MORALITIES, PUPPET-PLAYS, AND PAGEANTS
[_Bibliographical Note._—The English moralities are well
treated from a literary point of view in the books by Ten
Brink, Ward, Creizenach, Pollard, Collier, Klein, Symonds,
Bates, Jusserand, and Courthope, named in the bibliographical
note to Chapter xxi, and also in the Introduction to A. Brandl,
_Quellen des weltlichen Dramas in England vor Shakespeare_
(1898). Some texts not easily available elsewhere are given in
the same book; others are in Dodsley’s _A Select Collection of
Old English Plays_ (ed. W. C. Hazlitt, 1874-6), vol. i, and J.
M. Manly, _Specimens of the Pre-Shakespearean Drama_ (1897),
vol. i. Extracts are given by Pollard. Lists both of popular
moralities and of moral interludes will be found in Appendix X.
The French plays of a similar type are dealt with by L. Petit
de Julleville, _La Comédie et les Mœurs en France au Moyen
Âge_ (1886) and _Répertoire du Théâtre comique en France au
Moyen Âge_ (1886).—On puppet-plays, C. Magnin, _Histoire des
Marionnettes en Europe_ (1852), and A. Dieterich, _Pulcinella_
(1897), may be consulted. The traditional text of the stock
English play is printed, with illustrations by G. Cruikshank,
in J. P. Collier, _Punch and Judy_ (1870). English pageants at
the Corpus Christi feast and at royal entries are discussed
by C. Davidson, _English Mystery Plays_ (1892), § xvii, and
Sir J. B. Paul, in _Scottish Review_, xxx (1897), 217, and
the corresponding French _mystères mimés_ by L. Petit de
Julleville, _Les Mystères_ (1880).]
I have endeavoured to trace from its ritual origins the full development
of that leading and characteristic type of mediaeval drama, the
miracle-play. I now propose to deal, very briefly, with certain further
outgrowths which, in the autumn of the Middle Ages, sprang from the
miracle-play stock; and a final book will endeavour to bring together
the scattered threads of this discursive inquiry, and to touch upon that
transformation of the mediaeval into the humanist type of drama, which
prepared the way for the great Elizabethan stage.
The miracle-play lent itself to modification in two directions: firstly,
by an extension of its subject-matter; and secondly, by an adaptation
of its themes and the methods to other forms of entertainment which,
although mimetic, were not, in the full sense of the term, dramatic.
There are a few plays upon record which were apparently represented
after the traditional manner of miracles, but differ from these in that
they treat subjects not religious, but secular. Extant examples must
be sought in the relics, not of the English, but of the continental
drama. The earliest is the French _Estoire de Griselidis_, a version
of the story familiar in Chaucer’s _Clerkes Tale_, which was written
and acted, according to the manuscript, in 1395[427]. Slightly later is
a Dutch manuscript which contains, amongst other things, probably the
_répertoire_ of some _compagnie joyeuse_, three plays on the subjects
respectively of Esmoreit, Gloriant of Brunswick, and Lanseloet and
Sanderijn[428]. Both the French and Dutch plays belong to what may be
called the wider circle of chivalric romance. An obvious link between
such pieces and the ordinary miracle-play is to be found in those of
the _Miracles de Nostre Dame_ which, like _Amis et Amiles_ or _Robert
le Diable_, also handle topics of chivalric romance, but only such as
are brought technically within the scope of the miracle-play by the
intervention of the Virgin at some point of the action[429]. Similarly,
another French play, dating from about 1439, on the subject, drawn not
from romance but from contemporary history, of the Siege of Orleans,
may be explained by the sanctity already attributed in the national
imagination to Joan of Arc, who is naturally its leading figure[430].
But the usual range of subject was certainly departed from when Jacques
Millet, a student at Orleans, compiled, between 1450 and 1452, an immense
_mystère_ in 30,000 lines on the _Istoire de la destruction de Troye la
grant_[431]. In England, the few examples of the mingling of secular
elements with the miracle-plays which present themselves during the
sixteenth century can hardly be regarded as mediaeval[432]. The only
theme which need be noticed here is that of King Robert of Sicily. A play
on this hero, revived at the High Cross at Chester in 1529, is stated
in a contemporary letter to have been originally written in the reign
of Henry VII. But a still earlier _ludus de Kyng Robert of Cesill_ is
recorded in the Lincoln _Annales_ under the year 1453.
Far more important than this slight secular extension of miracle-plays
is another development in the direction of allegory, giving rise to
the ‘moral plays’ or ‘moralities,’ as they came to be indifferently
called[433], in which the characters are no longer scriptural or
legendary persons, but wholly, or almost wholly, abstractions, and which,
although still religious in intention, aim rather at ethical cultivation
than the stablishing of faith. The earliest notices of morals are found
about the end of the fourteenth century, at a time when the influence
of the _Roman de la Rose_ and other widely popular works was bringing
every department of literature under the sway of allegory[434]. That the
drama also should be touched with the spirit of the age was so inevitable
as hardly to call for comment. But it will be interesting to point out
some at least of the special channels through which the new tendency
established itself. In the first place there is the twelfth-century
Latin play of _Antichristus_. In a sense the whole content of this may
be called allegorical, and the allegory becomes formal in such figures
as _Heresis_ and _Ypocrisis_, _Iustitia_ and _Misericordia_, and in
those of _Ecclesia_, _Synagoga_, and _Gentilitas_, suggested to the
clerkly author by a well-known _disputatio_. The same theme recurs in
more than one later play[435]. Secondly, there is the theme of the
Reconciliation of the Heavenly Virtues, which is suggested by the
words of the eighty-fifth Psalm: ‘Mercy and Truth are met together:
Righteousness and Peace have kissed each other.’ This is treated in two
unprinted and little known French plays, also of the twelfth century,
which I have not as yet had occasion to mention and of which I borrow the
following analysis from Dr. Ward: ‘These four virtues appear personified
as four sisters, who meet together after the Fall of Man before the
throne of God to conduct one of those disputations which were so much in
accordance with the literary tastes of the age; Truth and Righteousness
speak against the guilty Adam, while Mercy and Peace plead in his favour.
Concord is restored among the four sisters by the promise of a Saviour,
who shall atone to Divine Justice on behalf of man.’ One of these pieces
is ascribed to the Anglo-Norman poet, Guillaume Herman (1127-70),
the other to Stephen Langton, afterwards archbishop of Canterbury.
They are generally spoken of as literary exercises, not intended for
representation[436]. But it is obvious that they might very well find
their places in miracle-play cycles, as links between the scenes dealing
respectively with the Fall and the Redemption. Further, precisely such
an episode, in precisely such a position, does occur, three hundred
years later, in the English cycle known as the _Ludus Coventriae_. Nor
is this the only allegorical element which distinguishes a certain part
of this patchwork cycle from nearly all the other English plays[437]. It
is not, perhaps, of great importance that in the Assumption scene the
risen Christ receives the name of _Sapientia_, or that _Contemplatio_
is the ‘exposytour in doctorys wede,’ by whom several other scenes are
introduced. But there is a striking passage at the end of the Slaughter
of the Innocents, where ‘Dethe, Goddys masangere,’ intervenes to make
an end of the tyrannic Herod[438], and here, I think, may clearly be
traced yet a third stream of allegorical tendency making its way into
the drama from that singular _danse macabre_ or ‘Dance of Death,’ which
exercised so powerful a fascination on the art of the Middle Ages. Death
hobnobbing with pope and king and clown, with lord and lady, with priest
and merchant, with beggar and fool, the irony is familiar in many a long
series of frescoes and engravings. Nor are cases lacking in which it
was directly adapted for scenic representation. An alleged example at
Paris in 1424 was probably only a painting. But in 1449 a _certain jeu,
histoire et moralité sur le fait de la danse macabre_ was acted before
Philip the Good at Bruges, and a similar performance is recorded at
Besançon in 1453[439].
The process of introducing abstractions into the miracle-plays themselves
does not seem to have been carried very far. On the other hand, the
moralities, if God and the Devil may be regarded as abstractions, admit
of nothing else. Two at least of the motives just enumerated, the Dance
of Death and the Reconciliation of the Heavenly Virtues, recur in them.
But both are subordinate to a third, which may be called the Conflict of
Vice and Virtue. This _débat_-like theme is of course familiar in every
branch of allegorical literature. Prof. Creizenach traces one type of it,
in which the conflict is conceived under the symbols of siege or battle,
to the _Psychomachia_ of Prudentius[440], and perhaps even further to
the passage about the ‘whole armour of God’ in St. Paul’s epistle to the
Ephesians[441]. For the purposes of the stage it is eminently suitable,
both because it lends itself to many and various modes of representation,
and because conflict is the very stuff out of which drama is wrought.
As the earliest notices of moralities are found in English records and as
this particular development of the drama is thoroughly well represented
in English texts, I may save space by confining my attention to these,
merely noting as I pass the contemporary existence of precisely parallel
records and texts on the continent and particularly in France[442]. The
first English moralities seem to have been known as _Paternoster_ plays.
Such a play is mentioned by Wyclif about 1378 as existing at York, and
at some date previous to 1389 a special guild _Orationis Domini_ was
founded in that city for its maintenance. The play, however, survived the
guild, and was acted from time to time as a substitute for the ordinary
Corpus Christi plays up to 1572. Similarly, at Beverley a _Paternoster_
play was acted by the crafts, probably in emulation of that of York,
in 1469, while a third is mentioned in Lincoln documents as played at
various dates from 1397 to 1521. Although all these _Paternoster_ plays
are lost, their general character can be made clear. In that of York ‘all
manner of vices and sins were held up to scorn and the virtues were held
up to praise,’ while an incidental entry in a _computus_ shows that one
division of it was known as the _ludus accidiae_. The information to be
derived from Beverley is even more explicit. There were eight pageants.
One was assigned to ‘Vicious,’ probably a typical representative of frail
humanity, the other seven to the seven deadly sins which beset him,
‘Pryde: Invy: Ire: Avaryce: Sleweth (or Accidie): Glotony: Luxuria.’
The _Paternoster_ play seems, therefore, to have been in some fashion a
dramatization of the struggle of the vices and the corresponding virtues
for the soul of man, and the name given to it may be explained by the
mediaeval notion that each clause of the Lord’s Prayer was of specific
merit against one of the deadly sins[443]. Here then is one version of
just that theme of the Conflict of Vice and Virtue noted as dominant in
the moralities.
Of the half dozen extant English moralities which can with any
plausibility be assigned to the fifteenth century, two are based upon
a motive akin to that of the Dance of Death. These are the fragmentary
_Pride of Life_, which is the earliest of the group, and _Everyman_,
which is by far the finest[444]. In the former Death and Life contend
for the soul of _Rex Vivus_, the representative of humanity, who is only
saved from the fiends by the intervention of the Virgin. In the latter,
God sends Death to summon Everyman, who finds to his dismay that of
all his earthly friends only Good Deeds is willing to accompany him.
The Conflict of Vice and Virtue is resumed in the moral of _Mundus et
Infans_ and in the three morals of the Macro manuscript, the _Castle of
Perseverance_, _Mind, Will and Understanding_, and _Mankind_. In all
four plays the representative of humanity, _Infans_ or _Humanum Genus_
or _Anima_ or Mankind, is beset by the compulsion or swayed this way and
that by the persuasion of allegorized good and bad qualities. At the end
of the _Castle of Perseverance_ the motive of the Reconciliation of the
Heavenly Virtues is introduced in a scene closely resembling that of the
_Ludus Coventriae_ or the earlier essays of Guillaume Herman and Stephen
Langton.
A somewhat unique position between miracle-play and morality is occupied
by the Mary Magdalen drama contained in the Digby manuscript. The
action of this, so far as it is scriptural or legendary, has already
been summarized[445]; but it must now be added that the episodes of
the secular life of the Magdalen _in gaudio_ are conceived in a wholly
allegorical vein. The ‘kyngs of the world and the flesch’ and the ‘prynse
of dylles’ are introduced with the seven deadly sins and a good and
a bad angel. The castle of Magdala, like the castle of Perseverance,
is besieged. The Magdalen is led into a tavern by _Luxuria_ and there
betrayed by Curiosity, a gallant. We have to do less with a mystery
beginning to show morality elements than with a deliberate combination
effected by a writer familiar with both forms of drama.
The manner of presentation of the fifteenth-century moralities did not
differ from that of the contemporary miracle-plays. The manuscript of the
_Castle of Perseverance_ contains a prologue delivered by _vexillatores_
after the fashion of the _Ludus Coventriae_ and the Croxton _Sacrament_.
There is also, as in the Cornish mysteries published by Mr. Norris, a
diagram showing a circular ‘place’ bounded by a ditch or fence, with a
central ‘castel’ and five ‘skaffoldys’ for the principal performers.
Under the castle is ‘Mankynde, is bed’ and near it ‘Coveytyse cepbord.’
The scaffolds are the now familiar _loca_ or _sedes_. The scantier
indications of more than one of the other moralities proper suggest
that they also were performed in an outdoor ‘place’ with _sedes_, and a
similar arrangement is pointed to by the stage directions of the _Mary
Magdalen_. Nor could the moralities dispense with those attractions of
devils and hell-fire which had been so popular in their predecessors.
Belial, in the _Castle of Perseverance_, is to have gunpowder burning
in pipes in his hands and ears and other convenient parts of his body;
_Anima_, in _Mind, Will and Understanding_, has little devils running
in and out beneath her skirts; and in _Mary Magdalen_, the ‘prynse of
dylles’ enters in ‘a stage, and Helle ondyr-neth that stage.’ The later
moralities, of which the sixteenth century affords several examples, were
presented under somewhat different conditions, which will be discussed in
another chapter[446]. Allusions to the ‘morals at Manningtree,’ however,
in the beginning of the seventeenth century, suggest that moralities may
have continued in out-of-the-way places to hold the open-air stage, just
as miracle-plays here and there did, to a comparatively late date. Actual
examples of the more popular type of morality from the sixteenth century
are afforded by Skelton’s _Magnificence_ and by Sir David Lyndsay’s
_Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis_, shown successively at Linlithgow in 1540,
on the Castle-hill at Cupar of Fife in 1552, and in the Greenside at
Edinburgh about 1554. This remarkable piece differs in many ways from the
English moralities. The theme consists of the arraignment of the estates
of the realm before _Rex Humanitas_. Various ‘vycis’ and allegorical
personages appear and plead, and the action is enlivened by farcical
interludes for the amusement of the vulgar, and wound up by a sermon of
‘Folie,’ which points rather to French than to English models[447]. The
flight of time is also shown by the fact that the _Satyre_ aims less at
the moral edification with which the fifteenth-century plays contented
themselves, than at the introduction of a sharp polemic against abuses in
church and state. Skelton’s _Magnificence_ had also, not improbably, some
political bearing. To this matter also I return in another chapter[448].
Miracle-plays and moralities ranked amongst the most widespread and
coloured elements, century after century, of burgher and even of
village life. It is not surprising that their subjects and their
methods exercised a powerful influence upon other manifestations of the
mediaeval spirit. The share which their vivid and sensuous presentations
of religious ideas had in shaping the conceptions of artists and
handicraftsmen is a fascinating topic of far too wide a scope to be even
touched upon here[449]. But a few pages must be devoted to indicating
the nature of their overflow into various pseudo-dramatic, rather than
strictly dramatic, forms of entertainment.
One of these is the puppet-show. It has been pointed out, in speaking
of the liturgical drama, that the use of puppets to provide a figured
representation of the mystery of the Nativity, seems to have preceded
the use for the same purpose of living and speaking persons; and
further, that the puppet-show, in the form of the ‘Christmas crib,’ has
outlived the drama founded upon it, and is still in use in all Catholic
countries[450]. An analogous custom is the laying of the crucifix in
the ‘sepulchre’ during the Easter ceremonies, and there is one English
example of a complete performance of a Resurrection play by ‘certain
smalle puppets, representinge the Persons of Christe, the Watchmen, Marie
and others.’ This is described by a seventeenth-century writer as taking
place at Witney in Oxfordshire ‘in the dayes of ceremonial religion,’ and
one of the watchmen, which made a clacking noise, was ‘comonly called
Jack Snacker of Wytney[451].’ This points to the use of some simple
mechanical device by which motion was imparted to some at least of the
puppets. A similar contrivance was produced by Bishop Barlow to point a
sermon against idolatry at Paul’s Cross in 1547 and was given afterwards
to the boys to break into pieces[452]. More elaborate representations of
miracle-plays by means of moving puppets or _marionnettes_ make their
appearance in all parts of Europe at a period when the regular dramatic
performances of similar subjects were already becoming antiquated, nor
can they be said to be even yet quite extinct[453]. Most of them belong
to the repertory of the professional showmen, and it will be remembered
that some form or other of _marionnette_ seems to have been handed
down continuously amongst the minstrel class from Roman times[454]. In
England the puppet-shows were much in vogue at such places as Bartholomew
Fair, where they became serious rivals of the living actors[455]. The
earliest name for them was ‘motions[456].’ Italian players brought ‘an
instrument of strange motions’ to London in 1574[457]. Autolycus, in
_The Winter’s Tale_, amongst his other shifts for a living, ‘compassed
a motion of the Prodigal Son[458].’ Ben Jonson, in _Bartholomew Fair_,
introduces one Lanthorn Leatherhead, a puppet-showman, who presents in
his booth a curious rigmarole of a motion in which Hero and Leander,
Damon and Pythias, and Dionysius are all mixed up[459]. It would appear
to have been customary for the showman, like his brethren of the modern
Punch and Judy, to ‘interpret’ for the puppets by reciting a suitable
dialogue as an accompaniment to their gestures[460]. The repertory
of Lanthorn Leatherhead contained a large proportion of ‘motions’ on
subjects borrowed from the miracle-play. Similar titles occur in the
notices of later performances at Bartholomew Fair[461] and of those
given by the popular London showman, Robert Powell, during the reign
of Queen Anne[462]. In more recent times all other puppet-shows have
been outdone by the unique vogue of Punch and Judy[463]. The derivation
of these personages from the Pontius Pilate and Judas Iscariot of the
miracle-plays is the merest philological whimsy. Punch is doubtless the
Pulcinella[464], who makes his appearance about 1600 as a stock figure
in the impromptu comedy of Naples. Under other names his traditions may,
for all one knows, go back far beyond the miracle-plays to the _fabulae
Atellanae_. But the particular drama in which alone he now takes the
stage, although certainly not a miracle-play, follows closely upon the
traditional lines of the moralities[465].
