Early Performance: Courts and Audiences: Shifting Paradigms in Early English Drama Studies 2020008466, 2020008467, 9780367219642, 9780429269042

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EARLY PERFORMANCE: COURTS AND AUDIENCES

Variorum Collected Studies Also in the Variorum Collected Studies series: Pamela Nightingale Mortality, Trade, Money and Credit in Late Medieval England (1285–1531) (CS1091) Sarah Carpenter, edited by John J McGavin and Greg Walker Early Performance: Courts and Audiences Shifting Paradigms in Early English Drama Studies (CS1090) Evelleen Richards Ideology and Evolution in Nineteenth Century Britain Embryos, Monsters, and Racial and Gendered Others in the Making of Evolutionary Theory and Culture (CS1089) David S. Bachrach Administration and Organization of War in Thirteenth-Century England (CS1088) Gérard Gouiran, edited by Linda M. Paterson From Chanson de Geste to Epic Chronicle Medieval Occitan Poetry of War (CS1087) John A. Cotsonis The Religious Figural Imagery of Byzantine Lead Seals II Studies on the Images of the Saints and on Personal Piety (CS1086) John A. Cotsonis The Religious Figural Imagery of Byzantine Lead Seals I Studies on the Image of Christ, the Virgin and Narrative Scenes (CS1085) Wendy Davies Christian Spain and Portugal in the Early Middle Ages Texts and Societies (CS1084) Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell The Boundless Sea Writing Mediterranean History (CS1083) Mohamed El Mansour The Power of Islam in Morocco Historical and Anthropological Perspectives (CS1082) John Marshall, edited by Philip Butterworth Early English Performance: Medieval Plays and Robin Hood Games Shifting Paradigms in Early English Drama Studies (CS1081) Jennifer O’reilly, edited by Carol A. Farr and Elizabeth Mullins Early Medieval Text and Image II The Codex Amiatinus, the Book of Kells and Anglo-Saxon Art (CS1080) www.routledge.com/Variorum-Collected-Studies/book-series/VARIORUM

VARIORUM COLLECTED STUDIES

EARLY PERFORMANCE: COURTS AND AUDIENCES Shifting Paradigms in Early English Drama Studies

Sarah Carpenter Edited by John J McGavin and Greg Walker

First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business This edition © 2021 selection and editorial matter, John J McGavin and Greg Walker; individual chapters, Sarah Carpenter The right of John J McGavin and Greg Walker to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and Sarah Carpenter for her individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Carpenter, Sarah, author. | McGavin, John J., 1950– editor. | Walker, Greg, 1959– editor. Title: Early performance—courts and audiences : shifting paradigms in early English drama studies / Sarah Carpenter ; edited by John J McGavin and Greg Walker. Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York : Routledge, 2020. | Series: Variorum collected studies series | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020008466 (print) | LCCN 2020008467 (ebook) | ISBN 9780367219642 (hardback) | ISBN 9780429269042 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: English drama—To 1500—History and criticism. | English drama—Early modern and Elizabethan, 1500–1600. | Theater— England—History—Medieval, 500–1500. | Theater—England— History—To 1500. Classification: LCC PR641 .C37 2020 (print) | LCC PR641 (ebook) | DDC 822/.109—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020008466 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020008467 ISBN: 978-0-367-21964-2 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-26904-2 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC VARIORUM COLLECTED STUDIES SERIES CS1090

CONTENTS

Introduction by John J McGavin and Greg Walker PART I

Courts

1

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1 Plays and playcoats: a courtly interlude tradition in Scotland?, Comparative Drama, 46:4 (2012), pp. 475–96.

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2 ‘To thexaltacyon of noblesse’: a herald’s account of the marriage of Margaret Tudor and James IV, Medieval English Theatre, 29 (2009 for 2007), pp. 104–20.

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3 ‘Gely wyth tharmys of Scotland England’: word, image and performance at the marriage of James IV and Margaret Tudor, in ‘Fresche Fontanis’: Studies in the Culture of Medieval and Early Modern Scotland, ed. by Janet Hadley Williams and J. Derrick McClure (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2013), pp. 165–77. Published with the permission of Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

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4 (with Graham Runnalls), The Entertainments at the marriage of Mary Queen of Scots and the French Dauphin François, 1558: Paris and Edinburgh, Medieval English Theatre, 22 (2000), pp. 145–61 [with thanks to Mrs Anne Runnalls].

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5 Performing diplomacies: the 1560s court entertainments of Mary Queen of Scots, Scottish Historical Review, LXXXII: 2 (October 2003), pp. 194–225. Reproduced with permission of the Licensor through PLSclear.

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6 Love and chastity: political performance in Scottish, French, and English courts of the 1560s, in Joyous Sweit Imaginatioun: Essays in Honour of Professor R.D.S. Jack, ed. by Sarah Carpenter and Sarah Dunnigan, SCROLL (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2007), pp. 111–28.

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7 Dramatising ideology: Monarch, State, and People, Theta, 9 (2011), pp. 95–112 http://umr6576.cesr.univ-tours.fr/ publications/Theta9/

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PART II

Audiences

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8 New evidence: Vives and audience-response to biblical drama, Medieval English Theatre, 31 (2011 for 2009), pp. 3–12.

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9 Verity’s Bible: books, texts, and reading in Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis, Medieval English Theatre, 33 (2011), pp. 58–74.

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10 Towards a reformed theatre: David Lyndsay and Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis, The Yearbook of English Studies, 43 (2013), pp. 203–22. Reproduced by permission of the Modern Humanities Research Association.

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11 The sixteenth-century court audience: performers and spectators, Medieval English Theatre, 19 (1997), pp. 3–14.

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12 ‘My Lady Tongue’: Thomas Tomkis’s Lingua, Medieval English Theatre, 24 (2002), pp. 3–14.

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13 The politics of unreason: Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis and the practices of folly, Theta, 10 (2013), pp. 35–52 http:// umr6576.cesr.univ-tours.fr/publications/Theta10/

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14 Laughing at natural fools, Theta, 11 (2014) pp. 3–22 http:// umr6576.cesr.univ-tours.fr/publications/Theta11/

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15 The places of foolery: Robert Armin and fooling in Edinburgh, Medieval English Theatre, 37 (2015), pp. 11–26.

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Sarah Carpenter: bibliography Index

224 227 viii

INTRODUCTION John J McGavin and Greg Walker

The period from the mid-1970s to the present day has seen exponential advances in our appreciation and understanding of early drama. This progress was driven by the optimism, intellectual excitement, and commitment of several generations of scholars and practitioners with a mission to show how plays traditionally marginalised by terms such as ‘pre-Shakespearian’ could be re-imagined through close attention to their historical context, to the pragmatics of performance, their documentary traces, and their comparability across different national and chronological traditions. Research projects with associated publications (and commitment to ‘authentic’ performance) developed, including seminal, enduring organisations and networks such as Medieval English Theatre (UK), Records of Early English Drama (Canada), and the Table Ronde on Théâtre Tudor (France), demonstrating both the fundamental durability of the new discipline and the capacity of its scholarship to move with the times in its aims, its methods, and its modes of publication. Dr Sarah Carpenter, many of whose most important essays are published in this volume, has been at the heart of this disciplinary advance from the outset, acting variously as a fundamental thinker, researcher, organiser, and encourager, and has been involved in all three of the international organisations mentioned above. Sarah Carpenter’s annual papers and publications have been welcomed by conference secretaries and readers alike as an assurance of scholarly and critical quality, and they have stood the test of time. Consequently they are published here not to illuminate the history of the discipline but rather to provide illumination afresh to those engaged in it. Although the essays frequently appeared in support of a prescribed theme for a journal or conference, their enduringly fresh originality bespeaks a quite separate, personal research trajectory which Carpenter chose to deploy in the service of her colleagues. Those working closest to her fields of interest are used to feeling that she has ‘been there already’ before them, providing not just new information and nuanced interpretations but, more basically, a guide to the most productive ways of thinking about a new topic or rethinking an existing one. New readers will benefit from her methodological insights, which are implicit in the ways she can reshape an event or discover a tradition, but they will also find a writer of pellucid clarity, economy, and tact. The handling of the diverse source material on which Carpenter draws underpins her reputation for 1

INTRODUCTION

meticulous, exacting scholarship. For her source materials and inspiration, she draws upon an often dazzling array of disparate materials, from official financial records, family and state papers, contemporary chronicles, histories and memoirs, literary texts, and diplomatic messages to modern theoretical and critical studies from a number of disciplines, most notably literary, theoretical, and anthropological, but reaching into studies of popular comedy, social media, and current affairs. Her work is also known for the delicacy with which she uses this learning, and the care she takes in ensuring that the reader knows precisely what is being claimed. Her ‘voice’ is instantly recognisable: often disarmingly understated in tone, tactful but compelling, underpinned by her capacity for reflection, perspective, and a penchant for taking an unusual angle on a topic which produces insights whose full radicalism is often appreciated by the reader only in retrospect. The essays published here have been selected to reflect Sarah Carpenter’s close focus on the relationship of performance and audience. They are drawn from a relatively short but creative period of 20 years from 1995 to 2015, and this has enabled the editors to organise them not chronologically but rather to develop her central themes through a range of genres, including morality plays, the interlude, court entertainments, international political spectacle, and the public ‘performances’ of natural and maintained fools. The performance contexts and auspices studied in these essays vary correspondingly – from indoor courtly or academic venues to city streets, and established or newly-devised public playfields. As a scholar who also has experience of acting and of production, Carpenter is particularly sensitive to the implications of location for creating meaning and generating audience reaction. The essays are focused on a relatively short time-span of 120 years, from the late fifteenth to the turn of the seventeenth century, and thus add rich nuance to our understanding of a period traditionally divided between the late medieval and the early-modern, and between Catholicism and Protestantism. Carpenter shows how the dynamics of theatrical engagement in which the roles of audience and performer are frequently mixed or even reversed offer a more creative route to understanding how the individual and society respond to cultural and religious change, and how those changes in turn inflected the conception, performance, and reception of drama and associated entertainment forms. The selection of essays has allowed us to create a cohesive book, divided into two parts to give controlled breadth with depth. The first part offers a sustained account of performance in courtly settings. The emphasis falls on the Scottish court, and the book thus makes a distinct and distinctive contribution to the field, complementing the largely English focus elsewhere in early drama studies. But even in this respect the work is not narrow, since, as well as discovering a now-lost interlude tradition in Scotland, it looks out to the political and diplomatic spectacles created by Scottish monarchs and their courts to establish international relations with their French and English counterparts. Its ideological aspect prepares the reader for later pieces on theatre and the Reformation. The second part picks up on and continues emphases and themes from the first, but focuses on audiences, their diversity, the different roles which they can play in a performance context, 2

INTRODUCTION

the ways in which they might be manipulated, their confused feelings, and their pleasures. This half of the book concludes with three essays on the performance of folly, which between them draw together a number of the book’s concerns, linking part 1 to part 2, Scotland to England, courtly culture to non-elite auspices, and focusing finally on those challenges of spectatorship and participation which both join and differentiate modern readers and their early-modern counterparts. Bringing these essays together in one place demonstrates their weight and significance as a body of work fundamental to the development of early theatre as an emergent field of study. It allows readers to study them in sequence, or to follow themes from one to another as their interests lead them, building an incremental understanding of the connections, resonances, and emerging insights that unite them. It also, we hope, demonstrates both the challenges posed by and the pleasures to be gained from the study of dramatic and performance culture in a richly documented period both crucially different from and yet fundamentally constitutive of what followed. The editors gratefully acknowledge the kind permission of the original publishers who have allowed the re-editing and publication of essays for this volume.

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Part I COURTS

1 PLAYS AND PLAYCOATS A courtly interlude tradition in Scotland?

The reign of Henry VIII saw a flourishing of court drama in England. Recent critical interest has sharpened our awareness of the varied uses of theatricality at the Tudor court, from performance games and disguising through spectacular revels to more or less elaborately developed spoken plays. Henry’s personal interest in performance and his apparent readiness to accept drama as an instrument of debate as well as entertainment seems to have encouraged not only dramatic activity itself, but also the survival of evidence. This evidence suggests an increasing prominence of the courtly interlude through the first half of the sixteenth century: printers published texts from playwrights such as Skelton, Rastell, and Heywood while historical records and anecdotes, along with wardrobe accounts, point to a range of other interludes. Both texts and reports suggest that court theatre became a recognized and at times highly developed mode of topical comment. This is a period when court drama played an important role in the assertion, celebration, and critique of royal power.1 If we turn away from Henry’s court and look north beyond the Tudor kingdom, what theatrical culture do we find in Scotland, England’s close but antagonistic neighbour? James IV’s marriage to Henry’s sister Margaret in 1503 had confirmed relations between the two countries and their monarchs as both intimate and conflicted. Both royal establishments acknowledged and exploited the consciously

1 For theatrical performance at Henry VIII’s court see David M. Bevington, Tudor Drama and Politics: A Critical Approach to Topical Meaning (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1968); Sydney Anglo, Spectacle, Pageantry and Early Tudor Policy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969); W. R. Streitberger, Court Revels, 1485–1559 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994); Greg Walker, Plays of Persuasion: Drama and Politics at the Court of Henry VIII (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991) and The Politics of Performance in Early Renaissance Drama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). Both Bevington and Walker demonstrate the increasing development and prominence of the courtly interlude as a form, in spite of an apparent shift in emphasis at Henry’s court from verbal to visual and physical performance, as suggestively documented by Streitberger, Court Revels, 88–89. See too J. McCarthy, ‘The Emergence of Henrician Drama “in the Kynges absens”’, English Literary Renaissance, 39 (2009), 231–66.

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spectacular court culture of the early sixteenth century.2 So did the Stewart courts of James IV and James V support any kind of comparably lively and searching interlude culture? The question is hard to address, primarily because of the difficulty besetting any analysis of early drama in Scotland: the notorious lack of surviving pre-Reformation dramatic texts. Apart from a few fragments from quasi-dramatic games, we have only Sir David Lyndsay’s Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis, and the two existing versions of that script document not a court production but large-scale public, outdoor performances in the 1550s.3 Without scripts the search for a Scottish interlude tradition seems frustrated before it begins. The picture is slightly less blank than this suggests, however. Lyndsay’s text is complemented by a detailed, vivid, and revealing eyewitness account of what is plainly a court interlude, played before the king and queen at Linlithgow on the Feast of the Epiphany in 1540 and widely taken to prefigure the Thrie Estaitis.4 Dramatizing the complaints of a poor man to a king and his parliament, the play addresses the corruption and oppression exercised by courtiers and, more especially, by the Church. Its vividly direct and immediate acknowledgment of topical events, of its courtly audience, and of James V among the spectators, along with the king’s apparent knowledge and approval of its content and his use of the performance as a political tool, all mark this as similar in type to the English courtly interlude.5 Our knowledge of the play rests on a report passed to the English commander of Berwick, Sir Thomas Eure, as evidence of James V’s attitudes to Church reform.6 What can be detected of the play’s reception might indeed suggest that the political courtly interlude was by then a familiar form in Scotland. Eure, who sent details of the play to Thomas Cromwell in London, states without

2 For Scottish court culture, see Andrea Thomas, Princelie Majestie: The Court of James V of Scotland, 1528–1542 (Edinburgh: John Donald, 2005); Carol Edington, Court and Culture in Renaissance Scotland: Sir David Lindsay of the Mount (East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 1995); Louise Olga Fradenburg, City, Marriage, Tournament: Arts of Rule in Late Medieval Scotland (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991). 3 The play exists in two versions: extended extracts from what appear to be the Cupar version were copied into the Bannatyne manuscript in 1568, and a full text of what seems to have been the Edinburgh version was printed by Robert Charteris in 1602. For both texts, see The Works of Sir David Lindsay of the Mount, 1490–1555, edited by Douglas Hamer, Scottish Text Society, 3rd series, 4 vols (Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons, 1931–36), vols. II and IV. For paradramatic textual survivals see ‘The Maner of the Crying of ane Play’, in The Asloan Manuscript, edited by William Craigie, Scottish Text Society, 2 vols (Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1923–25), II, 149–54; Helena M. Shire and Kenneth Elliott, ‘Pleugh Song and Plough Play’, Saltire Review, 2 (1955), 39–44. 4 Most scholars accept that the interlude action described has close enough parallels to the Thrie Estaitis to establish it as an earlier version of David Lyndsay’s play. For a counter view see Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis, edited by R. J. Lyall (Edinburgh: Canongate, 1989), pp. x–xii. 5 For the political engagement and implications of the interlude, see Walker, Politics of Performance, pp. 125–38. 6 British Library, MS Reg. 7.C. xvi, fols. 136–39; for a printed edition and further information see Medieval Drama: An Anthology, edited by Greg Walker (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), pp. 538–40.

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surprise: ‘thay have hade ane enterluyde played’ – he is interested in the political content of the play, not by the fact of its performance. In Scotland there is no surviving notice of the interlude at all, and this very lack of any contemporary comment or reflection might imply that its performance was, in itself, nothing out of the ordinary. What the report certainly reveals is that in 1540 a confident and theatrically sophisticated political interlude was performed at James V’s court, apparently exciting no surprise. Might this suggest a developed but now lost tradition of court interludes in Scotland? Apart from playtexts and contemporary descriptions, our chief source of evidence for all kinds of early performance comes from records of expenditures, that is, costs and payments. It therefore seems possible that the Scottish royal Treasurer’s Accounts, which survive in a fairly full run through the first half of the sixteenth century, might cast some light on the development of Scottish court performance in this period.7 The accounts are not organized in a way that makes the search easy. Although Scotland participated actively in the international court culture of the early sixteenth century, it was not wealthy enough to support a court of the size and magnificence of England and had no equivalent of the English offices of the Wardrobe or the Revels, with their own lines of accounting and inventory. Any expenses on court performance are included in the composite accounts of the Lord Treasurer, which cover a wide range of areas from the king’s wardrobe, stables, and household, to messengers, shipbuilding, and expenses on alms.8 While special events such as James IV’s spectacular Tournament of the Black Lady and the Wild Knight in 1507 and 1508 might have their own lists of expenses, isolated costs for less elaborate performances are likely to crop up undifferentiated within various more general categories such as expenses on the king’s person, expenses by special precept, or expenses on livery. Also, as might be expected, the treasury clerks are primarily interested in accounting for costs rather than in describing or recording the events or objects on which the money had been spent. Any evidence of dramatic activity that can be identified is therefore unlikely to tell us exactly what we would like to know. Nonetheless, the accounts can be illuminating. References to theatrical activity of various kinds do indeed recur throughout the reigns of James IV and James V: we find expenses for tournament and joust, dance and disguising, Christmas and seasonal revelry, music and song. Among these, between 1508 and 1540 in particular, there are a number of entries in the accounts that mention ‘plays’ or more often, intriguingly, ‘playcoats’. It is clear that in many of these entries the ‘playcoats’ refer to theatrical costumes of some kind, although 7 National Records of Scotland, series E21 (hereafter cited as NRS). Accounts between 1473 and 1580 have been published in extensive selections, though with silent omissions, as Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer of Scotland, edited by Thomas Dickson and others, 13 vols (Edinburgh: H. M. General Register House, 1877–1978) [hereafter LHTA]. 8 Expenses from the king’s privy purse were sometimes kept in separate and now largely lost accounts (see A. L. Murray, ‘Accounts of the King’s Pursemaster, 1539–40’, Scottish History Society Miscellany, 10 (1965), 13–51), while expenses of the Master of Works and the daily expenses of the Household have separate records.

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the accounts are generally frustratingly short on any detail of the exact nature or purpose of the garments or the events for which they were intended. Yet if we explore not just the specific content of these entries but their context within the accounts and beyond, we may begin to glimpse a fuller sense of dramatic performance at the courts of James IV and V. Analogous and adjacent items can help us to interpret the bald statements of expenditure. Moreover, other sources of material or narrative evidence can extend the implications of the scanty costume details. Initially, the terminology of plays and playcoats might seem to suggest a very different kind of dramatic tradition from the political courtly interlude. We first find a ‘play’ mentioned among the expenses recorded for entertainment at James IV’s Tournament of the Black Lady in 1508. The word occurs toward the end of a series of payments for what seem to be lavish disguisings, the spectacularly costumed and masked danced displays that frequently followed European tournaments.9 There is no clear sense of a spoken interlude. Fifty-four shillings were spent on providing ‘ye franch gunnar’ with four ells of red, white, green, and yellow taffeta ‘agane the bancat’ [for the banquet] while £10.5s went to twenty-two and a half ells ‘of birge satin Rede [red Bruges satin] and ȝallo to be v daunsing cotis agane the bancat’. These were enhanced by ‘cod lases ratland gold fulȝee v dosane small bellis vj dosane gret bellis lattoun wyre xij ½ eln blew bukrem xx eln j quarter frenȝeis xx fawdoun small toll to ye bancat & for ye play & dans of ye samyn’ [codpiece laces[?], rattling gold foil, five dozen small bells, six dozen great bells, brass wire, twelve and a half ells of blue buckram, twenty ells and a quarter of fringe, twenty fathom of thin rope for the banquet, and for the play and dance for the same].10 These items suggest that the ‘dans’ was a courtly version of a morris with a team of dancers in particoloured coats adorned with bells, who are joined by a fool. The entry for the dancers’ coats is bracketed with one for ‘taffetj to be sleffis to ye fulis cote & hude & taggis to ye samyn’ [taffeta to be sleeves to the fool’s coat and hood, and tags to the same]. It is not clear how the ‘play’ relates to this dance and the other banquet festivity: it is even possible that ‘play and dans’ simply constitute a doublet rather than pointing to two separate activities. Robert Lindsay of Pitscottie, in a history written some sixty or seventy years later, describes a series of different theatrical events at the banquet and does comment explicitly on spoken drama: ‘betuix everie seruice thair was ane phairs or ane play sum be speikin sum be craft of Igramancie quhilk causit men to sie thingis aper quhilk was nocht’ [between each course there was a farce or a play, some by speaking and some by craft of conjuring that caused men to see things appear which were not there].11 9 For an account of disguisings, see Meg Twycross and Sarah Carpenter, Masks and Masking in Medieval and Early Tudor England (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), pp. 128–150. 10 NRS, E21/9, fols. 19r, 58v, 93v (LHTA, IV, 23, 64, 125). 11 Robert Lindsay of Pitscottie, The Historie and Cronicles of Scotland from the Slauchter of King James the First to the Ane Thousande Fyve Hundreith Thrie Scoir Fyftein Zeir, edited by Æ. J. G. Mackay, Scottish Text Society, Old Series, 42, 3 vols (Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1899–1911), I, p. 244.

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However, while Pitscottie is clearly responsive to theatricality, and it is possible that he may have heard eyewitness accounts of the entertainments, his vivid history is not trustworthy on exact detail.12 While we cannot be sure of the nature of the ‘play’, the accounts record that for this spectacular occasion a performance garment required about four ells of cloth, and that the predominant materials used were taffeta and satin, both luxurious rather than durable or inexpensive fabrics. Three years later, the next record to mention a ‘play’ not only associates it this time with a ‘playcoat’, but famously provides the first reference to Sir David Lyndsay in a theatrical context. Lyndsay, then a young man of about twenty-five, went on to become a crucial figure in dramatic activity in Scotland both as a playwright and as a senior herald involved in the organization of a range of ceremonial and theatrical events. On 12 October 1511, we find the following payment among expenses from the King’s Purse: Item ye xij day of october fra maister Johne of murray ij ½ elnis blew taffatis and vj quartaris ȝallow taffatis to be ane play coit to dauid lindesay for ye play playt in ye king and qwenis presencis in ye abbay price elne xvj s summa iij li iiij s13 [Item: 12th day of October from Master John of Murray two and a half ells of blue taffeta and six quarters of yellow taffeta to be a playcoat for David Lyndsay for the play played in the king and queen’s presence in the abbey. Price per ell 16 shillings, total £3.4s] No other expenses are apparently recorded for this occasion, suggesting that this play was not part of some larger spectacular revel; on the other hand, the wording implies that although this expense is on a single costume it was not a solo performance by Lyndsay. This impression is supported by the payment later in the account, undated though probably for the Christmas season a couple of months later, of £8.8s for twelve ells of taffeta: Item be ye kingis command deliuer it to Sir James Inglis to be hyme and his collegis play cotis xij elnis taffatis price eln xiiii s summa viij li viij s Item for ye sam cotis xij elnis canwes price elne xiiijd summa

xiiij s14

12 Pitscottie was a younger kinsman of David Lyndsay; he acknowledges his elder kinsman in the preface to his history as one of the authors by whom he was ‘instructed and learned and laitlie informit’ (Historie, I, p. 2). 13 NRS, E21/10, fol. 97b (LHTA, IV, 313). 14 NRS, E21/10, fol. 100v (LHTA, IV, 321). The item appears in a list of mixed expenses between entries dated 10 and 19 December.

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[Item: by the King’s command delivered to Sir James Inglis, to be playcoats for him and his colleagues, twelve ells of taffeta. Price per ell 14 shillings, total £8.8s Item: for the same coats twelve ells of canvas. Price per ell 14 pence, total 14 shillings] Playcoats, as we find later in the accounts, are more often provided for groups than for single performers. As in the 1508 entry, Lyndsay’s costume is allowed four ells of cloth, two and a half of blue and one and a half of yellow. The twelve ells for Sir James Inglis thus sounds as if it represents coats for three performers. The fabric of choice remains the relatively costly taffeta, a silk material used in the king’s wardrobe for doublets and decorative linings, although the canvas used for lining or stiffening might possibly suggest something slightly more robust than before. While colour is not specified for the Inglis costumes, it is interesting to find that Lyndsay’s garment is apparently particoloured in blue and yellow. This seems to echo the earlier costumes for the dance and banquet of the Black Lady. We cannot tell what kind of plays these were. Theatrical terminology at the time is inevitably loose and elastic, and especially in contexts like the accounts writers are rarely interested in generic nuance, making it hard to pin down any formal significance for either ‘play’ or ‘playcoat’. Play is notoriously, in both Scots and English, a broadly applicable term used in contexts of sport, recreation, and even battle, as well as drama.15 However, it may be possible to detect a certain convention to its theatrical use in these records, even if it remains fundamentally imprecise. One observation is that the common English term interlude is rarely used in Scotland at the time, and does not appear at all in the Treasurer’s Accounts. Words for theatrical events that do occur include dans, ballat, fars, and maskrie [dance, ballad, farce, and masking] alongside play. Interestingly, Sir James Inglis himself was saluted by Lyndsay in later life as the author of ‘ballatts, farses, and [. . .] plesand playis’.16 While these three terms chosen by Lyndsay may be primarily a collective trope of rhetorical copiousness, they can also be understood as carrying certain distinctions, although to understand them we need to recognize both contemporary usage and the misleading resonances of modern definitions. Ballat has a looser sense than our current ballad. It appears to have a musical dimension, being most often associated with sung performance, as in 1492 when three chapel clerks were rewarded for ‘singyn of a ballat to ye king’.17 Yet it seems that the ballat was equally dependent on words: the poets Dunbar and Henryson both refer to some of their works as ballats, especially those with a

15 See Streitberger, Court Revels, p. 301, n. 1; John Coldewey, ‘Plays and “Play” in Early English Drama’, Research Opportunities in Renaissance Drama, 28 (1985), 181–88. 16 David Lyndsay, ‘The Testament of the Papyngo’ (line 41) in Sir David Lyndsay: Selected Poems, edited by Janet Hadley Williams (Glasgow: Association for Scottish Literary Studies, 2001), p. 59. 17 NRS, E21/2, fol. 93v (LHTA, I, 184).

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narrative focus.18 In fact, Dunbar seems almost to imply that the ballat falls somewhere between a sung and a dramatic performance, explaining how he can take no pleasure ‘Off sangs, ballattis and of playis’.19 Defined as a ‘false friend’, fars is one of those terms with a clear modern meaning that can too easily lead us astray. Although the word is widely used in sixteenth-century Scotland, it is rarely if ever associated with the short comic plays it now denotes.20 In Scottish usage fars may designate anything from serious spoken drama to spectacular pageants and theatrical machinery.21 The Treasurer’s Accounts do not securely differentiate it from play: two months after Inglis’s production, Gilleam Tabernar was paid £4.4s in February 1512 for ‘ane fars play to ye king and qvenis gracis in ye abbay’.22 More often, however, fars and play are paired in a convention that appears to imply some distinction between them. In references to civic drama, fars seems particularly associated with triumphant spectacle and pageantry, as in the ‘tymmer, canves, and all vther necessaris convenient for the triumphis and fairssis [at] the over trone’ [timber, canvas and all other necessaries convenient for the triumphs and farces at the Upper Tron] to welcome Mary, Queen of Scots in 1561.23 Pitscottie, who consistently uses the term in this sense, perhaps comes closest to spelling out what may have been a commonly perceived distinction in the quotation from his work above: a fars involves something that may seem like ‘craft of Igramancie’, whereas a play operates ‘be spekin’. Elusive as these shades of difference are, they suggest that play is the word most often used to signify a drama involving dialogue. It certainly seems possible that the Treasurer’s Accounts might generally use the term where a writer in England would refer to an interlude.

18 Contemporary titles for Dunbar’s poems include ‘Ane Ballat of Our Lady’ and ‘A Ballat of the Abbot of Tungland’, and he refers to himself as one who ‘can bot ballattis brief’ [can only write ballads] in ‘Schir, ȝit remember’, line 48 and ‘ballat wyse complaine’ (‘This hinder nycht’, line 69), see The Poems of William Dunbar, edited by Priscilla Bawcutt, 2 vols. (Glasgow: Association for Scottish Literary Studies, 1998). Henryson refers to his own Testament of Cresseid as a ‘ballet schort’ (line 610), see The Poems of Robert Henryson, edited by Denton Fox (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987). 19 ‘In to thir dirk’ (line 5). Bawcutt, Poems of William Dunbar, I, p. 109. 20 The term was probably adopted from France where its definition was similarly wide. According to Werner Helmich, ‘ce mot ne désigne pas forcément un genre dramatique opposé d’autres, mais une pièce quelconque, courte, destinée à la représentation’ [this word [farce] does not necessarily designate one dramatic genre as distinct from others, but a play of whatever kind which is short and designed for performance], Moralités françaises: réimpression fac-similé de vingt-deux pièces allégoriques imprimées aux XVe et XVIe siècles, 3 vols (Geneva: Slatkine, 1980), III, p. ix. 21 The entry for farce in the Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue offers a useful survey of contemporary usage. See www.dsl.ac.uk/dsl/. 22 NRS, E21/10, fol. 104v (LHTA, IV, 330). 23 Anna Jean Mill, Mediæval Plays in Scotland (1924; repr London: Benjamin Blom, 1969), p. 188. [All references to Mill’s Mediæval Plays in Scotland have been changed to this reprint edition for ease of access. Eds.]

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Like interludes, the unidentified plays of 1511 were presented at court before the king and queen as individual events rather than as part of larger entertainments. They appear to have had small casts – or at least to require small numbers of costumes. Apart from that, the particoloured taffeta and the apparent lack of differentiation between the generic ‘playcoats’ if anything suggests something not unlike the earlier set of red and yellow ‘daunsing cotis’. At least in the language of the records the playcoats sound more decorative than individually and dramatically mimetic. After 1511 there is a gap in allusions to drama through most of the accounts of James V’s minority (1513–1528), but as he moved into his personal reign payments for similar sounding ‘play cotis’ begin to recur sporadically. Sir James Inglis is given £40 ‘to by [buy] play coitis agane ȝule [for Yule]’ in 1526: this is presumably for a rather larger-scale production given the greater sum of money, though there are no more details to flesh out the event.24 In January 1534, we find forty shillings spent on ‘ij elnis taphety of the cord reid and ȝallow’ [two ells of red and yellow corded taffeta] for ‘ane play coit to the Kingis son’, the coat lined with red and yellow buckram.25 Although the parti-coloured taffeta sounds familiar, at two ells this is clearly a child’s costume rather than an adult’s. By early 1534 James was twenty-one and had probably fathered at least three of his five or six illegitimate sons. From the accounts, where he is provided with other clothing around this time, the likeliest candidate is the eldest, James Stewart, son of Elizabeth Shaw, born about 1529 and so around the age of five.26 It may be that this points to a simpler, less verbal kind of performance. The Household Book for the period reveals that James V spent most of January 1534 at Coupar where Andrea Thomas suggests he may have been visiting his young son.27 The child’s playcoat is paid for during this month and may therefore belong to private festivity. However, it is not impossible that such a young child might take part in an interlude. An item in another section of the accounts from around the same time might point to that possibility: Item the last day of december deliuerit to schir michell dysart and his marrowis be ye kingis precept to be yaim play coittis agane newȝeir day xx elnis bukrame Reid and ȝallow price of ye elne xxx d summa l s28 [Item: the last day of December delivered to Sir Michael Dysart and his fellows by the king’s precept to be playcoats for them for New Year’s day, 20 ells of red and yellow buckram. Price per ell 30 pence, total 50 shillings.] 24 NRS, E21/22, fol. 24r (LHTA, V, 316). 25 NRS, E21/28, fol. 14v (LHTA, VI, 186). ‘Tafetta of the cord’ refers to the weight of the cloth, being a relatively superior version of the fabric. 26 See Thomas, Princelie Majestie, pp. 41–42. Interestingly, however, five ells of velvet is provided for a more expensive and elaborate coat for this young child on the previous page of the accounts. Fabrics were, however, woven in different widths which are not specified in the accounts. 27 NRS, E31/5, fol. 29r; Thomas, Princelie Majestie, pp. 51–52. 28 NRS, E21/28, fol. 38r (not included in LHTA).

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Although these items are not directly linked, appearing at slightly different dates in the Christmas season, one under expenses on the king and the other under liveries, it is not impossible that they refer to a single performance in which the young James Stewart joined Sir Michael and his colleagues. English parallels suggest this is a viable scenario for court drama: John Heywood’s Play of the Weather, which may well have been performed at the court of Henry VIII the previous year, prescribes for one of its parts, ‘A boy the lest that can play [smallest who can act]’, to join with a cast of adult or older child actors.29 With twenty ells of cloth provided to Michael Dysart, we might assume there were five adult players, their costumes in the same red and yellow as the child’s playcoat. An apparently unusual feature is the coarser and cheaper buckram of the adult garments, while the child’s coat is made from even more than usually expensive taffeta of the cord. But the account entries offer no other clues as to purposes or effects: the little boy and the adults are both dressed for some kind of performance, but we cannot tell from these entries what sort of play, game, dance, or Christmas revel was involved. Some slight evidence that the playcoats considered so far form a distinct group associated with some particular form of drama might be suggested by an entry for a different kind of performance garment in 1535. At the Christmas season that year, around twenty-four ells of the much cheaper ‘Scottish white’ and fourteen of ‘Scottish black’ cloth are bought ‘to be certane play gownis to ye kingis grace to pass [take part] in maskrie’.30 These are again bi-coloured costumes, the black cloth bought ‘to be ye tothir half of ye saidis [the said] gownis’. However, these costumes much more definitely suggest disguising games, with a troop of maskers including the king himself wearing matching costumes.31 Unlike the previous playcoats these garments, specifically for the king’s use, apparently remained in the royal wardrobe. They reappear in a wardrobe inventory for 1543 that lists ‘sex play coitis quhite and blak claith’ [six playcoats white and black cloth].32 Many details distinguish these garments from the taffeta playcoats we have encountered 29 John Heywood, The Play of the Wether (London: W Rastell, 1533), sig. Air. See also The Plays of John Heywood, edited by Richard Axton and Peter Happé, Tudor Interludes (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1991), p. 183. Thomas Betteridge suggests in a recent discussion a date of late 1532 for the performance of this play, a moment when Sir David Lyndsay was passing through London returning from a diplomatic mission to France. See http://stagingthehenriciancourt.brookes.ac.uk/ research/political_history_1532_1533.html; Calendar of Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII, edited by J. S. Brewer and others, 21 vols (London: Longmans H.M.S.O, 1872–1910, V (1543); see www.british-history.ac.uk/letters-papers-hen8 . [Where possible, all references to multi-volume works of this nature have had digital access added. Eds.] 30 NRS, E21/29, fol. 15r (LHTA, VI, 255). 31 See Twycross and Carpenter, Masks and Masking, pp. 128–50. 32 John Harrison, ‘The Wardrobe Inventories of James V (particularly BL Royal 18C XIV, fols. 184–215)’ Stirling Castle Palace: Archaeological and Historical Research 2004–2008, Historic Scotland (http://sparc.scran.ac.uk/publications/pdfs/L2%20wardrobe%20inventories%20of%20 james%20v.pdf), 52 (fol. 215r). The list containing these garments was compiled on 26 February 1543, and appears to record items kept at St. Andrews, Falkland, and Stirling where James had spent the Yule 1535 holiday.

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so far: the word initially used is ‘gowns’, the material is less luxurious, a ‘play’ is not mentioned, and the king himself is involved. These differences all suggest that the coloured taffeta playcoats belong to a different kind of theatrical activity. Yet overall the evidence up to this point remains enigmatic: playcoats are relatively frequent; they are often, though not always, specifically associated with performance of something referred to as a ‘play’; they are usually made of taffeta and the entries for single costumes suggest they are often particoloured. The fact that they are called ‘coitis’ rather than ‘gowns’ and take on average four ells of cloth for an adult suggests something relatively close-fitting; and, possibly significantly, where there is more than one player the costumes seem not to be differentiated. While these references to playcoats testify to a continuing tradition of theatrical performance, they offer no solid evidence as to the plays they dressed. If anything, the impression, although indistinct, might be of decorative spectacle and game rather than formal drama, with the matching ‘dancing coats’ of the first entry in 1508 apparently setting the tone. That being said, the next playcoat entry in the accounts sheds a quite new light on Scottish court drama, and perhaps invites us to rethink the implications of those earlier entries. We reach January 1540, which is the date of the Epiphany ‘enterluyde’ described by a Scottish onlooker to English authorities. Here at last we have a full and detailed eyewitness account of a sophisticated Scottish courtly debate-drama, engaging eloquently and forcefully with current political affairs. It might seem that nothing in the previous surviving records would have prepared us for this confident and penetrating speech-based drama with its varied cast of characters and its lively awareness of debate and critique. It seems closer to Skelton’s Magnyfycence, Heywood’s Play of the Weather, or Bale’s Kyng Johan than to anything we might deduce from the multicoloured taffeta playcoats. Yet the play is likely to be less of an innovation than it might appear. Particular political circumstances led to our uniquely detailed eyewitness account of this interlude. If that report had not survived, would we know anything of this performance from the Treasurer’s Accounts? Intriguingly, there is a record of a rather familiar-sounding payment for playcoats specifically for Epiphany 1540. On 3 January, ‘vij elnis half eln reid and vij elnis half eln ȝallow taffites of cord’ are recorded as delivered to the king’s master tailor Thomas Arthur, ‘to be iij play cotis agane vphalyday’ [seven and half ells of red and seven and a half ells of yellow corded taffeta to be three playcoats for Epiphany].33 Here is the same theme again of apparently particoloured matching taffeta costumes; these are, though, possibly slightly more elaborate garments since five ells is allowed this time for each coat and a further two ells of red and yellow taffeta was supplied ‘to draw ye talis of ye saidis play cotis’ [to decorate the tails of the said playcoats]. Unusually, the expenses are then elaborated further. In addition to the red and yellow cloth, Arthur has ‘deliuerit to him to be ane syde cape to ane of ye playaris vj 33 NRS, E21/37, fol. 32r (LHTA, VII, 276–77).

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elnis purpur taffites of corde and ane eln of reid taffites to be ane hude’ [delivered to him, to be a long cape for one of the players, six ells of purple corded taffeta and one ell of red taffeta to be a hood]. He is then separately paid twenty shillings ‘for making of ye saidis play cotis and cape’. While the cape is a new departure, apart from this the record might not seem significantly different from previous expenses on playcoats. However, if we set the entry in the context of our external information about the interlude, and indeed in the wider context of the accounts themselves, something rather different begins to emerge. The eyewitness report of the interlude allows us to hazard reasonable guesses at the purposes of these costumes.34 The cast comprised: Solace (a cheerful and jesting MC); the King (who took little part in the action but at the end ratified ‘as in playne parliament’ the outcome of the debate); three flamboyantly satirized courtiers, ‘Placebo, Pikthanke, and Flatterye’; representatives of the three estates – a man at arms, a bishop, and a burgess – the expositor, Experience (‘clede like a doctor’ of law); and the Poor Man (who brought complaints to the parliament). Thomas Arthur clearly did not clothe this whole cast, but it seems likely that appropriate clothing for many of them – the poor man, the three estates, the doctor of law, for example – might have been fairly readily available elsewhere. The costumes mentioned in the accounts, though, do appear to match specific characters in the interlude. The three matching red and yellow playcoats are most likely to have been designed for the three caricatured courtiers. Red and yellow have, of course, already appeared among playcoat entries. They had been heraldic colours of the Scottish crown for a considerable time, and long connected with courtly display. It is in the 1530s, however, that they seem to have become fully established as the standard household livery colours for James V.35 The combination appears to have become the norm especially for musicians and performers: in the 1539–40 Christmas season of the interlude, five ells of red and yellow cloth are provided for liveries for each of three violers, four trumpeters, two tabor players, and John Lowis, a fool. The colours are not exclusive to these groups; various other court servitors – lackeys, children of the stable, muleteers – are given the same red and yellow liveries, both at this Christmas season and in the immediately preceding years.36 Those receiving these liveries are not the highest-ranking members of the court. Nobles and superior household officials were provided with individual gowns made from a variety of colours and fabrics. There even appeared to be a certain class consciousness about the uniform liveries. The previous Christmas 34 Anna Jean Mill assumes that these costumes cannot be intended for the Epiphany interlude on the grounds that they appear in a section of the accounts listed as Expenses on the King’s Person (Mill, Mediæval Plays, p. 59). This view seems to place too firm a trust in the categories used in accounting, however. 35 See LHTA, VI, lxxviii. 36 Earlier in the period the colours for liveries varied, presumably according to the available cloth: red and yellow sometimes appears for individuals, but monochrome tanny, grey, and russet are all recorded for standard livery issue in earlier years.

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the chief tabronar, Antoun, was provided with money to buy alternative clothes ‘becaus yat he wald nocht were reid and ȝallow as his seruandis’ [because he would not wear red and yellow like his servants] while the lead violer, Jakkis, was also distinguished from his bicoloured colleagues ‘becaus his loueray Is reid’.37 It looks as though red and yellow play costumes might clearly signal, to the intended audiences, middle-ranking members of the king’s household, possibly especially those involved in entertainment. This would certainly be appropriate for the self-important, comic courtiers of the Epiphany interlude. The playcoats were apparently slightly more elaborate than usual, especially given the extra taffeta supplied for the ‘tails’. There was a fashion for tailed or trailing clothes for both men and women, which from the evidence of the Treasurer’s Accounts appears to peak in the 1530s.38 The king himself had a tailed doublet, and a riding coat with tails delivered to Linlithgow, for this Christmas season.39 The fashion also attracted some ridicule. Sir David Lyndsay wrote a contemptuous satirical poem on the flamboyant excesses of women’s ‘side (long) tails’ at around this time, condemning the waste of cloth as they trailed costly fabric through the dirt.40 Such elaborated playcoats seem particularly apt for the ridiculously boastful Placebo, Pikthanke, and Flatterye: ‘one swering he was the lustiest [liveliest], starkeste [strongest], best proporcioned and most valiaunte man that ever was [. . .] and so furthe during thair partes’.41 The fashionable though essentially subordinate costume suits their improperly self-flaunting characterization. The long purple cape with red hood is most likely to have been the costume for the player king. It took seven ells of cloth in all, so was clearly relatively lavish. The term ‘side cape’ is not repeated elsewhere in the accounts, and ‘cape’ itself is uncommon, so it is not easy to envisage this costume precisely; but there are features to link it persuasively to the player king who presides over a parliament in the interlude. Sir David Lyndsay, often assumed to be author of the interlude, was a senior herald who would be familiar with the ceremonial of the Scottish parliament. While we do not know a great deal about this ceremonial until much later in the century, the Treasurer’s Accounts show that in 1504 King James IV wore the ‘Rob Rall’ or robe royal for the occasion.42 At the time of the Epiphany interlude

37 NRS, E21/36, fol. 40r (LHTA, VII, 119); E21/37, fol. 26r (LHTA, VII, 271). 38 References to tailed clothing seem to begin from around 1525, petering out after the king’s death in 1542. 39 NRS, E21/37, fols. 18r, 31v. 40 ‘Ane Supplicatioun directit frome Schir David Lyndesay, Knicht, to the Kingis Grace, in contemptioun of Syde Taillis’, in Works, edited by Hamer, I, 118–22. 41 Walker, Medieval Drama, p. 539. 42 ‘Item ye x day of merch for ane cote of kentdale to ye king quhilk he vsit to were vndir ye Rob Rall [sic] at the parliament’ [Item: the tenth day of March for a coat of Kendal cloth for the king, which he used to wear under the Robe Royal at the parliament], NRS, E21/6, fol. 27v (LHTA, II, 224). See Thomas Innes of Learney, ‘The Scottish Parliament: its Symbolism and its Ceremonial’, Juridical Review, 44 (1932), 87–124. For Henry VIII’s contemporary royal and parliament robes see Maria Hayward, Dress at the Court of King Henry VIII (Leeds: Maney, 2007), pp. 130–31, 138–40.

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Thomas Arthur was actually in process of renewing James V’s own ‘robe royal’ in preparation for the queen’s coronation in February. On the very next page of the accounts we find delivered to Arthur on 21 January: ‘to be ye kingis graces rob ryall kirtill and hude xxxviij elnis purpur [purple] veluet’, at a cost of £123.10s.43 At the same time, dozens of ermine skins are bought to line the kirtle, and ‘to complete ye kaip and hwde’ of the ceremonial robe. While in terms of expense we are clearly in a radically different league here, the purple taffeta cape with its hood provided for the player king sounds like a deliberate visual allusion to the purple velvet cape and hood of the robe royal. This suggests a quite specific theatrical invocation of the power of the monarch, especially in parliament and in relation to the three estates. The conclusion that the costumes recorded in these entries were specifically designed for the Epiphany interlude is hard to resist. The account entry appears to be the only instance of Thomas Arthur, the king’s master tailor, being personally involved in the making of play costumes. Along with the placing of the account entries among ‘expensis debursit [paid out] vpoun ye king and quenis personis’ (fol. 31v), this might also be read as supporting Thomas Eure’s claim that the interlude had James V’s personal sanction: it was, he reported, played ‘by the Kings pleasour, he being prevey [privy] thereunto’.44 However, superficially there is little to distinguish the costumes mentioned here from previous playcoat entries, and this could well imply that the earlier plays were closer to the apparently innovative form of this interlude than we might have guessed. A tradition of debate interlude could have been flourishing at the Scottish court, concealed under the apparently decorative playcoats. It seems quite possible that Lyndsay’s blue and yellow coat and the taffeta costumes for Sir James Inglis and his colleagues in 1511, the 1526 playcoats, Sir Michael Dysart’s red and yellow buckram and even the child’s costume of 1534 could similarly have contributed to court interludes. The limited number of costumes provided on most of these occasions seems less problematic if we can assume that, as in 1540, costumes for other kinds of role might be available elsewhere. The puzzling suggestion of matching costumes in several of these records, along with the implied connection with the more serviceable particolour red and yellow livery clothes, might be seen in a different light if we make a comparison with the parts of the three foolish courtiers of the Epiphany interlude. Such playcoats might even suggest a courtly manifestation of the kind of role that came to be known in England as the ‘Vice’. While we tend to associate dramatic Vices with moral allegory, the term initially does not seem to have been primarily moral.45 The first character officially recorded as a Vice is John Heywood’s Mery Reporte in the court interlude the Play of the Weather, probably performed in 1532–33. Although 43 NRS, E21/37, fol. 32v (LHTA VII, 277). 44 Walker, Medieval Drama, p. 538. 45 For an overview see Peter Happé, ‘Deceptions: ‘The Vice’ of the Interludes and Iago’, Theta, 8 (2009), 105–24; http://umr6576.cesr.univ-tours.fr/publications/Theta8/index.php [This series moved online and, where appropriate, digital access has been added. Eds.]

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irreverent and perhaps mischievous, Mery Reporte is scarcely vicious. He is rather an articulate, theatrically comic household insider on intimate terms with members of the court in both the play and the audience, and often a satirical commentator on court affairs. Somewhat similarly, if more obviously vicious, characters appear in English courtly interludes of the period, specifically representing the dangerous qualities that might infest the great household. The quartet of vices in Skelton’s Magnyfycence – Counterfeit Countenaunce, Crafty Conveyance, Cloked Collusion, and Courtly Abusion – or Godly Queen Hester’s Vice Hardy-Dardy, eager for Aman’s ‘bage and marke’ [badge and mark], are all masters of comic routine who might, like Placebo, Pikthanke, and Flatery, appropriately appear in household livery.46 While such characters are more seriously concerned with moral and political corruption, they also share the light-hearted self-satirizing of the household and its members that seems characteristic of court literature. Skelton and Heywood in England, Dunbar and Lyndsay in Scotland, all offered the court opportunities to laugh wryly at itself and its own behaviour, in poetry as well as drama. The Epiphany interlude suggests that the red and yellow playcoats could represent a theatrical manifestation of such institutional playfulness and self-critique. The 1540 Epiphany interlude openly engages with a particular political issue of its moment, the accusations of oppression and corruption in the Church. Without the survival of the report transmitted to England we would not know this, and it is similarly impossible to know whether any earlier interludes might have addressed topical concerns. The Treasurer’s Accounts do, however, offer a few tentative clues towards recovering some possible contemporary contexts for performances. The 1511 blue and yellow playcoat for David Lyndsay is slightly unusual in that it appears to be ascribed to a date in mid-October not traditionally associated with theatrical performance. Two fragments of evidence, certainly purely circumstantial, might be adduced in relation to this moment. The item almost immediately following the entry concerning Lyndsay’s playcoat records: Item ye sam day to Schir dauid Spens at he debursat to iij scottis trumpatis playand at ye outputting of ye kingis gret schipe xiiij s47 [Item: the same day to Sir David Spens that he paid out to three Scots trumpeters playing at the launch of the king’s great ship 14 shillings] Sir David Spens paid for trumpeters at the ‘outputting’ of the Great Michael, James IV’s prized flagship, a vessel on which expense and workmanship were lavished throughout this period.48 The outputting does not appear to be the official 46 The same theatrical role is adopted by the political vices of Respublica – Avarice, Oppression, Insolence, and Adulation – although their identity as corrupt government ministers lifts them beyond the liveried household. 47 NRS, E21/10, fol. 97v (LHTA, IV, 313). 48 Norman Macdougall, ‘“The Greattest Scheip That Ewer Saillit in Ingland or France”: James IV’s “Great Michael”’, in Scotland and War, AD 79–1918, edited by Norman Macdougall (Edinburgh, 1991), pp. 36–60.

