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Chester ceremonial: re-creation and recreation in the English ‘medieval’ town1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 February 2009

Extract

During the last two decades the interests of scholars of early drama and of urban historians have found common ground in the study of urban celebration and ceremonial. For the student of early drama the beginnings of this interest coincided with a redefinition of the area and nature of the study of early drama, a shift in emphasis from the textual and literary problems of the few extant dramatic texts to the circumstances and conditions of their performance. Signalled in the mid-1950s by F.M. Salter's revealing study of the production of Chester's Whitsun plays, this movement gained impetus from Glynne Wickham's investigations of the development of English stagecraft between 1300 and 1660, the first volume of which appeared in 1959, which illustrated the interdependence of a range of ostensibly disparate activities, such as plays, royal entries and tournaments. Then, in the 1970s an iconoclastic challenge to traditional theories about the staging of mystery plays was mounted by Alan H. Nelson, drawing upon various local records, and from the resulting controversies was born a new initiative, the Records of Early English Drama, whose avowed purpose is ‘to find, transcribe, and publish external evidence of dramatic, ceremonial, and minstrel activity in Great Britain before 1642’. That series is still ongoing and already constitutes a major primary resource of regional documentary transcripts for all interested in early dramatic and quasidramatic activity, suggesting a hitherto unsuspected diversity and frequency of dramatic activity throughout England.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

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Footnotes

1

A version of this paper was given to a workshop on ‘Pageantry and Drama in the Renaissance Town’, organized by the Centre for Urban History, University of Leicester, and the Records of Early English Drama, which was held at the University of Leicester on 23 June 1989.

References

Notes

2 Salter, F.M., Mediaeval Drama in Chester (Toronto, 1955).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Wickham, Glynne, Early English Stages, 1300–1660 (London). Vol. I, 1300–1576 (1959); Vol. II, 1576–1660: Part I (1963), Part II (1972); Vol. III, Plays and Their Makers to 1576 (1981).Google Scholar

4 Nelson, Alan H., The Medieval English Stage: Corpus Christi Plays and Pageants (Chicago, 1974).Google Scholar

5 The following volumes have now appeared in the REED (Toronto) series: Clopper, L.M. (ed.), Chester (1974);Google Scholar Johnston, Alexandra F. and Rogerson, Margaret (eds), York (1974, 2 vols);Google Scholar Ingram, R.W. (ed.), Coventry (1981);Google Scholar Anderson, J.J. (ed.), Newcastle Upon Tyne (1982);Google Scholar Galloway, David (ed.), Norwich 1540–1642 (1984);Google Scholar Douglas, Audrey and Greenfield, Peter (eds), Cumberland, Westmorland, Gloucestershire (1986);Google Scholar Wasson, John M. (ed.), Devon (1986);Google Scholar Nelson, Alan H. (ed.), Cambridge (1989, 2 vols). Klausner, David (ed.), Herefordshire, Worcestershire (1990).Google Scholar

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7 Palliser, D.M., ‘Civic mentality and the environment in Tudor York’, Northern History, 18 (1982), 78115;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Berlin, Michael, ‘Civic ceremony in early modern London’, Urban History Yearbook 1986, 1527. See alsoCrossRefGoogle Scholar Anglo, Sydney, Spectacle, Pageantry, and Early Tudor Policy (Oxford, 1969);Google Scholar Bergeron, David M., English Civic Pageantry 1558–1642 (1971).Google Scholar

8 Trexler, Richard C., Public Life in Renaissance Florence (New York, 1980);Google Scholar Muir, Edward, Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice (Princeton, 1981).Google Scholar

9 James, Mervyn, ‘Ritual, drama and social body in the late medieval English town’, Past and Present, 98101 (1983), 3–29. For a more sociological approach, seeGoogle Scholar Clopper, Lawrence M., ‘Lay and clerical impact on civic religious drama and ceremony’, in Briscoe, Marianne G. and Coldewey, John C. (eds), Contexts for Early English Drama (Bloomington, 1989), 103–37.Google Scholar

10 The evolutionary thesis was influentially propounded by SirChambers, E.K., The Medieval Stage (Oxford, 1903, 2 vols). The fallacious assumptions within the thesis were definitively exposed byGoogle Scholar Hardison, O.B., Christian Rite and Christian Drama in the Middle Ages (Baltimore, 1965).Google Scholar

11 Phythian-Adams, Charles, ‘Urban decay in late medieval England’, in Abrams, Philip and Wrigley, E.A. (eds), Towns in Societies: Essays in Economic History and Historical Sociology (Cambridge, 1978), 184.Google Scholar