Another kind of religious dumb-show, at once more ancient and more
important than that of the puppets, was presented by living persons
in the ‘ridings’ or processions which formed an integral part of so
many mediaeval festivals. Like the miracle-plays themselves, these
_tableaux_ reached their highest point of elaboration in connexion with
the ceremonies of Corpus Christi day; and, in order to understand their
relation to the regular dramas, it is necessary to return for a moment
to the early history of the great feast. It has already been suggested
that the processional character of the great English craft-cycles, with
their movable pageants and their ‘stations,’ may be explained on the
hypothesis, that the performances were at one time actually given during
the ‘stations’ or pauses before temporary street altars of the Corpus
Christi procession itself. The obvious inconveniences of such a custom,
if it really existed, might not unnaturally lead to its modification.
Except at Draguignan, where the dialogue was reduced to the briefest
limits, no actual traces of it are left[466]. In England the difficulty
seems to have been solved at Newcastle by sending the pageants round with
the procession in the early morning and deferring the actual plays until
the afternoon. At Coventry representatives of the _dramatis personae_
appear to have ridden in the procession, the cumbrous pageants being
left behind until they were needed. Herod, for instance, rode on behalf
of the smiths. At other places, again, the separation between procession
and play was even more complete. The crafts which produced the plays were
as a rule also burdened by their ordinances with the duties of providing
a light and of walking or riding in honour of the host; but the two
ceremonies took place at different hours on the same day, and there was
no external relation, so far as the evidence goes, between them. Even
so there was still some clashing, and at York, after an unsuccessful
attempt on the part of the clergy in 1426 to get the plays put off, the
procession itself appears to have been transferred to the following day.
On the other hand the difficulty seems to have been met in certain towns
by suppressing the plays and reducing them to dumb-show ‘pageants’
carried in the procession. Lists are extant of such pageants as they
were assigned to the crafts at Dublin in 1498 and at Hereford in 1503,
and although it is not of course impossible that there were to be
plays later in the day, there is no proof that this was the case. For
a similar procession of _tableaux_ held in London, in the earlier part
of the fifteenth century, a set of descriptive verses was written by
John Lydgate, and the adoption of this method of ‘interpreting’ the
dumb-show seems to put the possibility of a regular dramatic performance
out of court[467]. There were pageants also in the Corpus Christi
processions at Bungay and at Bury St. Edmunds, but the notices are too
fragmentary to permit of more than a conjecture as to whether they were
accompanied by plays. The _tableaux_ shown at Dublin, Hereford, and
London were of a continuous and cyclical character, although at Hereford
St. Catherine, and at Dublin King Arthur, the Nine Worthies, and St.
George’s dragon were tacked on at the tail of the procession[468]. A
continental parallel is afforded by the twenty-eight _remontrances_,
making a complete cycle from the Annunciation to the Last Judgement,
shown at Béthune in 1549[469]. But elsewhere, both in England and abroad,
the shows of the Corpus Christi procession were of a much less systematic
character, and Dublin was not the only place where secular elements crept
in[470]. At Coventry, in addition to the representative figures from the
craft-plays, the guild of Corpus Christi and St. Nicholas, to which,
as to special Corpus Christi guilds elsewhere, the general supervision
of the procession fell, provided in 1539 a Mary and a Gabriel with the
lily, Saints Catherine and Margaret, eight Virgins and twelve Apostles.
The Coventry procession, it may be added, outlived the Corpus Christi
feast. In the seventeenth century Godiva had been placed in it and became
the most important feature. By the nineteenth century the wool-combers
had a shepherd and shepherdess, their patron saint Bishop Blaize, and
Jason with the Golden Fleece[471]. At the Shrewsbury ‘Show,’ which also
until a recent date continued the tradition of an older Corpus Christi
procession, Saints Crispin and Crispinian rode for the shoemakers. At
Norwich the grocers sent the ‘griffin’ from the top of their pageant and
a ‘tree’ which may have been the tree of knowledge from their Whitsun
play of Paradise, but which was converted by festoons of fruit and
spicery into an emblem of their trade[472].
Aberdeen seems to have been distinguished by having two great mimetic
processions maintained by the guilds. The interpretation of the data is
rather difficult, but apparently the ‘Haliblude’ play, which existed in
1440 and 1479, had given way by 1531 to a procession in which pageants
of the Crucifixion, the Resurrection, and the Coronation of the Virgin
were eked out by others of Saints Sebastian, Laurence, Stephen, Martin,
Nicholas, John, and George. The other procession seems originally to
have been introduced as an episode in a play of the Presentation in the
Temple on Candlemas day. Its ‘personnes’ or ‘pageants’ are such as might
furnish out the action of a short Nativity cycle, together with ‘honest
squiares’ from each craft, ‘wodmen,’ and minstrels. But in this case also
the play seems to have vanished early in the sixteenth century, while the
procession certainly endured until a much later date.
There are no other English religious dumb-shows, outside those of Corpus
Christi day, so elaborate as the Aberdeen Candlemas procession. On the
same day at Beverley the guild of St. Mary carried a pageant of the
Virgin and Child with Saints Joseph and Simon and two angels holding
a great candlestick[473]. The guild of St. Helen, on the day of the
Invention of the Cross (May 3), had a procession with a boy to represent
the saint, and two men bearing a cross and a shovel[474]. The guild of
St. William of Norwich paraded a knave-child between two men holding
candles in honour of the youthful martyr[475]. In the Whitsuntide
procession at Leicester walked the Virgin and Saint Martin, with the
twelve Apostles[476]. More interesting is the pageant of St. Thomas
the Martyr on December 29 at Canterbury, with the saint on a cart and
knights played by children and an altar and a device of an angel and
a ‘leder bag for the blode[477].’ Probably this list could be largely
increased were it worth while[478]. The comparatively modern elements
in the Corpus Christi pageantry of Coventry, Shrewsbury, and Dublin
may be paralleled from the eighteenth-century festival of the Preston
guild merchant on or near St. John Baptist’s day with its Crispin and
Crispinian, Bishop Blaize, Adam and Eve, Vulcan, and so forth[479],
or the nineteenth-century wool trade procession on St. Blasius’ day
(February 3), at Bradford, in which once more Bishop Blaize, with the
Jason and Medea of the Golden Fleece, appears[480]. It is noticeable how,
as such functions grow more civic and less religious, the pageants tend
to become distinctively emblematic of the trades concerned. The same
feature is to be observed in the choice of subjects for the plays given
by way of entertainment to the earl of Kildare at Dublin in 1528.
The dumb-show pageants, which in many cities glorified the ‘ridings’ on
the day of St. George (April 23), have been described in an earlier
chapter[481]. These ‘ridings,’ of curiously mingled religious and folk
origin, stand midway between the processions just mentioned and such
seasonal perambulations as the ‘shows’ and ‘watches’ of Midsummer. Even
in the latter, elements borrowed from the pageants of the miracle-plays
occasionally form an odd blend with the ‘giants’ and other figures of the
‘folk’ tradition[482]. The ‘wache and playe’ went together at Wymondham,
and also apparently at Chelmsford, in the sixteenth century. At York
we find the pageants of some of the crafts borrowed for a play, though
apparently a classical and not a religious one, at the Midsummer show
of 1585. At Chester, when the Whitsun plays were beginning to fall into
desuetude, the crafts were regularly represented in the Midsummer show
by some of their _dramatis personae_, who, however, rode without their
pageants. The smiths sent ‘the Doctors and little God,’ the butchers sent
‘the divill in his fethers,’ the barbers sent Abraham and Isaac, the
bricklayers sent Balaam and the Ass, and so forth. These with the giants,
a dragon, a man in woman’s clothes, naked boys, morris-dancers and other
folk elements, made up a singular cavalcade.
In London, pageants were provided for the Midsummer show by the guilds
to which the lord mayor and sheriffs for the year belonged. Thus the
drapers had a pageant of the Golden Fleece in 1522, and pageants of the
Assumption and Saint Ursula in 1523[483]. To a modern imagination the
type of civic pageantry is the annual procession at the installation of
the lord mayor in November, known familiarly as the lord mayor’s show.
This show was important enough from the middle of the sixteenth century,
and the pens of many goodly poets, Peele, Dekker, Munday, Middleton, and
others, were employed in its service[484]. But its history cannot be
taken much further back, and it is exceedingly probable that when the
Midsummer show came to an end in 1538, the pageants were transferred to
the installation procession. The earliest clear notice is in 1540, when
a pageant of the Assumption, perhaps that which had already figured at
the Midsummer show of 1523, was used[485]. The ironmongers had a pageant
when the lord mayor was chosen from their body in 1566. It was arranged
by James Peele, father of the dramatist, and there were two ‘wodmen’ in
it, but unfortunately it is not further described[486]. In 1568, Sir
Thomas Roe, merchant tailor, had a pageant of John the Baptist[487].
William Smith, writing an account of city customs in 1575, mentions, as a
regular feature of the procession, ‘the Pagent of Triumph richly decked,
whereupon, by certain figures and writings, some matter touching Justice
and the office of a Magistrate is represented[488].’ And about ten years
later the series of printed ‘Devices’ of the pageants begins.
The influence of miracle-plays and moralities is also to be looked for
in the municipal ‘shows’ of welcome provided at the state entries of
royal and other illustrious visitors. A large number of these, chiefly at
coronations, royal marriages and the like, are recorded in chronicles of
London origin, and with the London examples in their chronological order
I will briefly deal. The earlier features of such ceremonies include
the riding of the mayor and corporation to meet the king at some place
outside the gates, such as Blackheath, or, in the case of a coronation,
at the Tower, and the escorting of him with joyous _tripudium_ or
_carole_ to the palace of Westminster, the reading of loyal addresses
and the giving of golden gifts, the decking of walls and balconies with
costly robes and tapestries, the filling of the conduits with wine, white
and red, in place of the accustomed water[489]. The first example of
pageantry in the proper sense occurs about the middle of the thirteenth
century, in certain ‘devices and marvels’ shown at the wedding of Henry
III to Eleanor of Provence in 1236[490]. These are not described in
detail; but when Edward I returned to London after the defeat of William
Wallace at Falkirk in 1298, it is recorded by a chronicler, quoted in
Stowe’s _Annals_, that the crafts made ‘great and solemne triumph’ and
that the fishmongers in particular ‘amongst other pageantes and shewes’
had, as it was St. Magnus’s day, one of the saint accompanied by a
thousand horsemen, and preceded by four gilded sturgeons, four salmons
on horseback and ‘sixe and fourtie knights armed, riding on horses made
like luces of the sea[491].’ It was the fishmongers again who on the
birth of Edward III in 1313 went in a _chorea_ to Westminster with an
ingeniously contrived ship in full sail, and escorted the queen on her
way to Eltham[492]. At the coronation of Richard II in 1377 an elaborate
castle was put up at the head of Cheapside. On the four towers of this
stood four white-robed damsels, who wafted golden leaves in the king’s
face, dropped gilt models of coin upon him and his steed, and offered
him wine from pipes laid on to the structure. Between the towers was a
golden angel, which by a mechanical device bent forward and held out a
crown as Richard drew near[493]. Similar stages, with a _coelicus ordo_
of singers and boys and maidens offering wine and golden crowns, stood
in Cheapside when Richard again rode through the city in 1392, in token
of reconciliation with the rebellious Londoners. And at St. Paul’s was a
youth enthroned amongst a triple circle of singing angels; and at Temple
Bar St. John Baptist in the desert surrounded by all kinds of trees and
a menagerie of strange beasts[494]. No similar details of pageantry are
recorded at the coronations of Henry IV or Henry V. But when the latter
king returned to London after the battle of Agincourt in 1415 there was
a very fine show indeed. The procession came to the city from Eltham and
Blackheath by way of London Bridge. Upon the tower masking the bridge
stood two gigantic figures, one a man with an axe in his right hand and
the city keys in his left, the other a woman in a scarlet mantle. Beyond
this were two columns painted to resemble white marble and green jasper,
on which were a lion and an antelope bearing the royal arms and banner.
Over the foot of the bridge was a tower with a figure of St. George,
and on a house hard by a number of boys representing the heavenly host,
who sang the anthem _Benedictus qui venit in nomine Dei_. The tower
upon the Cornhill conduit was decked with red and had on it a company
of prophets, who sent a flight of sparrows and other birds fluttering
round the king as he passed, while the prophets chanted _Cantate Domino
canticum novum_. The tower of the great Cheapside conduit was green,
and here were twelve Apostles and twelve Kings, Martyrs and Confessors
of England, whose anthem was _Benedic, anima, Domino_, and who, even
as Melchisedek received Abraham with bread and wine, offered the king
thin wafers mixed with silver leaves, and a cup filled from the conduit
pipes. On Cheapside, the cross was completely hidden by a great castle,
in imitation white marble and green and red jasper, out of the door of
which issued a bevy of virgins, with timbrel and dance and songs of
‘Nowell, Nowell,’ like unto the daughters of Israel who danced before
David after the slaying of Goliath. On the castle stood boys feathered
like angels, who sang _Te Deum_ and flung down gold coins and boughs of
laurel. Finally, on the tower of the little conduit near St. Paul’s, all
blue as the sky, were more virgins who, as when Richard II was crowned,
wafted golden leaves out of golden cups, while above were wrought angels
in gold and colours, and an image of the sun enthroned[495]. The details
of the reception of Henry and Catherine of France, six years later, are
not preserved[496]. Nor are those of the London coronation of Henry
VI in 1429. But there was a grand dumb-show at the Paris coronation
in 1431[497], and it was perhaps in emulation of this that on his
return to London in the following year the king was received with a
splendour equal to that lavished on the victor of Agincourt. There is a
contemporary account of the proceedings by John Carpenter, the town clerk
of London[498]. As in 1415 a giant greeted the king at the foot of London
Bridge. On the same ‘pageant[499]’ two antelopes upbore the arms of
England and France. On the bridge stood a magnificent ‘fabric,’ occupied
by Nature, Grace, and Fortune, who gave the king presents as he passed.
To the right were the seven heavenly Virtues, who signified the seven
gifts of the Holy Ghost, by letting fly seven white doves. To the left,
seven other virgins offered the regalia. Then all fourteen, clapping
their hands and rejoicing in _tripudia_, broke into songs of welcome. In
Cornhill was the Tabernacle of Lady Wisdom, set upon seven columns. Here
stood Wisdom, and here the seven liberal Sciences were represented by
Priscian, Aristotle, Tully, Boethius, Pythagoras, Euclid, and Albumazar.
On the conduit was the Throne of Justice, on which sat a king surrounded
by Truth, Mercy, and Clemency, with two Judges and eight Lawyers. In
Cheapside was a Paradise with a grove full of all manner of foreign
fruits, and three wells from which gushed out wine, served by Mercy,
Grace, and Pity. Here the king was greeted by Enoch and Elijah[500]. At
the cross was a castle of jasper with a Tree of Jesse, and another of the
royal descent; and at St. Paul’s conduit a representation of the Trinity
amongst a host of ministering angels. In 1445 Margaret of Anjou came to
London to be crowned. Stowe records ‘a few only’ of the pageants. She
entered by Southwark bridge foot where were Peace and Plenty. On the
bridge was Noah’s ship; in Leadenhall, ‘madam Grace Chancelor de Dieu’;
on the Tun in Cornhill, St. Margaret; on the conduit in Cheapside, the
Wise and Foolish Virgins; at the Cross, the Heavenly Jerusalem; and at
Paul’s Gate, the General Resurrection and Judgement[501].
The rapid kingings and unkingings of the wars of the Roses left little
time and little heart for pageantries, but with the advent of Henry VII
they begin again, and continue with growing splendour throughout the
Tudor century. Space only permits a brief enumeration of the subjects
chosen for set pageants on a few of the more important occasions. Singing
angels and precious gifts, wells of wine and other minor delights may be
taken for granted[502]. As to the details of Henry VII’s coronation in
1485 and marriage in 1486 the chroniclers are provokingly silent, and
of the many ‘gentlemanlie pageants’ at the coronation of the queen in
1487 the only one specified is ‘a great redde dragon spouting flames of
fyer into the Thames,’ from the ‘bachelors’ barge’ of the lord mayor’s
company as she passed up the river from Greenwich to the Tower[503]. At
the wedding of Prince Arthur to Katharine of Aragon in 1501, ‘vi goodly
beutiful pageauntes’ lined the way from London Bridge to St. Paul’s.
The contriver is said to have been none other than Bishop Foxe the
great chancellor and the founder of Corpus Christi College in Oxford.
The subject of the first pageant was the Trinity with Saints Ursula
and Katharine; of the second, the Castle of Portcullis, with Policy,
Nobleness, and Virtue; of the third, Raphael, the angel of marriage,
with Alphonso, Job, and Boethius; of the fourth, the Sphere of the Sun;
of the fifth, the Temple of God; and of the sixth, Honour with the seven
Virtues[504]. As to Henry VIII’s coronation and marriage there is, once
more, little recorded. In 1522 came Charles V, Emperor of Germany, to
visit the king, and the city provided eleven pageants ‘very faire and
excellent to behold[505].’ The ‘great red dragon’ of 1487 reappeared in
1533 when yet another queen, Anne Boleyn, came up from Greenwich to enjoy
her brief triumph. It stood on a ‘foist’ near the lord mayor’s barge,
and in another ‘foist’ was a mount, and on the mount Anne’s device, a
falcon on a root of gold with white roses and red. The pageants for the
progress by land on the following day were of children ‘apparelled like
merchants,’ of Mount Parnassus, of the falcon and mount once more, with
Saint Anne and her children, of the three Graces, of Pallas, Juno, Venus,
and Mercury with the golden apple, of three ladies, and of the Cardinal
Virtues[506]. The next great show was at the coronation of Edward VI
in 1547, and included Valentine and Orson, Grace, Nature, Fortune and
Charity, Sapience and the seven Liberal Sciences, Regality enthroned with
Justice, Mercy and Truth, the Golden Fleece, Edward the Confessor and
St. George, Truth, Faith, and Justice. There was also a cunning Spanish
rope-dancer, who performed marvels on a cord stretched to the ground
from the tower of St. George’s church in St. Paul’s churchyard[507].
Mary, in 1553, enjoyed an even more thrilling spectacle in ‘one Peter
a Dutchman,’ who stood and waved a streamer on the weathercock of St.