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launch, as work continued on the ship thereafter, but it clearly indicated some significant moment in the construction of the highly valued and famous vessel. An intriguing entry from late September offers another faint verbal resonance. At that point five ells of relatively costly red and yellow cloth was bought ‘to be Johne of buit ane Coit of ye fassoun of ye sey wawis’ [to be a coat in the fashion of the sea waves for John of Bute].49 John of Bute was one of the court fools, more usually dressed in standard household clothes. This coat, in familiar red and yellow but fashioned like the waves of the sea, is clearly a garment intended to create a special effect. The cloth cost £3.11s and one of the tailors, Thom Edgar, was paid 10 shillings ‘for ye fassoun of it’, when his normal fee for making a coat of five ells is only four shillings. The entry remains entirely enigmatic, but conceivably the conjunction of the ocean wave coat with the Great Michael and the blue and yellow playcoat is more than accidental. The payment to Sir James Inglis in 1526 of £40 to buy playcoats is a significantly large enough sum to suggest a substantial theatrical production. There is even less information than usual about the nature of these coats, however, as the entry lists money for purchase only, rather than materials, so it is difficult to hazard any guess at topical relevance. The broader context may, however, be relevant. The young James V had reluctantly been taken into the control of his stepfather Archibald Douglas, Earl of Angus in 1525 and through 1526 there was considerable tension between Angus, James, other factions among the nobles, and James’s mother, Queen Margaret, over the custody of the monarch. In September 1526 an unsuccessful attempt was made to rescue the fourteen-year-old king from Angus, resulting in an armed confrontation. This was short lived and by the end of November it appears that James and his mother were lodged together in Edinburgh and spent the Yule season at Holyrood.50 It is possible that lavish Christmas celebrations at court were a ploy to assert the well-being of the court and the regime in the face of tension, and even to distract James from his antagonism to Douglas governance. According to Sir David Lyndsay such diversionary techniques had been used by controllers of the young king ever since he was first nominally declared in adult rule at the age of twelve in 1524.51 Lyndsay’s account of this manipulation of the monarch in his poem ‘The Complaint’ itself floats another fragment of potential evidence for the nature of these 1526 Yule celebrations. Describing the ways in which James was seduced from attempting serious kingship by sports and games, sexual adventures, and festivity, Lyndsay mentions how ‘Jhone Makerery, the kingis fule,/Gat dowbyll garmoundis agane the Yule’ [John McCrery, the king’s fool,/Got double garments for Yule, ll. 283–4]. The Treasurer’s Accounts for 1526 list livery clothes for McCrery 49 NRS, E21/10, fol. 70v (LHTA, IV, 263) 50 See Calendar of Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII, IV.ii, 2449, 2487, 2575, 2678. 51 Lyndsay, ‘The Complaint’, (lines 131–290), in Sir David Lyndsay: Selected Poems, edited by Janet Hadley Williams, pp. 45–50.

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amounting to about £12. In overall cost this is in fact no more than he was given for livery in the years preceding and following; yet at these other Yule seasons he (along with lists of other recipients) was awarded money in lieu of clothing. For this particular Yule he was individually supplied with eight ells of costly red and yellow cloth – six ells of fourteen-shilling camlet and two of fifty-shilling velvet – along with a fashionable ‘double neked’ bonnet.52 Conceivably this is what Lyndsay alludes to, and we might see the £40 spent on playcoats as part of an overall strategy of festive distraction. The 1534 playcoats are even harder to interpret. By this time James was well established in his adult rule. There is good evidence that Scotland in the 1530s was no stranger to drama as an instrument of politics beyond the court, and James himself appears to have been adept at exploiting the topical relevance of both literature and performance.53 The sources of information specifically for events and affairs of 1533–34 are, however, thin. In the last months of 1533, surviving official letters refer to the truce with England established in September that eventually led to a peace treaty the following year and to the beginning of James’s serious testing of the marriage market. England was also beginning to try out Scottish opinion on the issue of Henry VIII’s divorce, remarriage, and relations with the Pope; but we have little evidence of the domestic preoccupations of James V’s court in these months.54 The adults’ and child’s Yule season playcoats may have contributed, separately or together, to any kind of entertaining performance, although the modest outlay on costumes totaling only about £5 may not suggest any very serious or public engagement with affairs of State. The personnel associated with this series of plays and playcoats reinforces the emerging sense of a theatrical tradition that is more than simply amusement or transient revel. Three individual names appear. Sir David Lyndsay, one of James IV’s ‘spetiall serwandis’ [special servants] as a young man, became a respected senior courtier, herald, writer, and dramatist with an international reputation.55 Sir James Inglis similarly occupied a senior position; as Clerk of the Closet to James IV and Chaplain to the infant James V, he was involved in the political life of the court and as Lyndsay records was admired for his writing and dramatic composition.56 Significantly, Sir James also served as Chancellor of the Chapel Royal from 1515 to 1529. Sir Michael Dysart, the third name associated with playcoats, was also a canon of the Chapel Royal. Although we know less

52 NRS, E21/22, fol. 21v (LHTA, V, 312). 53 See Sarah Carpenter, ‘Drama and Politics: Scotland in the 1530s’, Medieval English Theatre, 10 (1988), 81–90. 54 Calendar of Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII, VI, 1069, 1161, 1487, 1571. 55 Pitscottie, Historie, p. 259; for Lyndsay’s career see Edington, Court and Culture. 56 Edington, Court and Culture, pp. 14–15.

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about his career, he apparently attended James V’s deathbed, suggesting that he too remained a respected figure at court.57 All three men specifically associated with court drama thus had important roles in court and public life. The involvement of both Inglis and Dysart in mounting performances also offers evidence for an involvement of the Scottish Chapel Royal with secular dramatic activity that Anna Jean Mill’s classic study looked for in vain.58 This involvement may move beyond a purely individual level since Inglis’s ‘colleges’, paralleled by Dysart’s ‘marrowis’, could well suggest the participation of groups of members of the collegiate chapel. We know that the Scottish Chapel Royal had a significant and influential association with poets and writers as well as visual art and music that moved beyond the sacred.59 It would be no surprise if, like its English counterpart, the Chapel also supported the development of a courtly interlude tradition. The evidence remains tantalizingly incomplete. We cannot prove that the Scottish court fostered any emerging tradition of court interlude and political drama through the early decades of the sixteenth century. It is clear from the Epiphany interlude that by 1540 the royal court of Scotland had become familiar with the traditions of allegorical debate drama and was able to exploit them in forceful and sophisticated ways. Some of that familiarity may have been developed from France where allegorical and political moralités were well-developed. Members of the court, including the king himself as well as Sir David Lyndsay, had spent much time in France during the 1530s particularly in relation to James V’s extended marriage negotiations, and one of the key members of the audience in 1540 was James’s second French wife, Mary of Guise. Lyndsay’s later play, Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis, has often been argued to show influence from French dramatic traditions.60 Yet the description of the 1540 interlude implies something closer to the traditions of English court and household interludes than to the French genres of moralité, sottie, and farce. If Lyndsay had spent significant time in France, he had also visited London both in 1532 and in 1535. This was a period when debate drama associated with Henry VIII’s court and addressing topical issues was flourishing, and drama itself was being seriously considered as a useful

57 For Inglis as Chancellor of the Chapel Royal see M. Livingstone, ed. The Register of the Privy Seal of Scotland, Vol 1 1488–1529 (Edinburgh: HM General Register House, 1908), 2573, 4119; Dysart is mentioned as capellanus at 926. He was also named as one of the witnesses to the notarial instrument apparently drawn up at James V’s deathbed in 1542: Historical Manuscripts Commission Eleventh Report, Part VI, The Manuscripts of the Duke of Hamilton (London: H.M.S.O, 1887), pp. 219–20. 58 Mill, Mediæval Plays, pp. 56–59. 59 See Theo van Heijnsbergen, ‘The Scottish Chapel Royal as Cultural Intermediary between Town and Court’, in Centres of Learning: Learning and Location in Pre-Modern Europe and the Near East, edited by Jan Willem Drijvers and Alasdair A. MacDonald (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1995), pp. 299–314. 60 See Anna Jean Mill, ‘The Influence of the Continental Drama on Lyndsay’s Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis’, Modern Language Review, 25 (1930), 425–42; see also Lyall, Satyre, pp. xxiii–xxv.

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weapon of political propaganda.61 It is tempting to believe that Lyndsay, passing through London in 1532, could even have encountered Heywood’s The Play of the Weather: its playful, level-headed yet suggestive engagement with the politics of Henry’s exercise of power seems congenial to Lyndsay’s own modes of poetic and dramatic writing. More important than any particular production, though, is the general sense of Scottish exposure to a court that supported the performance of topically engaged and advisory interludes.62 The Treasurer’s Accounts offer fascinating hints of a similarly established local tradition in Scotland, evolving out of an intimate relationship with the court it entertained and responsive to that court’s immediate preoccupations. The fragments of material evidence we can gather from the records all help to support the possibility that a drama of courtly interlude may have been more fully developed at home in the Scottish court than we have yet been able to recognize.

61 See Sydney Anglo, ‘An Early Tudor Programme for Plays and Other Demonstrations against the Pope’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 20 (1957), 176–79. Record of Henry’s attendance in 1535 at an anti-papal interlude which dramatised himself attacking the bishops might also have some relevance for the Epiphany interlude, see Calendar of Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII, VIII, 949. 62 For the influence of Lyndsay’s visits to London at this period, see Edington, Court and Culture, pp. 165–66.

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2 ‘TO THEXALTACYON OF NOBLESSE’ A Herald’s account of the marriage of Margaret Tudor and James IV

Recent developments in performance studies and in theories of performativity have encouraged us to reflect on performance beyond the established confines of dramatic events. Performance is increasingly understood not as bound by the theatre, but as a fundamental medium both of social relationships and of individual identity.1 While medieval and sixteenth-century notions of public and private were very different from our own, the late middle ages shows an analogous and active consciousness of the power of performance in and of daily life. Perhaps especially in the arena of the court, there is a clear recognition and exploitation of performance as an important mode of social and political interaction which seems not separate from, but on a continuum with, formal performance events. One especially vivid source of documentation and commentary on this spectrum of formal and informal performance can be found in the accounts of the spectacular pageantry associated with occasions such as royal entries, marriages and funerals, which form an increasingly popular literary genre in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.2 Often written by heralds, these narratives memorialise significant events; but they are primarily concerned not so much with the events themselves as with the ways in which they were embodied in public ceremonial and magnificent display. The occasions often include episodes easily definable as performances: pageants, tournaments, music. But within the narratives, such inset performances are not always easily separable from the wider spectacle of the events they celebrate. The overall choreography of the event offered a crucial

1 For an overview of modern thinking about performance see Marvin A. Carlson, Performance: A Critical Introduction, 2nd ed. (New York; London: Routledge, 2004). 2 Examples would be: ‘The Marriage of the Princess Margaret, 1468’, edited by Thomas Phillipps, Archaeologia, 31 (1846), 326–38; ‘The Marriage of Richard Duke of York, 1478’ in Illustrations of Ancient State and Chivalry, edited by W.H. Black (London: Roxburghe Club, 1840), pp. 25–40; The Receyt of the Ladie Kateryne (1501), edited by Gordon Kipling, Early English Text Society, Original Series, 296 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990); The Spousells of the Princess Mary (1505), edited by J. Gairdner, Camden Miscellany, Vol. 9, New Series, 53 (Oxford: Camden Society, 1895).

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means of enacting to a public audience the national, political, or social significance of the occasion.3 Political theorists of the time were alive to this active use of performance. Thomas Elyot, reflecting on the coronation ceremony in the Boke Named the Governour, explains how performance draws spectators into its meaning: For what purpose was it ordeyned/that christen kynges [ . . . ] shulde in an open and stately place before all their subiectes, receyue their crowne and other Regalities/but that by reason of the honorable circumstaunces than [then] vsed/shulde be impressed in the hartes of the beholders perpetuall reuerence: whiche [. . .] is fountayne of obedience/or els mought the kynges be enoynted and receyue their charge in a place secrete/with lasse peyne to them/and also their ministers.4 The point of the ceremony, Elyot explains, is not purely functional or sacramental, but to ‘impress the hearts of the beholders’. It is the responses of the witnesses that are central to the meaning of the ceremonial. The narrative accounts of this kind of spectacle may equally be concerned not just to record what happened, but to attempt to communicate or recreate for readers the experience of performance. One particularly engaging example of this genre recounts events associated with the marriage of Henry VII’s daughter Margaret Tudor to James IV of Scotland in August 1503. The account offers a vivid narrative of the month-long journey of the thirteen-year-old Margaret and her train into Scotland, her first meetings with her betrothed husband, royal entry into Edinburgh, and the marriage celebrations at Holyrood. The writer was John Young, the Somerset Herald of England who accompanied the convoy, apparently remaining with Margaret for some two years in Scotland.5 Although there has been no edition of the account since the eighteenth century, Young’s narrative is well known to theatre historians, providing valuable eye-witness evidence of the pageantry and spectacle associated with Scotland’s first recorded royal entry.6 As with similar narratives, the tendency so far has been to mine it for information about these formal pageants

3 For reflection on the wider significance of early spectatorship and witnessing, see John J. McGavin, Theatricality and Narrative in Medieval and Early Modern Scotland (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 1–13 and passim. 4 Thomas Elyot, The Boke Named the Gouernour (London: Thomas Berthelet, 1531) p. 174b. 5 The original manuscript is preserved as College of Arms, MS 1st M 13, fols. 76r–115v. For Young, see W. H. Godfrey, A. R. Wagner and H. S. London, The College of Arms (London: London Survey Committee, 1963), pp. 107–8. 6 The narrative has been accessible to scholars in Thomas Hearne’s edition of Joannis Lelandi Antiquarii De Rebus Britannicis Collectanea, vol. IV (London, 1770), pp. 265–300. Priscilla Bawcutt has valuable comments on Hearne’s work and its relationship to the College of Arms manuscript in Bawcutt, ‘A Note on the term Morality’, Medieval English Theatre, 28 (2008 for 2006), 171–74.

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and shows.7 But there is much to learn about performance not just from extracting information from the narrative but from exploring its rhetoric, its point of view, its preoccupations and shaping of material. It was composed by a man who was both an eye-witness and a participant in the marriage celebrations: Young was a spectator but also in part a performer of the spectacle. This makes his perspective especially interesting if we want to understand more about the experience of late medieval performance. Issues of performance also inform his purposes as an author, and his shaping of the narrative for particular effects on his intended readers. All this may give us insight into what were understood as the aims and effects of the performance of the marriage. Many sixteenth-century spectacle-narratives seem designed for wide public circulation, increasingly in print.8 Young’s account seems closer to a slightly earlier group of reports, less explicitly aimed at a broad public readership, and perhaps intended primarily for fellow officers of arms, recording protocol and establishing precedents.9 But they are distinctly more than bare records of ceremonial facts, suggesting that their role was more dynamic than simply heraldic record. Young’s manuscript apparently circulated primarily among heralds, being copied several times seemingly for officers of arms.10 Yet he shows a real interest both in the effects of the performances he describes and in the affective shaping of his own narration to convey this. Throughout the journey, he records in detail the costumes, the settings, the movements and gestures of the participants. This conveys a lively interest in the transmission of the experience of performance. Comparing what he says with records of material preparation from beyond his narrative suggests that the courts of both England and Scotland equally recognised the importance of performance in drawing spectators into the asserted significance of the marriage. Young is relatively self-conscious in outlining his intentions in his narrative. He opens by declaring: To thexaltacyone of noblesse shalbe rehersed in thys lityll Treatys the honour of the right noble departyng owt of the Realme of Inglaund the 7 Much interesting work has been published on Margaret’s entry into Edinburgh as described by Young. See, for example, Douglas Gray, ‘The Royal Entry in Sixteenth-Century Scotland’ in The Rose and the Thistle: Essays on the Culture of Late Medieval and Renaissance Scotland, edited by Sally Mapstone and Juliette Wood (East Linton: Tuckwell, 1998), pp. 10–37; Gordon Kipling, Enter the King: Theatre, Liturgy, and Ritual in the Medieval Civic Triumph (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), pp. 263–64; Michael Lynch and E. Patricia Dennison, ‘Crown, Capital and Metropolis: Edinburgh and Canongate: The Rise of a Capital and an Urban Court’, Journal of Urban History, 32:1 (2005), 22–43 (pp. 37–39); Louise Olga Fradenburg, City, Marriage, Tournament: Arts of Rule in Late Medieval Scotland (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991), pp. 91–122. 8 The Spousells of the Princess Mary (1505), for example, was printed in both English and Latin versions. 9 For example, the 1468 marriage of the princess Mary to Charles the Bold in Brussels, and the 1478 marriage of the five year-old Richard Duke of York. See n 1. 10 See the copies in Harvard’s Houghton Library, MS English 1095 and in London, The National Archives, SP 58/1.

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right high and myghty & the right excellent princesse Margaret by the grace of god qwene of scotlaund. Also to thende to confort the hertes of age for to here [hear] it, and for to gyffe corage to the yong to do there after in suche cas to come. ffor sens the honour of the said departyng to thende of her voyage schalbe wrytten the names of the nobles after the dignytees astates & degrees that in thys conveyng war ordonned.11 His first purpose, then, is ‘the exaltation of noblesse’. He presents the work as belonging to the body of literature through which courtly society celebrates, and so promotes and sustains, its ideal conception of itself. Young is clearly using the slippery term ‘noblesse’ to mean both the assumed generous and magnificent virtues of the elite and the costly display through which those virtues might be published. His further gloss on his aims is interesting: he wishes his narrative to ‘confort the hertes of age’ and to ‘give corage to the yong’. These terms suggest that he is alert to the affective and inspirational quality of performance. His narrative is not concerned with the national and political benefits of the marriage alliance, which he never mentions; it is the magnificently ordered spectacle and performance he is about to describe that he believes will inspire such feelings of comfort and courage. This strongly suggests that the purpose of the narrative is not only to record events, but to convey the affective experience of spectacular performance to those readers who were not present. The last sentence of the quotation above is informed by intertwined issues of memorial and of presence. One of the ways in which Young will exalt noblesse is to list the names of the nobles who took part in the convoy and celebration, ‘after the[ir] dignytees astates & degrees’. The narrative does indeed catalogue the names and titles of those present at every possible stage of the wedding journey. Official record and recognition are important here, as is protocol: noblesse is at least in part to do with ancestry and historical acknowledgement. But there is another dimension: one of the key identifying features of a performance (as opposed to other kinds of literary or visual representation) is presence. Performance is time-limited, and performers and spectators must both be present at the moment of enactment and witness. The lists of names, which for modern readers tend to hold up the progress of the narrative, are a confirmation of presence: these people were on the spot, participating in the show. To name them is part of the re-creation and validation of the moment of performance. Two qualities Young especially emphasises are the magnificence that asserts the momentousness of the alliance; and the images and gestures of unity, both formal and informal, that embody its political implications. Magnificence is embodied in part in the protocol, and the careful lists of the names and ranks of those present. He repeatedly records the formal gestures of reception that attend the journey. At each town, Margaret’s convoy is greeted by carefully listed local dignitaries; she is 11 MS 1st M 13, fol. 76a (Hearne, Collectanea, p. 265).

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brought a cross from church or cathedral or relics to kiss, bells are rung, musicians play, trumpeters display banners. Henry VII had ensured that his daughter was accompanied to Scotland by appropriate spectacle that would demonstrate royal magnificence wherever she passed. She was provided with a litter of cloth of gold, and Young records that even her baggage wagons were ‘couered wt couuerynges whytt & grene the armes of scotlaund & of inglaund halff parted wt Red Rosys & portecollies [portcullis] crowned’ (fol. 78b; Hearne, p. 268). Interestingly, he confirms that Henry also sent professional musical and dramatic performers. Henry Glasebury, marshall of his still minstrels, led a company of musicians while John English, leader of ‘les pleyars of the Kyngs enterludes’ took a company of players.12 Both companies made a prominent contribution to the spectacle of Margaret’s progress. Young reports the standard ordering of procession on entering and leaving towns: Before thesaid qwene war by ordre, Johannes & hys Company, henry glascebery & hys company the trompettes/officers of armes sergentes of masse yt [ . . . ] it was a Joy for to se & here. (fol. 93a; Hearne, p. 280) In translating events into verbal report he repeatedly emphasises those key aspects of performance: ‘it was a joy for to see and hear’. Even more colourfully Young attempts to convey the sensory impression of performance by his marked emphasis on clothing. Sensitive to the crucial importance of costume in the performance of magnificence, he provides detailed assessments of fabrics, cut, jewels and accoutrements. Outside York Margaret was met by the Earl of Northumberland: well horst opon a fayre courser wt a fowt [foot] cloth to the grownde of cramsyn velvet all borded of orfavery [jewelry], hys armes varey [very] Ryche in many places apon his sadle & harnays [harness], his sterroppes gylt. Hym self arayd of a gowne of thesaid cramsyne the opinynges [openings] of the slyves & the coller of grett bordeures of stones, hys bouttes of velvet blak, hys spours gylt in many places & maid gambades [gambles] plaisantes for to se. (fol. 83a; Hearne, pp. 271–2)

12 The list of musicians prepared for the journey North naming Glasebury as Marshall of the Still Minstrels is recorded in The National Archives, E 101/415/7. In English royal records minstrels are grouped into two sorts: ‘loud minstrels’ play noisier instruments – drums, trumpets, shawms, horns – while ‘still minstrels’ play softer ones – flutes, stringed instruments. See Richard Rastell, ‘Some English Consort-Groupings of the Late Middle Ages’, Music & Letters 55:2 (1974), 179–202 at pp. 182–3. For John English, see Gordon Kipling, ‘Henry VII and the Origins of Tudor Patronage’, in Patronage in the Renaissance, edited by Guy Fitch Lytle and Stephen Orgel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), pp. 117–64 (pp. 152–55).

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This goes well beyond simply a naive interest in the glamour of luxury and high fashion. Northumberland’s ‘gambades plaisantes for to se’ present a conscious gesture of self-display which seems understood not as vanity but as the deliberate performance of splendour. His magnificent display honours Margaret as much as himself. Sydney Anglo has acutely reminded us that such clothes might be understood not only aesthetically or as assertions of wealth, but as images designed to convey a desired truth. Anglo cites Elyot in the Boke Named the Governour describing how honour can be perceived only ‘by some exterior signe/and that is either by laudable reporte, or excellencie in vesture: or other thinge semblable: But reporte is nat so commune a token/as apparayle’.13 Costume can be an embodied sign of Young’s ‘noblesse’, a semantic and legible aspect of performance. Young’s responsiveness to the performance effects of clothes was clearly shared by the courts that produced them. In Scotland, record evidence allows us to trace these costumes all the way from the cutting room to the stage, revealing the deliberate manipulation of their purpose and effect. James IV’s Treasurer’s Accounts list lavish expenses on garments for the wedding period, many of whose effects are then documented in Young’s account. From the accounts we find, for example, a consciously staged gesture of unity in the decision to make matching wedding gowns for James and his young bride. Item for ane steik [a bolt] of quhit damas flourit with gold contenand [containing] xxxiij elne j quartar quhilk [which] was ane goune to ye king And ane oyir [other] to ye quene14 Further payments for taffeta linings and crimson velvet to border the queen’s gown bring the total expense to £183.2s.6d. When Young reports the wedding ceremony, he records this linking of the couple, uniting the thirty-year-old king with his girl bride: the kyng was in a gowne of damask hwytt fygured wt gold & lynned wt sersend [sarcenet?] [ . . . ] The said qwene was arayd in a Ryche robbe/ lyke hymself borded of velvet cramsyn and lyne of yeself.15

13 Elyot, Governour, pp. 174b–175a, cited in Sydney Anglo, Images of Tudor Kingship (London: Seaby, 1992), p. 9. 14 Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer of Scotland, 1502–4, National Archives of Scotland, E21/6, fol, 20a. 15 Fol. 107a. A choice of matching gowns for royal weddings may have been a recognised part of the language of display. We find from the account of the wedding of Prince Arthur and Katharine of Aragon in 1501 that ‘The garmentes of the Lord Prince and Princes bothe were of whight saten’, although that writer then points out the unfamiliar Spanish fashion of the bride’s gown: Kipling, Receyt, p. 43.

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Young then reveals a further role for the costume at the wedding feast. The king: before yt he satt, sent hys gowne of maryage to the offycers of armes of inglaund & chaunged an nother of velvet blak long & fourred of marten. The wiche Robbe berred the next day in cowrte sommersett herawld acompayned of hys compaynons, the wiche thaunked the kynge (fol. 220a–b; Hearne, p. 296) The king ceremoniously changes out of the white and gold damask, which becomes publicly displayed largesse to the English heralds, including Young himself. This appears to be a traditional practice: in London in January 1502 Margaret had been formally betrothed, the Earl of Bothwell standing proxy for James. After that ceremony ‘the Earle Bothwel sent to the Officers of Armes the Gowne of Cloth of Gold, that hee were [wore] when he was fyanced in the Name of his Soveraigne Lord’.16 In Edinburgh, Margaret’s gown was delivered the next day to the Scots Officers of Arms, but later redeemed for largesse of cash and returned to the royal wardrobe. As a dress for a young girl it was presumably less valuable for itself than for its symbolism in the performance of royal generosity. The ‘excellence in vesture’ of these matching robes therefore becomes an ‘exteriour signe’ of honour not only in the wedding itself, but in the performance of honour between sovereigns and heralds of the two nations. Settings for the performance were similarly lavishly created and carefully recorded. Large sums went towards hangings and traverses which provided a backdrop for the action, including £400 for two gold Cloths of Estate for the king and queen. Again, Young emphasises their effect as he reports the scene of the wedding feast where the new queen kept estate: thesaid chammer [chamber: where the queen dined] rychely drest & the clothe of a statt wher she satt of clothe of golde, vary riche . . . thesaid chammer [where the king dined] was haunged of Rede & of blew, a cyll of a state [celure/canopy of estate] of cloth of gold; bot he was not vnder for yt same day (fol. 208a–b; Hearne, pp. 294–95) Young shows the protagonists’ demonstrative interaction with the performance setting, by this scrupulous noting of choreographed gesture. Throughout the wedding he records how James publicly deferred honour and precedence to Margaret in all ceremonious details of the day. He repeatedly refused to kiss the Cross and relics before her, would not kneel in church before she did, would not even have his own largesse called but only hers, consistently enacting, as Young says, 16 Hearne, p. 263. This is taken from a narrative of ‘The Fyancells of Margaret’ recording the betrothal which is associated with though separate from Young’s narrative. For information on the manuscripts see Kipling, Receyt, pp. xxxi–xxxvi.

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‘the most grett humilite & Reuerence as possible myghte be’ (fol. 207b; Hearne, p. 294). His refraining from holding estate at the wedding feast himself by sitting out from beneath his canopy is another example of this significant gesture of performed deference. It is in such reading of gesture that Young’s narrative is perhaps most clearly nudged towards performance. His interest in the organisation of ceremony leads to a natural focus on choreography in formal settings as he traces order, precedence and ritualised movement through space. Through the wedding ceremony he charts movement almost like the figures of a dance: who accompanies whom, where people are placed, how the king and queen approach separately, make reverence, he leads her by the right hand to the altar, they kneel together, retire each to separate traverses and return. But this also colours the narration of far less obviously ritualised moments, which are similarly described in terms almost like stage directions or blocking instructions. As the queen on her progress neared the castle of Dalkeith, for example, Young explains how she stopped half a mile out and ‘apoynted hyre [dressed herself] rychely’ to enter ‘in fayre ordre’. The Earl of Morton then ‘came before hyre without the yatt [gate]’ to present her with the keys. Beyond him ‘Betuyx the two yattes was the lady acompayned of gentylmen and ladyes the wiche kneled downe, and thesaid qwene toke her up and kissed her, and so she was conveyd to hyre chammer’.17 The reader is guided through the precise sequence of movement, as if a spectator of the action. Young’s narrative is slightly unusual in covering not only formal ceremonial and display, but material which is less obviously public or performed, especially during Margaret’s first days in Scotland before the royal entry and wedding. It is in these episodes that the translation of events into quasi-performances is most overt. Most striking is the account of the first meetings of James and Margaret, which are presented as a few days of ‘courtship’ before the wedding. Their first encounter opens with a formal description of magnificent approach much like the public civic welcomes: the kynge came arayd of a Jakkette of cramsyn veluet borded with cloth of gold hys lewre [greyhound: from the French levrier] behynde hys bake his beerde somthynge longe acompayned of thes reuerend father in god tharchbyschope of saunt andrew brother of thesaid kynge and chauncellor of scotlaund [ . . . ] wt many others lordes knyghtes and gentylmen to the nombre lx horsys. (fol. 95a–b; Hearne, p. 283) 17 Fol. 95a; Hearne, pp. 282–83. In fact, Young’s corrections to the manuscript suggest that his original version was even more alive to the instant of action. He replaces several phrases indicating active movement with slightly more formal terms: ‘Betuyx the two yattes was the lady acompayned of gentylmen and ladyes the wiche cast hyr knellynge [del] kneled downe, and thesaid qwene Ros hyre ageyne in hyre kyssynge [del] toke her up and kissed her, and so she was conveyd in [del] to hyre chammer . . . ’

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But these formal details are followed by a personal encounter in a slightly different key. Though not a public ceremony, Young presents it very much as a choreographed action. The king: was conveyde to the qwenes chamber, wher she mett hym at her gret chamber dore, right honurable accompained, and at the mettynge he & she maid grett reuerences the one to the tother, his hed barre, and kyssed togeder, and in lyke wys kyssed the ladyes [ . . . ] And then they went a syd [aside] the qwene & he and commouned togeder, by long space. She held good manere, & he barre hed durynge the tyme/& many courtaysyes. (fol. 95b; Hearne, p. 283) The resonantly presented sequence of gestures again casts the reader as spectator, witnessing a silent performance not only of significant meeting but of a publicly enacted moment of privacy. We are not close enough to hear what passes between king and queen in their private encounter, but we are enabled to watch. Young shows us the embodied gestures of intimacy presented to public view: the personal conversation, the ‘good manere’ of one and the ‘bare heded’ reverence of the other in the exchange of lovers’ ‘courteysyes’. The fact that the royal couple do not withdraw altogether for their private conversation suggests that they too recognise the performed nature of the encounter. This is confirmed in an earlier narrative of an English princess travelling abroad to her wedding. When an earlier Margaret, the sister of Edward IV, travelling to her marriage with Charles the Bold of Burgundy, first met with her future mother in law, we are told that they went ‘after dynner to communycacion, in a tresaunce [gallery] betwixt, wher all the people of bothe nacions myght se ther famylyarite’.18 Young’s account of the following days shows how the courts of both countries found performance an appropriate means of both building and expressing the new relationship between the king and queen. Informal musical performance and dance played an important role during James’ visits to Margaret at Dalkeith. Margaret herself is especially involved in dance, from her very first meeting with James when, ‘After the soupper they wasched ageyne, with the Reuerences/mynstrelles begone to blowe, wher daunced the qwene acompayned of my lady of Surrey’ (f 95b; Hearne, p. 283). Dance was an expected accomplishment of a princess, used as a licensed means of public display especially of marriageable young women.19 Margaret’s dancing for James, repeated many times on the following 18 ‘The Marriage of the Princess Margaret, 1468’, fol. 329. 19 See Sarah Carpenter, ‘The Sixteenth-Century Court Audience: Performers and Spectators’, Medieval English Theatre, 19 (1997), 3–14 [edited in this volume, chapter 11, Eds.] Margaret had performed an exhibition dance with her young brother the future Henry VIII at the disguisings that celebrated the marriage of Arthur and Katherine of Aragon at the end of 1501: Kipling, Receyt, pp. 57–58.

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days, is not just a pleasurable entertainment but a presentation of herself for him in performance. Only once does Young record that James joined Margaret in dancing.20 He more often responded by playing for her. On the second day, after she has danced: Incountynent [immediately] the kynge begonne before hyre to play of the claricordes and after of the lut [lute] wiche pleasyd hyre varey muche and had grett plaisur to here hym. (fol. 96b; Hearne, p. 284) Like dance, the performing of music is presented by Young as an acknowledged ritual of courtship. The following day Margaret responded: & the one kyssed ye other & after drew them a syd for to comoun [talk together], and after she playd apon the claricordys, and after of the lut, he beynge apon his kne all wayes barre hed. (fol. 97b; Hearne, p. 285) The two enact, to each other but also their households, their roles as serenading lovers. James pursued further what seems a genuine pleasure in music-making, organising an impromptu chamber concert to follow his own performance: Apon thesaid claricordyes Sire edward stanneley playde a ballade and sange therwith wiche the kynge commended right muche, and incountynent he called a gentylman of hys yt could synge well & maid them synge togeder the wiche accorded varey well and afterward thesaid Sire edwarde stanneley & two of hys servauntes sange a ballade or two wheroff the kynge could hym good thaunke (fol. 96b/97a; Hearne, p. 284) This picture suggests the familiar and participatory use of the performance of music as informal courtly entertainment, allowing the two courts a shared means of pastime but also of interaction. James apparently exploited this in deliberately arranging for the harmonious duet between an English and a Scots courtier. Although presented and received primarily as an informal gesture of entertainment and courtesy, it allowed for the potential tensions of the political union to be at least symbolically overcome in domestic performance. There is some evidence that the English found the arrangements of the Scottish court more informal than those they were accustomed to, and that Young’s narrative in part attempts to re-present that informality as more deliberate performance. He takes pains to point out at various times that things were ‘apoynted after ther 20 Hearne, p. 291.

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[the Scots] gyse’ and this is echoed in the contemporary Great Chronicle of London which reported that ‘she cam Into Scotland, where she was Joyously and honourably afftyr theyr maner Ressayvid’.21 Edward Hall, later in the century, is more explicit, commenting that King James ‘feasted the Englysh lordes, and shewed to them Justes [jousts] and other pastymes, very honourably, after the fassion of his rude countrey’ but concluding that the English nobility gave ‘more prayse to the manhoode, then [than] to the good maner and nurture of Scotlande’.22 Scots historians, unsurprisingly, read this rather differently, John Leslie later claiming that ‘the Inglismen returne to thair king, tha declair the king of scotis his humanitie, the sueitnes of his Nobilitie, commendeng mekle [much/greatly] thair graciousnes, honour and fauour, bot maist thair courteous cleithing’.23 Both sides, however, seem to recognise that there was a difference in style. This may inform Young’s handling of the notoriously spontaneous and demonstrative personal manner of James IV. He repeatedly notes, with apparent faint surprise, James’ informality: ‘went to his horse, on whom he did lepe wtout puttynge the fowt wtin the sterrope [. . .] incountynent he sporred follow who myght’ (fol. 97a), ‘he beinge all wayes mere [merry] and his beerde somethynge longe’ (fol. 98a). There are famous legends of James’ impulsiveness and ready interaction with people of all classes; similar signs are visible even in the Treasurer’s Accounts which record with a certain resignation, ‘ij ½ elne wellus [velvet] to be ane jacat to the king quhen gaif [sic] away his awne jacat’, ‘Item for ane hat to ye king quhen he gaif away his hat for caus it wes hevy’.24 The accounts also reveal English reactions similar to Young’s: the ‘somethynge longe’ beard was tidied by the Countess of Surrey just after the wedding: Item, the ix day of August, eftir the marriage, for xv elne claith of gold to the Countess of Surry of Ingland, quhen scho and hir dochter Lady Gray clippit the Kingis berd.25 In his narrative Young finds strategies to translate this informality of manner into a more deliberate performance of graciousness. Sometimes he does so simply by presenting what might seem informal as a deliberate feature of the ceremonious

21 Guildhall Library, MS 3313, fol. 300b; The Great Chronicle of London, edited by A. H. Thomas and I. D. Thornley (Gloucester: Alan Sutton, 1983), p. 324. 22 Edward Halle, The Union of the Two Noble Families of Lancaster and York (1550), Facsimile edition (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1970), fol. 56b. 23 John Leslie, The Historie of Scotland, translated James Dalrymple (1596), edited by E. G. Cody and W. Murison, Scottish Text Society 5, 2 vols (Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1888–95), II, p. 121. 24 Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer of Scotland, National Archives of Scotland, E21/5, fol. 18a, fol. 27a (hereafter Treasurer’s Accounts). 25 Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer of Scotland, edited by Thomas Dickson and others, 13 vols (Edinburgh: H. M. General Register House, 1877–1978), II, p. 314.

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spectacle. As James and Margaret enter the Abbey church of Holyrood after her royal entry, he describes how: he tuke thesaid qwene in doynge humble Reuerence & led hyr to the grett awter by the body [ . . . ] hym transported the kynge to the pallais thorough the clostre holdynge all wayes the qwene by the body and hys hed barre [ . . . ] the kynge let go the qwene tyll she had kissed all thesaid ladyes [ . . . ] and so he tuke hyre ageyn with low courtaysy and barre hed (fol. 203b–204b) Young’s emphasis, while suggesting that such physical contact is faintly unusual in public, presents it as a deliberate performance of deferential affection. More rhetorically, as Louise Fradenburg has pointed out, he draws on a literary discourse of courtly love to define the king’s behaviour. Most strikingly we find this in metaphorical imagery drawn from the hunt of desire. The day after the couple’s first meeting, lords from the English party at Dalkeith ride out to greet the king as he returns to visit his bride. However: The kynge flyinge as the byrde yt sykes [seeks] hyre pray tuke oyer waye & cam pryvely to thsaid castell, and entred wtin the chammer wt small company & founde thesaid qwene playinge at the cardes (fol. 96a) This visit – the king riding privately, escaping the official welcome party, and entering without ceremony on the queen at play – seems to record behaviour slightly at odds with the formality with which the progress has been conducted so far.26 But through the hawking image Young invites his readers to understand the gesture not in terms of the normal protocol of courtly spectacle, but rather in terms of the discourse of courtly love. The king is cast in a familiar role, not this time that of sovereign ruler but of ardent lover. The noticeable intrusion of literary simile here perhaps even serves to emphasise the generally spectacular and performance bias of the account. Again, there is a vivid parallel in an analogous moment from the 1468 marriage narrative. When Charles the Bold first met his bride, the author reports: the Duc toke hir in his armes, kisside hir, and than kissid al the ladies and jentillwomen; and whane he hade so done, he loked and regarded the beautie of hir; he rejoysid, and in his rejose in suche case, me thought, as Troylus was ine, for he tarrid, and avised hir a tracte of tyme ar [ere] he went to hir againe, and thane reverently ywent to hir againe, and toke hir by the ryght hande, and set bothe them down, and askid her a questione secretlye.27 26 However, this kind of staged informality is also pleasurably recorded by Hall as a feature of Henry VIII’s relationship with Katherine of Aragon in the early years of their marriage. 27 ‘The Marriage of the Princess Margaret, 1468’, fol. 329.

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As with Young, the presentation of the meeting of the lovers as a scene staged to the view is momentarily mediated through a literary imagery of courtly romance. In both writers, these moments suggest a wider intended circulation than just officers of arms, and a concern not with performance as such, but with an attempt to convey the affective experience of the observed encounter. The mixture of magnificent and informal behaviours in the Scottish wedding, and their presentation as performance to Young’s readers are both well illustrated in the description of Margaret’s royal entry into the city of Edinburgh. This begins with the expected choreographed display of splendour. On 7 August the queen was conducted towards Edinburgh, ‘putt in hyr litere varey Rychely enorned’ (fol. 99a; Hearne, p. 286) and dressed in cloth of gold. Her ‘pallefrey of honnour’ was led behind, caparisoned in a costly ‘pil3eane’ of five ells of cloth of gold.28 Half way there: the kynge came toward hyre for to mett hyre monted apon a bay horse Rennynge as he wolde Renne after ye hayre [hare] acompayned of many gentylmen thesaid Horse trapped in a demy trappure of cloth of gold [ . . . ] The kynge ware a Jakette lyke to the trappure . . . at the commynge toward the qwene he maid hyre varey humble obeyssaunce in lepynge downe of hys horse, and kyssed hyre in hyre litere [ . . . ] a gentylman hussher bare ye swerd before him, thesaid swerde couuered, with a scabard of pourple velvet, and was written apon with perles/god my defende. (fols 99b/100a; Hearne, p. 287) The elaborate cloth of gold caparisons matching the couple’s clothes, and the sword of honour with its heraldic motto, all display the royal authority of the Sovereign, though mixed with displays of personal eagerness and tenderness as he welcomes his bride.29 Young then records a slightly curious episode. A gentlemen led another elaborately trapped courser to the king, ‘apon the wiche horse the kynge monted wtout puttynge the fout within the sterrope’ (fol. 100a; Hearne, p. 287).30 James then told one of his gentlemen ‘to monte behinde hym, to assay iff he wolde berre behynd/

28 This had been rapidly made by the king’s wardrobe (at a cost of £126.10s.10d) to replace her own that had been lost in a fire at Dalkeith. 29 James’ royal embroiderer had been paid £4 for his labour in dressing the sword of honour with purple velvet, gold and pearls, see Treasurer’s Accounts, NAS, E21/6, fol. 18b. This was clearly a carefully designed and promulgated image of sovereignty: one of the margins of the Flemish decorated Book of Hours closely associated with the marriage shows what is clearly intended as a representation of the precise effect Young observes, see Franz Unterkircher and James S. Wilkie, eds., Das Gebetbuch Jakobs IV. von Schottland und Seiner Gemahlin Margaret Tudor (Graz: Akademische Druck-u. Verlagsanstalt, 1987), fol. 189b. 30 This athletic leap into the saddle seems to have been a characteristic of James’ glamorous chivalric display which the English herald frequently records.

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or not’. Having experimented, it was decided that the Courser was not suitable.31 Instead James ‘monted apon the pallefrey of thesaid qwene, and thesaide qwene behinde hym and so rode thorow the said towne of edenbourgh’ (fol. 100b).32 This episode reveals interesting attitudes to performance. There is a suggestive note of improvisation in the Scots’ need to experiment with James’ courser. But it implies that James had already decided that it would be symbolically appropriate for Margaret to ride not in her rich litter, but behind him on the same mount, presumably as a sign of affection and royal unity. Sharing a horse was not a normal sign of courtly magnificence, nor indeed was it usual English practice for a king to play so active a part in the entry of his bride.33 The gesture seems to reveal James’ insistence on enacting the part of courtly lover as well as king right through the official entry.34 Young’s detailed account of the stage management of the mounted entry reveals not only the more informal style of Scottish pageantry, but also the sharp recognition by both participants and spectators of the rhetorical power of gestures of performance. It remains unclear exactly what was the role and readership Young envisaged for his narrative. The manuscript itself is not a presentation copy. It appears to be autograph, to be corrected as the writer went along, and towards the end description gets more sketchy as the celebrations gradually wind down. As an official report of ceremonial performance it has an obvious function for the officers of arms and the wide range of people involved in courtly organisation. It is also entirely possible that it was aimed to circulate more widely at the English court, even as far as the king, to reassure the royal family of England of the reception of the princess. But it plainly also has a more affective intention than this might suggest. The readership envisaged in the introduction might not extend much beyond the professional (it is not clear who are ‘the young’ who are encouraged to imitate the noble spectacle described). But that readership is addressed in ways which are more emotive than simply informational. The rhetorical strategies of the account suggest that not only factual descriptions of what occurred but the effects of

31 If this was the same courser referred to in the Treasurer’s Accounts around this time, it would certainly account for his unsuitability: 1501 ‘to the cheld of the pantree that hed his hors slane be the Kingis quhit cursour’; 1502 ‘to ane man hed his mere slane with the Kingis cursour’ (NAS, E21/5, fol. 107b, fol. 140a). 32 Again, Young’s corrections might suggest a more vivid sense of the dynamic of the episode: ‘monted apon the pallefrey of thesaid qwene, and thesaide qwene beyond [del] behinde hym / and in the manere layd hyre all ouerqwart of [del] and so rode thorow the said towne of edenbourgh’. 33 Pamela Tudor-Craig, ‘Margaret, Queen of Scotland, in Grantham, 8–9 July, 1503’, in The Reign of Henry VII: Proceedings of the 1993 Harlaxton Symposium, edited by Benjamin Thompson, Harlaxton Medieval Studies, 5 (Stamford: Paul Watkins, 1995), pp. 261–79 (p. 263 and note 9). 34 Douglas Gray, ‘The Royal Entry’ suggests that James’ unusually demonstrative participation picks up on the romance pas d’armes that was enacted half a mile further on, in which a ‘lady par amours’ is jousted for by two knight adventurers.

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witnessing performance are important. Certainly this narrative, and others like it, offers a valuable resource as an eye-witness response to performance; there are very few of these for other genres of late medieval dramatic activity. Speaking of the wedding day itself, Young tells us that: Trompettes somuch of the kynge as of the qwene mynstrell of many sortes Johanes & his company dyd yare devour [their duty] for yt day, somuche of ye mornynge as at the dynnare, and after as of ye soupper & also of the days followynge. (fol. 110a; Hearne, p. 296) He conveys a sense of an environment defined and animated by continuous performance. Young himself emerges as a writer who is alive to the organisation, the design, and the intentions of that performance, and of the ways in which audiences might respond to it – or might be wished to respond to it. As his professional role would suggest, he certainly sees performance of all kinds as crucial to establishing the significance of events like this marriage. And his narrative confirms that the courts of both England and Scotland shared this view, investing heavily and making extensive contribution to sustained and affective display.

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3 ‘GELY WYTH THARMYS OF SCOTLAND ENGLAND’ Word, image and performance at the marriage of James IV and Margaret Tudor

An English visitor from the City of London brought back a souvenir from the banquet celebrating Margaret Tudor’s reception into Edinburgh in 1503 as the new bride of James IV. Copied into The Great Chronicle of London in the Guildhall library is a menu of the three courses of the feast: the last course opened with ‘Gely wyth tharmys of Scotland’ and ‘Gely wyth tharmys of Scotland England’.1 This translucent and ephemeral gelatinous image is a vivid instance of the topic of this paper. It records the most fleeting of the many ways in which this significant political event was first imagined and then promulgated through heraldic images to those taking part in and those witnessing royal Scottish ceremonial. A great deal of expert work has been done on the ceremonial celebrations, the literature and the images connected with this marriage. Douglas Gray has written an enlightening essay on the royal entry of Margaret into Edinburgh; Priscilla Bawcutt has established in revealing detail the backgrounds to the heraldic images of, in particular, the thistle and the lion.2 This chapter is more concerned with the dynamics of ceremonial performance. Its purpose is to concentrate not so much on the images themselves and their traditional meanings, but on the media through which they were presented and the way in which they engaged spectators, audiences, and participants in the events. How were these heraldic images used to imagine and conceptualise the marriage and its implications? How were they offered, embodied, or enacted? How 1 The Great Chronicle of London (Guildhall Library, London, MS 3313), printed in Robert Fabyan, The Great Chronicle of London, edited by A. H. Thomas and I. D. Thornley (London: George W. Jones, 1938), fol. 301r. 2 Douglas Gray, ‘The Royal Entry in Sixteenth-Century Scotland’, in The Rose and the Thistle: Essays on the Culture of Late Medieval and Renaissance Scotland, edited by Sally Mapstone and Juliette Wood (East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 1998), pp. 10–37; Priscilla Bawcutt, ‘Dunbar’s Use of the Symbolic Lion and Thistle’, Cosmos, 2 (1986), 83–97. See also Louise Olga Fradenburg, City, Marriage, Tournament: Arts of Rule in Late Medieval Scotland (Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991), pp. 67–149; and Sarah Carpenter, ‘To thexaltacyon of noblesse’: a herald’s account of the marriage of Margaret Tudor and James IV’, Medieval English Theatre, 29 (2007), 104–120 [edited in this volume, chapter 2, Eds.]

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were they aimed to affect those involved in or witnessing the various stages of the event? These questions are as much about ceremonial and performance as about the images themselves. Ceremonial is clearly a particular kind of performance. It shares many of the features we associate with drama: spectacular embodiment; the immediacy of reception by spectators and witnesses; the ephemerality of live enactment. But it can also include an important element of Austin’s notion of performativity. Like Austin’s famous ‘performative utterances’ in which, he points out, ‘to say something is to do something’, the spectacle of ceremony is not only aesthetic or representational, but can enact or make real that which it represents.3 This chapter aims to trace the Scots’ use of heraldic imagery not only to represent and to explain, but to embody and to perform the marriage of James IV and Margaret Tudor. We can trace the beginning of the Scots’ imaginative conceptualisation of the marriage from early in the proceedings. The initial agreement took place in London, where a party of Scots ambassadors arrived in November 1501, resulting in the formal betrothal of the twelve-year-old Margaret to the Earl of Bothwell, standing proxy for James. That betrothal in January 1502 was marked by elaborate English court performances. The Scots ambassadors had arrived in London in the middle of a series of spectacular disguisings and tournaments that Henry VII had mounted to mark what seemed the far more important marriage of Arthur, Prince of Wales to Katherine of Aragon. For Margaret’s betrothal one of the pageant car disguisings from that earlier marriage was revived, ‘a goodly Pageant, curiously wrought with Fenestrallis [windows], having many Lights brenning in the same, in Manner of a Lantron, out of which sorted divers Sortes of Morisks’.4 This particular revival may have been chosen, as Gordon Kipling persuasively argues, because of its especially striking spectacle; but equally, of the various pageants of November 1501 it was one of the least specifically related to the circumstances and imagery of the Anglo-Spanish marriage, making it more readily transferable to the new occasion.5 Although splendid, the relation of this disguising to the new marriage was inevitably somewhat second-hand. The celebration of the betrothal and the accompanying ‘Treaty of Perpetual Peace’ in January 1502 was clearly a relief to both nations, although it does not seem to have been a source of spontaneous jubilation. Relations between England and Scotland had been unsettled and often ill-tempered for years, and the tentative negotiation for such a marriage and treaty had been proceeding by fits and

3 J. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962), p. 12. Austin did not himself consider the complex relationship between this concept of the performative and theatrical performance, but it contributes to much recent theorising. See James Loxley, Performativity, The New Critical Idiom (London and New York: Routledge, 2007), pp. 139–166. 4 John Leland, Joannis Lelandi antiquarii de rebus Britannicis collectanea. Cum Thomae Hearnii praefatione notis et indice ad editionem primam, 6 vols (London: William and John Richardson, 1770), IV, p. 263. For an account of the pageant at the earlier marriage, see The Receyt of the Ladie Kateryne, edited by Gordon Kipling, Early English Text Society, 296 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), p. 60. 5 Kipling, The Receyt, p. xxiii.

