17,99 €
Mehr erfahren.
- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Serie: Cultural History of Literature
- Sprache: Englisch
Medieval English Drama provides a fresh introduction to the dramatic and festive practices of England in the late Middle Ages. The book places particular emphasis on the importance of the performance contexts of these events, bringing to life a period before permanent theatre buildings when performances took place in a wide variety of locations and had to fight to attract and maintain the attention of an audience. Showing the interplay between dramatic and everyday life, the book covers performances in convents, churches, parishes, street processions and parades, and in particular distinguishes between modes of outdoor and indoor performance.
Katie Normington aids the reader to a fuller understanding of these early English dramatic practices by explaining the significance of the place of performance, the particularities of spectatorship for each event and how the conventions of the form of drama were manipulated to address its reception. Audiences considered range from cloistered members, congregations and parish members to urban citizens, nobles and royalty.
Undergraduate students of literature of this period will find this an approachable and illuminating guide.
Sie lesen das E-Book in den Legimi-Apps auf:
Seitenzahl: 351
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013
Ähnliche
Table of Contents
Cover
CULTURAL HISTORY OF LITERATURE
Title page
Copyright page
Dedication
Preface
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Introduction
What is Performance?
Reading the Event
Material Spectatorship
Religion
Social Strata
National Identity
Material Spectatorship
1 Drama of Enclosure: Convent Drama
Religious Houses and Spectatorship
Liturgical Drama: The Visitatio
Processions and Feasts
Performative Practices: The Novice Ceremony at Syon Abbey
Classical Drama
Material Spectatorship
2 Drama of Inclusion: Church and Parish
Parish Space
Church Architecture
Space and Ritual
The Parish Space
The Reformation and Material Changes
3 Drama and the City: City Parades
Self-Fashioning
Processional Theatre
The Power of the Procession
Processional Spectatorship
Bristol: Changing Monarch: Changing Fortune
Canterbury: Political Battle between State and Church
City and Individual
City and Codes of Behaviour
4 Drama in the City: Processional Drama and Hybridity
Material Spectatorship and Hybridity
Hybridity and the Texts
The Extant Texts
City Spectatorship
5 Fixed-Place Drama: Place-and-Scaffold
The Castle of Perseverance
Digby Mary Magdalene
N-Town Mary Play
Cornish Drama
6 Indoor Drama: Private Entertainment
Hospitality
Indoor Drama and Metatheatre: Mankind
The Politics of Heywood
Private Negotiations
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
CULTURAL HISTORY OF LITERATURE
Sandra Clark, Renaissance Drama
Ann Hallamore Caesar and Michael Caesar, Modern Italian Literature
Christopher Cannon, Middle English Literature
Roger Luckhurst, Science Fiction
Katie Normington, Medieval English Drama
Lynne Pearce, Romance Writing
Charles Rzepka, Detective Fiction
Jason Scott-Warren, Early Modern English Literature
Mary Trotter, Modern Irish Theatre
Andrew Baruch Wachtel and Ilya Vinitsky, Russian Literature
Andrew J. Webber, The European Avant-Garde
Tim Whitmarsh, Ancient Greek Literature
Copyright © Katie Normington 2009
The right of Katie Normington to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2009 by Polity Press
Polity Press
65 Bridge Street
Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK
Polity Press
350 Main Street
Malden, MA 02148, USA
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-3603-0
ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-3604-7(pb)
ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-5487-4(Single-user ebook)
ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-5486-7(Multi-user ebook)
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.
Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.
For further information on Polity, visit our website: www.politybooks.com
For Beatrice and Oliver
Preface
This book has been written to explore dramatic activity in England in the Middle Ages. Where possible the performance examples chosen are those that are readily available in medieval anthologies such as: Early English Drama: An Anthology, ed. John Coldewey (Garland Reference Library of the Humanities, 1993); English Mystery Plays: A Selection, ed. Peter Happé (Penguin, 1975); Everyman and Medieval Miracle Plays, ed. A. C. Cawley (Dent, 1974); Mediaeval Drama, ed. David Bevington (Houghton Mifflin, 1975); Medieval Drama: An Anthology, ed. Greg Walker (Blackwell, 2000); Medieval and Tudor Drama, ed. John Gassner (Applause Books, 1987). In choosing material from these anthologies I hope that the examples discussed are accessible to students. Where material is not readily accessible in print I have suggested internet editions.