Paul’s steeple. She had eight pageants, of which three were contributed
by the Genoese, Easterlings, and Florentines. The subjects are unknown,
but that of the Florentines was in the form of a triple arch and had
on the top a trumpeting angel in green, who moved his trumpet to the
wonder of the crowd[508]. There were pageants again when Mary brought her
Spanish husband to London in 1554. At the conduit in Gracechurch Street
were painted the Nine Worthies. One of these was Henry VIII, who was
represented as handing a bible to Edward; and the unfortunate painter was
dubbed a knave and a rank traitor and villain by Bishop Gardiner, because
the bible was not put in the hands of Mary[509]. At the coronation of
Elizabeth in 1559, with which this list must close, it was Time and
Truth who offered the English bible to the queen. The same pageant had
representations of a Decayed Commonwealth and a Flourishing Commonwealth,
while others figured the Union of York and Lancaster, the Seat of Worthy
Governance, the Eight Beatitudes, and Deborah the Judge. At Temple
Bar, those ancient _palladia_ of London city, the giants Gotmagot and
Corineus, once more made their appearance[510].
I do not wish to exaggerate the influence exercised by the miracle-plays
and moralities over these London shows. London was not, in the Middle
Ages, one of the most dramatic of English cities, and such plays as
there were were not in the hands of those trade- and craft-guilds to
whom the glorifying of the receptions naturally fell. The functions
carried out by the fishmongers in 1298 and 1313 are much of the nature
of masked ridings or ‘disguisings,’ and must be held to have a folk
origin. The ship of 1313 suggests a ‘hobby ship[511].’ Throughout the
shows draw notions from many heterogeneous sources. The giants afford
yet another ‘folk’ element. The gifts of gold and wine and the speeches
of welcome[512] need no explanation. Devices of heraldry are worked in.
The choirs of boys and girls dressed as angels recall the choirs perched
on the battlements of churches in such ecclesiastical ceremonies as the
Palm Sunday procession[513]. The term ‘pageant’ (_pagina_), which first
appears in this connexion in 1432 and is in regular use by the end of the
century, is perhaps a loan from the plays, but the structures themselves
appear to have arisen naturally out of attempts to decorate such obvious
architectural features of the city as London Bridge, the prison known as
the Tun, and the conduits which stood in Cornhill and Cheapside[514].
It is chiefly in the selection of themes for the more elaborate mimetic
pageants that the reflection of the regular contemporary drama must
be traced. Such scriptural subjects as John the Baptist of 1392 or
the Prophets and Apostles of 1415 pretty obviously come from the
miracle-plays. The groups of allegorical figures which greeted Henry VI
in 1432 are in no less close a relation to the moralities, which were at
that very moment beginning to outstrip the miracle-plays in popularity.
And in the reign of Henry VII the humanist tendencies begin to suggest
subjects for the pageants as well as to transform the drama itself.
Certainly one does not find in London or in any English city those
_mystères mimés_ or cyclical dumb-shows, with which the good people of
Paris were wont to welcome kings, and which are clearly an adaptation of
the ordinary miracle-play to the conditions of a royal entry with its
scant time for long drawn-out dialogue. The earliest of these upon record
was in 1313 when Philip IV entertained Edward II and Isabella. It is not
quite clear whether this was a procession like the disguising called the
_procession du renard_ which accompanied it, or a stationary dumb-show
on pageants. But there is no doubt about the _moult piteux mystere de
la Passion de Nostre Seigneur au vif_ given before Charles VI and Henry
V after the treaty of Troyes in 1420, for this is said to have been on
_eschaffaulx_ and to have been modelled on the bas-reliefs around the
choir of Notre-Dame. Very similar must have been the _moult bel mystere
du Vieil testament et du Nouvel_ which welcomed the duke of Bedford in
1424 and which _fut fait sans parler ne sans signer, comme ce feussent
ymaiges enlevez contre ung mur_. _Sans parler_, again, was the _mystère_
which stood on an _eschaffault_ before the church of the Trinity when
Henry VI was crowned, only a few weeks before the London reception
already mentioned[515].
It may be added that in many provincial towns the pageants used at
royal entries had a far closer affinity to the miracle-plays proper
than was the case in London. The place most often honoured in this sort
was Coventry. In 1456 came Queen Margaret and poor mad Henry VI. One
John Wedurley of Leicester seems to have been employed to organize a
magnificent entertainment. At Bablake gate, where stood a Jesse, the
royal visitors were greeted by Isaiah and Jeremiah. Within the gate was
a ‘pagent’ with Saint Edward the Confessor and St. John the Evangelist.
On the conduit in Smithford Street were the four Cardinal Virtues. In
the Cheaping were nine pageants for the Nine Worthies. At the cross
there were angels, and wine flowed, and at another conduit hard by was
St. Margaret ‘sleyng’ her dragon and a company of angels. The queen
was so pleased that she returned next year for Corpus Christi day. It
appears from the smiths’ accounts that the pageants used at the reception
were those kept by the crafts for the plays. The smiths’ pageant was
had out again in 1461, with Samson upon it, when Edward IV came after
his coronation, and in 1474 when the young prince Edward came for St.
George’s feast. The shows then represented King Richard II and his court,
Patriarchs and Prophets, St. Edward the Confessor, the Three Kings of
Cologne and St. George slaying the dragon. Prince Arthur, in 1498, saw
the Nine Worthies, the Queen of Fortune, and, once more, Saint George.
For Henry VIII and Katharine of Aragon in 1511 there were three pageants:
on one the ninefold hierarchy of angels, on another ‘divers beautiful
damsels,’ on the third ‘a goodly stage play.’ The mercers’ pageant
‘stood’ at the visit of the Princess Mary in 1525, and the tanners’,
drapers’, smiths’, and weavers’ pageants at that of Queen Elizabeth in
1565. I do not know whether it is legitimate to infer that the subjects
represented on these occasions were those of the Corpus Christi plays
belonging to the crafts named[516].
York was visited by Richard III in 1483, and there were pageants, the
details of which have not been preserved, as well as a performance of
the Creed play[517]. It was also visited by Henry VII in 1486, and there
exists a civic order prescribing the pageants for that occasion. The
first of these was a most ingenious piece of symbolism. There was a
heaven and beneath it ‘a world desolaite, full of treys and floures.’
Out of this sprang ‘a roiall, rich, rede rose’ and ‘an othre rich white
rose,’ to whom all the other flowers did ‘lowte and evidently yeve
suffrantie.’ Then appeared out of a cloud a crown over the roses, and
then a city with citizens with ‘Ebrauk’ the founder, who offered the
keys to the king. The other pageants represented Solomon and the six
Henries, the Castle of David, and Our Lady. There were also devices by
which a rain of rose-water and a hailstorm of comfits fell before the
king[518]. During the same progress which took Henry to York, he also
visited Worcester, where there were pageants and speeches, ‘whiche his
Grace at that Tyme harde not’ but which should have represented Henry VI
and a _Ianitor ad Ianuam_. Thence he went to Hereford, and was greeted
by St. George, King Ethelbert, and Our Lady; thence to Gloucester, where
the chronicler remarks with some surprise that ‘ther was no Pageant nor
Speche ordeynede’; and finally to Bristol, where were King Bremmius,
Prudence, Justice, ‘the Shipwrights Pageannt,’ without any speech, and
a ‘Pageannte of an Olifaunte, with a Castell on his Bakk’ and ‘The
Resurrection of our Lorde in the highest Tower of the same, with certeyne
Imagerye smytyng Bellis, and all wente by Veights, merveolously wele
done[519].’ In 1503 Henry VII’s daughter Margaret married James IV of
Scotland, and was received into Edinburgh with pageants of the Judgement
of Paris, the Annunciation, the Marriage of Joseph and Mary, and the Four
Virtues[520]. Eight years later, in 1511, she visited Aberdeen, and the
‘pleasant padgeanes’ included Adam and Eve, the Salutation of the Virgin,
the _Magi_, and the Bruce[521].
The facts brought together in the present chapter show how ‘pageant’
came to have its ordinary modern sense of a spectacular procession. How
it was replaced by other terms in the sense of ‘play’ will be matter for
the sequel. It may be added that the name is also given to the elaborate
structures of carpenters’ and painters’ work used in the early Tudor
masks[522]. These the masks probably took over from the processions and
receptions. On the other hand, the receptions, by an elaboration of the
spoken element, developed into the Elizabethan ‘Entertainments,’ which
are often classified as a sub-variety of the mask itself. This action and
reaction of one form of show upon another need not at this stage cause
any surprise. A sixteenth-century synonym for ‘pageant’ is ‘triumph,’
which is doubtless a translation of the Italian _trionfo_, a name given
to the _edifizio_ by the early Renascence, in deliberate reminiscence of
classical terminology[523].
BOOK IV
THE INTERLUDE
Patronage cannot kill art: even in kings’ palaces the sudden
flower blooms serene.
MODERN PLAY.
CHAPTER XXIV
PLAYERS OF INTERLUDES
[_Bibliographical Note._—The _Annals of the Stage_ in J. P.
Collier, _History of English Dramatic Poetry_ (new ed. 1879),
although ill arranged and by no means trustworthy, now become
of value. They may be supplemented from the full notices of
Tudor _spectacula_ in E. Hall, _The Union of Lancaster and
York_, 1548, ed. 1809, and from the various calendars of State
papers, of which J. S. Brewer and J. Gairdner, _Letters and
Papers of the Reign of Henry VIII_ (1862-1903), including the
_Revels Accounts_ and the _Kings Books of Payments_, is the
most important. Some useful documents are in W. C. Hazlitt,
_The English Drama and Stage_ (1869). The French facts are
given by L. Petit de Julleville, _Les Comédiens en France au
Moyen Âge_ (1889).]
The closing section of this essay may fitly be introduced by a brief
retrospect of the conclusions already arrived at. The investigation,
however it may have lingered by the way, has not been altogether without
its _logos_ or rational framework. The first book began with a study
of the conditions under which the degenerate stage of the Roman Empire
ceased to exist. The most important of these were the indifference of
the barbarians and the direct hostility of the Church. A fairly clean
sweep was made. Scarcely a thread of dramatic tradition is to be traced
amongst the many and diverse forms of entertainment provided by mediaeval
minstrelsy. But the very existence of minstrelsy, itself a singular blend
of Latin and barbaric elements, is a proof of the enduring desire of the
western European peoples for something in the nature of _spectacula_.
In the strength of this the minstrels braved the ban of the Church, and
finally won their way to at least a partial measure of toleration from
their hereditary foes. In the second book it was shown that the instinct
for _spectacula_ had its definitely dramatic side. The ludi of the
folk, based upon ancient observances of a forgotten natural religion,
and surviving side by side with minstrelsy, broke out at point after
point into _mimesis_. Amongst the villages they developed into dramatic
May-games and dramatic sword-dances: in their _bourgeois_ forms they
overran city and cathedral with the mimicries of the Feast of Fools and
the Boy Bishop; they gave birth to a special type of drama in the mask;
and they further enriched Tudor revels with the characteristic figures
of the domestic fool or jester and the lord of misrule. Upon the folk
_ludi_, as upon the _spectacula_ of the minstrels, the Church looked
doubtfully. But the mimetic instinct was irresistible, and in the end it
was neither minstrels nor folk, but the Church itself, which did most for
its satisfaction. The subject of the third book is a remarkable growth
of drama within the heart of the ecclesiastical liturgy, which began in
the tenth century, and became, consciously or unconsciously, a powerful
counterpoise to the attraction of _ludi_ and _spectacula_. So popular,
indeed, did it prove that it broke the bonds of ecclesiastical control;
and about the thirteenth century a process of laicization set in, which
culminated during the fourteenth in the great Corpus Christi cycles of
the municipal guilds. The subject-matter, however, remained religious to
the end, an end which, in spite of the marked critical attitude adopted
by the austerer schools of churchmen, did not arrive until that attitude
was confirmed by successive waves of Lollard and Protestant sentiment.
Nor was the system substantially affected by certain innovations of the
fifteenth century, a tendency to substitute mere spectacular pageantry
for the spoken drama, and a tendency to add to the visible presentment of
the scriptural history an allegorical exposition of theological and moral
doctrine.
It is the object of the present book briefly to record the rise, also in
the fifteenth century, of new dramatic conditions which, after existing
for a while side by side with those of mediaevalism, were destined
ultimately to become a substitute for these and to lead up directly to
the magic stage of Shakespeare. The change to be sketched is primarily a
social rather than a literary one. The drama which had already migrated
from the church to the market-place, was to migrate still further, to
the banqueting-hall. And having passed from the hands of the clergy to
those of the folk, it was now to pass, after an interval of a thousand
years, not immediately but ultimately, into those of a professional class
of actors. Simultaneously it was to put off its exclusively religious
character, and enter upon a new heritage of interests and methods,
beneath the revivifying breath of humanism.
A characteristic note of the new phase is the rise of the term
_interludium_ or ‘interlude.’ This we have already come across in the
title of that fragmentary _Interludium de Clerico et Puella_ which alone
amongst English documents seemed to bear witness to a scanty dramatic
element in the repertory of minstrelsy[524]. The primary meaning of the
name is a matter of some perplexity. The learned editors of the _New
English Dictionary_ define it as ‘a dramatic or mimic representation,
usually of a light or humorous character, such as was commonly introduced
between the acts of the long mystery-plays or moralities, or exhibited
as part of an elaborate entertainment.’ Another recognized authority,
Dr. Ward, says[525]: ‘It seems to have been applied to plays performed
by professional actors from the time of Edward IV onwards. Its origin
is doubtless to be found in the fact that such plays were occasionally
performed in the intervals of banquets and entertainments, which of
course would have been out of the question in the case of religious
plays proper.’ I cannot say that I find either of these explanations at
all satisfactory. In the first place, none of the limitations of sense
which they suggest are really borne out by the history of the word. So
far as its rare use in the fourteenth century goes, it is not confined
to professional plays and it does not exclude religious plays. The
_Interludium de Clerico et Puella_ is, no doubt, a farce, and something
of the same sort appears to be in the mind of Huchown, or whoever else
was the author of _Sir Gawain and the Green Knight_, when he speaks of
laughter and song as a substitute for ‘enterludez’ at Christmas[526].
But on the other hand, Robert Mannyng of Brunne, at the very beginning
of the century, classes ‘entyrludes’ with ‘somour games’ and other
forbidden delights of the folk[527], while the Wyclifite author of
the _Tretise on Miriclis_ at its close, definitely uses ‘entirlodies’
as a name for the religious plays which he is condemning[528]. In the
fifteenth century, again, although ‘interlude’ is of course not one
of the commonest terms for a miracle-play, yet I find it used for
performances probably of the miracle-play type at New Romney in 1426 and
at Harling in 1452, while the jurats of the former place paid in 1463
for ‘the play of the interlude of our Lord’s Passion[529].’ The term,
then, appears to be equally applicable to every kind of drama known to
the Middle Ages. As to its philological derivation, both the _New English
Dictionary_ and Dr. Ward treat it as a _ludus_ performed in the intervals
of (_inter_) something else, although they do not agree as to what that
something else was. For the performance of farces ‘between the acts of
the long miracle-plays’ there is no English evidence whatever[530]. The
farcical episodes which find a place in the Towneley plays and elsewhere
are in no way structurally differentiated from the rest of the text.
There are some French examples of combined performances of farces and
miracles, but they do not go far enough back to explain the origin of
the word[531]. A certain support is no doubt given to the theory of
the _New English Dictionary_ by the ‘mirry interludes’ inserted in Sir
David Lyndsay’s morality _Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaits_, but, once
more, it is difficult to elucidate a term which appears at the beginning
of the fourteenth century from an isolated use in the middle of the
sixteenth. Dr. Ward’s hypothesis is perhaps rather more plausible. No
doubt plays were performed at court and elsewhere between the banquet and
the ‘void’ or cup of spiced drink which followed later in the evening,
and possibly also between the courses of the banquet itself[532]. But
this fact would not differentiate dramatic _ludi_ from other forms of
minstrelsy coming in the same intervals, and the fact that miracle-plays
are called interludes, quite as early as anything else, remains to be
accounted for. I am inclined myself to think that the force of _inter_ in
the combination has been misunderstood, and that an _interludium_ is not
a _ludus_ in the intervals of something else, but a _ludus_ carried on
between (_inter_) two or more performers; in fact, a _ludus_ in dialogue.
The term would then apply primarily to any kind of dramatic performance
whatever.
In any case it is clear that while ‘interlude’ was only a subordinate
name for plays of the miracle-type, it was the normal name,
varied chiefly by ‘play’ and ‘disguising,’ for plays given in the
banqueting-halls of the great[533]. These begin to claim attention
during the fifteenth century. Dr. Ward’s statement that religious plays
could not have been the subject of such performances does not bear the
test of comparison with the facts. A miracle of St. Clotilda was played
before Henry the Sixth at Windsor Castle in 1429, a _Christi Descensus
ad Inferos_ before Henry the Seventh during dinner at Winchester in
1486; nor is it probable that the play performed by the boys of Maxstoke
Priory in the hall of Lord Clinton at Candlemas, 1430, was other than
religious in character[534]. The records of the miracle-plays themselves
show that they were often carried far from home. There was much coming
and going amongst the villages and little towns round about Lydd and
New Romney from 1399 to 1508. One at least of the existing texts, that
of the Croxton _Sacrament_, appears to be intended for the use of a
travelling troupe, and that such troupes showed their plays not only in
market-places and on village greens but also in the houses of individual
patrons, is suggested by entries of payments to players of this and that
locality in more than one _computus_[535]. Thus Maxstoke Priory, between
1422 and 1461, entertained _lusores_[536] from Nuneaton, Coventry,
Daventry, and Coleshill; while Henry the Seventh, between 1492 and
1509, gave largess, either at court or abroad, to ‘pleyers’ from Essex,
Wimborne Minster, Wycombe, London, and Kingston. The accounts of the
last-named place record an ordinary parochial play in the very year of
the royal ‘almasse.’
It is obvious that this practice of travelling must have brought the
local players into rivalry with those hereditary gentlemen of the
road, the minstrels. Possibly they had something to do with provoking
that _querelosa insinuatio_ against the _rudes agricolae et artifices
diversarum misterarum_ which led to the formation of the royal guild
of minstrels in 1469. If so, the measure does not seem to have been
wholly successful in suppressing them. But the minstrels had a better
move to make. Their own profession had fallen, with the emergence of the
_trouvère_ and the spread of printing, upon evil days. And here were the
scanty remnants of their audiences being filched from them by unskilled
rustics who had hit upon just the one form of literary entertainment
which, unlike poetry and romance in general, could not dispense with
the living interpreter[537]. What could they do better than develop a
neglected side of their own art and become players themselves? So there
appear in the _computi_, side by side with the local _lusores_, others
whose methods and status are precisely those of minstrels[538]. The
generosity of Henry the Sixth at the Christmas of 1427 is called forth
equally by the _entreludes_ of the _jeweis de Abyndon_ and the _jeuues
et entreludes_ of _Jakke Travail et ses compaignons_. By 1464 ‘players
in their enterludes’ were sufficiently recognized to be included with
minstrels in the exceptions of the Act of Apparel[539]. Like other
minstrels, the players put themselves under the protection of nobles and
persons of honour. The earliest upon record are those of Henry Bourchier,
earl of Essex, and those of Richard, duke of Gloucester, afterwards
Richard the Third. Both companies were rewarded by Lord Howard in 1482.
