenever I called to you, the place spoke the same word. The place itself wanted to feel my misery” (10. 21-3). Such a scene replays a rhetorician’s dream of an audience deeply moved and in sympathy with the speaker. As such, I would argue that Ariadne’s predicament was all the more memorable for the sixteenth-century students set to write in his style in order to become effective rhetoricians themselves. It is a scene that condenses both a wish and a fear - a wish for moving vocal power and the fear that one’s words might, in fact, fail to move any fellow feeling at all. There are several reasons that this imitative competition over who can best capture Ariadne’s lament undermines the promise of epic teleology and rhetoric’s instrumental function. For those who acquired rhetorical skill by imitating classical precursors, the humanist platform of instruction clearly proved profitable. But drilling in imitatio might have prompted some Latin students to empathize with Echo’s quandary. As Narcissus asks on hearing her verbal repetitions, “is anyone here? ” (ecquis adest? 3.303). Such a question can haunt any fiction of authorship, but is particularly vexing for such highly allusive forms of invention as are on display in the work of former schoolboys. Such a question also advances a critique of rhetoric’s instrumental function, suggesting that an educational program based on imitation might produce convincing fictions of rhetorical mastery and masculine identity, but such fictions would always be troubled by the possibility of an indeterminate vacillation between Echo and echo. With respect to humanist claims for rhetorical instrumentality, moreover, Ariadne’s letter raises a generically specific difficulty. By competing with one another through recollections of the Heroides, these authors revisit a shared school text in which however moving the complaint, readers know that it will change nothing. In the apt words of Alessandro Barchiesi, a reader of the Heroides <?page no="201"?> Drama, Pedagogy, and the Female Complaint 201 must make incisions into a given framework that cannot be modified, such that the existence of the epistle will not have any effect upon it. Indeed, this narrative context is decided elsewhere, in those literary texts … upon which Ovid has chosen to operate. The narrative autonomy of the letter is curiously interwoven with its pragmatic impotence. (Barchiesi 30) Writers of epyllia were trained in classical imitatio on the promise of acquiring eloquence that would be directly, politically useful. And those who became students at the Inns were relying not merely on the cultural capital of their education, but on the presumption that their rhetorical skill would have very real effects in the world. And so when these minor epics evade the Aeneid’s affinity with humanist educational goals and turn, instead, to Ariadne’s lament, they are calling upon a scene of “pragmatic impotence” that, to the precise extent that their imitations are affectively charged and thus poetically successful, simultaneously question their culture’s privileged narrative of epic masculinity. In the hands of these authors, female complaints raise serious questions about the humanist claim that classical eloquence is socially useful - and thus interrogate both the civic end-game, and corollary definition of masculinity, on which contemporary pedagogy was based. 3. Against Teleology; or, Burning Down the House Ariadne’s lament brings me to another female figure with a grievance to air: Christopher Marlowe’s Dido. Her complaint, like those of Scylla, Oenone, Lucrece, and Venus has much to reveal about the institutional parameters of sixteenth-century century Latin training. Dido, Queen of Carthage is a drama that, like the epyllia surveyed above, deploys Ovidian rhetorical and sexual excess against Virgilian teleology. Written for the Children of the Chapel Royal, the play required schoolboys, themselves in the middle of learning to imitate the Aeneid, to reenact the African Queen’s passionate self-annihilation. The play presumes a shared school habitus, expecting the audience to attend to Marlowe’s highly selfconscious rhetorical performance as well as to the way he intermingles Ovidian and Virgilian imitation. Ending with Dido’s death rather than Rome’s future, Marlowe puts the efficacy of grammar school training directly to the test. In other words, his play participates in the resistance to epic and humanist teleology I’ve traced in contemporary epyllia. To some, Dido seems both “to affirm and interrogate heroic duty,” to “valorize and deflate romantic passion,” reminiscent of in utramque partem argument (Deats 110-113). But if we read the play in light of the way <?page no="202"?> Lynn Enterline 202 Tudor epyllia are embedded in, but also provide critical commentary upon, contemporary educational practice, the play appears far less disinterested than that 6 - though indeed it does indicate a playwright well trained in the humanist skill of conducting controversiae. David Riggs, Marlowe’s most recent biographer, observes that the plot of the Aeneid “lent itself to an allegory of education: Aeneas inspires the scholar to persevere in his own quest for manly discipline” (Riggs 48). But he notes that Marlowe’s play “turns this ideology on its head” and instead offers us “a precious glimpse of the desires grammar school tried to repress.” More important for my purposes, Riggs cannily remarks that “despite the misogyny that surrounds her, the radical will in this early work belongs to Dido. She alone speaks with the voice of desire that would become the trademark of Marlowe’s tragic heroes.” A former grammar schoolboy who also participated in the vogue for minor epic critique, Marlowe invents in Dido a dramatic character in which the cross-voicing necessary to epyllia intersects with theatrical cross-dressing. The play’s most obvious intersection with minor epics comes with the figure of Anna. Rather than follow the Aeneid’s epic simile about an unspecified wind of words buffeting Aeneas on his imminent departure from Carthage, Marlowe invents a speech in which Anna is the one to plead with Aeneas from the shoreline: Then gan they drive into the Ocean, Which when I viewd, I cride, Aeneas stay, Dido, faire Dido wils Aeneas stay: Yet he whose hearts of adamant or flint My teares nor plaints could mollifie a whit (5.1.232-6) As either Ovid’s Ariadne or the other abandoned nymphs in Tudor epyllia could have told her, Anna’s complaint will have no effect. Marlowe marks her speech as affectively successful insofar as the rest of the audience on shore behaves like Lodge’s nymphs, sympathizing with her grief and taking up a lamenting chorus with her: “Then carelessly I rent my haire for griefe / Which seen to all . . . They gan to move him to redresse my ruth” (5.1.235-40). But true to the pragmatic impotence of 6 It will become clear that I agree with Timothy Crowley’s assessment that Marlowe’s ironic “compound imitation” in the play strategically deploys Ovid against the Aeneid to parody the heroic and ideological legacy of Troy. My project here is to suggest how much Marlowe’s parody shares with epyllia, especially when understood in light of contemporary education. <?page no="203"?> Drama, Pedagogy, and the Female Complaint 203 the Heroides’ intertextual engagements, Aeneas stays “clapt under hatches and saild away” (241). Beyond this (shared) allusion to the rhetorical dream and practical failure embedded in the story of Ariadne, Marlowe takes several opportunities to disrupt imperial teleology. As readers of the Aeneid know well, one of Virgil’s techniques for capturing the lock-step march of “destiny” is the poet’s remarkable ability to intertwine analepsis and prolepsis. Mingling flashbacks to an origin it never fully represents (the fall of Troy - see Bellamy) with prophecies of founding of a city we never see (Rome), Virgil’s narrative frames the first six books of romance wandering with glimpses of an ineluctable, collective futurity that annihilates any individual desire in its way (human or divine). But in his play’s provocative opening scene with Jupiter “dandling” the young boy Ganymede “upon his knee,” Marlowe reasserts the Ovidian world of desire - in all its particularized variety. He also truncates Jupiter’s extended opening prophecy of Rome’s future in Aeneid 1 to a mere 20 lines. And in them, Marlowe’s Jupiter manages to subsume Troy’s future to his proclivity for admiring young male beauty. With Ganymede still dandling, Jupiter’s prolepsis does not proceed, as does the Aeneid, with a careful genealogy. Virgil’s Jupiter surveys the lives of Aeneas, Ascanius, Romulus, and Caesar, but Marlowe’s god speaks only of the beautiful young Ascanius: . . . poor Troye so long supprest, From forth her ashes shall advance her head, And flourish once againe that erst was dead; But bright Ascanius, beauties better worke, Who with the sun divides one radiant shape, Shall build his throne amidst those starrie towers, That earth-borne Atlas groaning underprops: No bounds but heaven shall bound his Emperie . . . (1.1.93-100) Turning away from Virgil’s imperial vision of the pax romana in which Rome rules by means of “righteous laws,” Marlowe turns the promised “empire without end” into a personal, celestial existence for Ascanius that suggests he resembles not his father so much as Jupiter’s beloved Ganymede. And reminiscent of the effects of Hero’s beauty in Hero and Leander, Marlowe ends the description by drawing attention to the moving power of Ascanius’s “frame,” a beauty that forces the “morning” to “haste her grey uprise” in order to “feede her eyes” on a young boy, not on Rome (102-3). <?page no="204"?> Lynn Enterline 204 Perhaps one of the most memorable, and most imitated, moments of analepsis in the Aeneid is the ekphrasis of Troy in Carthage (Book 2), where Aeneas is rendered mute by “the tears of things.” But in another major change, when Aeneas and Achates arrive in Carthage in 2.1, Marlowe declines to describe any painting whatsoever. As every schoolboy knew on Aphthonius’s authority, ekphrasis was supposed to bequeath rhetorical “liveliness,” so Marlowe’s decision to avoid trying his hand at this famous set passage is noteworthy. Aphthonius’s text and school habits of impersonation are very much at issue in this scene: on washing ashore, Aeneas and Achates invoke Niobe and then Hecuba, memorable as the first two figures recommended for a boy’s imitation in the chapter on speeches that represent the art of ethopoeia. In Marlowe’s hands, Aeneas depicts his own feelings by modeling himself on “Theban Niobe.” While she “for her sonnes death wept out life and breath / And drie with griefe was turnd to stone,” Aeneas claims she “had not such passions in her head as I” (3-6). Achates follows that metamorphic story with another, asking “O where is Hecuba? Here she was wont to sit, but waving ayre / Is nothing here, and what is this but stone? ” (12-14). By such elaborate means, Marlowe alerts us to the deeply Ovidian story of turning to stone, which prepares the audience for another kind of rhetorical trope than ekphrasis: prosopospoeia. Epyllia are filled with ekphrases, including Marlowe’s own remarkable opening description of Hero’s gown. But here Marlowe supplants Virgilian ekphrasis with Ovid’s favorite trope of animation, trading one rhetorical idea of liveliness for another - one that reminds us that in Ovid’s hands, the animate can always return, like Niobe, to the inanimate. As if provoking a deliberate quarrel with a humanist schoolmaster’s claim that ekphrasis lends life to one’s words, that its fantasy of “seeing” rather than reading a text is the key to rhetorical power, Aeneas and Achates argue over the difference between a mere “stone” and Aeneas’s fantasy that his words can give Priam “life.” Where Virgil’s ekphrasis raises questions of interpretation and epistemology - Aeneas stands stupefied before an “empty” picture of Troy - Marlowe turns to Ovid’s story of Pygmalion to dismantle the rhetorician’s dream lying behind the story of his animated statue: that is, that words can change the world, that stones “want to be moved.” <?page no="205"?> Drama, Pedagogy, and the Female Complaint 205 Achates: What is this but stone? Aeneas: O yet this stone doth make Aeneas weep, And would my prayers (as Pigmalions did) Could give it life, that under his conduct We might sail back to Troy . . . (2.1.14-18) Achates, of course, tells Aeneas that it is all in his head and bluntly reminds him, “King Priamus is dead.” Aeneas is no Pygmalion; the “stone” remains stone, undergoes no animating change as the object of Aeneas’s address. Debunking the dream of performative verbal efficacy as mere fantasy by reminding us of the inverse story - that breathing beings can become mute statues - Marlowe’s “stone” runs against the grain of the claims for rhetorical power that lay behind school training. Such attention to Priam as an obdurately silent stone suggests that the matter of Troy may be just as “dead” as he is - that there is no “sailing back” to a distant, mute ruin that no longer translates forward across time and culture. If Priam’s mute stone derails the efficacy of Virgilian analepsis, Marlowe’s Dido meddles with prolepsis. Dido’s prophecy in Act 5 supplants Jupiter’s homoerotic vision of Rome through Ascanius’s beauty in Act 1; and she follows Virgil’s lead much more closely than does Jupiter. Dido quotes two lines in Latin from Aeneid 4 which see only as far as the Punic Wars and Hannibal. She concludes, “Betwixt this land and that be never league” (5.1.309). Instead of peace, Dido foresees nonstop war and, by echoing the last two words of the Aeneid (“sic sic iuvat ire sub umbras,” l. 313), manages to suggest that like the heroic spirit of Turnus, which goes indignata sub umbras (“indignant under the shades”), her passions beget only one future: hers, in the form of eternal “wrath.” Such a vision lends Dido extraordinary stature, transferring the critical potential of passionate female complaint from contemporary epyllia right back into the epic narrative valued by humanists for promoting civic-minded masculinity. In the play’s final scene, Marlowe preserves the detail from Aeneid 4 that Dido burns the monumenta of her relationship with Aeneas - but makes several significant alterations. Translating monumenta as “reliques,” she piles them on the pyre. But by this time in the play, we are aware that these objects may be something else than mere tokens of lost love. In contrast to Virgil, Marlowe insists on their textuality - “These letters, lines, and perjured papers all, / Shall burne to cinders in this pretious flame” (300-1) - which reminds the audience that this play is a script relying on humanist imitatio for its existence. In addition, some stage business in Act 2 about Aeneas’s robes underlines the connection be- <?page no="206"?> Lynn Enterline 206 tween costumes and the production of social identity. It is a metatheatrical moment that anticipates Shakespeare’s extended meditation on the performance of identity in Antony and Cleopatra: “Since my lord / Is Antony again, I shall be Cleopatra” (5.13). Dido similarly convinces Aeneas to “be Aeneas” - to assume the role of Aeneas - only after he puts on the right costume: Enter servant with robe and Aeneas puts it on. Aeneas. In all humilitie I thank your grace. Dido. Remember who thou art, speake like thyself. Humilitie belongs to common grooms (2.1.95-8) Read in light of the repeated exercises in impersonation required by training in Latin rhetoric, the scene indicates that Aeneas “speaks like” himself because now he is dressed to play the part that humanist students knew so well. 7 The relics Dido burns, in other words, are all marked as stage props in a play that is highly self-conscious about the physical objects required to translate this story to the stage, to enable schoolboys to impersonate ancient personae properly. Before enumerating each prop - “Here lye the sword,” “Here lye the garment which I clothed him in,” “These lines, these letters . . .” etc. - Dido speaks of herself as the equivalent of these relics. She represents herself as just as much of a cultural and literary artifact as they are: “Now Dido, with these reliques burne thy selfe” (292). When Marlowe’s Dido kills herself - with an efficacious, singular efficiency missing from the Aeneid - she burns the play’s props along with her. Dido closes the play with an iconoclastic attack on the textual, physical, and classical media of theatrical impersonation that her author practiced at school. Ending his version of the Aeneid with Dido’s passions and not Rome’s future, and with a pyre on which all the “relics” of Troy and theatrical imitatio burn, Marlowe alters the relentless teleology of Virgil’s poem in order to give us a vision of a nation with no future. Having become adept in the art of classical imitation at school, and having turned those Latin skills to use in new institutions, the writers I’ve discussed here provocatively interrupt the plot of epic masculinity their teachers privileged. Rather than imitate Aeneas’s devotion to Rome and its allegory of the humanist educational agenda, they follow the lead 7 Linda Charnes might very well call this a moment of “notorious identity,” when an early modern dramatic character realizes that he or she is playing a part that has already been scripted. <?page no="207"?> Drama, Pedagogy, and the Female Complaint 207 of Thomas Lodge, adopting the voices of ancient female characters whose expressions of grief, rage, and desire stress the cost of civic duty. Leaning heavily on imitations of Ovid to derail the Aeneid, these texts threaten to exceed or entirely undermine the imperial epic’s contract for social cohesion. They are marked by a recognizably Tudor form of “discontent” - skeptical imitations of epic that undercut normative, enddriven representations of nationhood and masculinity from within the genre thought to consolidate these identities and from within the institutions that most benefitted from upholding them. <?page no="208"?> Lynn Enterline 208 References Altman, Joel. The Tudor Play of Mind: Rhetorical Inquiry and the Development of Elizabethan Drama. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978. Aphthonius sophistae progymnasmata . . . Scholiis Reinhardi Lorichii Hamarii. London: Thomas Orwin, 1596. Baldwin, T. W. Shakspere’s Small Latine & Lesse Greeke. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1944. Barchiesi, Alessandro. Speaking Volumes: Narrative and Intertext in Ovid and Other Latin Poets. Bristol: Bristol Classical Press, 2001. Bellamy, Elizabeth. Translations of Power: Narcissism and the Unconscious in Epic History. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992. Bowers, Fredson, ed. The Compete Works of Christopher Marlowe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973. Brooks, Christopher. Law, Politics, and Society in Early Modern England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Brown, Georgia. Redefining Elizabethan Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Charnes, Linda. Notorious Identity: Materializing the Subject in Shakespeare. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995. Colie, Rosalie. Shakespeare’s Living Art. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974. Crowley, Timothy. “Arms and the Boy: Marlowe’s Aeneas and the Parody of Imitation in Dido, Queen of Carthage.” English Literary Renaissance (2008): 408-438. Deats, Sara Munson. “Marlowe’s Interrogative Drama: Dido, Tamburlaine, Faustus and Edward II. Marlowe’s Empery: Expanding His Critical Contexts. Eds. Sara Munson Deats and Robert A. Logan. University of Delaware Press: 2002. Enterline, Lynn. The Rhetoric of the Body from Ovid to Shakespeare. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. ―――. Shakespeare’s Schoolroom: Rhetoric, Discipline, Emotion. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014. ―――. “Elizabethan Minor Epics”. The Oxford History of Classical Reception in English, vol. 2. Eds. Patrick Cheney and Philip Hardie. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Folger MS V.a.381 Commonplace Book compiled c. 1600 - c. 1650. Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC. Fortescue, John, Sir. De Laudibus Legum Angliae. Ed. J. Selden. London: R. Gosling, 1737. <?page no="209"?> Drama, Pedagogy, and the Female Complaint 209 Harvey, Elizabeth. Ventriloquized Voices: Feminist Theory and English Renaissance Texts. New York: Routledge, 1995. Hutson, Lorna. The Invention of Suspicion: Law and Mimesis in Shakespeare and Renaissance Drama. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. James, Heather. Shakespeare’s Troy: Drama, Politics, and the Translation of Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Jones, Emrys. The Origins of Shakespeare. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977. Raffield, Paul. Images and Cultures of Law in Early Modern England: Justice and Political Power, 1558-1660. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Rhodes, Neil. Shakespeare and the Origins of English. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Riggs, David. The World of Christopher Marlowe. New York: MacMillan, 2014. Shakespeare, William. Complete Sonnets and Poems. Ed. Colin Burrow. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Shannon, Laurie. “Minerva’s Men: Horizontal Nationhood and the Literary Production of Googe, Turbervile, and Gascoigne.” The Oxford Handbook of Tudor Literature, 1485-1603. Eds. Mike Pincombe and Cathy Shrank. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Sullivan, Paul. “Playing the Lord: Tudor Vulgaria and the Rehearsal of Ambition.” ELH 75.1 (2008): 179-96. Watson, Foster. English Grammar Schools to 1600: Their Curriculum and Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1908. Weaver, William. “‘O teach me how to make mine own excuse’: Forensic Performance in Lucrece.” Shakespeare Quarterly (2009): 421-49. Winston, Jessica. “Lyric Poetry at the Early Elizabethan Inns of Court: Forming a Professional Community.” The Intellectual and Cultural World of the Early Modern Inns of Court. Eds. Jayne Elisabeth Archer, Elizabeth Goldring and Sarah Knight. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011. <?page no="211"?> Intervention in The Tempest Oliver Morgan This essay revisits a textual crux from 1.2 of The Tempest. From the mideighteenth century to the early twentieth, editors felt it necessary to reassign one of Miranda’s longest speeches - an angry tirade at the “abhorred slave” Caliban - to her father, Prospero. In the last fifty years this intervention has come to seem both textually unwarranted and ideologically suspect. Rather than trying to rehabilitate the emendation, I try to explain what prompted it. My claim is not that the eighteenth century editors were right, but that we have not paid sufficient attention to why they were wrong. Miranda’s speech is itself an intervention in her father’s correction of Caliban - an intervention that I attempt to locate in two kinds of context. The first is primarily formal - the interactional shape of the scene in which the crux occurs, and the interactional habits of the characters involved. The second is more culturally grounded. The play presents Prospero as a kind of pedagogue. As well as seeing Miranda as his daughter and Caliban as his slave, we should see them both as his pupils. The long second scene of The Tempest contains a notorious textual crux. Prospero has just summoned Caliban, who comes on cursing and complaining. This island, he claims, is rightfully his. When Prospero first arrived, he made much of Caliban - stroking him, feeding him, and teaching him to speak. Caliban loved his new master, and showed him all the qualities of the isle. Now he is made a slave, confined to a hard rock, and tormented at night by pinches. Or so he claims. Prospero responds to this bitter narrative with anger. The reason for Caliban’s subjection, he insists, is that he attempted to rape Miranda - until which time he had been treated as one of the family. The monster makes no attempt to deny it. If only he had been successful, he gleefully remarks, he could have peopled the island with Calibans. Drama and Pedagogy in Medieval and Early Modern England. SPELL: Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 31. Ed. Elisabeth Dutton and James McBain. Tübingen: Narr, 2015. 211-226. <?page no="212"?> Oliver Morgan 212 It is at this point that the crux occurs. Caliban’s gloating elicits the following response: Abhorred Slaue, Which any print of goodnesse wilt not take, Being capable of all ill: I pittied thee, Took pains to make thee speak, taught thee each houre One thing or other: when thou didst not (Sauage) Know thine owne meaning; but wouldst gabble, like A thing most brutish, I endow’d thy purposes With words that made them knowne: But thy vild race (Tho thou didst learn) had that in’t, which good natures Could not abide to be with; therefore wast thou Deseruedly confin’d into this Rocke, who hadst Deseru’d more then a prison. (TLN 492-503, 1.2.353-64) 1 The question at issue is who speaks these words - Prospero or Miranda. The only substantive text of the play, the First Folio (1623), gives them to Miranda, as do the three subsequent folios (1632, 1663/ 4, 1685), as does Shakespeare’s first known editor, Nicholas Rowe (1709), and his second, Alexander Pope (1725). But from the middle of the eighteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth, editors felt compelled to intervene, reassigning the speech from Miranda to Prospero. The first major editor to buck this trend was Horace Howard Furness in 1892, and the last to follow it George Kittredge, in 1939. Since Kittredge, editors and critics have been unanimous in Miranda’s favour, although the lines are still often reassigned in performance. 2 The basic pattern of the controversy is not unusual - many emendations made in the eighteenth century were handed down unchallenged until the twentieth. But the result of such challenges is usually a greater awareness of the instability of the text, not the establishment of a new orthodoxy. What makes this particular emendation interesting is that editors are as certain now that the speech should not be reassigned as they once were that it should. 1 All quotations from Shakespeare are from the First Folio unless otherwise stated. Citations refer to both the through line numbers ( TLN ) in Charlton Hinman’s Norton Facsimile, and to the act, scene and line numbers in Wells and Taylor’s Oxford Complete Works. When a quarto is cited, a signature is given in place of the TLN . 2 As, for example, by Peter Brook in 1957 (with John Gielgud as Prospero), Ron Daniels in 1982 (Derek Jacobi), and Silviu Purcarete in 1996. For a comprehensive survey of the performance history of the speech (and the play) see Dymkowski (164n). <?page no="213"?> Intervention in The Tempest 213 My purpose in this essay is not to re-open this debate, but to redescribe it. My claim is not that the eighteenth century editors were right, but that we have not paid sufficient attention to why they were wrong. The urge to intervene does not come from nowhere, but where exactly it does come from is not always clear - even to the editor who acts on it. Like all readers, editors can often hear more in a text than they are able to explain. The intuition comes first - the text must be corrupt here - and the explanation after. The explanation may be unconvincing but it does not follow from this that the editor is simply imagining things. There may still a basis for his intuition. Textual cruces often locate something important in the text that is only half-articulated in the debate which surrounds them. Before explaining exactly what I think it is that editors have heard in Miranda’s lines - and what that has to do with early modern pedagogy - it is worth reviewing arguments on both sides of the question. The case for intervention was first made by Lewis Theobald in a footnote of 1733: In all the printed Editions this Speech is given to Miranda: but I am persuaded, the Author never design’d it for her. In the first Place, ’tis probable, Prospero taught Caliban to speak, rather than left that Office to his Daughter: in the next Place, as Prospero was here rating Caliban, it would be a great Impropriety for her to take the Discipline out of his hands; and, indeed, in some sort, an Indecency in her to reply to what Caliban last was speaking of. (I, 18n) He gives three reasons for reassigning the speech, two of which have been seized upon by later editors, one of which has not. The first reason has to do with teaching. The speaker of the disputed lines claims to have taken pains to endow Caliban’s purposes with words. That Miranda had at least some hand in his education is clear from what Caliban later says to Stephano about his “Mistris” having shown him the man in the moon ( TLN 1184-5, 2.2.139-40). 3 That she could have been his teacher at a time when he did not know his own meaning and would “gabble, like | A thing most brutish,” however, is less clear. This lack of clarity has opened the way to a lengthy debate about the chronology of events before the start of the play. One side insists that Miranda, not yet three when she arrived on the island, “could hardly have been competent so 3 The point was first made by John Holt in a letter to Samuel Johnson, who includes it in the appendix to his edition (X, sig. Hh6v - curiously, the appendix has no page numbers). <?page no="214"?