The scope of this book is from roughly 1000 to 1576; a time that stretches from the laying down of the Winchester Regularis Concordia between 965 and 975 to the establishment of the first permanent theatre building.1 The time included within this framework comprises periods often referred to as Old English, Middle English, late medieval, Tudor, Henrician, Elizabethan, and Renaissance. For ease of reference, and in order to acknowledge the considerable cross-over between these terms, I shall refer to the drama of this period collectively as ‘early English’. This strategy is a deliberate attempt to dislodge the barriers that such periodization produces. The boundaries that have been set between terms such as medieval and renaissance have been created for the ease of scholarly study rather than as absolute markers of one set of values or another. In between any paradigm shift lies a ‘grey’ area where facets of the former epoch bleed into the later, or conversely aspects of the later can be found springing up in isolated patches far earlier than is commonplace. It is only necessary to look at the development of Renaissance art to see the inadequacy of absolute boundaries: it is often argued that the Renaissance began in the early fourteenth century in Italy, while it did not occur in England until some two centuries later. It is hard, therefore, to make a case that the ‘Renaissance’ occurred at a particular moment in time, or that it is fruitful to study history via particular epochs.
It is worth drawing attention to two distinctive features of this study: the absence of focus upon genre, and a concentration on the representation of gender. In attempting to approach early drama through the context of its performance this study offers an alternative approach to that of genre which has influenced much research in the area. The issue surrounding genre-based approaches has been outlined by Pamela King:
English medieval drama has been understood throughout most of the modern period to consist chiefly of two dominant categories of play. The categories ‘mystery play’ and ‘morality play’ – also known as ‘moral interlude’ – were devised from the evidence of the few scripts which survive … This simple convergent model has come under increasing pressure, particularly since the work of the Records of Early English Drama project has revealed a plethora of dramatic activity in late medieval England which does not conform to the binary model derived from surviving scripts.2
The categorization of early drama into distinctive genres has marked much previous study, however, this book acknowledges the plethora of performance that existed within the period and attempts instead to retrieve the performance conditions that surround events rather than classify dramas into specific genres. As King acknowledges, part of the reason for the dependence on genre classification is due to the priority given to extant play texts. The more recent availability of a wide field of performance records has done much to challenge this theory, and the use of these within this book questions the appropriateness of a genre-based approach.
There is one final distinctive element of this study to be noted and that is the focus upon gender. The position of women in early modern England is often absent or obscured within modern-day social, historical, and dramatic studies. This state of affairs is due to the relative invisibility of women within extant records and the fact that on the early stage the parts of women characters were usually played by men. Over the past thirty years the potential influence of women in early England has received increasing attention. Bonnie Anderson and Judith Zinsser, writing in 1988, noted the disparity between ‘our own growing knowledge of women and their activities both past and present, and the almost total absence of women from the pages of history books’.3 Since then there has been a growth of interest in finding a place for women in early modern studies. Attention has been paid both to the more housebound and often invisible activities that women undertook, and to cases where women held important public roles.
My previous work, Gender and Medieval Drama, explored the participation and reception of women within early drama, and in particular within the cycle dramas. However, this book follows the lead taken by P. J. P. Goldberg in Medieval England: A Social History 1250–1550 in which he advocates that women’s activity should be included within the main body of the book rather than segregated within a separate chapter outlining gender issues. In this way, gender becomes the mainstay of a study rather than a marginalized concern.
In order to follow the integration of gender issues where possible each chapter makes reference to the representation of women. In examining the context of spectatorship in the Introduction reference is made to men and women’s experiences. The first chapter on monastic drama focuses specifically on performative practices within the convent. Aspects of the experiences of women are included in the discussions on parish drama, street drama, and within private settings. The figure of Mary Magdalene receives particular attention in chapter 5. It is the intention of this book to provide a comprehensive examination of the social practices of early England and to depict the heterogeneity of that community.
Notes
1 The first permanent theatre is usually identified as James Burbage’s Theatre, however, Janette Dillon observes that recent discoveries of documents show the Red Lion may have been closer to a purpose-built theatre than it was to an inn. If this were the case, it would set the date of the first permanent theatre at 1567 (see Janette Dillon, The Cambridge Introduction to Early English Theatre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006) 40.
