The English: A Social History, 1066–1945 (Text Only)

by Christopher Hibbert

  The inventive concoctions of the Fishmongers were again ‘notably excellent’ when the city staged a pageant to celebrate the coronation of Richard II in 1377. But on this occasion other companies, too, were singled out for praise:

  Nor did these great guilds lack a large company of flutes and trumpets: for every guild is led by its own trumpeters. Trumpeters had been stationed by the Londoners above the Conduit, as above the tower in the same street, which had been built in the King’s honour, to sound a fanfare on his approach … A kind of castle had been constructed, having four towers, in the upper part of the shopping street called Cheapside: and from two of its sides wine flowed abundantly. In its towers, moreover, four very beautiful maidens had been placed, of about the King’s own age and stature and dressed in white garments … On the King’s approach being sighted, they scattered golden leaves in his path and, on his coming nearer, they showered imitation gold florins on to both him and his horse. When he had arrived in front of the castle, they took gold cups and, filling them with wine at the spouts of the said castle, offered them to him and his retinue. In the top of the castle, and raised above and between its four towers, a golden angel was stationed, holding in its hands a golden crown. This angel had been devised with such cunning that, on the King’s arrival, it bent down and offered him the crown.13

  Enormous sums of money were expended on occasions like these and wine flowed abundantly. Gates and market crosses were elaborately decorated; tableaux were staged upon the covered tops of water cisterns; flags and banners fluttered from windows and chimneys; the richest costumes were made for those who were to take part in the drama – an inventory of the properties required for the festivities attendant upon the coronation of Edward IV’s queen, Elizabeth Woodville, includes an item specifying 900 peacocks’ feathers – and handsome sums were paid to poets and schoolmasters for devising pageants: at the beginning of the seventeenth century Thomas Middleton received no less than £282 for composing a pageant for the Grocers’ Company.14

  One of the most memorable of all London pageants was that held to celebrate Henry V’s victory at Agincourt in 1415 when a triumphant cavalcade of scarlet-clad aldermen, citizens and craftsmen attended the king from London Bridge to St Paul’s. Each of the twin towers of the gatehouse on the bridge was surmounted by a statue ‘of amazing magnitude’, one representing a giant holding a battle-axe in his right hand and the keys of the city in his left, the other a woman clothed in a red cloak, sparkling with jewels and other ornaments. Beyond the bridge were other jewel-bedecked figures of animals and warriors standing on both sides of the roadway between columns painted to resemble white marble and green jasper, or in tapestry-lined pavilions. And beneath triumphal arches and inside velvet tents were ‘innumerable boys, representing the angelic host, arrayed in white with their faces painted gold and with glittering wings and virgin locks set with precious sprigs of laurel’, singing anthems to the sound of organs.

  As the procession of great men wound its way through the narrow streets to St Paul’s, the king bareheaded and in a purple robe like a Roman emperor marching in triumph down the Sacra Via, his knights following him in armour, his attendants wearing the insignia of their various offices, his forlorn and noble prisoners of war walking in their wake, they passed old men of ‘venerable hoariness’ dressed in golden mantles and representing prophets, martyrs and ancient kings. These men sang psalms of thanksgiving, offered the king silver leaves, a cup filled with wine from the conduit pipes, and then let fly ‘great quantities of sparrows and little birds that alighted on the King’s breast and shoulders and fluttered about him’. Beyond were pavilions in which ‘the most beautiful girls, standing motionless like statues’, blew from cups, ‘with gentle breath scarcely perceptible’, leaves of gold upon the king’s head as he passed beneath them. Then there were choirs of girls ‘singing with timbrel and dance’; and white-clad cherubs feathered like angels throwing down gilded laurel leaves from the towers of model castles; and, on the steps of St Paul’s, eighteen bishops in their pontificals waiting to conduct him to the high altar.15