> Oliver Morgan 214 early” to teach Caliban to speak (Furness 73n). The other maintains that “later on - by age 10 or so - she could have introduced him to European words and ideas that Prospero had recently taught her” (Vaughan and Vaughan 135). A third position, adopted by Frank Kermode, is that any such quibbling is misguided, since it fails to take account of Shakespeare’s “habitual disregard for this kind of immediate probability” (32n). Theobald’s second reason for reassigning the speech - the “Impropriety” of Miranda taking the discipline out of her father’s hands - has been largely ignored, primarily, I want to suggest, because it has been conflated with his third - that it would be “an Indecency” for Miranda to respond to a remark about rape. Current critical consensus sees Miranda as more “sexually aware than early editors seemed to prefer” (Vaughan and Vaughan 135). Theobald and his followers are “discomfited by harsh words in Miranda’s supposedly tender mouth” (Lyne 107), their objections having more to do with their own preconceived ideas about femininity than they do with Shakespeare’s play. The reassignment of the “abhorred slave” speech has come to be seen as a classic example of an ideologically motivated textual intervention - the silencing of an unacceptably outspoken young woman by a male editorial tradition. 4 As a characterisation of the attitudes prevalent amongst eighteenth and nineteenth century editors of Shakespeare, this may well be accurate. As a reading of Theobald’s footnote, it is not. Miranda’s outburst is surprising not only because of what she says, but when she says it. It is Prospero who is rating Caliban, and Prospero to whom Caliban is complaining. Miranda intervenes in this exchange by replying on her father’s behalf to what Caliban has just said - not to her but to him. Rather than take “the discipline out of his hands” she takes the words out of his mouth. As well as speaking out, she is speaking out of turn. The question of what it means for her to do this - or for an editor to stop her from doing it - remains open. But the fact that she does it is a matter of dialogical structure, not ideological prejudice. Intervention, in this sense, is an example of what I want to call a figure of dialogue - an interactional pattern every bit as recognisable, and every bit as versatile, as a figure of speech. What distinguishes the two types of figure is that figures of dialogue can only occur in situations 4 For other ideologically loaded textual cruces in The Tempest, see Leah Marcus (5-17) on the “blew ey’d hag” Sycorax, and Ronald Tumelson on “Ferdinand’s Wife and Prospero’s Wise.” <?page no="215"?> Intervention in The Tempest 215 involving more than one potential speaker. They occur, that is, across and between the speech of several characters, rather than within the speech of one. Aposiopesis, for example, is a figure of speech - a sentence can be left unfinished even by a hermit, sitting alone in a cave. Interruption, on the other hand, is a figure of dialogue - it takes two. The figure I am calling intervention takes at least three. A addresses a remark to B, but C rather than B speaks next - C intervenes between A’s remark and a projected reply from B. 5 The significance of this apparently mundane pattern will depend on who A, B and C are, what they are saying to one another, under what circumstances, and so on, but the pattern itself is a formal feature of the dialogue. What makes it significant at all - what makes it an intervention rather than simply a sequence of three speakers - is that address is the most basic means by which people nominate one another to speak. 6 We might think of address, in this sense, as an act of linguistic pointing - it helps us identify whose turn it is to speak next. I use the word “nominate” rather than “select” because addressing someone does not guarantee that person possession of the floor (any more than passing to someone guarantees them possession of the football). But the addressee of the current turn is at least the default speaker of the next. In the absence of a reason to do otherwise, it is to the addressee that we look for a response. To intervene, on the other hand, is to speak without having been pointed at. It is to take a turn at talk, like another slice of cake, without having been offered it - not rude necessarily, but risky amongst people you do not know well. Before returning to the potential impropriety of Miranda’s intervention, I want to look - briefly - at a couple of other examples. Here is Falstaff, intervening between King Henry and the rebel Worcester: Wor. Heare me, my Liege: For mine owne part, I could be well content To entertaine the Lagge-end of my life With quiet houres: For I do protest, I haue not sought the day of this dislike. King. You haue not sought it: how comes it then? Fal. Rebellion lay in his way, and he found it. Prin. Peace, Chewet, peace. 5 Conversation analysts use the term “self-selection” to mean something very similar (Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson 704). 6 On address in conversation, see Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson (716-18); Lerner (177- 201); and Hayashi (168-73). <?page no="216"?> Oliver Morgan 216 Wor. It pleas’d your Maiesty, to turne your lookes Of Fauour, from my Selfe, and all our House (TLN 2659-68, 5.1.22-31) This intervention is clearly improper, as the prince’s reaction shows. What makes it so clear is that the king both addresses Worcester and asks him a question - specifies who should speak next, and specifies the kind of thing he should say. 7 The king is also the king. His interactional wishes, like his wishes more generally, should be respected. The comedy of Falstaff’s answer lies partly in his sarcastic dismissal of any explanation Worcester might give, and partly in the audaciousness of his speaking so flagrantly out of turn. Compare Gertrude, intervening - equally publically - between her husband and her son: King. [. . .] for your intent In going back to schoole in Wittenberg, It is most retrogard to our desire, And we beseech you bend you to remaine Heere in the cheare and comfort of our eye, Our chiefest courtier, cosin, and our sonne. Quee. Let not thy mother loose her prayers Hamlet, I pray thee stay with vs, goe not to Wittenberg. Ham. I shall in all my best obay you Madam. King. Why tis a louing and a faire reply. (Q2, sig. C1r, 1.2.112-21) Rather than being improper, this is supremely tactful. Gertrude simultaneously relieves Hamlet of the obligation to reply to Claudius, and averts the risk that he will do so impertinently. Both men are able to save face - Hamlet because he is obeying his mother rather than his uncle, Claudius because Hamlet does as he is told. She steps between them in the dialogue like a barman stepping between two drunks in a pub - positioning herself as a conversational buffer to prevent the two men from coming to blows. Notice too how the two examples differ. Falstaff replies to the previous speaker, albeit sarcastically, in place of the person who has just been addressed. Gertrude continues where the previous speaker left off, directing what she says to the same addressee. Falstaff’s intervention substitutes for a reply, Gertrude’s for a continuation. In both cases A 7 In conversation analytic terms, he produces the “first pair part” of an adjacency pair (Schegloff 13) - an act of address combined with a “sequence initiating action” (in this case the asking of a question). <?page no="217"?> Intervention in The Tempest 217 addresses B and C speaks next, but in one case C speaks to A, and in the other to B. Other permutations are of course possible (C can address both A and B, or neither, or can leave what he or she says ambiguously unaddressed), but I think the point is made. An intervention need not be improper. It can be an act of rescue or an act of aggression, ostentatious or tactful, momentous or trivial. It can relieve someone of the obligation to speak, make it easier for them to do so, or deny them the opportunity altogether. Figures of dialogue, like figures of speech, are “polysemous” (Vickers 307). Any attempt to determine the propriety of Miranda’s intervention - and thus the likelihood that the text is corrupt - will therefore need to locate it in some sort of context. I want to look at two sorts, both of which seem to me to have been overlooked. The first is primarily formal - the interactional shape of the scene in which the intervention occurs, and the interactional habits of the characters involved. The second is more culturally grounded, and thus more speculative. What I want to suggest is that the interactional patterns of the scene self-consciously invoke those of the early modern schoolroom - that Miranda is Prospero’s pupil as well as his daughter. In formal terms, then, the disputed turn is the ninety-third since Miranda and Prospero entered the stage over three hundred and fifty lines ago. Forty-six of the preceding ninety-two turns have been spoken by Prospero, the other forty-six have been spoken to him. There has been a strict alternation, that is, between A and B - where A is Prospero and B is any one of the other three inhabitants of the island. In this time Prospero has conversed with all three of them, but they have not said a single word to each other. The “abhorred slave” speech breaks this pattern. Instead of ABAB we have ABCB - instead of Prospero-other-Prosperoother we have Prospero-other-Miranda-other. It’s the dialogical equivalent of a false rhyme after a hundred lines of neat heroic couplets. Add a little flesh to the interactional bones, and things become clearer still. The scene opens with an exchange between Prospero and Miranda, in which he assures her that no one was harmed in the making of the tempest she has just witnessed, and explains, at some length, how they first came to be marooned on the island. Prospero then puts his daughter to sleep and summons Ariel, from whom he receives a report on the shipwreck and to whom he issues instructions. When he has finished with this he wakes Miranda and continues chatting, with Ariel periodically popping in and out for further reporting and further instruction. Then Prospero calls for Caliban, who enters, as we know, cursing and complaining. The other three characters take turns to interact with <?page no="218"?> Oliver Morgan 218 Prospero, and they do so at his bidding - he summons and dismisses them, puts them to sleep and wakes them up. He is the single centre of both the action and the dialogue. Miranda, Ariel, and Caliban rotate around him like planets around a star. They do so, that is, until the moment of the crux. When Miranda addresses Caliban, Prospero is for the first time side-lined - excluded (albeit momentarily) from the axis of speaker and addressee, a dialogical bystander rather than a participant. It is the breaking of this pattern, I want to suggest, as much as anything Miranda actually says to Caliban, that caused Lewis Theobald to reach for his red pen. At the moment of its occurrence, then, the intervention comes as a surprise. But this is not the only time in the play, or the scene, that Miranda intervenes between her father and another character. She does so again when Prospero unjustly accuses Ferdinand of plotting to usurp him ( TLN 607-40, 1.2.456-80). Stephen Orgel is one of several critics to have drawn a parallel between the two exchanges. The “decidedly active Miranda [. . .] who energetically defends Ferdinand,” he suggests, would be equally capable of an energetic attack on Caliban (Tempest 17). Editors who deny her the “abhorred slave” speech are refusing to recognise “an important aspect of her nature” (Tempest 120n). But what he calls an “aspect of [Miranda’s] nature” is really a habit of speech. She is “active” in both exchanges in the sense that she speaks without waiting to be spoken to. The source of the “energy” (Tempest 120n) Orgel identifies can be located more precisely in the recurrence of a dialogical pattern. An awareness of Miranda’s interventions as formal features of the text also enables us to make some distinctions. She intervenes three times on Ferdinand’s behalf - twice when the preferred next speaker is her father, and once when it is her future husband. On the first two occasions (612, 627) she adds something to a reply that Ferdinand has already given, glossing the young man’s behaviour in an attempt to influence how Prospero will interpret it (“nothing ill, can dwell in such a Temple,” “Hee’s gentle, and not fearfull”). On the third occasion (634) she changes tack. Rather than comment retrospectively on something Ferdinand has just said, Miranda speaks first - stepping into the firing line to plead with her father directly (“Beseech you Father”). All three examples differ from her attack on Caliban because what she says is addressed to Prospero. The old man remains at the dialogical centre of the scene, the object of both Ferdinand’s challenges and Miranda’s appeals. Despite the similarity of the two exchanges, the “abhorred slave” speech remains unique. It is the only time in the play that Miranda side-lines her father in this way, the only time she addresses anyone other than him or <?page no="219"?> Intervention in The Tempest 219 Ferdinand, and the only time that one of Prospero’s three fellow islanders directly addresses another. 8 Having located Miranda’s intervention in the context of a wider dialogical pattern, I want to try to locate that pattern in the context of a wider cultural practice. Prospero has, as Lynn Enterline puts it, “a grammar school master’s penchant for instructing (and dominating) his pupils” (174). 9 But what he teaches them is history rather than grammar. His text is a narrative, authored by himself, explaining how life on the island came to be ordered in just the way it is - including how he came to be teacher. Sit still, and heare the last of our sea-sorrow: Heere in this Iland we arriu’d, and heere Haue I, thy Schoolemaster, made thee more profit Then other Princesse can, that haue more time For vainer howres; and Tutors, not so carefull. (TLN 280-4, 1.2.171-5) As well as seeing Miranda as his daughter and Caliban as his slave, the play encourages us to see them both as Prospero’s pupils. To understand what it means for her to intervene in the way she does, we need to understand what it would mean for an early modern schoolboy to do likewise. And to understand that, we need to know something about the interactional patterns characteristic of the early modern schoolroom. This is not quite as easy as it sounds. The question of who speaks when is not of central concern in the pedagogical literature of the period, although it is sometimes touched on in discussion of larger issues. 10 One exception is John Brinsley’s Ludus Literarius: Or, the Grammar Schoole (1612) - a handbook “Intended for the helping of the younger sort of Teachers” (sig. ¶1r). Brinsley provides a detailed account of a 8 There are two marginal cases. First, Caliban curses Miranda, along with Prospero, at TLN 459-62 (1.2.323-6). This is marginal because, although Miranda is included as part of a plural addressee, her father is not excluded. Secondly, Ariel addresses Caliban at TLN 1414 (3.2.62) but not in his own voice. Instead, he impersonates Trinculo to make the monster believe he has been insulted. 9 Other studies to have explored the pedagogical side of the play include Moncrieff and Carey-Webb. Rupert Goold’s 2006 production for the Royal Shakespeare Company presented the opening section of 1.2 as a lesson. Miranda “sat in tense anticipation, knees together, back straight, hands clasped” speaking to her father “only after thrusting her hand into the air and waiting for permission to proceed” (Moncrief 127). 10 Issues such as the nature and foundation of the schoolmaster’s authority, for example, the rights and wrongs of beating, and the difficulty of ensuring that schoolboys speak Latin. See Burrow, Enterline, and Bushnell (23-72) for useful surveys. <?page no="220"?> Oliver Morgan 220 centrally important early modern pedagogical technique known as “poasing” or, less frequently, “apposing.” 11 Put simply, to pose a student is ask him a series of questions. Much of the schoolmaster’s expertise lies in his ability to distil difficult material into simple sets of questions and answers. According to Brinsley, “The moe the questions are, the shorter and plainer [. . .] the sooner a great deale will your children vnderstand them” (sig. H4r). The pupils proceed by stages, from hearing the master answer his own questions, to answering for themselves, first with the book open in front of them, then without it. By means of “daily repetitions and examinations” (sig. K2v) they are soon able to “say without book all the vsual and necessary rules” (sig. §3r). Further up the school, the same technique is used to test that the boys have completed the work set for them. They should be ready, according to Brinsley, “at any time whensoeuer they shall be apposed of a sudden” to “construe, parse” and “reade into English” any of the authors they have studied, and “forth of the translation” to read them back into Latin (sig. §4r). To be posed, in this wider sense, is to do more than simply recite a grammatical catechism. It is to be put on the spot and required to perform - to demonstrate skill as well as memory. But the rationale for posing is only partly pedagogical. The schoolmaster’s constant questioning is also a means of maintaining discipline. According to Brinsley, the threat of being posed is enough to keep the boys “from playing, talking, sleeping and all other disorders in the Church” (sig. Ll1r). Enterline quotes an account of a class being posed by their master, written by one of the boys: [T]hey were all of them (or such as were picked out, of whom the M r made choice by the feare or confidence in their lookes) to repeat and pronounce distinctlie without booke some piece of an author that had been learnt the day before [. . .] some to be examined and punished, others to be commended and proposed to imitation. (176) “A Westminster boy’s choice is stark,” she remarks, “imitate well or be beaten” (176). But the fear of being beaten is both subsequent to and dependent upon another fear - the fear of being chosen to speak. The boy’s suspicion that the master is deliberately picking on the students who look most nervous is well founded. Brinsley repeatedly advises young teachers to “poase whom you suspect most carelesse” (sig. Kk3v) 11 The same word is used in The Boke of Common Praier (1559) to describe how “the Bishop (or suche as he shal appoinct) shal by his discretion appose” the children during Confirmation. See Cummings 150. <?page no="221"?> Intervention in The Tempest 221 and “appose the worst and most negligent of each fourme aboue all the rest” (sig. H1v). The relevance of posing to intervention is obvious. To pose a pupil is an act of selection on the part of the master - a heightened form of addressivity that requires the addressee to do more than just speak. It is indicative of the master’s authority, and the way in which that authority translates into patterns of interaction. As Rod Gardner has put it, “the teacher is the one who allocates turns, not the students [. . .] there is no opportunity for students to self-select, or for a student to select next speaker” (Gardner 596). There is no mention in Brinsley - or anywhere else I can find - of a schoolboy putting his hand up. The turn-taking pattern most characteristic of the early modern schoolroom is thus identical with that of the second scene of The Tempest - a simple alternation between A and B, in which A is the master and B is whichever of the pupils he is currently requiring to recite or construe. To acquire a turn without being posed, the pupil, like Miranda, will have to intervene. Shakespeare explicitly dramatises the posing of a schoolboy named William in The Merry Wives of Windsor ( TLN 1835-98, 4.1.16-73). His use of the technique in The Tempest is more subtle. This is a play that invokes rather than depicts the schoolroom. What we have in 1.2 is an allusion at the level of interactional structure - an allusion that is activated by the play’s repeated references to teaching. By the time Caliban enters, we have already seen Prospero in recognisably pedagogical exchanges with Miranda and Ariel, both of which have involved some form of posing. With his daughter he begins as follows: Pros. Obey, and be attentiue. Canst thou remember A time before we came vnto this Cell? I doe not thinke thou canst, for then thou was’t not Out three yeeres old. Mira. Certainely Sir, I can. Pros. By what? by any other house, or person? Of any thing the Image, tell me, that Hath kept with thy remembrance. (TLN 108-15, 1.2.22-8) This is their first lesson on a hitherto taboo subject. Prospero poses Miranda to discover how much she already knows - to determine where he needs to start from. Notice too the demand that she “obey, and be attentiue.” In the narrative that follows Prospero repeatedly pauses to <?page no="222"?> Oliver Morgan 222 insist that Miranda “attend,” “marke,” or “heare” him. 12 Rather than characterise her as inattentive (as directors of the play frequently assume) this obsession with being listened to characterises Prospero as a schoolmaster. Dyers have inky hands, and teachers have an inculcated distrust of young people’s ears. In the exchange with Ariel, Prospero shows a different but equally recognisable side of the early modern pedagogue. Pro. Do’st thou forget From what a torment I did free thee? Ar. No. Pro. Thou do’st: & thinkst it much to tread y e Ooze Of the salt deepe; To run vpon the sharpe winde of the North, To doe me businesse in the veines o’th’ earth When it is bak’d with frost. Ar. I doe not Sir. Pro. Thou liest, malignant Thing: hast thou forgot The fowle Witch Sycorax, who with Age and Enuy Was growne into a hoope? hast thou forgot her? Ar. No Sir. Pro. Thou hast: where was she born? speak: tell me: Ar. Sir, in Argier. Pro. Oh, was she so: I must Once in a moneth recount what thou hast bin, Which thou forgetst. This damn’d Witch Sycorax [. . .] (TLN 375-91, 1.2.251-64) This is posing as threat and punishment. Ariel has not forgotten how he came to be released from the tree in which Sycorax had trapped him, and Prospero knows it. But he persists with his aggressive questioning until the whole story has been recounted. Ariel has had the temerity to remind his master of a promise to set him free, and for that he must be corrected. Like Brinsley’s schoolmaster, Prospero poses his pupils into submission. To a reader or an audience familiar with early modern educational techniques both exchanges would be recognisable - the introduction of a new text and the recitation of an old, the teaching and the testing, the beginning of the pedagogical process and the end. 12 Eight times in total: “pray thee marke me,” “(Do’st thou attend me? ),” “Thou attend’st not? ” “I pray thee marke me,” “Do’st thou heare? ” “Heare a little further,” “Sit still, and heare” ( TLN 162, l. 67; TLN 173, l. 78; TLN 183, l. 87; TLN 185, l. 88; TLN 203, l. 105; TLN 238, l. 135; TLN 280, l. 171). <?page no="223"?> Intervention in The Tempest 223 Which brings us back to Caliban, the last and least of Prospero’s pupils. Unlike Miranda and Ariel, he does not wait to be posed - volunteering his own narrative, of dispossession and enslavement, as soon as he enters the stage. Like Ariel, he is immediately corrected: Cal. [. . .] This Island’s mine by Sycorax my mother, Which thou tak’st from me: when thou cam’st first Thou stroakst me, & made much of me: wouldst giue me Water with berries in’t: and teach me how To name the bigger Light, and how the lesse [. . .] I am all the Subiects that you haue, Which first was min owne King: and here you sty-me In this hard Rocke, whiles you doe keepe from me The rest o’th’ Island. Pro. Thou most lying slaue, Whom stripes may moue, not kindnes: I haue vs’d thee (Filth as thou art) with humane care, and lodg’d thee In mine owne Cell [. . .] (TLN 470-488, 1.2.333-50) What we might expect at this point is another brutal catechism in which another recalcitrant pupil is forced to cooperate in the recitation of his own misdeeds. What we get instead is Miranda’s intervention. And what it sounds like - at least to a reader alive to the pedagogical patterning of the scene - is one pupil intervening in the correction of another. As well as breaking an established interactional pattern, the intervention confounds a set of expectations imported from the early modern schoolroom. The speech itself, we recall, is a reproach to an ungrateful, unteachable pupil, and much of the argument about whether or not it should be reassigned revolves around who could have taught what to whom. By speaking when she does, Miranda assumes, albeit momentarily, the interactional role of the schoolmaster. The speech in which she claims to have taught Caliban to speak is itself a claim to the speaking rights of a teacher. That an intervention can sometimes be heard in this way is made clear a few lines later, when Prospero reprimands Miranda for defending Ferdinand: “What I say, | My foote my Tutor? ” ( TLN 628-9, 1.2.471-2). By intervening to protect her future husband Miranda is again assuming the role of “Tutor.” None of which means that we should correct Shakespeare’s dialogue by reassigning the speech to Prospero, any more than we should correct a poet’s sudden use of a half-rhyme by inserting a word more satisfying to the editorial ear. What it does mean is that the shock felt by eight- <?page no="224"?> Oliver Morgan 224 eenth-century editors is not only a matter of prejudice. Theobald’s intervention in the text is prompted by Miranda’s intervention in her father’s correction of Caliban - by when she speaks as well as what she says - and by the pedagogical context in which the exchange takes place. To those who would reassign the speech, this is all the more reason to do so. To those who would not, it is all the more reason not to. *** My final point is a slightly larger one and belongs by itself, in a coda. In a characteristically pithy and ambitious essay, Stephen Orgel bemoans the “editorial energy that has been expended on the question of consistency of character” (“What is a Character? ” 106). Characters, he observes, “are not people, they are elements of a linguistic structure, lines in a drama, and more basically, words on a page” (102). To understand this is “to release character from the requirements of psychology, consistency and credibility” (102-3). As a former editor of The Tempest, one of Orgel’s key examples is Miranda. The reassignment of the “abhorred slave” speech is, according to him, “a very clear case of the character being considered both prior to and independent of her lines” (107). It “clearly springs not from the play but from notions of how fifteen-yearold girls ought to behave” (107). First, as I hope I have shown, this is not true. There are reasons for reassigning the speech that spring not from “notions of how fifteenyear-old girls ought to behave” but from precisely those “elements” of the linguistic structure of The Tempest that constitute the character “Miranda.” Secondly, there are ways of understanding consistency of character that do not rest on unexamined impressions of psychological credibility. They rest instead on the distribution of turns at talk, on patterns of interaction and habits of speech - on figures of dialogue that can be identified in the text with as much confidence as alliteration, chiasmus, or feminine rhyme. <?page no="225"?> Intervention in The Tempest 225 References Brinsley, John. Ludus Literarius: Or, the Grammar Schoole. London: Humphrey Lownes, 1612. Burrow, Colin. “Shakespeare and Humanistic Culture.” Shakespeare and the Classics. Ed. Charles Martindale and A. B. Taylor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. 9-27. Carey-Webb, Allen. “National and Colonial Education in Shakespeare’s The Tempest.” Early Modern Literary Studies 5 (1999): 3.1-39. http: / / purl.oclc.org/ emls/ 05-1/ cwebtemp.html. Cummings, Brian, ed. The Book of Common Prayer: The Texts of 1549, 1559, and 1662. Oxford World’s Classics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Enterline, Lynn. “Rhetoric, Discipline, and the Theatricality of Everyday Life in Elizabethan Grammar Schools.” From Performance to Print in Shakespeare’s England. Ed. Peter Holland and Stephen Orgel. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. 173-90. Gardner, Rod. “Conversation Analysis in the Classroom.” The Handbook of Conversation Analysis. Ed. Jack Sidnell and Tanya Stivers. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013. 593-611. Hayashi, Makoto. “Turn Allocation and Turn Sharing.” The Handbook of Conversation Analysis. Ed. Jack Sidnell and Tanya Stivers. London: Blackwell, 2013. 167-90. Lerner, Gene H. “Selecting Next Speaker: The Context-Sensitive Operation of a Context-Free Organization.” Language in Society 32 (2003): 177-201. Lyne, Raphael. Shakespeare’s Late Work. Oxford Shakespeare Topics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Marcus, Leah S. Unediting the Renaissance: Shakespeare, Marlowe, Milton. London: Routledge, 1996. Moncrief, Kathryn M. “‘Obey and be attentive’: Gender and Household Instruction in Shakespeare’s The Tempest.” Gender and Early Modern Constructions of Childhood. Ed. Naomi J. Miller and Naomi Yavneh. Farnham: Ashgate, 2011. 127-38. Orgel, Stephen. “What is a Character? ” Text 8 (1995): 101-9. Sacks, Harvey, Emmanuel A. Schegloff, and Gail Jefferson. “A Simplest Systematics for the Organization of Turn-Taking for Conversation.” Language 50 (1974): 696-735. Schegloff, Emmanuel A. A Primer in Conversation Analysis, Volume 1: Sequence Organization in Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. <?page no="226"?> Oliver Morgan 226 Shakespeare, William. The tragicall historie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke. London: Nicholas Ling, 1604. ―――. Mr. William Shakespeares comedies, histories, & tragedies. London: Isaac Jaggard and Edward Blount, 1623. ―――. Mr. William Shakespeares comedies, histories, and tragedies. London: John Smethwick, William Aspley, et al., 1632. ―――. Mr. William Shakespeares comedies, histories, and tragedies. London: Philip Chetwinde, 1663/ 4. ―――. Mr. William Shakespear’s comedies, histories, and tragedies. London: H. Herringman, et al., 1685. ―――. The works of Mr. William Shakespear; in six volumes. Ed. Nicholas Rowe. London: Jacob Tonson, 1709. ―――. The works of Shakespear. In six volumes. Ed. Alexander Pope. London: Jacob Tonson, 1725. ―――. The works of Shakespeare: in seven volumes. Ed. Lewis Theobald. London: A. Bettesworth, et al., 1733. ―――. The plays of William Shakespeare, in eight volumes. Ed. Samuel Johnson. London: J. and R. Tonson, et al., 1765. ―――. The Tempest. Ed. Horace Howard Furness. The New Variorum Shakespeare. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1892. ―――. The Tempest. Ed. G. L. Kittredge. The Kittredge Shakespeares. Boston: Ginn, 1939. ―――. The Tempest. Ed. Frank Kermode. The Arden Shakespeare: Second Series. London: Methuen, 1954. ―――. The Tempest. Ed. Stephen Orgel. The Oxford Shakespeare. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987. ―――. The First Folio of Shakespeare: The Norton Facsimile. Prep. Charlton Hinman. 2nd ed. New York: Norton, 1996. ―――. The Tempest. Ed. Virginia Mason Vaughan and Alden T. Vaughan. The Arden Shakespeare: Third Series. London: Thomson Learning, 1999. ―――. The Tempest. Ed. Christine Dymkowski. Shakespeare in Production. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. ―――. Complete Works. Ed. Stanley Wells, Gary Taylor, et al. 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005. Tumelson, Ronald A. “Ferdinand’s Wife and Prospero’s Wise.” Shakespeare Survey 59 (2006): 79-90. Vickers, Brian. In Defence of Rhetoric. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998. <?page no="227"?> “Jests, stolne from the Temples Revels”: the Inns of Court Revels and Early Modern Drama Michelle O’Callaghan The repertoire of the boys’ companies in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries is characterised, in part, by experiments with a burlesque style and an aggressive mode of intertextuality that testifies to a sustained dialogue with the performance culture of the Inns of Court revels. A subgenre of serio ludere, serious play, the revels are a hybrid form that freely mixes ceremonial structures with bawdy farce and the rites of violence. By entering into a conversation with the Inns of Court revels, the boys’ companies advertised their shared pedagogic performance culture at a time when their own educational links were becoming increasingly attenuated. Borrowing jests from the revels therefore provided a means of claiming shared educational capital. The mode of fraternity promoted within these all-male pedagogic institutions relied on rites of violence, which incorporated satire and burlesque, to assert institutional privilege and to fashion elite corporate identities. From 1599 to around 1607, a series of plays appeared on stage and in print that were characterised by an often aggressive intertextuality. In its benign and emulative form, it involved borrowing and re-staging scenes. However, particularly in the earlier plays produced around 1600, the dialogue is more combative, frequently turning into flyting. The majority of these plays - Ben Jonson’s Every Man Out of His Humour (1599) and Poetaster (1601), Thomas Dekker’s Satiromastix (1601/ 1602), John Marston’s Jack Drum’s Entertainment (1600) and What You Will (1601), and the last of the Parnassus plays performed by Cambridge University in 1601 - Drama and Pedagogy in Medieval and Early Modern England. SPELL: Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 31. Ed. Elisabeth Dutton and James McBain. Tübingen: Narr, 2015. 227-252. <?page no="228"?> Michelle O’Callaghan 228 are often gathered under the umbrella of the so-called “War of the Theatres.” The narrative of this war is well-rehearsed: Marston portrayed Jonson in an albeit admiring portrait in Histriomastix around 1599, Jonson took offence and retaliated with an attack on Marston and other playwrights he disliked, including Dekker, in Poetaster, Dekker responded in kind with his Satiromastix, and Marston satirised Jonson in Jack Drum’s Entertainment and What You Will. Earlier theatre historians used this model of a “War of the Theatres” to argue for a deep structural professional rivalry between the adult and boys’ companies. Roslyn Knutson has successfully challenged intra-company rivalry as a basis for understanding how commercial relationships between playing companies were organised. Although these plays provide evidence for a “game of serial satire,” she argues this was all part of the commerce between theatres in this period, and as much sociable as it was competitive (12-14, 141-2). Knutson’s concern is to demonstrate how commercial relations between playing companies were structured by “patterns of fraternity, the roots of which were feudal hierarchies such as kinship, service, and the guild,” rather than rivalry (10). The significance of Knutson’s revisionism for my own argument lies in her recognition that the homosocial aggression played out in the “game of serial satire” was constitutive of corporate identities, and not their negation. My interest in this essay is in the ways in which this “game” involved playing companies in a dialogue not only amongst themselves, but with another pattern of fraternity whose roots were in the pedagogic institutional cultures of the Inns of Court and the universities. The term, “War of the Theatres,” is itself a misnomer. A culture of flyting at the turn of the sixteenth century was certainly not confined to the theatres. The “game of serial satire” was being played across various institutions - the universities, the Inns, an increasingly and dangerously factional court, and the theatres - and across a range of media - manuscript, print, and performance (Clegg 198-217). Satiric fraternities, which allied themselves with particular personalities at Cambridge and the Inns of Court, were constructed in print through the books of satires published between 1597 and 1601. And one of the key participants in this bout of flyting was Marston, who also played a leading role in the “game of serial satire” on stage. The institutional contexts of these satiric fraternities points to the ways in which aggression was constitutive of the elite modes of homosociality fostered at schools, universities and the Inns of Court. Rituals of incorporation at these institutions involved “various rites of violence” for proving manhood and fashioning a mode of homosociality <?page no="229"?> “Jests, stolne from the Temples Revels” 229 that was related to, but distinct from the chivalric models fostered at courts. Although physical violence did play a part in the formation of homosocial identities at the universities and Inns, the emphasis was on rhetorical modes of aggression, exemplified by the adversarial structure of the disputation, the cornerstone of Renaissance pedagogy (Davies 141-65). On ceremonial and festive occasions, such as at the elaborate Christmas revels at the Inns of Court and the public Act for granting degrees at Oxford, disputation took a serio-comic form and veered into the aggression of satire. The terrae filius, for example, who performed at the Oxford Act, as Kristine Haugen points out, was expected to make “insulting the dons the raison d’être” of his mock-disputation (2-3). At the turn of the sixteenth century, flyting was therefore a strategy dramatists shared with these institutions at a time when the relations between the professional theatres, especially the boys’ companies, and the Inns were particularly close. What also characterises the plays often gathered together under the rubric of “War of the Theatres” is a conversation with the celebrated 1597/ 98 Middle Temple revels. Hence, Dekker’s jibe in Satiromastix that Jonson pads out his plays with jests stolen from the Temple revels (V.ii.295-6). It was a dialogue that included an experiment with burlesque and other forms of serio ludere - serious play - showcased at the revels. Burlesque, from the Italian “burla,”meaning mockery or ridicule, is an unstable and hybrid genre that includes parody, travesty, satire and nonsense. The most celebrated examples of this humanist tradition of serio ludere are Erasmus’s Praise of Folly and Thomas More’s Utopia. Serious play was a vital element of Renaissance pedagogy. Lucian, one of the classical forefathers of serio ludere, with his playful mix of philosophy, history, comic satire and the fantastic, was the first Greek author taught in the Renaissance schoolroom (Marsh 7-12). Serio ludere was used to teach the arts of disputation, including mooting - the formulation and debating of a hypothetical case involving a controversial point of law. Classical controversiae, based on ambiguous or contradictory Roman laws, were given to students to test “adeptness at law”; yet, since these cases were often paradoxes that veered into the farcical and fantastic, they also encouraged a playful and mocking sophistry (Kinney 17-20). Mockmooting was a key feature of the law sports during the Inns of Court revels. At the revels, the pedagogical and professional purpose of serio ludere coalesces with the “various rites of violence” (Davies 154) that function to incorporate the individual within the fraternity. Linguistic aggression was constitutive of the ceremonial forms of its seriocomic <?page no="230"?> Michelle O’Callaghan 230 “law sports,” and played out through the formation of satiric fraternities and burlesque parodies of legal and political forms and social customs. From the late 1590s, the influence of this tradition of serio ludere can be discerned in the drama of the period. Jonson began developing a Lucianic form of “comicall satyre,” that included a strong burlesque element, in those late Elizabethan plays which tend to be cited as part of the “Wars of the Theatres” - Every Man Out of his Humour (1599), Cynthia’s Revels (1600), and Poetaster (1601) (Duncan 119-43). The latter two plays were performed by the Children of the Queen’s Revels. Ludic experiments with burlesque characterise the repertoire of the boys’ companies in this period to a marked degree. Arguably, burlesque finds a home within both the revels and the repertoire of the boys’ companies because they share pedagogic traditions of serio ludere. Boys’ companies had evolved out of grammar and choir schools, environments in which students, like those at the universities and the Inns, performed regularly as part of their education. These different student groups therefore shared a pedagogic understanding of the role of performance, which was to provide training in the arts of rhetoric, memory, bodily comportment, and audacity. One of the key differences between the adult and children’s playing companies, Edel Lamb argues, was that the latter defined and promoted themselves as institutions for the training of youths (104-5). However, by the early seventeenth century, as Lucy Munro has noted, the “link between children’s performance and the educational process” became increasingly attenuated (37). Arguably, because this link was in the process of disappearing in the early seventeenth century, the value in maintaining a dialogue between the repertoire of the boys’ companies and elite educational institutions, such as the Inns and universities, increased. A key aspect of their shared pedagogic performance culture was the forms of serio ludere, hence the popularity of burlesque and satire in the repertoire of the boys’ companies in this period. The Inns of Court revels: the “law sports” and the rites of violence The Christmas revels were a performance tradition shared between the Inns of Court and the boys’ companies. Christmas princes were elected to preside over revels at the grammar schools, while choir schools appointed Boy Bishops (this tradition seems to have ended with the accession of Elizabeth I), and both performed regularly at the court’s Christmas revels (Shapiro 8-11). In keeping with the forms of serio ludere, revels <?page no="231"?> “Jests, stolne from the Temples Revels” 231 in the sixteenth and early seventeenth century are a deliberately mixed mode that freely mixed solemn ceremony with bawdy farce and rites of violence. The Inns of Court grand revels were particularly spectacular affairs (McCoy 286-7). The progress of the Prince d’Amour to the court through the streets of London during the 1597/ 98 Middle Temple revels included richly armoured “knights” attended by squires and torchbearers, all dressed in cloth of gold and silver, and accompanied by masquers. Benjamin Rudyerd concluded, “Never any Prince in this Kingdom, or the like made so glorious and so rich a shew” (REED II, 483). Ceremonies of state proceed through a continual movement between the serious and purposeful and the irreverent and playful. One of the critical questions posed by the revels is how to interpret these seemingly contrary impulses, particularly in relation to the corporate identity imagined by the “law sports.” If viewed through the lens of Victor Turner’s influential Ritual to Theatre: the Human Seriousness of Play, then the revels exemplify a liminal ritual, a feature of highly structured hierarchal societies. Through serious play, the structures of the institution are parodied and reconfigured in ludic form. And yet, these subversive energies, paradoxically, function to reinforce institutional structures, since misrule is predicated on the “naturalness” of the rules that are burlesqued. The revels, within this schema, function to reproduce a normative mode of of communitas through the forms of serious play, which incorporate the individual within the fraternity and reinforce a corporate and customary institutional identity (Turner 27-60; Shapiro 40-2). Yet, one limit of this modelling of the revels is that it can confine itself to a self-confirming dialectic between the forces of subversion and containment and so flatten out the complexities of serio ludere. The rites of violence enacted during the revels, for example, do not necessarily function as subversive forces that are generated in order to be contained, instead their role in constituting homosocial identities is more purposeful and more fraught. In recent studies of revels at the Inns of Court, Gerard Legh’s account of the 1561/ 2 Inner Temple revels in his Accedens of Armory is often a starting point for understanding how the Inns fashioned a corporate civic identity in the sixteenth century. For Paul Raffield, the “revels constructed a Utopian commonwealth, in which the ruler was counselled by learned advisors, or amici principis, whose function was to direct the polity of the idealised state in the best interest of the commonwealth” (Images and Culture 264). Similarly, Peter Goodrich turned to Legh’s text to illustrate how the legal profession in England established itself as a “de facto sovereign power” within the public sphere. Glossing <?page no="232"?> Michelle O’Callaghan 232 Legh’s description of the feast held in the Great Hall during the revels, Goodrich writes: “The order of dining - of arrival, dress, seating, service, food, speech, argument, exposition, dance, revelry and masques - is the order of a lawful world, a symbolic order in which Justice, Rule and Law are to be understood as being expressed together through culinary measures, victuals and wine” (247-8). Through professional rituals held during commons - legal exercises, such as mooting, as well as feasting and the revels - the individual is incorporated into this sacred “community of the Law.” The bibliophagic analogy between eating, reading, and learning is put into practice in the commons, all the while governed by a dietary regimen that regulated both body and mind. For Goodrich, “commoning,” as an institutional practice, is the means by which the early modern legal profession inculcated a model of elite homosociality. Yet, although they go unrecorded in Legh’s account, these 1561/ 2 revels were not without the characteristic traits of burlesque and rites of violence. One of the entertainments at this feast, according to William Dugdale’s account in Origines Juridiciales, was a hunt, a blood-sport which enacted the privileges of the aristocracy over the natural world they claim to govern. The Master of Game, bowing before the Lord Chancellor, was granted the privilege of entering his service. At this point, the huntsman entered with a bound fox and cat, which were then released, set upon by hounds, “and killed before the fire” (155). The hunt is both a violent assertion of the customary rites of the elite and a blood sacrifice through which social subordinates - the Master of Game and the huntsman - express the fealty that is constitutive of the hierarchies within this mock-court. Dugdale also lists the burlesquing names of the lords within the mock-court: “Sir Francis Flatterer of Fowleshurst in the County of Buckingham; Sir Randle Rackabite, of Rascall Hall, in the County of Rake Hell; Sir Morgan Mumchance, of Much Monkery, in the County of Mad Mopery; Sir Bartholmew Baldbreech, of Buttocks-bury, in the County of Breke neck” (156). Raffield argues that “Such licensed parody was a form of repressive tolerance on the part of the governing bodies of the Inns”; a form of “superficial rebellion against the formal practices and institutions of the Inns” that ultimately did not threaten the established order (“Elizabethan Revels” 165). Its origins are in the primitive, like the Lord of Misrule, “representing the repressed hatred of hierarchy and order” (177). Yet, arguably, rather than erupting from below, since parody and burlesque function within the dynamics of learned play, alongside the rites of violence, they are a purposeful <?page no="233"?> “Jests, stolne from the Temples Revels” 233 marker of elite identity, rather than embodying residual and repressed primitive forces. The absence of the hunt or the burlesquing lords in Legh’s account of the 1561/ 2 revels is due to the fact that it is situated within a book of heraldry, and therefore has a different generic framework to other accounts of the revels which function primarily within a serio ludere tradition. This is not to argue that these other accounts of the revels are more factual, but rather to point out that they belong to a different genre with a different set of conventions. Legh’s account is also unusual in that it was published soon after the 1561/ 2 revels; by contrast, the text of the 1594/ 5 Gray’s Inn revels was not published until 1688, while the account of the 1597/ 98 Middle Temple revels was published in 1660. There have been a number of important studies of these revels in relation to contemporary Elizabethan politics, in particular, the question of the Queen’s marriage (see Winston 11-34; Dunn 279-308). Yet, there is also another story to tell about the timing of these revels. The early 1560s witnessed a revival of plans to establish an academy to rival those of Europe for educating wards and children of the gentry and the nobility. In 1561, Sir Nicholas Bacon finally produced a manuscript treatise, which he presented to Elizabeth I, based on the report he had produced for Henry VIII in the late 1530s, recommending the foundation of a fifth inn along the lines of a humanist academy. Around this time, the Master of the Court of Wards, William Cecil, Lord Burghley, was promoting Gray’s Inn as a substitute for an academy. Given that both Cecil and Bacon were Gray’s Inn men, there seems to have been a campaign to promote this inn as an alternative academy (Wienpahl 8-10, 43-6.). The Inner Temple’s decision to hold spectacular grand revels in 1561/ 2, presided over by the queen’s favourite, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and to sponsor Legh’s published account, strongly suggests a counter-campaign by the Inner Temple to make a rival bid for academy status. Legh’s Accedence of Armory constructs a potent fiction that harmonises the dual educational roles of the inns in both providing training in the law for an expanding professional class of lawyers and as an academy for educating the elite in the courtly arts. Hence, when Legh describes the Inner Temple as a microcosm of the commonwealth, this ideal city-state looks very like an academy, where: . . . gentilmen of y e whole realme, . . . repaire thither to learne to rvle, and obay by law, to yeld their fleece to their prince & commonweale, as also to vse all other exercises of body & mind whereunto nature most aptli serueth, to adorne by speaking, countenance and gesture, & vse of app[ar]el y e person of a gentilman, whereby amitie is obtained, & continued. (205r-v) <?page no="234"?> Michelle O’Callaghan 234 With Accedence, Legh offered the inns, and the Inner Temple, in particular, a highly polished mirror that reflected their ambitions in the 1560s to take responsibility for educating a governing class. Legh’s idealising vision of confraternity does incorporate the abstract, symbolic forms of the rites of violence through its detailed description of chivalric iconography of a militaristic knightly culture, in keeping with its status as a book of heraldry. The codes of honour that underpinned this masculine culture at the Inns generated “homosocial tensions, rivalry and competition”; the fraternal rituals of the commons were designed to mediate these tensions. Goodrich argues, via Freud, that homosociality at the Inns was therefore structured by a “sublimated conflict,” “whose unconscious cause” was the “rivalrous resemblance” or “confraternal paranoia” that arose out of men living and working together in close proximity (256). However, as we shall see, sublimation is not quite the right word for the level of performativity in which rites of violence are staged during the revels in order to demonstrate good governance. To an extent, these scenes of elite homosocial conflict are produced in order to uphold the principle of communitas. And yet, the deliberate staging of often highly stylised aggression and other forms of disruption also plays a productive role that exceeds this regulatory intent and is part of the performance culture of the revels itself. Rites of violence and burlesque performance seem to be a feature of revelling societies more broadly. The Basoche, a society formed by Parisian law clerks, had a very similar structure to the mock states formed during Inns of Court revels, with yearly elections of a king, a chancellor, and a High Court of Justice (Harvey 12-18). The plays performed during their revels mixed bawdy farce with sharp political and religious satire that sometimes cut very close to the bone, resulting in street fights and libel actions. Sara Beam has argued that, until the outbreak of the Wars of Religion in 1562, the satirical farces of the Basoche were tolerated by civic authorities because of the relatively high social status of the revellers, which permitted them to take risks with their mockery of those in authority, not available to those lower down the social hierarchy (7-8). Violence within elite homosocial communities, as Anna Bryson argues, arose out of the “survival of values of ‘honour’” within early modern codes of civility, which meant that rites of violence, both physical and rhetorical, were a customary tool for individual and collective displays of elite masculinity (240). Moreover, violence had a particular role to play in the all-male youth cultures at the universities and Inns of Court. Education was a transitional stage, when young men were in training for <?page no="235"?> “Jests, stolne from the Temples Revels” 235 taking up public office and assuming civic identities. The rites of violence and the related forms of burlesque allowed youths to assert an elite mode of identity, which was accorded privileges unavailable to those lower down the social scale, and to articulate a privileged relationship to the law and other mechanisms of governance, which similarly was a function of their status as future members of the social and political elite (see Davies 141-65; Skoda 31-40). That said, violence was not always easily incorporated into codes of civil conduct, rather there was an uneasy balance, which could tip over into forms of unacceptable violence that threatened civic order (Bryson 240). Rites of violence had a structural place in the revels. Skirmishes between innsmen and the followers of the Christmas prince traditionally accompanied his election on Candlemas night, despite efforts to curb the worst excesses in the late sixteenth century (Prest 97-9). Parliaments held by the Inns frequently recorded fines and other punishments meted out to students for breaking down doors, and sometimes heads, during the revels (Prest 96-7; REED I, 177-8, 231). The Middle Temple parliament held in February 1591 expelled a Mr. Lower, while other revellers, including Richard Martin and John Davies, who later took part in the 1597/ 98 revels, were fined (REED I, 118-9). The revels amplify the adversarial nature of the law so that it becomes an integral theatrical mode of statecraft. Rituals of combat structure the mock states formed during the revels and take ceremonial forms. Principalities are typically on a war footing. The Prince of Purpoole, who presided over the 1594/ 5 Gray’s Inn revels, sent out orders to quell insurrections at home and to wage war abroad, in alliance with “our Brother Russia,” against the Tartars (REED II, 414-6). These revels ended with “a grand chivalric contest” that, both symbolically and in actuality, staged and mediated conflicts among the elite, in this case between the Queen’s two favourites, Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex and George Clifford, Earl of Cumberland (McCoy 296). The 1597/ 98 Middle Temple revels opened with a challenge delivered from a “strange knight” in defence of the rights of “that Lady of that Fortunate Island” against the usurper, the Prince of Love, Richard Martin (REED II, 441-2). Both the Gray’s Inn and Middle Temple revels record diplomatic incidents disrupting the amicable relations between brother Inns: famously, during the Gray’s Inn revels, their “Friends,” the Inner Templars sent an ambassador, but “there arose such a disordered Tumult” that he was forced to leave, launching an investigation into the cause of the uproar leading to the arraignment of a “sorcerer” (REED II, 395-9); similarly, during the 1597/ 98 revels, Benjamin Rudyerd reported that “the Lincolnians,” the <?page no="236"?> Michelle O’Callaghan 236 Middle Temple’s brother inn, “intended to see the Princes Court, and so did all the Town; which bred such disorder that the Prince could not receive them according to their worthiness” (484). Such playful breaches of ceremony had their rhetorical counterpart in the seriocomic forms of learned play which structure the revels and similarly counterpoint elaborate ritual with low, and often crude literary forms. The revels, as I have argued elsewhere, set in place “a ritualised space of play in which the ceremonial structures of the institution are parodied” from within, but not dismantled or overturned by external forces (24). Parody, in this context, was a mode of sprezzatura that signalled the revellers’ easy mastery of the rituals of their profession. Moreover, the shared laughter occasioned by bawdy farce aggressively reinforces the homosociality of the group. Not surprisingly, the ceremonial structures typically open to burlesque during the revels were the orders and articles contractually binding the knights to the Christmas Prince. For example, the articles of service in the Gray’s Inn revels recorded in the Gesta Grayorum are a series of often bawdy jests: “Every Knight of this Order is bound to perform all requisite and Manly Service, be it Night-service, or otherwise, as the Case requireth, to all Ladies and Gentlewomen,” and so it continues (REED II, 402). Bawdiness is even more pronounced in the later Middle Temple revels: item 2 stipulates that every Knight of this Order shall . . . have those things in readiness which Ladies desire, as the Launce for the Ring, and such like; and shall twice a week at the least Tilt and Turine [sic] for Ladies, shewing them all their cunning in Arms when they lust or command. (II, 459) These revels staged a contest between the erotic politics promoted by “the Lady of that fortunate Island” (REED II, 442), Queen Elizabeth, and the revels’ Prince of Love. The bawdy libertinism of his court signifies an unruly elite masculinity, which, within the framework of the revels, usurps the authority of the Petrarchan politics of Elizabeth’s court. Libertinism travesties codes of civility, and constitutes a specifically elite mode of lawlessness, that, in turn, is an aspect of the licence gentlemen were privileged to enjoy in their recreations (Bryson 243-9). It is a mode of burlesque that is not carnivalesque in a Bakhtinian sense, nor does its violence necessarily borrow from lower-class modes of rebellion. Rather, it functions as a particularly elite mode of violence that asserts social privilege; like the Basoche and university students, Inns of Court revellers could afford to take risks because of their comparatively high social status. <?page no="237"?