12 On Rogers' Breviary, see further Hart, Steven E. and Knapp, Margaret M., ‘The Aunchant and Famous Cittie’: David Rogers and the Chester Mystery Plays (New York, 1988);Google Scholar Clopper, L.M., Records of Early English Drama: Chester (Toronto, 1979)Google Scholar [hereafter REED], xxiv, xxvii–xxxv;Google Scholar Lumiansky, R.M. and Mills, David, The Chester Mystery Cycle: Essays and Documents, with an Essay, ‘Music in the Cycle’, by Richard Rastall (Chapel Hill, 1983)Google Scholar [hereafter Lumiansky-Mills], 260–71. Quotations, unless otherwise stated, are from the 1609 version in the Chester City Record Office, as transcribed inGoogle Scholar REED, 232–54. The first 1619 copy, in BL Harley 1944, is similar to the 1609 version and is collated with it by Clopper.Google Scholar

13 Cf. REED, 320–6, and Hart and Knapp, ‘The Aunchant and Famous Cittie’, 205–8, ‘The dating of the five versions of the Breviarye’.Google Scholar

14 The description is discussed by, among others, Salter, 54–69; Wickham, Vol. 1, 169–74;Google Scholar Powlick, Leonard, ‘The staging of the Chester Cycle: an alternate theory’, Theatre Survey, 12 (1971), 119–50;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Clopper, L.M., ‘The Rogers' description of the Chester Plays’, Leeds Studies in English, 7 (1974), 6394;Google Scholar Marshall, John, ‘The Chester pageant carriage - how right was Rogers?’, Medieval English Theatre, 1:2 (1979), 49–60, and ‘“The manner of these playes”: the Chester pageant carriages and the places where they played’, inGoogle Scholar Mills, David (ed.), Staging the Chester Cycle (Leeds, 1985), 1748;Google Scholar Hart and Knapp, especially ‘Conclusion’, 131–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15 See further, chapter 4 in Hart and Knapp, ‘The Aunchant and Famous Cittie’, ‘The breviary and seventeenth-century historigraphy’, 109–30.Google Scholar

16 See REED, 258–62.Google Scholar

17 REED, 261.Google Scholar

18 On antiquarians and their records, see REED, xxiii–xxxvi; William Aldersay, George Bellin, Randle Holme, and David and Robert Rogers, who are mentioned in this paper, were contemporaries who shared this antiquarian interest.Google Scholar

19 REED, xi.Google Scholar

20 Palliser, D.M., A Revised List of Chester Freemen 1392–1538 (Chester City Record Office, n.d.), 3.Google Scholar

21 The City Record Office Catalogue states positively: ‘The first of these Assembly Books was started on the initiative of Henry Gee during his second mayoral year in 1539–40.’ Clopper (REED, xii) states that ‘it is probable that the book was not copied before 1567–8’ and goes on to say that there is evidence to suggest that ‘the Assembly Book was compiled from the debris of an earlier book or from loose records and that the prefatory the material was added by an antiquarian who either copied the List of Mayors from another source or compiled it himself.’ The ascription of initiative to Gee must, therefore, remain circumstantial, though strongly urged.Google Scholar

22 REED, 3942.Google Scholar

23 Ff. 30-2. I am indebted to the present Steward of the Merchant Drapers Company for allowing me to examine the Company Book.Google Scholar

24 REED, 27–8 (Chester City Record Office Assembly Files A/F/1, collated with BL Harley 2013, f.1);Google Scholar Lumiansky-Mills, 212–16.Google Scholar

25 On the development of the Cycle, see Clopper, L.M., ‘The history and development of the Chester Cycle’, Modern Philology, 75 (1978), 219–46;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Lumiansky-Mills, 165202. It should perhaps be noted that there is no evidence that the Whitsum Plays were ever performed annually, although annual performance may be inferred for the Corpus Christi Play. Rogers makes it clear that he considered the Plays and the Midsummer Show to be alternative annual civic events.Google Scholar

26 This seems to be the import of the comment in a Mayor's List for 1574–75 which states that the final performance was ‘to the great dislike of many because the playe was in on part of the Citty’ (REED, 110).Google Scholar

27 REED, 26–7; Lumiansky-Mills, 217–18.Google Scholar

28 On Francis, see further Lumiansky-Mills, 167–8.Google Scholar

29 The pre-Reformation Banns are transcribed in REED, 34–9 and edited in Lumiansky-Mills, 278–84. The post-Reformation Banns are transcribed with collation in REED, 240–7 and edited inGoogle Scholar Lumiansky-Mills, 285–310.Google Scholar

30 REED: York, 3.Google Scholar

31 On Aldersey's list, see REED, xxiv. Mills, David, ‘William Aldersey's “History of the Mayors of Chester”’ (forthcoming in REED Newsletter 1990) describes the original of the lists, now Chester City Record Office 469/542.Google Scholar