2 Pamela King, The York Mystery Cycle and the Worship of the City. Westfield Medieval Studies. Vol. 1 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2006) 1.
3 Bonnie S. Anderson and Judith P. Zinsser, A History of Their Own: Women in Europe from Prehistory to the Present. Vol. 1 (London and New York: Penguin, 1988) xiii.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank those that have made this book possible. My colleagues in the Department of Drama and Theatre at Royal Holloway University of London have, as ever, provided support, friendly criticism, and enthusiasm. This book was made possible by sabbatical leave from the Department. Particular thanks go to Liz Schafer, and Ruth Kennedy from the Department of English for reading draft chapters; any errors remain my own. My thanks to Nesreen Hussein for her help with the manuscript.
Versions of this material have been presented at Theatre and Performance Research Association, Birmingham 2007, International Medieval Congress, Leeds in 2008, and a departmental research afternoon at Royal Holloway University of London, 2008. I thank colleagues at those events for their suggestions.
The strength of friendship of the following has spurred me on: Andrea, Ann and Bob, Anthony and Mary, Carolyn and Keith, Dorinda and Peter, Helen and Cam, Libby, Liz and Vincent, Máire, Mollie, Rona, Sharon and Steve, Shira and Peter, Simon and Caroline, Zena and David, and, of course, Mum.
Finally, I would like to thank Andrea Drugan at Polity Press and the helpful reports of their anonymous readers.
Abbreviations
Introduction
Medieval English Drama: Performance and Spectatorship examines how the playing spaces of early English drama and the cultural context of the audience within that space shaped the nature of the production and reception of the event. One of the most striking features of drama of this period is the sheer variety of places where performances took place. In an age before permanent theatre buildings, drama seeped into a variety of spaces: churches, streets, village greens, private halls, inns – in fact anywhere that an audience could assemble. Few of these performance spaces were controlled in the manner that is familiar to us from modern-day indoor theatres. There were no attentive audiences sitting quietly in the darkness, often no seating, and no politely silent spectators. Instead the performances analysed in this book had to attract their audiences and hold their attention, often above the distractions of outdoor noises and that of fellow spectators. In fact the distinction between everyday life and performance was less marked than it is today. In early England life and performance bled into one another so that as a guild or parish member citizens might participate in entertainments but were simultaneously enacting their roles as workers or members of a community; the distinction between work and leisure, which is commonplace within modern society, was absent.
What is Performance?
It is clear that there is a need for some definition of what constituted performance within the Middle Ages. Within contemporary society the term ‘theatre’ is used to describe that which happens within a theatre building, while ‘drama’ is synonymous with the practice or study of the subject. There are a great number of other terms used in modern-day society to embrace a range of performance activities such as ritual, entertainment, show, or sometimes even game. The Middle Ages offered no such distinctions between types of dramatic entertainment. While there is evidence of separate terminology for what today would be distinguished as drama and music, or players and musicians (‘ludentes’ or ‘histriones’,1 and ‘ministralli’ respectively), it is difficult to determine how early performances were categorized by contemporary audiences, or if indeed they were. This book includes reference to a broad range of entertainments. Although some written texts have survived from the period it is important to acknowledge that within Medieval England there was a huge variety of festivities which included summer games, festive processions, and ritual practices for which no spoken texts exist.
One major difference between performance in the Middle Ages and that of the modern-day was the influence of religious practices and beliefs. As shall be shown in the chapters that follow, early drama held a close relationship with liturgical practice both through the services conducted within the Church and the celebration of the ecclesiastical calendar within the parish. While some critics have attempted to separate the use of drama within the Church from that of the sacred world, Dunbar Ogden sensibly argues of the Middle Ages that: ‘A clear dividing line between theatre and worship cannot be drawn at this point.’2
Given the difficulty of distinguishing between theatre, drama, religious service, and ritual the parameters of the events included within this book are more usefully defined through the use of the term ‘performativity’.3 Performativity is used here to denote both that which happens within a clear performance environment (such as an act which requires a stage) and an event that is planned, executed, and witnessed but may belong to a system of cultural expression other than that which is recognized as theatrical. For example, a Lord Mayor’s parade through the city of London or a public scolding to punish a woman for inappropriate speech were pre-planned events which were deliberately constructed in order to affect the audience and participants in particular ways. The definition of performance used within this book, then, is an act which has been self-consciously prepared for deliberate spectatorship. The preparation of this event might be as little as the changing into a garment for dancing to raise money for the parish, or it might be as extravagant as the building of stages or scaffolds to entertain the entry of a monarch into a city. Whether these events are elaborate or simple is irrelevant, for this book is concerned with how the performance practices that were utilized were received by the audience, and in turn both affected and were affected by the cultural landscape of early England.