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starts since at least 1496.6 Scotland, in particular, therefore needed to develop a means of presenting the alliance which would emphasise its benefits in the most rhetorically persuasive way. Within two months of the January betrothal, we find the Scots beginning to formulate new imagery to present and publicise the alliance. Sometime in February or March, Walter Ogilvie, a member of the Scots delegation to London to agree the treaties, wrote a panegyric to Henry VII.7 This eulogy focused primarily on the glorious marriage alliance the English king was forming with Scotland. Written in the encomiastic style favoured by Henry, it first picks up the well-established imagery of Tudor propaganda in presenting Margaret as the parti-coloured ‘red and white’ rose of the combined houses of Lancaster and York:8 hec margareta candore niues quem a matre rosa candida contraxat: superare videtur: purpureum uero genitoris roseumque decorem ab omni parte equauit: Ita ex vtroque paterno scilicet roseoque decore maternoque candore pulcherrimum gratissimumque contemperamentum in hac margareta fecit natura. (Ogilvie, fol. 4) [This Margaret/pearl seems to outdo the snow in whiteness which she inherited from the white rose her mother; she has fully equalled the rosyred beauty of her father. Thus Nature has made in this Margaret/pearl a fair and most attractive mingling from each – the fatherly, rosy beauty and the motherly whiteness.] But Ogilvie then expands this heraldic motif to embody the new marriage. The rose Margaret encounters the lion of Scotland: Hec est enim margareta que sola ex omnibus principum atque regum filiabus Magnanimum sibi illum generosissimumque leonem Jacobum scotorum regem strenuissimum haud aliter In sui amorem traxit: quam magnes ferrum succinum paleas trahere solet [ . . . ] sic ussit leonem margarete nitor splendentis pario marmore purius [ . . . ] Curret generosus ille leo post odorem rose gratissimum. (Ogilvie, fols. 4v–6r) 6 Norman Macdougall, James IV (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1989), pp. 248–49. 7 Walter Ogilvie, ‘Panegyric to Scotland’ (1502), Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, MS 33.2.24 [Hereafter, Ogilvie]. Ogilvie’s assumption in the panegyric that Prince Arthur is still alive dates its composition to a narrow window between the betrothal on 25 January and Arthur’s death on 2 April 1502. It is possible that this death made it inappropriate to present the panegyric to Henry VII, leaving the only copy in Scotland where by the early seventeenth century it had devolved to the officers of arms. 8 For panegyric at Henry’s court, see Gordon Kipling, ‘Henry VII and the Origins of Tudor Patronage’, in Patronage in the Renaissance, edited by Guy Fitch Lytle and Stephen Orgel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), pp. 117–164; and Lena Wahlgren-Smith, ‘Heraldry in Arcadia: the Court Eclogues of Johannes Opicius’, Renaissance Studies, 14 (2000), 210–234.

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[This is the Margaret who alone of all kings’ and princes’ daughters drew to her love that chivalrous and most noble lion, the most vigorous James, King of Scots; none otherwise than the magnet draws the iron, or amber a straw [ . . . ] Thus the beauty of the shining Margaret, purer than Parian marble, inflames the lion [ . . . ] That noble lion runs after the most attractive perfume of the rose.] The Tudor exploitation of heraldic symbols is extended to the Stewart line, via the royal arms of Scotland, the single lion rampant. The lion enters a relationship with the rose more metaphorically vivid (and in fact significantly less compromised and uneasy) than the political alliance of James and Margaret, Scotland and England, was known to be. Ogilvie’s work seems designed not only to impress Henry VII but to present an embodied image of the beauty, strength and harmony of the national alliance to encourage imaginative assent amongst courtly readers. As preparations for the Edinburgh marriage gathered pace, the ceremonial vision continued to draw on this readily available heraldic focus. Both countries adorn the proceedings with their own arms, shifting from the verbal and literary to the material and visual. The English prepared for Margaret’s journey to Scotland a bed of estate with ‘a scochyn [escutcheon] of our armes to be set on the said bedde with two of our own bests [heraldic beasts]’, while similar heraldic badges adorned an altar cloth, a ‘sadyll and a pillyon’ and a litter.9 Even her baggage wagons were ‘couered with couuerynges whytt & grene [the Tudor livery colours] the armes of scotlaund & of inglaund halff parted with Red Rosys & portecollies [portcullises] crowned’.10 The magnificence of national and genealogical union was thus demonstrated to onlookers along Margaret’s progress. In Scotland, the red lion of the Royal Arms illuminates official documents, decorating the final versions of the treaties of marriage and perpetual peace;11 the Arms were carved and painted on the gatehouse of Holyrood palace, newly constructed for the marriage;12 and perhaps most impressively, they glow from the pages of the spectacular Book of Hours James appears to have commissioned for Margaret.13 Here the king kneels before an altar dominated by his own royal arms while

9 Calendar of Documents Relating to Scotland, edited by Joseph Bain, 4 vols (Edinburgh: General Register House, 1881–88), IV, 344–46. 10 John Young, ‘To thexaltacyone of noblesse’ (1502), London: College of Arms, 1st M 13, fols. 76r–110v (fol. 78v), printed in John Leland, Joannis Lelandi antiquarii, IV, 268. 11 London, The National Archives, E39/58 (1502 Treaty of Marriage James IV and Margaret Tudor). 12 Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer of Scotland, edited by Thomas Dickson and others, 13 vols (Edinburgh: H. M. General Register House, 1877–1978) [hereafter LHTA], II, p. 383. 13 Franz Unterkircher and James S. Wilkie, eds., Das Gebetbuch Jakobs IV. von Schottland und Seiner Gemahlin Margaret Tudor (Graz: Akademische Druck-u. Verlagsanstalt, 1987) [hereafter Osterreichische], fols. 14v, 24v, 243v. For the Book of Hours, see Lesley Macfarlane, ‘The Book of Hours of James IV and Margaret Tudor’, Innes Review, 11 (1960), 3–21.

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the new queen’s altar cloth represents the parted arms of the two nations.14 Apart from these formally parted royal arms English heraldic representation seems to focus exclusively on the Lancastrian badges of Margaret’s English heritage. But Scottish imagery, following the same strategy as Ogilvie’s panegyric, is increasingly expanded to include heraldic representations of the new marriage alliance. There is no obvious image of the rose inflaming the lion, or the lion pursuing the perfume of the rose. But designers seem to have quickly moved to a more easily managed partner to the Tudor rose (or sometimes Margaret’s own flower, the daisy): the Scottish thistle. The thistle, first introduced as a Scottish badge under James IV’s father, James III, was popularised perhaps especially in relation to this marriage.15 The finely illuminated treaty documents prepared by Sir Thomas Galbraith, one of the clerks of the Chapel Royal at Stirling, in addition to the Scottish royal arms show intertwined thistles and roses, with daisies.16 The Flemish Master of James IV, who clearly worked on parts of the Book of Hours with input from Scotland, similarly combined thistles, daisies, and roses in the borders.17 Although the pairing is not certainly deliberate, at least one margin presents a thistle and a rose growing from a single stem.18 While documentary images of this kind are clearly not in themselves performances, they certainly help to form the visual context for ceremonial enactment. These images feature actively in many aspects of the public wedding spectacle in August 1503. They enact the historic, genealogic linking of nations through a visually imaginative representation, perhaps appearing most dynamically in the climax to the entry pageants that received Margaret into Edinburgh. Unusually for a royal entry, the king accompanied his new bride throughout her entry, and the final pageant seems to address them together as sovereigns before the wedding and investment ceremonies were performed the following day.19 Images of rule

14 The Book of Hours includes other allusions to Scottish ceremonial heraldry. One illuminated border explicitly echoes the dressing of the Scottish sword of honour: purple velvet with the motto ‘in my defens’ picked out in pearls: Osterreichische, fol. 189v; cp John Young, ‘To thexaltacyone of noblesse’, fol. 99v; Leland, Joannis Lelandi antiquarii, IV, p. 87. James’ royal embroiderer had been paid £4 for his labour in dressing the sword of honour with purple velvet, gold, and pearls for the wedding entry, see LHTA, II, p. 206. 15 Bawcutt, ‘Dunbar’s Use of the Symbolic Lion and Thistle’; Katie Stevenson, ‘The Unicorn, St Andrew and the Thistle: Was there an Order of Chivalry in Late Medieval Scotland?’, Scottish Historical Review, 83 (2004), 3–22. 16 London, The National Archives, E39/81 (1502) (Treaty of Marriage James IV and Margaret Tudor.); LHTA II, 350. The parallel English version (Edinburgh, National Records of Scotland, SP6/31 (1502 Treaty of Marriage Margaret Tudor and James IV)) is decorated with red Lancastrian roses alone. The Book of Hours borders the image of St Margaret with alternating daisies and thistles (Osterreichische, fol. 56r). 17 It is often argued that the artist was Gerard Horenbout. See, for example, Macfarlane, ‘Book of Hours’, 18–20. Although the illuminations show many references to James and Margaret, it is not clear how far the floral borders are standard patterns rather than specific to the commission. 18 Osterreichische, fol. 53v. 19 Gray, ‘Royal Entry’, passim.

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and government decorated an arch at the Netherbow gate between the High Street and Canongate.20 This gateway marked the passage out from the city proper to the new royal palace of Holyrood and the abbey church where the marriage itself would be performed.21 The arched gate presented the four Cardinal Virtues, traditionally proper to rule: Justice, Fortitude, Temperance, and Prudence. Beneath these Virtues, however, was a crucially combined image. John Young, the English Somerset herald who composed a detailed narrative of the entry, describes a ‘licorne and a greyond yat helded a difference of one chardone florysched & of a Red Rose entrelassed’ [a unicorn and a greyhound that supported a difference (an addition to a coat of arms) of a thistle flourished (flowering) and of a red rose, interlaced].22 Unicorns had been established by James III as the supporters of the Scottish Royal Arms, while the greyhound was Henry VII’s sinister supporter: the two beasts now join to support the new device, the interlaced badge of thistle and rose. This image, vividly expressive in itself, formed the setting for a symbolic performed action. As the royal couple approached the arch, ‘was tabrettes [tabors] yat playd merely [merrily] whill ye noble company past thorough yat same’. The pageant images of heraldic union offer an expressive symbolic stage space through which the two royal actors move in a gesture that both anticipates and embodies the marriage ceremony, in a public rather than a sacred space. This focus on performing the new relationship can be seen in variously translucent media at the celebration that followed the next day’s wedding ceremony. The windows of the Great Chamber at Holyrood had been finely decorated and newly glazed to form an expressive setting for the marriage feast: ‘thorough the glassys wyndowes the armes of scotlaund & of inglaund myperted with the differences beforsaid, chardone & Rose interlassed thorough a crowne’.23 That stained glass, and the coloured patterns it cast, was complemented by the even more ephemeral display of the jellies. These tremulous images form an especially engaging emblem of the vividly evanescent embodiment of the marriage for the assembled Scots and English spectators and actors.24 20 Ian Campbell argues that this may be the first instance in Britain of a Renaissance triumphal arch: Campbell, ‘James IV and Edinburgh’s first Triumphal Arches’, in The Architecture of Scottish Cities, edited by Deborah Mays (East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 1997), pp. 26–33. 21 For the topography of the entry see, Michael Lynch and E. Patricia Dennison, ‘Crown, Capital and Metropolis: Edinburgh and Canongate: The Rise of a Capital and an Urban Court’, Journal of Urban History, 32 (2005), 22–43 (pp. 37–39). 22 Young, ‘To thexaltacyone of noblesse’, fol. 103r; Leland Joannis Lelandi antiquarii, IV, 290. 23 Young, ‘To thexaltacyone of noblesse’, fol. 119v; Leland Joannis Lelandi antiquarii, IV, 295. ‘Miparti’ is the heraldic term for arms which are divided in half and joined together longwise to express alliance. 24 Jelly art at royal banquets was clearly highly sophisticated. I am grateful to Meg Twycross for pointing out the menu for the Henry VI’s coronation which included ‘Gely wrytyn and notyd Te Deum laudamus’, an even more direct embodiment of performance: James Gairdner, ed., The Historical Collections of a Citizen of London in the Fifteenth Century: Containing: I. John Page’s poem on the siege of Rouen. II. Lydgate’s verses on the kings of England. III. William Gregory’s Chronicle of London (Westminster and London: The Camden Society, 1876), p. 169.

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This brings us to the most famous and most elaborate exploitation of the heraldic images of union: Dunbar’s poem The Thrissil and the Rois. This work offers an imaginative, literary re-conception of the marriage in the form of a latemedieval dream vision. It presents an allegorical vision of Nature summoning all living things and crowning the lion as king of beasts, the eagle as king of birds, and the thistle as king of plants, who is then emblematically united to the rose, crowned queen of flowers. The poem survives for us purely as a literary text; but it is intimately adapted to the network of material performance of heraldic images that embodied and expressed the marriage. This is apparent in more than just Dunbar’s general sensitivity to the theatrical which we find in many of his poems. The detail of The Thrissil and the Rois suggests a close familiarity with the spectacular arrangements for the marriage, and a responsiveness to the particular ceremonial vision of the event. Dunbar picks up the heraldic images which had dominated representations of the marriage from Ogilvie’s 1502 panegyric onwards: much of the power of the poem arises from his developing those static images into a potentially theatrical encounter. The heraldic badges of lion, thistle or rose personified James and Margaret as idealised but static emblems of royal or national identity; Dunbar’s court of Nature draws them into a dynamic action and dialogue that shares many of the features of dramatic performance. Aspects of the poem reveal a direct engagement with performance. Song accompanies the action of the poem throughout, as we know it also accompanied the entry celebrations. The final lyrical hymn of the birds at the close celebrates the Rose in terms that are specific to Margaret Tudor: Haill, plant of yowth, haill, princes dochtir deir, Haill, blosome breking out of the blud royall Quhois [whose] pretius [precious] vertew is imperiall [...] [ . . . ] Haill, Rois both reid and quhyt, Most plesand flour of michty cullouris twane! [...] Welcome to be our princes of honour.25 This closely echoes a song whose music survives in a manuscript in the British Library, which must have been composed for performance at the entry: Young tender plant of pulcritud Descendyd of Imperyall blode Freshe fragrant floure of ffayre hede shene Welcum of scotlond to be quene

25 William Dunbar, Selected Poems, edited by Priscilla Bawcutt (London: Longman, 1996), pp. 207–08.

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Welcum the rose bothe rede & whyte Welcum the floure of oure delyte.26 We know that Margaret was received into Edinburgh by ‘revested Angells syngyng joyously for the Comynge of so noble a Lady’ in towers above the city gate’.27 If Dunbar’s birdsong in The Thrissil and the Rois was not itself presented as a live choral performance, it must at least have addressed an audience who would recognise and appreciate its close relationship to these other performed musical events. The Thrissil and the Rois hovers intriguingly between a literary and a performance text. Its intimate relationship to the marriage and entry ceremonial suggests a performance context, yet it survives only as a narrative poem presented for readers in the Bannatyne manuscript. The scenario it creates has strong resemblance to the kind of courtly pageant disguising that the Scots ambassadors witnessed in London, of which Walter Ogilvie gives a brief eye-witness description in his panegyric. There is even a possibility that Dunbar may also have been present at this disguising. While there is no certain proof, various circumstantial evidence might imply that he was part of the Scottish delegation to London. A well-known anecdote from the Great Chronicle of London records the contribution of a Scottish priest-poet among the ambassadors: In the Crystmess weke ffolowyng the mayer had to dyner my lord chaunceler whom accompanyed the fforenamyd Scottysh ambassadours wyth many othyr honourable men/In tyme of which dyner a Scottysh preyst Syttyng at oon of the syde tablys made thys Balade here vndyr ffoluyng.28 This report is followed by the text of ‘To London’, sometimes since attributed to Dunbar even if only on the general grounds of its congruent style and because the chronicle tale supports our impression of impromptu engagement with public occasions which seems typical of Dunbar.29 Supporting evidence for a possible visit to London at around this time comes from the Treasurer’s Accounts. A payment made on or after 20 December 1501 records the payment of an instalment of Dunbar’s pension: ‘Item to maister William dunbar quhilk wes payit to him eftir he cam furth of Ingland v lib’.30 This entry is at the foot of a page, in slightly darker ink, possibly implying that it was added at a later date from the other entries on the leaf. While this evidence certainly does not prove Dunbar’s presence at the 26 November disguising, it does add circumstantial support to the impression that he could have been among the eye-witnesses. 26 British Library, MS Royal App 58, fol. 17v. See, Kenneth Elliott, Now fayre, fayrest off every fayre (for three voices): welcome song for Margaret Tudor on her marriage to James IV of Scotland, 1503, Musica Scotica (Glasgow: Musica Scotica Trust, 2003). 27 Leland, Joannis Lelandi antiquarii, IV, 289. 28 Fabyan, The Great Chronicle of London, fol. 292v. 29 Priscilla Bawcutt, Dunbar the Makar (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), pp. 81–82. 30 Treasurer’s Accounts, E21/5, fol. 89r.

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The disguising that Ogilvie, if not Dunbar, attended offered a heraldic celebration of the marriage of Arthur and Katherine of Aragon. Two symbolic mountains were wheeled into the hall, one ‘grene, plantid full of fresshe trees’ representing Arthur and England, the other ‘like unto a roche skorgid [scourged] and brent with the soone’ representing Spain and Katherine.31 The mountains were chained together and carried musicians ‘makyng great and swete melody’. This national symbolism offers a parallel, if not a model, for imaginative spectacular embodiment of an international marriage which resonates with Dunbar’s choice of the animated Lion, Eagle, Thistle, and Rose in a garden ‘of herb and flour and tendir plantis sweit’ (l. 48) with ‘the blisfull soune of cherarchy [the celestial hierarchies]’ (l. 57). The striking English pageants seem not to have included dialogue; Dunbar’s poem, which describes an analogous action and is sensitive to many aspects of live performance, elaborates the spectacle and its meaning in poetic text. If The Thrissil and the Rois is not, formally, a performance, it suggests a sophisticated verbal engagement with one. Gordon Kipling has pointed out how the English pageant disguisings frequently attempt to re-create the scenarios of late medieval dream visions.32 Dunbar seems to reverse the process, re-imagining the model of pageant entry in the medieval form of the dream vision.33 Much more uncertain is any direct connection of the poem to performance. We do not know what reception it was designed for: private or public reading, some kind of spectacle, or even full enactment as a disguising pageant. In spite of its extensive passages of direct speech, the framework of the text is plainly narrative rather than dramatic, and no concrete evidence survives for any kind of disguising performance during the wedding festivities. But it is worth considering the role of the only dramatic performers known to have contributed to the revels. Henry VII had ensured that his daughter was accompanied to Scotland not only by professional musicians but also by a company of players, headed by John English, leader of ‘les pleyars of the Kyngs enterludes’.34 It seems at least possible that these players were sent because Henry had learned that formal dramatic performance was not as yet an established feature of the Scottish court. There is certainly no evidence that James’ court provided for the wedding any of the spectacular indoor theatrical pageantry that Henry VII’s had developed. Young’s report of the Scottish celebrations refers to jousting, music, and elaborate acrobatic displays, but the only brief allusions to dramatic entertainment are associated with the visiting English players. On 11 August, the third day after the marriage, Young records that: ‘After the soupper the kynge & the qwene togeder in ye grett chambre of hyre playd Johne inglysche and hys companyons after Ichon [each person] went 31 Kipling, The Receyt, p. 66. 32 Gordon Kipling, The Triumph of Honour: Burgundian Origins of the Elizabethan Renaissance (The Hague: Leiden University Press for the Sir Thomas Browne Institute, 1977), pp. 107–09. 33 For further suggestive reflection on the relation of Dunbar’s poetry to court pageant disguising, see Pamela M. King, ‘Dunbar’s The Golden Targe: a Chaucerian Masque’, Studies in Scottish Literature, 19 (1984), 115–131. 34 Kipling, ‘Henry VII and the Origins of Tudor Patronage’, pp. 152–55.

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hys way’.35 Two days later, on what appears to be the last day of formal festivity: ‘after dynnar was playd sum moralite by thesaid inglish & hys companyons the kyng & the qwene ware yare & after daunces ware daunced’.36 No detail is given of the nature of these performances. In London, John English was involved not only in the playing of interludes but also as a deviser/producer of the new pageant car disguisings; he had in fact been responsible for the spectacular lantern pageant which had been played for the marriage of Arthur and Katherine and had then been revived for the betrothal of Margaret and James in January 1502.37 Neither time nor resource would have allowed for such a display at Edinburgh. But Gordon Kipling has pointed out that the company was ‘a troupe whose strong suit was spectacle’ and John English’s expertise in this area, along with his possible acquaintance with some of the Scottish embassy, may well have inflected his company’s activity at the wedding.38 There is one surprising and possibly suggestive element of Young’s account: his use of the phrase ‘was playd sum moralite’. We are now so familiar with the term ‘morality play’ that we tend to forget that this did not emerge in English as a name for a genre of drama until the eighteenth century.39 In 1503 Young’s introduction of it is exceptional.40 It is possible that he was simply borrowing from French, where the moralité was a well-established theatrical form which was designed ‘to teach a moral lesson by means of allegorical personifications’.41 There are a number of French borrowings in Young’s account (e.g. deessys, chardon), often connected to his heraldic interests. But there seems little reason to introduce a French term at this non-heraldic point when normal English usage for plays of this type, interlude, was readily available. More probably, perhaps, Young is using the word in its English, literary but non-dramatic sense, especially as he refers to the less discrete ‘sum moralite’ rather than to ‘a moralite’. Literary use of the term at this period can refer simply to serious or moral content.42 But in English, as in French, the literary meaning tends to shade over into something closer to allegory.43 This is often linked to the form of the fable, as when Chaucer’s 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43

Young, ‘To thexaltacyone of noblesse’, fol. 124r; Leland Joannis Lelandi antiquarii, IV, 299. Young, ‘To thexaltacyone of noblesse’, fol. 125r; Leland Joannis Lelandi antiquarii, IV, 300. Kipling, Receyt, p. xxiii. Kipling, ‘Henry VII and the Origins of Tudor Patronage’, p. 154. Meg Twycross, ‘Medieval English Theatre: Codes and Genres’, in The Blackwell Companion to Medieval English Literature and Culture c.1350 – c.1500, edited by P. Brown (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), pp. 454–72 (pp. 454–55). Priscilla Bawcutt, ‘A Note on the Term “Morality”’, Medieval English Theatre, 28 (2008 for 2006), 171–74. Alan Knight, ‘From Model to Problem: The Development of the Hero in the French Morality Play’, in Everyman and Company: Essays of the Theme and Structure of the European Moral Play, edited by Donald Gilman (New York: AMS Press, 1989), pp. 75–89 (p. 75). See, for example, the Kingis Quair, which cites Gower and Chaucer as ‘poetis laureate / In moralitee and eloquence ornate’, ll. 200–01. The MED defines this (sense 2c) as ‘the spiritual or moral significance or interpretation of a tale, name, season, etc’.

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Nuns’ Priest urges readers to ‘taketh the moralitee’ of the fable of the cock and the fox. But it can also be applied more generally, as when Lydgate explains in ‘A Sayinge of the Nyghtyngale’: ‘Þis briddes song [. . .] Who þat take þe moralytee, Betokeneþe [. . .] Þe gret fraunchyse, þe gret liberte, Which shoulde in loue beo’ (ll. 64–68).44 Young’s phrase ‘sum moralite’ may very well refer not specifically to what we now think of as a morality play but to any broadly ethical performance with an allegorical interpretation. The Thrissil and the Rois fits well with this sense of the term moralite. An ethical work offering welcome to the queen and advice to the king, it is also a heraldic allegory which invites interpretation. Our only witness of the text, the Bannatyne manuscript, seems to agree, as it groups the poem in the section of ‘the fabillis of Esop with diuers vþir fabillis and poeticall workis’, claiming that in these poems ‘ar hid but [without] dowt/Grave materis wyiss and sapient/Vnder the workis of poyetis gent’.45 None of this, of course, proves or even implies that The Thrissil and the Rois formed the basis of any performance by John English and his players. But it does at least suggest that when Young unusually chooses to specify ‘sum moralite’, the term is one that would not at this period commonly designate a ‘morality play’, but could be taken as appropriate for a performance relating to a work like Dunbar’s poem. Young’s unexpected choice of terminology might even hint that the troupe’s performance was slightly unusual in form. There is at least scope to imagine some kind of presentation of Dunbar’s vision that was neither clearly an interlude nor a disguising: a scaled down performance of a pageant disguising, or an enacted reading rather than an interlude, performed by professionals with experience of both forms. This is not a necessary conclusion of the evidence. There may be no material connection at all between English’s company and Dunbar’s poem. But there remains a reinforced sense of the detailed theatricality both of The Thrissil and the Rois and its occasional context. Dunbar has chosen to write in very sophisticated ways to readers who are cast as audiences, listeners who are cast as spectators. It is clear that the Scots were concerned to enact the marriage of James and Margaret both visually and verbally, and to concentrate this presentation around the moment of the wedding. Dunbar was plainly alert to the programme of presentation and his poem both responded to and developed further many of the performed images that accompanied the celebrations. The poem expands our sense of late medieval response to ceremonial as performance, and to performance as a very particular means of engaging spectators in the meaning of what they witness. The Thrissil and the Rois may also contribute to another feature of the wedding celebration and spectacle. The various performances associated with the marriage 44 John Lydgate, Lydgate’s minor poems: The Two Nightingale Poems (A.D. 1446.), edited by Otto Glauning, Early English Text Society, Extra Series, 80 (London: Early English Text Society, 1900). 45 George Bannatyne, The Bannatyne Manuscript, edited by W. Tod Ritchie, 4 vols. Scottish Text Society, 3rd Series, 5 (Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1930), IV, pp. 116–17.

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offer suggestive evidence of some degree of influence and interaction between Scotland and England. This is perhaps most vividly summed up in James IV’s apparently impromptu arrangement of a musical duet between Scots and English courtiers. When Sir Edward Stanley, one of the English retinue, sang and played for the royal couple, the king ‘incountynent [immediately] he called a gentylman of hys yat could synge well & maid them synge togeder the wiche accorded varey well’.46 Performance became the arena for enacted national harmony. In elaborating their own artistic response to the marriage of their king, the Scots not only emphasised the linking of the two nations, but drew on and developed images, theatrical forms, possibly even performers from England. The new national alliance was notoriously fragile, emerging from a climate of political frustration between the two countries and ending only ten years later with death of James at the hands of English forces at Flodden. It is perhaps the very transience of performance that allowed for the vividness of the images of unity and the artistic co-operation. The ‘Gely with tharmys of Scotland England’ proved a fitting emblem not only for the performances, but for the national union itself.

46 Young, ‘To thexaltacyone of noblesse’, fols. 96v–97r; Leland Joannis Lelandi antiquarii, IV, 284. For a vivid account of Edward Stanley’s musical talents see, Records of Early English Drama: Lancashire including Isle of Man: Addenda, edited by Elizabeth Baldwin, David George, and David Mills (Toronto, 2009), 31–33, https://reed.utoronto.ca/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/LancashireAddenda.pdf [REED has moved online and the web address has been added for ease of access. Eds.]

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4 THE ENTERTAINMENTS AT THE MARRIAGE OF MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS AND THE FRENCH DAUPHIN FRANÇOIS, 1558 Paris and Edinburgh1

On 24 April 1558, Mary Queen of Scots married François, the French Dauphin, in Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris. Even before her marriage, Mary, through her striking physical appearance and her personality – not to mention her political significance – had attracted the attention and admiration of many at the French court. The romantic notion of the marriage of such a person to the heir to the throne of France led many contemporary writers to eulogise both her and the event itself. At least fifteen poets, mostly French (including Ronsard, Du Bellay, and Grévin) but also Scottish and Italian, dedicated poems to her. But even this literary outburst was overshadowed by the festivities and entertainments which surrounded the marriage ceremony. These were believed at the time to have been among the most splendid and elaborate in living memory – and this at a period known for its love of display and pageantry, exemplified in the many well-documented royal and princely entries. One of the reasons for the expense and self-indulgence was probably that this was the first time in 200 years that the Dauphin, the heir to the French throne, had been married on French soil. Another unusual aspect of these particular ceremonies is that some months after the Paris event, a repeat event took place in Edinburgh. It is these entertainments that constitute the subject of this chapter, written jointly by Sarah Carpenter and Graham Runnalls. Graham Runnalls will be dealing with the French connection; Sarah Carpenter will look at the Scottish dimension. We had originally seen this chapter as a – hopefully – light-hearted pièce d’occasion with which to round off the twenty-first Medieval English Theatre annual conference and to celebrate its second visit to Edinburgh. However, we discovered in the course of our joint researches that the topic did provide more than just local colour. Indeed, although we do not have space to explore these matters fully, the events we shall be discussing cast light on several more far-reaching issues, for example, the differences between French 1 This chapter was co-written with the late Graham Runnalls.

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and Scottish dramatic traditions, the relationship between court and popular culture in the two countries, and also the different kinds of complementary information that contrasting types of archival material can provide.

Political background2 A brief account of the historical setting will help readers to appreciate not only the importance of the marriage but also some of the ironies and the various types of political and theatrical make-believe that surrounded it. Mary Queen of Scots was born on 8 December 1542, daughter of James V of Scotland and Mary of Guise. James belonged to the dynasty of Royal Stewarts, which had provided the previous three kings of Scotland, and which was subsequently to produce James VI of Scotland and I of England. James V’s wife, Mary of Guise, was French, a member of the powerful Guise family from Lorraine, whose three brothers dominated the French court for much of the middle of the sixteenth century. James V’s death on 14 December 1542 meant that his daughter Mary became queen of Scotland when she was only six days old. During the early years of her reign, Scotland was governed by regents, including the formidable Mary of Guise herself. For much of this period, Scotland was threatened by its English neighbours; Henry VIII was particularly keen to marry Mary to his son. Mary’s mother, however, sought to strengthen the Auld Alliance with France and the primacy of the Catholic faith. Aware of her young daughter’s vulnerability, in 1548 she sent Mary Queen of Scots to be educated and protected at the French court. There the young Mary stayed until the death of her husband, by then François II of France, in 1560, after which she returned to Scotland. Mary’s formative years were therefore spent in the French court, whose manners, culture, and language she adopted. Her marriage in 1558, at the age of sixteen, to the Dauphin François, first son of the French king Henri II, who had succeeded François I in 1547, was no surprise. The two children had been brought up together at the same court; they were roughly the same age, François being one year younger than Mary. Indeed, there appeared to exist some degree of real friendship between them despite the fact that Mary was tall, lively, and active, whereas François was sickly, unhealthy, and taciturn. But the union was primarily a political one, which had been envisaged long before the official betrothal. Mary’s mother saw in the marriage a double advantage. It would reinforce the Auld Alliance by linking the 2 There are many books on Mary Queen of Scots and her life and times; some of the most useful include the following: Antonia Fraser, Mary Queen of Scots (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1969); David Hay Fleming, Mary Queen of Scots (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1897); Jane Stoddart, The Girlhood of Mary Queen of Scots (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1908); James Phillips, Images of a Queen: Mary Stuart in Sixteenth Century Literature (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1964); René de Bouillé, Histoire des Ducs de Guise, 4 vols (Paris: Amyot, 1849– 50); Calendar of State Papers: Venice, edited by R. Brown and others, 38 vols (London: HMSO, 1864–1947), VI, 3, pp. 1486–87; see

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crowns of France and Scotland, and it would ensure that a member of the Guise dynasty sat on the throne of France. The marriage was attended not only by all the members of the French court, but also by nine Scottish Commissioners, who came to Paris explicitly to witness the event, to draft the treaties related to the marriage and to protect Scottish interests. In fact, they were the victims of a deception. Two different marriage contracts were drawn up. The first, about which they knew nothing, decreed among other things that, should Mary die without issue, the Scottish crown would revert to France; it also decreed that any subsequent marriage contract would be invalid. The second contract, which the Scottish Commissioners negotiated and signed, envisaged, in the event of Mary’s death without issue, the return of the Scottish crown to the Scottish inheritance. In fact, the early death in 1560 of François II, crowned only in 1559, meant that this planned deception came to nothing. Another misfortune befell the Scottish Commissioners; on their way back to Scotland, several of them suddenly fell ill, and four died in one night. Poison was naturally suspected; perhaps they had found out about the false marriage contract? However, no complaints were made by the surviving Commissioners when they reported back to the Scottish parliament later in the year.3

The Parisian ceremonies There are many descriptions of the festivities surrounding the 1558 marriage, but the original documents on which these are based are few in number. In fact, there are three main contemporary accounts. One tells the story from the stand-point of the French court. Another relates the events from the point of view of the Paris town councillors, the échevins. The third, a fragmentary text, describes the events through the eyes of a Scot. The first and most important document is the Discours du Grand et Magnifique Triumphe faict au mariage de François et Marie Stuart;4 this was an independent semi-official publication, printed by the Parisan publisher Annet Briere in 1558. Two other editions were published in Bordeaux and Rouen later in the same year. The Briere text is quite short, consisting of twelve small in-quarto folios. 3 The intrigues that lay behind these manoeuvrings are complex and fascinating; it is not the place to develop them here. But there is much literature devoted to the subject. We would recommend, for a factual account, Antonia Fraser’s Mary Queen of Scots; for fictional versions with a firm historical basis, such contrasting works as Dorothy Dunnett’s Queen’s Play (London: Cassell, 1964) and Checkmate (London: Cassell, 1975); and Madame de Lafayette, La Princesse de Clèves (Paris: Livres de Poche, 1972). 4 Discours du Grand et Magnifique Triumphe faict au mariage de François et Marie Stuart (Paris: Annet Briere, 1558); also published in L. Cimber et F. Danjou, Archives Curieuses de l’Histoires de France, 27 vols (Paris: Beauvais, 1834–40), series 1, vol 3 (1835), pp. 252–59; and by W. Bentham, ed., Ceremonial at the Marriage of Mary Queen of Scots and the Dauphin François (London: Roxburghe Club, 1818); English translation by B. C. Webster, The Marriage of Mary Queen of Scots to Francis the Dauphin of France MDLVIII (Greenock: Grian-Aig Press, 1969).

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Secondly, the official Registres de l’Hôtel de Ville de Paris for 24 April 1558,5 contain a ten-page account of the ceremonies, emphasising the role – largely passive – played by the city representatives. Much is made of the clothes the échevins wore, and how they arrived at the wrong entrance to the church and had in the end to go round to the front. But in some respects, the description of the entertainment is more detailed than that of the Discours. The third consists merely of several pieces of paper, found in the binding of a 1559 edition of the poems of Sir David Lyndsay.6 Printed in gothic character in the Scots language, and dated May–June 1558, it contains a few tantalising fragmentary passages from an anonymous eyewitness account written by a Scot who attended parts of the ceremonies, but had to watch the rest as a member of the public. These three documents do not contradict each other in any significant way but, because of their varied view-points, they tend to focus on different aspects of the events. Moreover, although most features of the ceremonies are mentioned by at least two sources, the degree and nature of the details differ. A conflation of the first two documents allows one to reconstruct the full ceremonies; we will return to the third later. In what follows, we give emphasis to the entertainments, and spend little time on clothes and jewellery, which loom large in the sources. Extracts from original documents, translated into English, are in quotation marks. Occasionally we include words from the original French, in italics, where the extract meaning is not transparent. Well before the marriage on 24 April 1558, and even before the betrothal ceremony on 19 April at one of the newly-completed buildings of the royal palace of the Louvre, a considerable amount of planning and preparation had taken place. For example, in the grand salle du palais, i.e., the royal palace, now called the Palais de Justice, on the Ile de la Cité, several theatres (theatres) had been built. Also, ‘another stage or platform (theatre ou eschaufault) had been constructed on the parvis [= the porch, but often, esp. in France, a wider area around the church – eds. See OED, parvis] of Notre-Dame, with a gallery going from the Bishop’s Palace to the great door of this church, and from thence to the choir; this platform and gallery was twelve feet high, and made in the fashion of an arch, festooned with vine branches on all sides in antique style’. The Bishop’s Palace was next to Notre-Dame, immediately on its south side. On the day of the wedding ceremony itself, ‘in front of the great door of Notre-Dame a royal canopy (ciel royal) was erected, with tapestries of fleur 5 Alexandre Teulet, Relations Politiques de la France et de l’Espagne avec l’Ecosse au XVIe siècle, 5 vols (Paris: Veuve Jules Renouard, 1862), I: Correspondences Françaises, 1515–1560, ch. 34, ‘Mariage du Dauphin et de Marie Stuart’, pp. 302–11. The same text is found in Alexandre Teulet, Papiers d’Etat relatifs à l’histoire de l’Ecosse au XVIe siècle, 3 vols (Edinburgh: Bannatyne Club, 1853), I, 292–303. 6 Douglas Hamer, ‘The Marriage of the Queen of Scots to the Dauphin: a Scottish Printed Fragment’, The Library, 4th series, 12 (1931–1932), 420–28.

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de lys on both sides of the door’. The city representatives had to arrive early, before the main royal procession. At 9 a.m. they tried to go in a side door of Notre-Dame, but were told that, if they wanted to get into the choir, they would have to go round to the front and enter by the wooden bridge leading right into the choir, which they did, walking on Turkish carpets all the way. There they awaited the wedding procession, along with many other important citizens. At 11 a.m. the procession arrived; each participant is described in order of appearance, with their dress and jewellery. All entered Notre-Dame by way of this wooden gallery, twelve feet above the ground. Monsieur de Guise arrived first and greeted the bishop of Paris and his entourage. At one point, Monsieur de Guise asked some of the notables walking along the galleries to move, so that the ordinary people, who were watching in great numbers down below the Rue NeuveNotre-Dame and in other nearby streets, could see what was going on. In fact this happened several times during the proceedings; clearly it was deemed important that the ordinary public should be able to have a good view of their leaders, their rich clothes, and the pageantry. Then came the king’s household and more cardinals, and finally the main participants, the Dauphin led by the King of Navarre and by the Dukes of Orléans and Angoulême, the king accompanied by Mary Queen of Scots and the Duke of Lorraine, the Queen of France accompanied by Condé, followed by other members of the royal family, sisters and daughters. After the marriage ceremony and mass were completed, the married couple left together under a ciel, and the procession went back, along the raised galleries, to the Bishop’s Palace for dinner. Once again, the king ensured that the public got a good view of the full procession. Meanwhile, the city representatives had to go back a different way, to make ready for the soupper du roy which was to be held later at the royal palace. A truly royal (a la realle) dinner was then served in the Grande Salle of the Bishop’s Palace; this was followed by a bal royal. Then, at about 4 or 5 o’clock, the king and his guests returned to the royal palace. There were large crowds awaiting them along the streets directly linking the two palaces, i.e., along the Rue Saint-Cristophe and the Rue Neuve-Notre-Dame. However, the king decided to take a longer and more visible route. The procession crossed the Seine over the Pont-au-Change, and then went straight into the palace. When the crowds realised their mistake, they rushed towards the royal palace a different way, causing a certain amount of confusion. Also, on several occasions, money was thrown to the watching people with the cry of largesse; the result was a chaotic scrum. The soupper du roy was held in the royal palace, at the famous Table de Marbre, a kind of raised daïs, which was occasionally used for theatrical performances. Music played while the guests ate. After the meal, the tables were cleared away for a ball (dance). All the royal party joined in; details are given of who danced with whom. After the dance came the entertainments, which

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consisted of a large number of masques, mommeries, ballades et autres jeux et passetems. There appear to have been three main parts to the proceedings. 1

2

3

Firstly appeared the seven planets, wearing the costumes that the poets have given them, i.e., Mercury, with two wings, as herald and messenger of the gods, dressed in white satin with a golden belt, holding his rod in his hand; Mars wearing armour; Venus dressed as a goddess, and the other planets likewise, and as they walked along, they sang specially-composed songs, most melodiously. Next there appeared a number of artificial horses made of basket-work. According to the Hôtel de Ville account, first there appeared twenty-five chevaulx triumphans dressed in cloth of gold and silver, each ridden by a young prince and led by a lackey. Then came two hacquenees (smaller horses) led by a man, and pulling antique-style carts, carrying musicians of various sorts. Then came twelve unicorns, again mounted by young princes, followed by two more hacquenees pulling a chariot carrying the Nine Muses, and finally more horses like the first ones. Lastly, after a break for another half-hour of dancing, appeared the climax, which consisted of six beautiful artificial ships with masts and silver sails six to ten feet high, covered in cloth of gold, which were made to look as if propelled by breezes, constructed in such a way that they could turn any way you wanted. Sitting in the middle of each ship was a young prince, dressed in cloth of gold, and masked, and beside him there was an empty seat. All of these ships went sailing round the great Hall of the Palace, just as if they were on the sea, being tossed by wind and tide. And they passed in front of the Marble Table, where all the ladies were seated, and as they passed, each prince in a ship took a lady, one taking the queen, another the bride, another the queen of Navarre, etc., and they sat them down beside them on the ship. Thus they sailed away with them and took them to their bedrooms. Thus ended the festivities of this great day.

The above information comes from the first two documents mentioned. Much of the third, Scottish, account has been lost; the remaining fragments mainly describe the events before the entertainments. The anonymous author makes occasional references to the Scots present at the ceremony; these are mostly totally ignored in the other two documents. In particular, he expands with deliberately comic glee on the chaos provoked by the largesse, the coins thrown to the public. He relates how a Franciscan friar, who grabbed most of the money, defended himself by saying that, if Saint Francis himself were there, he would have done the same thing. But otherwise his account (or the parts of it that have been preserved) repeats the content of the other documents, although there are minor discrepancies, and additional details of no great import for us (the number of servants, the gifts for the

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heralds, etc.). He does, however, mention the ‘skaffald within the kirke’, and the last part of the fragment describes the twelve ‘artificiall horssis’. This document adds a little to the overall picture, but provides no more details about the entertainments. The author is, of course, anonymous, but his learning shows through in his inclusion of several Latin quotations, often used humorously, to underline a point in his narrative. It seems to me very plausible that he was one of the entourage of one of the surviving Commissioners. After all, not only did he attend some of the festivities (but not all of them) in Paris in April, but he was back in Edinburgh within a couple of months. However, the main importance of the Scottish account could be that it constituted a means whereby the full details of the ceremony became rapidly known in Edinburgh, where it was apparently published by May or June 1558. In other words, it could be one of the sources for the duplicate events, which followed two months later.

The Edinburgh festivities Our reason for looking at these marriage festivities as a joint project is that the Paris wedding of 24 April was re-celebrated in Edinburgh, though without the chief players, on 3 July 1558. Unlike the French event, we have no narrative sources at all for the celebrations.7 But the Lord High Treasurer’s accounts refer to ‘the solemnization of the marriage of our Soverane Ladie to be conterfute in Edinburgh’,8 which seems to suggest some kind of proxy ceremony. Then accounts of the Burgh Council record payments for what is clearly a civic celebration to mark the day: ‘the expensis maid upone the Triumph and Play at the Mariage of the Quenis Grace, with the Convoy the [blank] day of Julii anno 1558’.9 From these two sources we have relatively extensive record entries from which we can piece together something of what happened. The difference in the kinds of surviving evidence from France and Scotland determines some differences in what can be learned about the parallel events. The coherent ‘stories’ presented by the various French and Scottish chronicles of the Paris ceremonies offer us an impression of the whole occasion, while also determining a particular contemporary perspective on it. The fragmentary Scottish record evidence, while frustrating any such overall 7 The Scottish histories and chronicles record the Paris celebration, but not those in Edinburgh. See Robert Lindesay of Pitscottie, The Historie and Cronicles of Scotland from the Slauchter of King James the First to the Ane thousande fyve hundreith thrie scoir fyftein ȝeir, edited by Æ. J. G. Mackay, Scottish Text Society, Old Series, 3 vols (1899–1911), II, 124–25; John Lesley, The History of Scotland from the death of King James I in the year M.CCCC.XXXVI, to the year M.D.LXI (Edinburgh: Bannatyne Club, 1830), pp. 264–65; Diurnal of Remarkable Occurrents that have passed within the country of Scotland since the death of King James the fourth till the year M.D.LXXV (Edinburgh: Bannatyne and Maitland Clubs, 1833), p. 52. 8 Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer of Scotland, edited by Thomas Dickson and others, 13 vols (Edinburgh: H. M. General Register House, 1877–1978), X, p. 360; [hereafter LHTA] 9 Anna Jean Mill, Mediæval Plays in Scotland (1924; repr London: Benjamin Blom, 1969), p. 183.

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sense of what occurred, offers instead a relatively unmediated access to the fabric of the pageantry. This difference in kind between the two bodies of evidence tends to inhibit direct comparison, either of the events themselves or of their purposes, effects, or the responses they generated. But they do, plainly if tantalisingly, suggest a possible direct link between the pageantry of the two celebrations. As we have seen, the first of the theatrical shows celebrating the Paris wedding presented ‘the seven planets, wearing the costumes the poets have given them’, who walked along singing specially composed songs. The City of Edinburgh accounts refer to the ‘vij men quha wes the vij planets’, and to the ‘payntyng of the vij planets’.10 Representations of the Seven Planets were, of course, not unusual: they crop up in literature, visual arts, and royal entries elsewhere, and it is always possible that their appearance at both wedding celebrations was just coincidence. But given the intimate link between the two ceremonies, the diplomatic and political affiliations of the two countries, and the existence in Scotland of documentary evidence of the Parisian shows, it seems a fairly firm possibility that the Edinburgh celebrations were consciously modelled on those of Paris. If this is the case, then we have an interestingly deliberate use of the quasi-theatrical show as an active, if minor part of international relations. What might be invested in any echoing of the French celebration in Edinburgh? Although it is unlikely that France would have had any particular interest in the Edinburgh festivities, the French did appear to see the marriage as a means of effectively annexing Scotland. So for them a reflection of the greater country’s pageantry in the lesser might seem appropriate. But in Edinburgh there may well have been stronger incentives to re-stage the Parisian ceremonies. Mary’s mother, Mary of Guise, the Queen Regent, still identified her own, and Scotland’s, interests with her daughter and family in France. However, in spite of tensions with England, there was clearly a good deal of resistance in Scotland to these closer ties with France.11 Mary had now been absent for ten years, the religious and political situation had shifted, and antagonism to the French was beginning to increase. For both these positive and negative reasons, a public and civic spectacle demonstrating not only fidelity to the absent queen but the intimate links between the two countries might well be considered expedient, especially by the Queen Regent. In general Edinburgh seems to have been accustomed to look to mainland Europe for its models for display and ceremonial.12 On this occasion this tendency

10 This coincidence of the Seven Planets in the celebrations of both cities is pointed out in G. Connock, ‘Continental Influences on Religious Pageantry and Plays in Pre-Reformation Scotland’ (unpublished M.Litt thesis, University of Glasgow, 1996) 11 See, for example, Lesley, History of Scotland, p. 251; Fleming, Mary Queen of Scots, I, p. 208, note 38. 12 David Lyndsay’s account of the 1537 royal entry that never was, prepared for Madeleine, French bride of James V, who died before she ever entered the city, vividly asserted the equivalence of Edinburgh pageantry to that which had honoured James at the wedding in Paris. See Lyndsay, ‘The Deploratioun’, in The Works of Sir David Lindsay of the Mount, 1490–1555, edited by Douglas

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may have been confirmed by detailed eyewitness information about the Paris celebrations.13 The account printed by John Scot suggests that details were probably quite widely known in Edinburgh. So both the political and theatrical climate seems to have been conducive to a pageantry asserting, however tenuously, the links between the two capitals. How far can we reconstruct what actually happened in Edinburgh, and how it compared with Paris? Since the records are patchy, it is hard to be sure about the extent of the celebrations. They seem to have involved some kind of wedding ceremonial: the Dean of Guild accounts for St Giles Kirk record a payment, ‘the thrid day of Julij, to twa werkmen to gand to the Abbay and fetche viij [sic: eight what?] to the Processioun of the Sacrament quhen the Quenis Grace wes maryit’.14 The procession presumably included the cathedral’s ‘Eucharist contenand foure litill bellis of gowld, ane blewe bell of gould, twa litill hartts, twa litill croces, all hingand at the said Euchareist’.15 But any such ceremony was, with neither party present, only ‘conterfute’. The impression from the records is that in Edinburgh the festive shows were aimed rather at the people and the nation than, as in Paris, at the central participants and the court. The fact that the pageantry appears to have been mainly organised and financed by the Burgh Council, rather than by the court, confirms this differing political slant. Graham Runnalls has pointed out that the accounts of events in Paris show the duke of Guise and the king concerned to ensure that the public had a good view of events; in Edinburgh it looks as if the public were the main focus of the celebration. While in Paris the theatrical shows of the planets, artificial horses, and ships were indoor sports for the aristocratic audience, in Edinburgh the ‘Triumphe and Play’ appear to have been outdoor performances at the Tron, for the people of the city.

Hamer, Scottish Text Society, 3rd series, 4 vols (Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons, 1931– 36), I, pp. 105–12. John Knox writing sourly of the apparently similar shows in 1561 to welcome Mary back to Scotland, remarked that: ‘Great preparations were made for her entry in the town. In farces, in masking and in other prodigalities, fain would the fools have counterfeited France’, John Knox’s History of the Reformation in Scotland, edited by W. Croft Dickinson, 2 vols (London: Thomas Nelson, 1949), II, p. 21. 13 A variety of Scots had been present in Paris. The printed fragment records the delightful detail that: Quahis grace [also comman] did that all Scottishmen of [rank, quhaso]euer they vvar, suld haue en[trance withi]is wwaitche vvurde Brede and [ . . . ] and that not only the high-ranking Scots but large numbers of gatecrashers, of many nations, got in through access to this password (Hamer, ‘The Marriage of Mary Queen of Scots’, p. 427, lines 6–9) 14 Edinburgh Records. The Burgh Accounts: vol 2, Dean of Guild’s Accounts, 1552–1567, edited by R. Adam, with preface by Thomas Hunter (Edinburgh: Scottish Burgh Record Society, 1899), p. 89. 15 Listed at the selling off of the kirk’s jewels two years later, Dean of Guild’s Accounts, p. 91.