The earls of Northumberland, Oxford, Derby, and Shrewsbury, and Lord
Arundel, all had their players before the end of the century[540]. The
regulations of the _Northumberland Household Book_, as well as entries
in many _computi_, show that by the reign of Henry the Eighth the
practice was widespread[541]. Naturally it received a stimulus when a
body of players came to form a regular part of the royal household.
Whether Richard the Third retained his company in his service during his
brief reign is not upon record. But Henry the Seventh had four _lusores
regis, alias, in lingua Anglicana, les pleyars of the Kyngs enterluds_ at
least as early as 1494. These men received an annual fee of five marks
apiece, together with special rewards when they played before the king.
When their services were not required at court, they took to the road,
just as did the minstrels, _ioculator_, and _ursarius_ of the royal
establishment. In 1503 they were sent, under their leader John English,
in the train of Margaret of Scotland to her wedding with James the Fourth
at Edinburgh, and here they ‘did their devoir’ before the Scottish
court[542]. Henry the Eighth increased their number to eight, and they
can be traced on the books of the royal household through the reigns of
Edward the Sixth and Mary, and well into that of Elizabeth[543].
The new conditions under which plays were now given naturally reacted
upon the structure of the plays themselves. The many scenes of the
long cyclical miracles, with their multitudinous performers, must be
replaced by something more easy of representation. The typical interlude
deals with a short episode in about a thousand lines, and could be
handled in the hour or so which the lord might reasonably be expected
to spare from his horse and his hounds[544]. Economy in travelling and
the inconvenience of crowding the hall both went to put a limit on the
number of actors. Four men and a boy, probably in apprenticeship to one
of them, for the women’s parts, may be taken as a normal troupe. In many
of the extant interludes the list of _dramatis personae_ is accompanied
by an indication as to how, by the doubling of parts, the caste may be
brought within reasonable compass[545]. The simplest of scenic apparatus
and a few boards on trestles for a stage had of course to suffice. But
some sort of a stage there probably was, as a rule, although doubtless
the players were prepared, if necessary, to perform, like masquers,
on the floor in front of the screen, or at best upon the dais where
the lord sat at meals[546]. The pleasure-loving monks of Durham seem
as far back as 1465 to have built at their cell of Finchale a special
player-chamber for the purposes of such entertainments[547]. Henry the
Eighth, too, in 1527 had a ‘banket-house’ or ‘place of plesyer,’ called
the ‘Long house,’ built in the tiltyard at Greenwich, and decorated by
none other than Hans Holbein[548]. But this was designed rather for a
special type of disguising, half masque half interlude, and set out with
the elaborate pageants which the king loved, than for ordinary plays. A
similar banqueting-house ‘like a theatre’ had been set up at Calais in
1520, but unfortunately burnt down before it could be used[549]. Another
characteristic of the interlude is the prayer for the sovereign and
sometimes the estates of the realm with which it concludes, and which
often helps to fix the date of representation of the extant texts[550].
Like the minstrels, the interlude players found a welcome not only in
the halls of the great, but amongst the _bourgeois_ and the village
folk. In the towns they would give their first performance before the
municipality in the guildhall and take a reward[551]. Then they would
find a profitable pitch in the courtyard of some old-fashioned inn, with
its convenient range of outside galleries[552]. It is, however, rather
surprising to find that Exeter, like Paris itself[553], had its regular
theatre as early as 1348, more than two centuries before anything of
the kind is heard of in London. This fact emerges from two mandates
of Bishop Grandisson; one, already quoted in the previous volume,
directed against the _secta_ or _ordo_, probably a _société joyeuse_, of
Brothelyngham[554], the other inhibiting a satirical performance designed
by the youth of the city, in disparagement of the trade and mystery of
the cloth-dressers. In both cases the ‘theatre’ of the city was to be
the locality of the revels[555]. Much later, in 1538, but still well in
anticipation of London, the corporation of Yarmouth appear to have built
a ‘game-house’ upon the garden of the recently surrendered priory[556].
In the villages the players probably had to content themselves with
a stage upon the green; unless indeed they could make good a footing
in the church. This they sometimes did by way of inheritance from the
local actors of miracles. For while the great craft-cycles long remained
unaffected by the professional competition and ultimately came to their
end through quite different causes, it was otherwise in the smaller
places. If the parson and the churchwardens wanted a miracle in honour
of their patron saint and could readily hire the services of a body of
trained actors, they were not likely to put themselves to the trouble of
drilling bookless rustics in their parts. And so the companies got into
the churches for the purpose of playing religious interludes, but, if the
diatribes of Elizabethan Puritans may be trusted, remained there to play
secular ones[557]. The rulers of the Church condemned the abuse[558],
but it proved difficult to abolish, and even in 1602 the authorities of
Syston in Leicestershire had to buy players off from performing in the
church[559].
Even where the old local plays survived they were probably more or less
assimilated to the interlude type. It was certainly so with those written
by John Bale and played at Kilkenny. It was probably so with the play of
_Placidas_ or _St. Eustace_ given at Braintree in 1534, if, as is most
likely, it was written by Nicholas Udall, who was vicar of Braintree at
the time. And when we find the wardens of Bungay Holy Trinity in 1558
paying fourpence for an ‘interlude and game-booke’ and two shillings for
writing out the parts, the conjecture seems obvious that what they had
done was to obtain a copy of one of the printed interludes which by that
time the London stationers had issued in some numbers. On the other hand
the example of the travelling companies sometimes stirred up the folk,
with the help, no doubt, of Holophernes the schoolmaster, to attempt
performances of secular as well as religious plays on their own account.
The rendering of _Pyramus and Thisbe_ by the mechanicals of Athens, which
is Stratford-upon-Avon, is the classical instance. But in Shropshire the
folk are said to have gone on playing debased versions of _Dr. Faustus_
and other Elizabethan masterpieces, upon out-of-door stages, until quite
an incredibly late date[560].
I return to the atmosphere of courts. It must not be supposed that, under
the early Tudors, the professional players had a monopoly of interludes.
On the contrary, throughout nearly the whole of the sixteenth century,
it remained doubtful whether the future of the drama was to rest in
professional or amateur hands. The question was not settled until the
genius of Marlowe and of Shakespeare came to the help of the players.
Under the pleasure-loving Henries accomplishment in the arts of social
diversion was as likely a road to preferment as another. Sir Thomas More
won a reputation as a page by his skill in improvising a scene[561].
John Kite stepped almost straight from the boards to the bishopric of
Armagh. His performances, not perhaps without some scandal to churchmen,
were given when he was subdean of the Chapel Royal[562]. This ancient
establishment, with its thirty-two gentlemen and its school of children,
proved itself the most serious rival of the regular company. Both
gentlemen and children, sometimes together and sometimes separately, took
part in the performances, the records of which begin in 1506[563]. The
rather exceptional nature of the repertory will be considered presently.
Few noblemen, of course, kept a chapel on the scale of the royal one.
But that of the earl of Northumberland was of considerable size, and
was accustomed about 1523 to give, not only a Resurrection play at
Easter and a Nativity play at Christmas, but also a play on the night
of Shrove-Tuesday. The functionary to whom it looked for a supply of
interludes was the almoner[564].
The gentlemen of the Inns of Courts were always ready to follow in the
wake of courtly fashion. Their interludes were famous and important in
the days of Elizabeth, but, although Lincoln’s Inn entertained external
_lusores_ in 1494 and 1498[565], Gray’s Inn is the only one in which
amateur performances are recorded before 1556. A ‘disguising’ or ‘plaie’
by one John Roo was shown here in 1526, and got the actors into trouble
with Wolsey, who found, or thought that he found, in it reflections
on his own administration[566]. All ‘comedies called enterludes’ were
stopped by an order of the bench in 1550, except during times of solemn
Christmas[567]. In 1556 an elaborate piece for performance by all the
Inns was in preparation by William Baldwin[568].
There were interludes, moreover, at universities and in schools. The
earliest I have noted are at Magdalen College, Oxford, where they occur
pretty frequently from 1486 onwards. They were given in the hall at
Christmas, and overlap in point of time the performances of the _Quem
quaeritis_ in the chapel[569]. There was a play at Cardinal’s College in
1530[570]. Nicholas Grimald’s _Christus Redivivus_ was given at Brasenose
about 1542. Possibly his _Archipropheta_ was similarly given about 1546
at Christ Church, of which he had then become a member. Beyond these
I do not know of any other Oxford representations before 1558. But in
1512 the University granted one Edward Watson a degree in grammar on
condition of his composing a comedy[571]. At Cambridge the pioneer
college was St. John’s, where the _Plutus_ of Aristophanes was given in
Greek in 1536[572]. Christ’s College is noteworthy for a performance of
the antipapal _Pammachius_ in 1545[573], and also for a series of plays
under the management of one William Stevenson in 1550-3, amongst which it
is exceedingly probable that _Gammer Gurton’s Needle_ was included[574].
Most of these university plays were however, probably, in Latin. The
Elizabethan statutes of Trinity College[575] and Queens’ College[576]
both provide for plays, and in both cases the performances really date
back to the reign of Henry VIII. At Trinity John Dee seems to have
produced the _Pax_ of Aristophanes, with an ingenious contrivance for
the flight of the Scarabaeus to Zeus, shortly upon his appointment as an
original fellow in 1546[577].
The Westminster Latin play cannot be clearly shown to be
pre-Elizabethan[578], and the Westminster dramatic tradition is,
therefore, less old than that of either Eton or St. Paul’s. Professor
Hales has, indeed, made it seem plausible that Udall’s _Ralph Roister
Doister_ dates from his Westminster (?1553-6) and not his Eton mastership
(1534-41). But the Eton plays can be traced back to 1525-6[579], and
were a recognized institution when Malim wrote his _Consuetudinary_
about 1561[580]. In 1538 the Eton boys played, under Udall, before
Cromwell[581]. A decade earlier, in 1527, John Ritwise had brought the
boys of Colet’s new foundation at St. Paul’s to court. They acted an
anti-Lutheran play before Henry and probably also the _Menaechmi_ before
Wolsey. Certainly they acted the _Phormio_ before him in the following
year[582]. The dramatic history of this school is a little difficult
to disentangle from that of its near neighbour, the song-school of St.
Paul’s cathedral[583]. The song-school probably provided the children
whom Heywood brought before the princess Mary in 1538[584] and to court
in 1553. But some doubt has been cast upon the _bona fides_ of the
account which Warton gives of further performances by them before the
princess Elizabeth at Hatfield in 1554[585]. Plays, either in English or
in Latin, of which Bale preserves a list, were also acted in the private
school set up in 1538 by one Ralph Radclif in the surrendered Carmelite
convent of Hitchin[586].
It will be seen that the non-professional dramatic activities of England,
outside the miracle-plays, although of some importance in the sixteenth
century, came late and hardly extended beyond courtly and scholastic
circles. There is nothing corresponding to the plentiful production
of farces by amateur associations of every kind which characterized
fifteenth-century France. Besides the scholars and the _Basoche_, which
corresponded roughly to the Inns of Court, but was infinitely more lively
and fertile, there were the _Enfants sans Soucis_ in Paris, and in the
province a host of _puys_ and _sociétés joyeuses_. All of these played
both morals and farces, particularly the latter, for which they claimed
a very free licence of satirical comment[587]. As a result, although
salaried _joueurs de personnages_ begin to make their appearance in the
account books of the nobles as early as 1392-3[588], the professional
actors were unable to hold their own against the unequal competition, and
do not really become of importance until quite the end of the sixteenth
century[589]. In England it was otherwise. The early suppression of the
Feast of Fools and the strict control kept over the Boy Bishop afforded
no starting-point for _sociétés joyeuses_, while the late development
of English as a literary language did not lend itself to the formation
of _puys_. We hear indeed of satirical performances by the guild of
Brothelyngham at Exeter in 1348, and again by the _filii civitatis_ in
1352[590], but Bishop Grandisson apparently succeeded in checking this
development which, so far as the information at present available goes,
does not seem to have permanently established itself either at Exeter or
elsewhere.
CHAPTER XXV
HUMANISM AND MEDIAEVALISM
[_Bibliographical Note._—The literary discussions and
collections of texts named in the bibliographical note to chap.
xxiii and the material on the annals of the stage in that to
chap. xxiv remain available. W. Creizenach, _Geschichte des
neueren Dramas_, vols. i-iii (1893-1903), is the best general
guide on the classical drama and its imitations during the
Middle Ages and the Renascence. W. Cloetta, _Beiträge zur
Litteraturgeschichte des Mittelalters und der Renaissance_: i.
_Komödie und Tragödie im Mittelalter_ (1890); ii. _Die Anfänge
der Renaissancetragödie_ (1892), deals very fully with certain
points. C. H. Herford, _Studies in the Literary Relations of
England and Germany in the Sixteenth Century_ (1886), has an
admirable chapter on _The Latin Drama_. G. Saintsbury, _The
Earlier Renaissance_ (1901), chap. vi, may also be consulted.
Useful books on the beginnings of the Elizabethan forms of
drama are R. Fischer, _Zur Kunstentwicklung der englischen
Tragödie von ihren ersten Anfängen bis zu Shakespeare_ (1893);
J. W. Cunliffe, _The Influence of Seneca on Elizabethan
Tragedy_ (1893); L. L. Schücking, _Studien über die stofflichen
Beziehungen der englischen Komödie zur italienischen bis
Lilly_ (1901); F. E. Schelling, _The English Chronicle Play_
(1902). The best bibliographies are, for the Latin plays, P.
Bahlmann, _Die Erneuerer des antiken Dramas und ihre ersten
dramatischen Versuche, 1314-1478_ (1896), and _Die lateinischen
Dramen von Wimpheling’s Stylpho bis zur Mitte des sechzehnten
Jahrhunderts, 1480-1550_ (1893); and for English plays, W. W.
Greg, _A List of English Plays written before 1643 and printed
before 1700_ (1900). This may be supplemented from W. C.
Hazlitt, _A Manual for the Collector and Amateur of Old English
Plays_ (1892). A list of early Tudor interludes will be found
in Appendix X.]
The dramatic material upon which the interlude was able to draw had
naturally its points of relation to and of divergence from that of
the popular stage, whose last days it overlapped. It continued to
occupy itself largely with the morality. The ‘moral interludes’ of
the early Tudor period are in fact distinguished with some difficulty
from the popular moralities by their comparative brevity, and by
indications of the _mise en scène_ as a ‘room’ or ‘hall’ rather than
an open ‘place[591].’ The only clearly popular texts later than those
of the fifteenth century, discussed in a previous chapter, are Sir
David Lyndsay’s Scottish _Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis_, and the
_Magnificence_, which alone survives of several plays from the prolific
pen of the ‘laureate’ poet, John Skelton. A somewhat intermediate type is
presented by the _Nature_ of Cardinal Morton’s chaplain, Henry Medwall.
This was certainly intended for performance as an interlude, but it is
on the scale of the popular moralities, needing division into two parts
to bring it within the limits of courtly patience; and like them it is
sufficiently wide in its scope to embrace the whole moral problem of
humanity. The conditions of the interlude, however, enforced themselves,
and the later morals have, as a rule, a more restricted theme. They make
their selection from amongst the battalions of sins and virtues which
were wont to invade the stage together, and set themselves the task of
expounding the dangers of a particular temperament or the advantages of
a particular form of moral discipline. _Hickscorner_ shows man led into
irreligion by imagination and freewill. _Youth_ concerns itself with
pride, lechery, and riot, the specific temptations of the young. _The
Nature of the Four Elements_ and John Redford’s somewhat later _Wit and
Science_ preach the importance of devotion to study. The distinction
between the episodic and the more comprehensive moralities was in the
consciousness of the writers themselves; and the older fashion did not
wholly disappear. William Baldwin describes his play for the Inns of
Court in 1556 as ‘comprehending a discourse of the worlde[592]’; and
mention is more than once made of an interesting piece called _The Cradle
of Security_, which seems to have had a motive of death and the judgement
akin to that found in _The Pride of Life_ and in _Everyman_[593].
The morality was not, perhaps, quite such an arid type of drama as might
be supposed, especially after the dramatists learnt, instead of leaving
humanity as a dry bone of contention between the good and evil powers, to
adopt a biographic mode of treatment, and thus to introduce the interest
of growth and development[594]. But by the sixteenth century allegory
had had its day, and the light-hearted court of Henry VIII and Katharine
of Aragon might be excused some weariness at the constant presentation
before it of argumentative abstractions which occasionally yielded
nothing more entertaining than a personified _débat_[595]. Certainly it
is upon record that Medwall’s moral of ‘the fyndyng of Troth,’ played
at the Christmas of 1513, appeared to Henry so long, that he got up and
‘departyd to hys chambre[596].’ The offenders on this occasion were
English and his company of household players. They seem to have been
unwisely wedded to the old methods. They pursued the princess Margaret to
Scotland with a ‘Moralite’ in 1503, and in the reign of Edward VI they
were still playing the play of _Self-Love_[597]. Perhaps this explains
why they make distinctly less show in the accounts of Tudor revels than
do their competitors of the Chapel. Unfortunately none of the pieces
given by this latter body have been preserved. But, to judge by the
descriptions of Hall, many of them could only be called interludes by a
somewhat liberal extension of the sense of the term. There was perhaps
some slight allegorical or mythological framework of spoken dialogue. But
the real amusement lay in an abundance of singing, which of course the
Chapel was well qualified to provide, and of dancing, in which the guests
often joined, and in an elaborately designed pageant, which was wheeled
into the hall and from which the performers descended. They were in fact
masques rather than dramas in the strict sense, and in connexion with the
origin of the masque they have already been considered[598].
The popular stage, as has been said, had its farcical elements, but did
not, in England, arrive at any notable development of the farce. Nor
is any marked influence of the overseas habit even now to be traced.