The relationship between cultural practice and everyday life has been examined by theorists such as Michel de Certeau who suggest that the two are inextricably linked. He postulates that though culture may be produced by the elite, it is important to look at how the ‘users’, the ‘common people’, shape that culture through their everyday practices. De Certeau argues that ‘We must first analyze its [a representation] manipulation by users who are not makers. Only then can we gauge the difference or similarity between the production of the image and the secondary production hidden in the process of its utilization.’4 De Certeau’s comments are pertinent to an analysis of early dramatic activity for he suggests that the importance of dramatic representation lies not only in the artefact that is produced, but also in the way that the practice is received and how it is ‘used’ by the audience that witness or participate in the event.
Reading the Event
The focus on the performance and spectatorship of drama of early England creates a number of problems, since it is difficult to envision what watching these events might have been like. There are very few eyewitness accounts of the time and those that do exist are difficult to interpret with any surety since there are no foolproof systems for objectively documenting and analysing audience reactions. However, theorists such as Hans Robert Jauss have attempted to disentangle the issue of audience response within the reception of literature and some of his ideas can be expanded in order to appropriate them for the use of dramatic analysis.
Jauss suggests that reader response can be imagined through the use of what he terms a ‘horizon of expectation’. In order to construct reader response Jauss suggests that three criteria are employed: comparison with the norms of the genre; other literary and historical references, and the opposition of fiction and reality.5 As Jauss admits, and this is a point pertinent to much of the material covered in this book, when the identity and therefore intentions of an author is unknown it is difficult to determine the relationship that was held with the ‘norms of the genre’. In these cases, Jauss advises that it is best ‘if one foregrounds it (the work) against those works that the author explicitly or implicitly presumed his contemporary audience to know’.6 Jauss’s other two categories, that of literary and historical references within a work and the relationship held between the social reality and the fiction created within a text, can provide helpful pointers in ascertaining the response an audience may have had to an entertainment. The importance of the social milieu in forming an audience’s response is returned to later in this introduction when the factors that shaped their reactions are discussed further.
Of interest to this study is the developing body of approaches to reclaiming theatre history that have been advanced by dance and theatre history specialists. Each of these historians has suggested ways in which methodologies can be more directly linked to the nature of performance. Any performance is, as theatre director Peter Brook has declared, ‘a self-destructive art, and it is always written in the wind’.7 The performative moment is bound by the event itself; it happens in a very specific time and place. This is perhaps best evidenced by the comments made about theatre visits today. Frequently, actors and audiences alike declare that it was ‘a good night’, ‘the audience were great’, or conversely ‘it didn’t go as well’. Such comments support the notion that performance is specific to the time it is enacted and that no two performances will be quite the same. Given the ephemeral nature of drama, it is important that methodologies address the peculiarities of performance.
The new methodologies suggest how non-traditional ‘archives’ might be used to retrieve theatre history. While traditional archives house records of churchwardens’ accounts and the like, which are useful in giving evidence of parish celebrations used to raise money for the church, new methodologies look to the importance of buildings, bodies, gestures, embodied knowledge, and oral practices.8 The use of oral practices in the investigation of performance is highly appropriate for this study since many traditions of performance utilize oral knowledge in passing skills from one generation to another, and in the largely pre-literate society of early England orature would have been an important mechanism through which to pass knowledge of performances from year to year or place to place.
