Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

of Lydgate, monk of Bury, that he was the author of 'a procession of pageants from the creation';1 and Skelton, who had been tutor, and was subsequently chaplain to Henry VIII, mentions in his Garlands or Chapelet of Laurell, printed in 1523, that one of his earliest works had been a series of performances of the same kind, 'played in Joyous Garde', or Arthur's Castle.

The most authentic and indisputable testimony of the instrumentality of the clergy in the performance of dramatic representations is furnished by a valuable MS. formerly in the collection of Mr. Craven Ord :2 it is a thick folio volume

1 Vide Ritson's Bibl. Poet., p. 79. The 'Processioun of Corpus Christi', there also attributed to Lydgate, has nothing dramatic in its shape and conduct: it consists of an enumeration and description of Patriarchs and Saints, beginning with Adam, Melchisedech, Abraham, etc., down to Ambrosius and Thomas Aquinas. The title was given by Shirley, the transcriber of the volume, who by a note at the end seems to have thought the poem incomplete: 'Shirley kowde fynde no more for this copye': however, the piece appears finished, the design having been this: before the administration of the eucharist, in some way to represent the figures of the persons successively named, in order to produce a greater degree of piety, and to make a show at the feast of Corpus Christi: when the figures have been exhibited one after the other, the author thus concludes:

'With there figures, shewed in yowre presence

By dyvers likenesse you to do pleasaunce,

Receyvith hem with devout reverence

This brede of lyf ye kepe in remembraunce;
Oute of this Egipt of worldly grevaunce
Yowre restoratyf celestial manna:

Of which God graunt eternal suffisaunce,

Where Aungels syng everlastyng Osanna.'

It is followed in the same MS. (Harl. MS. No. 2251) by a series of historical portraits, exhibited probably in the same manner, beginning with Edward of Carnarvon.

2 And now in that of the Duke of Newcastle.

consisting of minute entries of all the expenses incurred by the Priory of Thetford from Christmas 1461 to Christmas 1540, after which date the house was dissolved. It contains several hundred entries of payments to players and minstrels, and, in not a few instances, it is expressly added, that the plays were represented with the assistance of the members of the convent. The accounts are not regular until the reign of Henry VII, and it is to be remarked, that the items of expense for dramatic exhibitions, when the convent lent its aid for the purpose, do not begin prior to the 11th Henry VIII. Anterior to this year, the entries usually run in more general terms: 13 Henry VII-'To menstrell and pleyers in festo Epiphie, 2s.' 19 Henry VII-'To the pley of Myldenale, 12d.' 21 Henry VII—' In regard lusoribus et minstrells, 17ď.' 2 Henry VIII-'To the pley in sent Cuthbert parissh, 2s.' After 10 Henry VIII, entries in the following forms are frequent: II Henry VIII-Lusoribus cum adjuturio Conventus, 25.' 12 Henry VIII-' Jocatoribus cum adjutorio conventus, 25. 14 Henry VIII-Jocatoribus in Nat.: Dom : cum auxilio Conventus, 20d.' These representations, with the assistance of the ecclesiastics, usually occurred twice or three times in every year, but in the 22 Henry VIII, there were five repetitions of them. After this date (and the fact may be accounted for by the progress of the Reformation) only three entries are met with of plays performed by the convent in conjunction with common actors; and after the 24 Henry VIII, although rewards to the players of the King and of the nobility are often registered, not one occurs which shews that the members of the Priory of Thetford joined in the representation.

The British Museum contains the Register of the Fraternity or Guild of Corpus Christi, at York, from 1408 to 1546, and under the earliest date we find an enumeration of the various

properties belonging to that religious society, from which it is evident that then, and doubtless for some years afterwards, it was engaged in the representation of Miracle-plays in that city. Among the articles are more than one book of the plays, a number of banners and flags of all descriptions, vizards, beards, diadems, crowns, etc., besides the castles, or scaffolds, on which the representations took place.1

On a former page (64) we have given some account of the Scrivener's Play, the sole relic of a series of religious dramas formerly exhibited at York; and it seems that great disorders had taken place there during the representation of the Corpus Christi plays previous to 1426, and they had in consequence been discontinued at intervals. In that year, however, a friar minor of the name of William Melton, who is called 'a professor of holy pageantry', preached several sermons in favour of them; and with a proviso that the revellings, drunken1 The following are extracts from this very curious document, in which the items and their value are specified with the utmost particularity :— 'Alius liber de Ludo, 100s.