The name is not used in England, although it is in Scotland, where
at the beginning of the sixteenth century the relations with France
were much closer[599]. Whether directly or indirectly through French
channels, the farce is perhaps the contribution of minstrelsy to the
nascent interlude. That some dramatic tradition was handed down from
the _mimi_ of the Empire to the _mimi_ of the Middle Ages, although not
susceptible of demonstration, is exceedingly likely[600]. That solitary
mediaeval survival, the _Interludium de Clerico et Puella_, hardly
declares its origin. But the farce, in its free handling of contemporary
life, in the outspokenness, which often becomes indecency, of its
language, in its note of satire, especially towards the priest and other
institutions deserving of reverence, is the exact counterpart of one
of the most characteristic forms of minstrel literature, the _fabliau_.
These qualities are reproduced in the interludes of John Heywood, who,
though possibly an Oxford man, began life as a singer and player of
the virginals at court, and belonged therefore to the minstrel class.
He grew quite respectable, married into the family of Sir Thomas More
and John Rastell the printer, and had for grandson John Donne. He was
put in charge of the singing-school of St. Paul’s, the boys of which
probably performed his plays. Of the six extant, _Wit and Folly_ is a
mere dialogue, and _Love_ a more elaborate disputation, although both are
presented ‘in maner of an enterlude.’ But the others, _The Pardoner and
the Friar_, _The Four P’s_, _The Weather_, and _John, Tib and Sir John_
are regular farces. And with them the farce makes good its footing in the
English drama.
Those congeners of the French farce which took their origin from
the Feast of Fools, the _Sottie_ and the _Sermon joyeux_, are only
represented in these islands by the Sermon of ‘Folie’ in Sir David
Lyndsay’s _Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis_[601]. But the ‘fool’ himself,
as a dramatic character, is in Shakespeare’s and other Elizabethan
plays, and it must now be pointed out that he is in some of the
earliest Tudor interludes. Here he has the not altogether intelligible
name of the ‘vice.’ A recent writer, Professor Cushman of the Nevada
State University, has endeavoured to show that the vice came into
the interludes through the avenue of the moralities. Originally ‘an
allegorical representation of human weaknesses and vices, in short
the summation of the Deadly Sins,’ he lost in course of time this
serious quality, and ‘the term Vice came to be simply a synonym for
buffoon[602].’ This theory has no doubt the advantage of explaining the
name. Unfortunately it proceeds by disregarding several plays in which
the vice does occur, and reading him into many where there is none[603].
‘Vicious’ had his pageant in the Beverley _Paternoster_ play, and vices
in the ordinary sense of the word are of course familiar personages in
the morals, which generally moreover have some one character who can
be regarded as the representative or the chief representative of human
frailty. But the vice is not found under that name in the text, list of
_dramatis personae_, or stage directions of any popular morality or of
any pre-Elizabethan moral interlude except the Marian _Respublica_. The
majority of plays in which he does occur are not morals, even of the
modified Elizabethan type; and although in those which are he generally
plays a bad part, even this is not an invariable rule. In _The Tide
Tarrieth for No Man_, as in the tragedy of _Horestes_, he is Courage.
Moreover, as a matter of fact, he comes into the interludes through the
avenue of the farce. The earliest vices, by some thirty years, are those
of Heywood’s _Love_, in which he is ‘Neither Loving nor Loved,’ who
mocks the other disputants, and plays a practical joke with fireworks
upon them, and _The Weather_, in which he is ‘Merry Report,’ the jesting
official of Jupiter. And in the later plays, even if he has some other
dramatic function, he always adds to it that of a riotous buffoon.
Frequently enough he has no other. It must be concluded then that,
whatever the name may mean—and irresponsible philology has made some
amazing attempts at explanation[604]—the character of the vice is derived
from that of the domestic fool or jester. Oddly enough he is rarely
called a fool, although the description of Medwall’s _Finding of Truth_
mentions ‘the foolys part[605].’ But the Elizabethan writers speak
of his long coat and lathen sword, common trappings of the domestic
fool[606]. Whether he ever had a cockscomb, a bauble, or an eared hood is
not apparent. A vice seems to have been introduced into one or two of the
later miracle-plays[607]. At Bungay in 1566 he ‘made pastime’ before and
after the play, as Tarleton or Kempe were in time to do with their ‘jigs’
upon the London boards. And probably this was his normal function on such
occasions.
From the moral the interlude drew abstractions; from the farce social
types. The possibility of vital drama lay in an advance to the
portraiture of individualities. The natural way to attain to this was by
the introduction of historical, mythical, or romantic personages. The
miracle-play had, of course, afforded these; but there is little to show
that the miracle-play, during the first half of the sixteenth century,
had much influence on the interlude[608]. The local players brought it
to court, but, for the present, it was _démodé_. It was, however, to
have its brief revival. The quarry of romantic narrative had hardly been
opened by the Middle Ages. An old theme of Robert of Sicily, once used at
Lincoln, was now remembered at Chester. Robin Hood had yielded dramatic
May-games, and his revels were popular at Henry VIII’s court[609]. New
motives, however, now begin to assert themselves. Some at least of these
were suggested by the study of Chaucer. Ralph Radclif’s school plays at
Hitchin included one on _Griselda_ and one on _Meliboeus_[610]. Nicholas
Grimald wrote one on _Troilus_, and another had been acted by the Chapel
at court in 1516[611]. Radclif was also responsible for a _Titus and
Gisippus_, while the king’s players, shaking off their devotion to the
moral, prepared in 1552 ‘a play of _Aesop’s Crow_, wherein the most part
of the actors were birds[612].’ An extant piece on ‘the beauty and good
properties of women’ and ‘their vices and evil conditions’ is really a
version through the Italian of the Spanish _Celestina_, one of the first
of many English dramatic borrowings from South European sources.
So far I have written only of developments which were at least latent in
mediaevalism. But the interlude had its rise in the very midst of the
great intellectual and spiritual movement throughout Europe which is
known as humanism; and hardly any branch of human activities was destined
to be more completely transformed by the new forces than the drama. The
history of this transformation is not, however, a simple one. Between
humanism and mediaevalism there is no rigid barrier. As at all periods
of transition, a constant action and reaction established themselves
between the old and new order of ideas. Moreover, humanism itself held
elements in solution that were not wholly reconcilable with each other.
Many things, and perhaps particularly the drama, presented themselves in
very different lights, according as they were viewed from the literary or
the religious side of the great movement. Some brief indication of the
in-and-out play of the forces of humanism as they affected the history
of the interlude during the first half of the sixteenth century is,
therefore, desirable.
The chief of these forces is, of course, the influence of classical
comedy and tragedy. These, as vital forms of literature, did not long
survive the fall of the theatres, with which, indeed, their connexion had
long been of the slightest. In the East, a certain tradition of Christian
book dramas begins with the anti-Gnostic dialogues of St. Methodius in
the fourth century and ends with the much disputed Χριστὸς Πάσχων in the
eleventh or twelfth[613]. It is the merest conjecture that some of these
may have been given some kind of representation in the churches[614].
In the West the _Aulularia_ of Plautus was rehandled under the title
of _Querolus_ at the end of the fourth century, and possibly also the
_Amphitruo_ under that of _Geta_[615]. In the fifth, Magnus, the father
of Consentius, is said by Sidonius, as Shakespeare is said by Ben
Jonson, to have ‘outdone insolent Greece, or haughty Rome[616].’ Further
the production of plays cannot be traced. Soon afterwards most of the
classical dramatists pass into oblivion. A knowledge of Seneca or of
Plautus, not to speak of the Greeks, is the rarest of things from the
tenth century to the fourteenth. The marked exception is Terence who, as
Dr. Ward puts it, led ‘a charmed life in the darkest ages of learning.’
This he owed, doubtless, to his unrivalled gift of packing up the most
impeccable sentiments in the neatest of phrases. His vogue as a school
author was early and enduring, and the whole of mediaevalism, a few of
the stricter moralists alone dissenting, hailed him as a master of the
wisdom of life[617]. At the beginning of the eleventh century, Notker
Labeo, a monk of St. Gall, writes that he has been invited to turn the
_Andria_ into German[618]. Not long before, Hrotsvitha, a Benedictine nun
of Gandersheim in Saxony, had taken Terence as her model for half a dozen
plays in Latin prose, designed to glorify chastity and to celebrate the
constancy of the martyrs. The dramaturgy of Hrotsvitha appears to have
been an isolated experiment and the merest literary exercise. Her plays
abound in delicate situations, and are not likely to have been intended
even for cloister representation[619]. Nor is there much evidence for
any representation of the Terentian comedies themselves. A curious
fragment known as _Terentius et Delusor_ contains a dialogue between the
_vetus poeta_ and a _persona delusoris_ or mime. The nature of this is
somewhat enigmatic, but it certainly reads as if it might be a prologue
or _parade_ written for a Terentian representation. In any case, it is
wholly unparalleled[620]. In fact, although the Middle Ages continued to
read Terence, the most extraordinary ideas prevailed as to how his dramas
were originally produced. Vague reminiscences of the pantomimic art of
later Rome led to the mistaken supposition that the poet himself, or a
_recitator_, declaimed the text from a _pulpitum_ above the stage, while
the actors gesticulated voicelessly below[621]. By a further confusion
the name of Calliopius, a third- or fourth-century grammarian through
whose hands the text of Terence has passed, was taken for that of a
_recitator_ contemporary with the poet, and the _Vita Oxoniensis_ goes
so far as to describe him as a powerful and learned man, who read the
comedies aloud in the senate[622]. The same complete ignorance of things
scenic declares itself in the notions attached to the terms _tragoedia_
and _comoedia_, not only vulgarly, but in the formal definitions of
lexicographers and encyclopaedists[623].
The characteristics which really differentiate the drama from other
forms of literature, dialogue and scenic representation, drop out of
account, the latter entirely, the former very nearly so. Both tragedy
and comedy are regarded as forms of narrative. Tragedy is narrative
which concerns persons of high degree, is written in a lofty style,
and beginning happily comes to a sad conclusion. Comedy, on the other
hand, concerns itself with ordinary persons, uses humble and everyday
language, and resolves its complications in a fortunate ending[624].
Even these distinctions are not all consistently maintained, and the sad
or happy event becomes the only fixed and invariable criterion[625].
The origin of such conceptions is to be found partly in the common
derived classical use of _tragoedia_ and _comoedia_ to describe tragic
and comic events as well as the species of drama in which these are
respectively represented; partly in a misunderstanding of grammarians
who, assuming the dialogue and the representation, gave definitions
of tragedy and comedy in relation to each other[626]; and partly in
the solecism of the fifth-century epic writer Dracontius, who seems
to have called his _Orestes_ a tragedy, merely because it was from
tragedies that the material he used was drawn[627]. The _comoedia_ and
_tragoedia_ of the Latin writers, thus defined, was extended to all the
varieties of narrative, in the widest sense of the word. The epics of
Lucan and Statius, the elegies of Ovid, are _tragoediae_; the epistles
of Ovid, the pastoral dialogues of Virgil, are _comoediae_; the satires
of Horace, Persius, Juvenal, are one or the other, according to the
point of view[628]. It is curious that, with all this wide extension
of the terms, they were not applied to the one form of mediaeval Latin
composition which really had some analogy to the ancient drama; namely to
the liturgical plays out of which the vernacular mysteries grew. These
must have been written by learned writers: some of them were probably
acted by schoolboys trained in Terence; and yet, if Hrosvitha, as she
should be, is put out of the reckoning, no inward or outward trace
of the influence of classical tragedy or comedy can be found in any
one of them. In the manuscripts, they are called _officium_, _ordo_,
_ludus_, _miraculum_, _repraesentatio_ and the like, but very rarely
_comoedia_ or _tragoedia_, and never before 1204[629]. From the Latin
the mediaeval notions of tragedy and comedy were transferred to similar
compositions in the vernaculars. Dante’s _Divina Commedia_ is just a
story which begins in Hell and ends in Paradise[630]. Boccaccio[631],
Chaucer[632], and Lydgate[633] use precisely similar language. And, right
up to the end of the sixteenth century, ‘tragedy’ continues to stand for
‘tragical legend’ with the authors of the _Mirror for Magistrates_ and
their numerous successors[634]. Long before this, of course, humanistic
research, without destroying their mediaeval sense, had restored to
the wronged terms their proper connotation. There is a period during
which it is a little difficult to say what, in certain instances,
they do mean. When Robert Bower, in 1447, speaks of _comoediae_ and
_tragoediae_ on the theme of Robin Hood and Little John, it is a matter
for conjecture whether he is referring to dramatized May-games or merely
to ballads[635]. Bale, in writing of his contemporaries, certainly
applies the words to plays; but when he ascribes _tragoedias vulgares_
to Robert Baston, a Carmelite friar of the time of Edward II, it is
probable that he is using, or quoting a record which used, an obsolescent
terminology[636]. What the _comoediae_ of John Scogan, under Edward IV,
may have been, must remain quite doubtful[637].
It is in the early fourteenth century and in Italy that a renewed
interest in the Latin dramatists, other than Terence, can first be
traced. Seneca became the subject of a commentary by the English
Dominican Nicholas Treveth, and also attracted the attention of Lovato
de’ Lovati and the scholarly circle which gathered round him at Padua.
The chief of these was Albertino Mussato, who about 1314 was moved
by indignation at the intrigues of Can Grande of Verona to write his
_Ecerinis_ on the fate of that Ezzelino who, some eighty years before,
had tyrannized over Padua. This first of the Senecan tragedies of
the Renascence stirred enthusiasm amongst the growing number of the
_literati_. It was read aloud and Mussato was laureated before the
assembled university. Two learned professors paid it the tribute of a
commentary. The example of Mussato was followed in the _Achilleis_ (1390)
of Antonio de’ Loschi of Vicenza and the _Progne_ (†1428) of Gregorio
Corraro of Mantua. Petrarch was familiar not only with Terence, but also
with Seneca and Plautus, and his _Philologia_, written before 1331 and
then suppressed, may claim to take rank with the _Ecerinis_ as the first
Renascence comedy. It was modelled, says Boccaccio, upon Terence. A fresh
impulse was given to the study and imitation of Latin comedy in 1427
by the discovery of twelve hitherto unknown Plautine plays, including
the _Menaechmi_ and the _Miles Gloriosus_, and various attempts were
made to complete the imperfect plays. In 1441 Leonardo Dati of Florence
introduced a motive from the _Trinummus_ into his, not comedy, but
tragedy of _Hiempsal_[638].
It must be borne in mind that during these early stages of humanism
classical models and neo-Latin imitations alike were merely read and not
acted. There is no sign whatever that as yet the mediaeval misconception
as to the nature of Roman scenic representation had come to an end. It
was certainly shared by Nicolas Treveth and probably by both Petrarch
and Boccaccio[639]. It was not indeed in these regular dramas that the
habit of acting Latin first re-established itself, but in a mixed and
far less classical type of play. It is probable that in schools the
exercise of reciting verse, and amongst other verse dialogue, had never
died out since the time of the Empire. In the fourth century the _Ludus
Septem Sapientum_ of the Bordeaux schoolmaster Ausonius, which consists
of no more than a set of verses and a ‘_Plaudite!_’ for each sage, was
doubtless written for some such purpose[640]. Such also may have been the
destiny of the ‘elegiac’ and ‘epic’ comedies and tragedies of which a
fair number were produced, from the eleventh century to the thirteenth.
These are comedies and tragedies, primarily, in the mediaeval sense.
They are narrative poems in form. But in all of them a good deal of
dialogue is introduced, and in some there is hardly anything else. Their
subject-matter is derived partly from Terence and partly from the stock
of motives common to all forms of mediaeval light literature. Their
most careful student, Dr. Cloetta, suggests that they were intended for
a half-dramatic declamation by minstrels. This may sometimes have been
the case, but the capacity and the audience of the minstrels for Latin
were alike limited, and I do not see why at any rate the more edifying
of them may not have been school pieces[641]. By the fifteenth century
it will be remembered, students, who had long been in the habit of
performing miracle-plays, had also taken to producing farces, morals,
and those miscellaneous comic and satiric pieces which had their origin
in the folk-festivals. Many of these were in the vernaculars; but it
is difficult to avoid classing with them a group of Latin dialogues
and loosely constructed comedies, written in Terentian metres and
presenting a curious amalgam of classical and mediaeval themes. Of
hardly any of these can it be said positively that they were intended to
be acted. This is, however, not unlikely in the case of the anonymous
_Columpnarium_, which goes back to the fourteenth century. Pavia probably
saw a performance of Ugolini Pisani’s _Confabulatio coquinaria_ (1435),
which has all the characteristics of a carnival drollery, and certainly
of Ranzio Mercurino’s _De Falso Hypocrita_, which is stated in the
manuscript to have been ‘_acta_’ there on April 15, 1437. The _Admiranda_
of Alberto Carrara was similarly ‘_acta_’ at Padua about 1456. The exact
way in which these pieces and others like them were performed must remain
doubtful. Acting in the strict sense can only be distinctly asserted of
Francesco Ariosto’s dialogue of _Isis_ which was given ‘_per personatos_’
at the Ferrara carnival of 1444[642].
All this pseudo-classic comedy was looked upon with scorn by the purists
of humanism. But it made its way over the Alps and had a considerable
vogue in Germany. In France it found an exponent in Jean Tissier de
Ravisy (Ravisius Textor), professor of rhetoric in the College of Navarre
at Paris, and afterwards rector of the Paris University, who wrote, in
good enough Latin, but wholly in the mediaeval manner, a large number
of morals, farces, and dialogues for representation by his pupils[643].
Two at least of these were turned into English interludes. The classical
element predominates in the pseudo-Homeric _Thersites_, the production
of which can be fixed to between October 12 and 24, 1537; the mediaeval
in Thomas Ingelend’s _The Disobedient Child_, which belongs to the very
beginning of the reign of Elizabeth.
It was doubtless the study of Vitruvius which awakened the humanists to
the fact that their beloved comedies had after all been acted after very
much the fashion so long familiar in farces and miracle-plays. Exactly
when the knowledge came is not clear. Polydore Vergil is still ignorant,
and even Erasmus, at the date of the _Adagia_, uncertain. Alberti put a
_theatrum_ in the palace built on the Vatican for Nicholas V about 1452,
but there is no record of its use for dramatic performances at that
time, and the immediate successors of Nicholas did not love humanism.
Such performances seem to have been first undertaken by the pupils of a
Roman professor, Pomponius Laetus. Amongst these was Inghirami, who was
protagonist in revivals of the _Asinaria_ of Plautus and the _Phaedra_
of Seneca. These took place about 1485. Several other representations
both of classical plays and of neo-Latin imitations occurred in Italy
before the end of the century; and the practice spread to other countries
affected by the humanist wave, soon establishing itself as part of the
regular sixteenth-century scheme of education. By this time, of course,
Greek as well as Latin dramatic models were available. The Latin
translation of the _Plutus_ of Aristophanes by Leonardo Bruni (†1427)
found several successors, and the play was acted at Zwickau in 1521. The
study of Sophocles and Euripides began with Francesco Filelfo (†1481),
but no representations of these authors are mentioned[644].