32 On Higden's alleged authorship and related proposals, see Salter, , Mediaeval Drama in Chester, 3742.Google Scholar

33 See Fowler, David C., ‘John Trevisa and the English Bible’, Modern Philology, 58 (19601961), 8198.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

34 ‘The texts of the Chester Cycle’, in Lumiansky-Mills, 386.Google Scholar

35 REED, 104.Google Scholar

36 REED, 110.Google Scholar

37 On this use of the past see Mills, David, ‘Chester's mystery cycle and the “mystery” of the past’, Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, 137 (1988), 123.Google Scholar

38 On Gregorie, see Mills, David, ‘Edward Gregorie - a “Bunbury Scholar”’, REED Newsletter 1982, 4950; on Bellin, see REED, xxiv–xxxvii;Google Scholar on Miller, see Mills, David, ‘James Miller: the will of a Chester scribe’, REED Newsletter 9:1 (1984), 1113. The different practices of these scribes are discussed inGoogle Scholar Lumiansky-Mills, 4976, and their manuscripts are described inGoogle Scholar Lumiansky, R.M. and Mills, David (eds), The Chester Mystery Cycle: Vol. 1: Text (EETS ss.3, Oxford, 1974), ix–xxvii.Google Scholar

39 On the problems presented by this date, see REED, xli–xlii.Google Scholar

40 Assembly Book 2, fol. 119r. The italics are mine.Google Scholar

41 REED, 71–2.Google Scholar

42 I have discussed the Show more fully in ‘Chester's Midsummer Show: creation and adaptation’, a paper first given at the Colloquium of the International Society for the Study of Medieval Theatre, held at the University of Lancaster in July 1989, and to be published in Twycross, Meg (ed.), Festive Drama (Cambridge, forthcoming).Google Scholar

43 On London's giants, see Kingsford, Charles Lethbridge (ed.), A Survey of London by John Stow (Oxford, 1908), 101–4, andGoogle Scholar Anglo, , Spectacle, 191, 338. London's Midsummer and Lord Mayor's Shows are discussed byGoogle Scholar Williams, Sheila, ‘The Lord Mayor's Show in Tudor and Stuart times’, The Guildhall Miscellany, 10 (1959), 318. On giants in the shows of other towns, seeGoogle Scholar REED: Coventry, pp. xxiii–xxiv; REED: Newcastle, xv; REED: York, 399.Google Scholar

44 REED, 70.Google Scholar

45 REED, 71.Google Scholar

46 REED, 90; 120; 93.Google Scholar

47 REED, 198 (BL Harley 2125). Randle Holme II, the Chester antiquarian, has inserted the word ‘ouer’ in front of ‘zealous’.Google Scholar

48 Hinde, William, A Faithfull Remonstrance of the Holy Life and Happy Death of John Bruen of Bruen Stapleford in the County of Cheshire Esquire (London, 1641), 99. The Mayors' Lists inGoogle Scholar REED, 198–9 describe Hardware's reforms, and Rogers comments approvingly (REED, 251).Google Scholar

49 REED, 206.Google Scholar

50 REED, xxxi.Google Scholar

51 REED, 415. Despite Rogers' idealistic view of the dignity of the Show, social tensions were on occasion manifested during it. A case in point is the evidence in the Quarter Sessions Accounts (Chester City Record Office QSE 9/69) of a brawl between the city waits and men in the service of Mr Dutton during the Show. The reference to ‘discord’ in the 1666 order may hint at tensions among the companies.Google Scholar

52 On underlying causes of Chester's economic decline, see Alldridge, N., ‘The mechanics of decline: migration and economy in early modern Chester’, essay 3 in Bond, Michael (ed.), English Towns in Decline 1350–1800 (Leicester, 1986).Google Scholar

53 References from Assembly Book 2 (Chester City Record Office AB/2), fols 119 (1657), 132(1661), 171r-v (1671), 188(1678). The Treasurer's Account is in the 1663–64 account roll (Chester City Record Office TAR 3/54), mb 5.Google Scholar

54 Assembly Book 2, 30 April 1686, f. 192r.Google Scholar

55 The annals, erroneously attributed to Edmund Whitbie, Recorder of Chester, were, until 1990, in the Public Library of the City of Chester. They have now been transferred to the Chester City Record Office (Accession No. 682, awaiting catalogue under CR 60). They are in the hand of George Bellin. See my description and selected transcriptions (forthcoming). The entries here cited are from fols 6v (1454) and 24v (1613).Google Scholar

56 REED, 258 (1610 Show), and 72 (1564 triumph). The 1610 Show is discussed inGoogle Scholar Bergeron, , English Civic Pageantry, 92–4.Google Scholar

57 On Bruen, see Mills, David, ‘“Bushop Brian” and the dramatic entertainments of Cheshire’, REED Newsletter, 11:1 (1986), 17.Google Scholar