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The court did have some involvement. Although there is little to mark the actual wedding in April,16 the court clearly took some part in the July festivity: Item, the last day of Junij, to maister Johne Balfour in the gardrope [garderobe: wardrobe] to by certane welvot, sating and tapheteis agane [velvet, satin and taffeta I preparation for] the solemnization of the mariage of our Soverane Ladie to be conterfute in Edinburgh the thrid day of Julij nixttocum xliiij li.17 The sum is substantial but not lavish: it is clearly for grand clothes, but may not involve any kind of performance activity.18 Perhaps more significantly, the Treasurer’s Accounts also reveal the orchestration of public festivity: messages are sent out at the end of June to some twentythree different burghs all through Scotland from Inverness to Dumfriess ‘with certane chargis of the Quenis grace [ . . . ] to mak fyris and processioun generall for the completing and solemnizing of the marriage betuix our Souerane Ladie and the Dolphine of France’.19 As in Edinburgh, it appears that the main body of the festivities, although initiated and ordered by the queen, is to be produced by the people for the people. Which brings us to the burgh’s own ‘triumph, play and convoy’. The records are fascinating but, as usual, often enigmatic. William Lauder was paid ten pounds ‘for the making of the play and the wrytting thairof’; William Adamson four pounds ‘for writting of ane part of the play, and for recompense of his part of the play, quhilk he had in keping, at the president’s command’.20 From the relative payments Lauder was presumably the chief author, and he was indeed by this date an established playwright, having been paid by the court for a wedding play in 1548, and by the city for a ‘litill farsche and play’ performed for Mary of Guise in 1554.21 He had also published in 1556 Ane Compendious and Breue Tractate concerning ye Office and Dewtie of Kyngis, Spirituall Pastoris, and Temporall Iugis, a poem of advice to rulers on controlling spiritual affairs which is very close to the kind of moderate reforming tendencies of the Thrie Estaitis (performed in Edinburgh two years earlier), and written in a plain but energetic sub-Lyndsayan

16 An exception is ‘Item: for iij ½ lb wecht of quhite walx to afix certane seillis to the commissionis send in France’ with the Commissioners, LHTA, X, 331. 17 LHTA, X, 360. 18 Charges for making a specific dress for a particular woman, Katherine Michelson, Lady Carnock, do appear in the same group of records, making it possible that she took the role of Mary Stuart. But this dress, too, although clearly costly, by court standards does not seem sumptuous (£11.3.4d), LHTA, X, 366. 19 LHTA, X, 365. 20 Mill, Mediæval Plays, p. 183. 21 Mill, Mediæval Plays, pp. 182 and 332.

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style.22 So Lauder was clearly involved in and aware of the potential intersection of drama, spectacle, and politics in the Edinburgh performance culture of the 1550s. His payment from the council on this occasion, as previously, was for more than simply penning speeches. It was also ‘ressavit for his travell and lawbour tane [taken] vpone him in setting furth of the play’;23 he appears to have been in our terms a producer or ‘deviser’ as much as a playwright.24 The play is recorded as an outdoor public event, rather than the musical spectacular interlude of the Parisian court. We are told that the Tron was decorated ‘agane the said play’. There are various payments for the construction of scaffolds and for laying two hundred turfs ‘till the skaffetts for latting of dyn [prevention of noise] to be maid by the playaris feit’.25 While indoor entertainments cannot be ruled out, substantial performance was clearly taking place in the streets. It is from the many references to costumes, characters, and other aspects of the convoy that we can best determine how closely the Edinburgh entertainments paralleled those in Paris. First, there are the Seven Planets. In Paris these were ‘wearing the costumes the poets have given them’. In Edinburgh, more prosaically, we discover that their costumes involved twenty-four ells of small canvas, twenty-four ells of mock taffeta of various colours, an extra two and three-quarter ells of green taffeta for one Planet, seven red skins ‘tilbe thair short brotykynnis [aprons/tunics?]’, and four golden skins to be crown for one of them.26 Clearly their clothes are striking, and in some ways differentiated, although we cannot tell how far. Instead of walking in singing, like their Parisian counterparts, these Planets appear to have been carried through the city to the scaffolds in the ‘convoy cart’: ‘to Walter Bynning for paynting of the vij planets of the kart with the rest of the convoy xvj li. xiij s. iiij d.’.27 Of course, this painting may have been a pictorial representation of the cart itself, but Binning had been paid by the council four years earlier for ‘paynting of the [ . . . ] playaris facis’ for the Thrie Estaitis.28 In terms of vehicles, the convoy appears to have involved only this one ‘cart’.29 But, obviously enough, it also involved horses (decorated with seven skeins of 22 William Lauder, The Office and Dewtie of Kyngis, edited by Fitzedward Hall, Early English Text Society, Original Series, 3, 2nd edn (London: Trübner & Co, 1869). In later life Lauder seems to have become a minister of the Reformed Church, and produced a number of works addressing the moral and social state of his country in the late 1560s and 1570s. Furnivall points out that Lauder in these later works ‘appears as a sterner and more earnest Reformer’ (though his judgement that ‘our estimate of him must rise accordingly’ may be more arguable today). 23 Mill, Mediæval Plays, p. 187. 24 See W. R. Streitberger, ‘Devising the Revels’, Early Theatre, 1 (1998), 55–74. The payment to William Adamson, though rather enigmatic, also seems to have involved more than just writing. 25 Mill, Mediæval Plays, p. 186. 26 Mill, Mediæval Plays, pp. 183–84. 27 Walter Binning appears in conjunction with William Lauder at other times. See Sarah Carpenter, ‘Walter Binning: Theatrical and Decorative Painter’, Medieval English Theatre, 10:1 (1988), 17–25. 28 Mill, Mediæval Plays, p. 182. 29 Andrew Williamson was paid £5.4.9d to make the cart, Mill, Mediæval Plays, p. 187.

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‘flanders girths’). However they seem to have been the real thing, rather than the magnificent artificial creatures of Paris. ‘Ane puir man’ was given ten shillings ‘for recompance of his yaird trod doun by convoyaris horss’.30 Equally there is no reference at all to ships. But there are a number of other players mentioned, which may modify our sense of a ‘play’ of the Seven Planets. There are, for example, the costumes of ‘the freiris’: fourteen ells of ‘blak and quhyt grayis to be the freiris weids’. On the basis of the forty-eight ells of cloth for the Seven Planets, this looks as if it might amount to no more than two friars, and there are indeed references to the ‘gray freir’ and ‘to Patrik Vernor [ . . . ] quha had the blak freris part in the play’.31 It is not clear if or how these friars might have been combined with the planets; friars were also likely to carry rather a different weight in a Scotland less than two years from the Reformation, than they might have in France. Other players on whose costumes significant sums were spent are more predictable: a troop of six dancers, three in red, three in white, each with sixty-two bells ‘till be put upone thair bodyis and leggs’; a fool; and a parade of ensigns. In terms of performers, then, Edinburgh seems to have picked up only on the Seven Planets. But it is also just possible that some of the decoration of the city may have been slightly influenced by descriptions of the Paris wedding. Paris prepared the great eschaffaud constructed at the door of Notre-Dame, ‘twelve feet high and made in the fashion of an arch, festooned with vine branches on all sides in antique style’ and covered in Turkish carpets. Edinburgh also constructed substantial scaffolds at ‘the But, Tron, Croce, with the ovir Trone’. These, too, were decorated, not in this northern nation with vine branches but with ‘symmer treis’ (one decorated with ‘twa dosoun of cachepull balls cled with gold fuilȝe’ and ‘and hundreth cheryis’) while the Tron was furnished with woodbind, and clay ‘for upstikin of jonet flowers’.32 As far as records suggest, the normal city decoration for festivity was with tapestries and cloth hangings, or with painted constructions. It is at least conceivable that the plant and flower decorations of these Edinburgh scaffolds owed something to the vine branches of Paris. Overall there is no cast-iron case for asserting a deliberate parallel between Edinburgh and Paris for this triumph. Both the Planets and the vegetation are common enough elements of civic and courtly pageantry. But equally, since it is clear that the details of the French entertainments were known in Scotland, and the whole event was a ‘conterfute’ of that in Paris, it seems unlikely that this could be entirely coincidence. Indeed, the very partiality of the degree of overlap between the two cities’ festivities is itself revealing of the political relationships, the linked, yet radically different political contexts of the two shows. Paris offered a courtly celebration of royal and dynastic position: the populace were invited to see, to observe, the aristocratic reaffirmation of the royal house, while the nobility 30 Mill, Mediæval Plays, p. 187. 31 Mill, Mediæval Plays, pp. 186–87. 32 Mill, Mediæval Plays, pp. 184–85. Note the contrast between the ‘Renaissance’ decoration of Paris (‘in antique style’), and the medieval romance trees and jonet flowers in Edinburgh.

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were entertained with glorious and sophisticated shows. In Scotland, the dramatic shows were produced by the city and its people for the people of the city. The money was put up by the Burgh Council, the performers seem to have been local guildsmen, the shows were not indoors at court but in the public streets where the fountain at the Cross ran with wine for the populace. How far the Edinburgh shows represented spontaneous popular opinion is unclear. Celebrations throughout the country appear to have been prompted by the Queen Regent. The marriage of their long absent queen far away in France seems to have provoked little response in the city, except anxiety at the temporary loss of the Lord Provost, who was one of the marriage Commissioners: they asked for a replacement for ‘lord Seytoun, prouest, now in pairttis of France’. The preoccupation of the Burgh Council through most of the year was with the feared imminence of an English invasion, with major expenditure in May and June for preparations and call-up ‘gif [if] it salhappin [shall happen] our auld inemyis of Ingland to cum fordwart for persuite of this toun’.33 The marriage shows seem at best an interlude in a difficult year. But for these troubled times a fine show was clearly put on.34 It was a show which in some elements mirrored the splendour of Paris for those at home. But equally it is not surprising if Edinburgh chose to reproduce the cheapest elements of the Parisian display: the costumes of the Seven Planets, rather than the elaborate stage machinery of artificial horses and mechanised ships; fresh vegetation and turf, rather than the arch à l’antique and the Turkish carpets. The Edinburgh shows seem to confirm both the intimate links, and yet the political, financial, and cultural distance between the two countries.

33 Extracts from the Records of the Burgh of Edinburgh, AD 1403 (–1589), edited by J. D. Marwick, Scottish Burgh Records Society, 5 vols (Edinburgh, 1869–75), III, 1557–71 (p. 22). 34 The overall sum spent by the city was about £150.

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5 PERFORMING DIPLOMACIES The 1560s court entertainments of Mary Queen of Scots

‘Thair began the masking, which from year to year hath continewed since’.1 Knox’s notorious fulmination against the courtly entertainment of Mary Queen of Scots’ personal reign, in particular its ‘excessive dancing’, implies that her court was exceptionally devoted to performance and display. In the eyes of Knox and other reformers, the lively performance culture of that court straightforwardly revealed the moral and religious shortcomings of its monarch: ‘In fidling and flynging’ she was ‘more exercised then in reading or hearing of Goddis most blessed word’; ‘banketting, [and] immoderat dansing’ are linked to avarice, oppression of the poor, and ‘hurdome [whoredom] that thairof enseuis’.2 In diagnosing the investment of the court in such spectacle as not only excessive, but a result of individual taste and moral failing, the reformers were plainly simplifying a far more complex phenomenon. Mary’s court may well have attracted their suspicion: Gordon Donaldson has established the French dominance, and the relatively lowly born status of the queen’s household, both of which may have caused tensions.3 But the court was no more obviously committed to dancing and display than those of Elizabeth I, or of Catherine de Medici in France, both of whom were at times congratulated for honourable and appropriate magnificence.4 Although each court had its own character and culture, valuing and employing entertainments in different ways, a powerful international rhetoric

1 John Knox, The History of the Reformation in Scotland, in D. Laing, ed., The Works of John Knox, 6 vols (Edinburgh: Woodrow Society, 1848), II, p. 314. 2 Knox, Works, II, 333 and 362. See also George Buchanan, The Tyrannous Reign of Mary Stewart, translated and edited by W. Gatherer (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1958), pp. 61 and 64. 3 G. Donaldson, All the Queen’s Men: Power and Politics in Mary Stewart’s Scotland (London: Batsford, 1983), pp. 60–69. 4 See, for example, Calendar of State Papers: Venice, edited by R. Brown and others, 38 vols (London: HMSO, 1864–1947), VII, 97; see www.british-history.ac.uk/cal-state-papers/venice/ hereafter CSP: Venice; Roger Ascham, cited F. Mumby, Elizabeth and Mary Stuart: The Beginning of the Feud (London; Constable and Co., 1914), p. 225. Pierre de Ronsard, Oeuvres Complètes (Paris: Le Club Francais, 1948), XIII, pp. 35–36; Michel de Castelnau, Memoires (Paris, 1621), Bk. 5, pp. 303–04.

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of performance and spectacle had developed. It is well recognised, too, that by the sixteenth century all the courts of Europe were fully versed in the power of court performance as an instrument, however minor, of prestige, of diplomacy, of politics, and sometimes even of government itself.5 Court performances were watched, and frequently enacted, by some of the most powerful figures in the land, and often reported by diplomats and foreign ambassadors. This makes the line between recreational relaxation and political statement inevitably permeable; as is that between private life and public display in the life of the sixteenthcentury court more broadly, and ultimately even between the ‘two bodies’ of the monarch.6 Court entertainments lived on these shifting interfaces, expressing and mediating a court not only to itself, but to all who interacted with it. The performances at the royal court of Scotland during the 1560s need to be understood in the wider arena of the European community of court spectacle: they expressed not only Mary Stewart’s personal preferences, but important aspects of her national and international policies. In Scotland, as in other European kingdoms, court entertainment provided a site where the personal and the public figures of the monarch might feed into each other. In the publicly visible life of the court, even those entertainments that seem to avoid politics can have political implications. For the Scottish court the most significant comparators are the courts of France and England. These were the two kingdoms with which Scotland had the most intimate and influential, if tense and shifting political relations. Mary Stewart’s upbringing in France had educated her cultural tastes in French forms and provided her with French maîtres du jeu. Entertainments in both Scottish and English courts also demonstrate a consciousness of the close proximity of the two British realms and the analogous positions of their young unmarried queens. There are occasions when both Mary and Elizabeth use court performance as a direct means of addressing their ‘gud suster’ or the problems she presents. All three courts demonstrate their familiarity with the sixteenth century’s language of performance in spectacle, allegory, and image. There are differences of scale and focus, France concentrating more on elaborate visual spectacle asserting harmony and magnificence, while the English court tended to host plays of argument and debate. But the same visual and theatrical motifs recur across all the national borders: the snaky-collared personification of Discord on the triumphal 5 See, for example, S. Anglo, Spectacle, Pageantry and Early Tudor Policy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969); R. Strong, Art and Power: Renaissance Festivals 1450–1650 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1984); G. Walker, The Politics of Performance in Early Renaissance Drama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 6 See E. H. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957); M. Axton, The Queen’s Two Bodies: Drama and the Elizabethan Succession (London: Royal Historical Society, 1977). In Scotland the court poetry of William Dunbar and David Lyndsay testifies to this culture: see, for example, P. King, ‘The Goldyn Targe: a Chaucerian Masque’, Studies in Scottish Literature, 19 (1984), 115–33; Carol Edington, Court and Culture in Renaissance Scotland: Sir David Lindsay of the Mount (East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 1995), pp. 89–114.

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arch welcoming Charles IX to Lyon in 1564 (where English ambassadors invested the king with the order of the Garter) reflects the ‘captive Discord’ who would have been bound in the prison of Extreme Oblivion before Mary and Elizabeth had they met as planned at Nottingham in July 1562, or the preserved design for a masking costume for Discordia by Primaticcio, designer of court entertainments for the French royal family including Mary Stewart.7 John Hall has suggested that Primaticcio’s design for a masking costume for a wise (or foolish) virgin was influenced by an Elizabethan disguising presented to French nobles visiting the English court in 1561.8 Sung or spoken debates between Love and Chastity were performed at all three courts between 1564 and 1565.9 Michael Lynch persuasively links the firework attack on a fort at Stirling at the baptism of James VI in 1566 with spectacles in the elaborate royal tour of France undertaken by the young Charles IX (1560–74), in 1564–65.10 Similar ‘fort-holdings’ were widely popular in the later sixteenth century, adaptable to many courtly purposes in all three countries.11 European court culture clearly shares, even in detail, the rich but familiar vocabulary of performance on which all three courts drew for their particular ends. Contemporary attitudes to these entertainments are crucial in determining their meanings as performances. Then, as now, they could be dismissed as frivolous distractions from the serious business of the court. Thomas Randolph, the English ambassador during most of Mary’s personal reign, excused his infrequent dispatches in early 1563 by remarking that, ‘I had nothing to write, for we had so little to think on, that we passed our time in feasts, banqueting, masking, and running at the ring, and such like’.12 Similar judgements are made in both England and France.13 However, the more elaborate entertainments of the sixteenth century were, as Jean Wilson points out, clearly ‘recognised as propaganda [as] 7 The Royal Tour of France by Charles IX and Catherine de’ Medici: Festivals and Entries, 1564–6, edited by V. E. Graham and W. McAllister Johnson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979), p. 193; E. K. Chambers and W. W. Greg, eds, Dramatic Records from the Lansdowne Manuscripts (London: Malone Society, 1908); J. Hall, ‘Primaticcio and Court Festivals’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 58 (1975–76), 353–77. 8 Hall, ‘Primaticcio’, p. 373. 9 Robert Keith, The History of the Affairs of Church and State in Scotland, 2 vols (Edinburgh: Spottiswoode Society, 1845), II, p. 220; Royal Tour, pp. 24–25; Calendar of Letters and State Papers: Spain, edited by G. A. Bergenroth and others, 13 vols (London: H.M. Stationery Office, 1862–1954), I, 404; see 10 M. Lynch, ‘Queen Mary’s Triumph: The Baptismal Celebrations in Stirling in December 1566’, ante, 79 (1990), 1–21. The French Royal Tour was arranged by Catherine de Medici to reinforce the position of her son. 11 P. Butterworth, Theatre of Fire: Special Effects in Early English and Scottish Theatre (London: Society for Theatre Research, 1998), pp. 99–128. 12 Calendar of State Papers: Scotland, edited by J. Bain and others, 11 vols. (London and Edinburgh: HMSO, 1898–1936) II, p. 8.; see 13 CSP: Venice, VII, 3; Castelnau, Memoires, p. 303.

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. . . indicated by the speed with which they were described in print.’14 Even those who were dismissive of performance were quick to attribute political significance to certain entertainments we might now consider very slight. In fact, apart from financial records, we most often know about court performances from diplomatic observers and historians who felt them worth recording alongside more obviously political events. In spite of Francis Bacon’s later scorn of such things as ‘but toys, to come amongst such serious observations’, court performance in the sixteenth century was widely recognised as one of the many languages of diplomacy.15 The entertainments of the Marian court need to be considered in the light of this well-established and highly-nuanced European tradition. On Mary’s arrival in Scotland in 1561 the proliferation of festive performance generated by and for her was identified by several observers as deriving from France. Knox dismissed not only the queen’s own entertainments, but also those presented to her by the burgh of Edinburgh as French imports: ‘In ferses, in masking, and in other prodigalities, faine wold fooles have counterfooted France’.16 Knox’s xenophobic reaction was as much political as aesthetic: bitter antagonism to the French in Scotland and suspicion of Mary as a product of the French court made the accusation of French influence an easy political weapon. Yet even Mary’s supporter John Leslie, writing later in the 1580s, asserted the same influence although locating it further back, remarking of James V’s marriage visit to France in 1537, ‘their wes mony new ingynis and devysis [. . .] as of banquatting and of menis behauiour, first begun and used [ . . . ] fassionis they had scene in France’.17 The regency of Mary’s French mother, Mary of Guise reinforced the connection: it appears, for example, that the elaborate entertainments presented in Paris at Mary Stewart’s marriage to the Dauphin in April 1558 were deliberately imitated in the burgh celebration encouraged by the queen regent when the marriage was ‘conterfute’ in Edinburgh that June.18 Although there is evidence of a lively Renaissance culture of performance and spectacular entertainment at the Scottish royal court at least as far back as James IV at the beginning of the sixteenth century, contemporary perception among Scots appears to identify France as the major influence during Mary’s reign. There is plenty of evidence that during her upbringing Mary did participate fully in the elaborate entertainment culture of the French court. According to John Leslie this continued until her final days in France, which were spent with the Duke of Lorraine who provided ‘ane magnifique triumphe’ followed by ‘pleasant 14 J. Wilson, Entertainments for Elizabeth I (Woodbridge: D.S. Brewer, 1980), p. 6. 15 Francis Bacon, ‘Of Masques and Triumphs’, in Bacon, Essays, edited by W.H.O. Smeaton (London: J. M. Dent, 1906), p. 115. 16 Knox, Works, II, pp. 287–88. 17 John Leslie, The Historie of Scotland (Edinburgh: Bannatyne Club, 1830), p. 154. 18 S. Carpenter and G. Runnalls, ‘The Entertainments at the Marriage of Mary Queen of Scots and the French Dauphin François, 1558: Paris and Edinburgh’, Medieval English Theatre, 22 (2000), 145–61 [edited in this volume, chapter 4, Eds.]

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farces and playes’.19 These spectacles reaffirmed to the departing Scots queen her own status in France, and the support of her noble family. The full flowering of French court spectacle as a political tool under Catherine de Medici did not develop until after Mary had returned to Scotland,20 but there are many records of rich performances of dance, song, scenic device, and debate at the courts of Henri II (1547–59) and François II (1559–60). These performances often had political dimensions: we know that Mary herself took the role of a Sybil in a performance to welcome Henri II back to court in 1554, addressing her future husband with a speech celebrating her own political and dynastic identity: ‘Delphica Delphini si mentem, oracula tangunt,/Britanibus junges regna Britana tuis’.21 [If Delphic oracles move the mind of the Dauphin,/you will join Britain’s realms with your Bretons.] The content of these performances usually appears as straightforward celebration and the demonstration of royal magnificence. Yet even before Catherine de Medici’s acknowledged policy of using spectacle to reassure and unite the country after the end of the first War of Religion (1562–64), there was a French tradition of employing such entertainments to assert security in the face of conflict or threat. During the brief reign of François II, Mary was received with her husband at the château of Chenonceaux on 31 March 1560 by a spectacular triomphe involving figures of Renomée, Victoire, and Pallas.22 The pageants of this glorious entry suggest only calm and splendid success; yet for the participants it must have tacitly addressed, by its very lack of overt acknowledgement, the recent threats of Protestant uprising, the tensions and disaffection among the nobility, and the insurrection and attack on the court at Amboise barely two weeks earlier. Ruegger traces back at least to 1554 ‘ce phénomène de vie des spectacles comme conjuration des menaces politiques’.23 Given this background, it seems probable that Mary Stewart brought to Scotland from France both a personal delight in courtly performance, and a general sense of spectacle as a means of asserting political confidence and stability. It is clear that Mary’s Scottish court did very quickly establish a culture of entertainment more lavish and spectacular than had been seen in the immediately preceding years. Here, however, Mary’s most immediate comparator in the management of her court was not France but England. In her own early years as monarch Elizabeth I also took lavish pleasure in courtly performance, 19 Leslie, Historie, p. 295. 20 On Catherine de Medici and court spectacle see Graham and McAllister, eds., Royal Tour, and E. Ruegger, ‘De Grace Dieu à Circé: Le Ballet de Cour au XVIe Siècle et son Livret’, Théâtre et Spectacles Hier et Aujourd’hui: Moyen Age et Renaissance (Paris: CTHS, 1991), pp. 145–62. 21 Cited in J. Phillips, Images of a Queen: Mary Stuart in Sixteenth Century Literature (California: University of California Press, 1964), p. 4. Mary’s speech refers to her status as Queen of Scots and her claim to the English throne, as well as her future marriage to the Dauphin. 22 L. Dimier, Le Primatice, Les Maitres du Moyen Age et de la Renaissance (Paris: E. Leroux, 1928), pp. 185–86. 23 Ruegger, ‘Grace Dieu’, pp. 152–53.

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the Italian ambassador Tiepolo reporting in 1559 that ‘the queen’s daily arrangements are musical performances and other entertainments’.24 Like Mary, she plainly enjoyed, and prided herself on, her own skill as a dancer.25 But overall Elizabeth appears as a shrewd observer more often than as a performer. Both Spanish and Italian diplomats mention ‘the queen very fine in her presence chamber looking on at the dancing’; or that ‘she takes marvellous pleasure in seeing people dance’.26 Although more than ready to perform herself on occasion, she appears more deliberate, more concerned with effect in her participation. Evidence from the early years of Elizabeth’s reign suggests that she was also, perhaps because of the uncertainties of her path to the throne, more sharply aware than Mary of the role of performance in controversy and in the manipulation of opinion. In her first months as queen she apparently tolerated, even supported, explicitly controversial court disguisings such as the 1559 Twelfth Night ‘mummery [. . .] of crows in the habits of Cardinals, of asses habited as Bishops, and of wolves representing Abbots’.27 Although such partisan performances were later sharply suppressed,28 Elizabeth was plainly aware of the use of court performance in establishing her Protestant identity, in shaping opinion and debating political issues. It is tempting to crystallise the different attitudes of the English and Scottish queens through tellingly comparable moments from their first triumphal entries into their capital cities.29 At her coronation entry Elizabeth was presented ‘with a book generally supposed to be the New Testament in English, which the queen clasped in her arms and embraced passionately, returning thanks’.30 Jean Wilson points out the political significance of Elizabeth’s action, and her readiness to seize the theatrical occasion for a significant political performance of her own. Mary, encountering an almost identical presentation at her official entry into Edinburgh was, at least according to Knox, a far less accomplished public performer. When the English Bible along with a psalm book was presented to her by a child emerging from a descending globe, ‘sche began to frown; for schame sche could not refuise it’ but she hurriedly handed it on to a Roman Catholic member of her

24 CSP: Venice, VII, 101. 25 The most famous anecdotal evidence is recorded by James Melville: see Sir James Melville of Halhill, Memoirs of his Own Life MDXLIX–MDXCIII, edited by Thomas Thomson (Edinburgh: Bannatyne Club, 1827), p. 125. 26 CSP: Spain, I, 71; CSP: Venice, VII, 101. 27 CSP: Venice, VII, 11. 28 See, for example, at Cambridge in 1564, see Records of Early English Drama: Cambridge, edited by A. H. Nelson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989), I, pp. 242–43. 29 For illuminating discussion of both entries in the context of the genre see G. Kipling, Enter the King: Theatre, Liturgy and Ritual in the Medieval Civic Triumph (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), pp. 125–29 and Chapter 6 passim. 30 CSP: Venice, VII, 15; Wilson, Entertainments, pp. 6–7.

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train.31 The simple explanation, of course, is that the English Bible was a welcome symbol to the Protestant Elizabeth but an affront to the Roman Catholic Mary, and each reacted accordingly. But the contrasted handling of the public theatrical situation reported by onlookers (biased as they may have been) suggests that the two queens, though both aware of the power of royal performance, responded differently to the political possibilities of spectacle. The earliest entertainments of Mary Stewart’s own Scottish court show few overtly political dimensions: we hear of dances and masking at court, the nobility playing in tilts and disguised war-games, spectacular celebrations at noble weddings. Evidence presents these occasions as primarily domestic, a means for the court to give itself pleasure by spectacle and performance. George Buchanan, among others, associated these early entertainments primarily with the French entourage who had accompanied Mary to Scotland, claiming that after her arrival ‘the rest of that year was spent in honourably sending away the French who had ceremoniously accompanied the queen; and in sports and entertainments’.32 Various occasions do seem especially to have involved the French visitors. Lining materials for masking costumes were issued to French valets de chambre and to M. Damville, son of the Constable of France, in October 1561.33 Mary’s uncle, the Marquis d’Elboeuf, then a young man of twenty-five, is recorded as participating in various quasi-theatrical events during December, from a private masking visit to a young woman in the town (sparking near riots as part of a feud being played out between Bothwell and Arran),34 to a magnificent ‘running at the ring’ on Leith sands with the combatants ‘dysguised and appareled thone [the one] half lyke women, and thother lyke strayngers, in straynge maskinge garmentes’.35 While court masking itself had been well-established for many years, it is arguable that both the flirtatious masking visits, and the cross-dressed battle sports might show particularly French influence. Domestic ‘amorous’ masking was a well-established 31 Knox, Works, II, 288. See A. A. MacDonald, ‘Mary Stewart’s Entry to Edinburgh: An Ambiguous Triumph’, Innes Review, 42 (1991), 101–10; Peter Davidson, ‘The Entry of Mary Stewart into Edinburgh, 1561, and other Ambiguities’, Renaissance Studies, 9 (1995), 416–29; A. R. MacDonald, ‘The Triumph of Protestantism: The Burgh Council of Edinburgh and the Entry of Mary Queen of Scots, 2 September 1561’, Innes Review, 48 (1997), 73–82. Lord Herries confirms that the books were ‘emblems of her defending the Reformed Relligion. This was scarse savorie to her at the first entrie! But she went on’. Lord Herries, Historical Memoirs of the Reign of Mary Queen of Scots, edited by R. Pitcairn (Edinburgh: Abbotsford Club, 1836), p. 56. Mary was apparently similarly discomfited at her entry to Perth two weeks later, falling sick and leaving the procession after taking a dislike to pageants which ‘dyd to playnely condemne the errors of the worlde’ (CSP: Scotland, I, 555). 32 Buchanan, Tyrannous Reign, p. 55. 33 Inventaires de la Royne Descosse Douairiere de France [hereafter, Inventories], edited by J. Robertson (Edinburgh: Bannatyne Club, 1863), pp. 127–28. 34 Although d’Elboeuf was identified as the prime mover in this masking visit, it seems to have been engineered by the Earl of Bothwell as a mischievous encounter with a young woman believed to be the lover of the young Earl of Arran, the son of the Duke of Chatelherault and Bothwell’s political enemy: CSP: Scotland, I, 582–83; Knox, Works, II, 315–320. 35 CSP: Scotland, I, 576.

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tradition in France, with its etiquette the subject of a light-hearted section added to Martial d’Auvergne’s popular Arrets d’Amour in 1528; such masking was especially associated with messieurs les mignons, the young men of the French court.36 Joseph Robertson points out that France also offers contemporary parallels to the crossdressed tilting.37 Mary herself most probably witnessed a running at the ring during her own reign in France, in which another of her uncles, the Grand Prior, dressed as an Egyptian woman, while the Duke de Nemours was costumed as a burgher’s wife. But if France was the inspiration for such performances, the Scottish nobility seem to have taken part with equal enthusiasm. The Marquis was accompanied on his domestic masking visits by the Earl of Bothwell and Lord John who also, with the Lord Robert, took part in the running at the ring. These latter two were Mary’s half-brothers, commendators of religious houses at Coldingham and Holyrood, but now, like their elder half-brother Lord James, converts to the reformed religion.38 In spite of Knox’s ire, the reformed nobility of Scotland clearly did not at this stage object to the teasing magnificence of courtly performance, and ‘Lord Robert and the women won the ring’.39 More elaborate entertainments early in 1562 accompanied important weddings. In January Randolph mentions ‘much good sport and pastimes’ at the marriage of Lord John with Bothwell’s sister;40 but it is the February wedding festivities for Lord James, the queen’s oldest half-brother and most senior adviser, later Earl of Moray and Regent, that were seen as especially symptomatic of the new performance culture. The wedding followed the belting of Lord James as Earl of Mar, and it was the celebration of these events that prompted Knox’s anger against spectacle and excess: ‘The greatness of the bancquett, and the vanitie used thairat, offended many godly. Thair began the masking, which from year to year hath continewed since’.41 Masking itself had in fact been established at the Scottish court long before: there are records under James V of ‘play gounis to the Kingis grace to pas in maskrie’ back in 1535.42 It seems to have been the scale and splendour of the entertainments that were considered new. The Diurnall of Remarkable Occurrents, claiming the marriage accompanied ‘sik [such] solemnitie as the lyk hes [has] not bene sein befoir’, is more explicit, describing the queen’s hosting of the banquet at Holyrood with ‘greit and diverse baling, and casting of fyre ballis, fyre speris [spears] and rynning with horsis’.43 Dance and music were combined 36 See M. Twycross and S. Carpenter, Masks and Masking in Medieval and Early Tudor England (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), pp. 172–79. 37 Inventories, p. lxxvii; Seigneur de Brantome [Pierre de Bourdeilles], Oeuvres Complètes, 8 vols (Paris: Foucault Libraire, 1823), III, pp. 154–55. 38 The Heads of the Religious Houses in Scotland from the Twelfth to the Sixteenth Centuries, edited by D. E. R. Watt and N. F. Shead (Edinburgh: Scottish Record Society, 2001), pp. 40, 96. 39 CSP: Scotland, I, 576. 40 CSP: Scotland, I, 590. 41 Knox, Works, II, 314. 42 Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer of Scotland, edited by Thomas Dickson and others, 13 vols (Edinburgh: H. M. General Register House, 1877–1978), VII, 255; hereafter LHTA. 43 A Diurnall of Remarkable Occurrents that have passed within the Country of Scotland since the death of King James the Fourth till the year MDLXXV (Edinburgh: Bannatyne Club, 1833), p. 70.

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with firework display and war sports on a clearly lavish scale. It seems probable that the ‘xxxviij elnis of reid and quhite taffeteis to be maskin claithis of divers prices’, provided to the court tailor on 31 January, were intended for these festivities.44 The spectacle appears to have impressed even the French. Pitscottie claims ‘that same day Monseur Martis [Marquis d’Elboeuf] quhilk was the quenis grace moder broder confessit that he saw nevir sic ane brydill in france nocht the kingis awin brydill’.45 We should remember that Moray, although at this stage conciliatory to his Roman Catholic half-sister, was a committed reformer. His readiness to participate with the queen in such display clearly irritated Knox, who had personally preached on moderation at the wedding service, and perhaps other Protestants. Buchanan claimed later that the festivities at the marriage ‘bitterly offended his friends, and provided the envious with grounds for slander’.46 But Moray does not appear to have found the magnificent disguising of courtly entertainment improper or uncomfortable. In the rather chaotic scramble over Mary’s possessions after her deposition in 1567 Moray, by then Regent, received a quantity of elaborate ‘Maskyne Cleise [clothes]’ from the royal wardrobe, comprising at least thirty spectacular costumes, some in matching sets.47 If the lavishness of court entertainment was really initiated by Mary and her French education, it was clearly accepted by the Scottish nobility as an appropriate and successful means of asserting the status and power both of individuals and of the court itself. Another noble wedding a few months after Moray’s was the occasion for more magnificent entertainment, reinforcing and expanding the role of such performance at the new court. In May 1562 Randolph reported that ‘Lord Fleming shall be married on Sunday next [. . .] the Quene makethe the feaste’.48 John, the fifth Lord Fleming, was a brother of one of the queen’s four Maries, sharing ties of both blood and religion with Mary.49 The queen not only provided the feast but also decked the bride: ten ounces of gold trimming, costing £25 was supplied ‘to garneis [garnish/ornament] ane gowne to my Ladie Flemyng agane hir mariage’.50 The queen’s generosity to her household and close companions frequently seems to have been expressed in such gifts of festivity. There are many instances of her providing clothing, banquets, and the accompanying entertainments for weddings, 44 LHTA, XI, 103. Records suggest that a ‘masking cote’ used about 7 ells of cloth, a team generally involving six or more dancers with matching costumes: see Twycross and Carpenter, Masks, pp. 133–35. 45 Robert Lindsay of Pitscottie, The Historie and Cronicles of Scotland from the Slauchter of King James the First to the Ane Thousande Fyve Hundreith Thrie Scoir Fyftein Zeir, edited by Æ. J. G. Mackay, Scottish Text Society, Old Series, 42, 3 vols (Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1899–1911) II, p. 173 n.7. 46 Buchanan, Tyrannous Reign, pp. 64–65. 47 Inventories, pp. 185–86. 48 CSP: Scotland, I, 622. 49 Donaldson, All the Queen’s Men, p. 58. 50 LHTA, XI, 162.

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most notoriously the mask for the marriage of her valet de chambre Bastien Pagez for which she left Darnley in the Kirk o’Field, thereby avoiding the explosion in 1567. This mode of largesse demonstrates another well-established role of courtly entertainment in the sixteenth century: the splendour of display could constitute a public performance of royal munificence, a performance which honoured both donor and receiver in enacting the glory and the generosity of the monarch.51 The personal celebration of the Fleming wedding extended into an entertainment with wider and more overtly political implications. Pitscottie records that: the same day me lord Fleming was marieit witht great treumph maid, to wit, thair was maid wpoun the locht of Airthour saitt gaillayis and ane castell maid alsua thair of tymmer and greit artaillze [artillery] schot in everie syde, the quens grace and the nobilietie present, quhilk wes done befor the ambassadour of Swadin conforme to the fegour of the seige of Leytht.52 The water battle, combined with a probably pyrotechnic ‘fort-holding’ by Dunsapie Loch in Holyrood Park, confirms that sophisticated martial and firework theatre was already established in Scotland, providing an interesting technical forerunner to the elaborate spectacle four years later at the baptism of James VI at Stirling. According to Pitscottie’s account, however, the aim was more than aesthetic. It was performed before a Swedish ambassador, in Scotland possibly for marriage negotiations between Mary and his king.53 The fort-holding was apparently designed to recall the siege of Leith in 1560, a ferocious assault by the English, aiding the Protestant Lords of Congregation, on the French supporters of the Roman Catholic regent, Mary of Guise, holding the fort of Leith. The wedding spectacle, with its galleys and water-battle, seems to refer to the earlier phase of the siege, a sea-assault initiated in January 1560.54 Both this assault and the land siege that followed were in military terms unsuccessful in ousting the French forces of the queen regent. But since the siege was only concluded with the death of her mother and the negotiated departure of French forces from Scotland, we might not expect Mary to have wholeheartedly welcomed its festive re-enactment. The outcome of the assault in the Treaty of Edinburgh, accepted though never finally ratified by Mary and her then husband, François II, was an uncertain victory. For the queen and her circle at the Fleming wedding, however, the siege’s transformation into a triumphant entertainment may have reinforced its emblematic status as a danger averted and controlled, its victory more secure, its conflict demonstrably no longer a threat to the stability of the realm. 51 52 53 54

Twycross and Carpenter, Masks, pp. 131–33. Pitscottie, Historie, II, 176. See CSP: Scotland, I, 621–30. See The Journal of the Siege of Leith 1560, in Two Missions of Jacques de la Brosse, edited by G. Dickinson (Edinburgh: Scottish History Society, 1942), pp. 56–121; CSP Scotland, I, 300–01.

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Within these first few months of Mary’s reign we already find a range of performances and entertainments, fulfilling a range of purposes: dancing and masking for private pleasure, which could become an assertion of the character of the court or its monarch; deliberate enhancement of the glory of the court through the splendour of the spectacle presented; public demonstration of the monarch’s generosity and the privileged status of the recipient; and control of political events by their translation into festive terms. Although on the face of it none of these entertainments carried, or was designed to carry, any obvious political weight, they all contributed to a climate in which the wider political identity of the court and the monarch were partly formed by performance. There are two intertwined strands of court performance during Mary’s reign in Scotland. Before considering the more deliberately political entertainments it is worth pursuing some of the implications of her personal pleasure in courtly performance. According to Knox she was explicit about her delight in such entertainment: ‘Hir commoun talk was, in secreat, sche saw nothing in Scotland but gravitie, which repugned alltogetther to her nature, for sche was brocht up in joyusitie; so termed sche hir dansing, and othir thingis thairto belonging’.55 Knox’s sarcastic reflections on such ‘joyusitie’ assert a link between courtly dance and masking performance, and sexual licence, ascribing the phenomenon to French influence.56 For him performance was intrinsically bound up with both sexual and political offence. Even at the time this was an extreme view. Music and dance supplied the commonest mode of European court entertainment at the time, and Renaissance courts were by the later sixteenth century well supplied with theoretical analyses of the dance that presented it as a neo-platonic image of cosmic harmony.57 More practically, contemporary diplomatic comment suggests that dance was generally accepted as an appropriate mode of courtly spectacle, dignifying the court and providing a suitable showcase especially for its younger members, along with a means for both sexes to be involved in assertions of personal and political harmony. Criticism might be levelled at excessive dance entertainment, but rarely at dancing itself. It is arguable however that Mary’s pleasurable participation in court dance entertainment tended towards the personal rather than the public end of the spectrum. Those commenting on Elizabeth’s performances suggest a fairly calculated sense of public effect: ‘at the dance the queen performed her part, the Duke of Norfolk being her partner, in superb array’.58 Sir James Melville apparently recognised the official quality, famously distinguishing her performance as ‘high and disposed’ in comparison with Mary’s.59 Court observers suggest that Mary danced more readily, 55 Knox, Works, II, 294. 56 See Knox’s reflections on the ‘Mask of Orleans’, Works, II, 318–19. 57 See Margaret McGowan, L’Art du Ballet de Cour en France, 1581–1643 (Paris: CNRS, 1963), chapter 1; Ruegger, ‘Grace Dieu’. 58 CSP: Venice, VII, 27. 59 Melville, Memoirs, p. 125.

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more informally, and less self-consciously than her cousin. Passing comments reveal dance as a natural feature of her court life, marking all ordinary festivity. Some commentators claimed that the informality of her dance performance could be surprising. Knox, most explicitly, accused the queen of excessive public intimacy with the young and unfortunate Chastelard in one particular dance ‘in the which man and woman talkis secreatlie’.60 Later, the French ambassador Le Foix told Catherine de Medici in January 1565 that she might find it strange that while the newly re-instated Earl of Lennox, recently returned to Scotland, ‘mène le plus souvent ladicte dame à la dance, quelquefois, à faulte d’aultre, ung de ses gentilzhommes servans’.61 Both men may have overemphasised the level of personal involvement in these performances: Knox acknowledged that ‘secret talk’ was a formal, if deplorable, part of the dance in question, and de Foix that such dancing behaviour was ‘ordinaire et tous les jours accoustumé en Escosse’. But such comments suggest that Mary did manifestly enjoy the more personal pleasures of dance. In his influential dance manual of 1588, Orchésographie, Thoinot Arbeau lists different kinds of public role for dance performance: les Roys & princes, commandent dances & mascarades, pour festoier, recepuoir, & faire receuil ioyeux, aux seigneurs estrangiers. Nous practiquons telles refiouissances aux iours de la celebration des nopces, & ez sollemnités des festes de nostre Eglise.62 [Kings and princes command dances and masks, to celebrate, receive, and welcome foreign nobility. We use such festivity on days of wedding celebrations, and at the festive ceremonial on Church holidays.] All these public manifestations of dance entertainment can be found at the Scottish court (even though, as Arbeau himself acknowledges, ‘les reformez abhorrent telles choses’). But Arbeau also outlines eloquently the particular pleasures of performance for the individual dancer. Dance is, he claims: vne espece de Rhetorique muette, par laquelle lO’rateur [sic] peult par ses mouuements, sans parler vn seul mot, se faire entendre, & persuader aux spectateurs, quil est gaillard digne destre loué, aymé, & chery.63 [A kind of silent rhetoric, by which the orator can by his movements, without speaking a single word, make himself understood, and persuade the spectators that he is gallant, worthy to be praised, loved, and cherished.] 60 Knox, Works, II, 368. Chastelard was later executed for invading Mary’s bedchamber. ‘Commoning’ between male and female dancers was, however, a distinguishing feature of Italianate mask dancing (see Twycross and Carpenter, Masks, pp. 169–72). 61 Alexandre Teulet, Relations Politiques de la France et de l’Espagne avec l’Ecosse au XVIe Siecle (Paris: Veuve Joules Renouard, 1862), II, p. 189. 62 Thoinot Arbeau, Orchesographie (Lengres: Jehan des Preyz, 1588), sig. Aiiiv. 63 Arbeau, Orchesographie, sig. Bir.

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In her own day Mary’s public image as queen was interpreted both positively and negatively as bound up with just such demonstrative expression of desire and desirability.64 It seems entirely probable that her pleasure in dancing asserted, in addition to any formal element of entertainment, a desire to be ‘loué, aymé, & chery’. Her behaviour in court was always readily emotionally demonstrative, a fact frequently reported by diplomats and observers.65 Courtly dance provided an arena in which the private and public roles of the monarch could interact, allowing Mary to perform an image of herself as queen in which both were important. One step beyond dance was masking, by the later sixteenth century widespread through all European courts. The commonest pattern involved a team of masked dancers, drawn from the members of the court, in matching, elaborate though not necessarily representational costumes, who would perform exhibition dances themselves and then take partners from among the unmasked court spectators. Sometimes this might include formalised elements of scenario; but dance was at the core of the mask. The mask form thus involved spectacular costume, though not necessarily impersonation, a teasing play with anonymity and identity, and a deliberate unsettling of any boundary between ‘performance’ and ‘participation’.66 Mary’s court plainly enjoyed masking activities throughout her personal reign. ‘Masks’ are frequently mentioned at court celebrations and weddings. Accounts and inventories record many masking garments, properties, or materials towards them: ‘deux manteaux de masque faictz de taffetas blanc’; ‘damas blanc pour faire six gibesieres [knapsacks/hunting bags] de bergers pour des masques au nopces de Monsieur de Sainct Cosme’; ‘troy rest de taffetas orangie chengent contenant xxviij aulnes demy cart qui furt enploye pour les masque qui fit la Royne le jour de son bonque’; ‘vj maskis, the pece xx s’.67 Old clothes and hangings would furnish materials for masking costumes: ‘Je rompu vng soye de velours bleu pour faire trois grands bonnetz a la Souisse pour faire des masques’.68 An impression of the splendour of the masking garments comes from the 1569 list of costumes handed over to the Regent Moray: the ‘vj coitis begareit with quheit and reid satyne and dropit with cleith of gold’ suggest the dazzling effect of a team of matching dancers; while the ‘coit of quheit armosing tauffateis, hingand full of schakaris, broderit with gold’ accompanied with its ‘howde of quheit and 64 For discussion of issues of desire and femininity at Mary’s court, see Sarah Dunnigan, ‘Rewriting the Renaissance Language of Love and Desire: the “bodily burdein” in the Poetry of Mary, Queen of Scots’, Gramma, 4 (1996), 183–95; ‘The Creation and Self-creation of Mary Queen of Scots: literature, politics and female controversies in sixteenth-century Scottish poetry’, Scotlands, 5 (1998) 65–88; David Parkinson, ‘”A Lamentable Storie”: Mary Queen of Scots and the Inescapable Querelle des Femmes’, in A Palace in the Wild: Essays on Vernacular Culture and Humanism in Late-Medieval and Renaissance Scotland, edited by L. A. J. R. Hoewen, A. A. MacDonald and S. Mapstone (Leuven: Peeters, 2000), pp. 141–160. 65 CSP: Scotland, I, 551, 628, 641; II, 3 et al. 66 Twycross and Carpenter, Masks, pp. 169–90. 67 Inventories, pp. 136 and 144; LHTA, XI, 358. 68 Inventories, p. 141.

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reid tauffateis, full of schakaris’ confirm Francis Bacon’s observation that ‘oes, or spangs, as they are of no great cost, so they are of most glory’.69 Display, performance, and disguise were clearly important and pleasurable elements of the life of Mary’s court, contributing to the public definition both of the monarch and of courtly allegiances. It is against this background that we must read the more explicitly political entertainments of Mary Stewart’s reign. Most of these address Anglo-Scottish relations, as do a number of contemporary English court performances. The implied dialogue that can be traced between the entertainments of the two courts is both politically and expressively revealing. A broad overall difference in the culture of performance emerges: Mary’s entertainments tend to focus on the personal relationship between herself and the English queen, employing a visually assertive mode of spectacle and show, emphasising harmony and security. Elizabeth more often watched performances focusing on the political issues raised, in dramas or narratives of debate and analysis. The differences testify to the expressive range of sixteenth-century court performance as a language of political intervention. In the early weeks of 1562, in the first winter festivities of Mary’s reign, each court witnessed a performance concerning the other. On 18 January 1562 Robert Dudley brought to the court at Whitehall from the Inner Temple a play, mask, and triumph. Scholars have established that the play was Gorboduc, addressing the question of the English succession, while the mask explored in allegorical terms the marriage possibilities for Elizabeth, enacting Dudley’s own worthiness as a suitor.70 As Marie Axton’s detailed and revealing analysis points out, ‘when they took their entertainments to the Court the Inner Templars offered the queen advice on the two most controversial political questions of the day: her marriage and the succession’.71 It is the question of succession which involved the position of Mary Stewart. At the end of the play’s story of tragically divided inheritance and civil conflict, a discussion on the succession to Gorboduc’s line in Act V apparently explicitly attacks the claim of the Roman Catholic and foreign Mary Stewart to be recognised as Elizabeth’s heir: ‘in no wise admit/The heavy yoke of foreign governance’.72 An oblique allusion to the threat to national peace and security that Mary represents also seems to appear in the snaky-haired figures of the Furies, associated with discord and division, who appear in one of the play’s dumbshows.73 The question of Mary’s right to be recognised as Elizabeth’s rightful heir was a live and thorny one that dominated the relationship between the two queens.

69 Inventories, p. 186; Bacon, Essays, p. 115. Bacon also observes that white was an especially good colour for masking costumes as it was one of those ‘that shew best by candle-light’. 70 M. Axton, ‘Robert Dudley and the Inner Temple Revels’, The Historical Review, 13 (1970), 365–78. 71 Axton, ‘Robert Dudley’, p. 374. 72 Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville, Gorboduc in Two Tudor Tragedies, edited by W. Tydeman (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1992), l. 1688. 73 Norton and Sackville, Gorboduc, p. 94.