The outburst of dramatic activity in English schools and universities
during the first half of the sixteenth century has already been noted.
Wolsey may claim credit for an early encouragement of classical comedy in
virtue of the performances of the _Menaechmi_ and the _Phormio_ given in
his house by the boys of St. Paul’s in 1527 and 1528[645]. The master of
St. Paul’s from 1522 to 1531 was John Ritwise, who himself wrote a Latin
play of _Dido_, which also appears to have been acted before Wolsey[646].
The _Plutus_ was given at St. John’s College, Cambridge, in 1536; the
_Pax_ at Trinity about a decade later[647]. A long series of English
translations of classical plays begins with one of the _Andria_ printed,
possibly by John Rastell, under the title of _Terens in Englysh_[648].
A more important matter is the influence exercised by classical models
upon the vernacular interludes. This naturally showed itself in school
dramas, and only gradually filtered down to the professional players.
Two plays compete for the honour of ranking as ‘the first regular
English comedy,’ a term which is misleading, as it implies a far more
complete break with the past than is to be discerned in either of them.
One is Nicholas Udall’s _Ralph Roister Doister_, the performance of
which can be dated with some confidence in 1553, by which time its
author may already have been head master of Westminster; the other
is _Gammer Gurton’s Needle_, which was put on the stage at Christ’s
College, Cambridge, has been ascribed to John Still, afterwards bishop
of Bath and Wells, and to John Bridges, afterwards bishop of Oxford, but
is more probably the work of one William Stevenson, who was certainly
superintending plays at Christ’s College in 1550-3. Both plays adopt the
classical arrangement by acts and scenes. But of the two _Gammer Gurton’s
Needle_ is far closer to the mediaeval farce in its choice and treatment
of subject. _Ralph Roister Doister_, although by no means devoid of
mediaeval elements, is in the main an adaptation of the _Miles Gloriosus_
of Plautus. A slighter and rather later piece of work, _Jack Juggler_,
was also intended for performance by schoolboys, and is based upon the
_Amphitruo_. The earliest ‘regular English tragedy’ on Senecan lines,
or at least the earliest which oblivion has spared, is the _Gorboduc_
or _Ferrex and Porrex_ of 1561. This falls outside the strict scope of
this chapter. But a fragment of a play from the press of John Rastell
(1516-33) which introduces ‘Lucres’ and Publius Cornelius, suggests that,
here as elsewhere, the Elizabethan writers were merely resuming the
history of the earlier English Renascence, which religious and political
disturbances had so wofully interrupted.
Towards the end of Henry VIII’s reign, the course of the developing
interlude was further diverted by a fresh wave of humanist influence.
This came from the wing of the movement which had occupied itself, not
only with erudition, but also with the spiritual stirrings that issued
in the Reformation. It must be borne in mind that the attitude of mere
negation which the English Puritans, no doubt with their justification
in ‘antiquity,’ came to adopt towards the stage, was by no means
characteristic of the earlier Protestantism. The Lutheran reformers were
humanists as well as theologians, and it was natural to them to shape
a literary weapon to their own purposes, rather than to cast it aside
as unfit for furbishing. About 1530 a new school of neo-Latin drama
arose in Holland, which stood in much closer relations to mediaevalism
than that which had had its origin in Italy. It aimed at applying the
structure and the style of Terence to an edifying subject-matter drawn
from the tradition of the religious drama. The English _Everyman_ belongs
to a group of related plays, both in Latin and in the vernaculars, on
its moral theme. The _Acolastus_ (1530, acted 1529) of William Gnaphaeus
and the _Asotus_ (1537, written †1507) of George Macropedius began a
cycle of ‘Prodigal Son’ plays which had many branches. The movement
began uncontroversially, but developed Protestant tendencies. It spread
to Basle, where Sixt Birck, who called himself Xystus Betuleius, wrote
a _Susanna_ (1537), an _Eva_ (1539), a _Judith_ (1540), and to France,
where the Scotchman George Buchanan added to the ‘Christian Terence’
a ‘Christian Seneca’ in the _Jephthes_ (1554) and _Baptistes_ (1564)
performed, between 1540 and 1543, by his students at Bordeaux. In these,
which are but a few out of many similar plays produced at this period,
the humanists drew in the main upon such scriptural subjects, many of
them apocryphal or parabolic, as were calculated, while no doubt making
for edification, at the same time to afford scope for a free portrayal of
human life. This on the whole, in spite of the treatment of such episodes
as the Magdalen _in gaudio_, was a departure from the normal mediaeval
usage[649].
A new note, of acute and even violent controversy, was introduced
into the Protestant drama by the fiery heretic, Thomas Kirchmayer, or
Naogeorgos. Kirchmayer wrote several plays, but the most important from
the present point of view is that of _Pammachius_ (1538), written during
his pastorate of Sulza in Thuringia before his extreme views had led,
not merely to exile from the Empire, but also to a quarrel with Luther.
The _Pammachius_ goes back to one of the most interesting, although of
course not one of the most usual, themes of mediaeval drama, that of
Antichrist; and it will readily be conceived that, for Kirchmayer, the
Antichrist is none other than the Pope. It is interesting to observe
that the play was dedicated to Archbishop Cranmer, whose reforming
_Articles_ of 1536 had roused the expectations of Protestant Germany. It
was translated into English by John Bale, and was certainly not without
influence in this country[650].
Both the merely edifying and the controversial type of Lutheran drama,
indeed, found its English representatives. To the former belong the
_Christus Redivivus_ (1543) and the _Archipropheta_ (1548) of the Oxford
lecturer, Nicholas Grimald, one of which deals, somewhat exceptionally
at this period, with the Resurrection, the other with John the Baptist.
The _Absalon_ of Thomas Watson, the _Jephthes_ of John Christopherson
(1546)[651], and the _Sodom_, _Jonah_, _Judith_, _Job_, _Susanna_,
and _Lazarus and Dives_ of Ralph Radclif (1546-56)[652], can only
conjecturally be put in this class; and Nicholas Udall, who wrote an
_Ezechias_ in English, certainly did not commit himself irrecoverably in
the eyes of good Catholics. John Palsgrave’s _Ecphrasis_ or paraphrase of
_Acolastus_ (1540) is supplied with grammatical notes, and is conceived
wholly in the academic interest. On the other hand controversy is
suggested in the titles of Radclif’s _De Iohannis Hussi Damnatione_, and
of the _De Meretrice Babylonica_ ascribed by Bale to Edward VI[653],
and is undeniably present in the _Christus Triumphans_ (1551) of John
Foxe, the martyrologist. This, like _Pammachius_, to which it owes much,
belongs to the Antichrist cycle.
Nor was controversy confined to the learned language. As Protestantism,
coquetted with by Henry VIII, and encouraged by Cromwell, became
gradually vocal in England and awakened an equally resonant reply, the
vernacular drama, like every other form of literary expression, was swept
into the war of creeds. This phase, dominating even the professional
players, endured through the reigns of Edward VI and Mary, and still
colours the early Elizabethan interludes. Its beginnings were independent
of the Lutheran influences that so profoundly affected its progress. The
morality already contained within itself that tendency to criticism which
was perhaps the easiest way to correct its insipidity. Historically it
was politics rather than religion with which the interlude first claimed
to interfere. The story begins, harmlessly enough, at court, with an
allegorical ‘disguising’ during the visit of the Emperor Charles V to
London in 1523, in which the French king, typified by an unruly horse,
was tamed by Amitie, who stood for the alliance between Charles and
Henry[654]. In 1526 John Roo’s morality, played at Gray’s Inn, of ‘Lord
Governaunce’ and ‘Lady Publike-Wele’ wrung Wolsey’s withers, although as
a matter of fact it was twenty years old[655]. Religion was first touched
in 1527 in a piece of which one would gladly know more. It was played, as
it seems, in Latin and French by the St. Paul’s boys under John Ritwise,
before ambassadors from France. The subject was the captivity of the
Pope, and amongst the singular medley of characters named are found
‘the herretyke, Lewtar’ and ‘Lewtar’s wyfe, like a frowe of Spyers in
Almayn[656].’ This was, no doubt, all in the interests of orthodoxy; and
a similar tone may be assumed in the comedies acted before Wolsey in the
following year on the release of the Pope[657]. But much water passed
under the mill in the next few years, and in 1533 there was a comedy
at court ‘to the no little defamation of certain cardinals[658].’ In
the same year, however, a proclamation forbade ‘playing of enterludes’
‘concerning doctrines in matters now in question and controversie[659].’
This is a kind of regulation which it is easier to make than to enforce.
Its effect, if it had any, was not of long duration. In 1537 much offence
was given to Bishop Gardiner, the Chancellor of Cambridge University, by
the performance amongst the youth of Christ’s College of a ‘tragedie,’
part at least of which was ‘soo pestiferous as were intolerable.’ This
‘tragedie’ was none other than the redoubtable _Pammachius_ itself[660].
In the same year, strict orders were issued to stay games and unlawful
assemblies in Suffolk, on account of a ‘seditious May-game’ which was
‘of a king, how he should rule his realm,’ and in which ‘one played
Husbandry, and said many things against gentlemen more than was in the
book of the play[661].’ These were exceptional cases. Both the students
of Christ’s and the Suffolk rustics had in their various ways overstepped
the permitted mark. Certainly Henry was not going to have kingship
called in question on a village green. But it is notorious that, in
matters of religion, he secretly encouraged many obstinate questionings
which he openly condemned. And there is evidence that Cromwell at least
found the interlude a very convenient instrument for the encouragement
of Protestantism. Bale tells us that he himself won the minister’s
favour _ob editas comedias_[662]; and there is extant amongst his
papers a singular letter of this same year 1537, from Thomas Wylley,
the vicar of Yoxford in Suffolk, in which he calls attention to three
plays he has written, and asks that he may have ‘fre lyberty to preche
the trewthe[663].’ Cranmer, too, seems to have been in sympathy with
Cromwell’s policy, for in 1539 there was an enterlude at his house which
a Protestant described as ‘one of the best matiers that ever he sawe
towching King John,’ and which may quite possibly have been John Bale’s
famous play[664].
The position was altered after 1540, when Cromwell had fallen and the
pendulum of Henry’s conscience had swung back to orthodoxy. Foxe records
how under the _Act Abolishing Diversity in Opinions_ (1539), known as
the _Act of the Six Articles_, one Spencer, an ex-priest who had become
an interlude-player, was burned at Salisbury for ‘matter concerning
the sacrament of the altar’; and how, in London, one Shermons, keeper
of the Carpenters’ Hall in Shoreditch, ‘was presented for procuring an
interlude to be openly played, wherein priests were railed on and called
knaves[665].’ But the stage was by now growing difficult to silence. In
1542 the bishops petitioned the king to correct the acting of plays ‘to
the contempt of God’s Word[666]’; and in 1543 their desire was met by
the _Act for the Advauncement of true Religion and for the Abolishment of
the Contrary_, which permitted of ‘plays and enterludes for the rebukyng
and reproching of vices and the setting forth of vertue’; but forbade
such as meddled with ‘interpretacions of scripture, contrary to the
doctryne set forth or to be set forth by the kynges maiestie[667].’ This
led to a vigorous protest from John Bale, writing under the pseudonym of
Henry Stalbridge, in his _Epistel Exhortatorye of an Inglyshe Christian_.
Its repeal was one of the first measures passed under Edward VI[668].
Lord Oxford’s men were playing in Southwark at the very hour of the
dirge for Henry in the church of St. Saviour’s[669]. Almost immediately
‘the Poope in play’ and ‘prests in play’ make their appearance once
more[670]. Edward himself wrote his comedy _De Meretrice Babylonica_.
In 1551 the English comedies ‘in demonstration of contempt for the
Pope’ were reported by the Venetian ambassador to his government[671].
But the players were not to have quite a free hand. It was now the
Catholic interludes that needed suppression. A proclamation of August
6, 1549, inhibited performances until the following November in view of
some ‘tendyng to sedicion[672].’ The _Act of Uniformity_ of the same
year forbade interludes ‘depraving and despising’ the _Book of Common
Prayer_[673]. A more effective measure came later in a proclamation of
1551, requiring either for the printing or the acting of plays a licence
by the king or the privy council[674]. Mary, at whose own marriage
with Philip in 1554 there were Catholic interludes and pageants[675],
issued a similar regulation in 1553, though naturally with a different
intention[676]. But this was not wholly effectual, and further orders
and much vigilance by the Privy Council in the oversight of players were
required in the course of the reign[677].
Only a few texts from this long period of controversial drama have
come down to us. On the Catholic side there is but one, the play
of _Respublica_ (1553). In this, and in the Protestant fragment of
_Somebody, Avarice and Minister_, the ruling literary influence is that
of Lyndsay’s _Satyre of the Thre Estaitis_. Of the remaining Protestant
plays, _Nice Wanton_ (1560) and Thomas Ingelend’s _The Disobedient Child_
(n.d.) derive from the Dutch school of Latin drama and its offshoots.
_Nice Wanton_ is an adaptation of the _Rebelles_ (1535) of Macropedius.
_The Disobedient Child_ has its relations, not only to the play of
Ravisius Textor already mentioned, but also to the _Studentes_ (1549)
of Christopher Stymmelius. More distinctly combative in tendency is the
_Lusty Juventus_ (n.d.) of R. Wever, who may be reckoned as a disciple
of John Bale. The activity of Bale himself can be somewhat obscurely
discerned as the strongest impelling force on the Protestant side. He
had his debts both to Lyndsay and to Kirchmayer, whose _Pammachius_, if
not his other plays, he translated. But he is very largely original,
and he is set apart from the other great figures of the Lutheran drama
by the fact that all his plays were written _in idiomate materno_.
Moreover, though not without classical elements, they were probably
intended for popular performance, and approach more closely to the
mediaeval structure than to that of the contemporary interlude. In his
_Scriptores_ he enumerates, under twenty-two titles, some forty-six of
them. The five extant ones were probably all ‘compiled’ about 1538 while
he was vicar of Thorndon in Suffolk. But some of them were acted at the
market-cross of Kilkenny in 1553, and the others show signs of revision
under Edward VI or even Elizabeth. In _God’s Promises_, _John Baptist_,
and _The Temptation_, Bale was simply adapting and Protestantizing the
miracle-play. The first is practically a _Prophetae_, and they are all
‘actes,’ or as the Middle Ages would have said ‘processes’ or ‘pageants,’
from a scriptural cycle. Of similar character were probably a series of
eleven plays extending from Christ in the Temple to the Resurrection.
A _Vita D. Joannis Baptistae_ in fourteen _libri_ perhaps treated this
favourite sixteenth-century theme in freer style. The polemics are more
marked in _Three Laws_, which is a morality; and in _King John_, which is
a morality varied by the introduction of the king himself as a champion
against the Pope and of certain other historical figures. It thus marks
an important step in the advance of the drama towards the treatment of
individualities. With the _Three Laws_ and _King John_ may be grouped
another set of lost plays whose Latinized titles point unmistakably to
controversy. An _Amoris Imago_ might be merely edifying; but it would be
difficult to avoid meddling in matters of doctrine with such themes to
handle as _De Sectis Papisticis_, _Erga Momos et Zoilos_, _Perditiones
Papistarum_, _Contra Adulterantes Dei Verbum_, _De Imposturis Thomae
Becketi_. A pair of plays _Super utroque Regis Coniugio_, must have been,
if they were ever acted, a climax of audacity even for John Bale.
What then, in sum, was the heritage which the early Elizabethan writers
and players of interludes received from their immediate predecessors? For
the writers there were the stimulus of classical method and a widened
range both of intention and of material. Their claim was established
to dispute, to edify, or merely to amuse. They stood on the verge
of more than one field of enterprise which had been barely entered
upon and justly appeared inexhaustible. ‘Tragedy, comedy, history,
pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical,
tragical-comical-historical-pastoral’; they possessed at least the keys
to them all. Their own work is a heterogeneous welter of all the dramatic
elements of the past and the future. Belated morals and miracle-plays
jostle with adaptations of Seneca and Plautus. The _dramatis personae_
of a single play will afford the abstractions of the allegory and the
types of the farce side by side with real living individualities; and the
latter are drawn indifferently from contemporary society, from romance,
from classical and from national history. These are precisely the dry
bones which one day, beneath the breath of genius, should spring up into
the wanton life of the Shakespearean drama. The players had made good
their footing both in courts and amongst the folk. But their meddlings
with controversy had brought upon them the hand of authority, which was
not to be lightly shaken off. Elizabeth, like her brother, signalized the
opening of her reign by a temporary inhibition of plays[678]; and her
privy council assumed a jurisdiction, by no means nominal, over things
theatrical. In their censorship they had the assistance of the bishop
of London, as ‘ordinary.’ The lesser companies may have suffered from
the statute of 1572 which confined the privilege of maintaining either
minstrels or players of interludes to barons and personages of higher
degree[679]. But the greater ones which had succeeded in establishing
themselves in London, grew and flourished. They lived down the
competition of the amateurs which during the greater part of the century
threatened to become dangerous, by their profitable system of double
performances, at court and in the inn yards. Thus they secured the future
of the drama by making it economically independent; and the copestone
of their edifice was the building of the permanent theatres. But for
courtesy and a legal fiction, they were vagabonds and liable to whipping:
yet the time was at hand when one player was to claim coat armour and
entertain preachers to sack and supper at New Place, while another was to
marry the daughter of a dean and to endow an irony for all time in the
splendid College of God’s Gift at Dulwich.
APPENDICES
A
THE TRIBUNUS VOLUPTATUM
[The _tribunus voluptatum_ was a municipal officer of the later
Empire charged with the superintendence of the _spectacula_. He
seems to have been appointed for life by the Emperor, and to
have taken over functions formerly discharged by the praetors
and quaestors. Mommsen, _Ostgothische Studien_ (_Neues Archiv_,
xiv. 495), says that he first appears in the fifth century.
Possibly, therefore, Suetonius, _Tiberius_, 42, ‘novum denique
officium instituit a voluptatibus, praeposito equite R. T.