Material Spectatorship
The argument of this book is that the conditions of spectatorship played a pivotal role in shaping the dramatic practices of early England. As has been suggested above, one of the over-riding influences on how spectators saw performance events was the issue of how the social, economic, and cultural circumstances of the milieu affected audience response to an entertainment. Included among the factors that shaped the beliefs of the medieval world are those of religious outlook, social networks, private economies, and national stability. In discussing these four issues I will refer to the trail of ‘material remains’ left by early English architecture, writers, illustrators, and painters, as well as more traditional archival records that survive from parishes, towns, and courts. Life in the Middle Ages was different from that of today; it intertwined notions of religion, the state, economy, and rank. It is to these areas that this study now turns.
Religion
The strength of religious belief within the Middle Ages and the effect that this had on the everyday lives of citizens was one of the greatest differences between medieval life and that of modern-day society. In pre-Reformation England, Catholic belief shaped the behaviour, daily lives, and yearly pattern of its inhabitants. Central to the beliefs were concerns with salvation (freedom from punishment of sin), redemption (forgiveness of past sins), meditation (achieved through prayer), the importance of the sacrament (rites, in particular the Eucharist), and the notion of an omnipotent God. These principles, as Eamon Duffy notes, permeated the whole of medieval life:
The Christian calendar determined the pattern of work and rest, fasting and feasting, and influenced even the privacies of the bedchamber, deciding the times of the year when men and women might or might not marry, when husbands and wives might sleep together or must abstain. Everyone, in principle at least, subscribed to the Christian creed. This taught that the world was not a random heap of blind circumstances, a cosmic accident, but that it was a meaningful whole, which had been created out of nothing by a good God.9
The way in which Christianity shaped life can be seen in a variety of material remains from the period. One such testimony is that of Margery Kempe, a fourteenth-century wife of a Norfolk burgess, who was illiterate and dictated her biography to a priest. Within the book she details her call to a spiritual life, and her pilgrimages in England, Europe, and the Holy Land. In recounting these journeys she reveals details of the medieval religious year, practices within parish churches, and her visionary experiences. The centrality of the religious calendar is often in evidence as events are marked by the day on which they occurred: for example, her journey to Sheen takes place three days before Lammas Day;10 in Aachen she stays for St Margaret’s Day to witness the relics and she processes with her local church congregation on Holy Thursday, seeing a vision of Saint Margaret, the namesake of the church. The Book of Margery Kempe offers an insight into the religious practices of an individual in early Europe.
Beyond the annual pattern established by the Church calendar, religion affected the daily practices of citizens. On Sundays they were expected to worship three times (Chapter 6 depicts the desolate Mankind who refuses to walk to church to worship), while Holy Days (which numbered around fifty per year) were times when lay people were excused their labours in order to worship. It has been noted that during the fourteenth century there was an increase in the use of ceremonial and public processions and that the Church began to use these public means to strengthen its position and promote locally based devotion.11 As well as the use of festive practices the Church employed a variety of methods to inspire and teach; the ceremony of the liturgy was at the centre of these practices.
The liturgy, the ritual of worship followed by the Catholic Church, was pivotal in promoting and reflecting the central belief systems of the Church. In England there were constant attempts to regularize the practice of the liturgy within parishes, and a number of methods were used whereby the Church tried to standardize the systems. For example, in 1281 John Pecham, the archbishop of Canterbury, laid out an educational programme for the laity and clergy called the Ignorantia Sacerdotum. Within this scheme, a priest was expected to teach his parishioners the following four times annually: the fourteen articles of faith, Ten Commandments, the Gospels, seven works of mercy and seven deadly sins, seven virtues, and seven sacraments.12 Indeed within The Book of Margery Kempe Kempe finds herself being quizzed on aspects of religious orthodoxy as she undertakes her travels; it is her possession of this knowledge which identifies her as a good parishioner rather than a heretic. When Margery visits York she is accused of heresy. She is threatened with prison and is saved only by passing the Archbishop’s test of her knowledge of the Articles of the Faith.13
The growth in interest in the liturgy at this time was also due to the rise in popularity of the notion of purgatory. The early Middle Ages projected the belief that salvation was for a minority of devout believers. But by the later medieval period salvation was offered to a greater proportion of the population through the notion that their souls may initially rest in purgatory, a place between heaven and hell where they could be purged of their sin, and thus pass to heaven. The belief that the purification of the soul after death could affect the chances of a final resting in heaven gave rise to a growth in prayers for the dead and gifts to parish churches. It is a point picked up in William Langland’s fourteenth-century allegorical poem Piers Plowman where the author offers biting criticism of the donations being sought by churches and the readiness of the congregation to buy themselves salvation:
Ac God to alle good folk swich gravynge defendeth –
To written in wyndowes of hir wel dedes –
An aventure prode be peynted there, and pomp of the world;
For God knoweth thi conscience and thi kynde wille,
And thi cost and thi coreitise and who catel oughte.14
In parishes gifts often stretched beyond new stained-glass windows and included bequests for endowments, funeral expenses, and anniversary masses.15 As will be seen in Chapter 3, the notion of purifying the soul led to elaborate funeral practices in England.