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Throughout the first years of Mary’s personal rule the question remained the primary cause of tension between the two, threatening all efforts to establish a personal friendship. It is indicative of the performance culture of Elizabeth’s court that drama was recognised as a proper arena in which such delicate and potentially explosive issues might be explored, and the queen herself addressed, influenced, or persuaded. There is no evidence that reports of this anti-Marian performance reached Scotland: although it concerned Mary, the play was aimed at Elizabeth and the court of England, addressing an ongoing internal debate.74 However, some three weeks later Randolph sent an account to Elizabeth’s secretary Cecil of an episode at a banquet at the Scottish court. Though scarcely an entertainment, it is plainly a deliberate courtly performance and one that sought to address political issues beyond its immediate audience: upon Shrove Twesdaye at nyght, syttinge amongest the lordes at supper in the syght of this Quene, placed for that purpose, she dranke unto the Quenes Majestie, and sent me the cuppe of golde which waythe xviij or xx unces.’After supper in giving her Majesty thanks, she uttered in many ‘effectueus’ words, her desire of perpetual amity, and talked long with me thereon in the hearing of the Duke and Huntly. I thought it my duty to signify this for your honour to report to the Queen’s Majesty.75 Randolph perceives the apparently informal moment as a carefully managed performance. The health-drinking and the symbolic largesse of the gold cup are clearly designed as a public enactment of Mary’s personal commitment to English friendship. The subsequent conversation is an extension of the performance, apparently deliberately held in the hearing of the Duke of Chatelherault and the Earl of Huntly, important members of the privy council. While the Duke was committed to the reformed religion and Huntly was a Roman Catholic, both were well known to favour amity with France rather than England.76 Although superficially a commonplace piece of courtesy, the moment was clearly recognised as theatrical, designed to be seen and to impress a number of different audiences.77 It seems characteristic that Mary herself enacted the scene as an assertion of her amity to Elizabeth. It is not a comment upon, but an intervention in, a relationship which the performance defines as a personal one. Its implications are, 74 Mary did, however, hear of and complain about a ‘discourse haid at Lyncollis Innis’ on her position in the succession in 1566. See CSP: Scotland, II, 304. 75 CSP: Scotland, I, 603. This occurred during the festivities accompanying Moray’s marriage. 76 Allan White, ‘Queen Mary’s Northern Province’, in Mary Stewart: Queen in Three Kingdoms, edited by M. Lynch (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988), pp. 53–70 (pp. 54–55). 77 Its significance is confirmed by Knox who thought it worth recording in his own history: ‘for his [Randolph’s] Maistres saik, she drank to him [in] a coupe of gold, which he possessed with greattar joy, for the favour of the gevar, then of the gift’, Knox, Works, II, 314–15.

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however, plainly political and its audience is conceived in political terms. The gesture is performed as a political statement to the Scottish court in general and to the opponents of English amity in particular. Yet the official representative of England has been set up as the prime spectator. Randolph is ‘in the syght of this Quene, placed for that purpose’; and he is a spectator through whom the spectacle will pass to a yet more important audience: ‘I thought it my duty to signify this for your honour to report to the Queen’s Majesty’. The tiny performance is aimed beyond the walls of Holyrood and the court of Scotland, right into the court of England itself. Mary’s emphasis on her personal relationship with Elizabeth as the means to resolve political differences underlay the negotiations for an interview between the two queens in England in the summer of 1562. These advanced to an almost final point: safe-conducts, passports, and even provisions were arranged, and the Scottish nobles were summoned to prepare to leave Edinburgh on 15 July. Only at the very last minute did the English withdraw, citing the religious conflict in France which threatened the delicate relationships between the three countries. Royal interviews of this kind, ostensibly opportunities for diplomatic negotiation at the very highest level, were not only accompanied by lavish entertainments and spectacle but were in themselves a form of theatre in which monarchs enacted both their own magnificence and their glorious alliance with each other.78 Preparations suggest that Mary and the Scots well understood the importance of such display.79 The interview was seen on both sides as an important courtly show, as well as a personal and political meeting. Most revealing, however, is a detailed account of the formal entertainments devised for the meeting by the English court. Arrangements were so advanced that Cecil had received and carefully vetted a plan of the ‘Devyces to be shewed before the quenes Matie by waye of maskinge, at Nottingham castell, after the meteinge of the quene of Scottis’.80 Spread across three evenings, these masking scenarios were designed to celebrate the political significance of the meeting of queens in appropriately spectacular mode. Though carefully uncontroversial, the devices covertly imply some assertion of English control. The masks followed traditional patterns. Each evening would present an elaborate entry of maskers, riding strange beasts or in triumphal floats. An allegorical narrative would be played out, each evening concluding with masking dances.

78 The Field of Cloth of Gold is a spectacular example: see Anglo, Spectacle, pp. 137–69. 79 Randolph reports discussion of ‘the great charges to this Queen and realm, of such “solemne meetinge”’; the problem of suitably spectacular costume was finally solved by deciding ‘that all men shall wear black cloth, for the Queen herself has not cast off “her murnynge garmentys which wyll holde in verie myche monye.”’ CSP: Scotland, I, 608, 621. 80 Chambers, ‘Lansdowne Manuscripts’, p. 144.

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Overtly the performances present a poised celebration of mutual alliance. They opened with: Pallas rydinge vppon an vnycorne, havinge in her hande a Standarde, in wch is to be paynted ij Ladyes handes, knitt one faste wthin thother, and over thandes written in letters of golde/ffides/81 Pallas, already an image with some association with Elizabeth, borne by the Scottish unicorn, carries a banner asserting the equality and friendship of the two queens. She was followed by: ‘ij Ladyes rydinge togethers thone vppon a golden Lyon, wth a crowne of gold on his heade, thother vppon a redd Lyon wth the like crowne of gold’.82 These ladies, though identified as the virtues Prudentia and Temperantia, ride on the golden lion of England, the red lion of Scotland. Behind them are brought ‘captive Discorde, and false Reporte, with ropes of gold about there neckes’, who are then confined in the prison of Extreme Oblivion. The second night brought Peace, riding an elephant, to live with the two ladies in the Castle of Plentie. The resulting prosperity was disrupted on the third evening by Disdain on a wild boar, bringing his captain Prepence Malice to banish Peace and liberate Discord and False Report. Discretion and Valiant Courage, armed by Patience and Temperance, are sent against them, overcoming the vices who threaten ‘the perpetuall peace made betwene those ij vertues’.83 The enacted harmony between the two queens would then ripple out into the courtly spectators, as on the first evening ‘thinglishe Ladies to take the nobilite of the straunger and daunce’, while on the second ‘thinglishe Lordes shall maske wth the Scottishe Ladyes’.84 Conceived to be played before the two monarchs, these spectacular entertainments assert their equality, reject ancient discord and ‘False Report’, and celebrate the perpetual treaty of friendship which the Queen of Scots was thought to pursue.85 The performance might almost be seen to dramatise a letter from Mary to Elizabeth in January 1562: ‘the matter being so knit up, and all seed of dissension uprooted, we shall present to the world such an amity as has never been seen’.86 The show was undoubtedly intended to be read in such a way. Its performance frustrated by the failure of the interview, it was apparently made over for a different meeting of reconciliation ten years later. In June 1572 the French marshal Montmorency visited the English court to conclude a peace negotiation which briefly resurrected friendly relations between England and France. For that occasion Revels accounts record the construction of ‘A Castell for Lady peace to sytt’ and ‘A prison for discord’, along with ‘vj yardes of cheyne with the golde lether 81 82 83 84 85

Chambers, ‘Lansdowne Manuscripts’, p. 145. Chambers, ‘Lansdowne Manuscripts’, p. 145. Chambers, ‘Lansdowne Manuscripts’, p. 148. Chambers, ‘Lansdowne Manuscripts’, pp. 145, 146. Mary had clearly been taught from childhood to pursue this image. In an autograph letter to Elizabeth she wrote, aged only eleven, of ‘a perpetual memory of two Queens in this isle joined in inviolable friendship’, CSP: Scotland, I, 194. 86 CSP: Scotland, I, 587.

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[ . . . ] A Bolte, shackles & a coller for Discorde’ with ‘Curling of Heare made of Black silk for Discordes heade’.87 The images of the intended Nottingham masks clearly constituted an enduring visual language of peace, appropriate for any meeting of reconciliation. But hindsight introduces a further reading of the planned shows, a reading which, although not active in summer 1562, might be seen as latent in the congratulatory images. Explicitly the mask represented the two queens to themselves as poised and equal virtues, Prudentia and Temperantia, with equal power, equal commitment to peace, equal roles to play in its defence. The action overall is governed, however, by the opposing forces of Pallas and Discord. These are both common figures in such congratulatory shows, figures that Mary would have encountered in festive celebrations in France.88 But even so early in Elizabeth’s reign, tradition had already begun to link her to Pallas, the virginal goddess of wisdom. She had been so figured only a few months before in the mask accompanying the performance of Gorboduc. The wild-haired Discord, on the other hand, came in the English view to be associated with the Queen of Scots. In the Gorboduc dumbshow the threat of conflict posed by Mary’s claim to the succession and the invasion from the North is, though obliquely, associated with the snake-headed Furies. Elizabeth herself famously came to characterise Mary as the ‘daughter of debate, that discord aye doth sow’.89 There is no reason to assume that such an opposition was intended to be realised had the two queens actually watched this entertainment in 1562, in fact quite the contrary since Cecil’s vetting of the plans was designed to control the political impact of the show. But it is interesting that the theatrical language of courtly performance so readily allows for such a reading, and entirely likely that an English court audience would have been quite acute enough to read it in that way at a different political juncture. The meanings of such shows depend as much on the political circumstances of performance as on the performance itself. This is crucially true of an entertainment at the Scottish court eighteen months later, during Shrovetide 1564. Randolph describes an elaborate banquet, with each course accompanied by music and pageantry celebrating Eros, Chastity, and Mutual Love. Superficially the show again seems entirely traditional, echoing similar love/chastity debates at other Renaissance courts.90 But the moment of performance was dynamically informed by the particular political context, turning the apparently neutrally decorative entertainment into an eloquent if enigmatic diplomatic statement. 87 A. Feuillerat, ed., Documents relating to the Office of the Revels in the time of Queen Elizabeth (Louvain: A. Uystpruyst, 1908), pp. 157–58. 88 See notes 7 and 22, this chapter. 89 The Poems of Queen Elizabeth I, edited by L. Bradner (Providence: Brown University Press, 1964), p. 4. For further analysis see Axton, Queen’s Two Bodies, pp. 48–49; Phillips, Images of a Queen, pp. 81–84. 90 See note 9, this chapter.

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Since 1562 the focus of Anglo-Scottish relations had shifted towards the Queen of Scots’ marriage and English approval for any match. By the end of 1563 Elizabeth had ruled out a wide range of foreign suitors, causing Mary deep frustration and leading Randolph to conclude shortly before Christmas that ‘some think the queen’s sickness is caused by her utterly despairing of the marriage of any of those she looked for’.91 At the end of December Randolph, under orders from England, began to hint to her the advantages of an English match.92 The new year opened with a sustained and dazzling period of ‘mirth and pastimes’ culminating in a series of Shrovetide banquets.93 Randolph interestingly interprets this season of entertainment as politically motivated, even while acknowledging that those motives are unclear: ‘The banquete insuethe here upon; what divelyshe devises are imagined upon that, yt passethe all moste the wytte of man to thynke! lyttle good some saye is intended to some or other’.94 He draws parallels with similar banquets hosted by Mary’s mother before ‘the trobles’ of 1559 erupted in violent conflict between the Reformers and the Roman Catholic regent.95 Knox also claimed the 1564 entertainments were ‘done upoun polessie’,96 confirming the contemporary reading of court performance as intrinsically political. The love/chastity entertainment emerges from this climate of heightened political awareness. The dispatch in which Randolph describes it to Cecil opens with a long reflection on the queen’s marriage. He then speaks of ‘marvellous sights and shows, singular devices’ at the climactic banquet of the season; Mary herself, and her ladies and gentlemen who served at the feast, were strikingly ‘all yn whyte and blacke’.97 Randolph then describes three successive courses, accompanied by ‘blind Cupid’, ‘a fayer yonge Maid’, and ‘a yonge Childe set forth like vnto Tyme’. The accompanying waiters sang verses celebrating, respectively, Love, Chastity, and Mutual Love, with the final song articulating an openly political statement, concluding with an explicit statement of harmony between Mary and Elizabeth: Rerum supremus terminus Ut astra terris misceat, 91 CSP: Scotland, II, 30. 92 CSP: Scotland, II, 31–33. 93 See CSP: Scotland, II, 34, 41; James Dennistoun and Alexander Macdonald, eds., Miscellany of the Maitland Club (Edinburgh: Maitland Club, 1840), II, 391–92. 94 CSP: Scotland, II, 46. 95 This earlier case confirms the political illegibility of court festivity: Randolph read Mary of Guise’s festivity as calculated to distract attention from her plan to go ‘about to suppress “Godes worde”’; John Leslie saw an equally political but opposite intention of reconciling the Protestant lords ‘thinking be that and siclike familiar intertenement to have stayed all thair interprices’ (Leslie, Historie, p. 269). 96 Knox, Works, II, 417. 97 CSP: Scotland, II, 47. Although the colours are common, this could be read as compliment to Elizabeth who claimed them as her own in a comparable English court performance a few months later (CSP: Spain, I, 368). On the other hand, the first masking costumes recorded at the Scottish court, for James V in 1535, were also black and white.

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Regina Scota diliget Anglam, Angla Scotam diliget.98 [Though the last end of the universe confounds heaven with earth, the queen of Scots will love the English queen; the English queen, the queen of Scots.] This combination of spectacle and impersonation, music and song, was plainly aimed by Mary at an English as well as a Scottish audience. As two years previously, Randolph is alert to the symbolic performance of amity: ‘My Sovereign was drunk unto openly, not one of 300 persons or more, but heard the words spoken and saw the cups pass between’.99 But now Mary also stressed the verbal content of the performance, openly indicating that it was intended for Elizabeth’s ears. She told Randolph that the feelings expressed towards the English queen were: more in heart than in outward show, as these verses shall testify, which she gave me in my hand, ‘(the self same that were songe)’ and willed me to do with them as I liked. I trust your honour will present them to the queen’s majesty.100 Randolph enclosed these copies of the verses with his letter: a lyric in Italian celebrating the power of Cupid; Latin verses by George Buchanan asserting the power of Chastity; and finally Buchanan’s Mutuus Amor, which concludes with the assertion of unshakeable love between the queens of England and Scotland.101 Mary’s presentation of the lyrics to Randolph ensured that the mask had a double audience: the Scottish court at the banquet, and the English monarch beyond. Buchanan’s complimentary verses might easily have been sent directly to Elizabeth, as had happened before.102 The more indirect course Mary chose suggests that she felt it important that the English queen was aware of the performance context. The theatrical enactment of amity to Elizabeth within the Scottish court was itself part of the mask’s political implication, transforming personal friendship into diplomatic statement. Elizabeth is defined as the ‘audience’ not of the entertainment itself, but of the Scottish court watching and hearing it: the gesture of amity becomes a kind of ‘play within a play’. Traditional as it is, the imagery of the performance was also carefully chosen. The opposition of love and chastity was topically charged at this moment when marriage negotiation was so live an issue. The dominance allowed to ‘Chastity, Keith, History, II, 220. CSP: Scotland, II, 47. CSP: Scotland, II, 47. All the verses are printed in Keith, History, II, 220. For Buchanan’s ‘In Castitatem’ and ‘Mutuus Amor’, see Opera Omnia, edited by T. Ruddiman and P. Burmann (Leiden: Johannum Arnoldum Langorak, 1725), II, pp. 409–10, 418; for translations, see P. Ford, George Buchanan: Prince of Poets (Aberdeen: University of Aberdeen Press, 1982), pp. 139, 159. 102 See, for example, CSP: Scotland, II, 637. 98 99 100 101

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conqueror of alluring love’ may well compliment Elizabeth, while the resolution of what initially seems a marriage debate into sisterly affection apparently signals Mary’s continuing willingness, in spite of her known unhappiness with the situation, to prefer Elizabeth’s favour to the marriage she so desires. It is not clear, however, whether the show suggests that Mary will continue to defer to Elizabeth’s advice on her choice of husband, or whether it simply asserts that whatever choice she makes cannot affect the alliance between them. Such ambivalence is by no means uncommon in courtly pageantry.103 But the entertainment as a whole recalls the half-joking assertion made earlier in the reign, ‘that thys Queen wysshed that one of the two were a man, to mayke an ende of all debates’.104 The two queens, Buchanan’s lyric implies, are indeed effectively married to each other. The following year, of course, theatrical marriage to Elizabeth was superseded by real marriage to Darnley and antagonism between the two queens. Although there is no record of deliberately political entertainment associated with these developments, Randolph tends to identify Mary’s shifting allegiances partly through the implications of informal court performance. In October 1564 he reports ‘she danced long “and in a maske playinge at dyce, loste unto my lord of Lenox a prettie juell of crystall well sette in golde”’.105 This informal court masking activity reveals a reconciliation with the re-instated Earl of Lennox, only recently permitted to return to Scotland; by the end of February Lennox’s newly arrived son Darnley ‘being required by Murray, danced a “galiarde” with the Queen’.106 The notoriously rapid development of the relationship between the couple accompanies an apparent increase in unofficial quasi-theatrical activity. The match was seen at the time as impulsive and emotional rather than politically considered, and the queen appears to have used the resources of informal performance to assert her personal, rather than political engagement. In the middle of Darnley’s April illness in Stirling which is generally assumed to have triggered the sudden growth of intimacy between the two,107 Mary followed an unusually elaborate Easter Mass, wanting ‘nether trompet, drumme, nor fyffe, bagge pype, nor taber’,108 with a playful public ‘hocking’ on Easter Monday: On Monday she and divers of her women apparelled themselves like ‘bourgois’ wives, and went upon their feet up and down the town, of every man they met they took some pledge for a piece of money to the banquet; and in the same lodging where I was accustomed to lodge, there 103 See MacDonald, ‘Ambiguous Triumph’; and Davidson, ‘Entry’. 104 CSP: Scotland, I, 570. Only a few weeks before this entertainment the Duke of Argyll had joked with Mary when she mentioned an English marriage, ‘Is the Quene of Englande become a man?’ (CSP: Scotland, II, 33). 105 CSP: Scotland, II, 88. 106 CSP: Scotland, II, 128. 107 See, for example, Antonia Fraser, Mary Queen of Scots (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1969), pp. 270–77. 108 CSP: Scotland, II, 148.

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was the dinner prepared and great cheer made, at which she was herself, to the great wonder and ‘gasinge’ of man woman and child!109 Randolph, unsympathetic to the Darnley match, stresses the inappropriate selfdisplay of this entertainment, ‘Thys is myche wondered at of a Quene’; but theatricality seems to have been an important element of this stage of the courtship. There is unusually high expenditure on coloured taffetas, silks, velvets, and masks during the month, conveyed to the queen by ‘Johnie Ramsay, passand of Edinburght to Striviling witht certane merchandice concernyng the furnetour of the Quenis grace for the Maii plais’.110 According, again, to Randolph, Darnley joined the queen in similarly playful performance very shortly before the official marriage in July: ‘That afternone she and my lord Darlye walked up and downe the towne dysguysed untyll suppertyme, and returned thither agayne’.111 Like her great uncle Henry VIII thirty years previously, Mary seems to have seen a natural affinity between marriage and masking.112 The formal performances for the wedding itself, on 29 July 1565, appear to avoid explicit engagement with its fraught political context. Elizabeth’s disapproval of the match, the general absence of international representatives, and the opposition of many of the Scottish nobility, including Moray, made the marriage a contested and contentious event. There are no eye-witness accounts, though Knox insisted that ‘during the space of three or four days, there was nothing but balling, and dancing, and banquetting’.113 However texts survive for Pompae composed by George Buchanan for the wedding celebrations which provide a more detailed view.114 The first entertainment presented a series of gods and goddesses praising the power of marriage and of love, and celebrating the queen as one of the band of five ‘Maries’. The second performance brought in bands of exotic visitors to congratulate the couple: mounted horsemen from Ethiopia and the North, nymphs from Neptune, knights of Virtue, of Pallas and Cupid all offer allegiance to the couple. The queen’s four Maries also performed a mask celebrating the return of Salus, the goddess of life and health. None of these masks engage openly with political questions, seeming instead to centre largely on the closest members of the court and the personal prosperity and welfare of the married couple. 109 CSP: Scotland, II, 148. For Easter Monday hocking customs, see R. Hutton, The Stations of the Sun (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 207–13. These are not recorded as traditional in Scotland. 110 LHTA, XI, 359. 111 Selections from unpublished manuscripts in the College of Arms and the British Museum, edited by J. Stevenson (Glasgow: Maitland Club, 1837), pp. 119–20. 112 Eustace Chapuys, the Emperor’s ambassador to Henry VIII’s court, commented in 1538, ‘He cannot be one single moment without masks, which is a sign that he purposes to marry again’ (CSP: Spain, V.2, 520). 113 Knox, Works, II, 495. 114 Buchanan, ‘Pompa Deorum in Nuptiis Mariae’, ‘Pompae Equestres’ in Opera, II, pp. 400–403.

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As with the Shrovetide banquet of 1564, however, the traditional materials are likely to have acquired more explicit resonance from their inevitably political context. The first, in which Diana laments that marriage is stealing one of her band of five Maries, develops into another chastity/marriage debate. A range of classical gods assert the superiority of fertile marriage as the source of continuity, of new virgins, new soldiers, and new Maries. These commonplace wedding sentiments may well have carried a sharper edge, given the angry opposition to the marriage of the virginal Elizabeth. This would be further complicated by the fact that any children conceived in it, by parents who both had claims to the English succession, would carry implications for the English as well as the Scottish throne. The structure of the second mask might also suggest broader political issues: as Ian McFarlane points out, it echoes the form of many French courtly shows in which bands of visitors enter to honour the monarch, a motif Buchanan repeats in the baptismal celebrations for the couple’s son eighteen months later.115 Such shows, asserting the extent of royal power, constructed the ruler as the stable and magnificent centre around whom the world revolves.116 However, the choice of visitors at this wedding mask seems uncontentious: the lands represented are exotically distant from Scotland’s reality, while the allegorical Knights of Virtue, Wisdom, and Love tend to shift the focus from the particular to the more generalised. The form and splendour of the entertainment suggest French influence; but in spite of its tacit reflection on Elizabeth, the performance seems to look more inward than outward, celebrating the personal fulfilment of marriage and the joy of the immediate courtly household, while avoiding direct engagement with the broader and far less consensual implications for the realm. The marriage marked a crucial shift in relations between Scotland and England, one effect of which is that Randolph came to lose his position at the Scottish court. Late in 1565 he was expelled for undiplomatic activities, removing our chief political eye-witness for the performances enacted there.117 Scantier evidence from other sources suggests that in spite of the demands of the Chaseabout Raid, caused by Moray’s rebellion, in the months following the marriage, and indeed the rapid deterioration in relations between the queen and her husband, performance continued to play an important part in court life. Expenses over the Christmas season 1565–66 imply ongoing masking activity, with payments for lavish fabrics alongside what seem to be props: ‘Item, ij dosane [dozen] of flouris maid of fedderis [feathers], . . . iij li; Item, ane creill to put thame in, . . . ij s; Item, thre grit dice, . . . iij s’. We also find ‘certane merchandice in ane grit

115 I. D. McFarlane, Buchanan (London: Duckworth, 1981), pp. 233–34. 116 For French examples, see Ruegger, ‘Grace Dieu’. For later Scottish examples, see Alexander Montgomerie, Works, edited by J. Cranstoun (Edinburgh: Scottish Text Society, 1887), ‘The Navigatioun’, pp. 205–12; ‘A Cartell of the Thre Ventrous Knichts’, pp. 213–14. 117 Randolph shared the English opposition to the Darnley marriage. Maurice Lee concludes that from this period his dispatches are prone to misrepresentation: Lee, James Stewart, Earl of Moray (New York: Columbia University Press, 1953), p. 139n.

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pan3eour’ decorated by the painter, thirty-two sheets of gold foil for gilding, and even pyrotechnics: ‘to Charlis Burdeaulx for certane fire werk maid to his grace [4 li.]’.118 The announcement of the queen’s pregnancy on New Year’s Day apparently emerges from a context of celebratory performance. The first occasion for more official diplomatic entertainment and international recognition presented itself in February 1566, when the French ambassador Rambouillet arrived to invest Darnley with the order of St Michael. Despite increasing ill-feeling between the king and queen, both took part in several days of magnificent performance designed to honour the ambassadors, and through them the French king. Randolph, though by now banished to Berwick for supporting the Protestant rebels, heard of ‘a costlye maske in which the Quene, her howsbonde and David [Riccio] were with vij other in riche attire’.119 The participation of the royal couple, known by now to be in conflict, appears as so often to employ performance to assert glorious harmony in the face of tension. On the second day: at evin our soueranis maid the maskrie and mumschance, in the quhilk the quenis grace, and all hir Maries and ladies wer all cled in mens apperrell; and everie ane of thame presentit ane quhingar [dagger], bravelie and maist artificiallie made and embroiderit with gold, to the said ambassatour and his gentilmen, euerie ane of thame according to his estate.120 Masking was, as we have seen, an established means of performing largesse: the theatrical enactment of lavish royal generosity, especially where the monarch performed personally, enhanced the honour and value of the gift.121 Care was taken to turn the souvenir Scottish daggers into spectacular dramatic props, the queen’s Master of the Wardrobe providing ‘iij quartier de veloux noyr pour fairre viij fourreaux a des dacques dEcosse’.122 The male dress of Mary and her ladies adds a teasing though familiar ambivalence to the performance. Cross-dressing was not uncommon in court masking, extending the central pleasure in playful disguise and the flirtatiously heightened awareness of royal or noble identity beneath the mask.123 Mary herself was alleged to have also enjoyed cross-dressing on more informal occasions. Her father-in-law the Earl of Lennox, after the murder of his son, claimed that ‘man’s apparel [. . .] she loved oftentimes to be in in dancings secretly with the King her husband, and going in masks by night through 118 LHTA, XI, 439–40. 119 Bibliothèque Nationale MS anglais 130, f48v; cited Agnes Strickland, Lives of the Queens of Scotland (Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1853), IV, p. 248. 120 Diurnal, p. 87. 121 See note 51; also S. Carpenter, ‘The Sixteenth-Century Court Audience: Performers or Spectators?’ Medieval English Theatre, 19 (1997), 3–14 [edited in this volume, chapter 11, Eds.] 122 Inventories, p. 162. 123 For contemporary comment on disguise and noble identity, see Baldassare Castiglione, translated in Thomas Hoby, The Book of the Courtier, edited by J. H. Whitfield (London: J. M. Dent, 1974), pp. 99–100.

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the streets’.124 The queen was also recorded as alert to cross-gender experience, reportedly wishing she were a man ‘to know what life it was to lie all night in the fields, or to walk upon the causeway with a jack and knapscall [protective doublet and metal cap]’.125 Such claims about the play with gender identity push courtly acceptance towards a faint edge of scandal.126 It is not clear how visually daring a gesture the mask for the French ambassadors may have been: men’s ‘masking cotes’ in the sixteenth century tended to be ‘garmentes long and brode’, often with hoods and hats that disguised the masked wearer’s shape.127 Although perfectly possible and potentially striking, it is not certain that Mary, now five months pregnant, masked in doublet and hose. The wardrobe accounts that accompany the entry for the daggers mention cloth of gold to make flame-decorations only on ‘vj abillement de masque pour des famme’, which does not suggest that flamboyant maleness was the defining characteristic; nor is it mentioned in contemporary letters and accounts of the event. The male masking dress was, however, appropriate to the gift of the daggers and may have at least covert bearing on Mary’s deliberate assertion of her own sovereignty and known resistance to granting Darnley the crown matrimonial.128 But its immediate effect was probably to throw teasing emphasis on the gracious participation of the pregnant queen rather than raising any seriously provocative public questioning of gender. The final entertainment of Mary’s personal reign was appropriately the most ambitious: the climactic triumph celebrating the baptism of the infant James in December 1566. Michael Lynch has already fully established the broadly French influence on this spectacle, both in form and in purpose.129 Its masks, entries, and martial pyrotechnics echo those of French triumphs, while the aim of asserting confident glory and consensual harmony in the face of internal political tension reflects Catherine de Medici’s use of spectacular entertainment as a means towards domestic peace.130 But we should also consider the baptismal celebrations in the local context of Scottish court performance. While the triumph is the only really international spectacle of Mary’s personal reign, almost all its elements can 124 R. H. Mahon, Mary Queen of Scots: A Study of the Lennox Narrative (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1924), p. 130. 125 CSP: Scotland, I, 651. 126 For fuller discussion of gendered performance and its complex significance in Mary’s court, see Parkinson, ‘Lamentable Storie’. On this episode see also Clare McManus, ‘Marriage and the Performance of the Romance Quest: Anne of Denmark and the Stirling Baptismal Celebrations for Prince Henry’, in Hoewen, Palace in the Wild, pp. 175–98 (p. 179). 127 Twycross and Carpenter, Masks, pp. 169–70. 128 Fraser, Mary Queen of Scots, pp. 296–97. 129 Lynch, ‘Queen Mary’s Triumph’. 130 The baptismal triumph might almost be read as a response to the message of congratulation sent by Catherine de Medici and Charles IX to Mary on James’ birth: ‘they think her most important object will be to reconcile her subjects to each other, if there yet remains any enmity among them on account of the past, and to preserve peace and tranquillity in her dominions’, Letters of Mary Queen of Scots, edited by A. Strickland, 3 vols (London: Henry Colburn, 1843), I, p. 33.

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be paralleled from the court entertainments of the preceding five years. With all its French influence, the spectacle offers the culmination of a domestic tradition, rather than a wholly unfamiliar and newly imported display. The triumph involved masks, spectacular decorated floats, and the outdoor firework entertainment of an assault on a fort. Buchanan’s congratulatory lyrics for the mask, like his wedding Pompae, present a series of groups bringing gifts and homage to the infant prince and his mother: Satyrs, Naiads, and Northern Mountain nymphs (Orcades) address the prince, Nereids, and Fauns the queen.131 But this time the choice, and the words, of the visitors celebrate the public rather than the private roles of those honoured. The maskers addressing the future king offer tribute from different areas of his realm. The woodland satyrs celebrate the lowland countryside, the Naiads the streams and rivers, and the Orcades the wild Highland mountains. In pastoral mode, they envisage the prince growing to be a hunter, joyfully engaging with the territories of his land. The Nereids and Fauns who honour the queen, focus on her virtue and constancy; it is her joy as mother of a king, rather than her own regal power that predominates. This procession of gift bearers closely resembles those of French court entertainments. Mary (and even Buchanan) may well have attended one particular spectacle by Mellin de St Gellais in 1554, which presented three groups of nymphs – of the waters, of the forests and of the fields, the last leading two chained satyrs, each group addressing Henri II and celebrating the natural world.132 Ruegger points out how this show was produced at a time when French peace was newly threatened by the English. It offers a revealing political as well as theatrical parallel to the Stirling entertainment. Buchanan’s graceful neo-classical mask celebrates the prince dynastically and within his kingdom, employing generalised pastoral imagery to show him cherished by the whole realm of Scotland. Part of the spectacle accompanying this mask involved the satyrs: with lang tailes and whippis in ther handis, runnyng befoir the meit, quhilk wes brocht throw the gret hall vpon ane trym engyn, marching as apperit it alain [a fine device, seemingly moving unaided], with musiciens clothed lyk maidins.133 Though common in court entertainments, there is no evidence that such theatrical vehicles had appeared before at Mary’s court (unless the ‘deux vieux dras del lin pour couurir deux licornne’ in 1564 suggest some such device).134 But it is

131 Buchanan, ‘Pompae Deorum Rusticorum dona ferentium Jacobo VI & Mariae matri ejus, Scotorum Regibus, in coena quae Regis baptisma est consecuta’, Opera, II, pp. 404–05. For translations, Davidson, ‘Entry’, pp. 426–29. 132 Ruegger, ‘Grace Dieu’, pp. 152–53. Buchanan was in Paris at this time, and writing court verse. 133 Melville, Memoirs, p. 171. See Primaticcio’s design for a satyr masking costume for a waiter, Dimier, Le Primatice, Pl 39. 134 Inventories, p. 145.

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unlikely to be a complete innovation: Pitscottie’s account of the Tournament of the Black Lady in 1507 implies that even back in the time of Mary’s grandfather the Scottish court had witnessed similar spectacular machinery.135 More unusual was a disruption caused by the attendant satyrs. According to Melville: the sattiers wer not content only to red rown, bot pat ther handis behind them to ther tailes, quhilkis they waggit with ther handis, in sic sort as the Englismen supponit it had bene deuysed and done in derision of them.136 The outraged visitors turned their backs and sat on the floor in protest at the tailwagging, which supposedly referred to the old Scots joke that all Englishmen are born with tails. This improvised episode, comic in retrospect if embarrassing at the time, is revealing of the particular communicative possibilities inherent in the most formal court spectacle, as well as the crucial importance of performance in determining meaning. If the satyrs’ behaviour was, as Melville suggests, a deliberate slight, it demonstrates the opportunity for performers to import or alter meaning according to circumstance. The episode also testifies to the shift in Mary’s political allegiances: although there is no suggestion that the queen was party to the joke, such mockery would plainly have been unacceptable in the proEnglish entertainments of the earlier 1560s.137 The incident may also confirm the different approaches to performance in the Scottish and English courts. As Elizabeth’s entertainments more often engaged in argument and debate on specifically topical affairs, the English courtiers seem readier to interpret court spectacle as carrying combative and topical reference. Mary’s entertainments, like those of France, tend towards less particularised assertions of magnificence, and Melville at least seems to assume that this is how court spectacle should be taken. The English nobles were ‘daftly apprehending that quhilk they suld not seam to haue understand [. . .] the Englis gentill men committed a gret errour to seam till [to] vnderstand it as done against them’.138 Although a trivial dispute over precedence and respect, the story does confirm certain patterns of difference between the two courts in the perception of performance and its expressive role. The explosive fort-holding which followed beside the kirk-yard in Stirling is plainly a recapitulation, if a grander one, of the firework assault at Dunsapie loch back in 1562. Michael Lynch has cogently argued that the general theme, echoing French models, was a celebration of victory against conflict and chaos. But the Scottish Treasury records which provide our evidence are not clear enough to determine the underlying narrative as one in which ‘the various assailants, all 135 Pitscottie, Historie, I, 244. 136 Melville, Memoirs, p. 171. 137 The English recovered their dignity by claiming that the satire was revenge devised by the French ‘for dispyt, that the Quen maid mair of them then of the Frenchemen’, Melville, Memoirs, p. 172. 138 Melville, Memoirs, p. 172.

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threatening war and chaos, were repulsed and the royal castle remained intact’.139 The records mention nineteen costumes for five groups of assailants: lanzknechts, moors, horsemen, and highland wildmen in groups of four, with three ‘contrefait devillis’.140 The wild highlanders, clad in goatskins ‘from heid to fute’, were responsible either solely, or in conjunction with the others, for the management of the fireworks.141 These combatants fought ‘within and without the forth’, but the records fail to distinguish attackers from defenders. Significantly all the men appear to have been ‘soldiouris of the companyes’ or gunners with technical competence in artillery, rather than members of the court, suggesting that the management of the special effects was more important than the identity of the performers. Unlike many famous fort-holdings, the honour of the house of Stewart or of the Scottish nobility was not directly involved or represented.142 If the fort had symbolic significance it is not recorded: what struck the historian of the Diurnall was only the ‘artail3erie, schot fyre ballis, fyre speris, and all vtheris thingis plesand for the sicht of man’.143 This focus on spectacle supports the probability that, as in comparable fort-holdings, the pyrotechnic climax was the destruction of the fort rather than the repulsion of the invaders.144 If the assault demonstrated the magnificent reassertion of peace and stability in the Stewart line, it seems to have done so by its general splendour rather than by direct representation. Scotland’s court was not large enough to need or sustain an equivalent of the English Office of the Revels, and nothing is known of who initiated, devised, and managed most of the performances of Mary’s court. But the Stirling shows allow us some glimpse of how the system functioned. We can, for example, recover details of the various personnel involved in creation and organisation. George Buchanan’s authorship of masking speeches is established from texts published in his collected works. A widely respected European humanist who had worked in France for most of his adult life, Buchanan had already published Latin plays as well as celebratory verse for court festivity in France, before returning to Scotland in the early 1560s. Although to modern eyes his mask lyrics seem only ‘elegant trifles’,145 it is a mark of the cultural value placed on courtly entertainments that an eminent scholar of international reputation was employed in this way. But although he was responsible for the words, it is not clear whether Buchanan designed the scenarios. This was not necessarily conceived as a literary role: some 139 Lynch, ‘Queen Mary’s Triumph’, p. 10. 140 LHTA, XII, 406 (full record pp. 403–08). 141 For the association of highlanders with pyrotechnic destruction, see Sally Mapstone in Hoewen, Palace in the Wild, pp. vii–ix. 142 The Fontainebleau fort-holding of 1564, and that at Warwick before Queen Elizabeth in 1572, both involved royalty or nobility as performers. See Castelnau, Memoires, p. 305; Butterworth, Theatre of Fire, pp. 167–69. 143 Diurnal, p. 105. 144 This was the case at both Warwick and Fontainebleau. See note 135, this chapter, and Butterworth, Theatre of Fire, p. 104. 145 McFarlane, Buchanan, p. 285.

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part at least of the Stirling spectacle is explicitly ascribed to Bastien Pagez, one of the queen’s French valets de chambre and, according to Buchanan, ‘ane Auernois, a Man in greit Favour with the Quene for his Cunning in Musike, and his merie Jesting’.146 Melville claims Pagez ‘deuised’ the satyr entry that offended the English, an ascription that was apparently public knowledge since one of the furious visitors threatened to ‘put a dagger to the hart of that Frenche knaif Bastien’.147 It is not clear that Pagez, or indeed anyone else, had single overall control of the Stirling entertainments; but his role, great or small, is revealing of theatrical organisation in the court.148 He was a favourite of the queen and, like her Italian secretary Rizzio, was also employed as a singer. The combinations of roles are interesting: both men occupied the intimate post of ‘chamber child’ to the queen, both were performers, but each was also responsible for wider royal business, which in Pagez’ case included the devising of performance. While the indoor entertainments were apparently organised by individual members of Mary’s courtly household, the fort-holding spectacle was under the overall control of John Chisholm, ‘comptrollar of the artailyerye’.149 It seems that he was not only in charge of the fireworks but of the whole scenario of the assault, providing performers from among his men and organising the various costumes required. There is no record of his liaison with a court producer or access to the resources of the court wardrobe. The fact that he initially paid for the costs of the spectacle himself before finally persuading the queen to sanction proper finance from the Treasury seems to confirm the apparent autonomy Chisholm had in devising the show.150 The separate roles of all three men raise wider questions about the ultimate control of entertainment at Mary’s court. Each of them appears to have had some degree of creative freedom. Buchanan’s texts are published alongside his other works as part of his original and independent literary output. Bastien was clearly assumed to have personal responsibility not only for devising his show but also for the political satire imported by his performers; while Chisholm was paid for the ‘dressing and overseing and causing to mak this triomphe of fyrework’.151 Yet equally, the political and diplomatic functions of these and other entertainments suggest fairly careful control from the centre. Cecil’s vetting of the English plans for the Nottingham masks demonstrated political oversight at a high level of entertainments which to modern eyes might appear merely decorative. Although there is no hard evidence, the Scottish performances plainly imply similar central intervention, most probably from the queen herself. 146 Buchanan, Ane Detectioun of the Doingis of Marie Quene of Scottis, in Collections relating to the History of Mary Queen of Scotland, edited by J. Anderson (Edinburgh: John Mosman and William Brown, 1727), p. 22. 147 Melville, Memoirs, p. 172. 148 Forty ells of taffeta were provided to Bastien on 3 December ‘preparatevis for the baptisme’, but it is not clear whether this was for theatrical purposes: LHTA, XII, 35. 149 LHTA, XII, 403. 150 LHTA, XII, 404. 151 LHTA, XII, 408.

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It is very clear, for example, that Buchanan’s 1564 verses on the harmony between the Scottish and English queens, copied by Mary to Elizabeth with a claim that they were intended ‘more in heart than in outward show’,152 must at the very least have had the Queen of Scots’ prior knowledge and assent and much more likely were a specific commission. While we cannot tell whether the same is true for the Stirling masks, their notable absence of reference to the prince’s father suggests similar high-level guidance. Darnley pointedly absented himself from the celebrations, but it remains striking that Buchanan, committed to the Lennox family and shortly to use his literary skills to attack rather than honour Mary, makes no reference to the prince’s father in this entertainment. Either he had accepted Darnley’s marginalised position, or had instruction to leave him out. Records of the fort-holding also hint at Mary’s personal involvement. During the preceding weeks messengers were sent to the queen at Dunbar and Craigmillar, not only to seek finance but ‘to informe hir hienes of the proceiding of the foirsaid fyrework conforme to hir grace precept thairupoun’.153 While the nature and detail of this ‘precept’ are unclear, it implies something more than a general request for a firework display.154 All the evidence suggests that the entertainment culture of the Marian court centred very actively on the queen herself. Her personal pleasure in participation, role-play, and spectacular display led to her use of performance in advancing and managing her relations with members of her own court. More significantly, perhaps, she appears to have had a determining role in the political employment of court performance to advance diplomatic ends. Unlike the English court, in which entertainments seem largely to have been presented to the queen as means of honouring her or of exploring political issues, and where direct control apparently resided with Elizabeth’s ministers rather than herself, the smaller world of Scottish court performance suggests a more immediate involvement of the queen as a direct moving force. Less analytical than English shows, Marian court performances, possibly influenced by the example of Catherine de Medici, employed court spectacle as a minor but apparently direct intervention of the monarch in promoting local, national, and international harmony and stability. It is perhaps ironic that, given the temper of the Scottish political situation, these performances came to be represented as exhibitionist and inflammatory exercises in luxury and frivolity, rather than as the joyous demonstration of peaceful security that seems to have been intended. Within a few months of the baptismal triumph, Mary’s personal reign was effectively over, her court and its entertainments dissolved. Within a year it was 152 CSP: Scotland, II, 47. 153 LHTA, XII, 404. 154 Other evidence points to Mary’s surprisingly personal attention to the material culture of her court. Her master of the wardrobe, recording the re-use of a number of elaborate church vestments for decorative purposes, carefully notes that they were ‘all brokin and cuttit in hir awin presence’: Inventories, p. 53.

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Moray, now Regent for the infant James, who was seeking English support. In December 1567 Mary’s complicity in the murder of Darnley was for the first time publicly asserted in the Scottish parliament. Over Christmas 1567–68 festivities at the English court included a play on the story of Orestes, glossed as ‘a Tragedie of the king of Scottes’.155 As in the ballad published in Edinburgh a few months before, Mary, Darnley, and Bothwell are shadowed in the story of Clytemnestra, Agamemnon, and Aegisthus.156 Later in 1567 a play of The Historye of Horestes was published in London, probably by John Pickering of Lincoln’s Inn.157 Whether or not this is the play performed at court, it plainly addresses with some sophistication the immediate political aftermath of the murder of Darnley and Mary’s subsequent marriage with Bothwell, and is likely at the very least to provide a fair idea of the possible nature of the court performance.158 Pickering’s drama presents the personal dilemma posed for Horestes by his murderous and adulterous mother, with figures of Nature and Revenge offering him conflicting advice on avenging his father’s death. But the situation is more than familial: Horestes brings his problem to the King Idumeus, who is advised by his Council to support an attack on Clytemnestra on grounds of good government. After Horestes takes his revenge, his action is debated, defended, and validated by the king and his advisers, the play closing with a salutation to Elizabeth and her Council, ‘In settynge up vertue and vyce to correcte’.159 Horestes’ personal dilemma is thus re-presented as an issue for the sovereign in council, a problem of safeguarding the stability of government and of the public assertion of national justice. The real focus is not Clytemnestra/Mary, but the difficult decisions faced by Horestes/Moray (for James) and Idumeus/Elizabeth. It is a play of debate and persuasion, urging and sanctioning political action against those identified as murderers of Agamemnon/Darnley. Like Gorboduc back in 1561, the ‘Tragedie of the king of Scottes’ dramatised and debated for the English court the problems presented by Mary Stewart. We do not know how Elizabeth received this advice, but she clearly accepted the drama as a valid means through which the issues might be explored. While we find no such use of drama at Mary’s court, her father and mother were both familiar with politically engaged discussion plays. An interlude, probably by David Lyndsay, performed for James V at Linlithgow in 1540 intervened directly and critically in affairs of Church and government reform, while in 1554 Mary of Guise as regent 155 Feuillerat, Documents, p. 119. 156 The National Archives, SP 52/13/47 (broadsheet); cited in CSP: Scotland, II, 329. 157 Horestes, in Three Tudor Classical Interludes, edited by M. Axton (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1982). See also, John Pikeryng’s Horestes (1567), edited by K. Robertson and J.-A. George (Galway: Galway University Press, 1996). Pickering served as Speaker of the House of Commons later in Elizabeth’s reign. See J. E. Phillips, ‘A Re-evaluation of Horestes’, Huntingdon Library Quarterly, 18 (1955), 227–44. 158 Although nominally presented by the publisher for actors, the play calls for the kinds of scenic and casting resources that would be most easily available at court. 159 Horestes, in Axton, I.1198.

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attended a public performance of Lyndsay’s more elaborated Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis which carried these contentious issues to a wider audience.160 Both rulers, though in different ways, not only accepted but deliberately exploited the opportunity given by drama to analyse and advance political issues. Comparison of all these various court entertainments might suggest a broad difference between Protestant and Roman Catholic understanding of courtly performance. The entertainments at Elizabeth’s Protestant court, like Lyndsay’s proto-Reformation plays, use drama primarily as an arena for debate or argument. Performances explore conflicts and problems, urging judgement. At the French and Scottish courts of the 1560s, performance, though equally political, tends to the visual more than the verbal, to the assertion of harmony rather than the analysis of problem. But it is over simple to see these differences as primarily religious. At these political moments the French monarchy and Mary Stewart were both defending traditional ways, while Elizabeth, James V and Lyndsay were all concerned with issues of change and innovation in the Church and Monarchy. This in itself may account for the varying theatrical emphases without regard to religious affiliation. What the differences certainly demonstrate is the rich variety of possibility in court performance as a language of politics. The brief but bright flourishing in Mary’s reign may cast a longer shadow than we have yet recognised, ultimately informing the complex enactment of royal authority in the Stuart masque under her son, fifty years later in England.

160 For a full discussion of these shows, Lyndsay and the role of performance at the Scottish court, see Edington, Court and Culture, passim; Greg Walker, The Politics of Performance, pp. 117–62.

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6 LOVE AND CHASTITY Political performance in Scottish, French, and English courts of the 1560s

This chapter begins from an interesting coincidence. In the single year between the Shrovetides of 1564 and 1565 the royal courts in Scotland, France, and England were all entertained by performances involving debates between Love and Chastity. On the very same evening, Shrove Sunday, 13 February 1564, the courts of France and of Scotland each witnessed Italianate musical intermèdes which set Amor against the greater power of Chastity. One year later, on Shrove Tuesday 1565, Elizabeth I and her court watched a comedy in which a debate over the respective merits of marriage and chastity was determined in favour of Marriage.1 There is no evidence that this coincidence was deliberate, although the close links – and tensions – between the three countries and their rulers might suggest that it was not entirely fortuitous. At this moment marriage was also, to a greater or lesser extent, a live topical issue for all three monarchs. Planned or not, the falling together of the three shows is a revealing one that can teach us much about the rich and subtle uses of sixteenth-century court performance. Exploration of these three very specific events confirms a much broader truth: that we should be suspicious of ostensible content as the prime key to understanding the meaning of such court performances. Although apparently focused on the same subject, the three shows carried significantly different meanings for their first audiences, and engaged them in those meanings in very different ways. The limited significance of definable content is of course true of all forms of writing; but live performance, especially of this occasional kind, is especially acutely 1 For records of the three performances, see The Royal Tour of France by Charles IX and Catherine de’ Medici: Festivals and Entries, 1564–66, edited by V. E. Graham and W. McAllister Johnson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979), pp. 24–25, 75; Pierre de Ronsard, Oeuvres Complètes, edited by Paul Laumonier, 17 vols (Paris: Didier, 1948), XIII, pp. 218–21; Calendar of State Papers: Scotland, edited by J. Bain and others, 11 vols. (London and Edinburgh: HMSO, 1898–1936), II, 41,47; see [hereafter CSP: Scotland]; SP 52/9/15 and BL, Cotton Caligula B X. 91, fols. 259b–260a, translated in Robert Keith, The History of the Affairs of Church and State in Scotland, 3 vols (Edinburgh: Spottiswoode Society, 1845), II, p. 220; Calendar of Letters and State Papers: Spain, edited by G. A. Bergenroth and others, 13 vols (London: H.M. Stationery Office, 1862–1954), I, 404; see [hereafter CSP: Spain].

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and obviously determined by factors beyond overt subject-matter. The production auspices and patronage, the political and social context, the identity of the performers, the different and often multiple audiences, as well as the production and performance styles will all influence meaning at least as much as the topic or text of the performance. As Roger Chartier reminds us, ‘when the “same” text is apprehended through very different mechanisms of representation, it is no longer the same’.2 Report of the subject matter of these shows suggests sameness; but in the conditions of representation and performance we can rediscover their difference. By exploring these material contexts we can ‘take [these] works back to the situations that led to their production, that dictated their forms, and, for that reason, shaped their intelligibility’.3 In Scotland, in particular, we can recover enough of this specific context to unravel some of the rich semantic layering of an apparently insignificant entertainment. This is not to suggest that similarity is not an important aspect of the three performances. In fact, the popularity of this particular motif confirms how fully courtly performances of the later sixteenth century had developed an internationally shared European language, recognisable and active in all three courts. These three courts, famously, were headed by three female monarchs: Mary Stuart, Catherine de Medici (queen mother of the 14-year-old Charles IX), and Elizabeth I. Like the performances they watched, the three queens were on the one hand bound together by their common, if contested, status as women rulers, yet on the other differentiated by their individual political preoccupations and styles of rule. Comparison between both shows and queens allows us to explore the shared language of courtly performance, but also the differing management of patronage and theatrical organisation at the three courts. Perhaps most interesting is the range of political purposes and modes of political intervention that could be served by such court performances. Recognition of the international nature of sixteenth-century court performance culture is of course not new: much influential work through recent decades from Sydney Anglo, to Gordon Kipling, to Roy Strong has demonstrated this in many areas of public show.4 But by the mid-sixteenth century we find this internationalism confirmed in increasing detail, both by the coincidence of visual and theatrical motifs, and by personal connections between particular individuals (designers, performers, courtiers) and their contacts. To take one example from the 1560s: we find a figure of Discord, characterised (as later in Ripa’s Iconologia)5 as a 2 Roger Chartier, Forms and Meanings: Texts, Performances and Audiences from Codex to Computer (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995), p. 2. 3 Chartier, Forms and Meanings, p. 2. 4 Sydney Anglo, Spectacle, Pageantry and Early Tudor Policy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969); Gordon Kipling, The Triumph of Honour: Burgundian Origins of the Elizabethan Renaissance (The Hague: Leiden University Press, 1977); Roy Strong, Art and Power: Renaissance Festivals 1450–1650 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1984). 5 Cesare Ripa, Iconologia [1611: facsimile], edited by Stephen Orgel (New York and London: Garland, 1976), pp. 120–21.