> “Jests, stolne from the Temples Revels” 237 In keeping with Inns’ self-fashioning as academies for educating gentlemen for courtly service, disputes over honour were one of the set performances during the revels and were played out within the chivalric structure of the mock-court. By the late sixteenth century, these chivalric codes operated within a context in which the traditional definitions of gentility on which they were based - land and blood - were giving way to looser comparatively meritocratic models, fostered in part by the Inns of Court and universities (James 375-86). Attendance at these institutions conferred gentle status. George Buc complained in his history of the Inns, it was a commonly held “error to thinke that the sonnes of Graziers, Farmers, Marchants, Tradesmen, and artificers can bee made Gentlemen, by their admittance or Matriculation in the Buttrie Hole, or in the Stewards Booke, of such a house or Inne of court” (968). The gentleman lawyer was therefore a character in flux. Gentility was increasingly defined by a set of social codes, including the company one kept and one’s “manners,” which signified good breeding; thus loosened from its traditional moorings in “three descents,” gentility was both highly unstable and energetically policed (Bryson 146-50). Rather than displaying a consensus about how a civic society is formed, the revels were far more fraught performances that often staged conflicts about who was entitled to membership of the community. Shared modes of laughter and bawdy farce have an aggressive “commoning” function, in which satire and other modes of admonition could also turn inward. Notions of breeding and civility, at the core of the Inns’ self-promotion as an alternative academy, provided the terms for the organised flyting of key revellers in the 1590s. “A libel against some Greys Inn gentlemen and Reuellers” mocks the poor performances of members of the Prince of Purpoole’s court during the 1594/ 95 revels: How happens it of purpose or by chaunce that ffleetwood goes the formost in your daunce bycause he in his nose doth beare a light which all the ffayries in their daunce did light but blame not him, alas that comes by kind his fathers nose although his eyes were blind would serve him in his countinghouse to see ten in the hundred come in merily perhaps it is his gould chaines bright reflexion that makes his nose of such a braue complexion a poxe on him and his chaines, for by his chaines and bondes & vsury comes in his gaines. (Rosenbach MS 1083/ 15, 64) <?page no="238"?> Michelle O’Callaghan 238 Henry Fleetwood is ridiculed both for his red nose and his father’s money (Thomas Fleetwood was Master of the Royal Mint under Henry VIII); others are mocked for their dress, speech and bodily comportment during the revels. These conventional outward signifiers of civility are not themselves travestied. Instead, ridicule is directed at the bodies of the revellers in order to exclude them from this field of distinction; their grotesque performances and physical coarseness signify a lack of breeding and their failure to make the grade socially. The compiler of the miscellany (Rosenbach MS 1083/ 15) in which the Gray’s Inn libel is copied, given his access to John Davies’s verse and very rare epigrams by Rudyerd, must have had close connections with the Middle Temple in the 1590s (Eckhardt 25). It is therefore possible that the Gray’s Inn libel was produced by Middle Templars. If so, it testifies to the combative rivalry between Inns in their efforts to secure comparative institutional prestige. Intra-institutional rivalry was similarly very pronounced at Oxford University, where colleges were the primary focus for group loyalty (Skoda 30). Aggression also structures homosocial relations within these peer groups. Rudyerd’s account of the 1597/ 98 revels takes particular delight in describing the humiliation of one “Stradilax,” thought to be John Davies, who appears to have been the victim of a libelling campaign. Stradilax, according to Rudyerd, made a great feast, as part of his bid to become Christmas prince, “and instead of Grace after it, there was a Libel set up against him in al famous places of the City, as Queen-hithe, Newgate, the Stock, Pillory, Pissing Conduit” (REED II, 480). Davies took his revenge after the revels, striding into the commons and hitting Richard Martin, the Prince of Love, over the head with a bastinado until it broke. Stradilax’s wit is derided by Rudyerd as too coarse. However, given the notoriously bawdy punning of these revels, Stradilax’s vulgarity is not markedly out-of-place. Rudyerd’s derision is indicative of the finely-tuned set of social discriminations at work in the definition of wit. Stradilax is ritually humiliated within Rudyerd’s account for trying to play the game, to take a prominent role in the law sports, but is repeatedly identified as lacking the wit to do so: Milorsius Stradilax made three Confessions; for a Souldier, a Traveller, and a Country Gentleman; but two so bad, that the meanest Wit would not undertake to bring them in; and the souldier’s speech in the stile of a Taylors Bill, or a Memorandum, with imprimis and Items: yet did disclaim in the nights devise, because it wanted Applause. <?page no="239"?> “Jests, stolne from the Temples Revels” 239 Milorsius Stradilax usurped upon the commendation of all tolerable speeches; insomuch that one praising the Heralds Coat, he reported that he penned it ………… Here Milorsius Stradilax, scorning the soberness of the company, fell drunk without a Rival; he made a festival Oration, and in his new Drunkennes repeated his old comparison of Pork, to the dispraise of the noble women there present. (REED II, 482, 483-4) Wit is understood in terms of both bodily comportment and verbal and intellectual dexterity. As a signifier of educational capital, wit should be worn lightly, natural and extemporized, rather than studied and laboured. This type of internecine conflict functions to establish the collective cultural capital of the group at the expense of those who, while nominally members of the community, are set up as negative exemplars that, in turn, function to police boundaries - who is “in,” and who is “out.” Lynne Magnusson, in her discussion of the Inns of Court, has called this phenomenon, “scoff power” - a communicative practice in which aggression functions assertively to claim cultural capital in competition with other groups (196-208). It is a model of commoning that contrasts markedly with the civic utopianism of the revels described by Raffield. The revels do adhere “to a traditional code of manner or honour as the basis of ideal governance,” as Raffield contends (Images and Cultures 93). However, this code operates within elaborate travesties during the revels, which means that it not only functions to incorporate individuals into a civic body, but also to exclude others through derision. The revels do promote a social contract founded on a notion of the public good. That said, the aggressive, satiric commoning practised during the revels draws attention to the role of elite violence in constituting and policing the hierarchies on which the “homosociality of professional relation” (Goodrich 254) and model of governance promoted by the Inns depend. “that terrible Poetomachia”: Satiric Fraternities at the turn of the sixteenth century Flyting, or the game of serial satire, had long been a feature of sixteenthcentury print culture. The Harvey-Nashe pamphlet war of the early 1590s, for instance, drew much of its energy, strategies, and participants from the earlier Marprelate controversy. Another pamphlet skirmish <?page no="240"?> Michelle O’Callaghan 240 began in the late 1590s, this time between self-proclaimed satirists, all of whom were associated with either the Inns or Cambridge, or both: Joseph Hall, a recent graduate of Cambridge, Marston, a Middle Templar, Everard Guilpin, at Gray’s Inn after graduating from Cambridge, and John Weever, also a Cambridge graduate. This game of serial satire ran from 1597 to 1601 and made innovative use of print. Hall’s Virgidemiarum (1597) opened by challenging others to follow him in print to “be the second English Satyrist” (“Prologue” 3-4), and ended by prophesying that “the timely publication of these my concealed Satyres” would incite a print war between the satirists (“Postscript” 6-8). Marston announced he was taking up the gauntlet in his Certaine Satyres, published with Metamorphosis of Pigmalions Image in 1598, while his friend and kinsman, Guilpin in his Skialetheia (1598) imagined contemporary literary culture consumed by “ciuill warres” between the satirists, “Englands wits” (1.9, 12-13). Marston was similarly keen to advertise these pamphlet wars. He drew attention to Hall’s inventive use of the printed book by including an epigram in the second 1599 edition of Scourge of Villanie, explaining its “Author, Vergidemiarum” (Hall), had it “pasted to the latter page” of every copy of his book “that came to the stacioners of Cambridge” (10.47-9). Weever’s epyllion, Faunus and Melliflora (1600), metamorphoses into a satire on the satirists that praises the “sharp quills” of Hall’s “Satire Academicall” (F3r) and accuses Marston of hypocrisy, of practising the vices he condemns (I4v). Weever is probably the “W.I.” of The Whipping of the Satyre (1601), which scourges Marston, the satirist, and Guilpin, the epigrammatist. What is notable about this poets’ war, which sees Cambridge men, the “pure fraternitie” (Scourge 2.9.40), as Marston calls them, lining up on one side and Inns of Court men on the other, is the role played by institutional affiliations and, relatedly, intra-institutional rivalry, in the words of Goodrich, the “homosociality of professional relations” (255). The turn of the sixteenth century witnessed the formation of satiric fraternities at both the Inns and Cambridge which engaged in intra-institutional aggression, one attacking the credibility of the other. The Cambridge play, Second Part of the Return from Parnassus, performed around 1601/ 2, is often discussed from the perspective of its participation in the “War of the Theatres” (Bednarz 45-52, 257-64). Yet, when it takes the part of the Cambridge man, Hall, against Marston, an Inns man, there is a strong institutional bias to its satire. The last of the Parnassus plays it is the first to incorporate an attack on the lawyers and the Inns of Court through three set pieces: a satire on the openness of the common law to corruption, a mock-mooting in which practices of disputation result in “hotch <?page no="241"?> “Jests, stolne from the Temples Revels” 241 potch,” and a scene deriding the Inns’ construction of their corporate identity as the third university, which is itself framed in terms of the quarrel between the civil law taught at the universities and the common law. Ingenioso sneers, “I pray you Monseiur Ploidon, of what Vniuersitie was the first common Lawyer. Of none forsooth” (IV.ii.1672-3). Amoretto, the venial Inns of Court student, as his name suggests, is a character drawn from the 1597/ 98 Middle Temple revels presided over by the Prince d’Amour. His characterisation is a patchwork of quotes from these revels that are recast in an often lower register to mock both the pretensions of the gentleman lawyer and the style of burlesque play showcased at these law sports. Hence, the jest that it is the role of the Archflamen to canonise acts of supererogation by the Knights of the Quiver, “such as kiss[ing] the stool whereon their Mistris sate” (REED II, 449), is given a much cruder scatological rendering in the Cambridge play: Ingenioso claims that Amoretto is “good for nothing but to commend in a sette speach, the colour and quantitie of your Mistresses stoole, and sweare it is most sweete Ciuet” (1684-6). The “community of the law” in the play - Sir Raderick, his son, Amoretto, and the Recorder - is remorselessly derided and then purged in the final act by the vituperative Cambridge scholars, Ingenioso and Furor. Of course, many common lawyers were university men - as is Amoretto - and training in rhetoric and disputation was part of the curriculum at both institutions. But this is precisely the point. These skirmishes were generated, in part, by “rivalrous resemblance,” in which the stakes were relative institutional prestige. Communal aggression is thereby bound up with the process of fashioning elite homosocial professional identities which, in turn, rely on constructing, refining and policing complex sets of distinctions. Thomas Dekker was therefore rehearsing a very well-established trope when he wrote in the 1602 preface to Satiromastix: . . . of that terrible Poetomachia, lately commenc’d betweene Horace the second, and a band of leane-witted Poetasters. They haue bin at high wordes, and so high, that the ground could not serue them, but (for want of Chopins) haue stalk’ vpon Stages. Horace hal’d his Poetasters to the Barre, the Poetasters vntruss’d Horace: how worthily eyther, or how wrongfully, (World) leaue it to the Iurie . . . (“To the World” 7-14) Dekker draws on the dialogic language of flyting familiar from the vituperative conversations between satirists across the 1590s. His key trope - the arraignment - is very distinctive and is borrowed, very loudly, <?page no="242"?> Michelle O’Callaghan 242 from Jonson’s Poetaster or The Arraignment, which ends with Horace, the lawyer-poet, arraigning the poetasters at the bar. By “stealing” this figure, Dekker particularises the quarrel, setting up a combative dialogue with Jonson in print (Knutson 140-2). As a dramatic metaphor, the arraignment aligns satire with the combative, adversarial structure of the law. Poetaster follows through the logic of this simultaneously civic and satiric modelling of the law. Jonson’s play is concerned with issues of counsel and who can justly claim the right to participate in its processes. Via Horace, the play dignifies a certain mode of satire and type of satirist. His Horace is a version of the parrhesiastes, who delivers healthy admonition in the form of invective. Caesar praises Horace for his “free and wholesome sharpness,/ Which pleaseth Caesar more than servile fawns” (V.i.95-6). Satire, delivered by orator-poets, ensures the health of public dialogue, partly by discovering those individuals who would abuse its liberties. The law, embodied in the adversarial topos of the arraignment, is, to use Raffield’s phrase, “immanently involved” in how the cultural and political place of the theatre is imagined (Shakespeare’s Imaginary 8). And yet, while the public good is an ideal in Jonson’s play and secured through a juridical framework of counsel, its mechanisms are adversarial and their favoured genre is satire in all its vituperative violence. Helen Ostovich in her edition of Every Man Out of His Humour, which relies on a similar legal imaginary to Poetaster, describes how this play shares a mode of satiric “commoning” with Inns of Court revels that functions to reinforce “group intimacy and shared amusement by provoking and indulging the aggressiveness of a particularly assertive audience” (33). Dekker was suspicious of the equation between satiric comedy and the law that Jonson pioneered in his plays and draws out its divisive, exclusionary tactics. At the end of Satiromastix, he too arraigns Horace/ Jonson at the bar, ordering him not “to fling Epigrams, Embleames, or Play-speeches about you (lyke Hayle-stones) to keepe you out of the terrible daunger of the Shot, vpon payne to sit at the vpper ende of the Table, a’t the left hand of Carlo Buffon” (5.2.330-2). Dekker lampoons Jonson through imitation, throwing back at him bits and pieces of Jonson’s own plays, in particular, the character of Carlo Buffone from Every Man Out. The image of texts - “Play-speeches” - written on leaves of paper and rolled up into balls or “Shot” is a lively figure for the particularly aggressive mode of intertextuality used not only by Dekker, but by others involved in flyting. It aptly describes the combative and innovative uses of texts in all their materiality in this game of serial satire. <?page no="243"?> “Jests, stolne from the Temples Revels” 243 When Dekker used the term, poetomachia, in the preface to his Satiromastix, he entered into a dialogue with the satiric fraternities at the Inns and universities. A deliberately classicising term, it gives the game of serial satire literary credibility, perhaps also mocking the classical pretensions of Jonson along the way, and brings the stage into conversation with performance cultures at the Inns and universities by sharing their vocabulary and satiric practices of commoning - their “scoff power.” The games of serial satire played at the turn of the sixteenth century speak to the “sociable commerce” not just between playing companies, but between these companies and other institutional theatrical cultures at the Inns and at the universities. “Jests, stolne from the Temples Revels”: the Inns of Court and the Boys’ Companies Dekker jibed during the arraignment in Satiromastix that Jonson/ Horace must “sweare not to bumbast out a new Play, with the olde lynings of Jests, stolne from the Temples Revels” (5.2.295-6). Borrowing from the revels, especially the Middle Temple revels, was not just confined to Jonson, but is a feature of a series of plays, particularly those produced by Middle Templars for the boys’ companies - Marston’s Jack Drum’s Entertainment (c.1600), The Fawne (1604/ 5), and What You Will and Edward Sharpham’s The Fleer (c. 1607) and Cupid’s Whirligig (c.1606/ 7). Given these shared affiliations, it is not surprising that the dialogue between the Middle Temple and the boys’ companies was so pronounced in this period. Borrowed, “stolne” jests act as a set of signifiers for the distinct theatrical culture of the Inns of Court. The jests borrowed most often were the articles binding the Knights of the Quiver, who take their oath on Ovid’s Ars Amatoria, and the statutes and charges delivered during the arraignment of the discontented lover. Edward Pudsey, whose commonplace book is often cited as a source for playgoing in the period, listed a number of these orders and articles, with a note referring to their performance at the 1602 Middle Temple revels (Bod. MS. Poet.d.3, 87r). In 1602, either Martin reprised his earlier role as the Prince of Love, or the performance was repeated by a new mock-court. In either case, it suggests that a text of these revels was available in some form prior to its eventual publication in the 1660 miscellany, Le Prince d’Amour. As Pudsey’s commonplace book indicates, these revels were collectable, most likely because they encapsulated a certain style of wit. <?page no="244"?> Michelle O’Callaghan 244 Finkelpearl, many years ago, listed in detail the pattern of borrowings from the Middle Temple revels in Marston’s The Fawn, performed by the Children of the Queen’s Revels at Blackfrairs around 1604/ 5, and then later at Paul’s (“‘The Fawne’” 199-209). The play concludes with “Cupids parliament” in session, in which Cupid “survay[s] our old lawes,” listing transgressions against the laws of love, concluding: “Let us therefore be severe in our justice: And if any of what degree soever have approvedly offended, let him be instantly unpartially arrested and punished, read our statutes” (V, p. 216). The structure of this scene clearly recalls the arraignment of the discontented lover in the Middle Temple revels, which legislates against “divers most horrible and notorious Treasons’ committed against the Prince of Love (REED II, 476-8); a borrowing that is made audible through the series of statutes announced by Cupid which mimic the procedures set in place for enforcing the Laws of Love at the revels. The pattern of borrowing is looser but still audible in Sharpham’s Fleer, also performed by the Children of the Queen’s Revels around 1607. In Act I, scene iii of The Fleer, Susan has Master Ruff swear to a series of conditions that mimic the articles binding the Knights of the Quiver, but on a tobacco pipe, rather than the copy of Ovid’s Ars Amatoria used in the 1597/ 8 Middle Temple revels. Throughout this play and Sharpham’s other play, Cupids Whirligig, it is possible to hear the echo of tropes and phrases from these revels (Sharpham 24-30). Through borrowed jests, these plays privilege an audience and readership that can recognise the frequently bawdy learned play of the revels both in terms of tone and detail - it rewards those with a taste for and detailed knowledge of this material. These shared jokes not only appeal to the Inns as an audience, as consumers of plays, but also acknowledge their status as producers of theatre. The revels, after all, were elaborate theatrical performances, with memorable virtuoso performances by leading revellers. Moreover, the line between those who were performers and those who made up the audience was porous during the revels - all were revellers (Rhatigan 154). The re-staging of jests borrowed from the revels in these plays similarly asks the Inns of Court audience to recognise themselves in the play as active producers of the entertainment, not simply as passive consumers. The consciously borrowed mode of laughter in these plays produced by the boys’ companies interpellates the Inns as a brother institution, a companionate theatrical culture, thereby claiming the fraternal right to join in their privileged games and to share their institutional prestige. <?page no="245"?> “Jests, stolne from the Temples Revels” 245 Even the borrowing of jests from the revels had a competitive edge in this period. One game from the Middle Temple revels that was restaged by both Jonson and Marston is John Hoskins’s “Fustian Answer to a Tufftaffetta Speech,” the latter delivered by Charles Best, the Prince’s orator. It was one of the most celebrated performances during the 1597/ 8 Middle Temple revels and highly collectable, circulating widely in manuscript miscellanies. Hoskins’ oration belongs to a learned seriocomic tradition. It is significant in literary terms because it is the earliest example of English nonsense that draws on European traditions (Malcolm 4-5). Hoskins’ mock-oration is a virtuoso display of rhetorical prowess. As he advised in his rhetoric manual, Directions for Speech and Style: “you will find most of the figures of Rhetorick there, meaning neither harme, nor good, but as idle as your selfe, when yow are most at leisure” (165). Nonsense aims for a radical dissociation of style and meaning within the forms of rhetoric: For even as the Snow advanced upon the points vertical of cacuminous Mountains, dissolveth and discoagulateth it self into humorous liquidity; even so by the frothy volubility of your words, the Prince is perswaded to depose himself from his Royal Seat and Dignity, and to follow your counsel with all contradiction and reluctation. (REED II, 456) This is affected and pleonastic speech, stuffed full of newfangled Latinate words, a rhetorical vice that Puttenham calls “Fond Affectation” and closely related to “Soraismus, or the Mingle-Mangle,” the affected use of foreign words in place of the vernacular (337-8). Here, the aim of oratory is not to persuade but to use rhetorical figures with a wit that purposefully confounds sense and delights through its incongruity. Nonsense is a cultivated mode of learned play, appreciated by those with the requisite educational capital to understand this metarhetorical game and the leisure profitably to spend their time idly. Jonson’s Every Man Out, performed soon after the revels in 1599, recalls this performance in the scene where Clove and Orange “talk fustian a little, and gull them; [to] make them [the onstage audience] believe we are great scholars.” Clove’s stream of nonsense is bombasted “Mingle Mangle,” mimicking Hoskins’ mock-oration: whereas the ingenuity of the time and the soul’s synderisis are but embryons in nature, added to the paunch of Esquiline, and the intervallum of the zodiac, besides the ecliptic line being optic and not mental, but by the contemplative and theoric part thereof, doth demonstrate to us the vegetable circumference, and the ventosity of the tropics; and whereas our intellectual, or <?page no="246"?> Michelle O’Callaghan 246 mincing capriole (according to the Metaphysics) as you may read in Plato’s Histriomastix. (III.i.183-91) Even Orange’s responses - “O Lord, sir! ” (171), “It pleases you to say so, sir” (174), “O God, sir! ” (180) - are in dialogue with these revels, and echo the tenth article of the Knights of the Quiver against empty vain rhetoric: “That no Knight reply to another mans speech, O good Sir, you have reason, Sir, You say well Sir, It pleaseth you to say so Sir, or any such like answerless answers” (REED II, 460). It is a highly stylised performance of nonsense that continues the game set in motion by Hoskins, thus entering into a creative dialogue with these revels, and advertising Every Man Out as part of shared literary experiment. Mimicry also takes a more aggressive form in this speech. Clove’s fustian is peppered with phrases from Marston’s Scourge of Villanie - “paunch of Esquiline” and “mincing capriole” - and cites Histriomastix. By mockingly quoting textual scraps of Marston and others, Jonson’s play stigmatises their performances, setting in place distinctions between his mode of learned play and that of others. This derisory mimicry speaks to “confraternal paranoia”; such ridiculing requires the dramatist to take his rival’s part, echoing his words through a process of intertextuality which is aggressively dialogic and sociable. Marston’s Jack Drum’s Entertainment, performed by the Children of Paul’s around 1600, both restages Clove’s performance of fustian and includes a further device - onstage smoking - that draws the scene into direct conversation with the original performance of Hoskins’s fustian oration, which was itself delivered while its addressee, Charles Best, took tobacco onstage. Jack Drum’s Entertainment includes quotes from Hoskins’s mock-oration elsewhere in the play. One character repeats Hoskins’s nonsensical antimetabole: “Truly as a Mill-horse, is not a horse Mill, and as a Cart Jade, is not a Jade Cart, even so will I go hang my selfe” (IV, 225; REED II, 457). Puffe’s performance of fustian, like that of Clove, is cast not simply as a set-piece performance, but as a consciously borrowed performance. Hence, when Puffe begins to speak, Planet, as a cue to the audience, recognises the distinctive bombasted nonsensical style, announcing: “By the Lord fustian, now I understand it: complement is as much as fustian” (III, p. 209). Once again, Marston borrows from Hoskins, in this instance his Directions of Speech and Style which describes “compliment” as a “performance of affected ceremonies in words, lookes, or gesture” (158; Finkelpearl, John Marston 130-1). At the end of the performance, Puffe marks his departure from the stage and from the plot by falling “to the Lawe” (210). The easy passage <?page no="247"?> “Jests, stolne from the Temples Revels” 247 between the stage and the law tropes the commercial and creative traffic between the playing companies, especially the boys’ companies, and the Inns in this period. Possibly one reason why these Middle Temple revels had jests stolen so frequently by dramatists is because its mode of burlesque was understood to be particularly innovative. Other Inns turned their hands to producing nonsense for their revels. Francis Beaumont and Heneage Finch produced pedagogic mock-orations for the 1605 Inner Temple revels - the “Grammar Lecture” and the “Arithmetic Lecture” - that are also nonsense. Beaumont’s “Grammar Lecture” divides the Prince of Templaria’s subjects rhetorically into three - “young students, Revelers, and plodders.” These principles of syntaxis are translated into the principles of social manners, thus playing on “vain rhetoric” as empty ornament in a very physical sense: “there is another arthography fitt for A Reveller to witt the right writing of a sinkapace,” or galliard, “avoiding all playerly dashes which beget exceedingly false orthography in dancing” (REED II, 659-60). The lecture is a study of the grammar of manners, so highly mannered it is purposeless, providing instead a study of idleness. Finch’s “Arithmetic Lecture” lists uses of maths that seem to make sense, but actually make none at all: I could here number innumberable inconveniences that through the want of this numbring art have befallen a number of ignorant sowles And I could open many misteryes that by this art you might easaly compass, as for example: To knowe howe long a man might be a clyming vp to the primum mobile and when he were there vnluckely missing some footstep or other howe long he might be falling, which some long studied Astromers have thought would be a hundred years. (REED II, 652). The principle of measurement makes sense, but not the example, which is fantastical. Like the articles of the Middle Temple revels, these mockorations are made up of quips, set-pieces that are readily available for appropriation and recasting. The Middle Temple revels pioneer a mode of burlesque that mixes mock-heroic with displays of mock-rhetoric, forms of urban satire, parody, travesty, and invective (O’Callaghan 23- 30). Key to this mode of burlesque is a knowing incongruity, a witty self-consciousness that marks it out as an elite and learned mode, which should not be to everyone’s taste. Girardus Listrius’ letter before Erasmus’s Praise of Folly made “unpopularity” one of the defining features of serio ludere: “there are truly many things in it which cannot be understood <?page no="248"?> Michelle O’Callaghan 248 except by the learned and attentive . . For there is nothing requiring more talent than to joke learnedly” (cited in Elton 167-8). Beaumont’s Knight of the Burning Pestle, performed by the Children of the Queen’s Revels around 1607, is a similarly highly self-conscious experiment with burlesque. One of the marketing strategies of its publisher, Walter Burre, as Zachary Lesser has noted, was to focus on its unpopularity when first performed, and “the wide world . . . for want of judgement, or not understanding the privy marke of Ironie about it (which shewed it was no of-spring of any vulgar braine) utterly rejected it” (52-4, 74-9). The “privy marke of Ironie” is a generic marker shared with Beaumont’s “Grammar Lecture,” performed at the 1605 revels. It is simultaneously a signifier for distinction and for a burlesque style. Burlesque, a pungent mix of parody, travesty, and topical satire, was a hybrid genre that the boys’ companies arguably cultivated as one of their signature styles - many of the plays that I have referred to were part of the repertoire of the boys’ companies. Obviously, burlesque was not confined to Inns of Court dramatists or to the boys’ companies - Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida, for example is, in part, a sustained dialogue with the mode of burlesque showcased at the Middle Temple revels (see Elton). Yet, tellingly, the jesting epistle to the 1609 printed quarto of Troilus and Cressida, “A never writer to an ever reader: news,” echoes Burre’s epistle before Knight of the Burning Pestle, using a similar trope of exclusive unpopularity, announcing it as “a new play, never staled with the stage, never clapper-clawed with the palms of the vulgar, and yet passing full of the palm comical” (73). Burlesque is one of the generic signs of the commerce, the creative dialogue in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries between the boys’ companies, the Inns and the universities. Fostering this type of creative and sociable commerce may have been to the advantage of the boys’ companies because it foregrounded the elite pedagogic performance culture they shared with these educational institutions at a point when their links with the grammar and choir schools was becoming weaker. The Inns of Court revels are significant not just for their production of civic fictions, but also, particularly in the late 1590s, as performance cultures developing innovative modes of burlesque and satire. When dramatists borrowed from these forms of learned play they also took with them sets of associations that, in turn, helped to shape the corporate identity of the playing companies. The way that burlesque coincides with satiric fraternities and other aggressive modes of commoning in the revels and in these plays testifies to the formative role of rites of violence within modes of learned play and within elite corporate <?page no="249"?