Caesonio Prisco’ refers to some other post. A _titulus_, ‘de
officio tribuni voluptatū qd a temelicis et scenariis,’ which
should be _C. Th._ i. 19, is missing from the text. _C. Th._
xv. 7, 13 (413), is addressed to the _tribunus voluptatum_ of
Carthage. The office was maintained in Italy under Theodoric
(493-526). The _formula_ of appointment here given is preserved
by Cassiodorus, _Variae_, vii. 10; cf. _Var._ vi. 19 ‘cum
lascivae voluptates recipiant tribunum.’ The Senate is informed
by _Var._ i. 43 (†509) of the promotion of Artemidorus, who
had held the office, to be _praefectus urbanus_. The _tribunus
voluptatum_ of Rome is referred to in two inscriptions of
522 and 526 (Rossi, _Inscr. Christ._ i. Nos. 989, 1005). One
Bacauda is appointed _tribunus voluptatum_ in Milan by _Var._
v. 25 (523-6). Constantine Porphyrogenitus _de Caer._ i. 83
mentions an ἄρχων τῆς θυμέλης in the tenth-century court of
Byzantium, who may be the same officer.]
_Formula Tribuni Voluptatum._
Quamvis artes lubricae honestis moribus sint remotae et histrionum
vita vaga videatur efferri posse licentia, tamen moderatrix providit
antiquitas, ut in totum non effluerent, cum et ipsae iudicem sustinerent.
amministranda est enim sub quadam disciplina exhibitio voluptatum.
teneat scaenicos si non verus, vel umbratilis ordo iudicii. temperentur
et haec legum qualitate negotia, quasi honestas imperet inhonestis,
et quibusdam regulis vivant, qui viam rectae conversationis ignorant.
student enim illi non tantum iucunditati suae, quantum alienae laetitiae
et condicione perversa cum dominatum suis corporibus tradunt, servire
potius animos compulerunt. Dignum fuit ergo moderatorem suscipere, qui
se nesciunt iuridica conversatione tractare. locus quippe tuus his
gregibus hominum veluti quidam tutor est positus. nam sicut illi aetates
teneras adhibita cautela custodiunt, sic a te voluptates fervidae
impensa maturitate frenandae sunt. age bonis institutis quod nimia
prudentia constat invenisse maiores. leve desiderium etsi verecundia
non cohibet, districtio praenuntiata modificat. agantur spectacula
suis consuetudinibus ordinata, quia nec illi possunt invenire gratiam,
nisi imitati fuerint aliquam disciplinam. Quapropter tribunum te
voluptatum per illam indictionem nostra fecit electio, ut omnia sic
agas, quemadmodum tibi vota civitatis adiungas, ne quod ad laetitiam
constat inventum, tuis temporibus ad culpas videatur fuisse transmissum.
cum fama diminutis salva tua opinione versare. castitatem dilige, cui
subiacent prostitutae: ut magna laude dicatur: ‘virtutibus studuit, qui
voluptatibus miscebatur.’ optamus enim ut per ludicram amministrationem
ad seriam pervenias dignitatem.
B
TOTA IOCULATORUM SCENA
John of Salisbury, _Polycraticus_ i. 8 (†1159, _P. L._ cxcix, 406),
says, Satius enim fuerat otiari quam turpiter occupari. Hinc mimi,
salii vel saliares, balatrones, aemiliani, gladiatores, palaestritae,
gignadii, praestigiatores, malefici quoque multi, et tota ioculatorum
scena procedit.’ The specific terms belong to John of Salisbury’s
classical learning rather than to contemporary use; but his generic
_ioculator_ is the normal mediaeval Latin term for the minstrel in the
widest sense. Classically the word, like its synonym _iocularis_, is an
adjective, ‘given to ioca,’ ‘merry.’ Thus Cicero, _ad Att_. iv. 16. 3
‘huic ioculatorem senem illum interesse sane nolui.’ Similarly Firmicus
Maternus (fourth century), _Mathesis_, viii. 22 ‘histriones faciat,
pantomimos, ac scaenicos ioculatores,’ and 4 _Conc. Carthag._ (398), c.
60 (_C. I. C. Decr. Gratiani_, i. 46. 6) ‘clericum scurrilem et verbis
turpibus ioculatorem ab officio retrahendum censemus.’ Here the technical
meaning is approached, which Gautier, ii. 12, declares to be complete
in Salvian (fifth century), _de gubernatione Dei_. I cannot, however,
find the word in Salvian, though I do find _iugulator_, ‘cut-throat.’
I have not come across _ioculator_ as a noun before the eighth century
(vol. i. p. 37), but thenceforward it is widely used for minstrels
of both the _scôp_ and the _mimus_ type. A rarer form is _iocista_.
_Ioculator_ gives rise to the equally wide French term _jouglere_,
_jougleur_, which seems to merge with the doublet _jogeler_, _jougler_,
from _iocularis_. Similarly _ioca_ becomes _jeu_, the equivalent of
the classical and mediaeval Latin _ludus_, also in the widest sense.
In Provençal _ioculator_ becomes _joglar_, in English _jugelour_,
_jugelere_, _jogeler_, &c. Thus _S. Eng. Leg._ i. 271 (†1290) ‘Is
iugelour a day bifore him pleide faste And nemde in his ryme and in is
song þene deuel atþe laste’; King Horn (ed. Ritson), 1494 (†1300) ‘Men
seide hit were harperis, Jogelers, ant fythelers.’ The incorrect modern
French form _jongleur_ seems due to a confusion between _jougleur_ and
_jangleur_, ‘babbler,’ and the English _jangler_ has a similar use; cf.
_Piers the Plowman_, B. Text, _passus_ x. 31 (ed. Skeat, i. 286) ‘Iaperes
and Iogeloures, and Iangelers of gestes.’ Here both words appear side
by side. The English _jogelour_ sometimes has the full sense of the
French _jougleur_, as in the instances just given, but as a term for
minstrels of the higher or _scôp_ type it has to compete, firstly, with
the native _gleeman_, from O. E. _gleoman_, _gligman_, and secondly, with
_minstrel_; and as a matter of fact its commoner use is for the lower
type of minstrel or buffoon, and in particular, in the exact sense of
the modern _juggler_, for a conjuror, _tregetour_ or _prestigiator_. The
latter is the usual meaning of _jogelour_, with the cognate _jogelrye_,
in Chaucer; for the former, cf. Adam Davie (†1312) ‘the minstrels sing,
the jogelours carpe.’ In English documents the Latin _ioculator_ itself
to some extent follows suit; the _ioculator regis_ of late fifteenth or
early sixteenth-century accounts is not a minstrel or musician, but the
royal _juggler_ (cf. vol. i. p. 68). On the other hand the Provençal
_joglar_ is differentiated in the opposite sense, to denote a grade of
minstrelsy raised above the mere _bufos_ (vol. i. p. 63).
A street in Paris known at the end of the thirteenth century as
the ‘_rue aus Jugléeurs_,’ came later to be known as the _rue des
Ménétriers_ (Bernhard, iii. 378). This is significant of a new tendency
in nomenclature which appears with the growth during the fourteenth
century of the household entertainers at the expense of their unattached
brethren of the road. _Minister_ is classical Latin for ‘inferior’
and so ‘personal attendant.’ The _ministeriales_ of the later Empire
are officers personally appointed by the Emperor. Towards the end of
the thirteenth century _minister_, with its diminutives _ministellus_
and _ministrallus_ (French _menestrel_), can be seen passing from the
general sense of ‘household attendant’ to the special sense of ‘household
_ioculator_.’ A harper was one of the _ministri_ of Prince Edward in
1270 (vol. i. p. 49). Gautier, ii. 13, 51, quotes _li famles_ (_famuli_)
as a synonym for such _ioculatores_, and such doublets as ‘menestrel
et serviteur,’ ‘menestrel et varlet de chambre.’ The _ministeralli_ of
Philip IV in 1288 include, with the musicians, the _rex heraudum_ and
the _rex ribaldorum_. From the beginning of the fourteenth century,
however, _ministrallus_, with French _menestrel_, _menestrier_, and
English _menestrel_, _mynstral_, is firmly established in the special
sense. The antithesis between the _ministrallus_ and the unattached
_ioculator_ appears in the terminology of the 1321 statutes of the
Paris guild, ‘menestreus et menestrelles, jougleurs et jougleresses’;
but even this disappears, and the new group of terms becomes equivalent
to the _ioculator_ group in its widest sense. So too, _ministralcia_,
_menestrardie_, _minstralcie_, although chiefly used, as by Chaucer, for
music, are not confined to that; e.g. _Derby Accounts_, 109, ‘cuidam
tumblere facienti ministralciam suam.’ The word is here approaching very
near its kinsman _métier_ (vol. ii. p. 105). Wright-Wülcker, 596, 693,
quotes from the fifteenth-century glossaries, ‘_simphonia_, mynstrylsy,’
and ‘_mimilogium_, mynstrisye.’
_Ioculator_ and _ministrallus_ are in their technical sense
post-classical. But it is to be noted that the classical _histrio_ and
_mimus_, widened in connotation to an exact equivalent with these, remain
in full use throughout the Middle Ages. They are indeed the more literary
and learned words, as may be seen from the fact that they did not give
rise to Romance or English forms; but they are not differentiated as to
meaning. In particular, I do not find that _mimus_ is used, as I have
occasionally for convenience used it, to denote the lower minstrel of
classical origin, as against the higher minstrel or _scôp_. Here are
a few of many passages which go to establish this complete fourfold
equivalence of _ioculator_, _ministrallus_, _mimus_ and _histrio_;
_Gloss._ in _B.N. MS._ 4883ᵃ, f. 67ᵇ (Du Méril, _Or. Lat._ 23) ‘istriones
sunt ioculatores’; _Constit. regis Minorcae_ (1337, Mabillon, _Acta
SS. Bened. Ian._ iii. 27) ‘In domibus principum, ut tradit antiquitas,
mimi seu ioculatores licite possunt esse’; _Conc. Lateran._ (1215), c.
16 ‘mimis, ioculatoribus et histrionibus non intendant.’ This triple
formula, often repeated by ecclesiastics, is of course conjunctive,
like ‘rogues and vagabonds.’ Guy of Amiens (†1068) calls Taillefer
both _histrio_ and _mimus_ (vol. i. p. 43). At the beginning of the
sixteenth century the royal minstrels are _histriones_ in the accounts
of Shrewsbury, _ministralli_ in those of Winchester College (_App. E._
(_iv_)), _mimi_ in those of Beverley (Leach, _Beverley MSS._ 171).
The _ioculator regis_, as already said, is by this time distinct. The
Scottish royal minstrels appear in the Exchequer Rolls for 1433-50 as
_mimi_, _histriones_, _ioculatores_ (_L. H. T. Accounts_, i, cxcix). The
town musicians of Beverley, besides their specific names of _waits_ and
_spiculatores_, have indifferently those of _histriones_, _ministralli_,
_mimi_ (Leach, _Beverley MSS._ _passim_). It is largely a matter of
the personal taste of the scribe. Thus the Shrewsbury accounts have
both _histriones_ and _menstralles_ in 1401, _histriones_ in 1442,
_ministralli_ regularly from 1457 to 1479, and _histriones_ regularly
from 1483 onwards.
Many other names for minstrels, besides these dominant four, have been
collected by scholars (Gautier, ii. 10; Julleville, _Les Com._ 17;
Gröber, ii. 489; Bédier, 366). From the compliments exchanged in the
_fabliau_ of _Des Deux Bordeors Ribaux_ (Montaiglon-Raynaud, i. 1)
one may extract the equivalence of _menestrel_, _trouvère_, _ribaud_,
_bordeor_, _jougleur_, _chanteur_, _lecheor_, _pantonnier_. Of such
subordinate names many are specific, and have been dealt with in their
turn in chh. iii, iv. Others, again, are abusive, and found chiefly
in the mouths of ecclesiastics, or as distinctive of the lower orders
of minstrels. There are _garcio_, _nebulo_, _delusor_, _saccularius_,
_bufo_, _ribaud_, _harlot_. There are _bourdyour_, _japer_, _gabber_,
_jangler_ (vol. i. p. 84). There is _scurra_, an early and favourite term
of this class; cf. Ælfric’s gloss (Ducange, s.v. _Iocista_), ‘_Mimus_,
_iocista_, _scurra_, gligmon’; Wright-Wülcker, 693 (fifteenth-century
gloss), ‘_scurra_, harlot’; and vol. i. p. 32. There is _leccator_,
_leccour_ (cf. above and _App. F._ s.v. _Chester_). And finally, there
are a few terms of general, but not very common, application. _Scenici_
and _thymelici_ come from the early Christian prohibitions (vol. i. pp.
12, 17, 24). More important are a group derived from _ludus_, which like
_jeu_ has itself the widest possible sense, covering every possible kind
of amusement. The _Sarum Statutes_ of 1319, in a _titulus_ dealing with
_histriones_, speak of those ‘qui “menestralli” et quandoque “ludorum
homines” vulgari eloquio nuncupantur’ (vol. i. p. 40). In the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries appear such terms as _lusor_, _lusiator_,
_ludens_, _interlusor_, _interludens_. The two latter of these are always
specific, meaning ‘actor’; the three former are usually so, although they
may occasionally have the more general sense, and this is probably also
true of the English _player_. This question is more fully discussed in
vol. i. pp. 84, 393, and vol. ii. p. 185.
C
COURT MINSTRELSY IN 1306
[From _Manners and Household Expenses of England in the
Thirteenth and Fifteenth Centuries_, 141 (Roxburghe Club,
1841), from Exchequer Roll (King’s Remembrancer’s Dept.)
in Rolls Office. The Pentecost feast of 1306 was that at
which Prince Edward, who became in the next year Edward II,
was knighted. It is described in the _Annales Londonienses_
(_Chronicles of Edward I and Edward II_, R. S. i. 146).]
Solutio facta diversis Menestrallis die Pentecostes anno xxxiiiiᵗᵒ.
[A. D. 1306.]
Le Roy de Champaigne }
Le Roy Capenny } cuilibet v._marc._;
Le Roy Baisescue } summa, xvj._li._
Le Roy Marchis } i._marc._
Le Roy Robert }
Phelippe de Caumbereye lx._s._; summa, lx._s._
} cuilibet iiij._marc._;
Robert le Boistous } summa,
Gerard de Boloigne } c. vj._s._ viij._d._
}
Bruant } cuilibet xl._s._;
Northfolke } summa, iiij._li._
Carltone }
Maistre Adam le Boscu } cuilibet xx._s._;
Devenays } summa, lx._s._
Artisien } cuilibet xxx._s._;
Lucat } summa, iiij._li._
Henuer } [x._s._]
Le menestral Mons. de Montmaranci }
Le Roy Druet }
Janin le Lutour }
Gillotin le Sautreour }
Gillet de Roos }
Ricard de Haleford }
Le Petit Gauteron } cuilibet xl._s._;
Baudec le Tabourer } summa, xxvj._li._
Ernolet }
Mahu qui est ove la dammoisele de Baar }
Janin de Brebant }
Martinet qui est ove le Conte de Warwike }
Gauteron le Grant }
Le Harpour Levesque de Duresme x._s._
Guillaume le Harpour qui est ove le Patriarke }
Robert de Clou }
Maistre Adam de Reve }
Henri le Gigour }
Corraud son compaignon }
Le tierz Gigour }
Gillot le Harpour } cuilibet ij._marc._;
Johan de Newentone } summa,
Hugethun le Harpour lour compaignon } xxj._li._ di._marc._
Adekin son compaignon }
Adam de Werintone }
Adam de Grimmeshawe }
Hamond Lestivour }
Mahuet qui est ove Mons. de Tounny }
Johan de Mochelneye }
Janin Lorganistre }
Simond le Messager }
Les ij. Trumpours Mons. Thomas de Brothertone }
Martinet le Taborour }
Richard Rounlo }
Richard Hendelek }
Janin de La Tour son compaignon }
Johan le Waffrer le Roy }
Pilk }
Januche } }
Gillot } Trumpours Mons. le Prince }
Le Nakarier }
Le Gitarer } cuilibet j._marc._;
Merlin } summa, xl._marc._
Tomasin, Vilour Mons. Le Prince }
Raulin qui est ove le Conte Mareschal }
Esvillie qui est ove Mons. Pierres de Maule }
Grendone }
Le Taborer La Dame de Audham }
Gaunsaillie }
Guillaume sanz maniere }
Lambyn Clay }
Jaques Le Mascun }
Son compaignon }
Mahu du North }
Le menestral ove les cloches }
Les iij. menestraus Mons. de Hastinges }
Thomelin de Thounleie }
Les ij. Trompours le Comte de Hereforde }
Perle in the eghe }
Son compaignon }
Janyn le Sautreour qui est ove Mons. de Percy }
Les ij. Trumpours le Comte de Lancastre }
Mellet }
Henri de Nushom }
Janyn le Citoler }
Gilliame }
Fairfax } cuilibet xx._s._;
Monet } summa, iiij._li._
Hanecocke de Blithe }
Summa totalis,—cxiiij._li._ x._s._—Et issi demoerent des cc._marc._, pur
partir entre les autres menestraus de la commune,—xviij._li._ xvj._s._
viij._d._—Et a ceste partie faire sunt assigne Le Roy Baisescu, Le Roy
Marchis, Le Roy Robert, et Le Roy Druet, Gauteron le Graunt, Gauteron
le Petit, Martinet le Vilour qui est ove le Conte de Warewike, et del
hostiel Mons. le Prince, ij. serjantz darmes ... clerke.
[Five lines of which only a few words are legible.]
Richard le Harpour qui est ove le Conte de Gloucestre.