  The enjoyment of spectacles like this was limited to those who lived in London and in the few other towns such as York and Coventry which could afford to stage them. But all over the country, on a lesser scale, theatrical performances were regularly produced. These had developed from the liturgical drama of the early Church. The Mass itself with its ceremonial and symbolism was a dramatic spectacle, while the antiphonal singing in church services lent itself readily to dialogue. As early as 970 St Ethelwold of Winchester was speaking of ‘the strengthening of faith in the unlearned vulgar’; and since then the primitive dramas enacted in churches at Easter, in which the Angel appeared before the Marys by the tomb of the Resurrection, had become increasingly elaborate and more sophisticated. Other characters had been introduced, among them Doubting Thomas and the Seller of Spices; the Marys sang lyric laments. Nativity plays were introduced with yet further characters, the Magi, the Shepherds, and, later to become a stock character of broad comedy, the rowdy, hectoring Herod, who was a popular character, too, in those entertainments staged by the minor clergy in cathedrals and collegiate churches known as the Feast of Fools. During these revels, held at New Year at Lincoln, Beverley, St Paul’s, Salisbury and probably elsewhere, the clergy, giving free rein to their high spirits, appointed ‘a King’ who presided over the festivities and took a leading part in the noisy merriment and farcical pantomime.16

  At first, in churches, the parts were taken – the dialogue being chanted not sung – by priests, nuns and choirboys. But later laymen, though not lay women, were allowed to appear; and eventually, it seems, a few professional performers, mostly musicians. The action took place both in the nave and in those parts of the aisle which were intended to represent the Garden of Gethsemane, Herod’s Palace, the Mount of Olives or whatever scenes the play demanded. Those playing the parts of prophets delivered their lines from the pulpit.

  As time passed, as the congregations, or audiences, grew in numbers, and as increasingly comical and even bawdy characters were added to the cast, many clergy expressed themselves in agreement with Abbess Herrad of Landsberg who, though she, like St Ethel wold, acknowledged that the plays had been instituted ‘in order to strengthen the belief of the faithful and to attract the unbeliever’, regretted they had now been spoiled by ‘buffoonery, unbecoming jokes … and all sorts of disorder’. They still had their advocates. In 1300 Robert Manning of Bourn warmly commended them, provided that the clergy did not wear unseemly masks. Their good purpose was:

  To make men be in belief of God,

  That He rose in flesh and blood …

  To make men to believe steadfastly

  That God was born of Virgin Marie.

  Yet in several dioceses the performance of plays in church had already been forbidden, as it had been by Bishop Grosseteste of Lincoln who in 1244 had written, ‘The clergy [of our diocese], as I hear, make plays which they call Miracles’, and had ordered his archdeacons to ‘exterminate these altogether’, in so far as it was in their power. Other bishops, including Walter de Chanteloup, Bishop of Worcester, also pronounced against plays in church; and about 1250 the university of Oxford banned all masked students from taking part in performances in all churches within the city. So religious drama gradually moved out of churches and was performed instead in churchyards, in market places or on carts which were paraded about the town, the actors performing their particular scene before a group of spectators who waited in their places at the various ‘stations’ – in York there were up to sixteen of these, in Beverley six – for the next cart and the next scene to appear. Or a play might be performed on a site leased for the occasion by the corporation to an individual citizen who might want to entertain guests outside his own house or make money by selling seats on platforms he created around the performing area. The actors now were no longer clergymen and choirboys but members of trade guilds and, possibly, a few actors employed by
the guilds to give credit to their performances. Amateur craft members were encouraged to take part by the offer of free food and drink both during and after the performance and at rehearsals which were usually held in the morning before the day’s work began. The smiths of Chester, for example, were given ‘flesh at the breakfast and bacon’. Payments of money are also recorded: in 1494 at Hull a player received 10d for taking the part of God; and in 1490 at Coventry payments were made of 2s to Christ and to Pilate’s wife, 3s 4d to Herod, and 4s to Pilate himself. At Perth, Adam and Eve both got 6d, the Devil and St Erasmus 8d each, while the torturers of the saint whose intestines were wound out of his body on a windlass, were given is each. One Fawston of Coventry was less well rewarded with 4d for ‘hanging Judas’ though he did get another 4d for ‘coc croying’.17