> “Jests, stolne from the Temples Revels” 249 identities. Subversion is not perhaps the most useful critical model for defining this phenomenon. As Hannah Skoda points out in relation to student violence, it “was not aberrant or irrational,” but rather structured and controlled; individuals and communities had an interest in these rites of violence because they offered a compelling expression of identity (40). The fraternal “games of serial satire” that were played at the turn of the sixteenth century functioned to bring a range of different, albeit often closely related, performance cultures into dialogue, each with their own particular set of investments in establishing and perpetuating a corporate identity. <?page no="250"?> Michelle O’Callaghan 250 References Beam, Sara. Laughing Matters: Farce and the Making of Absolutism in France. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2007. Bednarz, James. Shakespeare and the Poets’ War. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001. Bryson, Anna. From Courtesy to Civility: Changing Codes of Conduct in Early Modern England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. Buc, George. The Third Universitie of England, appended to John Stow, The Annales, or Generall Chronicle of England. London, 1615. Clegg, Cyndia Susan. Press Censorship in Elizabethan England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Davies, Jonathan. Education and Society in the Middle Ages and Renaissance: Culture and Power: Tuscany and its Universities 1537-1609. Boston, Massachusetts: Brill, 2009. Dekker, Thomas. Satiromastix. The Dramatic Works. Ed. Fredson Bowers. 4 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953. Vol I. Dugdale, William. Origines Juridiciales. London, 1666. Duncan, Douglas. Ben Jonson and the Lucianic Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979. Dunn, Kevin. “Representing Counsel: Gorboduc and the Elizabethan Privy Council.” English Literary Renaissance 33 (2003): 279-308. Eckhardt, Joshua. Manuscript Verse Collectors and the Politics of Anti-Courtly Love Poetry. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Elton, W. R. Troilus and Cressida and the Inns of Court Revels. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2010. Finkelpearl, Philip J. “The Use of the Middle Temple’s Christmas Revels in Marston’s The Fawne.” Studies in Philology 64 (1967): 199-209. ―――. John Marston of the Middle Temple: An Elizabethan Dramatist and His Social Setting. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1969. Goodrich, Peter. “Eating Law: Commons, Common Land, Common Law.” Journal of Legal History 12 (1991): 246-67. Harvey, Howard Graham. The Theatre of the Basoche: The Contribution of the Law Societies to French Medieval Comedy. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1941. Haugen, Kristine. “Imagined Universities: Public Insult and the Terrae Filius in Early Modern Oxford.” History of Universities, 16 (2000): 1-31. Hoskins, John. Life, Letters and Writings. Ed. Louise Osborn. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1937. <?page no="251"?> “Jests, stolne from the Temples Revels” 251 James, Mervyn. Family, Lineage, and Civil Society. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974. Jonson, Ben. Every Man Out of His Humour. Ed. Helen Ostovich. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001. Kinney, Arthur. Humanist Poetics: Thought, Rhetoric, and Fiction in Sixteenth- Century England. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1986. Knutson, Roslyn Lander. Playing Companies and Commerce in Shakespeare’s Time. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Lamb, Edel. Performing Childhood in Early Modern Theatre: The Children’s Playing Companies (1599-1613). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Lanham, Richard A. The Motives of Eloquence: Literary Rhetoric in the Renaissance. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1976. Legh, Gerard. Accedence of Armory. London, 1562. Lesser, Zachary. Renaissance Drama and the Politics of Publication: Readings in the English Book Trade. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Magnusson, Lynne. “Scoff Power in Love’s Labour’s Lost and the Inns of Court Language in Context.” Shakespeare Survey 47 (2004): 196-208 Malcolm, Noel. The Origins of English Nonsense. London: Fontana, 1998. Marsh, David. Lucian and the Latins: Humor and Humanism in the Early Renaissance. Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 1998. McCoy, Richard. “Law Sports and the night of errors: Shakespeare at the Inns of Court.” The Intellectual and Cultural World of the Early Modern Inns of Court. Eds. Jayne Archer, Elizabeth Goldring and Sarah Knight. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010. 286-301. Munro, Lucy. Children of the Queen’s Revels: A Jacobean Repertory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. O’Callaghan, Michelle. The English Wits: Literature and Sociability in Early Modern England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Prest, Wilfred. The Inns of Court Under Elizabeth I and the Early Stuarts, 1590-1640. London: Longman, 1972. Raffield, Paul. “The Separate Art Worlds of Dreamland and Drunkenness: Elizabethan Revels at the Inns of Court.” Law And Critique 8 (1997): 163-88 ―――. Images and Cultures of the Law in Early Modern England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. ―――. Shakespeare’s Imaginary Constitution: Late Elizabethan Politics and the Theatre of the Law. Oxford and Portland, Oregon: Hart Publishing, 2010. Records of Early English Drama: Inns of Court. Ed. Alan Nelson and John Elliot. 3 vols. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2010. <?page no="252"?> Michelle O’Callaghan 252 Rhatigan, Emma. “Audience, Actors, and ‘Taking Part’ in the Revels.” Imagining the Audience in Early Modern Drama. Eds. Jennifer Low and Nova Myhill. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2011. 151-69. Shakespeare, William. Troilus and Cressida. Ed. Anthony Dawson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Shapiro, Michael. Children of the Revels: the Boy Companies of Shakespeare’s Time and Their Plays. New York: Columbia University Press, 1977. Sharpham, Edward. A Critical Old Spelling Edition of The Works of Edward Sharpham. Ed. C. G. Petter. New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1986. Skoda, Hannah. “Student Violence in Fifteenth Century Paris and Oxford.” Aspects of Violence in Renaissance Europe. Ed. Jonathan Davies. Farnham and Burlington: Ashgate, 2013. 17-40. Turner, Victor. Ritual to Theatre: the Human Seriousness of Play. New York: PAJ Publications, 1982 Wienpahl, Robert W. Music at the Inns of Court During the Reigns of Elizabeth, James and Charles. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University Microfilms International, 1979. Winston, Jessica. “Expanding the Political Nation: Gorboduc at the Inns of Court and Succession Revisited.” Early Theatre 8 (2005): 11-34. <?page no="253"?> Teaching and Contesting Royal Obedience: The Case of the Stuart Court Masques Effie Botonaki The Stuart court masques were staged to present James I and Charles I as wise, virtuous, powerful, and divinely appointed rulers. Although the official purpose of these masques was to construct and promote idealized images of the Kings they were written for, often enough, they reveal precisely those aspects of the Stuart government that had to be concealed, excused or beautified. Furthermore, masques fail to contain the subversive ideas they occasionally give voice to, and eventually bring on the royal stage the conflicting viewpoints that circulated at the time regarding the position and power of kings. For the reasons above, masques demonstrate the gradual decline of monarchical power - a process that was completed in 1649 with Charles’s execution on a scaffold erected outside the Banqueting House, where the most illustrious court masques of his reign had been staged. As this essay will conclude, the Stuart masques were caught up in an unresolved contradiction: while trying to teach blind obedience to an infallible monarch, they actually challenged all royal claims to absolute authority. Court masques were a popular form of royal entertainment during the reigns of James I and Charles I. These performances took place in the palace and had an exclusive audience: the royal family, select members of the court and, on several occasions, foreign royalty and ambassadors. Professional actors and musicians held the speaking and singing parts, whereas the key but mute roles were played by courtiers or members of the royal family. These mute protagonists, dressed in outlandish, expen- Drama and Pedagogy in Medieval and Early Modern England. SPELL: Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 31. Ed. Elisabeth Dutton and James McBain. Tübingen: Narr, 2015. 253-273. <?page no="254"?> Effie Botonaki 254 sive costumes, usually represented glorious mythological or allegorical figures, and performed carefully choreographed dances. At the end of their performance the masquers “took out” members of the audience to dance with them in a dramatic gesture symbolizing and reflecting the union and harmony that supposedly characterized not only the court but also the kingdom. Regardless of the official theme of each masque, the underlying meaning of all these spectacles was the glorification of their patron and prime member of the audience, the King. Masques celebrated James I and Charles I as wise, virtuous, powerful and divinely appointed rulers, and there are reasons to assume that both Kings, to some extent at least, consciously used these court entertainments to promote imposing images of themselves. This is the main reason why masques were overlooked for centuries: they were read simply as exaggerated glorifications of the Kings for whom they were written and were thus dismissed as naive forms of monarchical propaganda. The attention that masques have received in the last few decades, however, has exposed this view as oversimplifying. Stephen Orgel, David Lindley, Jerzy Limon, David Bevington, Peter Holbrook, Clare McManus, Martin Butler, and Barbara Ravelhofer, among others, have revealed the complexity and interpretative wealth of these texts. As this essay will illustrate, the Stuart court masques were sites of contest between monarchical and antimonarchical ideology, participating thus in the heated political debates of that tumultuous period. Contrary to what we might expect, these grand spectacles often allowed their audiences glimpses of kings who were far from perfect. While masques might have been thought to have tried to teach blind obedience to the “infallible” monarch, indeed, in several cases they unwittingly presented the King as unworthy of the people’s respect and submission, cancelling in this way their didactic purpose and function. During the masque performances, the King and some of his most distinguished guests would be seated on a raised platform facing the stage, which was called “the state”; the King himself was sitting on a throne, under a canopy. The rest of the audience were placed on two sides, facing the stage and the platform where the King sat. The monarch was therefore the focal point of the performance - at once the most privileged viewer and the centre of both the players’ and the audience’s attention. Furthermore, the King was in visual control of everyone in the room and could take advantage of his privileged position to approve or disapprove, direct, and teach both the masquers and the spectators. The King’s placement within this spatial arrangement, coupled <?page no="255"?> Teaching and Contesting Royal Obedience 255 with the status and power conventionally attributed to him by the theme of the masques, turned him into an actor too. As Helen Cooper has commented, in these performances “the action emanates from the chair of state - it begins when the King takes his place, and describes the conditions brought about by his presence” (137). Let us not forget either that sometimes there was a more overt interaction between the stage and the King: the chorus made direct addresses to him, the masquers offered him gifts, or underwent beneficial transformations just by being looked upon by him. The theatricality of the King’s presence in these spectacles was reinforced by his placement on a raised platform, which was a kind of stage itself; this reminds us vividly of what James had written in his Basilikon Doron: “A king is as one set on a stage, whose smallest actions and gestures, all the people gazingly do behold” (qtd. in Kernan 19). James’s statement reveals his awareness that his position was very similar to that of an actor playing his part in front of an audience. In court masques, though, it was not “all the people” that beheld the king, but only his favourites, and this inevitably limited the potential impact of the monarch’s “performance.” James was more keen on theatrical performances than his predecessor, Elizabeth, and this is proved not only by the large number of such entertainments in his court, but also by the amount of money he spent on them. During James’s reign, thirty-seven masques were performed in his court and their extraordinary cost was a constant cause of friction between the King and his Council (see Sullivan Ch. 5). James did not seem to be particularly interested in the artistic aspect of the various masques he sponsored, but rather in what his involvement in their production signified, and what role they could play in his self-fashioning: the new King apparently realized that by supporting these performances he would promote himself as a patron of the Arts, and he could also use them to project upon himself the image of the ideal monarch. As Graham Parry has argued, James, and later on Charles too, “felt the masque to be indispensable to their concept of state, for they continued to fund these shows well beyond their means . . . they knew that ‘to induce a courtly miracle’ was to vindicate the mysterious power of majesty that still held men in awe” (“Politics of the Jacobean Masque” 115). The performance of these “miracles” in front of the court audience, members of which were often masquers themselves, made the spectators not only witnesses of but also participants in this magic. The masque performances made projections not only upon the King, but upon the masquers and audience too. If the monarch was an earthly God, then his subjects/ believers, who were made in his image, were <?page no="256"?> Effie Botonaki 256 capable of developing some of his perfect qualities too, on condition that they submitted to his authority and followed his teachings. In this respect, masques did not only try to idealize the King but his followers too, attributing to them characteristics that they did not necessarily have, but that they could have, if they were obedient to him. Masques frequently presented James as a Sun or a bright star which diffuses its light and beneficial influence across the whole realm. One of the first masques staged in James’s court, Ben Jonson’s Masque of Blackness (1605), presents the King as a “bright Sol,” “who forms all beauty with his sight” (5, ll. 166, 171). In this masque the daughters of Niger travel from Ethiopia to Britain to be rid of their black colour by the cleansing rays of the British ruler; James will perform this miracle just by looking at these “luckless creatures” (4, l. 142) since he is “a sun/ Whose beams shine day and night, and are of force / To blanch an Ethiop and revive a cor’se” (5, ll. 224-226). James was presented in a similar manner in later masques too: in Campion’s The Lord Hay’s Masque (1607) he was depicted as Phoebus (26, l. 316), in Chapman’s The Memorable Masque (1613) as a “Briton Sun” (91, l. 643), and in Jonson’s Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue (1618), as “Hesperus,” “The brightest star” (121, ll. 166, 167). The Sun metaphor was taken up by James himself in his discussion of the qualities and function of monarchs; according to James, the “glistering worldly glorie of Kings is given them by God” so that “their persons as brighte lampes of godlines and vertue may, going in & out before their people, give light to all their steppes” (quoted in Kogan 43). Masques also employed mythical figures to stress James’s supposed beneficial influence upon his people and, especially, his divine status: he was described as “an earthly deity” (Chapman 87, l. 523), an omnipresent king who acted as Jove “bear[ing] the thunder” (Jonson, Golden Age Restored 102, l. 5). This representation of James echoes once again the King’s own ideas about the divine origin of Kings, which he repeatedly elaborated upon in his writings and speeches (see Odom 373-375). Masques painted a flattering picture of James throughout his reign, but in the first years after his succession, claims that he was a virtuous and wise ruler were particularly strong. The first Jacobean nuptial masque, Jonson’s Barriers at a Marriage (1606), for instance, claimed that the King’s “innocence” was “without spot or gall” and that “his rule and judgement” were “divine” (17, ll. 282, 280). This representation was facilitated by the peace and prosperity that characterized the beginning of Jacobean rule. The King’s care to avoid military confrontations with rival countries was seen by his advocates rather as proof of his divine wisdom than a sign of weakness, and enabled him to boast that he had <?page no="257"?> Teaching and Contesting Royal Obedience 257 brought peace and harmony in the united, under his rule, kingdom. Such views are present in Jonson’s Love Restored (1612), which argued that James’s court had always been, and would always continue to be, characterized by “harmony . . . honour . . . courtesy, True valour . . . confidence . . . industry,” and that these virtues were diffused throughout Britain (72, ll. 235-39). Equally frequent in masques was the claim that the people not only acknowledged and appreciated their King’s positive qualities, but that they also loved him. As the years went by, however, there were increasingly frequent signs that Jacobean rule actually had many flaws. In the eyes of his contemporaries, James turned into a King who would rather occupy himself with pastimes like hunting than with affairs of the state, leaving important decisions to be made by others (Ashton 9). He also squandered vast amounts of money on masques, banquets and expensive gifts to friends at times of great financial strain (see McElwee 172- 176). James’s financial mismanagement estranged the City merchants and the Puritans, and exacerbated the decaying image of his court. Significantly, masques encapsulated all the “evils” that were attributed to the King and court in the final years of Jacobean rule: they were selfcomplacent, elitist and extravagant spectacles, meant exclusively for the pleasure of the King and his court and, as such, they underlined not what united the King with his people, but what separated them. An excerpt from a contemporary ballad, for example, illustrates both the decaying public image of the King and the negative opinion the common people had of masques: At Royston and Newmarket He’ll hunt till he be lean. But he hath merry boys That with masques and toys Can make him fat again. (Quoted in Thomson 176) As years went by, court masques could not entirely circumvent making mention of the people’s growing displeasure with James’s policies, despite the fact that their ultimate aim remained praise of the King. As Russell West has remarked, Jacobean court drama “was increasingly pulled in two directions: on the one hand, towards the perfection of reified myths which constructed the monarch as the embodiment of classical virtues, and on the other hand, towards a complicated engagement with versions of a tarnished reality” (81). According to West, masques “could none the less not afford to admit openly” this reality. I would argue, however, that there were masques that made quite overt <?page no="258"?> Effie Botonaki 258 references to social disorder, even if they downgraded these conflicts by presenting the resolution of the relevant troubles as effortless or miraculous. Jonson’s The Golden Age Restored (1616), for example, was one of the first masques that made the problems of the Jacobean reign its theme. By the time of its performance, the prevailing public opinion of the King and his court was that both were immoral and corrupt, and this is precisely why the controlling idea of the masque was that James would restore justice and fight corruption. The Golden Age Restored was performed right after the trials over the murder of Thomas Overbury, while the prosecution of James’ former favourite, Robert Carr, and his wife Frances Howard for their part in the crime was awaited. As David Lindley has remarked, the relevant trials “were presented as a triumph of James’ love of justice over the claims of favouritism and high birth” (Lindley, Court Masques 243). The Golden Age Restored acknowledges that “the great” were taking advantage of the “weak” and that the latter had been “made / A prey unto the stronger” (102, ll. 7, 8, 8-9); Jove, however, as a just and magnanimous God, “can endure [this] no longer,” so he intervenes to restore the order for the sake even of “offending mortals” (102, ll. 6, 3). On the other hand, although this masque seeks to present the King as almost omnipotent, it reminds James that his power is conditional upon the acknowledgement of his authority by his subjects; when Astraea and “Golden Age” wonder “But how without a train / Shall we our state sustain? ” (105, ll. 105-106), they indirectly invite James to ponder on how much power he can actually have if he has no followers - no “train.” Lastly, the most uncomfortable as well as inevitable question the masque poses is that if James had actually been as good a ruler as the masque argues, then the “Golden Age” would not have been a condition of the past that had to be “restored”. Jonson’s Neptune’s Triumph (1624) is another masque that makes mention of unrest and points to a discrepancy between an idealizing vision and political reality. In February 1623 Prince Charles secretly left for Spain, escorted by the notorious Duke of Buckingham, to promote the negotiations concerning his marriage to the Spanish princess, a prospect that was not at all popular with the English people. Jonson wrote this masque to celebrate Charles’s return and presented the young Prince as the people’s “general joy” (139, l. 104), but both the Prince’s and Jonson’s plans were frustrated. When Charles returned to England without a Spanish bride, there was public rejoicing over the failure of the marriage negotiations; these developments initially forced Jonson to modify the text in order to “obfuscat[e] the reasons for the journey (and <?page no="259"?> Teaching and Contesting Royal Obedience 259 the disgrace of the return)” but eventually the performance was cancelled (Lindley, Court Masques 256). This cancellation can be seen as symbolic not only of failed royal policies but also of the rising power of public opinion. From this point of view, the final wish of the chorus to see that the King is dutifully obeyed highlights the clash between the King’s desire for absolute authority and the increasing tendency of the people to question and resist the established regime: And may thy subjects’ hearts be all on flame, whilst thou dost keep the earth in firm estate, And ’mongst the winds dost suffer no debate. (146, ll. 368-70) Neither James nor Charles later on seemed to worry about their subjects’ complaints, as they apparently believed that they could rule with a firm hand, without the consent of the “vulgar” (Jonson, Neptune’s Triumph 139, l. 116) or the “inferior sort” (Daniel, Tethys’ Festival 64, ll. 410- 11). Some masques opened with “anti-masques,” i.e. spectacles in which the roles were held by professional actors, who, unlike the main masquers, had speaking parts. Once more in contrast with the main masquers, the antimasquers were bizzareor ugly-looking, and their dances and songs had no harmony, order or beauty. They usually represented evil or ridiculous figures, and the central theme of their show was conventionally the disastrous effects of disorder or rebellion. One of the first antimasques to be produced was written at the instigation of Queen Anne and was included in The Masque of Queens (1609); as its author, Ben Jonson, explained, “because her Majesty, best knowing that a principal part of life in these spectacles lay in their variety, had commanded me to think on some dance or show that might precede hers, and have the place of a foil or false masque” (35, ll. 9-12). Jonson could not but obey his Queen and patron and “therefore . . . devised . . . a spectacle of strangeness” with “twelve women in the habit of hags or witches, sustaining the persons of Ignorance, Suspicion, Credulity, etc., the opposites to Fame” (35, ll. 14-16); these hags also represented the opposites to all the positive qualities the Queen and her ladies had in their roles as main masquers. Although the female antimasquers had many of the characteristics generally attributed to witches, they were not meant to cause fear to the audience, but rather laughter; their repulsive appearance and weird dances, “the repository of all that was un-courtly” (McManus 24), aimed at their ridicule and the building of a sharp contrast with the lofty, elegant spectacle the Queen and her ladies would <?page no="260"?> Effie Botonaki 260 present shortly afterwards with their appearance on stage. This was actually the conventional function of the anti-masques throughout the Stuart period: to give “much occasion of mirth and delight to the spectators” (Jonson, Haddington Masque 112, ll. 146-147), not to cause them anxiety by implying that the chaotic world of the antimasque could become a social reality. On the other hand, antimasques “gave the opportunity for scenes of barbaric anarchy to be played out in the court,” taking on “an uninhibited and uncouth violence that unleash[ed] wildness close to the seat of majesty” (Craig 177). Such an encounter of the King and his court with a world of misrule not only disrupted the harmonious universe the masque sought to conjure up, but temporarily also deprived the King of his power to control the spectacle unfolding in front of him. Antimasques presented the “other” that had to be contained and defeated, but, in the utopian world of such spectacles, this victory was achieved painlessly and bloodlessly: the antimasquers would not make a respectable exit from the stage but would be either scared off by the approach of the main masquers, or they would stay just to suffer some form of punishment and humiliation by the latter. In The Golden Age Restored, for instance, when the main masquer, goddess Pallas, appears on stage, she turns the antimasquers, who represented evils like “Avarice,” “Fraud,” “Slander,” “Pride” etc., to stone. Immediately before doing this, she explains that they were punished for daring to think themselves “equal” to “the gods,” i.e. the King (104, ll. 72, 71). Despite the eventual defeat of antimasquers in Jacobean masques, the troubling issues introduced by their appearance remained, destabilizing the idealized world that was so carefully structured by the main masque. It is probably for this reason that antimasques reached their climax towards the end of the Jacobean reign and then began to decline; as Lesley Mickel has suggested, Charles’s political absolutism left little room for the uneasy questions the antimasques put forward (157). Antimasques were meant to cause laughter and offer dramatic variety to the otherwise lofty, and to some degree predictable, spectacle of the masque. At the same time, they often subverted one of the main functions of these entertainments, i.e. the idealization of monarchy, by exposing its weaknesses. Such is the case with the antimasque in Jonson’s Love Restored (1612). In this particular antimasque, the central figure is Plutus, god of wealth, who voices opinions associated with the Puritans and attacks the court masques and their audience. His reviling of these entertainments occupies several lines and includes all the contemporary arguments that enemies of both masques and the wider court might well have put forward. For opponents, masques represented everything they <?page no="261"?