A further significant aspect of religious practice involved the use of meditation, and this custom was important for it gave way to the liberal use of artistic representation. In meditation parishioners were encouraged to ponder upon images of the life of Christ in order to reach a deep spiritual experience. A number of treatises, such as the early fifteenth-century Dives and Pauper, a vernacular guide to the Commandments, advocated the use of mental images to inspire religious piety. This focus on the importance of image also played a part within the liturgy. A central aspect of this involved the elevation of the Host during communion. Gazing upon the Host carried with it a sense of receiving a blessing. The use of image in carrying religious meaning is, of course, pertinent to this book. Performance practices outlined here utilize both the word and the image, and in some cases, such as that of religious processions, little time was afforded the spoken word and the image became the central icon.
Given the argument that local customs were important in establishing religious practices it is clear that the parish structure needs some discussion. As has been noted, ‘it was in the medieval parishes, not the great cathedrals, that most people in the Middle Ages experienced daily and weekly religious ritual and [through] the landmark ceremonies marking individual and community life, such as baptism, marriage, and death’.16 The importance of the parish is evident too in Margery Kempe’s autobiography for it is here that she defines her identity as being a member of the St Margaret’s parish in Lynn.
The growth of the identity of the parish occurred in England between the Norman Conquest and the thirteenth century. Most parishes grew around churches established by landlords who were keen to provide access to worship and to collect tithes. The parish served not only as a place of worship but also as a unit for administration. Parishioners are recorded as attending church for an array of business purposes, including legal settlements, and for social interaction and entertainment, as well as for worship.17
One of the most interesting things about the parish was its amorphous nature. It had no legal standing and was open to and served a wide range of social classes within medieval England. While much of medieval life was divided along the lines of rank, trade, or gender, parishes often brought diverse groups together to worship, socialize or participate in fund-raising. The constitution of parishes was as involuntary associations and membership was open to all of those who lived within the boundary of the parish. In other words, membership was based on geographic location rather than any other criteria.
This traditional picture of the ‘inclusiveness’ of a parish needs to be examined more carefully. Though families of all rank could attend their parish, the wealthiest families often built private chapels, or sometimes engaged a personal chaplain to preside over a private mass. The composition of the practising members of the parish was likely then to exclude the very wealthy. A sense of segregation was also engendered within the parish by changes that were made to the architecture of the parish church. As Chapter 2 notes, churches were initially empty spaces and fixed pews within the church were only commonplace by the fifteenth century. The addition of pews created an increased sense of separation within the parish for it led to the separation of women from men. Women were now placed either on the left-hand side, or at the back of the church, removed from the Host, and thus any closeness of identification with the sacrament.
The structural identity of the parish was further complicated by the existence of religious guilds. The guilds were voluntary associations, often formed around a particular saint. The activities undertaken by guilds within the parish included the maintenance of ornaments, the provision of lights, and the upkeep of side chapels.
Religious guilds had their own liveries, charged entrance fees and could exclude members for betraying secrets of the guild, or for poor behaviour. There were thus many mechanisms through which the guilds could create a sense of separateness and impose restrictions; a far more exclusive model than that offered by the parish structure. It is difficult to determine the relationship between these two religious affiliations, that of the parish and the guild, but it seems likely that most guilds complied with parish organization and operated with an awareness of that structure.18
The most important influence on religious practice during this period was the Reformation. Between the 1530s and 1540s a series of measures were taken on behalf of Henry VIII in order to detach England from the Roman Catholic Church and establish Protestantism in the country. The drive behind Henry’s actions was to produce a male heir so his dynasty might continue to reign. His marriage to Catherine of Aragon (who was now in her early forties and the mother of a sole daughter, Mary), was the main obstacle to the production of a successor. The Pope’s refusal to grant an annulment led to a series of events which were to separate England from the Roman Catholic Church and establish the country as Protestant with Henry as supreme head and king. Henry’s creation of a national Church of England was accompanied by governmental acts which ordered the suppression of religious houses. Between 1536 and 1540 a programme of dissolution of monasteries was implemented in England.