  Each guild might be responsible for a particular scene in a play; Noah’s ark, for example, would be the responsibility of the shipwrights, Jonah and the Whale that of the fishmongers, Joseph’s workshop would be assigned to the carpenters, the Last Supper to the Bakers, the retinue of the Magi to the Goldsmiths. Or a guild might be responsible for one entire miracle or mystery play, the town authorities often deciding which were most suited to a particular guild. This sometimes led to resentment, as it did in York in 1431 when the masons’ guild ‘murmured among themselves concerning their own pageant on Corpus Christi Day, when Fergus was scourged, seeing that the matter of the pageant is not contained in Holy Scripture, and that it caused rather laughter and clamour than devotion, and sometimes quarrels, contentions and fights proceeded therefore among the people’. The city council acceded to the guild’s request and granted them permission to perform the Herod play instead. The apocryphal play was not suppressed altogether, however; and, ribald and contentious though it was, it was later performed in York by the guild of linen-weavers.18

  The town authorities were not only responsible for allocating the plays; they also took it upon themselves to arrange for auditions to discover the best performers.

  Yearly in the time of Lent [the York city council ordained] there shall be called before the Mayor four of the most conyng, discrete and able players within this city, to search for, hear and examine all the players throughout all the artificers belonging to the Corpus Christi play. And all such as they shall find sufficient in person and conyng to the honour of the city and the worship of its crafts they shall admit, and all other insufficient persons either in conyng, voice or person they shall discharge, ammove and avoide.19

  The York city council also decreed, as did Wakefield council, that plays should be staged at authorized places only and nowhere else on pain of a fine, that every player should ‘be ready in his pagiaunt’ at a specified time (half past four in the morning at York, five o’clock at Wakefield), and that if a guild failed to produce a play ‘by good players well arrayed and openly spekyng’ 100s should be ‘paide to the chambre without any pardon’.20

  At Coventry it was also an offence for a member of one guild to appear in another’s production without permission from the mayor. And at Beverley fines were imposed for incompetent productions, and one unfortunate player was fined for forgetting his lines. In certain towns close supervision by the authorities was clearly necessary since quarrels and even fights between rival guilds were far from uncommon. At Chester in 1399 there was a pitched battle between the Weavers and the Fullers during the procession; at York in 1419 the Carpenters and Cordwainers attacked the Skinners with clubs and axes; and at Newcastle-upon-Tyne measures had to be taken to abate ‘the dissension and discord that hath been amongst the Crafts of the said Towne as of man slaughter and murder and other mischiefs in time comeing which hath been lately attempted amongst the fellowship of the said crafts’.21

  Although the York Masons complained that their play provoked laughter, most guilds welcomed plays that had funny interludes and went out of their way to emphasize the comic element in their performances. The workmen at the Tower of Babel were normally given comic dialogue, as, sometimes, were the shepherds in the nativity plays. Noah’s wife was invariably a raging harridan; Noah himself a laughable drunkard; Herod an absurdly bombastic figure; Satan and his devils caused as much mirth as horror as they diligently prodded the souls of the damned into the mouth of hell.

  Audiences demanded horror as well as humour. There had to be bladders of blood, severed heads, lambs for sacrifices, fearsome masks, instruments of torture and full-throated cries of anguish. When Christ suffered on the cross, the actor must be seen to be suffering, too.22

  The theatrical effects were cunningly devised and extremely realistic. There were earthquakes and floods and fire; the Devil appeared from concealed traps in clouds of sulphurous smoke; God and his angels descended to the stage by means of wires and cranes hidden in clouds; one contraption representing hell’s mouth required sixteen men to work the mechanism.23