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woman with wild hair accoutred with snakes, appearing across the three national boundaries. Discord features in devices for masks designed for a proposed meeting between Mary Stuart and Elizabeth I at Nottingham in 1562,6 reappearing in almost identical guise wearing ‘Curling [. . .] Heare made of Black silk’ in 1572 performances mounted by the English court for the French marshal Montmorency.7 The same figure, this time with a snaky collar, is found on a triumphal arch welcoming Charles IX to Lyon in 1564, where the king was visited by English diplomats arriving to invest him with him the Order of the Garter.8 Finally, Discord is illustrated in a design for a masking costume by Primaticcio, the Italian court designer for the French royal family, which included for a significant period the Scottish Mary Stuart, in the mid-sixteenth century.9 Another Primaticcio design, for a Foolish Virgin, may similarly testify to this international crossfertilisation. According to J.T.B. Hall, the design may have been influenced by an English court performance.10 He cites the French commentator Brantôme who tells us of a 1561 Elizabethan disguising of the wise and foolish virgins which especially impressed the French visitors for whom it was presented, the Constable Montmorency and François de Lorraine.11 The interconnections between designers, motifs, and audiences are plain. As this also suggests, court performances in all countries were watched, often performed, and at times specifically devised by some of the most powerful figures in the land. Equally, they were often reported on to home governments by diplomats and foreign ambassadors: much of our evidence for courtly performance culture comes from diplomatic reports. These were not always trivial entertainments presented to passive spectators as pastimes to fill the moment. Performance, in all its verbal and non-verbal aspects, could be deliberately addressed to one’s national and courtly neighbours as well as to one’s own court. However apparently slight or decorative a show and its overt subject matter, the court context and the international conventions of performance could turn these entertainments into one of the languages of diplomacy. In each of the three Love and Chastity performances, in Scotland, France, and England, we are able to decipher a diplomatic intention. Although the three performances all arise from the same common background, it is from their local contexts and inflection that each acquired its most telling 6 E. K. Chambers and W. W. Greg, eds, Dramatic Records from the Lansdowne Manuscripts, Malone Society Collections, 2 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1908). 7 Albert Feuillerat, ed., Documents Relating to the Office of the Revels in the time of Queen Elizabeth (Louvain: A Uystpruyst, 1908), pp. 157–58. 8 Graham and McAllister, Royal Tour, pp. 88, 193 and Appendix VI. 9 J.T.B. Hall, ‘Primaticcio and Court Festivals’, in Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 58 (1975– 76), 353–77 (pp. 353–54); Laura Aldovini, et al, Primatice: Maître de Fontainebleau (Paris: Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 2004), pp. 134, 136. 10 Hall, ‘Primaticcio’, pp. 372–73. 11 Pierre de Bourdeille, Seigneur de Brantôme [known as ‘Brantôme’], ‘Le Roy Henry II’, in Les Vies des Grands Capitaines, in Oeuvres Complètes, edited by Prosper Mérimée and others, 88 vols (Paris: Plon, 1859), IV, p. 127.

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meanings. Catherine de Medici, although a queen mother rather than a monarch in her own right, was the oldest and most experienced of the three queens, and her Love/Chastity debate was part of the most elaborate and spectacular of the three entertainments. Catherine took an active interest in courtly performance and its political uses throughout her life.12 The 1564 debate between Love and Chastity fell during celebrations at Fontainebleau which initiated the magnificent two-year Royal Tour of France which Catherine arranged for the young Charles IX in the wake of the first War of Religion.13 The young king was to travel through his realm, ceremoniously greeted by spectacular and triumphant shows and entertainments designed to enact his glorious relationship with the towns and cities of France. The moment was of serious political significance to the monarchy. Since the unexpected death of Henri II in 1559 France had been ruled briefly by the 15-year-old François II, followed in 1560 by his 10-year-old brother Charles. The serious tensions apparent among the advisors and regents of these immature boy kings were intensified by the eruption of religious dissent in the first War of Religion in 1562.14 The Royal Tour attempted to address this long period of unrest, the Shrovetide celebrations at Fontainebleau marking the first stage of reconciliation of the conflicting nobility. Catherine’s acknowledged policy, throughout her reign as queen mother, seems to have been to use spectacle to reassure and unite the country, asserting security, splendour, and harmony in the face of conflict or threat. Ruegger in fact traces back to at least 1554 ‘ce phenomène de vie des spectacles comme conjuration des menaces politiques’, pointing to an elaborate ‘mascarade dansée’ prepared for Henri II of the nymphs of waters, forests, and fields asserting natural harmony.15 This was performed at a moment when the peace with England was in fact not at all secure but under threat. A similar pattern is suggested in 1560 during the brief reign of her eldest son François II, when Catherine arranged for the young king and his wife Mary, Queen of Scots to be received at the chateau of Chenonceaux by a spectacular triomphe involving figures of Renomée, Victoire, and Pallas.16 The pageants of this glorious entry suggest peaceful and splendid success; yet for the participants its very absence of direct comment must have tacitly addressed the violent tensions of the immediate political situation. The king was traveling to Chenonceaux from Amboise where barely two weeks earlier threats of Protestant uprising along with tensions and disaffection among the nobility had led to the 12 Brantôme, ‘Catherine de Medicis’, in Receuil des Dames, in Oeuvres Complètes, 10, pp. 30–110; Henry Prunières, Le Ballet de Cour en France (Paris: H. Laurens, 1914), pp. 34–57; Hall, ‘Primaticcio’, pp. 359–61; E. Ruegger, ‘De Grace Dieu à Circé: le Ballet de Cour au XVIe siècle et son Livret’ in Théâtre et Spectacles Hier et Aujourd’hui: Moyen Age et Renaissance (Paris: Éditions du CTHS, 1991), pp. 145–62. 13 See Graham and McAllister, Royal Tour. 14 R. J. Knecht, The French Wars of Religion, 1559–1598 (London: Longman, 1989). 15 Ruegger, ‘De Grace Dieu à Circé’, pp. 152–53. 16 L. Dimier, Le Primatice: Peintre, Sculpteur et Architecte des Rois de France (Paris: Ernest LeRoux, 1900), pp. 185–86.

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‘conspiracy of Amboise’ resulting in a bloodily suppressed attack on the court.17 The celebratory entry asserting glorious security is tonally strikingly at odds with the internecine violence of the preceding days. Catherine herself openly acknowledged the value of entertainment in the art of peaceful rule. In a letter cited by Hall she observed to the young Charles IX how ‘j’ay ouy dire au Roy vostre grand père qu’il fallout deux choses pour vivre en repos avec les François et qu’ils aimassent leur Roy: les tenir joyeux, et occuper à quelque exercise’.18 The poet Ronsard explicitly noted that the 1564 festivities at Fontainebleau were designed to draw together the factions among the nobility after another period of internal strife: ‘joindre et unir d’avantage par tel artifice de plaisir, noz Princes de France’.19 Another contemporary, Brantôme, asserts a foreign as well as domestic purpose here. Defending Catherine after her death against charges of superfluous and wasteful expenditure he claimed she saw such magnificent performance as demonstrating that ‘la France ne s’estoit si totalement ruynée et pauvre, à cause des guerres passées, come il l’estimoit’.20 The elaborate spectacles at Fontainebleau involved a wide variety of events sponsored, by command of the queen, by a number of the most important nobles. These ranged from romance combats and games, to a water battle, a fête champetre, dance and mask performances, and drama. The queen herself provided ‘une comedie sur le subject de la belle Genievre de l’Arioste’,21 an Italian story drawn from the Orlando Furioso but set in Scotland. For the interludes of the comedy Ronsard wrote two Italianate intermèdes, the Trophé d’Amour and the Trophé de la Chasteté.22 So in this case the Love/Chastity debate formed just one tiny strand in a much more elaborate and spectacular festivity which was designed to delight the French nobility, to reflect to them their own modern magnificence, and to draw them into political unity. The Trophés themselves may in fact seem dwarfed by the overall extent and duration of the entertainments. Ronsard’s texts present self-defining neo-platonic sung speeches, first for Amor presented as an ‘enfant nud’ with bow and arrow and possibly with a train of attendants representing ‘Joy, Youth and Idleness’.23 He asserts his power over all the world and his contrarious nature enclosing sweet and bitter, frailty and power, blindness and sight. In the second Trophé Chastity enters in a Chariot of Triumph, bearing an impenetrable shield of ‘constance and perseverance’, with the infant Amor now bound and captive at the wheels. The motif is clearly drawn from Petrarch’s Trionfi. Not only do the verses echo the language and sentiments of the Trionfo d’Amore and Trionfo della Pudicizia, but the 17 Léonie Frieda, Catherine de Medici (London: Phoenix, 2005), pp. 155–57. 18 Lettres de Catherine de Médicis, edited by H. de la Ferrière and other, 11 vols (Paris, Imprimerie Nationale, 1880–97), II, p. 92; cited in Hall, ‘Primaticcio’, p. 360. 19 Ronsard, Oeuvres Complètes, XIII, pp. 35–36. 20 Brantôme, ‘Catherine de Medicis’, p. 73. 21 Ibid, p. 73. 22 Ronsard, Oeuvres Complètes, XIII, pp. 218–21. 23 For music, see Ruegger, ‘De Grace Dieu à Circé’, p. 153, n34.

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implied characterisation and spectacle reflect many of the fifteenth- and sixteenthcentury illustrations of the Trionfi.24 Politically, the specific production auspices of this show are crucial: in such court performances topical meaning is carried in the choice of who devises, who performs, and who witnesses the performance as much as in its subject matter, which is here both familiar and conventional. In terms of patronage it appears that Catherine de Medici took a highly active role, not only in the general initiation of courtly festivity but in the detail of the performances themselves. Speaking of spectacles that followed later in the Royal Tour, Brantôme comments, ‘et nottez que toutes ses inventions ne venaient d’autre boutique ny d’autre esprit que de la royne; car elle y estoit maistresse et fort inventive en toutes choses’.25 The comedy of ‘la belle Genievre’, drawn from her native Italy with interventions specially commissioned from the revered court poet Ronsard, seems likely to reflect Catherine’s own choices and intentions. While the Trophés as printed may now seem blandly ephemeral occasional pieces, they carried direct inspiration from the highest political authority as well as the cultural authority of Ronsard’s poetic status. The performers in the piece equally mark its significance for the court: Brantôme tells us that it was performed by Diane de France (natural daughter of Henri II, later to be Duchess of Angoulême) and the ‘plus honnetes et belles princesses, et dames et filles de sa court’.26 The Sieur Mauvissière de Castelnau also played an important role in the tragicomedy, as well as delivering Ronsard’s defence of tragedy at its close.27 He left Fontainebleau directly after the celebrations on a diplomatic mission to the English court, thus making first hand comment on the performance available in England before he rejoined the French court at Bar-le-Duc bringing Charles the offer of the Order of the Garter from Elizabeth.28 The festival was plainly a talking point. Castelnau remembered the magnifiques festins vividly and thought them worthy of record in his memoirs even though he claims to refer to them ‘en passant’ as a relief from ‘discours plus serieux’. The show was plainly the active production of the most important and influential figures of the court. It is clear that the meaning of this show for its first audience lay in the splendour of the events as a whole, their inspiration from the highest authorities, and the involvement of the members of the court both as performers and as the intended audience, all of which were more important than the specific theatrical content. The subject matter is superficially apolitical: Castelnau comments on the ‘gentiles et agreables inuentions pour l’amour & pour les armes’ which accompanied the 24 Francesco Petrarca, Trionfi, edited by Guido Bezzola (Milan: Rizzoli, 1984). For illustrations and early translations of the Trionfi, see Lord Morley’s ‘Tryumphes of Fraunces Petrarcke’, edited by D. D. Carnicelli (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971), 28–71. 25 Brantôme, ‘Catherine de Medicis’, p. 76. 26 Ibid, p. 73. 27 Michel de Castelnau, Mémoires (Paris: Chappelet, 1621), pp. 303–04; Ronsard, Oeuvres Complètes, XIII, pp. 212–14. 28 Castelnau, Mémoires, p. 303.

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neo-Platonic focus of the Love-Chastity debate. Yet paradoxically this was itself probably a deliberate political ploy. Catherine was concerned to defuse political tension and engage the conflicting nobles in a harmonious joint display of cultural sophistication. One uncontentious ground on which they might be able to act in concert was the splendour of Renaissance spectacular display. The apparently trivial, decorative performance can thus be seen as carrying a carefully calculated political role in dissolving or concealing conflict, asserting harmony and displaying confident modern magnificence to a court and a nation unsettled by internal and violent tensions. There are powerful links between the French and Scottish performances. But when we move to the entertainment enacted on the same evening at the court of Scotland, the specific content of the debate becomes far more significant. The event itself, its style and auspices are remarkably similar to its French counterpart – although on a radically reduced scale befitting the poorer country and local context. The English agent, Thomas Randolph, describes at some length in a dispatch to the English Secretary Cecil an elaborate Shrove Sunday banquet with three courses, each introduced by music and pageantry: like Ronsard’s intermèdes these sung episodes featured Eros and Chastity, but then finally added the figure of Mutual Love to conclude the entertainment. Eros was represented by ‘blinde Cupid’, Chastity by ‘a fayer yong maid’, while Mutual Love was presented by ‘a younge childe set furth like vnto tyme’.29 Each was accompanied by sung lyrics. The power of Love was celebrated in Italian verses, earlier assumed to be by an unnamed local poet, probably David Rizzio.30 In fact, as Ronnie Jack has pointed out to me in conversation, these are verses taken directly from Petrarch’s Trionfo d’Amore, I: 76–87. Chastity was then praised as ‘blandi domitrix amoris’ in Latin stanzas composed, as were those for Mutual Love, by the eminent scholar George Buchanan.31 The final episode, the ‘younge childe [. . .] like vnto tyme’, appears to recall Petrarch’s Trionfo del Tempo, though in fact the verses allude more obviously to themes expressed in the Trionfo dell’Eternità, the last in the series. It seems clear that the whole entertainment was specifically located in the context of the Petrarchan source, suggesting that for the deviser of the entertainment, if not the audience, the allusion was an active strand of its meaning. Superficially then, the Scottish shows are closely analogous in form and style to the Fontainebleau intermèdes. The verses, though not identical, are drawn from a closely familiar and common pool of courtly and Petrarchan discourse, sung by or about very similarly characterised personifications. But the moment of the Scottish performance was dynamically informed, not this time by a broad agenda of domestic 29 British Library, MS Cotton Caligula B X. 91, fols. 259b–260a; Keith, History, 2, p. 220. 30 Joseph Robertson, ed., Inuentaires de la Royne Descosse Douairiere de France (Edinburgh: Bannatyne Club, 1863), p. lxxxiii; Philip J. Ford, George Buchanan: Prince of Poets (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1982), p. 107. 31 George Buchanan, Opera Omnia, edited by T. Ruddiman and P. Burmann, 2 vols (Leiden: Johannem Arnoldum Langerak, 1725), II, pp. 409–10, 418; translated Ford, George Buchanan, pp. 139, 159.

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peace-making, but by a very specific international political context which turns the conventional and decorative entertainment with its canonical source-text into an eloquent and multi-layered diplomatic statement. Shrovetide 1564 fell in the middle of a protracted and oblique negotiation between Elizabeth I and Mary about the latter’s plans for marriage. Mary had been seeking appropriate royal suitors across Europe, the names of Don Carlos, heir to Philip II of Spain, the Archduke Charles, brother to the Emperor, and the boy king Charles IX of France were all tentatively mentioned. Elizabeth had insisted on their unacceptability to England, leaving Mary profoundly frustrated.32 At the end of December 1563 Randolph, under orders from Elizabeth, began to hint more openly of the advantages of an English match. The dispatch of 21 February in which Randolph describes the entertainment is largely given over to reflection on the queen’s possible marriage. He presents his account of the banquet and its shows in that context, revealing the performance as a specific intervention into the debate with England over the marriage. This is confirmed by the texts. After the celebrations of Love and of Chastity, Mutual Love resolves the debate with an explicit statement of harmony. But this is not a generalised harmony in the arena of amorous love but an explicit statement about the two queens: Rerum supremus terminus vt astra terris misceat Regina Scota diliget Anglam Angla Scota diliget.33 [Though the final end of the universe confounds heaven with earth, the queen of scots will love the English queen, the English queen the queen of Scots.] The familiar allegorical and neo-platonic debate has resolved into a specific political statement about the relationship of the two monarchs and their nations. Obviously for the Scottish court the traditional opposition of Love and Chastity was not incidental but carefully chosen, when negotiations for marriage were so topical. The dominance given to Chastity over Love, although familiar from Petrarch and identical to Ronsard’s Trophés, may well also be a courtly compliment to Elizabeth and a deprecation of Mary’s commitment to marriage. But it is the final assertion of mutual love that shifts the foregoing debate firmly from the general to the particular, from decorative entertainment to political statement. Even so, the obliqueness characteristic of such allegorical courtly discourse is in this case not unambiguous: although the pageantry plainly emphasises compliment and harmony, it is not clear whether the show signals that Mary will follow Elizabeth’s wishes in her marriage; or simply that her choice of husband, whoever 32 Antonia Fraser, Mary Queen of Scots (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1969), Chapter 12; CSP: Scotland, II, 30. 33 British Library, MS Cotton Caligula B X. 91, fol. 260a; Keith, History, II, p. 220.

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it may be, cannot impair their friendship. While the dominant tone is conciliatory, the performance might be interpreted either as a gesture of compliance, or as an assertion of amicable independence.34 In this case in particular, the political meaning is bound up and multiplied in complex issues relating to audience. To understand the semantics of the performance, we need to identify the various layers of audience the show addressed. The immediate spectators were the Scottish nobles, as Randolph tells us that ‘The Quene dyned privatlye with the cheif of the lordes and ladies’,35 although he also refers to the audience as upwards of 300. So the statement was first addressed to the Scottish court, asserting to its mixed and frequently conflicting political inclinations Mary’s own determination at this point in her reign to maintain close amity with England.36 The public performance of this amity is clearly an important statement in Mary’s relationship with her own court: Randolph tells us that ‘My Soveregne [Elizabeth] was dronk vnto openlye, not one of iij c persones or moe but harde the wordes spoken and sawe the cuppes passe betwene’.37 He signals to Cecil the importance of Mary’s use of performance to declare to her nobility her own continuing pro-English stance, and analyses the mixed audience response: ‘Thys pleased well a good number to see those tokens of kyndenes towardes the Quenes majestie [Elizabeth]. I dowte not also but some were reddie to burste for envie. This dyde wype awaye the suspicion of evle meaninge’. Beyond this immediate and internal audience, however, the entertainment deliberately singled out Randolph himself as a spectator. He reports that, ‘her grace wyll was that I sholde be placed so at the lordes table so nere that she myghte speake vnto me’. After the show Mary told him that the feelings expressed towards Elizabeth were ‘more in harte, then wttor [utter/outward] shewe’. Clearly she wished to impress the political meaning of the performance personally on the English diplomat, making the show a signal to the English court and government as well as to the Scots. Yet the spectacle was also aimed at a specific English spectator beyond Randolph himself. For Mary then produced what were clearly preprepared copies of the verses ‘which she gave me in my hande (the self same that were songe) and willed me to do with them as I lyked, which I truste your h. wyll presente vnto the Quens majestie’. The debate and its resolution were intended for Elizabeth’s personal reception; although absent from the performance she becomes one of its key spectators. We have here an overt recognition of the subtle power of performance as a reception mode. The simple complimentary verses of the text might easily have

34 Randolph’s dispatch confirms this ambivalence: before describing the banquet he complains of Mary’s contradictory views of marriage and reports to Cecil, ‘I can neither assure her majesty of any good to insue of my labours, nor am I willing to put her out of hope’ (CSP: Scotland, II, 46). 35 The National Archives, SP 52.9.15, p. 9. 36 For allegiances among Mary’s nobility, see Gordon Donaldson, All the Queen’s Men: Power and Politics in Mary Stewart’s Scotland (London: Batsford, 1983). 37 SP 52/9/15, p. 10; CSP: Scotland, II, 47.

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been sent directly to Elizabeth, as had indeed happened before.38 The indirect course Mary took via Randolph on this occasion suggests that she wanted Elizabeth to recognise and appreciate the performance context, rather than just the verses themselves. The theatrical enactment of amity to Elizabeth before the Scottish court was itself a significant part of the mask’s political implication, a means for Mary to emphasise not just her own feelings but her political relationship with her nobles. The English queen is cast as the proxy audience not just of the performance itself, but of the Scottish court watching and hearing it. Elizabeth must be the spectator of the interlude as a play within a play, transforming what might appear just a courtly compliment into a complex diplomatic statement. Both the mode and the auspices of the French and Scottish entertainments are remarkably similar: Renaissance Italianate spectacular pageantry, personally initiated by the queens, performed to audiences of high-ranking nobles and designed to affect their political relationship with their sovereign. Given Mary’s own upbringing in France and active participation in French courtly culture this is not surprising. The remarkable co-incidence of the form and delivery, and even of the Petrarchan verses in which the theme is expressed, may be no more than that: there is no indication of direct communication between the two courts on this event, and Mary’s personal relations with Catherine were by this time not close.39 According to Randolph, however, Catherine de Medici knew of the complications of Mary’s marriage plans and Elizabeth’s intentions, and only three weeks before this entertainment had tried to intervene: he told Elizabeth that ‘the Quene mother [Catherine de Medici] [. . .] altogether mislykinge your majesties intente, perswadethe with the Cardinal of Guise to hinder the same’.40 Mary, he said, had also received a letter in which Catherine, alluding to a proposed meeting between Mary and Elizabeth, had ‘wished herself the third person of the three queens to be at the interview this next summer’. It is therefore not impossible that the two performances were even more closely linked than they appear, in spite of their very different inflections as tools of diplomacy. The episode demonstrates peculiarly sharply the intimacy of Scottish courtly links with both France and England, yet the asserted independence of diplomatic stance within that closeness of culture and communication. The performance at Elizabeth’s court a year later, superficially similar again, reveals an entirely different conjunction of court, politics, and performance. We hear from the Spanish ambassador Guzman de Silva that he was invited to a Shrove Tuesday entertainment at Whitehall.41 After a joust and tourney, he attended ‘the representation of a comedy in English. The plot was founded on the question of marriage, discussed between Juno and Diana, Juno advocating 38 39 40 41

See, for example, CSP: Scotland, I, 637. See, for example, CSP: Scotland, II, 60. CSP: Scotland, II, 37. CSP: Spain, I, 404; Susan Doran, ‘Juno versus Diana: The Treatment of Elizabeth I’s Marriage in Plays and Entertainments, 1561–1581’, The Historical Journal, 38 (1995), 257–74 (p. 264).

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marriage and Diana chastity. Juno gave the verdict in favour of matrimony. The Queen turned to me and said “This is all against me”’. Although it shares a topic with the previous year’s French and Scottish entertainments, it is clear that this performance is not in the Petrarchan style of allegorical pageant derived from the Trionfi. This is a narrative debate comedy of a kind that seems to have been common at the early Elizabethan court. A few months later Guzman de Silva reports on another court comedy: ‘I should not have understood much of it if the Queen had not interpreted, as she told me she would do. They generally deal with marriages in the comedies’.42 But the visual style of the show seems to resemble the earlier events. While no text survives, the Revels accounts record substantial payments for work on machinery, props, and costumes for the play and the masks that followed, including ‘charetts for the goddesses [. . .] the hevens and clowds’.43 Spectacular neo-classical entries unite the three shows. In spite of the involvement of the Revels office in its material production, the drama itself seems not to have originated in the Revels. It was performed by the ‘Gentillmenne of the Innes of Court’ and may have been organised by the Earl of Leicester to present to the queen, as he had done several times before.44 Although by this time Elizabeth was actually offering Leicester as a husband for Mary, his suit to his own queen was still active and this play might seem a lighter version of the mask accompanying the play of Gorboduc which had urged his claims to her hand in 1561.45 Elizabeth’s notorious tolerance of Leicester’s courtship may colour the apparently affectionate irony with which she remarked to De Silva on the play’s message. Doran argues persuasively that Leicester was unlikely to have been the patron,46 and a match for Elizabeth with the Archduke Charles of Austria was also under open discussion at the time, which in spite of Leicester’s own opposition might equally have provided the context for the performance and the persuasion towards marriage.47 But it remains clear that the play was presented to the queen by the players of Grey’s Inn rather than originating in the Court. While Leicester was in an especially privileged position, it seems a feature of Elizabeth’s court that entertainment and spectacular performance was as likely to be provided for her by her nobles – either on her progresses to their estates or in the royal palaces – as to be initiated by the royal household.48 Although Elizabeth took great pleasure in both dance and other kinds of performance, she apparently arranged, partly for economic reasons, to be a recipient more often than an instigator. 42 CSP: Spain, I, 367. 43 Feuillerat, ed., Documents Relating to the Office of the Revels, p. 117. 44 Richard McCoy, The Rites of Knighthood: The Literature and Politics of Elizabethan Chivalry (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), p. 42. 45 Marie Axton, ‘Robert Dudley and the Inner Temple Revels’, The Historical Review, 13 (1970), 365–78. 46 Doran, ‘Juno versus Diana’, p. 264. 47 Susan Doran, Monarchy and Matrimony: The Courtships of Elizabeth I (London: Routledge, 1996), pp. 73–78. 48 Jean Wilson, Entertainments for Elizabeth I (Woodbridge: Brewer, 1980), pp. 1–60

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While we have evidence of her participation in masks and responses to shows offered to her,49 she does not appear to have had the active personal engagement of Catherine de Medici and Mary Stuart in the design and deliberate use of court performance. This contrast has a significant effect on the nature and possibilities of the political dialogue the English entertainments present. The 1565 play shared its topic, and its neo-classical magnificent style, with the earlier French and Scottish examples. But as a fully developed spoken drama it clearly depended much more on debate and the development of argument: as Da Silva records, ‘many things [. . .] passed on both sides in defence of the respective arguments’. This is quite different from the emblematic and largely visual oppositions and resolutions of the French and Scottish Petrarchan entertainments. Even more crucially, perhaps, its prime audience seems to have been neither the court nor the foreign ambassadors, but the queen herself. Elizabeth certainly interpreted it as designed – however playfully, with whatever royal sanction – to persuade her: ‘This is all against me’. In 1565 she was 31, still marriageable although getting older. Public opinion in the court, parliament, and beyond was still urgent that she should marry and produce a stable succession to the throne. It was Elizabeth’s own ambivalence, her asserted reluctance for marriage, and value for single life which frustrated movement. This performance addressed and sought to influence the queen, casting her as the audience, rather than the author or patron of the event. But as Jessica Winston argues, in so doing it also asserted the right of other bodies, in this case the Inns of Court, to hold a view on the queen’s actions and decisions and to share those views publicly. While Elizabeth is in one sense the crucial spectator, with the play designed to persuade her alone, it is also addressed beyond her as a contribution to the debate that was taking place around her, in and beyond the court: ‘the performers [become] during the performance legitimate contributors to a discussion about matters of State’.50 Like the Scottish performance, this was a show which addressed and engaged a number of different and distinct audiences. Broadly, however, the 1565 English version of the Love/Chastity debate shows performance used as a means to influence the monarch rather than vice versa. Throughout her reign Elizabeth clearly accepted court performance as a valid means through which political issues could be explored. Gorboduc, presented in 1561, had debated questions of the succession, a play of Orestes in 1567 addressed the issues raised by the murder of Darnley, husband of Mary Queen of Scots.51

49 See, for example, CSP: Spain, I, 71; Calendar of State Papers: Venice, edited by R. Brown and others, 38 vols (London: HMSO, 1864–1947), VII, 11 and 101; see ; Sir James Melville of Halhill, Memoirs of his Own Life MDXLIX–MDXCIII, edited by Thomas Thomson (Edinburgh: Bannatyne Club, 1827), p. 125; Records of Early English Drama: Cambridge, edited by A. H. Nelson (London: University of Toronto Press, 1989), I, 242–43. 50 Jessica Winston, ‘Expanding the Political Nation: Gorboduc at the Inns of Court’, Early Theatre, 8 (2005), 11–34 (p. 26). 51 Sarah Carpenter, ‘Performing Diplomacies: the 1560s Court Entertainments of Mary Queen of Scots’, Scottish Historical Review, 82 (2003), 194–225 (pp. 224–25) [edited in this volume, chapter 5, Eds.]

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Her coronation procession and court masks at various times raised questions of religious debate. Elizabeth appears to have sanctioned courtly performance as an arena for public discussion, even if it was a controlled and sometimes censored one. The famous dynamism of public theatre during her reign may owe something to this acceptance of performance as a forum for serious topical debate. These three performances of 1564–65 show us three courts, led by three queens, each witnessing enacted debates between Love and Chastity. All are presented in high Renaissance neo-classical terms, sharing imagery, language, and spectacle. Cultural, political, and personal connections between the courts emphasise the shared performance language and all three courts show a sophisticated awareness in France, Scotland, and England of the possibilities of intervention through performance in the political process. Yet what these performances also reveal are the differences, both profound and subtle, in the courtly exploitation of such shows. In the arena of court performance it is clear that subject matter and style are relatively minor elements in the generation of meaning: political circumstances, the authorising patron, the performers, the nature of the audience – or the overlapping audiences – addressed are all equally crucial in determining what and how a sixteenth-century court performance might mean. The court of Scotland may have had fewer material resources, but it showed itself both equal and independent among the courts of Europe in its subtle exploitation of the politics of performance.

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7 DRAMATISING IDEOLOGY Monarch, State, and People

Christmas 1553 and August 1554 saw the productions of two highly topical political plays in England and in Scotland. Respublica, attributed to Nicholas Udall, was written for performance at the court of Mary Tudor in London; David Lyndsay’s Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis was played publicly on the playfield in Edinburgh before an audience which included the Queen Regent, Mary of Guise.1 In spite of a difference in scale, with Respublica a relatively brief interlude and the Thrie Estaitis a day-long production, in content and structure as in many of their production circumstances these two almost contemporaneous plays seem intimately similar. Both were performed close to and probably in direct association with the accession of a Roman Catholic female ruler to a nation troubled by political and religious controversy: Mary Tudor succeeded to the throne of England in September 1553, and Mary of Guise to the Regency of Scotland in April 1554. The plays are both openly propagandist, addressing contemporary issues concerning national government and Church reform. They share a common allegorical action of sixteenth-century political drama: in each a misgoverned state is oppressed by vices of political power disguised as virtues but is finally rescued, in part by divine intervention. Within this action, too, both plays present a particular triangle of personified figures: each includes characters representing the Monarch, the State, and the Common People. This is to emphasise the undoubted similarities between the two plays. But equally interesting, in plays which initially seem so very like, are the differences that underlie or play through the surface resemblance. With the same structures, themes, theatrical traditions, and conventional political vocabularies, the two plays nonetheless clearly address different political situations and audiences.2

1 Anon, Respublica: An Interlude for Christmas 1553, edited by W. W. Greg, Early English Text Society, Original Series, 226 (Oxford University Press, 1952); David Lindsay, Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis, edited by R. J. Lyall (Edinburgh: Canongate, 1989). All references are to these editions. [The accepted spelling for the author of Ane Satyre is now ‘Lyndsay’. Eds.] 2 For analysis of each play in its political context, see David M. Bevington, Tudor Drama and Politics: A Critical Approach to Topical Meaning (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1968); Greg Walker, The Politics of Performance in Early Renaissance Drama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Alice Hunt, ‘Legitimacy, Ceremony and Drama: Mary Tudor’s

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They also reveal rather different assumptions about the structures and dynamic of government. In part these differences are openly articulated. The Thrie Estaitis is vehement and energetic in its criticism of the Church, while Respublica, supportive of the Church, steers away from explicit religious engagement and gives more eloquent attention to the problems of corruption and avarice on the part of government ministers. But equally, if not more interesting are the more tacit differences that are expressed not directly or verbally, but through the imaginative and theatrical creation of the dramatic personifications and their relationships. The ways in which the figures representing Monarchy and the State are imagined, the stage relationships they engage in with other characters, their roles in the material presentation of performance – visual, proxemic, kinesic roles – all these can be as semantically revealing as what these characters actually say, or what is said about them. It is in these things that we perhaps encounter the real ideologies expressed through the two plays. These are the implicit imaginative representations of the institutions of State; they reveal underlying assumptions, rather than reasoned arguments, about the relationships between monarch, State, and people. The stated opinions and political views of the characters are clearly important; we might see them as carrying the primary purpose of each play. But the imaginatively theatrical representations of ideas present a powerful shaping of political consciousness. An audience can easily choose to agree or disagree with the explicit arguments put forward by a Lady Respublica or a John the Common-Weill; it is harder to evaluate and debate the political implications of the theatrical representation of these personifications as characters. It is the tacit ideology expressed in these images that this chapter addresses. Most particularly I will explore how the two plays dramatise the complex and overlapping triangular relationships between King, Commonwealth, and People. It is worth first considering what the two plays share, since recognising their similarities is not only revealing in itself, but gives a clearer basis for exploring difference. Detached from their specific contexts, they are both mainstream examples of what by the 1550s had become a traditional pattern of political morality drama.3 In each, a realm is attacked by vices understood as especially Coronation and Respublica’, in Interludes and Early Modern Society: Studies in Gender, Power and Theatricality, edited by Peter Happé and Wim Hüsken (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2007), pp. 331–51; Douglas Rutledge, ‘Respublica: Rituals of Status Elevation and the Political Mythology of Mary Tudor’, Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England, 5 (1991), 55–68; Carol Edington, Court and Culture in Renaissance Scotland: Sir David Lindsay of the Mount (East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 1995); Claude Graf, ‘Theatre and Politics: Lindsay’s Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis’, in Bards and Makars: Scottish Language and Literature, Medieval and Renaissance, edited by A. J. Aitken, M. P. McDiarmid, and D. S. Thomson (Glasgow: Glasgow University Press, 1977), pp. 143–55; M. Winkelman, ‘Respublica: England’s Trouble about Mary’, Comitatus: A Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 33 (2002), 77–98. 3 See Robert Potter, The English Morality Play: Origins, History and Influence of a Dramatic Tradition (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975), pp. 78–104.

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dangerous to good government: Avarice, Adulation, Insolence, and Oppression in Respublica; in the Thrie Estaitis Flattery, Falsehood, and Deceit (later joined by Covetise and Public Oppression). In keeping with their natures, all these Vices disguise themselves as virtues, infiltrating unrecognised into roles of power; once there they act on principles of private profit and exploitation, enriching themselves at the expense of the good governance and prosperity of the country. After a period of disorder and suffering, the machinations of the Vices are finally exposed and overthrown, restoring good order and justice to the nation. This pattern of action had been established and explored in various plays since the beginning of the century. We see it crisply outlined in the account of the Gray’s Inn Christmas interlude of 1526, supposedly attacking Cardinal Wolsey. Edward Hall explains how John Roo, Sergeant at Arms, had compiled a play in which: Lord Governaunce was ruled by Dissipacion and Negligence, by whose misgovernance and evil order, lady Publike Wele was put from governance: which caused Rumor Populi, Inward Grudge and Disdain of Wanton Sovereignetie, to rise with a greate multitude, to expell Negligence and Dissipacion, and to restore Publike Welth again to her estate.4 With some variations of emphasis and direction, this core of action is found in a range of political allegorical drama.5 At root it is derived from the earlier morality tradition in which a generalised figure of Mankind is similarly attacked or seduced by vices until rescued and restored to virtue. It offered a fruitful, strongly narrative, deep structure which could be adapted to numerous different political situations. But Respublica and Thrie Estaitis share more particular features of this common pattern. Both, like Roo’s play though not all examples of the form, include a personification of the Nation or State itself: Roo’s Lady Publike Wele is echoed in Lady Respublica and John the Common-Weill. These figures of the State champion personifications of the common people: People in Respublica and Pauper in Thrie Estaitis. In both plays, a character representing Truth is introduced in opposition to the vices, working to expose their deceit. In both a royal virtue is sent directly from God to initiate reform in the abused commonwealth: Nemesis in Respublica and Divine Correction in Thrie Estaitis. These parallels of form echo similarities in the production auspices of the two plays. Respublica was composed for performance at Christmas 1553, apparently 4 See ‘Hall’s Chronicle’: Edward Hall, The Union of the two Noble and Illustre Famelies of Lancastre and Yorke, edited by Henry Ellis (London: J. Johnson, 1809), p. 719. 5 Cf. John Skelton, Magnyfycence (London: John Rastell, 1533); John Bale, Kynge Johan (see, John Bale, The Complete Plays of John Bale, edited by Peter Happé, Tudor Interludes, 2 vols (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1985–86), vol 1.); A mery playe bothe pytthy and pleasaunt of albyon knyghte (London: Thomas Colwell, ?1556); and Anglia Deformata (see Records of Early English Drama: Cambridge, edited by A. H. Nelson, 2 vols (London: University of Toronto Press, 1989), I, p. 187). For a non-dramatic parallel see, Anon, Philargyrie of Greate Britayne (London: Robert Cowley, 1551).

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at court, following Mary Tudor’s coronation in September after the death of Edward VI in July.6 Mary had won popular support for her accession, in spite of the attempts of her Protestant brother and his chief minister the Duke of Northumberland to keep her from the throne, and had immediately begun moves to restore Roman Catholic practice in England. Respublica offers an attack on the corruption of the previous administration and a celebration of the new regime. In Scotland, Mary of Guise was invested as Regent for her young daughter Mary Stuart in April 1554, in succession to the Duke of Châtelherault who was known as a Protestant sympathiser.7 On 12 August she attended a public performance of the Thrie Estaits on the playfield in Edinburgh. The production was financed by the burgh council who paid ‘for the making of the Quenis grace hous on the playfeild’; although it is not directly recorded as such, the performance may well have been associated with her assumption of the Regency.8 As well as their structural similarities, the two plays are both linked to the recent accession of female, Roman Catholic rulers who may well have been their chief spectators. These are interesting and suggestive parallels; yet closer exploration of the similar dramatic forms and occasions also demonstrates differences in the conception of polity. In theatrical terms, it is perhaps most striking to look at the characters representing the State or Nation: the Lady Respublica and John the Common-Weill. Apart from anything these characters specifically say or do, they offer us a lively stage contrast in gender, in appearance, social class, manner, and role. Respublica is a poor but noble widow, ‘our greate graund Ladie mother/ Noble dame Respublica’ (ll. 91–92) as the vice Avarice (sardonically) refers to her before we ever see her. She enters alone with a dignified soliloquy, speaking with educated eloquence; she presents a figure of suffering innocence who trusts to find good in all who approach her and cannot see through the machinations of the Vices. She is protective of her people, especially the poor, but seems to have no capacity to act on her own behalf. John the Common-Weill, on the other hand, bursts into the action of the play, pushing through the audience and leaping over (or into) a ditch, after a formal call for complainants to the Parliament. He is a rough and at first ragged masculine figure; although he is articulate, and respectful towards true royal authority, he is colloquial and assertive, critical, and forthright in describing his troubles and identifying those who oppress him. He confidently and energetically proposes action to improve his own situation, and that of Pauper whose case he supports.

6 See Walker, Politics of Performance, pp. 168–72. 7 See Pamela E. Ritchie, Mary of Guise in Scotland, 1548–1560: A Political Career (East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 2002), pp. 90–95. 8 See The Works of Sir David Lindsay of the Mount, 1490–1555, edited by Douglas Hamer, Scottish Text Society, 3rd series, 4 vols (Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons, 1931–36), IV, pp. 139–42. Records suggest a sudden increase in public drama in the months following Mary’s assumption of the regency: see Anna Jean Mill, Mediæval Plays in Scotland (1924; repr London: Benjamin Blom, 1969), pp. 180–83.

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These two figures clearly make such very different impressions in performance that we might well ask whether they are intended to represent the same concept. We should not be distracted by the difference in name. The prologue of Respublica makes very clear from the start that the protagonist’s Latin name is simply an educated form of the vernacular ‘common weal’. The prologue explains that: the Name of our playe ys Respublica certaine oure meaninge ys [. . .] To shewe that all Commen weales Ruin and decaye from tyme to tyme. (ll. 16–20) Respublica herself makes the same identification in her introductory soliloquy. She points out that without good governors: Comon weales decaye, and all thinges do goe backe. what mervayle then yf I wanting a perfecte staigh From mooste flourishing welth be fallen in decaye? (ll. 456–58) Finally, People makes the synonym comically clear: ‘Whares Rice pudding cake? . . . alese dicts [alias dictus] comonweale’ (ll. 636–37). Like John in the Thrie Estaitis, Respublica is clearly defined as the common weal. What, then, are the connotations of this idea of the commonweal in the 1550s? Discussion of the concept of commonweal was very active in the first half of the sixteenth century. Whitney Jones points out that: the concept of the commonwealth . . . was at the centre of the discussion of the social and economic, as well as the religious and political, problems of society which came to a climax in the disturbed middle decades of the sixteenth [century].9 The term was originally, as Jones says, used simply as ‘a synonym for “body politic” or “realm”’; but in the developing debate it came ‘far more significantly, to describe the welfare of the members of that body and to imply the duty of government to further that welfare’.10 Jones lists a substantial body of contemporary English texts which address and develop this notion of the common good and prosperity of the realm, perhaps most famously the Discourse of the Common Weal of this Realm of England, attributed to Thomas Smith and thought to have been written around 1549.11 Jones’s 9 Whitney R. D. Jones, The Tudor Commonwealth, 1529–1559 (London: Athlone Press, 1970), p. 1. 10 Ibid, pp. 1–2. 11 A Discourse of the Common Weal of This Realm of England (attrib. Thomas Smith), ed., Elizabeth Lamond et al (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1893).

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English examples are paralleled in Scotland in works such as David Lyndsay’s The Dreme, or The Complaint of Scotland.12 By the mid 1550s the commonweal, then, referred to the prosperity or welfare of the realm as a whole, and was subject to complex political discussions. A couple of dominant ideas shape and underlie the debate. Theoretical works tend to stress the inclusive nature of the commonweal. Early images or metaphors imagine it as a tree shading and protecting all around, as a garden or a ship, or famously as a body, the body politic, which is made up of mutually interdependent organs.13 Such images all express social inclusion. Smith’s Discourse is set as a dialogue between five representatives of different classes, emphasising both the importance of their different kinds of wisdom in addressing the welfare of all, and the peculiarly human recognition that ‘we be not borne to our selves but partly to the use of oure countrie’.14 As Latimer urged in a sermon of 1552, ‘consider that no one person is born into the world for his own sake, but for the commonewealth sake’.15 The Complaynte of Scotland describes how the cloak of the personification of commonweal, in this case the afflicted Dame Scotia, is made up of the Three Estates of the realm. The central sense of the sixteenth-century concept of commonwealth, then, is this embracing of the realm as a whole and all of its members as one. This all suggests that Respublica and John the CommonWeill, different as they seem, are both intended to be recognised as composite and universalising figures. Respublica may appear on stage as a noble and educated virtuous lady, John as a forthright member of the common people, but we should not take them as representing or personifying these restricted social identities. They are offered as figures for a much broader sense of national identity, although their particular theatrical characterisations certainly enact tacitly varying assumptions by the authors about how such national identity might be characterised and understood. Another dominant strand in sixteenth-century discussion of commonweal focuses on the social and economic problems which beset society.16 The prosperity of the commonweal is envisaged importantly in economic terms, although these are generally understood as inseparable from moral and religious concerns. 12 See, Sir David Lyndsay: Selected Poems, edited by Janet Hadley Williams (Glasgow: Association for Scottish Literary Studies, 2001), pp. 29–40; Robert Wedderburn, The Complaynt of Scotland, c.1550, edited by A. M. Stewart (Edinburgh: Scottish Text Society, 1979). 13 See, for example. Edmund Dudley, The Tree of Commonwealth: A Treatise, edited by Dorothy Margaret Brodie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1948), pp. 31–32; Christine de Pisan, The Body of Polycye, The English Experience, No. 304 (Amsterdam and New York: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, Da Capo Press, 1971). Now available through Early English Books Online Text Creation Partnership: 14 Smith, Discourse, p. 14. 15 Hugh Latimer, Frutefull Sermons (London: John Day, 1572), p. 156. Cf. Hector Boece, Scotorum Historia (Paris, 1575), translated by Dana Sutton, The Philological Museum. www.philological. bham.ac.uk/boece/, Preface (1527) for a similar formulation. 16 For the following see Jones, Tudor Commonwealth, chapters 1–2.

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Issues of poverty, and those of productivity, trade, and taxation dominated. Anxiety was directed not only toward the absolute poverty of the common people but to the relative depression of landowners, merchants, and craftsmen, and of the consequent difficulties in supporting the functioning of the realm and the wealth and welfare of its inhabitants. In the mid-century there is increasing debate about social and economic processes, and the relative responsibilities of the crown, the nobility, the church, and the merchants in promoting employment and prosperity and alleviating distress. Discussion of commonwealth is dominated by such social and economic concerns. These issues are crucial in both of these plays. They are not presented as plays about social and economic hardship, but rather about wider-reaching issues of government, Church, and State. But poverty and social welfare are pointedly dramatised as an index of the state of the commonweal: the hardship suffered by the common people is vividly presented in both plays, through the tragicomic figures and complaints of People and Pauper. So, in Respublica People complains of the exorbitant prices of basic commodities, while Avarice delights in his corruption of leases and rents, benefices and bribes, the appropriation of church property, sale of counterfeit goods, and the export of ‘grayne, bell meatall, tynne and lead’ (l. 877). Many of these were issues flagged up by Mary’s Privy Council at the beginning of her reign as requiring immediate attention.17 In the Thrie Estaitis, Pauper, supported by John the Common-Weill, draws attention to the problem of work-refusers in all classes, the unequal and corrupt administration of justice, and especially the unjust imposition of church dues and the real suffering caused by the sequestration of goods. While both Respublica and John the CommonWeill are clearly differentiated from the representatives of the poor, these topical issues of economic and fiscal management are singled out as threatening their own political and spiritual, as well as material welfare. This is materially and visually demonstrated in each play by the same device: both characters initially appear in poor and tattered clothing, which is replaced when abuses are righted by magnificent costume.18 Through their plays’ attention to these central current ideas about the shaping of commonweal, Respublica and John the Common-Weill again clearly share an identity. But once more, differences in theatrical presentation suggest different ideologies of state underlying their common concerns. The two figures both suffer from and are damaged by the same problems. But Respublica does not herself understand or even fully recognise those problems. On stage, things are done to her by the deceiving Vices that she can neither perceive nor control: she accepts their false reassurances, their manipulations, telling Avarice, ‘I will putt miselfe whollye into your handes’ (l. 499). People, for all his comic-yokel stage presence, is a shrewder observer of the political process she is subject to than she is herself. 17 See the ‘Remembraunce of thynges worthie examinacon for the quenes maiestie’, The National Archives, SP11/1/22; Walker, Politics of Performance, pp. 172–84. 18 Respublica, lines 1425–26 and 1482–83; Thrie Estaitis, lines 2445 and 3802.