Alius liber de eodem, Anglice vocatus crede-play, continens 22 quaternos.

xvii. Vexilla magna, 80s.

iv. Vexilla minora de serico rubeo, 6s. 8d.

ix. Alia Vexilla vocata "pennons" de novo factis, cum scutis fidei

et calicibus depictis, 11s. 6d.

xxiv. Instrumenta ferrea, vocata sokkets, ordinata pro extensione vexillorum, 4s. 6d.

Una Corona regis cum ceptro, et una cithera, 6d.

iv. Alia Vexilla vocata 'pennons', 3s. 4d.

x. Diademata pro Christo et Apostolis cum una larva, et aliis

[ocr errors]

novem cheverons", 6d.

xiv. Torchiæ.

iii. Judasses veteras, Is. 2d.

xii. Castella picta cum calicibus aureis, et laminis de ferro ejusdem

castellis pertinentibus, 4s.

xxxiv. Vexilla picta per torcheis ordinatis, 20s.'

རྗ

ness, etc., with which they had been previously attended, should be reformed, they were made annual in consequence of his exertions. The instrument published on this occasion recites, that for a long course of time' prior to 1426, the artificers and tradesmen have, at their own expence, acted several plays.'1 Perhaps the disorders to which we have alluded arose from the non-interference of the clergy, for a time, in these representations; and hence it might be inferred, that the fraternity of Corpus Christi had relinquished them to the 'artificers and tradesmen' of York.

It is as certain, that churches and chapels of monasteries were the earliest theatres, as that ecclesiastics were the earliest actors of Miracle-plays: when the one practice or the other was discontinued, we have no distinct evidence :2 with regard to the first, we are told by Burnet,3 that as late as 1542 Bishop Bonner issued a proclamation to the clergy of his diocese, prohibiting 'all manner of common plays, games, or interludes to be played, set forth, or declared within their churches and chapels'. From the following passage in a tract printed in 1-572, it appears that even then interludes were occasionally played in churches: the author is speaking of the manner in which the clergy neglect their duties:-'He againe posteth it (the service) over as fast as he can gallop; for either he hath two places to serve, or else there are some games to be played in the afternoon, as lying for the whetstone, heathenishe dauncing for the ring, a beare or a bull to be 1 See the Appendix to Drake's History of York, where this document is inserted at length.

2 The employment of churches for the representation of the passio Christi and the Vita alicujus sancti is justified by Johannes Aquila, in his Enchiridion de omni ludorum genere, cap. v. Oppenheim, 1516. He, however, denies the lawfulness of Ludi theatrales, seu larvales in ecclesiis, seu aliis locis sacris.

3 Hist. of the Reformation, 1 Coll. Rec., p. 255, edit. fol.

bayted, or else jack-an-apes to ryde on horseback, or an enterlude to be played; and if no place else can be gotten, it must be doone in the church." As to the last, we know (beyond what has been already proved by the accounts of Thetford Priory, and the inventory of theatrical properties belonging to the fraternity of Corpus Christi, at York), that in 1519 Cardinal Wolsey found it necessary, in the regulations of the Canons Regular of St. Austin, to order, that the brothers should not be lusores.2 That ecclesiastics commonly performed in plays in 1511, is proved moreover by Dean Colet's Oratio ad Clerum, delivered in convocation in that year, in which he calls upon the heads of the church to remember and put in force the laws and rules which forbade the clergy to be publici lusores.3

In cities and large towns, at a very early date, the getting

1 An Answer to a Certain Libel, intituled,‘An Admonition to the Parliament, by John Whitgift. 4to, 1572.

2 Malone (Shakespeare by Boswell, iii, 13, n. 7) follows Warton in a reference to Wolsey's ordinances for the Canons Regular of St. Augustine, 1519, in which the historian of English poetry supposes the Cardinal to forbid them to be lusores aut mimici. The original MS. of these regulations is in the British Museum (Cotton. MS., Vesp. F. ix), and there the passage stands as follows, from whence it will be seen that Warton misread an important word. Statuimus et ordinamus quod hujusmodi canonici ad recreationes admissi, non ut antea lusores aut minuti de cætero nominentur, cum denominatio non nihil insolentiæ et levitatis præ se ferre videatur. Warton lays stress upon mimici as explanatory of lusores, which explanation is not borne out by the true reading, minuti. My late friend Mr. Amyot pointed out this mistake, on reference to Wilkins's Concilia Mag. Brit. et Hib., iii, 687, where Wolsey's regulations are inserted at length, and where it properly stands minuti, as in the original manuscript.

3 The whole passage, with the translation of it printed by Berthelet, in which the words publicus lusor are rendered 'common player', is quoted in the Annals of the Stage, vol. i, p. 64.

« ZurückWeiter »