> Teaching and Contesting Royal Obedience 261 objected to in the Jacobean court and government: “superfluous excess,” prodigality, idleness, and folly (69, l. 144). Plutus’s arguments are, in fact, so compelling that the modern reader is impressed that they were stated in front of the very audience they were directed against. In the eyes of Plutus, masques corrupt the court as they are not only “the sower[s] of vanities in these high places, but the call of all other light follies to fall and feed on them.” As if speaking from a superior position, Plutus then announces: “I will endure thy prodigality nor riots no more; they are the ruin of states. Nor shall the tyranny of these nights hereafter impose a necessity upon me of entertaining thee. Let ’em embrace more frugal pastimes! ” (69, ll. 129-34). Few spectators would have been able to argue that such a description of masques was inaccurate; they themselves were repeatedly eye-witnesses of the costly sets and costumes, and some of those involved, including the King, ran into debt in order to finance their elaborate spectacles. Furthermore, the spectators of masques would have no doubt seen the “riots” mentioned by Plutus - the disorderly conditions that often followed these orderly and graceful spectacles. The appearance of Plutus in this antimasque leads to an unwitting critique of the Jacobean monarchy for an additional reason: many of the flaws for which the Puritan Plutus is condemned and ridiculed are, ironically, the same as those attributed to James himself: “Tis he,” it is said of Plutus, “that pretends to tie Kingdoms, maintain commerce, dispose of honours, make all places and dignities arbitrary from him . . .” (70, ll. 158-160). Plutus, like James, “walks as if he were to set bounds and give laws to destiny” (70, ll. 165-166), but, in fact, he is an “earthy . . . idol,” an “insolent and barbarous Mammon” (70, ll. 176, 174). As for the mortals that “worship” Plutus, they are called, “fools” (70, l. 167). One might argue that most of the masque’s negative comments against Plutus were not likely, of course, to remind the royalist spectators of their King; only anti-royalists would have been able to see him as representing James’s failed efforts to convince his subjects of his divine right to kingship and absolute power. It is particularly interesting that the attack on Plutus is offered by Robin Goodfellow, an antimasquer who represents a “harmless,” “honest plain country spirit” (67, l. 50). Robin resorts to all sorts of funny tricks and disguises to enter the palace and watch a masque, but he is repeatedly turned away by the guards, who do not hesitate to use both verbal and physical abuse. Robin’s wit and lofty language underline the incongruity between his social position and the ideas he expresses, as his speech was not likely to be articulated by a contemporary, illiterate, <?page no="262"?> Effie Botonaki 262 lower-class person. If we try to explain Robin’s political alliances, we are led to the conclusion that Love Restored most probably reflected the court’s assumption that the common people, despite their inferior status, were on its side. At the same time, this masque suggests that the King and his court held people like Robin in contempt: despite his innocence and royalist sentiments, Robin becomes a target of ridicule for his passionate and hopeless efforts to enter the palace, and watch a masque next to his social superiors and his King. Although James was aware of the power of self-display, he had an aversion for any public appearance that would bring him close to crowds. The earliest manifestation of this attitude was his conduct during his first formal progress in the streets of London. When the historian Arthur Wilson (1595-1652) described the progress, he made a telling comparison between the new King and his predecessor: He was not like . . . the late Queen, of famous Memory, that with a wellpleased Affection, met her People’s Acclamations . . . He endured this Day’s Brunt with Patience, being assured he should never have such another, and his Triumphal riding to the Parliament that followed: But afterwards in his publick Appearances . . . the Accesses of the People made him so impatient, that he often dispersed them with Frowns, that we may not say with Curses. (qtd. in Ashton 64) Unlike James, Elizabeth had skilfully manipulated her public appearances to present herself as a powerful yet tender ruler who was in turn loved and willingly obeyed by her people. Elizabeth had thus encouraged her subjects to believe that she was both literally and figuratively close to them, and this illusion of proximity enabled her to develop an arresting and influential public image. The relevant comparison the Venetian ambassador, Nicolo Molin, drew between the two monarchs is revealing: [King James] does not caress the people nor make them that good cheer the late Queen did, whereby she won their loves: for the English adore their Sovereigns, and if the King passed through the same street a hundred times a day the people would still run to see him; they like their King to show pleasure at their devotion, as the late Queen knew well how to do; but this King manifests no taste for them but rather contempt and dislike. The result is he is despised and almost hated. In fact, his Majesty is more inclined to live retired with eight or ten of his favourites than openly, as is the custom of the country and the desire of the people. (qtd. in Ashton 10) <?page no="263"?> Teaching and Contesting Royal Obedience 263 In the light of this evaluation, it should not be seen as accidental that Elizabeth had a taste for outdoor entertainments such as progresses, whereas her successors preferred indoor court masques instead. Given James’s fear of crowds, court masques constituted an ideal form of entertainment, and one that enabled him to display himself in glory without compromising his safety or requiring him to tolerate disagreeable multitudes. The safety and comfort that the court masque offered to the monarch, however, came at a price as the relatively limited audience of these performances necessarily lessened their impact as a form of propaganda. That the glorification of the King attempted by the court masques could not reach a wider audience was of no mean insignificance; as Graham Parry has argued in his discussion of court masques, “the Stuart line was to be less secure as a result of the limited proclamation of its virtues” (Golden Age Restored 62). Furthermore, while the Elizabethan progresses had “sustain[ed] the myth of a unified, basically, feudal society” (Chibnall 81), Jacobean court masques dramatized the King’s increasing spatial and ideological detachment from the common people and the expectations of the latter. As Keith Sturgess has noted, the production of masques “within the protective atmosphere” and “enclosed world” of the court invites us “to see the theatre of the Stuarts as an index of the loss of the common touch the Tudors had pragmatically and skilfully cultivated” (164). Unlike Elizabethan progresses, Jacobean masques could not successfully evoke the myth of a united kingdom; and, if the former had strengthened the ties binding the monarch to the people, the latter only severed them. Like his father, Charles was aware that his public image as a monarch was of grave importance. At the same time, although he appeared to have better social skills than James, he continued to keep the court entertainments indoors, staging most of the masques of his reign within the walls of the newly built and illustrious Banqueting House. The result was that these entertainments confined the monarch’s self-display within a relatively small circle of favourites and allies, and failed to spread the intended political messages across a wider audience. The Caroline court masques thus continued to symbolize the King’s unwillingness to be in touch with the common people, as well as his inability to influence and inspire them. When Charles succeeded his father to the throne, the debate over the royal prerogatives had become more heated. At the same time, Charles did not think of his supremacy as something questionable or negotiable and his absolutist ideas were vividly reflected in the court masques of his reign. In this respect, it is not surprising that the eleven <?page no="264"?> Effie Botonaki 264 years Charles governed without a Parliament (1629-40) was the period that these entertainments flourished. As Roy Strong has argued, Inigo Jones, the architect-engineer of these masques, undertook to “set forth the politico-religious theories of the first two Stuart monarchs” (223). The relevant masques are in fact “so pure an expression of this decade” that, to understand them, “it is necessary to forget totally what happened after 1640” and “view these productions solely through the eyes of an optimistic King and his Surveyor of Works as they annually celebrated what they foolishly believed to be the triumphant rule of a monarch by Divine Right” (Strong 224). Unlike his father, Charles did not restrict his role in the court masques to that of the privileged viewer, but appeared in several performances as a key masquer. By leaving his elevated position on the “state” for a masquing role on the stage, the King could actually occupy an even more central, dynamic and potentially didactic position. Furthermore, Charles would read (and approve of) the masque texts before the performance and would supervise the masque designs. As Erica Veevers notes, there is evidence that “after 1630 the King himself became Jones’s chief collaborator” (110). There is similarly evidence to suggest that Henrietta Maria, who also appeared as a masquer, worked closely with Jones for the staging of these performances too. The active involvement of the royal couple in all the stages of the masques’ production implies that they saw these spectacles as much more than entertainment. Charles and his Queen obviously thought that court masques, if managed appropriately, could play an important role in the enhancement of their images, and the promotion of their political agendas. Contrary, however, to what Charles may have expected, his dynamic participation in these shows and his occasional dominance over the masquing stage did not mean that he could fully control the meaning of these spectacles, as these would often accommodate ideas that contradicted his absolutism and exposed the weaknesses of his rule. Continuing the Jacobean tradition, Caroline court masques frequently compare Charles to the Sun or a star. The innovation is that they do the same for the King’s wife, who is also attributed divine status: she is a virtuous “bright Deity” (Carew 190, l. 965) with “Divine Beauty” (Townshend 164, l. 323); Henrietta looks upon the earth from above and with the “beams” of her soul “she doth survey” the people’s “growth in virtue or decay, Still lighting” them “in Honour’s way! ” (Davenant 211, ll. 379, 380-81). Henrietta’s representation in masques is such because, in contrast with his father, Charles was a loving and devoted husband who apparently wished his wife to have her own share of <?page no="265"?> Teaching and Contesting Royal Obedience 265 praise in these spectacles. Furthermore, the celebration of the royal couple’s marital happiness in masques had a political meaning too as it presented “their ideal love as a benign image of the personal rule” (Hoxby 77). In several court masques Charles and his Queen appear together as “Bright glorious twins of love and majesty” (Carew 167, l. 38), personifying the Neoplatonic union of virtue, love and beauty. This harmonious relationship of the royal couple is shown in turn to have miraculously transformed their country: the King and Queen “have turned this age to gold” (Townshend 161, l. 238), and they are so perfect that “no worth / Is left for after-ages to bring forth” (Carew 192, ll. 1024-25). More importantly, their “exemplar life” has not only “transfused a zealous heat / Of imitation through . . . [their] virtuous court” (Carew 167, ll. 52, 53-54), but has affected the whole realm: “And as their own pure souls entwined, / So are their subjects’ hearts combined,” claims the figure of “Homonoia” in Carew’s Coelum Britannicum (192, ll. 1032-33). Even in the final masque before the Civil War, the Chorus praises the King and Queen because their love can miraculously defeat their enemies’ passions: “All that are harsh, all that are rude, / Are by your harmony subdued” (Davenant 212, ll. 425-26). As David Lindley suggests, in masques “the theme of love . . . as the platonic love between Charles and his queen . . . became a politicised emblem of the harmony of court and nation” (“The Stuart Masque and its Makers” 385). Furthermore, this harmony is described as a result of the royal couple’s genuine concern for their people; in most masques Charles and Henrietta appear to treat their subjects the way tender parents treat their children: they use “no awful frowns / To fright” them, but with “calmer eyes” “Shed joy and safety on their [subjects’] melting hearts / That flow with cheerful loyal reverence . . .” (Carew 167, ll. 41-42, 43-44). The contemporary debates over the position of kings within a state often found their way into the Caroline court masques too. Carew’s Coelum Britannicum, “ostensibly the most complete celebration of the court of Charles and Henrietta Maria” (Lindley, Court Masques 263), includes a number of antimasques which make various comments on the government of kingdoms. Although the aim of the masque (and its antimasques) is to support Charles’s absolute rule, there are lines that invite alternative interpretations. An antimasquer who represents “Fortune,” for example, appears wearing a skirt decorated with “crowns, sceptres . . . and such other things as express both her greatest and smallest gifts” (181, ll. 625-26) and, in the conclusion of her speech, she claims: <?page no="266"?> Effie Botonaki 266 The revolutions of empires, states, Sceptres, and crowns are but my game and sport, Which, as they hang on the events of war, So those depend upon my turning wheel. (182, ll. 662-65). Fortune’s final words stress her absolute power over the fate of everyone and everything: “I rule the game” (182, l. 669, my emphasis). The repeated references to sceptres and crowns in relation to Fortune’s power cannot but attract our attention. On a surface level the relevant comments suggest that the fate of “empires” and “states” is actually determined by chance; at the same time, they also remind us that in hereditary monarchy a king’s accession to the throne is essentially determined by chance too - one’s birth as a royal heir. The last Caroline masque, Davenant’s Salmacida Spolia (1640), once more unwittingly, makes a similar comment. Charles is told by the chorus - his people: “Since strength of virtues gained your Honour’s throne, / Accept our wonder and enjoy your praise! ” (209, ll. 337-38). As Charles did not owe his enthronement to his “virtues” but to a sequence of entirely accidental events - the death of his elder brother, Henry, and his own birth as James’s second son - the above statement could be easily reversed to mean that he deserved neither his throne, nor the people’s respect and praise. William Davenant’s Salmacida Spolia, with which I am going to conclude, was the last masque before the Civil War. It is also by far the most important masque in terms of political meaning, and this perhaps helps to explain why critics have disagreed about its interpretation (Lindley, Court Masques 269; see Butler, “Politics and the Masque”). This masque was performed at a turbulent time, when Charles, faced with the Scottish rebellion and in serious need of money, was forced to recall Parliament after eleven years of personal rule. What makes this masque still more interesting is that it captures with uncanny accuracy the problems Charles was to encounter several years later. The King is once more presented as a gentle and benevolent ruler and, in an obvious effort to reinforce this representation, Charles appears in it as an actor himself, impersonating “Philogenes” - lover of the people - a good but misunderstood king. Britain continues to be described as a happy isle which enjoys the kind of harmony that cannot be found anywhere else in the world. A “Fury” in the antimasque thus complains: <?page no="267"?> Teaching and Contesting Royal Obedience 267 How am I grieved the world should everywhere Be vexed into a storm save only here! Thou over - l ucky, too-much-happy isle. (203, ll. 113-15) On the other hand, Davenant’s comments on this scene do mention conflicts: “The allusion is, that his Majesty, out of his mercy and clemency . . . seeks by all means to reduce tempestuous and turbulent natures into a sweet calm of civil concord” (202, ll. 90-92). Later on it is openly admitted that the King is facing potentially serious problems; “the Genius of Great Britain” begs “Concord”: “Stay then, O stay! if but to ease / The cares of wise Philogenes” (204, ll. 164-65). While Salmacida Spolia tries to portray Charles as an appreciated and successful King, it makes overt references to underlying conflicts, and implies that Charles may have been unpopular even within his own court. What is particularly interesting is that some of Charles’s fellow masquers were courtiers displeased with his policies; in this respect, the co-existence of these courtiers and the King on the stage could have been a means of bringing about a reconciliation. At the same time, Salmacida Spolia allows glimpses of the King’s contempt for his enemies, who are accused of having “weak common ears,” easily “infect[ed]” by “Murmur” (209, ll. 326, 325). As “the Good Genius of Great Britain” complains, “the people” are ungrateful: I know it is the people’s vice To lay too mean, too cheap a price On every blessing they possess; Th’ enjoying makes them think it less. (204, ll. 150-53) The King, on the other hand, shows “mercy” and does not “punish vulgar sickness as a sin” “like monarchs that severe have been” (209, ll. 329, 332, 330). Charles is praised for being magnanimous and wise enough to avoid taking conflicts to extremes: Nor would your valour, when it might subdue, Be hindered of the pleasure to forgive. Th’are worse than overcome, your wisdom knew, That needed mercy to have leave to live. (209, ll. 333-36) The portrayal of Charles’s model of rule in these lines was clearly not an accurate description of the King’s policies at the time. Charles did not seem to have taken into serious consideration his opponents’ objections and his subjects’ complaints; worse still, he appeared much readier to <?page no="268"?> Effie Botonaki 268 “subdue” his enemies than to “forgive” them. In his discussion of Salmacida Spolia, Martin Butler has convincingly argued that “the masque as a whole showed few signs of compromise” (The Stuart Court Masque 345) and that “Charles’s forgiveness was underpinned by the threat of what he could do were he so minded” (346). From a similar point of view, Lesley Ferris has remarked that this masque “was an exorbitant final theatrical display of defiance of the revolutionary reality enveloping the court” (67). Despite its effort to attribute to Charles a conciliatory attitude, Salmacida Spolia suggests that he was too rigid and too selfrighteous to negotiate his rights and accept a compromise, even when he was faced with the strongest opposition. Indeed, as I mentioned earlier, what makes Salmacida Spolia particularly interesting is that it proved to be prophetic of Charles’s tragic future. The antimasquer playing the part of the “Genius of Great Britain” begs another antimasquer, “Concord,” to “stay! if but to ease / The cares of wise Philogenes” (204, ll. 164-65). “Concord” agrees to stay but notes: I will! And much I grieve, that though the best Of kingly science harbours in his breast, Yet `tis his fate to rule in adverse times, When wisdom must awhile give place to crimes. (204, ll. 166-69, emphasis added) The “Genius of Great Britain” and “Concord” then sing: O who but he could thus endure To live and govern in a sullen age, When it is harder far to cure The people’s folly than resist their rage? (204, ll. 174-77) In the light of King Charles’s death on the scaffold nine years later, the references to the King’s endurance and the people’s “rage” and “crimes” acquire a special meaning. The same applies to the end of the masque, when the King’s delay to appear on the stage makes the chorus exclaim: “Why are our joys detained by this delay? ” (208, l. 289). The chorus then wonders about the possible reasons, hinting at the troubles Charles is having: <?page no="269"?> Teaching and Contesting Royal Obedience 269 are you slow ‘cause th’way to Honour’s throne, In which you travail now, is so uneven, Hilly and craggy, or as much unknown As that uncertain path which leads to heaven? (208, ll. 293-96; emphasis added) The above lines portray not only the King’s difficult position at the time but also anticipate the problems he was to encounter in the future; his death would be seen by Royalists as another ascent to Golgotha, which the King bore with Christ-like patience. The hagiographic accounts that described Charles’s execution draw parallels between the King’s conduct before his beheading and Christ’s conduct on the cross. Charles is believed to have consciously adopted such an attitude in his final days, and especially while he was on the scaffold, where he appeared fearless of death, composed, magnanimous and forgiving even towards his enemies (Williamson 133-146). At the same time, in the speech he addressed to bystanders, Charles was bold enough to reiterate his rigid views on the superiority of kings and the exclusion of the people from government: For the people, truly I desire their liberty and freedom as much as anybody whomsoever. But I must tell you their liberty and freedom consists in having government - those laws by which their life and their goods may be most their own. It is not having a share in government. That is nothing pertaining to them. A subject and a sovereign are clean different things and therefore, until they do that - I mean that you do put the people in that liberty as I say - certainly they will never enjoy themselves. (qtd. in Williamson 143) Charles remained an absolutist King until the end. Even in those final moments before his execution he stubbornly refused to accept his defeat, since in doing so he would have proved the whole course of his life and rule to have been wrong. Like the authors of the Stuart masques, Charles continued to envision an idealized world where a monarch would “suffer no debate.” The Stuart court masques were not “unequivocal, unambiguous celebrations of royal power” (Greenblatt 63), but interpretively fluid and self-contradictory representations of a monarchy in crisis. As I have argued, while these entertainments sought to construct and promote idealized images of the Kings for which they were written, they often exposed the very aspects of the Stuart government that had to be concealed, excused or beautified. Furthermore, these spectacles failed to contain the subversive ideas they occasionally gave voice to, and eventu- <?page no="270"?> Effie Botonaki 270 ally brought on the royal stage the conflicting viewpoints that circulated at the time regarding the position and power of kings. For these reasons, instead of teaching the spectators to accept and respect their King as a divinely appointed ruler, the court masques ultimately illustrated why absolute monarchy had no chances of survival. The end of this model of rule was dramatized in 1649 with Charles’s ultimate public performance, this time on a scaffold erected to stage his execution, outside the Banqueting House - the building that had hosted the most illustrious court entertainments of his reign. In contrast with the consistently happy ending of the Stuart masques, this spectacle ended not with Charles’s triumph over his opponents, but with the victory of his enemies, and the decapitation of his “sacred head” (Jonson, Neptune’s Triumph 144, l. 288). What a lesson! <?page no="271"?> Teaching and Contesting Royal Obedience 271 References Ashton, Robert, ed. James I by His Contemporaries. London: Hutchinson, 1969. Bevington, David M. and Peter Holbrook, eds. The Politics of the Stuart Court Masque. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Butler, Martin. “Politics and the Masque: Salmacida Spolia.” Literature and the English Civil War. Eds. Thomas Healy and Jonathan Sawday. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. 59-74. ―――. The Stuart Court Masque and Political Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Campion, Thomas. The Lord Hay’s Masque (1607). Court Masques: Jacobean and Caroline Entertainments, 1605-1640. Ed. David Lindley. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. 18-34. Carew, Thomas. Coelum Britannicum (1634). Court Masques: Jacobean and Caroline Entertainments, 1605-1640. Ed. David Lindley. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. 166-93. Chapman, George. Memorable Masque (1613). Court Masques: Jacobean and Caroline Entertainments, 1605-1640. Ed. David Lindley. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. 74-91. Chibnall, Jennifer. “`To that secure fix’d state’: The Function of the Caroline Masque Form.” The Court Masque. Ed. David Lindley. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984. 78-93. Cooper, Helen. “Location and Meaning in Masque, Morality and Royal Entertainment.” The Court Masque. Ed. David Lindley. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984. 135-48. Craig, Hugh. “Jonson, the Antimasque and the ‘rules of flattery’.” The Politics of the Stuart Court Masque. Eds. David M. Bevington and Peter Holbrook. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. 176-96. Daniel, Samuel. Tethys’ Festival (1610). Court Masques: Jacobean and Caroline Entertainments, 1605-1640. Ed. David Lindley. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. 54-65 Davenant, William. Salmacida Spolia (1640). Court Masques: Jacobean and Caroline Entertainments, 1605-1640. Ed. David Lindley. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. 200-13. Ferris, Lesley. “Masques and Masquing.” Acting Women: Images of Women in Theatre. New York: New York University Press, 1989. 65-78. Greenblatt, Stephen. Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. <?page no="272"?> Effie Botonaki 272 Hoxby, Blair. “The Wisdom of Their Feet: Meaningful Dance in Milton and the Stuart Masque.” ELR 37: 1 (2007): 74-99. Jonson, Ben. Barriers at a Marriage (1606). Court Masques: Jacobean and Caroline Entertainments, 1605-1640. Ed. David Lindley. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. 10-17. ―――. The Golden Age Restored (1616). Court Masques: Jacobean and Caroline Entertainments, 1605-1640. Ed. David Lindley. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. 102-108. ―――. The Haddington Masque (1608). Ben Jonson: The Complete Masques. Ed. Stephen Orgel. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1969. 107-121. ―――. Love Restored (1612). Court Masques: Jacobean and Caroline Entertainments, 1605-1640. Ed. David Lindley. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. 66-73. ―――. Masque of Blackness (1605). Court Masques: Jacobean and Caroline Entertainments,1605-1640. Ed. David Lindley. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. 1-9. ―――. Masque of Queens (1609). Court Masques: Jacobean and Caroline Entertainments, 1605-1640. Ed. David Lindley. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. 35-53. ―――. Neptune’s Triumph (1624). Court Masques: Jacobean and Caroline Entertainments, 1605-1640. Ed. David Lindley. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. 136-46. ―――. Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue (1618). Court Masques: Jacobean and Caroline Entertainments, 1605-1640. Ed. David Lindley. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. 117-25. Kernan, Alvin. Shakespeare, The King’s Playwright: Theater in the Stuart Court, 1603-1613. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995. Kogan, Stephen. The Hieroglyphic King: Wisdom and Idolatry in the Seventeenth-century Masque. Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1986. Limon, Jerzey. The Masque of Stuart Culture. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1990. Lindley, David, ed. The Court Masque. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1975. ―――. Court Masques: Jacobean and Caroline Entertainments, 1605-1640. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. ―――. “The Stuart Masque and its Makers.” The Cambridge History of British Theatre, vol. I: Origins to 1660. Ed. Jane Milling and Peter Thomson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 383-406. McElwee, William. The Wisest Fool in Christendom: The Reign of King James I and VI. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1974. <?page no="273"?> Teaching and Contesting Royal Obedience 273 McManus, Clare. Women on the Renaissance Stage: Anne of Denmark and Female Masquing in the Stuart Court, 1590-1619. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002. Mickel, Lesley. Ben Jonson’s Antimasques: A History of Growth and Decline. Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999. Odom, Glenn A. “Jacobean Politics of Interpretation in Jonson’s Masque of Blacknesse.” SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 51: 2 (2011): 367-83. Orgel, Stephen. The Illusion of Power: Political Theatre in the English Renaissance. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975. ―――. The Jonsonian Masque. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1965. Parry, Graham. The Golden Age Restor’d: The Culture of the Stuart Court, 1603-42. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1981. ―――. “Politics of the Jacobean Masque.” Theatre and Government under the Early Stuarts. Eds. J. R. Mulryne and Margaret Shewring. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. 87-117. Ravelhofer, Barbara. The Early Stuart Masque: Dance, Costume, and Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Strong, Roy. Splendour at Court: Renaissance Spectacle and Illusion. London: Weidenfield and Nicolson, 1973. Sturgess, Keith. Jacobean Private Theatre. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1987. Sullivan, Mary. Court Masques of James I: Their Influence on Shakespeare and the Public Theatres. New York: The Knickerbocker Press, 1913. Thomson, Peter. Shakespeare’s Professional Career. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Townshend, Aurelian. Tempe Restored (1632). Court Masques: Jacobean and Caroline Entertainments, 1605-1640. Ed. David Lindley. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. 155-65. Veevers, Erica. Images of Love and Religion: Queen Henrietta Maria and Court Entertainments. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. West, Russell. Spatial Representations and the Jacobean Stage: From Shakespeare to Webster. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002. Williamson, Hugh Ross. The Day They Killed the King. London: Frederick Muller, 1957. <?page no="275"?> In the Company of Edward’s Boys Perry Mills and Alex Mills Since 2005, Edward’s Boys from King Edward VI School, Stratfordupon-Avon, have been performing plays from the neglected repertoire of the early modern boys’ companies. 1 Under the direction of Perry Mills, Deputy Head of the School, Edward’s Boys have staged Marlowe’s Dido, Queen of Carthage, Marston’s The Dutch Courtesan, Dekker and Webster’s Westward Ho! , Marston’s Antonio’s Revenge, Middleton’s A Mad World My Masters and A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, Lyly’s Galatea, as well as extracts from Lyly’s Mother Bombie and Endymion. Edward’s Boys have toured extensively, by invitation, to the universities of Warwick, Oxford, London and Cambridge, the Royal Shakespeare Company Swan Theatre, Middle Temple Hall, and at Shakespeare’s Globe’s Bear Gardens and Sam Wanamaker Playhouse. In this essay Perry Mills discusses Edward’s Boys with his son, Alex Mills, who acted with the company. Perry: I will explore here the educational value of the Edward’s Boys project and occasionally reflect on what it might offer the academic world. It seemed sensible to collaborate on this essay in order to give a sense of replicating the complementary contributions of the teacher/ director and the student/ actor. And, like all wise teachers, I propose to supply the intellectual stimulus and the startling insights, thereafter leaving the bulk of the work to the student . . . 1 King Edward’s is a selective boys’ state school also known as K.E.S. and “Shakespeare’s School,” since it is the grammar school in Stratford which Shakespeare would have attended. Drama and Pedagogy in Medieval and Early Modern England. SPELL: Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 31. Ed. Elisabeth Dutton and James McBain. Tübingen: Narr, 2015. 275-293. <?page no="276"?> Perry Mills and Alex Mills 276 Figure 1. David Biddle (Chorus) in Henry V (2013). Audience members often pose the question: “How do they do it? How do boys, just boys, learn these very tricky plays? ” And the simple answer is there in the question: learning is easy for boys. It is not something that is scary. They are used to encountering things they do not immediately understand - they learn these parts alongside German and Biology and Physics, etc. The familiar teacher/ pupil dynamic is the model for how we work. I am perfectly aware that I am something of a “linguistic dinosaur.” I am not trained in theatre; I am an English teacher who does plays. All I have ever learnt about drama has come from watching, reading and doing plays. The only way I can approach the early stages of rehearsal is for us all to sit at desks and read and re-read and re-read the text. And throughout this “process” we talk about everything - what the words say and what they might mean. The importance of the text is only challenged by the need to tell the story as clearly as possible. We interrogate every line, every word, even the silences. Even the filthy jokes. In fact, particularly the filthy jokes. We are, after all, boys. And then it goes back in its box. The aim is for the boys to take over the language, possess it as their own. And then we might feel ready to try to put it on its feet. By this <?page no="277"?> In the Company of Edward’s Boys 277 stage, decisions concerning “blocking” are usually pretty straightforward. As one parent commented after an early production by the company, “What a wonderful way to learn! ” Alex: Edward’s Boys begin each rehearsal period by focusing closely upon the play’s text. It has been said of John Marston’s writing that “Those who seek consistency and wholeness will be disappointed, not only when they seek it across his canon but when they look for it within single scenes or even lines” (Wharton 105-6, quoted in Ryan 145). Plays such as Marston’s The Dutch Courtesan expose the children to the ambiguities and intricacies of language, as they consider the possible meanings of lines, thereby developing sensitivity to complexity. As Elisabeth Dutton comments on the 2012 performance of Dekker and Webster’s Westward Ho! (c.1604), it is clear that “the boys understand every line” (“Review”). Humanist rhetorical education likewise focused upon language and its potential for various interpretations: intriguing insight into the ways in which early modern youths were taught linguistic competence is offered in A Chaste Maid in Cheapside. Though listed as originally performed by Lady Elizabeth’s Men, the company would have been augmented by boy actors because, as Lucy Munro states, when the Children of the Queen’s Revels disbanded in “early 1613, they were merged with the adult Lady Elizabeth’s men” (“Coriolanus” 82). John Jowett writes that whilst Chaste Maid was “performed by an adult company,” Edward’s Boys “demonstrated that Middleton’s experience writing for younger actors shows through in this play” (Jowett, “Review”). With nineteen female characters, the play has a strong youthful presence: children are frequently onstage or the subject of the play’s action, such as the Kixs’ inability to conceive. By using children for all the parts, the Edward’s Boys’ production emphasised the prominence of education within the play. One of the Allwits’ children (or rather Mrs Allwit’s and Sir Walter’s) is able to “make a verse / And is now at Eton college” (Middleton, Chaste Maid 4.1.148-149). The production’s opening saw the cast, wearing school uniform, file on stage to form a choir - a nod towards the chorister background of the Children of Paul’s. After a choral number, the cast dispersed about the stage, breaking into catches of Thomas Ravenscroft’s sixteenth-century street-cries, in organised chaos. This beginning highlighted child-identity in a manner reminiscent of Induction scenes, as in Jonson’s Cynthia’s Revels. The children were very clearly taking control of the stage, the playing space. At the play’s ending, the <?page no="278"?> Perry Mills and Alex Mills 278 choir reformed, with the school-children of the opening emerging recognisably behind their costumes. In Chaste Maid, the character of Tim Yellowhammer offers particular evidence about educational practices: he is a developing male youth, not quite a man, and “[t]he reference to Tim’s size indicates that the part was probably played by one of the Queen’s Revels boys” (note to 4.1.121-124, Middleton, Chaste Maid 73). In the Edward’s Boys staging, the actor playing Tim was sixteen, roughly the age of early modern University students, and possibly of the original Queen’s Revels actor. Tim is, as his parents proudly announced in unison in the Edward’s Boys production, “the Cambridge boy” (1.1.44). The grating pride in their pronouncement provided familiar satire, indicating the Yellowhammers’ social climbing in a manner consistent with the production’s 2010 setting, with the son’s study at “Uni-vers-i-tay” (as affectedly pronounced by his mother, Maudline) providing an opportunity to show-off. Figure 2. The Final Chorus from A Chaste Maid in Cheapside (2010). Tim (bespectacled and constantly weighed down with books in this production) visits his family in Cheapside, accompanied by his university tutor. Though he is a university student rather than a school pupil, Tim’s education is in the same humanist vein of rhetoric. In the play, Middleton offers a direct depiction of learning in progress: the form of a university debate opens 4.1. Peter Mack notes that “To obtain a degree, students had to participate in disputations” (97), and that the teaching of the rhetorical technique of utramque partem (the ability to argue, convincingly, on each side of a dispute), encouraged control over linguistic <?page no="279"?> In the Company of Edward’s Boys 279 complexities. During this debate in this scene, on whether a fool is a rational being, both characters appear fools. Tim declares to his mother that “By logic I’ll prove anything” (4.1.39), yet can prove nothing. Tim’s former inability, related by Maudline, to answer the simplest question of “Quid est grammatica” (“What is grammar? ”) invites open mockery (4.165). However, whilst ridiculing a formal system of early modern education, the city comedy, through the witty complexity of its rude, fastpaced wordplay offers an alternative route to linguistic skill. In the final scene, Tim begins to understand not the language of university debate, but that of the bawdy and playful city. The puns and jokes of this play are linguistic plurality in action, and to be proficient at recognising the plurality of language, the potential for “both sides” of a matter to be almost simultaneously present, is a profitable ability. This is something the members of Edward’s Boys have developed through performing plays such as Chaste Maid, Middleton’s A Mad World, My Masters and John Lyly’s Endymion, relishing the learned puerility: a licence to speak filth in public. It would be surprising if a similar effect was not realised for the original boy-players. Perry: Of course, boys will be boys - but in adult companies like Lady Elizabeth’s Men, boys were deployed not just to play boys but also to play women. Perhaps I should say a few words about boys playing girls. It’s really not a problem. Edward’s Boys don’t attempt to impersonate women. They’re not illusionists. They’re actors playing parts. It’s simply a question of ACTING - or perhaps I should say PLAYING . They aren’t kings or generals or murderers either yet they play those roles. During a Question and Answer session following a performance of scenes from Lyly’s Mother Bombie, a particularly earnest PhD student posed a long, convoluted question concerning puberty, sexuality and gender politics to the twelve year-old George who had just performed the role of Livia. When she eventually stopped he simply shrugged and said, “I’m still just a bloke underneath.” The actors know that if you are a member of Edward’s Boys you will, at some point, play a girl. There are as many ways of playing women as there are women. High voices and false breasts are not only unnecessary; they are frequently positive obstacles. They only serve to highlight the differences/ inadequacies. Anyway, some women have deep voices and flat chests. Wigs were ditched by two of the three female characters in the course of the run of A Mad World My Masters. The <?page no="280"?> Perry Mills and Alex Mills 280 important thing is to TELL THE STORY of the character, just as you do with any other part. The reaction of the audience is of course worth taking into account. The first time we mounted a (nearly) full production of The Dutch Courtesan there were gasps from certain members of the audience as the first female characters entered in the second scene. The shock value was audible, but that was probably as a result of the subject matter as much as the fact that boys were playing female roles. However, within a few scenes the audience calmed down, got used to the novelty, and started to respond to the twists and turns of the story. By the moment in Act Two when Freevill slapped Franceschina across the face in anger, the auditorium was utterly silent. Now it’s just something we do, everyone is used to it. And our school community has learned from the experience. That is of course educational in itself. Still, we often encounter disbelief that some of the actors were not really girls. “But, that one, surely, that one was a real girl? ” is not an uncommon reaction. The actor playing Katherine in Henry V met particular resistance to the acceptance that he was, indeed, a boy. Generally, of course, the audience know; and then they forget - until they remember, often, I would suggest, when we choose to remind them. Figure 3. George as Katherine in Henry V (2013). That kind of reaction accounts for what I call “double-seeing.” As so often in drama, an audience is encouraged to see the play through a series of different lenses, practically simultaneously. <?page no="281"?> In the Company of Edward’s Boys 281 Alex: So gender is just one aspect of a character’s identity and has to be played, just like any other characteristic. Edward’s Boys’ rehearsal process is the main period in which the actors explore character identity. Although, as Tiffany Stern discusses, it is anachronistic to talk of the rehearsal room as a place where “magic and creation can happen,” since early modern rehearsals were very limited owing to the pressure of the number of performances companies gave (Stern, Rehearsal 8), the work achieved through Edward’s Boys’ rehearsal is relevant nonetheless. Identity exploration has been viewed as significant in early modern education. Carol Rutter cites the importance of the process of ethopoeia, which means “character making” or “impersonation” in early modern education (Shakespeare and Child’s Play 61). Children were required to learn a speech and perform it, imitating the identity of the speaker. In Ludus Literarius, John Brinsley explains that students should “utter every dialogue lively as if they themselves were the persons which did speak that dialogue” (cited in Gibson 23). The aspect of ethopoeia which most interests Rutter is the use of works such as Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Heroides, which provided “a vast range of hugely charged emotional speeches spoken by women” (“Learning Thisby’s Part” 16) for the early modern schoolboy to impersonate, with an invitation to see things from a feminine perspective - “the schoolboy studies the grammar of emotion” (Shakespeare and Child’s Play 68). The company has taken various approaches to playing women, just as with the male roles, and, over the years, has established an audience than has become ever more willing to accept the different portrayals of the female roles. Young boys have played both genders, as have older ones. Whilst there is no evidence that boys of eighteen played female roles in the children’s companies, Edward’s Boys have helped show that they can. As with the original companies, “any actor might be called on to play either male or female parts” (Senapati 126). The ease with which a boy may become a girl on stage was exemplified in the production of Chaste Maid when onstage, after the opening song, the actor playing Maudline simply placed a dress over his school uniform, recalling Follywit’s boast in Mad World - “Come, come, thou shalt see a woman quickly made up here” (Middleton, The Collected Works 3.3.96-97). As Stern has said of Edward’s Boys, “Their productions revel in crossgender and cross-age casting. Both emerge as equal constructs, creating scenes that are touching, outrageous and wild by turn” (“Expert Opinion”). This recognition of the constructed nature of identity is a powerful realisation for any child. <?page no="282"?> Perry Mills and Alex Mills 282 All parts involve identity play, affording various perspectives, none the same as the actor’s own. Thus, over the years of the Edward’s Boys project, the novelty of boys playing girls has given way to a wider recognition that the female roles are performed by the same process of acting as any of the male roles. This was most likely the case in the early modern theatre, with boys acting girls as the norm. Playing female and male roles have been equal challenges, and this would have been so for the original companies, “For boys were quite literally a different gender from men during the early modern period” (Fisher 235). Indeed “Childhood and youth were often aligned with femininity” (Lamb 30), so there is a sense in which the boy is allied with both genders, yet the same as neither. Will Fisher states that “when boy actors donned beards in order to play the parts of men, they would have been as much ‘in drag’ as when they played the parts of women” (231). Despite also being young and male, Edward’s Boys bear little relation to Freevill. Even the actor playing Tim was, of course, not being himself. In both male and female roles, the plays toy with notions of the boy in a process of identity development from child to man. Kate Chedgzoy describes the importance of the “pure intrinsic pleasure of play . . . the temporary provisional opportunity to inhabit another self in the act of pretending to be someone else, acting a theatrical role, and thus expand the performer’s sense of the possibilities of selfhood” (“Shakespeare in the company” 190). Performative-play is central to these identity games. Necessarily entailed in an exploration of character identity is an exploration of the actor’s own. This breaking down of barriers of identityconstructs in the free-play of rehearsal and performance has been of great importance in Edward’s Boys, and why might this not have been so for the original companies, if not as an impetus behind the performances, as a consequence of instead? Perry: Then again, who cares? We are most definitely not attempting to “explore Original Practices,” whatever that phrase may mean. We are not trying to show how boys’ companies must or might have done it. We simply aim to put on a good show using these largely unperformed and frequently excellent plays with an all-boy company. If, sometimes, people choose to think to themselves that maybe that was how it was done in 1588 or 1605 then perhaps the project - casting, rehearsals, staging as well as performances - does offer occasional “glimpses” into possibilities. <?page no="283"?> In the Company of Edward’s Boys 283 I prefer at this point to quote Professor Tiffany Stern on the subject: We all know that there were boy companies in the time of Shakespeare. Watching the extraordinarily talented boy company of King Edward VI School, however, is a revelation. The boys have the age-range, voices, physicality, and androgynous beauty for which the plays they perform were actually written . . . Skilful instrumentalists and actors, the boys also bring contemporary music and modern gesture to their performances, resulting in productions that are youthful, energetic and distinctly “now” as well as “then.” That is what is amazing about Edward’s Boys: they combine the best of the past and the present to create a wholly new and extraordinary theatrical experience (“Expert Opinion”). The original focus of the project - boys as girls - has shifted. Subsequently, we explored the repertoire of the boys’ companies, but now the interest primarily rests in the educational power of this model. An extraordinary, self-regulated process of apprenticeship, whereby the younger members of the company learn as much from the older performers as they do from me, is now the primary focal point. For me, as the English teacher who does the plays, this was an unexpected development, but now it is utterly central to the enterprise. I focus on it explicitly and exploit it relentlessly. We are all learning from each other. Figure 4. Photo of Jeremy as Neptune in Galatea (2014). <?page no="284"?> Perry Mills and Alex Mills 284 At the beginning of a production we have “The Big Meeting”. Everyone is welcomed and helped to feel part of the enterprise. We also take time to make the new members of the company aware of the tradition, and of how we work. And why. The performance, for example, is truly collaborative: control is given over to the boys - they run the show. They manage all the responsibilities. There is no prompt; a student acts as Stage Manager; a student conducts the band - all of whom are students. This is what we do it for. Significantly, they learn how to behave off-stage as well as on-stage. They develop a highly positive sense of self - which is NOT the same as arrogance. There is no self-indulgence since they are all aware that they are doing a “Job o’ Work”: I drum into them that acting is a set of tasks, like any other job. Self-discipline is evident at every turn. They want to do themselves justice and they don’t want to let anyone down - they all want to get it right. This is what Jonny wrote at the age of twelve after performing the role of Bianca in The Dutch Courtesan: I really enjoy touring because it’s fun and brings the cast out of the usual places and so forces us together as a school - and we always seem to have such fun. The fact these plays give me friends in other years who I probably wouldn’t have talked to or come across before is really good. Since the play I have had loads of Facebook friend requests from people in it which I just found really nice. Edward’s Boys has become what the Headmaster at K.E.S. has proudly dubbed the “best vertical tutor group in the school.” (The vertical tutor group system is one which allows for boys across the age range to interact). The first time I became powerfully aware of this phenomenon was during our production of Lyly’s Endymion in 2009. The cast were all twelve year-olds, but the Stage Manager, Oliver, was seventeen and had worked on several plays with me, even before the project started. During the final run-through at the Inigo Jones Rehearsal Room 3 at Shakespeare’s Globe, I was distracted by problems concerning the filming we were undertaking of the event. I asked Oliver to take notes for me on the run. Afterwards he approached and proffered a couple of pages of scrawl. “Why don’t you give them the notes? ” I suggested. He did, and to my surprise I could hear my voice through his, my obsessions with textual details, my idiosyncrasies, my weak attempts at humour. After the first run of performances of Lyly’s Galatea, in March 2014, we put the production to bed for six weeks before reviving it for a performance at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse. Another experienced <?page no="285"?> In the Company of Edward’s Boys 285 member of Edward’s Boys asked if I would mind if he sent me a few notes he had taken over the course of the initial run, in case they might prove helpful . . . I readily agreed and received three typed pages of A4 full of brilliant insights, suggestions and wit. They were subsequently passed onto the company and ensured the production matured and improved. Alex: The dynamic of a group putting on a play builds a company, and over years a sense of continuity has been created. As individual actors have increased in “audacity,” so the strength of the ensemble has developed. The cast learns from the director, the Deputy Head at the school, but more intriguingly, the older, more experienced members of casts have taken on something of a mentoring role, passing on tips and inspiring confidence in the younger cast members. In turn, through the mentoring process, the more experienced amongst the cast gain confidence, and a mutual respect is established (see Rutter, “Playing with Boys” 105-106). Figure 5. Ollie with kids in Chaste Maid (2010). In 2009 a cast of twelve-year-olds performed Lyly’s Endymion. In the following year several members of that cast became key players in Chaste Maid. By the time of Antonio’s Revenge in 2011, many original, longstanding cast members had left the school. Consequently, younger boys took on larger roles and became mentors themselves. Gordan McMullan has described the “remarkable experience” of seeing “the younger boys in the group grow up to become experienced actors” suggesting “the <?page no="286"?> Perry Mills and Alex Mills 286 development curve that must have been a significant element in the fluid and generative repertoire of the Elizabethan/ Jacobean boys’ companies” (“Expert Opinion”). This system that has built up has notable similarities to that of apprenticeship in the early modern adult playing companies. Perry: Edwards’ Boys is a boys’ company. We put on plays that were written to be performed by boys. Except when we don’t. In 2013 we staged Shakespeare’s Henry V, an adult company play, at the Royal Shakespeare Compaby Swan Theatre in order to commemorate the school’s 1913 production of the play. The school had been invited by the actor-manager Frank Benson to mount the production to complete his cycle of the first tetralogy of English History plays and two performances took place in the Stratford Memorial Theatre. The School Archivist discovered photographic evidence of the performance and then his researches revealed that the entire cast had subsequently fought in the First World War; and that seven of that cast had died. At first I was unsure why I should direct Henry V with an all-boy group. The 1913 K.E.S. cast featured both sexes; indeed the Chorus was performed by a professional actress. And then I thought about that cast, and how all those Old Boys went off to fight in a real war in Northern France within a few years. I imagined a couple of them meeting up by chance the night before the Battle of the Somme - or Ypres - and greeting one another as old friends. “Old Boys.” What would they talk about? Inevitably (I felt) they would swap memories of that production where they had played at being soldiers who fought a famous battle in a field not many miles from where they were sitting. They might even quote a few half-remembered lines. Now they were supposed to be real soldiers. Had they now grown into the role? Do soldiers ever really feel they are doing anything other than playing at it? I can only surmise that meeting up with an old school friend at such a time would be comforting. The production now had a context: the fact that they were boys - and boys from a school - became central to our interpretation. I soon realised that the production needed to take place imaginatively in Big School (“Shakespeare’s Schoolroom”) and that the Chorus, inevitably, was the aged schoolmaster recalling the fallen that he had taught so many years before. Alex: In staging Shakespeare’s Henry V, Edward’s Boys took on what Bart Van Es has argued is a “form of drama both practically and ideo- <?page no="287"?> In the Company of Edward’s Boys 287 logically unsuited to the [children’s] indoor stage” (211). Henry V is a very well-known play of professional adult theatre, and was performed by the boys in an adult space, usually inhabited by professional adult actors. Indeed, the self-consciously theatrical Chorus was played by the adult actor Tim Pigott-Smith, a former K.E.S. pupil. The Chorus possesses a shaping role, as the audience is asked to accept that the story is mediated through the role: “Admit me Chorus to this history, / Who Prologue-like your humble patience pray / Gently to hear, kindly to judge, our play” (1.0.32-34). The discrepancy in ages between the Chorus and the other actors emphasised this controlling aspect, with a seemingly inherently hierarchical relationship established between the mature Chorus and the immature boy players. The performance explored a relationship similar to that of a schoolmaster and his pupils, with the children breaking free through theatrical performance. The production demonstrated the theatrical value of Edward’s Boys to a wider audience, explicitly engaging with the educational idea of play which have been at the forefront of previous productions. There was a sense that the boys were claiming the stage - the Royal Shakespeare Company at that. Figure 6. Henry V et al. (2013). Moreover, returning to Edel Lamb’s idea of foregrounding the child (25), using boys highlighted themes of identity growth and development associated with childhood. Henry’s development is at the centre of the play. His character’s progression from wild youth to inexperienced king is followed over Henry IV’s two parts. In Henry V, Henry grows into this new role. Throughout this evolution, Henry’s youth simultaneously <?page no="288"?> Perry Mills and Alex Mills 288 haunts and aids him. The Dauphin, notably, interprets Henry’s past as weakness. Griffiths notes that “In adult discourse terms like ‘boy’ or ‘lad’ belonged to a vocabulary of insult . . . [with] their association with immorality and inadequacy” (quoted in Munro, “Coriolanus” 91). Thus the gift of tennis balls is a visual “boying” of King Harry. Henry does not take this insult lightly, wishing forcefully to show that the Dauphin is guilty of “Not measuring what use we made of . . . wilder days” (1.2.266-268). The play demonstrates the use Henry did make of his youth, for he has the capacity to not only play the King, a role which he learns after resolving to “Be like a king” (1.2.274), but also in conversing amongst ordinary soldiers, as in 4.1. Henry recognises the theatrical construction of identity through development, and therefore could be seen as the embodiment of an actor who is experimenting with role and identity. This aspect was endowed with a further significance in this production, with Henry being played by Jeremy Franklin. Franklin’s first role in Edward’s Boys was, suitably for Henry’s youth, part of Follywit’s wild gang in Mad World. His playing of various roles, including female, has developed his acting range. In a mirroring of Henry’s progression, Franklin has developed through the mentoring system outlined above to become a leader of Edward’s Boys. Incidentally, Franklin hopes to make the transition from boy-player to professional adult actor, as Nathan Field managed in the seventeenth-century (Lamb 118). Perry: As we come towards the end of this essay, let us attempt to gather together some reflections on the educational impact of the project on the boys who take part in it. It is obvious that the boys develop a remarkable linguistic facility, skills of performance, and an awareness of early modern drama, which are pretty unusual for most teenagers. They also discover that it is acceptable to aim high. The sense of achievement is often palpable: we are working on challenging material and any success is a result of hard work as well as talent and teamwork. They appreciate the meaning of the phrase “The best you can be is seen as exemplary.” Furthermore, a very powerful development is experiencing the “other” point of view, what is sometimes termed “alterity,” looking at the world through others’ eyes. One mother of an Edward’s Boys stalwart commented thus: It seems to me that the boys (and not just the ones actually playing the female roles) were encouraged to explore, deeply, various issues surrounding women. As young men - particularly in an all-boys school - this is a really <?page no="289"?