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John the Common-Weill, on the other hand, presents an incisive diagnosis both of the problems that affect him and of their causes. Although he is not able to put these problems right himself, he recognises what needs to be done and inspires and insists on action from those with authority. Respublica and John the Common-Weill are therefore shaped by shared and traditional formulations; but they embody contrasting political conceptions of the status and function of the commonweal. One is an entity we see acted upon, an image of innocent and passive suffering; the other a theatrically active agent in its own state of well-being. This sense of difference in figuring the State is reinforced by equally, if not more marked differences in the ways the two plays represent monarchy, and the relationship between monarchy and the commonweal. As with Respublica and John, it is not so much what is said by the personified characters involved, as what is seen and done in their action and gesture in performance that expresses the differing ideologies of kingship involved. Respublica is quite explicit about its representation of monarchy. The play concludes with the triumphant intervention of the goddess Nemesis, who passes judgement on the vices and leaves her ‘dearling Respublica . . . in tholde goode eastate’ (l. 1922). Before the action ever begins, the prologue explains to the spectators: Marye our Soveraigne and Quene [. . .] She is oure most wise and most worthie Nemesis Of whom our plaie meneth tamende that is amysse. (ll. 49–54) Mary I, newly crowned and sweeping away the corruption of her brother Edward’s government, is identified with Nemesis who, we are told: ‘hathe powre from godde all practise to repeale/which might bring Annoyaunce to ladie comonweale’ (ll. 1786–87). Her authority is over the constituent parts of the commonweal: ‘tys hir powre to forbidde and punishe in all eastates/all presumptuous immoderate attemptates’ (ll. 1790–91). But the stage presence of Nemesis is perhaps even more revealing of the nature and scope of her power than are these explanations. She is ceremonially brought in by the Four Daughters of God in the final scene of the play, to judge the Vices and deliver them to restitution or punishment. The descriptions that precede her entrance make it clear that she is costumed as a highly emblematic personification: hir cognisaunce therefore is a whele and wings to flye, in token hir rewle extendeth ferre and nie. A rudder eke she bearethe in hyr other hande, as directrie of all thinges in everye Lande. (ll. 1792–95) This suggests a visually dominating and elaborate figure, but a static one unlikely to engage in kinetic action. In fact, we are even alerted to her choreographed 117

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stance and gesture which reinforces the impression of an almost otherworldly, beyond human quality: ‘than pranketh she hir elbowse owte vnder hir side,/to keape backe the headie and to temper theire pride’ (ll. 1796–97). Mary, then, is identified with Nemesis; and monarchy is seen to function as the deus ex machina who emerges to right wrongs and to distribute absolute judgement sanctioned by – indeed almost identified with – the power of God himself. Monarchy is a far more contested notion in the Thrie Estaitis. As Greg Walker has pointed out, the play abounds with figures of kingship: King Humanitie and Divine Correction are both characterised as kings, Pauper usurps the image of kingship by climbing into the empty throne, and he and John the Common-Weill himself frequently appropriate the role with their repeated: ‘War I ane king . . . ’.19 Not only are the audience presented with these apparently multiple sources of royal authority, but the exercise of government in the play is itself diffracted. King Humanitie is ruled by Divine Correction, the two of them staging a twin model of kingship: John the Common-Weill greets the pair, ‘Gude day, gud day, grit God saif baith your Graces./Wallie, wallie, fall [good luck befall] thay twa weill fairde [well-favoured] faces!’ (ll. 2440–41). These twinned kings then operate not directly but through a parliament, in consultation with the Three Estates, advised by Gude Counsall and receptive to the complaints of the Common-Weill. So the position, role, and power of the monarch, his relationship to the institutions of government and to the state of the commonweal itself is a complex and composite one. This power relationship between the various bodies is not discussed or commented upon directly; but the theatrical presentation and choreography of the place and scaffold staging we find in this 1554 production demonstrates the conciliar and interactive process of government. Power relations can be made sharply apparent in proxemic groupings, as characters move between scaffolds: there is a revealing stage direction during the final judgements of the parliament on the Vices, for example, that states: ‘Heir sal the Kings and the Temporal Stait round [whisper] togider’ (l. 3734). The audience sees how the next royal judgement emerges from this silent consultation between King Humanitie, Divine Correction, and Temporality. The single, static, almost superhuman figure of Nemesis is replaced by this diffuse, partial, interactive performance of royal power. Other aspects of the action of the two plays reinforce this contrast. The Vices in each play represent political shortcomings, the moral failings of the administrators of government which damage Respublica and John the Common-Weill. In Respublica these vices attack and deceive Respublica herself, and it is with her that we watch them interact. The only relation the monarch, Nemesis, has with the Vices/ministers is one of judgment and control. In the Thrie Estaitis, however, it is King Humanitie who is seen to be attacked by the Vices; he is manipulated first by the follies of youth who tempt him into the arms

19 Walker, Politics of Performance, pp. 140–43; for ‘War I ane king’, see ll. 2592, 2846, 2961, 3015.

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of Sensuality, and then by the more serious agents of political corruption. It is John the Common-Weill who, like Respublica, is shown to suffer the evil effects of these political Vices; but in the stage action, the audience watch them manipulating not him but King Humanitie. The two figures of monarchy thus have contrasting stage interactions with the Vices, suggesting different kinds of engagement with the processes of government. This difference is heightened by the monarchs’ relationships to the agents of God’s judgement. In the Thrie Estaitis, Divine Correction is sent by God as a superior King, to awaken King Humanitie to his shortcomings and then to support him in his rule. But Nemesis, the ‘goddesse of correccion’ (l. 1782) in Respublica, is identified with the queen herself, emphasising the role of the monarch as God’s representative on earth. These conceptions of the strengths and weaknesses of the monarch, the powers and limitations of kingship in each play are not openly discussed; but they are embodied and performed as markedly different. There are some obvious contextual reasons for these striking differences in the performed portrayal of royal power. The plays are designed for very different audiences. Respublica seems to be a Christmas court performance by a boys’ company, probably drawn from the Chapel Royal. The Edinburgh production of the Thrie Estaitis took place on the city’s public playfield, to a very large mixed audience, including the Queen Regent and the nobility, but drawing together court and burgh, and ranging across all classes. It is hardly surprising that the view of royal power in the Edinburgh performance is more complicated and qualified than the more univocal celebration and reverence of the London court. Beyond their overt similarities as newly invested Roman Catholic female rulers, the different positions of the two queens are also influential. Mary Tudor came to the throne on a wave of popular support as the rightful heir, and had a clear personal commitment to restore Roman Catholic practice and reform the financial problems of her brother’s administration. Mary of Guise had won the regency from the Earl of Arran after long and careful negotiation, and was reigning as proxy for an absent child monarch, in a country where religious practice was still contested and shades of opinion divided and often unclear. But arguably what we see embodied in the two performances is not just these specific contextual circumstances, but what had become broader formulations of ideologies of monarchy in the two countries. Fifteenth- and sixteenth-century discussions of kingship shared many conventional positions about the powers and responsibilities of the monarch in relation to God and to the State. Traditionally, the prime duties of the king were to protect the realm, to administer justice and govern for the good of his people. His allegiance should be to God from whom he derived his power, but he should accept the importance of good counsel. During the first half of the sixteenth century these basic tenets remained central, but came to be rather differently inflected in England and in Scotland. In England, largely in response to the personal and constitutional strategies of Henry VIII, emphasis increased on the primary and undisputed power of the king over Church, State, and subjects. Images and ideas of royal supremacy and sovereign 119

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right were increasingly developed and promulgated.20 In Scotland, alternatively, there is evidence of developing theories of ‘contractual’ kingship. Roger Mason reminds us how sixteenth-century Scottish writers from John Mair (1521) to George Buchanan (1579) argued for the accountability of monarchs to their people, and the right to resist tyranny.21 The Thrie Estaitis does not itself present or support such an explicitly radical position. But its enactment of the qualified power of kingship, the forceful role of the Common-Weill, and his relative equality with the king in stage encounters is revealing of an underlying ideology that seems very different from the unquestioning reverence accorded to the monarch in Respublica. The two plays appear to offer us very similar fables of national recovery, in which personifications of very similar political and constitutional qualities act on and with each other in very similar ways. But if we look at the visual stage action, the embodied characterisation and the tone, style, and gesture of performed encounters, we come away with very different imaginative conceptions of the relationship between monarch and State. Respublica presents the State as the feminine, passive recipient of the grace of a supreme monarch, protected and nurtured by an absolute and quasi-divine power. John the Common-Weill shows the State as an active and equal partner who provokes the monarch to action. In a graphic stage action he is finally drawn into the centre of government: ‘Heir sal thay claith Johne the Common-weil gorgeouslie and set him down amang them in the Parliament’ (l. 3802). We might argue that of the two definitions of commonweal cited earlier – the body politic itself and the welfare of that body politic – Respublica is closer to the first and John to the second. She is the nation in which the audience live and to which they owe their duty; he is the state of common and mutual prosperity to which the audience aspire. It is clear that in both these plays ideology is projected not just through the spoken text, but through the experience of performance. Ideas about government, kingship, the State, and the people are all tacitly but vividly asserted through stage image and action. But the theatrical experience does not just enact differing ideologies of State and kingship. Spectators are prompted to very different theatrical responses to these performed characters, and through these responses are led to understand their own relationship to the commonweal, their own position as subjects and as citizens, rather differently. The courtly audience watching Respublica is invited to respond with admiration, but anxious tenderness to the suffering Lady Respublica and with awe and reverence to the spectacular Nemesis. The mixed audience of the Thrie Estaitis is drawn into humorous but spirited comradeship with John the Commonweal, and broadly respectful but critical evaluation of King Humanitie and his parliament’s proposed solutions. By engaging 20 See, for example, for example for example Dale Eugene Hoak, ed. Tudor Political Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), chapters. 1, 3 and 4. 21 Roger A. Mason, Kingship and the Commonweal: Political Thought in Renaissance and Reformation Scotland (East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 1998), pp. 1–7, and passim.

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their audiences in different theatrical experiences of spectatorship, the plays also offer them different roles as subjects and citizens. In the end it is not only differing ideologies of kingship and commonweal, but also of citizenship itself, that are performed; and they are performed in both theatrical and political senses, not only embodied on the stage but also brought into being beyond the stage, by the performance of these two plays.

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8 NEW EVIDENCE Vives and audience-response to biblical drama

Across many media of performance, audiences and spectators are increasingly a focus of study. Understanding spectatorship, and what it contributes to the meaning of any performance, is now an important topic in film and television studies, and emerging as a focus also for live performance events.1 In early drama, too, interest is growing in the importance of audiences – what John J. McGavin calls ‘value-laden witnessing’ – for our understanding of plays, ceremonies, games, and shows.2 But for the field of audience study there is a particular difficulty with any non-contemporary performance, which is especially acute in the case of medieval theatre. At this distance in time, the reactions of audiences seem inaccessible. We have scripts, records of material evidence, regulations, scenarios, and reports, but very rarely any evidence of how spectators responded to what they saw. Of course, there are various other paths to deducing or hypothesising audience response. Studies of the local context of any particular event may give us clues, as for example with the political circumstances which illuminate Heywood’s Play of the Weather.3 Analogous interpretative material may throw light on theatrical effect, such as the vernacular meditations on the life of Christ which illuminate the affective responses invited by the passion plays.4 The detailed study of scripts and staging frequently reveals how audiences were encouraged and invited to react. But direct evidence of audience and spectator response is sparse. In this rather barren field, the purpose of this paper is to re-introduce to the study of medieval theatre one valuable but largely forgotten piece of such evidence: an eye-witness report of an audience’s response to Passion plays, dating from the early years of the sixteenth century. I will not attempt to develop a fully researched analysis of

1 For recent overviews, see Will Brooker and Deborah Jermyn, The Audience Studies Reader (London: Routledge, 2003); Michele Aaron, Spectatorship: The Power of Looking On (London: Wallflower, 2007). 2 John J. McGavin, Theatricality and Narrative in Medieval and Early Modern Scotland (Aldershot and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007), p. 1. 3 Greg Walker, The Politics of Performance in Early Renaissance Drama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 76–116. 4 Meg Twycross, ‘Books for the Unlearned’ in Drama and Religion, edited by James Redmond (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 65–110.

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the plays in question or the particular context of performance. Rather, the aim here is simply to re-publish the evidence and point to some of its general implications for the study of early theatre through its audiences.5 This evidence is especially intriguing precisely because it deals primarily not with the organisation, the texts, or production of medieval drama, but with its contemporary reception. Although we have so little evidence for how audiences received and understood plays, we are beginning to recognise how audience response may confirm, complicate, or alter the meanings of performance events. The effect on the audience is, of course, the end purpose of all drama; but it is also a key to understanding those elements of meaning that are only created in the act of performance itself, and which are often incalculable from the records of how plays were written or staged. The rare responses that are recorded from or about spectators of early plays and performances can throw sometimes quite unexpected light on what they meant in their own time. It was the discovery of an eyewitness report of Gorboduc, for instance, that revealed the political meaning of the dumbshows taken by original spectators, which is not available from the surviving text.6 It is the chroniclers’ accounts of the royal entry of Anne Boleyn that reveal the onlookers’ ribald interpretation of the formally decorative wreathed monograms of Henry and his new bride.7 The evidence discussed here has something of the same capacity to reveal unexpected responses that may alter our view of the plays in question. It comes from a wholly non-dramatic source, which is presumably why it has found its way into few modern studies of late medieval drama: the commentary by Vives on Augustine’s City of God, first published in 1522. In Book 8, Chapter 27 Augustine distinguishes the Christian practice of honouring martyrs from pagan customs of worshipping gods or the dead which involve ceremonial and shows. Vives comments on this passage by criticising the performance of contemporary Passion plays which are, he claims, little different to the ancient pagan practices. He describes the apparently vocal and volatile responses of the popular audience in vivid, though negative terms. The full passage in its original Latin is quoted here, followed by the earliest English translation of the work, published in 1610: At qui mos nunc est, quo tempore sacrum celebrant Christi morte sua genus humanum liberantis, ludos nihil prope a scenicis illis ueteribus 5 The evidence discussed here seems to have dropped out of sight of current scholars of medieval theatre. It is cited and discussed in Joseph E. Gillet, ‘The German Dramatist of the Sixteenth Century and His Bible’, PMLA, 34 (1919), 465–93, and in fact (as so much else) quoted in E. K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, 4 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1923), IV, pp. 185–86. 6 Henry James and Greg Walker, ‘The Politics of Gorboduc’, English Historical Review, 110 (1995), 109–121. 7 Gordon Kipling, ‘“He That Saw It Would Not Believe It”: Anne Boleyn’s Royal Entry into London’, in Civic Ritual and Drama, edited by Alexandra F. Johnston and Wim Hüsken (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1997), pp. 39–80.

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differentes populo exhibere. etiam si aliud non dixero satis turpe existimabit quisquis audiet, ludos fieri in re maxime seria. Ibi ridetur Iudas quam potest ineptissima iactans, dum Christum prodit. ibi discipuli fugiunt militibus persequentibus, nec sine cachinnis & actorum & spectatorum: ibi Petrus auriculam rescindit Malcho, applaudente pullata turba, ceu ita uindicetur Christi captiuitas. Et post paulum, qui tam strenue modo dimicarat, rogationibus unius ancillulae territus abnegat magistrum, ridente multitudine ancillam interrogantem, et exibilante Petrum negantem. Inter tot ludentes, inter tot cachinnos & ineptias solus Christus est serius, & seuerus. quumcque affectus conatur moestos elicere, nescio quo pacto non ibi tantum, sed etiam ad sacra frigefacit, magno scelere atque impietate non tam eorum qui uel spectant, uel agunt, quam sacerdotum, qui eiusmodi fieri curant. Sed hisce de rebus loquemur forsan commodiore loco.8 [But now, euen at the celebration of Christs passion and our redemption, it is a custome to present plaies almost as vile as the old stagegames: should I be silent, the very absurdity of such shewes in so reuerend a matter, would condemne it sufficiently. There Iudas plaieth the most ridiculous Mimike, euen then when he betraies Christ. There the Apostles run away, and the soldiors follow, and all resounds with laughter. Then comes Peter,9 and cuttes off Malchus eare, and then all rings with applause, as if Christs betraying were now reuenged. And by and by this great fighter comes and for feare of a girle, denies his Maister, all the people laughing at her question, and hissing at his deniall: and in all these reuells and ridiculous stirres Christ onely is serious and seuere: but seeking to mooue passion and sorrow in the audience, hee is so farre from that, that hee is cold euen in the diuinest matters: to the great guilt,10 shame, and sinne both of the priests that present this, and the people that behold it. But wee may perhaps finde a fitter place for this thaeme.]11 Vives’ description is clearly biased and unsympathetic, but it seems a wonderfully vivid and immediate account of the way in which audiences responded to the Passion drama he has in mind. It gives us a glimpse of plays in performance, and suggests a tone, mood, and experience of spectatorship that we would be unlikely to have realised from either the playtext or dramatic records, had they survived. The context for this surprisingly placed account is not easy to pin down, though it will of course have a bearing on its implications. It is not immediately clear what kind of drama Vives is describing, or even from what country or area. He 8 9 10 11

Augustine, De Civitate Dei, comm. J. L. Vives (Basle: Frobenius, 1522) Bk. 8 Ch. 27, pp. 266–67. Marginal note: ‘Plaies of the passion of Iesus Christ, vnlawfull’. Marginal note: ‘The Louanists want this’. St Augustine, Of the Citie of God: with the learned comments of Io. Lod. Vives, Englished by J. H. (London: George Eld, 1610), pp. 337. Sad to say, the ‘fitter place’ has not yet come to light.

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himself had an interestingly mixed background, and by 1522 would have encountered theatrical practice in several different countries. He was born into a converted Jewish family in Spain around 1492, and grew up in Valencia. Possibly to escape the Inquisition, he moved as a scholar to Paris where he lived from around 1509 until 1514. After this, he spent most of his life in the Low Countries, particularly in Bruges where he married, and in Louvain, where he was an active member of the intellectual elite.12 He was close friends with Erasmus who promoted him and his work, especially this edition and commentary on the City of God. It was apparently at Erasmus’ suggestion that Vives dedicated the work to Henry VIII. One effect was that soon after its publication he was invited to England where he spent some years as tutor to the Princess Mary. From this brief biography, it seems most likely that the plays he describes were those performed in the Low Countries, probably in Louvain where he had been appointed professor in 1519.13 So, while Vives’ edition itself was well-known and well-received in England after 1522, his comments on the drama are unlikely to have been directed specifically at English versions of Passion plays. Nonetheless, what is described seems as though it might throw a relevant light on related dramatic events and performance possibilities in England. Vives’ critical attitude to the popular biblical drama of the late middle ages was not unusual among the intellectuals of the early sixteenth century, although it does seem to draw him rather closer to the reforming thought of the early protestants than to the Roman Catholic humanists such as More and Erasmus.14 Most of these humanist scholars did not object to drama as such, especially classical or Latin plays, Erasmus and others seeing them as a useful educational tool, promoting moral and intellectual understanding, a confident public presence, and language learning. Vives’ own lively Latin dialogues for schoolboys might suggest that he shared this view, but he was in fact rather more explicitly critical of drama than most humanists. In various writings he focused both on the immoral content of classical plays and their capacity to inflame the imagination and over-ride moral judgement.15 Vives’ objections to contemporary vernacular drama seem based in a similar distrust of misdirected imaginative engagement. He rejected the primarily 12 See Carlos G. Norena, ed., A Vives Bibliography (Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press, 1990), Introduction. 13 This may have been the assumption of the 1610 English translator, John Healey, who includes next to the account the marginal gloss, ‘The Louanists want this’; though this may equally refer to Healey’s knowledge of the reputation of the Roman Catholic university in seventeenth-century England. 14 For critical Protestant reaction to medieval biblical drama, see Gillet, ‘German Dramatist’. 15 For a useful comparison of Vives’ views on drama with those of More and Erasmus, see Howard B. Norland, Drama in Early Tudor Britain, 1485–1558 (Lincoln, Neb. and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1995), pp. 95–108. For Vives’ own lively engagement in quasi-dramatic forms see, for example, his book of school dialogues, Tudor School-Boy Life: The Dialogues of Juan Luis Vives, edited and translated by Foster Watson (London: Dent, 1908).

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emotive quality of late medieval devotional practice, which underlay what he saw as the dangers of this kind of popular public enactment of the events of Christ’s life. Vives seems concerned that those observing the events of the Passion are being encouraged to inappropriate and uncomprehendingly emotive reactions. This sort of suspicion of the affective power of devotional theatre and its ability to provoke misplaced fervour is of course of long standing. The fifteenth-century Tretise of Miraclis Pleyinge spells out very similar dangers, complaining that: þe wepyng þat falliþ to men and wymmen by þe si3te of siche miraclis pleyinge, as þei ben not principaly for þeire oune synnes, ne of þeire gode feiþ wiþinneforþe [inwardly], but more of þeire si3t wiþouteforþ, is not alowable byfore God but more reprowable [. . .] havyng more compassion of peyn þanne of synne, þei falsly wepyn for lakkynge of bodily prosperite more þan for lakkyng of gostly [spiritual].16 The Reformation revived these arguments. Around the time Vives wrote his commentary, Luther was similarly urging in 1518 that the point of meditation was to turn the meditator’s mind not to emotional engagement in the events of Christ’s life, but to his own spiritual condition: ‘Homini non est necessarium, ut Christum in ipsius passionem deploret, sed magis seipsum in Christo’.17 [It is not required for a man to weep for Christ in his passion, but rather for himself in Christ.] Vives shares the suspicion of affective devotion, presenting his spectators as doubly uncomprehending. They do not weep at all, even for Christ, but he clearly sees them as responding emotionally to the immediacy of the events represented, and not reflecting on the spiritual significance of those events to themselves. Although Vives’ account is unsympathetic, it does appear to give us a particularly sharp and persuasively authentic sense of spectator reaction. One important feature is that the response seems very vocal. This is not a reverently quiet audience, but one which laughs, hisses, and applauds the shifts of the action, participating noisily in its effects. It sounds as though the whole experience of the drama is as much defined by the shared audience involvement as it is by the actors. We might understand the difference made to the meaning of the performance if we compare today’s experience of being present at a live football match with that of watching it on television. We may see the same actions in both settings, but the shared participation with an energetically noisy and engaged crowd of spectators can transform both our reception and our understanding of what we see. Interestingly, oblique but somewhat comparable testimony to the exuberance of early 16 The Tretise of Miraclis Pleyinge, in Greg Walker, ed., Medieval Drama: An Anthology (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), pp. 199–200. 17 Luther, Duo sermones de passione Christi (1518), cited in Gillet, ‘German Dramatist’, p. 483, n.70.

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sixteenth-century audiences can be found from Thomas More, who was in general far more positive about drama as a medium than Vives. More imagines his antagonist Luther ‘performing’ a disputation: in his own theater, where the seats have been packed with scoundrels who [. . .] at each blasphemy will applaud and repeat, ‘Bravo!’ But at each word of the one who would come to dispute with Luther, with shouting, grimacing, stomping, pounding, they will interrupt him, hoot at him, hiss him off the stage.18 While this is only an imaginary performance, of a debate not a play, and before a hostile crowd, More suggests the same sort of vocal engagement and possibly a somewhat similar suspicion of the volatility of popular response. Like Vives, he implies that participation in the event through noisily vocal reaction is a normal feature of early spectatorship. One immediate surprise in Vives’ account lies in those episodes which he identifies as provoking laughter: Judas betraying Christ, the apostles running away from the soldiers, the servant girl questioning Peter. We are used to the idea that the English biblical plays rely extensively on creating humorous interactions with their audiences. If we consider our surviving texts, the movement between the tonally serious and the tonally funny is fluid and frequent. It is an easy movement characteristic of ‘folk’ or ‘popular’ performance.19 This frequently occurs where later audiences might find it surprising, potentially uncomfortable if not openly irreverent. It was one of the features of medieval theatre regularly objected to by critics, from the Lollards to the humanists and Protestants. Nor is it always the case that comic material is ‘inserted’ into biblical episodes. Rather, certain biblical characters and events are themselves explored with laughter, even when their import is serious. Obvious examples would be the Towneley Killing of Abel, where the funny but startling scurrility with which Cain treats the sacred (inviting God to wipe his arse with a wisp of corn) is an integral part of the action of the sacrifice and not a separate plot strand; or the N-Town play of Joseph’s Trouble, where Joseph’s outspoken worries about his wife’s chastity, his own impotence, and the social and physical unlikeliness of the virgin conception invite laughter around the sacred event. But in these episodes we can read the laughter from script, in the speeches provided for the characters. What Vives describes suggests that in the original performances of biblical drama laughter may well have been extended to many other episodes where it may not be visible to us in the play texts. We cannot, of course, 18 Thomas More, Responsio Ad Lutherum, The Complete Works of St. Thomas More, 5 (1), edited by John M. Headley, translated by Scholastica Mandeville (New Haven, Conn., and London: Yale University Press, 1969) pp. 43–45. 19 See, for example, Petr Bogatyrev, ‘Semiotics in the Folk Theater’ in Semiotics of Art, edited by Ladislav Matejka and Irwin R. Titunik (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1976).

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gauge this with accuracy as we do not know for sure which plays he is describing and so have no texts to explore. But, given the apparent relative similarity of such traditional drama in different countries at the time, it sounds as though laughter may have been licensed and even encouraged more fully around the events of the Passion than we have so far realised. Such a perception might make sense of some other snippets of record about audience response which equally express anxiety about laughter at serious events. Soon after Vives’ comments, early sixteenth-century Protestant criticism of late medieval drama raises similar concerns. Joachim Greff, a playwright from Dessau who published an Easter play in 1542, remembered the difficulty of staging the Passion in the late middle ages: Ursach/das die Jüden/mit der Spötterey so sie die person Christi angelegt/das volck mehr zum lachen gereitzt dann zu andacht bewegt.20 [Because the Jews, by the jeers they made against the person of Christ, aroused the people to laughter more than they moved them to devotion.] Closer to home, and well before the anxieties of the Reformation, the episode of the York Masons and their Fergus pageant in the Corpus Christi cycle suggests that this was neither an entirely new nor a late, decadent audience reaction. In 1431–32 the Masons negotiated to be relieved of their pageant of the Funeral of the Virgin, which included the miraculous episode of the blasphemous attack by the Jews on the Virgin’s bier. They offered a number of reasons for this, but one of the strongest seems to have been the audience response. The pageant, they claimed, ‘magis risum & clamorem causabat quam deuocionem’ [used to produce more noise and laughter than devotion]. In fact, it appears that ‘lites contenciones & pugne inde proueniebant’ [quarrels, disagreements, and fights used to arise among the people from this].21 The implication here seems to be that the laughter the play provoked was unwelcome and unintentional; but equally, it sounds as though the audience response was both expected and long-standing. Both of these comments identify audience laughter specifically with representations of the Jews. On the basis of English playtexts, we may not find this wholly surprising, since where the Jews are grouped en masse as tormentors or opponents they are generally to some degree caricatured. But Vives’ account suggests that laughter spread considerably wider than this, and in fact that only Christ was exempt. It may be that we need to widen our assumptions about the tonal experience of a much wider range of actions, characters, and episodes in these plays. The interplay between humour and reverence may be more intricate and more robust than we realise.

20 Joachim Greff, Werke (Kritische Gesamtausgabe) II, p. 136, cited in Gillet, ‘German Dramatist’, p. 489 n. 82. 21 Records of Early English Drama: York, edited by Alexandra F Johnston and Margaret Rogerson, 2 vols (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979), I, p. 48; II, p. 732.

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An audience’s laughter, especially at caricatured enemies, may be a reaction of superiority, scorn, group-identity, or defensiveness. But another particularly interesting aspect of Vives’ account is that it is not only laughter that he identifies as a vocal audience response. He also tells us of hissing (at Peter’s denial) and applause (at his cutting off Malchus’ ear). These sound not so much like the distancing of scornful laughter, but a direct emotional engagement in the surface heroics of the action. Vives’ sharp analysis of the movement of spectator sympathy is particularly telling: ‘Then comes Peter, and cuttes off Malchus eare, and then all rings with applause, as if Christs betraying were now reuenged’. This seems a genuine interpretation not of the play, but of the act of performance itself and the meaning it generates. We find the same insight in the reported comedy of the encounter between Peter and the maidservant: ‘And by and by this great fighter comes and for feare of a girle, denies his Maister, all the people laughing at her question, and hissing at his deniall’. This, too, seems to capture the moment of performance, and the spectators’ intense experience of joyfully conflicting sympathies and responses. It gives us a powerful sense of the experience of watching the play. Vives’ account reveals that, even more than we already realise, late-medieval audiences seem to have a participatory role. The description might remind us of the mode of twentieth-century pantomime – not pantomime’s specific theatrical traditions, but its audible engagement of its audience in the rapid transitions between stylised comic, serious, heroic, trivial, tragic, and triumphant moments.22 The audience have an active role, to laugh, hiss, applaud, sigh, weep. In this, Vives sometimes seems to link them directly with the actors, as though the two are inseparable in the act of performance. The elegance of Haines’ early English translation sometimes obscures this link. So, when Vives describes how ‘discipuli fugiunt militibus persequentibus’ [the disciples run away with the soldiers after them] he tells us that ‘nec sine cachinnis & actorum & spectatorum’ [both actors and spectators roar with laughter]. Similarly, in his resonant conclusion he places blame ‘non tam eorum qui uel spectant, uel agunt, quam sacerdotum, qui eiusmodi fieri curant’ [not so much on those who watch or act, but on the priests who encourage this sort of thing to be done]. Those who watch and those who act are colleagues and collaborators in the creation of the performance. This is the broad underlying significance of the study of theatrical spectatorship. Vives may have intended purely negative criticism of this kind of drama; but his account gives us vital and positive evidence for developing our understanding of the power and complexity of late-medieval spectatorship.

22 Millie Taylor, British Pantomime Performance (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2009).

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9 VERITY’S BIBLE Books, texts, and reading in Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis

There is a famous and striking dramatic moment in David Lyndsay’s Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis when the newly arrived personification of Verity is confronted by the Spiritual Estate and the Vices. Flatterie challenges her: Quhat buik is that, harlot, into thy hand? Out, walloway [alas, alas], this is the New Testament, In Englisch toung, and prentit in England! Herisie, herisie! Fire, fire incontinent!1 In modern productions, at least, this moment tends to be played as one of dramatic crisis. It theatrically crystallises the opposition of old and new faiths, and the Church’s perceived oppression of reform. In this spectacle of confrontation, the book Verity carries becomes a powerful theatrical shorthand for a complex set of ideas. In this paper, I aim to consider more closely this moment and the kinds of dramatic and ideological weight it carries. But I also hope to look beyond that particular encounter to the play’s wider engagement with books and with reading. This is a play in which ideas about the status and ownership of written text, and the translation, teaching, and comprehension of texts in various forms, form a central preoccupation. One of the issues Lyndsay is concerned with in the Thrie Estaitis is the right of access to the truths of faith, as encoded in books. While that raises questions about the availability of vernacular printed texts, as in the challenge to Verity’s New Testament, this is not the only means of textual engagement. The ‘text’, especially the biblical text, exists in the play in many different modes: not only within books, but also in the memory, or on the tongue; made available by teaching as well as by independent reading. This is an important aspect of the play’s subject matter; but it is complicated by the practices of stage performance. The Thrie Estaitis’ embodiment of books and their contents as stage properties raises further 1 David Lindsay, Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis, edited by R. J. Lyall (Edinburgh: Canongate, 1989), lines 1152–55.

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questions about the material or immaterial, literal, or emblematic quality of text. In this play, books are thus at the centre of strong and sometimes conflicting positions, not only of religious belief but also of theatrical practice. Lyndsay’s stage books are therefore especially revealing, at this heightened transitional moment on the eve of the Scottish Reformation.2 So first – what is Verity and why does she carry a book? She is of course a personification of virtue: Verity and Chastity are the two virtuous figures who arrive in the corrupt world of the play, and are set especially against the perceived failings of the spiritual estate. By itself, Verity’s name might suggest only a general conception of Truth; but by the mid-sixteenth century her identity had become both more precise and rather more polemical. Personifications of Veritas were common enough from earlier in the middle ages, perhaps especially in the motif of the Four Daughters of God or Parliament of Heaven where Truth acts with her sisters Mercy, Justice, and Peace.3 As such she is only one of the combined qualities of God. Images from this earlier period tend to represent the Four Daughters as distinguished primarily by their narrative context or sometimes by labelling scrolls: Truth rarely carries an attribute and is identified more from her place in the story than from any visual identification.4 But in the early sixteenth century the image of Veritas begins to acquire more particular connotations that overlie the medieval conceptions. From humanist interest in classical learning, Truth comes to be understood as the daughter of Time, who brings the truth to light.5 Deriving apparently from a chance remark in Aulus Gellius’ Attic Nights, the phrase had engendered a widely recognised allegory of Time rescuing his daughter from confinement in a hidden cave. In a different strand of images she also becomes a contested figure in the religious struggles of the earlier sixteenth century. Reforming propaganda was attracted to the figure of Truth oppressed by various social, ecclesiastical or moral forces.6

2 For an extensive discussion of these and related issues, see Frederick Kiefer, Writing on the Renaissance Stage: Written Words, Printed Pages, Metaphoric Books (Newark and London: University of Delaware and Associated University Presses, 1996). 3 For the allegory of the Parliament of Heaven, see Hope Traver, The Four Daughters of God (Philadelphia: John C. Winston, 1907); Samuel Chew The Virtues Reconciled: An Iconographic Study (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1947). 4 See Chew, Virtues Reconciled, plates 1–4. 5 For the development and sixteenth-century use of the allegory, see Fritz Saxl ‘Veritas Filia Temporis’, in Philosophy and History: Essays presented to Ernst Cassirer edited by R. Klibansky and H. Paton (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1936), pp. 197–222; Donald Gordon, ‘Veritas Filia Temporis: Hadrianus Junius and Geoffrey Whitney’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 3 (1940), 228–40. 6 See Durer, ‘Michelfeld Tapestry’, in R. W. Scribner, For the Sake of Simple Folk: Popular Propaganda for the German Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), fig. 107, p. 141; ‘Die vntertrückt Fraw Warheyt’, attributed Erhard Schoen, in The Illustrated Bartsch: German Masters of the Sixteenth Century Vol 13, edited by Walter Strauss (New York: Abaris Books, 1984) 1301.074.

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These new affiliations were brought together in the frontispiece of the Goodly Prymer in English, published in 1535.7 The image shows the ancient figure of Time, in the manner of Christ releasing the Patriarchs from Limbo, drawing his naked daughter Truth from the cave where she had been hidden, while a demonic figure of Hypocrisy vomits over her head. The text of the preface on the facing page attacks the ‘pestilent and infectious bokes’ of Roman Catholic devotion which have ‘pituously seduced and deceyued’ the faithful, and commends its own revelation of vernacular truth to devout common readers. The classical image thus combines with the appropriation of the figure of Truth to the Protestant or Reformist cause, here especially embodied in books. It is probably from around this time that the personification of Truth begins to acquire what was to become her common attribute: a book, often a book open to reveal the words Verbum Dei.8 This is an allegorical image, envisaging Truth as the word of God, the divine logos. But it also suggests the direct association of the personification of Truth with the material text of the bible, the book that carries the word of God. That material text of the bible itself, of course, became a battlefield in which new and old faiths struggled, especially over the question of vernacular translation. So much is this so that the frontispiece to Henry VIII’s ‘Great Bible’ of 1539, the official English bible circulated for use in churches, showed Henry himself in the image that came to be associated with Truth, presenting his new work, titled Verbum Dei, to the nation and the reader.9 The figure of Truth was thus adopted into the discourse of religious politics; but she remained a contested image, appropriated by both Protestants and Roman Catholics as an image of their cause. We see this especially vividly in her theatrical manifestations. In a 1527 court interlude before Henry VIII’s split from the Church of Rome, Veritas appears with Ecclesia and Religion, costumed ‘lyke iij novessis’, set against ‘Erresy, ffalse interpretacyon and Corrupcio scriptoris’.10 But twenty years later we find her in Edward VI’s assertively Protestant royal entry, at one pageant with a book and at another praising Henry’s suppression of ‘hethen rites and detestable idolatrye’ which had set her free.11 Perhaps most 7 Anon, A goodly prymer in englyshe, newly corrected and printed with certeyne godly meditations and prayers added to the same, very necessarie [and] profitable for all them that ryghte assuredly vnderstande not ye latine [and] greke tongues. (London: John Bydell for William Marshall, 1535), STC (2nd ed.) 15988. 8 See, for example, the publisher’s imprint of John Ross, Edinburgh as seen on the title page of George Buchanan, De Jure Regni apud Scotos (Edinburgh: John Ross, 1579). Interestingly, in an illustration of the Parliament of Heaven in a 1514 French Book of Hours, the figure of Truth is replaced by Ecclesia, who carries a book bag. See Chew, Virtues Reconciled, plate 5. 9 See John N. King, ‘The Royal Image, 1535–1603’, in Tudor Political Culture, edited by Dale Hoak (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 104–32 (pp. 108–11). 10 Calendar of Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII, edited by J. S. Brewer and others, 21 vols (London: Longmans H.M.S.O, 1872–1910), IV (ii), 3564, p. 1605; see . 11 Literary Remains of King Edward the Sixth, edited by John Gough Nichols, 2 vols (London: Roxburghe Club, 1857) I, pp. cclxxxvi, ccxci.

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famously, at around the time of the production of the Thrie Estaitis (1552 and 1554), first Mary Tudor and then Elizabeth each adopted the motto Veritas Filia Temporis (‘Truth, the daughter of Time’) as their own.12 She appeared in the pageantry for royal entries for both of them, in each case theatrically raising significant issues of devotional allegiance. So in 1554 Mary and her new husband Philip encountered Veritas as part of a Parliament of Heaven pageant: ‘wyth a boke in her hande, whereon was written Verbum Dei’.13 This securely Roman Catholic image was complicated, however, by the representation of an image of Henry VIII with the same book in the earlier pageant at Gracechurch Street. This allusion to Henry’s role in the patronage and circulation of the English translation, the Great Bible, apparently led to an angry confrontation between the Bishop of Winchester and the painter, who subsequently painted out the book and replaced it with a pair of gloves.14 Then, in her coronation entry in 1559, Elizabeth also encountered Truth, released by her father Time from a cave, who offered the queen the English bible inscribed with the words Verbum veritatis. Re-appropriating the image from her Roman Catholic sister, Elizabeth theatrically embraced the book as a sign of her support for her Protestant kingdom.15 All this suggests that when Lyndsay’s Verity appears holding her book she is entering a field which is already heavy with opposing significances, both theological and partisan. She is certainly treated by the clerics and vices of the play as a political as well as a moral danger. Urged on by Flattery, Spirituality is first of all eager to bar Verity from the royal presence: ‘Now, quhill [while] the King misknawis [misunderstands] the veritie’ (1110), suggesting that they see her primarily as a threat to secular authority and the relations between Church and State. The outcome of their intervention is that Verity is set in the stocks – an image which was already a recognisable trope of social protest – where she remains until the arrival of Divine Correction.16 Even before the book she carries is identified as an English New Testament, the context of the play’s action with its attack on the failings of the Spirituality makes clear that in this play the politicised Verity is a figure associated with reform rather than with the Roman Catholic Church. 12 See Saxl, ‘Veritas Filia Temporis’; and Gordon, ‘Veritas Filia Temporis’. 13 John Gough Nichols, ed., The Chronicle of Queen Jane and of Two Years of Queen Mary, and Especially of the Rebellion of Sir Thomas Wyatt (London: Camden Society, 1850), pp. 150–51; see King, ‘Royal Image’, pp. 118–20. 14 Nichols, Chronicle of Queen Jane, pp. 78–79; see also Kevin Sharpe, Selling the Tudor Monarchy: Authority and Image in Sixteenth-Century England (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009), pp. 292–96. 15 John Nichols. The Progresses and Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth, 3 vols (London: John Nichols and Son, 1823) I, pp. 48–51; see Sharpe Tudor Monarchy, pp. 421–22. 16 For comparison with Verity in the stocks, see Durer, ‘Michelfeld Tapestry’, or Justice in the stocks (while the Word of God with open book stands beside her), in Peter Flöttner ‘The Poor Common Ass’, reproduced in Scribner, For the Sake of Simple Folk, fig. 93, p. 122; and the binding of Charity in The Interlude of Youth (ll. 520–50) and Pity in Hickscorner (ll. 510–548) in Two Tudor Interludes: The Interlude of Youth and Hick Scorner, edited by Ian Lancashire (Manchester University Press, 1980).

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Lyndsay picks up the increasingly familiar Protestant imagery, so that her book is seen not, or not only, as a conceptual emblem of her quality as Truth, or as God’s word, but as a politically laden material actuality. There has been helpful research on the specific identity of Verity’s book. There are a number of candidates for English bibles printed in England before 1552, probably the most favoured being Henry VIII’s Great Bible of 1539.17 This is likely to have been the version the English offered to Regent Arran in 1543 for circulation in Scotland following his legislation to permit the reading of vernacular scriptures. Lord Lisle suggested to Arran during these negotiations that he should ‘lett slipp emonges the people in this tyme, the Bible and New Testament in Englishe, [. . .] and if you have non in your own tonge, I will help to gett you som out of England’.18 This may well be the edition of ‘ane byble in inglis’ recorded as owned by Lyndsay himself after his death.19 However, though the size of the Great Bible would make it an effective theatrical prop, it would be cumbersome in extended action and, perhaps more significantly, Verity’s book is always referred to not as a ‘bible’ but as a ‘New Testament’. These are likely to have created a different visual and theatrical effect, since New Testaments were generally designed to be portable and seem to have often been considered as pocket books. In the early 1540s, when James V’s treasurer, the Laird of Grange, was accused of having ‘becom ane heretik’, one of the signs was ‘that he had alwayes a New Testament in Englis in his poutche’.20 This is clearly not anything on the scale of the Great Bible. The question of an exact edition may be a red herring, however. In considering how this scene works in performance it is not necessary to assume that the book the actor carried was anything other than a prop, or, even if it were an English New Testament, that Lyndsay had any specific edition in mind. While the focus on its vernacularity and English printing suggests that Verity’s book is not a purely symbolic allegorical attribute, it is still a stage representation rather than a literal object. More important than its edition, therefore, is the part the book plays on stage. What does Verity do with it, and what kind of role does it carry in the action, either physical or allegorical? The first thing to say, perhaps, is that neither Verity nor anyone else appears to read from the book she carries. It is argued over, but as far as the text suggests it is not directly consulted. When Verity first enters, she has a substantial soliloquy in which she addresses rulers, both temporal and spiritual, on the topic of the exercise of justice, the protection of the poor, and the

17 See Carol Edington, Court and Culture in Renaissance Scotland: Sir David Lindsay of the Mount (East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 1995), pp. 149–50. 18 The Hamilton Papers, edited by Joseph Bain, 2 vols (Edinburgh: H.M. General Register House, 1890), I, p. 299. 19 Edinburgh, National Records of Scotland, CS7/15/1 (Register of Acts and Decreits 15), fols. 78v– 79v. I am grateful to Dr Janet Hadley Williams for this reference. 20 Sir James Melville of Halhill, Memoirs of his Own Life MDXLIX – MDXCIII, edited by Thomas Thomson (Edinburgh: Bannatyne Club, 1827), p. 65.

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need to set the example of virtuous deeds. From this speech alone we would not know that she carries a book; she makes no reference to it, nor does she imply that she is reading. Verity does, however, quote frequently and strikingly both from the scriptures and other sources. Interestingly, her tendency is to quote not directly in the vernacular, but in Latin, most often from the Vulgate, which she then translates. So she opens: ‘Diligite Justitiam qui iudicatis terram/Luif [Love] Justice, ye quha hes [who have] ane Judges cure [responsibility]/ In earth’ (1034–36).21 Although editions of the New Testament existed which parallel the Vulgate and English texts, it seems unlikely that Verity is presented as ‘reading’ these quotations from her book since the translations she offers are adapted to Lyndsay’s verse scheme rather than deriving from any known published version. Of course, this is not to say that Verity might not act as if reading from the book; but since the majority of her quotations are not taken from the New Testament this would seem both unlikely and confusing. Quotation of texts is plentiful and a distinctive aspect of her theatrical identity; so is translation of those quotations to make them accessible; but the act of reading seems less so. Even once the book is identified by Flattery and Verity defends its content, it is a surprisingly aureate image of God’s words that she defends rather than making any appeal to the efficacy of the literal text. So she explains to her accusers that ‘in this buik thair is na heresie,/Bot our Christs word, baith dulce and redolent,/Ane springing well of sinceir veritie’ (1157–59). In all, this scene might seem to suggest an intriguingly transitional mode in theatrical practice. It is important to the play that Verity’s book is not simply an icon or emblem of truth, but is identified as a physical printed volume in an accessible language. As such it fits with Protestant notions of a shift from the symbolic to the actual. But in performance the book is nonetheless more than just a material object. While Verity herself speaks the words of God that the bible contains, the book she carries functions as a resonant image of those words and access to them, rather than a functional reading text. So, in theatrical practice even the word itself (with its Protestant emphasis) becomes an image (with its Roman Catholic association). As throughout, the play hovers between allegorical and literal action; but these theatrical dimensions also suggest confessional implications. After this first striking scene, books, texts, and translation all remain important throughout the play, enabling dynamic performance of many of its central preoccupations. There are two other especially significant moments that are worth exploring in relation to Verity’s first appearance with the New Testament, and that may help to expand our sense both of Lyndsay’s religious ideas and his theatrical practice. The first is a moment in the second half of the play where a New Testament or bible is not only present but is formally consulted and read aloud. During

21 The quotation is from the Book of Wisdom 1.1.

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the parliament of the three Estates there is a combative discussion of the proper role of the Spirituality. Gude Counsell remarks that bishops should be preachers, and parsons should teach their parishioners ‘ane lessoun’, ‘of the Evangell’. We then find this exchange: Spirituality: Friend, quhair find ye that we suld prechours be? Gude Counsell: Luik quhat Sanct Paul wryts unto Timothie. Tak thair the Buik; let se gif ye can spell! Spirituality: I never red that; thairfoir reid it your sell! Gude Counsall sall read thir wordis on ane buik: Fidelis sermo, si quis Episcopatum desiderat, bonum opus desiderat. Oportet [ergo], eum irreprehensibilem esse, unius uxoris virum, sobrium, prudentem, ornatum, pudicum, hospitalem, doctorem non vinolentum, non percussorem sed modestum. That is: ‘This is a true saying, If any man desire the office of a Bishop, he desireth a worthie worke: A Bishop therefore must be unreproveable, the husband of one wife, etc. (2912–24) Unlike Verity’s ‘dulce and redolent’ emblem of Christ’s Law, this is primarily a material text, appealed to as literal proof of an ecclesiastical duty. Gude Counsell is citing the words of St Paul in the first Epistle to Timothy. But theatrically, there are some interesting questions about exactly what it is he appears to read, questions which themselves raise further queries about the nature and status of Charteris’ 1602 printed text of the play in which this scene is recorded.22 First, it appears that Gude Counsell reads not from an English bible, but from a Latin text which he then translates into English. The scene is not, then, building directly on Verity’s English New Testament with its reformist implications; the question raised at this point seems to be about clerical reading and understanding of the Vulgate, not about the broader access of lay people to the bible in English. This suggests that the play is interested not only in the politicised issue of access to the vernacular scriptures, but in dramatising a range of different issues concerning the role of biblical text and how it may be understood. According to the printed text, Gude Counsell initially reads in Latin, but then appears to translate the words into English. Scholars have pointed out that the English translation of the passage (like others in the play) does not follow any of the editions available to Lyndsay.23 They have therefore tended to suggest that 22 Bannatyne’s 1568 manuscript which records extensive extracts from the play omits a number of passages which Charteris includes, apparently on the grounds that they are over-serious and refer to matters since reformed. For a comparison of the two texts, see J. Derrick McClure, ‘A Comparison of the Bannatyne MS and the Quarto Texts of Lyndsay’s Ane Satyre of The Thrie Estaitis’, in Scottish Language and Literature, Medieval and Renaissance, edited by Dietrich Strauss and Horst W. Drescher (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1986), pp. 409–22. 23 See, for example, Lyall, Thrie Estaitis, p. xxxviii.

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he made his own translation (even though Gude Counsall’s words are noticeably more English than Scots). This might perhaps reinforce a sense that what mattered to Lyndsay was not any specific textual authority as contained in the words themselves, but simply the importance of making meaning broadly accessible. This seems to have been the position of Protestant translators of the bible into the vernacular. The Preface to the Geneva Bible, the popular translation led by William Whittingham and published in Geneva in 1560, points out that: ‘some translations read after one sort, and some after another, whereas all may serve to good purpose and edification’.24 However, it transpires that Gude Counsall’s translation in Charteris’ text is indeed taken from a published edition – but it is one that postdates Lyndsay’s own lifetime. The Geneva Bible itself provides a translation of the passage from Timothy that exactly matches that of Charteris’s print. While this does not significantly change the stage emphasis of the scene as we have it, it does demonstrate that what we have in Charteris is not an exact representation of any manuscript of Lyndsay’s, which could not have included this particular passage of translation.25 So the inclusion of the passage raises interesting if unanswerable questions both about the nature of Charteris’ copy text and about his own editorial role or that of his intermediaries. It may also reinforce our sense of how Lyndsay was viewed in the decades following his death in 1555. Current reading of Lyndsay’s work sees him as subtly poised between traditional and reformist thinking on matters of religious persuasion.26 This may in part account for the respect in which he seems to have been held by all parties to the controversy during his own lifetime. But from the first decisive steps of the Scottish Reformation shortly after his death, Lyndsay very quickly came to be co-opted as a Protestant hero, his work generally, and the Thrie Estaitis in particular, understood as outspokenly critical of the Roman Catholic Church and committed to the new faith. George Bannatyne, copying extensive extracts into his manuscript anthology in 1568, clearly read the play as an explicit forerunner of the Reformation, explaining that he omitted ‘the grave mater thairof becaws the samyne abvse is weill reformit in scotland praysit be god’.27 Charteris’ own preface to his edition of Lyndsay’s poetic Works in the same year used the Thrie Estaitis as an example to assure his readers that Lyndsay was ‘plane aganis thame [the Roman Catholic Church], and as it war professit enemie to thame’.28 While Charteris’ inclusion of the Geneva translation in his text of the play may be simply practical, 24 The Bible and Holy Scriptures (Geneva: Rouland Hall, 1560), fol. iiiir. 25 By the time of the 1602 edition of the play the Geneva Bible was fully established in Scotland. It is perfectly possible that Charteris drew on the Edinburgh ‘Bassandyne Bible’ version of 1579, the first Bible printed in Scotland. 26 See Edington, Court and Culture, pp. 145–46. 27 Bannatyne, George, The Bannatyne Manuscript, edited by W. Tod Ritchie, Scottish Text Society, 3rd Series, 5, 4 vols (Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1930), III, p. 101. 28 The Warkis of the famous and vorthie knicht Schir Dauid Lyndesay of the Mont (Edinburgh: Henrie Charteris, 1568), fol. iiir.

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reflecting what was by then the established biblical text of the Reformed Kirk, it may also offer a marginal reinforcement of the appropriation of Lyndsay to the cause of the Reformation. Whatever the textual politics of this insertion we will, I imagine, continue to assume that this scene in performance in 1552 and 1554 involved a reading of the Latin Vulgate followed by a translation. We cannot be sure of the nuances this involved, or even whether that is exactly what happened on stage; yet it seems unlikely, given the determinedly accessible theatrical practice of the play, that Gude Counsell would have been directed to read the passage only in Latin. Equally, we do not know how the scene might have been recorded in the original manuscript: whether it offered a full citation of the Latin followed by an English or Scots translation that was then replaced in Charteris’ edition, or whether it simply provided a biblical reference to the passage in either or both languages. While Lyndsay’s emphasis on reading, knowledge, and understanding of the scripture is evident, the exact role of texts and books in transmitting that knowledge is neither clear nor recoverable. In spite of this uncertainty, it remains crucial to the theatrical encounter that Gude Counsall should not just quote the words of the epistle, but read them out from the page. Because although the confrontation starts from an argument about Episcopal preaching, it very quickly shifts to the book and the act of reading itself. Gude Counsall counters Spirituality’s blustering response to his reading of the passage: Gude Counsall: Schir, red ye never the Newtestament [sic]? Spirituality: Na, sir, be him that our Lord Jesus sauld [sold/betrayed], I red never the New Testament nor Auld, Nor ever thinks to do, sir, be [by] the Rude: I heir freiris say that reiding dois na gude. Gude Counsall: Till yow to reid them, I think it is na lack, For anis [once] I saw them baith bund on your back, That samin day that ye was consecrat. Sir, quhat meinis that? Spirituality: The Feind stick them that wat [know]! (ll. 2932–40) The joke is on Spirituality here, not because of any false beliefs or superstitious rituals, or even for his failure to preach, but because he has not, and apparently cannot, read the Vulgate bible. He is shown as failing to engage with the book of God’s word either literally in its text or mentally in its meaning. Gude Counsall’s book thus functions as a specific and material exposure of deep-rooted ignorance. However, interestingly Gude Counsall here reproaches Spirituality not only with a failure to read or understand the words of the Bible, but with a failure even to read the symbols associated with Roman Catholic ritual. The books of the Old and New Testament are not only there to be read, but play a symbolic role in 141

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the consecration of bishops.29 It is revealing that Gude Counsall appears both to understand and respect this symbolic ritual language, as well as the printed text; Spirituality does neither. The questions raised about texts, reading, and translation are resonant in this scene, although they expand rather than focusing the particular issues raised by Verity and her English New Testament. The scene is shortly followed by another theatrical confrontation which, while this time it does not actually involve the reading of a book, seems to throw up yet more issues about the access to and use of texts and translations. Following further sharp criticism from John the Commonweil, Spirituality calls for his examination for heresy, under threat of burning. This leads into a tense confrontation in which both the feigned Friar, Flattery, and the instrument of God, Divine Correction himself, call on John to ‘Schaw furth your faith’ (l. 3021). This seems to be and is certainly taken as an instruction to repeat the ‘belefe’ or Creed enumerating the twelve articles of faith. On stage, the familiar recitation becomes a theatrically intense testing ground for the competing ethical and spiritual values of the play. John the Commonweil speaks the first part of the Creed in English: I beleife in God, that all hes wrocht And creat everie thing of nocht, And in His Son, our Lord Jesu, Incarnat of the Virgin trew; Quha under Pilat tholit [suffered] passioun, And deit for our salvatioun, And on the thrid day rais againe, As Halie Scriptour schawis plane; And als, my Lord, it is weill kend How he did to the Heavin ascend, And set Him doun at the richt hand Of God the Father, I understand, And sall cum judge on Dumisday. (ll. 3022–34) Lyndsay has clearly versified the words to fit the metre and rhyme scheme of the play at this point, but otherwise this follows fairly straightforwardly the terms of the Apostles’ Creed as far as they outline the nature and life of Christ. At this point John stops and asks Divine Correction:

29 The ceremony for consecration of a bishop, just after this passage from Paul is read, directs that the consecrand should lay his head upon the altar, ‘Et duo episcopi ponant et teneant euangelium super uerticem eius’ [and let two bishops place and hold the gospel over his head]: The Pontifical of Magdalen College, edited by H. A. Wilson (London: Henry Bradshaw Society, 1910), p. 73.