It is difficult to determine the effects that the Reformation had on parish life. Some scholars have argued that anti-clericalism was in evidence in the parishes from the early sixteenth century and that the religious reforms were therefore welcomed.19 Others have suggested that the Reformation was totally imposed from above and that parish activity would have remained unchanged had Henry not been so anxious for a male heir.20 A third interpretation of the impact of the Reformation has been advocated which is that the parish was neither a place of Lollardy nor of conservatism, but a heterogeneous site where high and low ranking parishioners were bound by Christian worship and ritual.21 If this viewpoint were correct, then it is possible that modern-day histories of the period have overplayed the importance of the Reformation and the immediate effect that it was to have on the population. It has often been assumed that religious practices changed from the point of Henry’s initial reforms in early 1531. It seems more likely now that the impact of the reforms was not felt until Thomas Cromwell reorganized the liturgical calendar and the observance of certain holy days was changed in 1536. It also appears that the effects of the Reformation were uneven and that a better understanding of the changes in religious practices can be best established at a local level whereby a more accurate sense of the impact of reforms can be gained. For example, evidence suggests that the West Country parishes of Bath and Wells were not affected by the initial Reforms.22
Social Strata
The religious outlook of the Middle Ages was one of the most significant differences between modern-day and medieval life, however, the arrangement of the social structure was also unlike that of today. It has been observed that ‘medieval English society was made up of a number of different axes of social inequality’.23 Among the axes that are identified are those of class, order, status group and gender. While many of the parish activities outlined above perhaps created a sense of shared worship or celebration, other forces within society acted as a dividing power.
The divisions of society according to class were inherent within the feudal system, which some scholars argue stemmed from models of slavery and free citizenship established within Roman times.24 Feudal society within early England consisted of a network of manorial estates that were leased to ‘landlords’ by the King in return for administrative duties and allegiance to serve within local and national armies. In order to obtain income from the manorial land the fief, or lord, charged peasant farmers rental to work the land, or was paid ‘in kind’ by demanding a certain number of day’s labour each week from his tenants. The manorial system, thus, set up a hierarchical model in which King governed the landlords, who in turn controlled the workers. Marxist analysis of this system sees this as a relationship between the ‘exploiter’ (those of high rank) and the ‘exploited’ (the peasants).25
By 1500 the rather rigid class system which is outlined above was thrown into instability by the rise of urban markets. Servitude for a fief was largely dispensed with and indentured land (formerly that which came under the jurisdiction of the manorial lord) was placed under a more liberal system of leasing to agricultural workers. One reason for the breakdown of the manorial system was due to ‘the incarnation of the new spirit of civic organization’.26 This organization came about as a result of the establishment of new trading centres, and the development of international trade routes. A move away from subsistence farming to more commercial agricultural development also helped to break the old agrarian patterns.
It is questionable how far the growth of new economic centres changed the status of the class system. Medieval historian Jacques Le Goff argues that ‘the traditional opinion that the medieval town patriciate wrenched the peasant from servitude to the land to tie him to servitude in the workshop remains true in its essentials’.27 The old system of the rural landlord and indentured peasant was in effect replaced by a variety of town structures, including that of the guild and its apprentice systems. Guilds were societies of traders, somewhat like embryonic modern-day trade unions, whose function was to both protect and develop the skills of their craft. They were central to the structure and administration of a town since their highest ranking members often formed the town’s elite officers, the aldermen or burgesses. The government of towns was similar to that of the countryside, and fell under the auspices of a landlord, often a lord or monarch, though the responsibility for the direct management of the town was devolved to appointed officers or the townsmen themselves.