> In the Company of Edward’s Boys 289 important part of their education. What a great opportunity the theatre offers, both in rehearsal and on stage, to explore and discover these things. Edward’s Boys enjoy their (albeit fleeting) power: they perform at Oxford University! At the Royal Shakespeare Company Swan Theatre! At the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse! These are their moments in the limelight, so to speak, a wonderful reward for all that hard work and selfdiscipline. The ephemeral quality in part reflects the nature of theatre, of course, but it is also evidence of the fact that it soon passes. One thing you can be sure about with boys - perhaps the only thing - is that they will, in some sense, grow up. Many ex-members of the company experience a powerful sense of nostalgia. Recently, I have come to understand the fundamental importance of the school itself in all of this: the institution, its expectations, its educational aims and objectives, the hierarchies which are all laid out. It was beautifully encapsulated for me in a conversation with a colleague who was expressing his admiration for the work: “Would you give it all up, if you could, and just direct Edward’s Boys? ” “No, never, not at all. It would entirely change the way we work, our relationship, the dynamic.” “Ah, I see. It works because, day-to-day, you also tell them off for being naughty.” Indeed, the games we all play have complex rules. These boys are given licence to “play” - but they also know why we are all doing it. The best image I have for how it works is to imagine choirboys - either side of the vestry door. In the church they appears as angels; in the vestry they are little devils. They know when and how to turn it on and off. It is essential that the boys have a space in which to play - and explore and fail and perform - within the context of the ensemble. That sounds like education to me. They want to get it right. They want to understand and learn. They also want to have fun - we all do! And then we move on from doing all these odd plays . . . because first lesson tomorrow is Physics . . . <?page no="290"?> Perry Mills and Alex Mills 290 Figure 7. Backstage at the Bear Garden, Shakespeare’s Globe (Dutch Courtesan, 2008). I shall conclude by exploiting another alumnus of Edward’s Boys, one of Alex’s contemporaries, Owen Hibberd, writing a few days after performing the role of Malheureaux in Marston’s The Dutch Courtesan at the invitation of Globe Education a few years ago: I cannot believe how well the play was received. Everywhere we went we had people congratulating us, some even saying that it was the best thing they had seen in years. When we were at the reception after our performance at the Globe I found myself talking to an elderly couple who had seen the play and thoroughly enjoyed it. They even offered to buy the whole cast drinks they enjoyed it so much! We talked for a long while about the play and it came up in conversation that, for them, the most remarkable thing was how seeing us at the reception they found us all unassuming and “just boys,” but on stage apparently it was as if our personalities and auras were ten times larger. My reply was something along the lines of saying how, at the end of the day, that’s all we are: just boys, really. <?page no="291"?> In the Company of Edward’s Boys 291 Edward’s Boys have received academic and critical acclaim for their work exploring the repertoire of the boys’ companies from the early modern period. There is an archive of all their performances available on DVD . For further details, please consult www.edwardsboys.org <?page no="292"?> Perry Mills and Alex Mills 292 References Chedgzoy, Kate. “Introduction: What, are they children? ” Shakespeare and Childhood. Ed. Kate Chedgzoy, Susanne Greenhalgh, and Robert Shaughnessy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. 15-31. ―――. “Shakespeare in the company of boys.” Shakespeare and Childhood. Ed. Kate Chedgzoy, Susanne Greenhalgh, and Robert Shaughnessy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. 184-200. Fisher, Will. “Staging the beard: masculinity in early modern English culture.” Staged Properties in Early Modern English Drama. Ed. Jonathan Gil Harris and Natasha Korda. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. 230-57. Gibson, Joy Leslie. Squeaking Cleopatras: The Elizabethan Boy Player. Stroud: Sutton, 2000. Lamb, Edel. Performing Childhood in the Early Modern Theatre: The Children’s Playing Companies (1599-1613). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Mack, Peter. “Humanism, Rhetoric, Education.” A Concise Companion to Renaissance Literature. Ed. Donna B. Hamilton. Oxford: Blackwell, 2006. 94-113. Marston, John. The Dutch Courtesan. Ed. David Crane. London: A and C Black, 1997. Middleton, Thomas. A Chaste Maid in Cheapside. Ed. Alan Brissenden. London: A and C Black, 2002. ―――. Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works. Ed. Gary Taylor and John Lavagnino. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2010. Munro, Lucy. Children of the Queen’s Revels: A Jacobean Theatre Repertory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. ―――. “Coriolanus and the little eyases: the boyhood of Shakespeare’s hero.” Shakespeare and Childhood. Ed. Kate Chedgzoy, Susanne Greenhalgh, and Robert Shaughnessy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. 80-95. Rutter, Carol Chillington. “Learning Thisby’s Part - or - What’s Hecuba to Him? ” Shakespeare Bulletin 22.3 (Fall 2004): 5-30. ―――. Shakespeare and Child’s Play: Performing Lost Boys on Stage and Screen. London: Routledge, 2007. ―――. “Playing with Boys on Middleton’s Stage - and Ours.” The Oxford Handbook of Thomas Middleton. Ed. Gary Taylor and Trish Thomas Henley. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. 98-114. <?page no="293"?> In the Company of Edward’s Boys 293 Ryan, Kiernan. “The Malcontent’: hunting the letter.” The Drama of John Marston. Ed. T. F. Wharton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. 145-161. Senapati, Sukanya. B. “‘Two parts in one’: Marston and masculinity.” The Drama of John Marston. Ed. T. F. Wharton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. 124-144. Shakespeare, William. The Complete Oxford Shakespeare. Ed. Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987. Stern, Tiffany. Rehearsal from Shakespeare to Sheridan. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007. Van Es, Bart. Shakespeare in Company. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Wharton, T. F. The Critical Fall and Rise of John Marston. Columbia: Camden House, 2004. Online References Dutton, Elisabeth. “Review: Westward Ho! ” http: / / www.edwardsboys.org/ ? page_id=57 [accessed 23 February 2015]. Jowett, John. “Review: A Chaste Maid in Cheapside.” http: / / www.edwardsboys.org/ ? page_id=49 [accessed 11 February 2015]. McMullan, Gordon. “Expert Opinion.” http: / / www.edwardsboys.org- / ? page_id=123 [accessed 25 January 2015] Munro, Lucy. “Review: Antonio’s Revenge.” http>/ / www.edwardsboys- .org/ ? page_id=46 (accessed 12 January 2015) Stern, Tiffany. “ Expert Opinion.” http: / / www.edwardsboys.org- / ? page_id=123 (accessed 25 January 2015) <?page no="295"?> Notes on Contributors S TEPHANIE A LLEN researches at the University of Fribourg, working on the Early Drama at Oxford project funded by the Swiss National Science Fund; she studies the influence of classical rhetoric on Oxford drama. Forthcoming publications include an article on Grimald’s Latin drama for Peter Happé, ed. Scriptural Drama. E FFIE B OTONAKI teaches literature at the Greek Open University. Her publications include Seventeenth-Century English Women’s Autobiographical Writings: Disclosing Enclosures. Lampeter: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2004, and several articles on court masques. S ARAH B RAZIL teaches medieval English literature at the University of Geneva. Her research explores figurative uses of clothing to convey concepts relating to the body. Forthcoming publications include a coauthored chapter, with Guillemette Bolens, in A Cultural History of Fashion in the Medieval Age, to be published by Berg in 2016. E LISABETH D UTTON is Professor of Medieval English at the University of Fribourg, and author of books and articles on medieval devotional writing, compilation, and drama. She co-founded (with James McBain) the Early Drama at Oxford project, and also researches Multilingual Shakespeare through performance. L YNN E NTERLINE is Nancy Perot Mulford Professor of English at Vanderbilt University. Her research explores the connections among rhetoric, emotion, gender and sexuality in renaissance literature: her most recent book, Shakespeare’s Schoolroom: Rhetoric, Discipline, Emotion. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012, investigates how Tudor grammar school training in ancient rhetoric shaped Shakespeare’s passions. <?page no="296"?> 296 Notes on Contributors A LEXANDRA F. J OHNSTON is Professor Emerita of English at the University of Toronto. She founded the Records of Early English Drama and co-edited REED volumes for York, Oxford University and City, and Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire (University of Toronto Press, 1979, 2004, and forthcoming). She has published extensively on early drama and directed for Poculi Ludique Societas. T AMÁS K ARÁTH is Lecturer in Medieval English Literature at the Institute of English and American Studies, Pázmány Péter Catholic University, Hungary. He has researched in the areas of medieval drama and devotion, and is currently working on the fifteenth-century textual tradition of translations of Richard Rolle. C AMILLE M ARSHALL researches at the University of Lausanne, where she works on the English mystery plays. Her doctoral thesis, under the supervision of Denis Renevey, is entitled “Dissent and Meekness in Performance: Conveying (Dis)Obedience with Emotions in Late Medieval Drama.” J AMES M C B AIN is post-doctoral researcher at Fribourg, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, on the Early Drama at Oxford project, which he co-founded (with Elisabeth Dutton). He is also Research Associate at St Catherine’s College, Oxford. His research considers legal language, rhetoric, and education in Tudor drama. J OHN J. M C G AVIN is Professor of Medieval Literature and Culture at the University of Southampton. He directed the Records of Early English Drama project “Middlesex/ Westminster: Eight Theatres North of the Thames” and is currently co-editing (with Ella Williamson) the REED volumes on South-East Scotland; his other publications include Theatricality and Narrative in Medieval and Early Modern Scotland. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007. A LEX M ILLS is the son of Perry Mills, and an alumnus of King Edward’s School and Edward’s Boys. He has a degree in English from the University of Oxford, and is writing a Master’s thesis on early modern <?page no="297"?> Notes on Contributors 297 boy players at King’s College, London. He has performed in several productions of the Early Drama at Oxford ( EDOX ) project, playing Dido in Gager’s tragedy Dido at Christ Church, Oxford (2013) and fronting the online EDOX documentary on John Bale, Three Laws in Oxford. P ERRY M ILLS is Deputy Head of King Edward’s School Stratford, where he is also Director of the boys’ company Edward’s Boys: the company has performed with great success in various venues including Shakespeare’s Globe, and has helped revive scholarly interest in the repertoires of early modern boy players. Perry has edited The Taming of the Shrew for the Cambridge School Shakespeare series and has written the Cambridge Shakespeare Student Guide to As You Like It. O LIVER M ORGAN teaches at the University of Geneva, where he is writing a doctorate on “Turn-taking in Shakespeare.” His research interests include early modern dramatic punctuation and typography, editing, rhetoric, pragmatics and conversation analysis. A LAN H. N ELSON is Professor Emeritus in the Department of English at the University of California, Berkeley. He has edited/ co-edited the Records of Early English Drama volumes for Cambridge, Oxford, and The Inns of Court (University of Toronto Press, 1989, 2004, 2010) and his other publications include Early Cambridge Theatre: University, College and Town Stages 1464-1720. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. M ICHELLE O’C ALLAGHAN is Professor of English Literature and Director of the Early Modern Research Centre at the University of Reading. Her research focuses on politics, sociability, and cultures of manuscript and print: her publications include The English Wits: Literature and Sociability in Early Modern England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006, and Thomas Middleton, Renaissance Dramatist. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009. O LIVIA R OBINSON is Lecturer in Medieval English at Brasenose College, Oxford. She has published on late medieval convent drama, and <?page no="298"?> 298 Notes on Contributors early printed copies of the works of Alain Chartier. She is writing a book on medieval English translation and dissemination of French verse, and its impact on the Chaucer canon. R OBERT S TAGG is a Wolfson Scholar at the University of Southampton: he is currently writing a book about Shakespeare’s imagination. He helped edit The Oxford Handbook of Victorian Poetry, and worked on a new edition of a Thomas Love Peacock novel for Cambridge University Press. <?page no="299"?> Index of Names Aesop, 195 Aethelwold of Winchester, 21 Alleyn, Edward, 160, 169 Alnwick, John, 97 Altman, Joel, 187-188 Ambrose of Milan, 23 Aphthonius, 188-189, 191, 204 Aristotle, 134, 136-137, 140 Arundel, Thomas, 38, 54, 59 Ascham, Roger, 178-179 Austin, J. L., 188 Bacon, Sir Nicholas, 233 Baldwin, T. W., 188 Barchiesi, Alessandro, 200-201 Barr, Helen, 74 Baxter, Margery, 98-101 Baxter, William, 99 Beadle, Richard, 27-28, 39-40, 45 Beam, Sara, 234 Beaumont, Francis, 186, 198, 198n, 247-248 Beckwith, Sarah, 28, 67 Benson, Frank, 286 Berenger of Tours, 23-24 Bernham, William, 97 Betteridge, Tom, 113-114 Binns, James, 134, 150 Bjork, David A., 21 Block, Katherine S., 92n Boas, Frederick, 132 Boccaccio, Giovanni, 143 Boleyn, Anne, 115 Brasbridge, Thomas, 166-168 Brinsley, John, 168, 219-222, 281 Brown, Georgia, 195 Browne, Robert, 164, 168 Brunswerd, John, 168 Bryson, Anna, 234, 237 Buc, George, 237 Buchanan, George, 116 Burre, Walter, 248 Burrell, John, 101 Burrow, Colin, 175 Butler, Martin, 268 Campion, Thomas, 256 Carew, Thomas, 264-265 Carpenter, Sarah, 63n Carr, Robert, 258 Cecil, William, 233 Chapman, George, 256 Charles I, 253-270 Charnes, Linda, 206n Chaucer, Geoffrey, 116 Chazelle, Celia, 23 Chedgzoy, Kate, 282 Chester Plays, 27-28; Abraham and Isaac, 56; Resurrection, 29 Chibnall, Jennifer, 263 Cinthio, Giovanni Battista Giraldi, 137-138 Clegg, Cyndia Susan, 228 Clifford, George, 235 Clifland, Johanna, 99-100, 101n Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 177 Coletti, Theresa, 66n Colie, Rosalie, 185-186 <?page no="300"?> Index of Names 300 Colwell, Thomas, 112 Cooper, Helen, 255 Courtenay, William, 60n Crockett, William R., 23 Crowley, Robert, 165-166, 168 Crowley, Timothy, 202n Cure, Thomas, 162 Daniel, Samuel, 259 Danvers, Sir John, 166 Davenant, William, 264, 266- 269 Davidge, John, 161 Davies, John, 235, 238 Davies, Jonathan, 229 Deats, Sara Munson, 201 Dekker, Thomas, 227-229, 241- 243 Demetriou, Tania, 138 Denores, Giason, 144, 146, 153 Devereux, Robert, 235 Dewar-Watson, Sarah, 134, 137 Dillon, Janette, 75-76 Dio Cassius, 149 Dobson, Barry, 48 Donne, John, 165 Douglas, Gavin, 116 Drummond, William, 117 Drury, Robert, 167 Dudley, Robert, 120-121, 233 Duffy, Eamon, 25 Dugdale, William, 232 Dutton, Elisabeth, 76, 79, 141n, 277 Elizabeth I, 112-115, 145, 175, 178-179, 233, 262-263 Elyot, Sir Thomas, 196n Enterline, Lynn, 117-118, 133, 174-175, 181, 219-220 Erasmus, 116, 132, 188, 191, 199, 229, 247 Euripides, 116, 140 Ferris, Lesley, 268 Field, Nathan, 167, 288 Field, Richard, 166 Finch, Heneage, 247 Finkelpearl, Philip J., 244 Fisher, Will, 282 Flannery, Mary C., 89 Fleetwood, Henry, 238 Fleetwood, Thomas, 238 Fletcher, Alan, 92 Ford, Philip, 132 Forrest, Ian, 59-60, 90-91, 104 Forrest, William, 122 Foxe, John, 97, 141n Franke, Humphrey, 161, 164n Furness, Horace Howard, 212, 214 Gager, William, 134-148, 151- 154; Ulysess Redux, 131-154 Gardner, John, 65 Gardner, Rod, 221 Gaytrick, John, 38 Gesta Grayorum, 236 Gildenhuys, Faith, 118-119 Goad, Thomas, 167 Goffe, Thomas, 133 Goodrich, Peter, 231-2, 234, 239-240 Gorboduc, 114 Granger, Penny, 67n, 72, 74-75, 78-79 Greenblatt, Stephen, 269 Grimald, Nicholas, 141n, 154 Guarini, Giovanni Battista, 138- 144, 146-148 Guilpin, Everard, 240 Gwinne, Matthew, 133-134, 141n, 148-154; Nero, 131- 154 Gwosdek, Hedwig, 176 Hall, Joseph, 240 <?page no="301"?> Index of Names 301 Harvard, John, 161 Harvey, Elizabeth, 194 Harvey, Gabriel, 239 Haste, Ian, 162 Haugen, Kristine, 229 Henry VIII, 113-114, 122, 176- 177, 233 Henslowe, Philip, 160, 169 Heywood, John, 112, 113-114 Heywood, Thomas, 186, 193, 197, 199-200 Holt, John, 213n Homer, 136-137, 140, 143, 196n Hoole, Charles, 177 Horace, 148 Hoskins, John, 245-246 Howard, Frances, 258 Hoxby, Blair, 265 Hudson, Anne, 61n, 67, 90, 97 Hughes, Ted, 148 Hutson, Lorna, 191n Hutten, Leonard, 133 Ingram, William, 162 James I, 253-270 Jenkins, Thomas, 180 John of Exeter, 91, 97-102, 108 Johnson, Samuel, 213n Johnston, Alexandra F., 83, 166n Jones, Emrys, 11, 173-174, 187- 188 Jones, Inigo, 264 Jonson, Ben, 159, 170, 227-230, 242-246, 256-263, 270, 277; Barriers at a Marriage, 256; Cynthia's Revels, 230, 277; Every Man Out of His Humour, 227, 230, 242, 245-246; Golden Age Restored, 256, 258, 260, 263; Haddington Masque, 260; Love Restored, 257, 260- 262; Masque of Blackness, 256; Masque of Queens, 259; Neptune’s Triumph, 258-259, 270; Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue, 256; Poetaster, 227- 228, 230, 241-242; Staple of News, 170 Jowett, John, 277 Jurkowski, Maureen, 97 Justice, Steven, 98 Kempe, William, 175 Kermode, Frank, 214 King, Pamela, 28, 67n Kinney, Arthur, 229 Kirchmeyer, Thomas, 141n Kirsch, Arthur, 142 Kittredge, George, 212 Knutson, Roslyn, 228 Kyd, Thomas, 118, 133 Kynget, John, 102 Lamb, Edel, 230, 282, 287-288 La Primaudaye, Pierre de, 145 Legge, Thomas, 149 Legh, Gerard, 231-234 Leonidas, Eric, 132 Lesser, Zachary, 248 Lily, William, 175-178, 180-181, 195-196 Lindley, David, 258-259, 265 Listrius, Girardus, 247-248 Lodge, Thomas, 186-187, 193, 196-199, 207 Longland, John, 97 Lorich, Reinhard, 188 Louth, Andrew, 24 Love, Nicholas, 38 Lucian, 229 Lyly, John, 126, 145 Lyndsay, Sir David, 113, 116, 120-121, 125 <?page no="302"?> Index of Names 302 Lyne, Raphael, 214 Machyn, Henry, 112 Mack, Peter, 278 Macy, Gary, 24-25 Magnusson, Lynne, 239 Marcion of Sinope, 19 Marcus, Leah, 214n Marlowe, Christopher, 186-187, 197, 201-207; Dido, Queen of Carthage, 187, 201-207; Hero and Leander, 197 Marston, John, 186, 190, 227- 229, 240, 243-246, 277; Certaine Satyres, 240; Dutch Courtesan, 277, 284; Fawne, 243; Histriomastix, 228; Jack Drum's Entertainment, 227- 228, 243, 246; Metamorphosis of Pigmalion’s Image, 190; Scourge of Villanie, 240, 246; What You Will, 227-228 Martin, Richard, 235, 238, 243 McMullan, Gordon, 285-286 McMurray Gibson, Gail, 75n, 66n McNamer, Sarah, 26 McSheffrey, Shannon, 97 Meredith, Peter, 66n Middleton, Thomas, 277-279, 281 Molin, Nicolo, 262 More, Thomas, 229 Morgan, David, 26 Morris, Colin, 20 Mulcaster, Richard, 189 Munro, Lucy, 230, 277 Nashe, Thomas, 239 Nice Wanton, 114 Normington, Katie, 72-73 North, Thomas, 179-180 N-Town Plays, 30, 72-84, 89- 108; Abraham and Isaac, 56; Announcement to the Three Marys, 30-31, 94; Betrayal, 94; Cleophas and Luke, 94, 107; Conspiracy, 92-93, 105-106; Last Supper, 106; Magi, 92; Moses, 105; Parliament of Heaven, 94-95; Salutation and Conception, 75; Trial Before Annas and Cayphas, 107; Trial of Mary and Joseph, 96-97, 105; Visit to Elizabeth, 73-79; Woman Taken in Adultery, 95- 96, 105-106 Ockland, Christopher, 162, 165 Oosterwijk, Sophie, 65n Ordo Paginarum, 40 Orgel, Stephen, 218, 224 Ostovich, Helen, 242 Overbury, Thomas, 258 Ovid, 176, 178, 187, 189, 193- 204, 196n, 207, 281 Palmer, Barbara, 66 Parkes, Malcolm, 66 Parnassus Plays, 170, 227, 240- 241 Parry, Graham, 255, 263 Pechum, John, 38 Pecock, Reginald, 93 Petronius, 154n Phillip, John, 112-115, 117, 121-122, 125-127; Comedy of Patient and Meek Grissill, 111- 128 Phillips, Edward, 166, 168 Pigott-Smith, Tim, 287 Plummer, John F., 103 Plutarch, 179 Pope, Alexander, 212 Potter, Ursula, 114-115 Pudsey, Edward, 243 <?page no="303"?> Index of Names 303 Puttenham, George, 145, 245 Quarles, Francis, 176 Quintilian, 189 Radbertus, 23 Raffield, Paul, 231-232, 239, 242 Ratcliffe, Thomas, 166, 168 Ratramnus, 23 Ravenscroft, Thomas, 277 Rawlings, Thomas, 166-167 Redford, John, 174 Regularis Concordia, 21-23 Rex, Richard, 67n Rhodes, Neil, 188 Richard, Duke of Gloucester, 40 Riggs, David, 202 Robert of Basevorn, 57 Rowe, Nicholas, 169, 212 Rudyerd, Benjamin, 231, 235- 236, 238-239 Rutter, Carol, 281 Sandys, George, 176 Scherb, Victor I., 121 Schmidt, Gary, 147 Senapati, Sukanya B., 281 Seneca, 116, 140, 150, 152-153, 154n Shakespeare, Edmund, 161 Shakespeare, William, 123, 126- 127, 133, 159-161, 168-170, 173-182, 186, 193-195, 199, 206, 211-224, 248; Anthony and Cleopatra, 179-180; As You Like It, 181; Comedy of Errors, 160; Hamlet, 118, 133, 175, 180, 216-217; 1 Henry IV, 215-217; Henry V, 160, 286-288; 1 Henry VI, 174; Love’s Labour’s Lost, 160; Macbeth, 133; Merry Wives of Windsor, 160, 169, 180-181, 195; Midsummer Night’s Dream, 126-128; Much Ado About Nothing, 178; Rape of Lucrece, 166, 193-195; Taming of the Shrew, 160, 177, 180; Tempest, 211-224; Titus Andronicus, 118; Troilus and Cressida, 185-186, 248; Twelfth Night, 160; Venus and Adonis, 166, 190, 199 Sharpham, Edward, 243-244 Sharrock, John, 165 Shenk, Linda, 134 Shepreve, John, 116 Sidney, Sir Philip, 145, 154 Skoda, Hannah, 249 Skylly, John, 102 Smart, William, 176 Smith, Emma, 150-151 Sophocles, 140 Spector, Stephen, 79 Spenser, Edmund, 198 Squires, Lynn, 93 Stern, Tiffany, 281, 283 Stoppard, Tom, 179 Strong, Roy, 264 Sturgess, Keith, 263 Suetonius, 149 Sugano, Douglas, 92 Sutton, Dana F., 134 Sutton, Thomas, 167-168 Tacitus, 150 Taylor, Andrew, 132 Terence, 141n, 163-164, 169 Theobald, Lewis, 213-214, 218, 224 Thomson, John A.F., 90 Thoresby, John, 38, 48 Towneley Plays, 27-28, 53-68; Abraham [Isaac], 54-57, 65, <?page no="304"?> Index of Names 304 68; Murder of Abel, 54, 57-63, 65, 67-68; Resurrection, 29-30; Second Shepherds’ Play, 65 Townshend, Aurelian, 264-265 Tretise of Miraclis Pleyinge, 63-64 Tumelson, Ronald, 214n Turner, Victor, 231 Twycross, Meg, 27n, 63n, 64-65 Van Es, Bart, 286-287 Veevers, Erica, 264 Venuti, Lawrence, 78 Vickers, Brian, 217 Vinzent, Markus, 19 Virgil, 116, 178, 195-197, 196n, 201-207 Vives, Juan Luis, 132 Visitatio Sepulchri, 17, 21-23, 28, 30 Wakefield Master, 65-66 Walker, Greg, 113-114 Wallace, Andrew, 181 Walter, Katie L., 89 Waters, Claire, 57, 60 Watkins, Thomas, 161 Watson, Nicholas, 59n Weaver, William, 193-194 Weever, John, 240 Weinberg, Bernard, 138, 139n Wellesley, Mary, 77n West, Russell, 257 Westcott, Sebastian, 112 Wharton, T.F., 277 White, William, 97, 99 Wiggins, Martin, 114 Wilson, Arthur, 262 Wolsey, Thomas, 196n Woolf, Rosemary, 56 Yelverton, Henry, 166 York Plays, 27, 37-49; Ascension, 45; Assumption of the Virgin, 43; Baptism, 39; Building of the Ark, 41; Christ Before Herod, 44; Christ’s Appearance to Mary Magdalene, 41-42, 46; Creation of Adam and Eve, 42; Crucifixio Christi, 45; Death of the Virgin, 43; Doomsday, 46; Fall of Man, 41; Flight Into Egypt, 41; Incredulity of Thomas, 44, 46; Joseph’s Trouble about Mary, 41; Judgement, 43-44; Mortificacio Christi, 39, 46; Nativity, 42-43; Pentecost, 45; Purification of the Virgin, 41; Resurrection, 27-28, 64-65 <?page no="306"?> Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature (SPELL) Edited by The Swiss Association of University Teachers of English (SAUTE) General Editor: Lukas Erne Already published: 1 Anthony Mortimer (ed.) Contemporary Approaches to Narrative 1984, 129 Seiten €[D] 16,- ISBN 978-3-87808-841-7 2 Richard Waswo (ed.) On Poetry and Poetics 1985, 212 Seiten €[D] 21,- ISBN 978-3-87808-842-4 3 Udo Fries (ed.) The Structure of Texts 1987, 264 Seiten €[D] 26,- ISBN 978-3-87808-843-1 4 Neil Forsyth (ed.) Reading Contexts 1988, 198 Seiten €[D] 21,- ISBN 978-3-87808-844-8 5 Margaret Bridges (ed.) On Strangeness 1990, 239 Seiten €[D] 23,- ISBN 978-3-8233-4680-7 6 Balz Engler (ed.) Writing & Culture 1990, 253 Seiten €[D] 24,- ISBN 978-3-8233-4681-4 7 Andreas Fischer (ed.) Repetition 1994, 268 Seiten €[D] 34,- ISBN 978-3-8233-4682-1 8 Peter Hughes / Robert Rehder (eds.) Imprints & Re-visions The Making of the Literary Text, 1759- 1818 1995, 241 Seiten €[D] 34,- ISBN 978-3-8233-4683-8 9 Werner Senn (ed.) Families 1996, 282 Seiten €[D] 36,- ISBN 978-3-8233-4684-5 10 John G. Blair / Reinhold Wagnleitner (eds.) Empire American Studies Selected papers from the bi-national conference of the Swiss and Austrian Associations for American Studies at the Salzburg Seminar, November 1996 1997, 275 Seiten €[D] 36,- ISBN 978-3-8233-4685-2 11 Peter Halter (ed.) Performance 1998, 226 Seiten €[D] 36,- ISBN 978-3-8233-4686-9 <?page no="307"?> 12 Fritz Gysin (ed.) Apocalypse 2000, 130 Seiten €[D] 29,- ISBN 978-3-8233-4687-6 13 Lukas Erne / Guillemette Bolens (eds.) The Limits of Textuality 2000, 204 Seiten €[D] 34,- ISBN 978-3-8233-4688-3 14 Martin Heusser / Gudrun Grabher (eds.) American Foundational Myths 2002, 224 Seiten €[D] 39,- ISBN 978-3-8233-4689-0 15 Frances Ilmberger / Alan Robinson (eds.) Globalisation 2002, 193 seiten €[D] 39,- ISBN 978-3-8233-4690-6 16 Beverly Maeder (ed.) Representing Realities Essays on American Literature, Art and Culture 2003, 228 Seiten €[D] 39,- ISBN 978-3-8233-6040-7 17 David Spurr / Cornelia Tschichold (eds.) The Space of English 2004, 322 Seiten €[D] 58,- ISBN 978-3-8233-6122-0 18 Robert Rehder / Patrick Vincent (eds.) American Poetry Whitman to the Present 2006, 238 Seiten €[D] 49,- ISBN 978-3-8233-6271-5 19 Balz Engler / Lucia Michalcak (eds.) Cultures in Contact 2007, 210 Seiten €[D] 49,- ISBN 978-3-8233-6272-2 20 Deborah L. Madsen (ed.) American Aesthetics 2007, 241 Seiten €[D] 49,- ISBN 978-3-8233-6372-9 21 Martin Heusser / Andreas Fischer / Andreas H. Jucker (eds.) Mediality / Intermediality 2008, 170 Seiten €[D] 49,- ISBN 978-3-8233-6457-3 22 Indira Ghose / Denis Renevey (eds.) The Construction of Textual Identity in Medieval and Early Modern Literature 2009, 222 Seiten €[D] 49,- ISBN 978-3-8233-6520-4 23 Thomas Austenfeld / Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet (eds.) Writing American Women 2009, 232 Seiten €[D] 49,- ISBN 978-3-8233-6521-1 24 Karen Junod / Didier Maillat (eds.) Performing the Self 2010, 196 Seiten €[D] 49,- ISBN 978-3-8233-6613-3 25 Guillemette Bolens / Lukas Erne (eds.) Medieval and Early Modern Authorship 2011, 323 Seiten €[D] 49,- ISBN 978-3-8233-6667-6 <?page no="308"?> 26 Deborah L. Madsen / Mario Klarer (eds.) The Visual Culture of Modernism 2011, 265 Seiten €[D] 49,- ISBN 978-3-8233-6673-7 27 Annette Kern-Stähler / David Britain (eds.) English on the Move Mobilities in Literature and Language 2012, 171 Seiten €[D] 49,- ISBN 978-3-8233-6739-0 28 Rachel Falconer / Denis Renevey (eds.) Medieval and Early Modern Literature, Science and Medicine 2013, 256 Seiten €[D] 49,- ISBN 978-3-8233-6820-5 29 Christina Ljungberg / Mario Klarer (eds.) Cultures in Conflict/ Conflicting Cultures 2013, 209 Seiten €[D] 49,- ISBN 978-3-8233-6829-8 30 Andreas Langlotz / Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet (eds.) Emotion, Affect, Sentiment: The Language and Aesthetics of Feeling 2014, 268 Seiten €[D] 49,- ISBN 978-3-8233-6889-2 31 Elisabeth Dutton / James McBain (eds.) Drama and Pedagogy in Medieval and Early Modern England 2015, 304 Seiten €[D] 49,- ISBN 978-3-8233-6968-4 32 Ridvan Askin / Philipp Schweighauser (eds.) Literature, Ethics, Morality: American Studies Perspectives 2015, 238 Seiten €[D] 49,- ISBN 978-3-8233-6967-7 <?page no="309"?> SPELL Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 31 This wide-ranging volume explores relationships between drama and pedagogy in the medieval and early modern periods, with contributions from an international field of scholars including a number of leading authorities. Across the medieval and early modern periods, drama is seen to be a way of disseminating theological and philosophical ideas. In medieval England, when literacy was low and the liturgy in Latin, drama translated and transformed spiritual truths, embodying them for a wider audience than could be reached by books alone. In Tudor England, humanist belief in the validity and potential of drama as a pedagogical tool informs the interlude, and examples of dramatized instruction abound on early modern stages. Academic drama is a particularly pregnant locus for the exploration of drama and pedagogy: universities and the Inns of Court trained some of the leading playwrights of the early theatre, but also supplied methods and materials that shaped professional playhouse compositions.