Wauter Bracon Trounpour
Wauter le Trounpour
Johan le Croudere
Tegwaret Croudere
Geffrai le Estiveur
Guillot le Taborer
Guillot le Vileur
Robert le Vilour
Jake de Vescy
Richard Whetacre
A ceux xj., por toute la commune, xvii._li._ iiii._s._ viii._d._
_Denarii dati Menestrallis._
Vidulatori Dominae de Wak’ v._s._
Laurentio Citharistae di._marc._
Johanni du Chat, cum Domino J. de Bur’ di._marc._
Mellers v._s._
Parvo Willielmo, Organistae Comtissae Herefordiae v._s._
Ricardo de Quitacre, Citharistae di._marc._
Ricardo de Leylonde, Citharistae di._marc._
Carleton Haralde v._s._
Gilloto Vidulatori Comitis Arundelliae di._marc._
Amakyn Citharistae Principis v._s._
Bolthede v._s._
Nagary le Crouder Principis v._s._
Matheu le Harpour v._s._
Johanni le Barber v._s._
ij. Trumpatoribus J. de Segrave di._marc._
Ricardo Vidulatori Comitis Lancastriae v._s._
Johanni Waffrarario Comitis Lancastriae xl._d._
Sagard Crouther xl._d._
William de Grymesar’, Harpour xl._d._
Citharistae Comitissae Lancastriae xl._d._
ij. Menestrallis J. de Ber[wyke] xl._d._
Henrico de Blida xl._d._
Ricardo Citharistae xl._d._
William de Duffelde xl._d._
v. Trumpatoribus Principis, pueris, cuilibet ij._s._ x._s._ in _toto._
iiijᵒʳ. Vigil’ Regis, cuilibet di._marc._ xx._s._
Adinet le Harpour
Perote le Taborer
Adae de Swylingtone Citharistae ij._s._
David le Crouther xij._d._
Lion de Normanville ij._s._
Gerardo xij._d._
Ricardo Citharistae ij._s._
Roberto de Colecestria iij._s._
Jhanni le Crouther de Salopia xij._d._
Johanni le Vilour domini J. Renaude xij._d._
Johanni de Trenham, Citharistae ij._s._
Willielmo Woderove, Trumpatori ij._s._
Johanni Citharistae J. de Clyntone ij._s._
Waltero de Brayles xij._d._
Roberto Citharistae Abbatis de Abbyndone xij._d._
Galfredo Trumpatori domini R. de Monte Alto
Richero socio suo ij._s._
Thomae le Croudere ij._s._
Rogero de Corleye, Trumpatori ij._s._
Audoeno le Crouther xij._d._
Hugoni Daa Citharistae ij._s._
Andreae Vidulatori de Hor’ ij._s._
Roberto de Scardeburghe xij._d._
Guilloto le Taborer Comitis Warrewici iij._s._
Paul’ Menestrallo Comitis Marescalli iij._s._
Matheo Waffraris domini R. de Monte Alto ij._s._
iij. diversis menestrallis, cuilibet iij._s._ ix._s._
Galfrido Citharistae Comitis Warrenniae ij._s._
Matill’ Makejoye xij._d._
Johanni Trumpatori domini R. de Filii Pagani xij._d._
Adae Citharistae domini J. Lestraunge xij._d._
Reginaldo le Menteur, Menestrallo domini J. de Buteturt xij._d._
Perle in the Eghe xij._d._
Gilloto Citharistae Domini P. de Malo Lacu x._s._
Roberto Gaunsillie xl._d._ Item. xl._d._
Jacke de Vescy di._marc._
Magistro Waltero Leskirmissour et fratri suo, cuilibet iij._s._ vj._s._
D
THE MINSTREL HIERARCHY
The term _rex_ is not seldom applied as a distinction amongst minstrels.
At the wedding of Joan of England in 1290 were present King Grey of
England and King Caupenny of Scotland, together with Poveret, minstrel of
the Marshal of Champagne (Chappell, i. 15). Poveret is perhaps the ‘roy
de Champaigne’ of the 1306 list, which also includes the ‘roys’ Capenny,
Baisescue, Marchis, Robert, and Druet (_Appendix C_). A ‘rex Robertus,’
together with ‘rex Pagius de Hollandia,’ reappears in accounts of the
reign of Edward II (1307-27), while one of the minstrels of the king was
William de Morlee, ‘roy de North’ (Percy, 416-8; cf. vol. i. p. 49).
In France a list of the ‘ministeralli’ of Philip IV in 1288 includes
the ‘rex Flaiolatus,’ ‘rex Heraudum,’ and ‘rex Ribaldorum.’ A certain
Pariset, who was minstrel to the Comte de Poitiers in 1314, signs the
statutes of the Paris guild in 1321 as ‘Pariset, menestrel le roy,’ and
the various ‘roys des menestreuls du royaume de France’ who appear in and
after 1338 may have been heads at once of the king’s household minstrels
and of the guild (_Appendix F_; cf. Bernhard, iii. 380). Further, the
title is claimed by the authors of various pieces of minstrel literature.
‘Adenet le roi’ is the author of _Cleomadès_ (Paris, 84; Percy, 416-8),
and ‘Huon le roi,’ perhaps identical with ‘Huon de Cambrai’ and
‘Huon Paucele,’ of the _fabliau_ of _Du Vair Palefroi_ (Bédier, 438;
Montaiglon-Raynaud, i. 3). The term _rex_ is of course common enough in
connexion with temporary or permanent associations of all sorts, and
is probably of folk origin (vol. i. chaps. iv, viii). It is possible
that some of these ‘rois’ may have been crowned by ‘puis’ (Lavoix, ii.
377), but it is more probable that they had some official pre-eminence
amongst their fellows, and perhaps some jurisdiction, territorial or
otherwise. Clearly this was the case with the ‘roy des ministralx’ at
Tutbury. The appearance of the ‘rex Flaiolatus’ with the ‘rex Heraudum’
and the ‘rex Ribaldorum’ in the French list of 1288 is thus significant,
for the latter had just such a jurisdiction over the riff-raff of the
court (Ducange, s.v.), and I conceive the relation of the minstrel ‘roys’
to their fellows to have been much that of the ‘Kings at arms’ to the
ordinary heralds. It seems that minstrels and heralds belonged to the
same class of _ministri_. The order of the Emperor Henry II (vol. i. p.
52) couples ‘ioculatores et armaturi’ and ‘Carleton Haralde’ is actually
rewarded in the 1306 list (_App. C_, p. 237). If one may quote a Celtic
parallel, the _Arwyddfardd_ or heralds formed a regular division (†1100)
of Welsh minstrelsy (E. David, _La Poésie et la Musique dans la Cambrie_,
72-91). Under Richard II the head of the English royal minstrels was
a _rex_, but from 1464 onwards the term used is _marescallus_ (Rymer,
xi. 512), and this again may be paralleled from the supreme position of
the Earl Marshal in heraldry. At the head of the Earl of Lancaster’s
minstrels in 1308 was an _armiger_. I only find this term again in the
burlesque account of the ‘auncient minstrell’ shown before Elizabeth at
Kenilworth (_Appendix H_). He was ‘a squier minstrel of Middilsex’ and,
as he bore the arms of Islington, presumably a ‘wait.’
E
EXTRACTS FROM ACCOUNT BOOKS
I. DURHAM PRIORY.
[The entries, unless otherwise specified, are amongst the
extracts (generally of _Dona Prioris_) from the Bursars’ Rolls
between 1278 and 1371, printed by Canon Fowler in vols. ii,
iii of the _Durham Account Rolls_ (Surtees Soc.). _D. H. B._ =
_Durham Household Book_ (Surtees Soc.), _F. P._ = _Inventories
and Account Rolls of Finchale Priory_ (Surtees Soc.). This
was a cell of Durham Priory. The minstrelsy often took place
at the _ludi Domini Prioris_, either in his _camera_ (_D. A._
ii. 424) or at Beaurepaire, Witton, or other _maneria_ of
the Priory. There seem to have been in most years four _ludi
ordinarii_ (_D. A._ ii. 296), though occasionally only two or
three are mentioned. These were at the feasts of Candlemas,
Easter, St. John Baptist, and All Saints (_D. A._ i. 242, iii.
932). But the Prior, Sub-Prior, and brethren seem often to have
been _ludentes_, _spatiantes_, or _in recreacione_ (_D. A._ i.
118, 235), without much regard to fixed dates. In 1438-9 they
were _ludentes_ for as much as eleven weeks and four days at
Beaurepaire (_D. A._ i. 71). See also _D. A._ i. 16, 116, 120,
129, 137, 138, 142, 166, 207, 263; ii. 287, 419, 456, 515; iii.
810, s.vv. _Ludi_, &c.; _D. H. B._ 9, 13, 54, 141, 240, 339;
_F. P._ 30, ccxcv, ccccxxxvi.]
1278. Menestrallo Regis Scociae.
Menestrallo de Novo Castro.
1299. Roberto le Taburer.
1300-1. Cuidam hystrioni Regis.
1302-3. Histrionibus domini Regis.
1310-11. Hugoni de Helmeslaye stulto domini Regis.
Cuidam Iugulatori d’ni Regis.
Cuidam Cytharistae.
†1310. Histrionibus d’ni H. de Bello Monte.
In scissura tunicae stulti.
†1315. Histrionibus ad Natale.
1330-1. In uno garniamento pro Thoma fatuo empto.
Histrionibus ad Natale.
” in fest. S. Cuthberti in Marcio.
” ad fest. S. Cuthberti in Sept.
” d’ni Henrici de Beaumond.
Citharistae (in another roll ‘citharatori’) d’ni Roberti de
Horneclyff ex precepto Prioris.
1333-4. Duobus histrionibus in die Veneris proximo post octavam beati
Martini.
Histrionibus d’ni Regis quando d’nus noster Rex rediit de
Novo Castro.
Stulto d’ni Episcopi.
Histrionibus comitis Warenne.
Histrionibus Regis Scociae.
1334-5. Histrionibus ad Natale.
1335-6. Histrionibus d’ni Regis Scociae.
Duobus histrionibus die Sci. Cuthberti.
Duobus histrionibus ex precepto Prioris.
Histrionibus Novi Castri ad fest. S. Cuthberti.
Histrionibus d’ni R. de Nevill, per Priorem.
In 1 Cythara empta pro Thom. Harpour. 3ˢ.
Cuidam histrioni apud Beaurepaire per R. de Cotam ex dono
Prioris.
Thomae fatuo ex precepto eiusdem.
†1335. Istrionibus d’ni Regis.
Istrionibus Reginae apud Pytingdon.
Istrionibus [die Dominica proxima post festum Epiphaniae, quo
die d’nus Episcopus epulabatur cum Priore].
Will’o de Sutton, Citharaedo d’ni Galfridi Lescrop eodem die.
Istrionibus die Natalis Domini.
†1336. Duobus istrionibus d’ni Regis.
Edmundo de Kendall, Cytharaeto, de dono Prioris ad Pascha.
Menestrallis de dono [quando Episcopus epulabatur cum Priore].
†1337. In 1 pari sotularium pro Thoma fatuo.
1338-9. Several payments to ‘istriones’ and ‘menestralli.’
In 4 ulnis burelli scacciati emptis pro garniamento Thomae
Fole per preceptum Prioris.
1339-40. In panno empto in foro Dunelm. pro uno garniamento pro Thoma
fatuo.
Willelmo Piper istrioni d’ni Radulphi de Nevill die
Circumcisionis.
1341. Pelidod et duobus sociis suis histrionibus d’ni Regis post
Natale Domini.
1341-42. In garniamentis emptis pro ... Thoma fatuo (and similar
entries, or for ‘Russet,’ ‘pannus,’ ‘Candelwykstret’ in
other years).
†1343. Various payments to ‘Istriones.’
1347-8. ‘Istrionibus,’ &c.
1350-51. Istrionibus ad Natale.
” ad S. Cuthbertum in Sept.
1355-6. Will’o Pyper et aliis istrionibus ad Natale.
Item duobus istrionibus d’ni Episcopi et duobus istrionibus
Comitis de Norhamton in festo Sci. Cuthberti in Marcio.
Item istrionibus d’ni Episcopi ad festum Paschae.
Item istrionibus in festo Sci. Cuthberti in Sept.
1356-7. In sepultura Thomae fatui et necessariis expensis circa
corpus eius, per manus d’ni Prioris (similar entry in
miscellaneous roll, ‘Thomae Fole,’ _D. A._ iii. 719).
Diversis ministrallis (_D. A._ iii. 718).
†1357. Et Will’o Blyndharpour ad Natale.
Et Ioh’i Harpour d’ni Ioh’is de Streuelyn et Will’o
Blyndharpour de Novo Castro.
Et duobus Trompours Comitis de Norhamton apud Wyuestow.
Et cuidam Harpour vocato Rygeway.
Istrionibus d’ni Episcopi (and Harpers, &c.).
†1360. Petro Crouder apud Pityngton, per Capellanum.
Item eidem Petro pro uno quarterio ordii sibi dato per
Priorem.
Duobus Istrionibus Episcopi in festo Assensionis Domini.
Et cuidam Istrioni Maioris villae Novi Castri per Capellanum.
1360-61. Will’o Pyper et aliis istrionibus ad Natale per manus Ioh’is
del Sayles.
Cuidam Welsharpour d’ni Will’i de Dalton.
Item histrionibus aliorum dominorum.
1361-2. In uno viro ludenti in uno loyt et uxori eius cantanti apud
Bewrpayr (_D. A._ i. 127, _Hostiller’s Accounts_).
1362. Item cuidam histrioni harper episcopi Norwychiae in festo
Transl. Sᶜⁱ. Cuthberti.
Cuidam Istrioni Jestour Jawdewyne in festo Natalis Domini.
Will’o yᵉ kakeharpour ad idem festum.
Et Barry similem sibi ad id. festum.
Et cuidam ystrioni caeco franco cum uno puero fratre suo.
Barry harper ex precepto Prioris in una tunica empta.
1363-4. Item cantoribus in Adventu Domini cum histrionibus ibidem
ex dono Prioris.
Item cuidam histrioni die Dominica _Quasimodo geniti_.
1364-5. To two players of the Lord Duke at the said feast (of St.
Cuthbert) (Raine, _St. Cuthbert_, 109, _Surtees Soc._).
1365-6. Barry Harpour, ystrionibus, &c.
1366-8. Ministrallis, Istrionibus.
1368-9. Rob’o Trompour et Will’o Fergos ministrallo in die Sci.
Cuthberti.
1373-4. Duobus Ministrallis cum uno Weyng.
1374. 12 ministrallis in festo Sᶜⁱ. Cuthb.
1375-6. Ministrall. in die S. Cuthb. in Mar.
Cuidam ministrallo ludenti coram domino Priori in camera sua.
Tribus ministrallis Comitis del Marchie ludentibus coram
domino Priore.
Cuidam ministrallo domini Regis veniente cum domino de Neuill.
12 ministrallis in festo Sci. Cuthb. in Sept.
4 ministrallis domini Principis in festo exaltacionis Sᶜᵉ.
Crucis.
Cuidam ministrallo in festo Sᶜⁱ. Mathaei.
Ministrallis in festo Sᶜⁱ. Cuthb. in Marcio anno Domini, &c.
lxxvᵗᵒ.
Duobus ministrallis in die Pasche.
1376-7. Willielmo Fergos et Rogero Harpour caeco ad Natale Domini.
Aliis ministrallis domini de Percy in eadem fest.
1377-8. Haraldis, histrionibus et nunciis, ut patet per cedulam.
1378-9. Histrionibus ... dominorum Regis, Ducis, et aliorum dominorum.
1380-1. Iohanni Momford ministrallo domini Regis.
1381-2. Ministrallis domini de Neuill apud Beaurepaire cum domina de
Lomly.
Ministrallo domini Ducis cum uno saltante in camera domini
Prioris.
(and others.)
1384-5. Ministrallis domini Regis.
1394-5. Ministrallis in festo S. Cuthb., Henrici Percy, domini Ducis
Lancastr., domini de Neuill, Ducis Eborac., de Scocia,
comitis Canciae, ad Nat. Domini, de Hilton, Ric. Brome
ministrallo, in fest. S. Cuthb. in Marc.
Uni Trompet domini Regis.
Uni Rotour de Scocia.
1395. Item, in vino, speciebus, in donis datis Confratribus,
ministrallis et aliis diversis, ex curialitate (_F. P._
cxv).
1399-1400. Ministrallis.
1401-2. Ministrallis.
1416-7. Ministrallis.
Diversis pueris ludentibus coram eodem priore in festo Sᶜⁱ.
Stephani hoc anno.
1441-2. Per ... capellanum [et] ... per bursarium ministrallis domini
Regis et aliorum dominorum supervenientibus.
1446-7. Ministrallis.
1449-50. Ministrallis.
1464-5. Et solvit Iohanni Andrewson et sociis suis operantibus pro
nova tectura unius camerae vocatae le Playerchambre
(_F. P._ ccxcv).
1465. Item j por de ferro in camera Prioris, j in le plaer cha ...
(_F. P._ ccxcviii).
1496. Paid to Robert Walssch for two days playing John Gibson of
Elvet ‘herper’ (_D. H. B._ 340).
1532-3. ... bus lusoribus ... Regis, in regardis, in auro, 15ˢ.
Et custodi ursorum et cimearum dominae Principis.
Et capellano, per bursarium, pro 4 lusoribus domini Comitis
de Darby, in auro, 7ˢ. 6ᵈ. (_D. H. B._ 143, the last two
items crossed out).
1536-7. In diversis donis datis ministrallis diversorum dominorum.
1538. Paid to the ministrels (_ministrallis_) at ‘le musters’ upon
‘le Gelymore.’
1539-40. Paid to the players (_lusoribus_) of Auklande at Christmas
before Master Hyndley, as a present (_D. H. B._ 340).
1554-5. [Cathedral Account.] Paid for two mynstralles.
II. MAXSTOKE PRIORY.
[Printed by Hazlitt-Warton, ii. 97, ‘_ex orig. penes me_.’]
‘In the Prior’s accounts of the Augustine canons of Maxstoke in
Warwickshire, of various years in the reign of Henry VI (1422-61), one of
the styles or regular heads is _De Ioculatoribus et Mimis_....
Ioculatori in septimana S. Michaelis, ivᵈ.
Citharistae tempore natalis domini et aliis iocatoribus, ivᵈ.
Mimis de Solihull, viᵈ.
Mimis de Coventry, xxᵈ.
Mimo domini Ferrers, viᵈ.
Lusoribus de Eton, viiiᵈ.
Lusoribus de Coventry, viiiᵈ.
Lusoribus de Daventry, xiiᵈ.
Mimis de Coventry, xiiᵈ.
Mimis domini de Asteley, xiiᵈ.
Item iiij mimis domini de Warewyck, xᵈ.
Mimo caeco, iiᵈ.
Sex mimis domini de Clynton.
Duobus mimis de Rugeby, xᵈ.
Cuidam citharistae, viᵈ.
Mimis domini de Asteley, xxᵈ.
Cuidam citharistae, viᵈ.
Citharistae de Coventry, viᵈ.
Duobus citharistis de Coventry, viiiᵈ.
Mimis de Rugeby, viiiᵈ.
Mimis domini de Buckeridge, xxᵈ.
Mimis domini de Stafford, iiˢ.
Lusoribus de Coleshille, viijᵈ....
[1432] Dat. duobus mimis de Coventry in die consecrationis Prioris,
xiiᵈ.’
III. THETFORD PRIORY.
[From Collier, i. 55, 84, on the authority of a ‘MS. of the
expenses of the Priory of Thetford, from 1461 to 1540, lately
in the collection of Mr. Craven Orde, and now of the Duke of
Newcastle.’]