Between 1200 and 1550 urban constitutions became increasingly elaborate and hierarchical. It is likely that by that point many towns comprised four strata: the governing elite of a few merchants or lawyers; independent craftsmen (who were part of the guild structure when it was formed); dependent townsmen who occupied lowly roles in the town hierarchy, and finally those too lowly and poor for any office.28 The notable absence from this list is that of women who rarely held rank in their own right, but occasionally came about it through their husbands’ position. There are a few records which show women in positions of power. In 1431 Lady Joan Abergavenny was a commissioner,29 the York Mercers had a woman (a widow) on their council,30 while the York Dyers’ ordinances show two women masters, one of whom was a widow.31
Though the development of towns had little impact on the flexibility of the structure of society, the growth of urban areas did catalyse other changes. One of these developments is noted by Le Goff: ‘It was in culture and the world of ideas above all that the medieval town was a crossroads – a workshop of cultural models, a meeting place of experience.’32 Le Goff argues that from the twelfth century onwards the guardianship of knowledge and learning passed from the monastic movement to the towns, where the growth of schools, universities, and printing meant that culture could be transmitted more successfully. However, the spread of literacy remained patchy particularly for women: both Margery Kempe, a burgess’s wife, and Margaret Paston, the wife of a fifteenth-century Norwich landowner, could not write. Both Kempe and Paston needed scribes to write their autobiography and letters respectively.
The development of the use of written language was crucial to the identity of the late Middle Ages. In 1526 William Tyndale’s translation of the Bible from Latin to English made the scriptures accessible to a wider range of the populace who had previously been dependent on priests to interpret the text. The establishment of printing through the development of William Caxton’s press in 1476 also meant that written texts could be transmitted more easily and that books were no longer hand copied. Another significant development in the use of language was the more regular adoption of English as a spoken language: until this point nobles had frequently used French. These cultural shifts meant that a greater sense of ‘English’ as a language to be spoken and read formed part of the identity of late medieval England.
National Identity
The last area of medieval life that needs highlighting is that of the identity of the state. As outlined above, the increasing awareness of Englishness shown by, among others things, the increased use of the English language led to the growth of a national identity. The influences of Norman settlement, demonstrated by the use of French language and the considerable ties between the English and French aristocracy, were gradually eroded and replaced instead by regional affinities within England. Strong regionalist beliefs could be seen in the many local disputes that erupted. For example, Margaret Paston’s letters to her husband are preoccupied by details of local tensions and requests for further arms for the house. It is eye-opening that women were so concerned with such matters, and that in the absence of their husband they were equipped to deal with the protection of the estate.
A sense of nationhood was inextricably linked to the issue of national stability. The stability of the state during this period was affected by the changing religious structures outlined above and by a variety of other factors, such as regional disputes, changing monarchs and the Black Death. Though national class revolts such as the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 did exist, the disputes that are illustrated in Margaret Paston’s letters are more typically regional and were manifest in other parts of the country in the War of the Roses between the houses of Lancaster and York, and battles with the Welsh and Scots. Such regional disputes affected the nobility in particular since knights were deployed to fight.
Not all causes of national instability were as discriminating as that of warfare. The Black Death knew no bounds and affected the whole populace. The plague first arrived in England in 1348 and killed as much as 45 per cent of the population; three further outbreaks in the 1360s–1370s had dramatic effects too.33 Deaths from the plague led to a sharp decrease in population which adversely affected the workforce of England and led to a shortage of labour. Such circumstances, though dire for much of the country, did lead to opportunities for other parts of society. In 1349 the Ordinance of Labourers encouraged all women and men under the age of sixty to seek work within a craft or on the land, thus creating an opportunity for women to become more visible within the public world.
Further domestic instability was caused by the frequent change in monarchs, and the ensuing disputes for the throne. Between 1000 and 1550 over thirty-five monarchs held power; some, like Jane lasted only nine days, while others, like Queen Elizabeth I served up to forty-five years. The flux of monarchs affected notions of stability and identity, particularly since the houses that brought forth monarchs were of varying allegiance. The Normans and Plantagenets were French while the Tudors had Welsh ancestry. The shifting identities of the monarchs were framed not only by their lineage, but also their religious allegiances. Chapter 3 shows how the changing identity and religious affinity of a monarch could affect the ceremonial life of a city.
Material Spectatorship