  The cost of these performances was naturally heavy. The guilds levied ‘pageant-pence’ or ‘pageant-silver’ upon their members. The fifteenth-century Glovers of York had to pay 2d a year towards the expenses of the guild’s play if they were born within the community, 4d if ‘strangers’.24 In the next century in Chester the Smith’s Company collected as much as 2s 4d a year from their guildsmen and about 1d each from their journeymen; and a dyer went to prison rather than make a contribution towards his guild’s pageant. At Chelmsford ‘the summer dramatic festival’ of plays in the town and its neighbourhood was supported by loans from nine leading citizens who contributed over £20 between them.25 Money was also raised by church-ales at which collections were made; by sales of unwanted costumes from previous performances; by payments from citizens who could afford to ‘have pageantry played before their own doores’; by the allocation of proportions of rents and tithes; by gifts from private and municipal benefactors; and by such bequests as that of the Coventry man who left a scarlet gown to the tanners for their plays, together with 3s 4d to every craft charged with the maintenance of a pageant.26 And, although it seems that spectators were not charged for watching the plays, a hat was taken round after each performance for contributions towards the cost.27

  In the countryside the opportunities for seeing a well-presented play with striking effects and expensive costumes were limited; but all over England village amateurs had for long been putting on mumming plays whose distant origins in dumb show seem to have been the rites performed at the various seasons of the agricultural year and whose later developments, spoken in rhyming couplets, featured some such heroic figure as St George who would introduce himself with the words,

  I am St George, a noble knight

  Come from foreign parts to fight

  To slay that fiery dragon who is bold

  And cut him down with his blood cold.

  There would then be fights with Turkish swordsmen after which a doctor would appear to demonstrate his prowess of healing wounds and bringing back the dead to life; and, as in the mystery plays and bible stories of the guilds, various stock characters, broadly lampooned, would find their way into the action, without too much concern for their relevance, the Fool with cap and bells, the Devil and Father Christmas. In the similar Plough Monday plays, which were performed on the Monday after Twelfth Night and were also, no doubt, relics of primitive folk festivals, the characters were farm workers and ordinary country people, the deaths that occurred among them being the results of accidents rather than combat.28

  The authorities kept a wary eye on these mumming plays, which were inclined to degenerate into riots and to keep men from more gainful occupations. Indeed, they kept a watchful eye upon all dramatic performances which were, from time to time, suppressed, as they were in London in 1318 when the mayor and aldermen were ‘chargen on the Kynges behalf that no manere persone, of what astate, degre or condicioun that evere be, duryng this holy tyme of Cristemes be so hardy in eny wyse to walk by nyght in any mere mommyng, pleyes, enterludes, or other disgisynges with eny feynd berdis, peynted visers, diffourmyd or colourid
visages in eny wyse.’29

  Morris-dancing, too, was often frowned upon, for in its origins this was far less innocent than might be gathered from the performances of its present practitioners. Derived from the sword-dance or from the Morisco or Moorish dance, morris-dancing was normally performed by six persons with bells on their legs and coloured scarves or sticks in their hands. They were generally accompanied by a fool who carried a cow’s tail and a bladder often blown up to represent a phallus; by a crowned man on a hobby horse; and at Maytime by a Jack-in-the-Green. In the later Middle Ages characters representing Robin Hood, Maid Marian and Friar Tuck were also of the troupe who danced to the accompaniment of pipe and tabor. The faces of the dancers were blackened, possibly a relic of the old pagan rite of smearing the face with ashes from a sacrificial fire.30

  Minstrels were also censured by the Church, for, while the most celebrated of their calling, men like Rahere, the Augustinian founder of St Bartholomew’s Hospital, and Blondel de Nesle, the favourite minstrel of Richard I, were respected figures at court, there were others who were condemned as harshly as any of those histriones anathematized by Thomas de Chatham, Sub-Dean of Salisbury, at the beginning of the thirteenth century:

  Some transform and transfigure their bodies with indecent dance and gesture, now indecently unclothing themselves, now putting on horrible masks … There are, besides, others who have no definite profession, but act as vagabonds, not having any certain domicile. These frequent the courts of the great and say scandalous and shameful things concerning those who are not present so as to delight the rest … There is yet a third class of histriones who play musical instruments for the delectation of men, and of these there are two types. Some frequent public meeting-places and lascivious gatherings, and there sing stanzas to move men to lasciviousness. Beside there are others, who are called jongleurs who sing the gestes of princes and the lives of saints.31