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Correction: John:

Quhat will ye mair, Sir, that I say? Schaw furth the rest; this is na game. I trow Sanctam Ecclesiam – But nocht in thir [these bischops nor thir freirs, Quhilk will for purging of thir nears [kidneys] Sard [fuck] up the ta raw [one row] and doun the uther. The mekill Devill resave [take] the fidder [cartload]. (ll. 2035–41)

Briefly and perhaps unexpectedly returning to Latin, John professes faith in the Church, but abruptly cuts himself off to reject the clerics with earthily comic sexual abuse. This scene clearly raises interesting theological issues in terms of what John will and will not affirm. Not only does he question the Church, and leave off before the last articles, but he oddly omits the familiar references to the Holy Ghost. For this discussion, however, I want to look not at these issues but at the text of the Creed itself and how it functions in the scene. It may seem political, practical, or entirely unremarkable that John repeats the Creed mostly in English. From at least the beginning of the sixteenth century the Church seemed to have accepted and even encouraged the learning of the key texts of the faith – the Pater Noster, Ave, Creed, and Ten Commandments – in the vernacular.30 Popular primers and lay texts circulated versions in English. There even survives a very early printed version in Scots included in the Kalendayr of Schippars, a translation of the Kalendrier des Bergiers printed in Paris in 1503.31 However, it is not wholly clear how widely such versions had spread in Scotland. Lyndsay himself, in Ane Dialog betwix Experience and ane Courtiour, composed around the same time as the productions of the Thrie Estaitis, speaks as if there is still a real need for both the availability and acceptance of vernacular versions: Rycht so childreyng and ladyis of honouris Prayis in Latyne, to thame ane uncuth leid [unknown language] Mumland [mumbling] thair matynis, evinsang and thare houris, Thare Pater Noster, Ave, and thare Creid. (615–18) He points out that ‘Had Sanct Jerome bene borne in tyll Argyle/In to Irische [Gaelic] toung his bukis had done compyle’ (ll. 627–28), concluding: ‘Bot in our language lat us pray and reid/Our Pater Noster, Ave, and our Creid’ (ll. 648–49).

30 Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, c.1400–c.1580 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1992), pp. 80–83. 31 The kalendayr of the shyppars [Compost et kalendrier des bergiers.] (Paris: Antoine Verard, 1503), fol. fiir.

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It is therefore possible that John the Commonweil’s recitation in English is a stronger and more polemical statement than it might seem. It is also interesting that he slips back into Latin for the contentious moment when he asserts faith in the Church but distinguishes Sanctam Ecclesiam from the clerics. This may tell us something revealing about the relationship of English and Latin texts of the Creed in lay culture, about translation, bilingualism, and ease with the macaronic. It does appear that Latin and English coexisted and interwove comfortably for a considerable time through the sixteenth century. Alternatively, in this speech it may be a subtle linguistic tool to distinguish the revered and sacred institution of the Church from the corrupt and ignorant behaviour of its priests. Whichever, the shift to Latin at such a tense and loaded moment of John’s recitation foregrounds the whole issue both of the language of prayer, and also the integrity and fixedness of texts. For, although John is reciting something that had widespread existence as a written text, he is not reading it. Nor is it at all clear that we should assume he memorised it from a written or printed text which his recitation aims to reproduce. The emphasis of English translation of these texts was not to replace the fixed words of the Latin with an equally fixed vernacular version. Lay learning of these texts was more concerned with sense than with a notion of verbal accuracy.32 So, when Lyndsay urges that the Creed should be available in English, it seems he is thinking of it in people’s minds and mouths rather than only in their books. Lyndsay valued books, and especially vernacular books, highly: in the Dialog he appeals urgently: Bot lat us haif the bukis necessare To common weill and our salvatioun Justlye translatit in our toung vulgare. (678–80) But it seems clear that he valued them as instruments, as a means of access to knowledge and understanding. He does not fetishize either the material text, or the act of reading. Taken together, these three scenes all suggest the transitional quality of Lyndsay’s religious position. Verity with her New Testament vividly recalls Protestant iconography, but the play’s opposition is to the ignorance and idleness of the Spirituality rather than to anything identified as Roman Catholic beliefs and practices. Gude Counsall urges the Protestant value of preaching, but seems fully comfortable with the Latin bible and even with Roman Catholic ritual practice. John the Commonweil shows no reverence to clerics, but proclaims his faith in

32 See Whittingham’s comments above, and Duffy, Stripping, pp. 84–85 on the ‘Plowman’s Pater Noster’.

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the Holy Catholic Church. We might also see these scenes as revealing a dynamically transitional mode of theatrical practice. In all three, Lyndsay takes books or texts that might function on stage symbolically – as emblems of truth, or the Word of God, or of Christian orthodoxy – and translates them from ritual images into functional material texts. Yet in theatrical performance, these texts can never entirely lose their representational quality as signs and images. The stage is necessarily an arena of images, its representations never entirely literal. Lyndsay’s dramatis personae are largely symbolic, adopted from allegorical schema; but he tends to push them towards social types, giving them dialogue which is frequently forcefully colloquial and focused on practical rather than theological or devotional issues. His theatrical practice is therefore as fluid and mixed as his religious ideology. Just as Lyndsay trod a thoughtful path between Protestant and Roman Catholic belief, so his play moves comfortably and creatively between symbolic and naturalistic theatrical modes.

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10 TOWARDS A REFORMED THEATRE David Lyndsay and Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis

Sir David Lyndsay’s Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis is, notoriously, the lone surviving complete dramatic text of pre-Reformation Scotland. Yet scholars have often pointed out that a play which is so poised, inventive and theatrically confident cannot have sprung fully-formed from a theatrical desert.1 Both its writer and its audiences must have had experience of developed traditions of performance in order to create, and to respond to, a play of such theatrical sophistication and audience engagement. One important line of response has been to look beyond Scotland, to scripts that survive in other European traditions that influenced Lyndsay. Enlightening work has been done on his use of French forms such as the sottie, farce and moralité.2 It seems very likely that he was also aware of and responsive to the English interlude tradition, especially the politically engaged plays of the Henrician court.3 But in terms of local traditions, as Anna Jean Mill pointed out back in 1930, ‘any attempt to reconstruct the dramatic background of Lyndsay’s play must [. . .] be largely conjectural’.4 Rod Lyall confirmed sixty years later that ‘the most obvious range of influences upon Lindsay’s drama is unfortunately the least visible’.5

1 See Anna Jean Mill, Mediæval Plays in Scotland (1924; repr London: Benjamin Blom, 1969), pp. 101–04; David Lindsay, Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis, edited by R. J. Lyall (Edinburgh: Canongate, 1989), pp. xxii–xxvi. All references to the play are to this edition. 2 See Anna Jean Mill, ‘The Influence of the Continental Drama on Lyndsay’s Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis’, Modern Language Review, 25 (1930), 425–42; Thrie Estaitis, pp. xxiii–iv; Peter Happé, ‘Staging Folly in the Early Sixteenth Century: Heywood, Lindsay, and Others’, in Fools and Folly, edited by Clifford Davidson (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University, 1996), pp. 73–111; Sarah Carpenter, ‘The Politics of Unreason: Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis and the Practices of Folly’, Theta, 10 (2012), 35–52 [edited in this volume, chapter 13, Eds.] [accessed 28 March 2013] 3 Carol Edington, Court and Culture in Renaissance Scotland: Sir David Lindsay of the Mount (East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 1995), pp. 166–67; Thrie Estaitis, pp. xxv–vi; Sarah Carpenter, ‘Plays and Playcoats: A courtly interlude tradition in Scotland?’, Comparative Drama, 46 (2012), 475–96 [edited in this volume, chapter 1, Eds.] 4 Mill, ‘Influence’, p. 425. 5 Thrie Estaitis, p. xxii.

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Despite its length, of over four thousand lines, the action and characterisation of the Thrie Estaitis show marked similarities to the briefer allegoricalpolitical forms of the French sottie and the English courtly interlude. Its first half traces the youth of the ruler King Humanitie, seduced from his virtuous path by three idle courtiers, Wantonness, Placebo and Solace, who introduce him to Dame Sensualitie. As he sleeps in her arms, three more dangerous political vices, Flatterie, Falset and Dissait, infiltrate the court and take over government of the kingdom in conspiracy with the corrupt Spirituality. Disguised as virtues, they bar virtue and virtuous counsel from the young monarch, until Divine Correction is sent from God to waken King Humanitie to his responsibilities and command him to call a parliament of the Three Estates. The second act of the play focuses on this parliament, in which the Estates are challenged by John the Commonweil to reform the unjust oppression of the poor, and the corruption of the Spirituality is exposed. After forceful debate, the vices are hanged, the Spiritual Estate are exposed as fools, and the parliament passes reforming laws before Folly arrives to conclude with a sermon joyeux.6 This action clearly echoes the form and subject matter of many French and English political allegorical plays; but it is unlikely that they can be the sole, or even the most immediate, influence either on Lyndsay’s dramaturgy or certainly on his audience’s theatrical experience. The play’s lively ease with performance suggests there must also have been well-developed local traditions of dramatic entertainment. Without surviving texts from Lyndsay’s contemporary or predecessor playwrights in Scotland, we cannot explore these more local influences on the dramatic genre, the speeches and dialogue, the crafting of scenes and characters of the Thrie Estaitis. Yet, although it is inevitably a limitation, this lack of play scripts might be a positive incentive to explore other kinds of evidence of local theatrical traditions. In approaching the Thrie Estaitis itself, the performance contexts are anyway almost as important as the surviving text. It appears to have been produced in different versions: we have evidence of varying performances at Linlithgow (1540), Cupar (1552) and Edinburgh (1554).7 While we cannot compare texts for these different versions, since none survives for the Linlithgow performance, we can appreciate their significantly shifting meanings by recognising the theatrical implications of, for example, the changing venues, audiences and dramatic modes, as well as the changing political contexts that inflect performance.8 A debate-interlude 6 For this French genre, see The New Oxford Companion to Literature in French, edited by Peter France (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). 7 For information on the three performances, see Thrie Estaitis, pp. ix–xiv; Greg Walker, The Politics of Performance in Early Renaissance Drama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 117–62. Lyall questions whether the Linlithgow interlude can properly be seen as an early version of the Thrie Estaitis, but the similarities are accepted by most scholars. 8 For the shifting political contexts see Walker, Politics of Performance.

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performed at court before an adult king, like the Linlithgow play, carries a different theatrical and political force from the larger scale, open-air, mixed and public productions at Cupar and Edinburgh when the reigning monarch is an absent child. Different things can be differently said through such varying performances, even where the topics, action and cast appear to change relatively little. In the absence of comparative texts, there may therefore be other kinds of dramatic evidence that might help us to understand the sorts of theatrical strategies that were available to Lyndsay, and his creative use of them in his own play. Anna Jean Mill’s seminal work on theatre in mid-sixteenth-century Scotland confirms that we can re-construct rather more about the organisation and the production of performance, both courtly and public, than we can about its spoken or scripted content.9 In Lyndsay’s particular case, records of his own professional engagement with a wide variety of performance modes can give us insight into his activities as organiser, consultant, producer, director and performer, if not as playwright. In understanding the Thrie Estaitis, it is therefore well worth re-visiting this practical theatrical experience and reflecting on how it may have shaped Lyndsay’s dramatic composition and attitudes to drama. This may throw light not only on Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis itself, but more widely on mid-sixteenth-century modes of poetic and dramatic writing under the pressures of humanism, and of religious and intellectual reform. Lyndsay has been recognised as an especially compelling writer and thinker for his period since he demonstrates the complex fluidity and lack of clear polarisation between Roman Catholic and Protestant, traditional and humanist, in the lead up to the Scottish Reformation.10 In retrospect his position might seem paradoxical: faithful to traditional Roman Catholic doctrine through his life, after his death he was admired and valued by the Scottish Kirk as an influential early Reformer; a court insider who as Lyon King of Arms promoted the central ceremonial of State and monarchy, his writings show an outspoken and often comic informality in their critique of kingly weakness and the machinery of power. This all means he cannot be placed securely in any of the camps which came to define the Reformation. His work offers, as Carol Edington establishes so persuasively, ‘a process of enquiry, discussion, and debate’ rather than a settled adherence to any established confession or party.11 As such, he offers exceptionally interesting evidence for the urgent and developing currents of thought that characterise pre-Reformation culture. Exploring the context for the dramaturgy of the Thrie Estaitis may itself reveal this intricate interaction of influences, allowing us to see how Lyndsay’s

9 Mill, Mediæval Plays. 10 Edington, Court and Culture, pp. 145–78; Clare Kellar, Scotland, England, and the Reformation, 1534–61 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003), pp. 81–83, 128–36. 11 Edington, Court and Culture, p. 211.

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play-wrighting was able to respond aesthetically, as well as ideologically, to the conflicted intellectual climate and topical issues of the time.12 Lyndsay’s mixed and diverse career brought him into practical contact with a range of theatrical experience. Broadly, we might think about this in two relatively distinct if overlapping categories. As a young courtier, and companion to James V from infancy, he was actively engaged in both formal and informal versions of court performance. Treasury records and his own autobiographical statements reveal him as an actor in a range of entertainments apparently testifying to his own talent and inclination as much as to any official duty. Later he would have had the opportunity to expand this personal knowledge of the possibilities of court performance on diplomatic visits to the courts of England, France and the Low Countries during the 1530s. The 1540 Linlithgow play, if it is, as widely accepted, Lyndsay’s work, demonstrates how richly creative he became in the devising of courtly interlude. On the other hand, as Lyndsay’s career developed during the personal reign of James V, he took on increasingly eminent and public roles as a herald and diplomat, rising to become the senior herald of Scotland, the Lyon King of Arms. In this function he would have been professionally involved in a wide range of courtly ceremonial and display, both in relation to such special events as royal weddings, entries and funerals and to the more regular management of tournament sports, diplomatic, seasonal and parliamentary ceremonial. Although the evidence for all these activities is scattered and often sketchy, when drawn together it suggests a sustained personal and professional interest and recognised ability in the production of performance both large and small scale, right across Lyndsay’s career: he is first recorded as performing in a play at court in 1511, while his major drama, the Thrie Estaitis, was performed in Edinburgh in 1554, the year before his death. This sustained practical theatrical interest and experience feeds into his literary work, both poetic and dramatic, and although the relationship between practice and writing is rarely entirely straightforward, it is undeniably illuminating. Some of the earliest glimpses we have of Lyndsay show him in the role of theatrical performer at court, rather than as a poet, herald or courtier. In fact what may be his first named appearance in the royal Treasurer’s Accounts records a payment in October 1511 for: ‘ij ½ elnis blew taffatis and vj quartaris 3allow taffatis to be ane play coit to David Lindesay for the play playt in the King and Quenis presence in the abbay’.13 Although this is the only entry that links him explicitly to the performance of a play, our knowledge of his subsequent career makes it likely that he continued to be more or less closely involved in the theatrical activity at 12 The title of this chapter is in part a reference and homage to an essay which explores another aspect of Lyndsay’s response to the developing thought of pre-Reformation Scotland, John J. McGavin’s ‘Working Towards a Reformed Identity in Lindsay’s Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis’, in Interludes and Early Modern Society, edited by Peter Happé and Wim Hüsken (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007), pp. 239–60. 13 Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer of Scotland, edited by Thomas Dickson and others, 13 vols (Edinburgh: H. M. General Register House, 1877–1978), IV, p. 313 [hereafter, LHTA].

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court over the next thirty years. Similar parti-coloured playcoat entries recur periodically through the reigns of James IV and V. While there is no direct evidence of what kind of play or entertainment was performed, it is probable that Scotland developed some tradition of courtly interlude along the lines of the Tudor drama performed at the court of Henry VIII.14 The 1540 Linlithgow interlude certainly shows a mature and effective familiarity with this kind of theatre, with its lively interaction with its court audience, engagement in topical political issues, and dependence on allegorical and type figures in a drama of ideas. Taffeta playcoats very similar to Lyndsay’s 1511 costume are recorded in the Treasurer’s Accounts for its performance date at Epiphany 1540.15 The surviving description of the interlude suggests that these costumes were probably designed for Placebo, Pikthanke and Flatterye, characters representing comic court retainers not unlike the parts of Wantonness, Placebo and Solace in the Thrie Estaitis, or, in England, Mery Reporte in Heywood’s Play of the Weather. This would be a natural performance role for Lyndsay as a young courtier, giving him practical understanding of the registers and dynamics of interlude drama as performed to court and monarch. Lyndsay’s theatrical skills in his early career were also exercised in less formal activities. He was appointed ‘ischar [usher] to the Prince’, the future James V, apparently from his birth in April 1512.16 In later years he recalled to the young king memories of his infancy in which Lyndsay would entertain him: Sumtyme playand fairsis on the flure [. . .] And sumtyme lyke ane feind transfegurate And sumtyme lyke the greislie gaist of Gye, In divers formis, oft tymes disfigurate, And sumtyme dissagyist full plesandlye.17 Perhaps no more than children’s games, these nonetheless confirm a personal pleasure in acting and in theatrical sensation. They also alert us to Lyndsay’s knowledge of popular as well as courtly performance. The traditional tales and figures he mentions here are the kind that recur in accounts of popular entertainment such as the shepherds’ games recorded in The Complaynt of Scotland.18 One especially suggestive comparison is the early sixteenth-century text titled ‘The Maner of the Crying of Ane Playe’ which appears to be the introduction to a 14 15 16 17

See Sarah Carpenter, ‘Plays and Playcoats’. LHTA, VII, pp. 276–77. LHTA, IV, p. 441. David Lyndsay, ‘The Dreme’, in Selected Poems, edited by Janet Hadley Williams (Glasgow: Association for Scottish Literary Studies, 2000), pp. 1–40 (ll. 13–18). 18 Robert Wedderburn, The Complaynt of Scotland, c 1550, edited by A.M. Stewart (Edinburgh: Scottish Text Society, 1979), pp. 50–52. See also Janet Hadley Williams, ‘Sir David Lyndsay’s “Antique” and “Plesand” Stories’, in A Day Estivall: Essays on the Music, Poetry and History of Scotland and England, edited by Alisoun Gardner-Medwin and Janet Hadley Williams (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1990), pp. 201–26.

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May game.19 The speaker, a lively comic dwarf who identifies himself as ‘Welth’, addresses an audience of Edinburgh merchants in outspokenly comic and fantastic mode. Like Lyndsay he adopts a series of mythical personae, including ‘the spreit of gy’ (14). It seems likely that Lyndsay’s charades for the infant king were not simply spontaneous invention but themselves drew on popular dramatic forms that were well established and widely known. Both the courtly interlude and popular performance leave their mark on the Thrie Estaitis. Although the play text itself is designed for a mixed and public audience and large-scale open-air performance, it draws on some of the key features of indoor, courtly interlude drama. The scenes of the first half at the court of King Humanitie, the use of social type-characters, the quick-witted wordplay between characters and audience, and the political debate enacted before the twin kings Humanitie and Divine Correction, all show the influence of interlude mode.20 Even the play’s affectionately critical treatment of the young King Humanitie seems to reflect the tone of licensed banter with the monarch that characterises much sixteenth-century Scottish court poetry. Lyndsay’s experience of performing at court appears to inform his assured sense of what might and might not be said to and about royalty. The play’s lively engagement of its spectators through direct address and comic play also suggests a writer with practical experience of audience interaction which translates well from the intimacy of the great hall to the open public playfield. The Thrie Estaitis shows a similar lively exploitation of the familiar topics and techniques of popular dramatic games. Most explicitly, the farce episode that enlivens the ‘Proclamatioun’ for the Cupar performance includes a scene almost identical to Lyndsay’s own performances for the child king. Towards the end the Fool comes in ‘with ane scheip heid on ane staff’, a theatrical practical joke to frighten the boastful foot soldier Fynlaw, who responds in terror: Quhat sicht is yone, schiris [sirs], that I see? In nomine Patris et Filii, I trow yone be the spreit of Gy! Na, faith, it is the spreit of Marling, Or sum scho-gaist [she-ghost], or Gyrcarling. (11. 249–53) This miniature farce-within-a-farce assumes an audience familiar with performed fright-games, whether from the nursery or from popular festivity. Yet more 19 The Asloan Manuscript, edited by William Craigie, 2 vols (Edinburgh: Scottish Text Society, 1923–25), II, pp. 149–54. 20 For the relationship of the play to the interlude tradition see, for example, Walker, Politics of Performance, pp. 117–54; Thrie Estaitis, pp. xxv–xxvi; Sarah Carpenter, ‘Dramatising Ideology: Monarch, State, and People’, Theta, 9 (2011), 95–112 [edited in this volume, chapter 7, Eds]. See [accessed 10 April 2012].

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significant than this inset episode, the theatrical motifs and techniques that belong to popular play are also at times used to shape the characterisation and action of the main play. In particular, the chief Vices of the first part of the play, Flatterie, Falset and Dissait, interact with the audience very much like the dwarf in the May game. Like him, Flatterie describes to the onlookers the adventurous journey he has taken to arrive in Edinburgh, while Dissait offers a similarly comic account of his heritage and ancestors. Both, like Welth, chat openly and intimately with the spectators, urging them to recognise their familiarity with the speaker. Flatterie, indeed, actually identifies himself as a well-known figure of entertainment, alluding to his own seasonal theatrical role: Quhat say ye sirs, am I nocht gay? Se ye not Flatterie, your awin fuill, That yeid to mak this new array? Was I not heir with yow at Yuill? (ll. 628–31) Such use of popular motifs not only serves to engage the spectators theatrically, but advances the purposes of the play’s allegory. The political vices that will corrupt the king and undermine the processes of government present initially as familiar figures of entertainment, asserting a solidarity with the audience. The spectators are drawn into a sense of recognisable harmless enjoyment which acts to postpone their ethical judgement and even to implicate them in the dangerous political processes at work in the wider play. Lyndsay’s easy use of these forms is ideologically revealing. Popular performance games of the kind typified by Welth in the May play, soon came to be associated by religious reformers with ‘superstition’. Linked to Roman Catholic seasonal festivity, and thence to potentially pagan practices, the foolery and theatre games associated with Yule and with May were condemned and gradually repressed by the Reformed Kirk.21 Lyndsay, however, seems to have had no hesitation not only in drawing on their dramatic forms, but in playing on the audience’s affectionate familiarity and readiness to participate in such performance play. Like the reformers, he rejected what he saw as the idolatry of various kinds of Roman Catholic festivity;22 but he does not appear to read these popular dramatic games as limited to that context. Audiences were familiar with and responsive to their theatrical techniques, and Lyndsay was ready to use those responses to shape and enrich his own dramatic writing. In all, it seems that Lyndsay was ready to draw on his experiences of both courtly and popular performance practice, 21 See Margo Todd, The Culture of Protestantism in Early Modern Scotland (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), pp. 183–226. 22 Ane Dialog betuix Experience and ane Courteour, in The Works of Sir David Lindsay of the Mount, 1490–1555, edited by Douglas Hamer, Scottish Text Society, 3rd series, 4 vols (Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons, 1931–36), I, 267–74; ll, 2279–2322; 2501–40.

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transplanting the techniques to different theatrical ground. The intimacy of elite court performance came to inform the drama of public spectacle; the festive ritual of popular play became the vehicle for reformist political criticism. The more public and official strand of Lyndsay’s long career as herald at the Scottish court seems equally likely to offer potential for theatrical development. Heralds were traditionally associated both with the organisation of ceremonial, and often with its recording.23 They wrote narratives in which, according to the fifteenth-century Ordinances of Thomas of Lancaster: ‘toutes manieres de solemnitees, actes solomnelz et faitz des nobles aussi bien touchant les faitz d’armes comme aultrement soient veritablement et indifferentement registrez’ [all kinds of ceremonies, solemn acts, and the deeds of noblemen, both deeds of arms and otherwise, are faithfully and objectively recorded]’.24 By the sixteenth century, heralds in England were often responsible for the literature which celebrated tournaments and royal entries, noble weddings and funerals.25 This literature gives us insight not just into the administration, but into the ideology embodied in such displays. Accounts of court spectacle were designed both to publicise and to reinforce majesty: in the words of the Somerset herald who recorded Margaret Tudor’s progress to Scotland and entry into Edinburgh in 1503, they aimed at ‘thexaltacyone of noblesse’. Their richly detailed descriptions of magnificence were designed ‘to thende to confort the hertes of age for to here it, and for to gyffe corage to the yong to do there after’.26 The magnificent performance of nobility imaginatively asserted the glory of princes and aimed to stir the heart to reverence and emulation. Lyndsay was clearly responsive to the power of such spectacle as a vehicle of royal magnificence and political authority, from early in his career. In The

23 See Maurice Keen, ‘Introduction’ in Heraldry, Pageantry and Social Display in Medieval England, edited by Peter Coss and Maurice Keen (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2002), pp. 8–12; Katie Stevenson, ‘Introduction’ in The Herald in Late Medieval Europe, edited by Katie Stevenson (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2009), pp. 5–8; Richard Firth Green, Poets and Princepleasers: Literature and the English Court in the Late Middle Ages (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980), pp. 168–72. 24 Anthony Richard Wagner, Heralds and Heraldry in the Middle Ages: An Inquiry into the Growth of the Armorial Function of Heralds, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 138 (translated in Green, Poets and Princepleasers, p. 170). The date and authorship of the ordinances are disputed, see Adrian Ailes, ‘Ancient Precedent or Tudor Fiction’ in Stevenson, The Herald, pp. 29–39. 25 English heralds’ accounts survive for such events as: the tournament between Lord Scales and the Bastard of Burgundy 1467, in Samuel Bentley, Excerpta Historica (London: S. Bentley, 1831), pp. 171–212; ‘The Marriage of the Princess Margaret, 1468’ ed. Thomas Phillipps, Archaeologia, 31 (1846), 326–38; ‘The Marriage of Richard Duke of York, 1478’ in Illustrations of Ancient State and Chivalry, edited by W.H. Black (London: Roxburghe Club, 1840), pp. 25–40; The Receyt of the Ladie Kateryne, edited by Gordon Kipling (Oxford: Early English Text Society, 1990); The Spousells of the Princess Mary, edited by J. Gairdner, Camden Miscellany, Vol. 9, NS 53 (Oxford: Camden Society, 1895). 26 London, College of Arms, MS 1st M 13, fol. 76a (printed in Thomas Hearne, ed., Joannis Lelandi Antiquarii De Rebus Britannicis Collectanea, vol. IV (London, 1770), p. 265).

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Testament of the Papyngo (c.1530) he reflects with nostalgia on his memories of the reign of James IV whom he served as a young man, apparently being recognised as one of his ‘spetiall serwandis’.27 Lyndsay recalls in particular the chivalric battle sports for which James was renowned: Triumphand tournayis, justing and knightly game With all pastyme according to ane king. He wes the glore of princelie governing.28 At least in retrospect Lyndsay links the glorious spectacle of tournament performance with glorious governing, apparently accepting the important role of chivalric magnificence in the functioning of kingship. The Papyngo was written early in James V’s personal reign, recalling to him the admirable example of the father he would not himself remember. At the same time Lyndsay was supporting the young king’s own interest in such warlike magnificence, composing a report especially for the nineteen-year-old monarch on the ‘gret towrnament’ he witnessed on his first official international trip as herald to the Low Countries in 1531.29 Lyndsay was clearly conscious of the political role of this kind of theatrical display. In 1537 he was actively involved in the organisation of James’s wedding in Paris to Madeleine de Valois, the daughter of François I, for which a fifteen-day tournament was mounted.30 The king spent hugely on scores of ells of green, white and carnation velvet, satin, taffeta and ribbons to make tournament clothes and caparisons, as well as on feathers, spears and other accoutrements. Appropriately magnificent performance in the tournament was not only a personal pleasure, but a means of confirming James’s status and promoting a companionship of nobility with the French royal family who had already prompted the city of Paris to offer the exceptional honour of a royal entry to the Scottish king. Reports of this tournament suggest that its chivalric display did indeed enhance James’s standing among the French, as well as cementing his relationship with the Dauphin, the future Henri II. A French chronicle recorded that in the wedding tournament ‘sur tous aultres faisoit bon veoir le noble Roy 27 Robert Lindsay of Pitscottie, The Historie and Cronicles of Scotland from the Slauchter of King James the First to the Ane Thousande Fyve Hundreith Thrie Scoir Fyftein Zeir, edited by Æ.J.G. Mackay, Scottish Text Society, Old Series, 42, 3 vols (Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1899–1911), I, p. 259. 28 Lyndsay, The Testament of the Papyngo, in Hadley Williams, ed., Selected Poems, pp. 58–97 (ll. 502–04). 29 See Janet Hadley Williams, ‘“of Officiaris Serving Thy Senyeorie”: David Lyndsay’s Diplomatic Letter of 1531’, in A Palace in the Wild: Essays on Vernacular Culture and Humanism in LateMedieval and Renaissance Scotland, edited by L.A.J.R. Houwen, A. A. MacDonald and S. L. Mapstone (Leuven: Peeters, 2000), pp. 125–40. 30 See Andrea Thomas, Princelie Majestie: The Court of James V of Scotland, 1528–1542 (Edinburgh: John Donald, 2005), pp. 184–88. Expenses on the event are recorded in NAS E21/35 (LHTA, VI, pp. 450–67).

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d’Escosse et aussy Monseigneur le Daulphin qui estoyent merveilleusement bien montez et équippez de toutes choses’ [above all others it was wonderful to see the noble King of Scotland and also M. le Dauphin, who were marvellously well mounted and equipped at every point].31 As herald, Lyndsay had a professional association with the management of tournament and his poetry shows an easy familiarity with this organisational role. Describing a joust in The Historie of Squyre Meldrum, he comments: ‘the heraldis put thame sa in ordour/That na man passit within the bordour’ and ‘the heraldis cryit hie on hicht/“Now let them go! God save the richt!”’.32 His writing reflects the practical involvement in tournament performance that the external evidence confirms. But in spite of this active participation and apparent responsiveness, a rather more ambivalent view of chivalric spectacle seems to emerge from Lyndsay’s writing. Apart from the account of the great tournament in the Low Countries which he wrote for the king in 1531, and which has not survived, he did not, as far as we know, undertake the traditional heralds’ literature promulgating the glory of such events. While praising James IV’s tournament spectacles, Lyndsay emphasised to the adolescent James V that in spite of his excellent capacity to ‘Ryde hors, ryn speris with gret audacitie’, chivalric sports should be primarily pleasant pastimes which should not distract him from the more serious pursuit of learning ‘to be ane king’.33 The rhetoric of his diplomatic letter from Brussels in 1531 may suggest similar priorities: the ‘gret towrnament’ seems to be pushed rather to the outskirts of consideration. This letter is addressed to the Secretary Sir Thomas Erskine and is occupied largely with such diplomatic business as the renewal of a trade treaty, correction of rumours of the death of James V, and the movements of the Emperor Charles V. Janet Hadley-Williams has demonstrated persuasively the businesslike and plainly spoken tone of this letter, characterising it as a ‘concise and perceptive official communication’.34 The only moment where a more florid lexis and nuance emerges is towards the end of the letter, after official business has been dealt with, where Lyndsay comments on the tournament almost as an afterthought: my/Lord It war to lang to me to writ to 3our/Lordschip ye triwmphis yat I haiff sein sen my cumin to ye cowrt Imperall/yat Is [deletion] to say ye triwmphand Iustynis // ye terribill turnementis // ye feychtyn on fut In barras [barriers] // ye naymis of lordis and knychtis yat war hurt ye day of ye gret towrnament quhais cercumstans I haiff writtin at lenth In articles to schaw ye kyngis grace at my haym cuming35 31 Cronique du Roy Françoys Premier de ce Nom, edited by Georges Guiffrey (Paris: Renouard, 1860), p. 205. 32 Lyndsay, The Historie of Squyre Meldrum, in Hadley Williams, ed., Selected Poems, pp. 128–74 (ll. 437–48). 33 Papyngo, p. 68, ll. 286–89. 34 Hadley Williams, ed., ‘of Officiaris’, p. 140. 35 Hadley Williams, ed., ‘of Officiaris’, p. 127.

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This offers a noticeable shift in register from the preceding paragraphs. In context, the suddenly obtrusive alliteration has a faintly exaggerated effect, suggesting that the triumphs are a delightful diversion for the young king separate from the serious diplomatic business shared between Lyndsay and Erskine. Lyndsay may enjoy and respect the spectacle, but it seems not central to his understanding of political diplomacy or the concerns of government. His poetic representations of chivalric performance show a similar distancing. ‘The Justing betwix James Watsoun and Jhone Barbour’, which presents a farcical combat between the king’s body-servants, is a parody which relies on the magnificence of tournament without contributing to it. When Lyndsay does describe a serious tournament encounter it is in Squyer Meldrum, a work which Felicity Riddy has sensitively characterised as one which ‘honours, laughs at, and in the end discards romance’.36 In spite of his professional commitment to chivalry and the associated science of heraldic display, Lyndsay does not seem to make any imaginative transfer of its values or aesthetic beyond the core activities themselves. Although he was instrumental in developing the impressive Lyndsay Armorial, the first native register of arms in Scotland, the topic does not animate his own poetry. Nor does he exploit its potential theatricality in his drama. In the Linlithgow interlude, although the representative of the Temporal Estate is identified by traditional knightly accoutrements ‘armed in harnes, with a sword drawn in his hande’, chivalric skills are mocked in the satirically presented comic courtiers. One of them, clearly farcically characterised like Watson and Barber, foolishly boasts ‘he was the best juster and man of armes in the world’, and there is no display of serious chivalry to counteract the parody. The Thrie Estaitis, although its grand theatrical scale would allow greater scope, shows little interest in any of the kinds of courtly spectacle associated with tournament. For all his professional engagement with the performance of chivalry, Lyndsay does not seem to draw on it as an expressive mode for his own drama, or his theatrical or political thinking. A similar ambivalence characterises Lyndsay’s engagement in other kinds of ceremonial. Acting as Lyon King, he was a key figure in the spectacular state funerals both of James V’s first wife Madeleine and of the king himself in 1542. This involved ceremonial performance in presenting the soul-penny offering for the queen and very probably, following heraldic practice, playing a central role in the cortège for James in the offering of the king’s arms and accoutrements, and even in the proclamation of the next monarch.37 He was also responsible for the practical supervision of James’s exequies. He is recorded as personally authorising the payments for enormous quantities of black cloth for hangings and mourning clothes, for hundreds of painted arms, the cloth of state and banners.38 He also 36 Felicity Riddy, ‘Squyre Meldrum and the Romance of Chivalry’, Yearbook of English Studies, 14 (1974), pp. 26–36 (p. 36). 37 See Clare Gittings, Death, Burial and the Individual in Early Modern England (London: Croom Helm, 1984), pp. 216–34. 38 See Thomas, Princelie Majestie, pp. 212–16.

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took receipt of a set of the king’s garments to be put on the royal effigy, furnished with replica regalia. The Master of the Wardrobe, John Tennent, passed ‘to Lyoun harret [herald] the day that the kings grace wes beryit ane dowblat of variant taffateis stickit with ane pair of blak hois of clayt cuttit out upoun blak taffateis quhilk wes put upoun the kingis figure’.39 The late-sixteenth-century historian John Leslie emphasises the elaborate ceremonial splendour of the occasion: ‘quhat evir culd be devysed in solemne pompe, or honourable decore, or duilful dolour and dule, sturt [strife] and kair, heirall was done fillit with all dew ceremonies and all diligence’.40 As Lyon Herald, it is clear that Lyndsay was centrally and personally responsible for the complex organisation and production of this impressive public spectacle, which occupied the streets and church buildings of the city as its stage. It is may be significant that Lyndsay does not appear to have seen it as part of his heraldic role to write any account of this funeral ceremonial, leaving it to historians like Leslie to memorialise its splendour. Later in his career he does describe noble funeral in his poetry, in the Testament of Squyer Meldrum; but while his account luxuriates in the spectacular detail of the heraldic event, Lyndsay presents himself not as recording and communicating the power of the ceremony but as assuming again an organisational role. His relationship to the Squire’s funeral is primarily practical, setting a distance between himself and the emotional effects that the spectacle is presumably designed to perform and to elicit from those attending. So Meldrum’s testament requests: ‘My friend, Sir David Lyndsay of the Mont,/Sall put in ordour my processioun’.41 Lyndsay’s organising voice then merges into Meldrum’s as he carefully records the numbers, status and order of the various mourners, the detail of arms and insignia to be borne, and the accompanying heraldic ceremonies. These directions envisage an event that for spectacle might almost match the funeral of James V himself a decade or so earlier: the thousand footmen in matching clothing, Meldrum’s silver banner accompanied with trumpets and tabors, his arms borne in honour and a ‘multitude’ of earls, lords and knights all in Meldrum’s livery and carrying victory laurels. In fact, the extravagance of the projected funeral itself conveys, in context, a pronounced edge of affectionate irony at this flamboyantly idealised chivalric pageantry. The effect is of a description which celebrates the production of the lavish spectacle of the funeral, rather than that spectacle’s realisation and enactment of a response to mortality and noble loss. This may be connected to conflicting attitudes to spectacle and ceremony in Reformation thinking. Huston Diehl argues that English Renaissance plays show ‘an intense interest in images [. . .] and spectacles of the 39 John Harrison, ‘The Wardrobe Inventories of James V (particularly BL Royal 18C XIVf. 184–215)’ Stirling Castle Palace: Archaeological and Historical Research 2004–2008, Historic Scotland [accessed 10 April 2012], p. 52 (f214r). 40 John Leslie, The Historie of Scotland, translated, J. Dalrymple (1596), edited by E. G. Cody and W. Murison, 2 vols. Scottish Text Society (Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1888), II, pp. 259–60. 41 Lyndsay, The Testament of Squyre Meldrum, in Hadley Williams, ed., Selected Poems, pp. 174–82 (ll. 92–93).

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traditional Church’, but that they are typically shown ‘in order to demystify and contain them’.42 Lyndsay shows a similar interest in such spectacle, while holding back from its emotive power by concentrating on how it is constructed. For, even while asserting its glory, the poem challenges the traditional ceremonial of funeral. Meldrum himself, calling for ‘musick and [. . .] menstrallie’ about his bier, refuses conventional engagement in sorrow, commanding instead ‘mirthis musicall,/To dance and sing’. He resists the spectacular performance of grief: Duill weidis I think hypocrisie and scorne, With huidis heklit doun ovirthort thair ene. With men of armes my bodie salbe borne. Into that band see that no blak be sene. (ll. 127–30) This makes an interesting if oblique comment on the acres of black cloth, the reverential ‘dule wedis’ and hoods provided for the mourners at James V’s funeral. These views may, of course, be personal to Meldrum whom Lyndsay treats as a valued if idiosyncratic friend. But it means that even while celebrating the honourable production of ceremonial display, the poem raises its association with hypocrisy and suggests through Meldrum its incapacity to express true belief or feeling. James Goldstein seems to touch on the same effect when he argues that the poem demonstrates ‘a powerful tension or ambivalence, a double perspective that indicates [Lyndsay] was simultaneously attached to the traditional chivalric values embodied by his friend and self-reproachful for maintaining attachments he knew to be moribund’.43 Goldstein is exploring the poem from a psychoanalytic perspective that locates the antagonism to the celebration of chivalric spectacle in a personal and emotional anxiety. But it might equally be a more ideological tension that Lyndsay reveals here. The First Book of Discipline of the Reformed Kirk, published only some ten years after the poem was written, also expresses suspicion of funeral display and urges that ‘the dead be conveyed to the place of buriall with some honest company of the kirk [. . .] without all kind of ceremony heretofore used’.44 While neither Meldrum nor Lyndsay appear to be advocating such an abandoning of ceremonial, the poem does seem to resist the theatricalised spirituality of traditional Catholic ritual practice. Meldrum himself, while insisting on ‘the use of feastis funerall’ (l. 196) and reverently accepting ‘my crysme, with the holie sacrament’ (l. 245), pointedly bans all priests from his funeral procession ‘without he be of Venus professioun’ (l. 152). The funeral 42 Huston Diehl, Staging Reform, Reforming the Stage: Protestantism and Popular Theater in Early Modern England (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997), pp. 4–5. 43 R. James Goldstein, ‘“With Mirth My Corps 3e Sal Convoy”: Squyer Meldrum and the Work of Mourning’, in Langage Cleir Illuminynate: Scottish Poetry from Barbour to Drummond, 1375– 1630, edited by Nicola Royan (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007), pp. 145–63 (p. 148). 44 The First Book of Discipline [of the Church of Scotland], edited by James K. Cameron (Edinburgh: St Andrew Press, 1972), p. 200.

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spectacle remains an important act of honour and community, but within what Goldstein terms ‘Lyndsay’s fantasy of a desacralised world’. Ceremony displays shared social reverence without any longer embodying a sacramental spirituality. Fuller evidence survives of Lyndsay’s practical involvement in organising more celebratory spectacle. He seems to have had key roles in the design and production of the entries welcoming James V’s two French brides, Madeleine de Valois and Marie de Guise, to Scotland. In January 1537 Lyndsay left the royal party in France immediately after James’ marriage to Madeleine, his early homecoming very probably connected with his oversight of plans for the spectacular reception for the new queen. Preparations were far advanced when the royal couple landed at Leith on 19 May, and immediately letters were sent out to the sheriffs of Edinburgh and other towns for ‘ye conventioun of the baronis to the quenis grace entran in Edinburgh and coronatioune’.45 However, Madeleine’s serious illness and death at Holyrood a few weeks later prevented the celebrations. Practical arrangements for this aborted entry have left little trace in surviving records, but the ‘Deploratioun’ Lyndsay wrote on Madeleine’s death shows such an intimate familiarity with its organisational detail that it is hard to believe that he was not a central director. He records the people of Edinburgh ‘labouring for thare lyvis/ To mak triumphe’.46 Scaffolds were built and painted for ‘disagysit folkis’ (l. 110). Fountains would have run with wine, the craft guilds would have paraded in green, the burgesses in scarlet, the lords in ‘purpure, blak and brown’ (l. 122). The ‘loud minstrels’ would have accompanied the procession while heralds and macers controlled the crowd and Madeleine would have proceeded under a canopy of gold borne by burgesses to hear ‘ornate oratouris/Makand hir hienes salutatioun’ (l. 162). The poem is one of a number of French and Scottish lamentations for the death of the young queen, but Lyndsay’s particular focus almost turns his poem into an elegy for the cancelled entry itself, the spectacular theatrical ceremonial that never came to performance.47 The procession would have publicly enacted the honour due to Madeleine, just as the French had honoured James with the royal entry into Paris; the poem records that honour almost like the published narratives that were increasingly coming to accompany such royal spectacles. The impression the poem creates, of Lyndsay’s close involvement in the production of the spectacle, is convincingly supported by the records of preparation (which this time do survive) for the entry of Marie de Guise into Edinburgh barely a year later. Extracts from the burgh council records of July 1538 confirm that the arrangements for pageants at six locations through the city should ‘be done with avyse of the said Dauid Lindsay anent all ordour and furnesing’, and that he 45 LHTA, VI, 313. 46 Lyndsay, The Deploratioun of the Deith of Quene Magdalene, in Hadley Williams, ed., Selected Poems, p. 101–08 (ll.101–02). 47 See Sarah Carpenter, ‘David Lindsay and James V: Court Literature as Current Event’, in Vernacular Literature and Current Event in France, England and Scotland on the Eve of the Reformation, edited by J. and R. Britnell (London: Ashgate, 2000), pp. 135–52 (pp. 143–48).

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should also, along with two other respected figures at court, Sir Adam Otterburn and Sir James Foulis, advise on the speech of welcome to be delivered in French. The details echo the ‘Deploratioun’ remarkably closely: we find mention not only of scaffolds and performers at the six stations, but of ‘the craftis [. . .] in thair honest aray’, the burgesses in red ‘Fransche clayth’, the chief dignitaries in ‘purpour [purple] [. . .] tanny [tawny/brown], and [. . .] blak veluott’ gowns.48 Pall bearers in velvet were arranged to carry the canopy over the queen and an oration ‘to welcum the Quenis grace’, composed with Lyndsay’s advice, would be delivered by Maister Henry Lauder. It sounds very much as if the previous year’s preparations were being effectively re-activated. Further evidence of Lyndsay’s role comes from Pitscottie’s account of the welcoming pageantry in St Andrews where Marie first arrived on 16 June. Pitscottie may even have had some of his information direct from Lyndsay, whom he cites as one of his authorities. He claims that the queen was received by ‘ane trieumphant frais be Schir Dawid Lyndsay of the Mont, lyoun harrot’ in which a cloud descending from the gate opened to reveal an angel handing her ‘the keyis of haill Scotland’ and delivering a speech ‘maid be the said Schir Dawid Lyndsay into the quens grace instructioun quhilk teichit hir to serue her god, obey hir husband, and keep hir body clene according to godis will and commandement’.49 Lyndsay was clearly very actively involved in the mounting and orchestration of these large-scale, multi-media, outdoor promenade performances of funeral and entry. In organisational terms this would provide invaluable experience for the conception of the Cupar and Edinburgh productions of the Thrie Estaitis: similarly large-scale, outdoor, built on scaffold and promenade action, music, ceremonial and spectacle, and complex central direction. But, as with chivalric tournament, Lyndsay’s drama seems rather less responsive to, or less influenced by the performance modes of late medieval funeral and entry pageantry than his experience and role as herald might imply. He adopts the mechanics of performance but appears to keep the values of such spectacle separate from his drama. In fact, even in his management of public pageantry itself, he appears somewhat resistant to the symbolic or ritual charge such events traditionally carried. The nearest Lyndsay came to writing the kind of celebratory account of spectacle associated with heraldic literature was in the ‘Deploratioun’. This is a lament for an entry that never was, and the poem is apparently designed in part to reassure the French of the honour planned for their princess. It may well have contributed to this effect. A contemporary French chronicler relating Madeleine’s death records, in words that almost seem to echo the poem: ‘n’est a doubter qu’on n’ait faict noubles et pompeuses entrées à la Roynne sa femme’ [there is no doubt that a noble and magnificent entry would have been mounted for the queen his wife].50 48 Extracts from the Records of the Burgh of Edinburgh, edited by James D. Marwick, 4 vols (Edinburgh: Scottish Burgh Records Society, 1869–82), II, pp. 89–91. 49 Lindsay of Pitscottie, Historie and Cronicles of Scotland, I, p. 379. 50 Guiffrey, Cronique, p. 216.

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But the close similarity between the ‘Deploratioun’ and the burgh council records for Marie de Guise’s reception emphasises how focused Lyndsay’s elegy is on the organisation of the magnificent spectacle rather than on its expressive content. While he mentions the pageants, he shows no interest in their subjects or in the scheme of imagery or representation designed to greet the queen. Gordon Kipling has demonstrated how accounts of royal entries are generally eager to record the rich subtlety with which the devisers of sixteenth-century entry pageantry designed their mimetic allegories.51 Lyndsay concentrates on an overall display of vibrant magnificence rather than on any pattern of ideas or images. His predecessor Dunbar makes an interesting comparison here. Dunbar’s The Thrissil and the Rois celebrates a very similar royal wedding and entry into Edinburgh; but this poem develops the heraldic imagery of thistle and rose in Margaret Tudor’s 1503 entry pageantry into a powerfully expressive allegory of dynastic power, national identity and courtly love.52 According to Pitscottie’s account of the St Andrews entry, Lyndsay’s wedding compositions were significantly more direct, discursive and exhortatory. The traditional visual pageantry of angel and keys formed simply a backdrop for ‘certane wriesons and exortations’ of explicit and literal instruction to the new queen. As in the shift in emphasis from Roman Catholic to Protestant devotional practice, for Lyndsay words begin to take precedence over images, spectacles or ceremonies as the vehicle for meaning. The Thrie Estaitis appears to confirm this preference. Richly spectacular as it is, the play does not develop its ideas through the complex imagery or formal allegorical schema generally associated with entry pageantry and other forms of ceremonial. The Thrie Estaitis certainly shows no anxiety over an enjoyment of theatrical display. It is visually striking, and confidently creates vivid set-pieces and special effects designed for large-scale, outdoor performance, which may well reflect Lyndsay’s organisational experience with this mode of staging. The impressively magnificent entrance of the crowned, winged Divine Correction, or the elaborate scene of the hanging of the Vices towards the end of the play, demonstrate the same kind of pleasure in the power of theatrical effect and mechanical spectacle. The complex sequence in which Thift, Dissait and Falset are drawn up on the gallows towards the end of the play offers what is almost a reverse version of the ‘trieumphant frais’ of St Andrews in which an angel was let down from heaven in a cloud. The printed text, although clearly published for readers rather than producers or performers, does not just outline the spectacle of this episode but indicates how it was achieved. Stage directions note that while 51 Gordon Kipling, Enter the King: Theatre, Liturgy, and Ritual in the Medieval Civic Triumph (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998). 52 See Priscilla Bawcutt, ‘Dunbar’s Use of the Symbolic Lion and Thistle’, Cosmos, 2 (1986), 83–97; Sarah Carpenter, ‘“Gely wyth tharmys of Scotland England”: Word, Image and Performance at the Marriage of James IV and Margaret Tudor’, in Fresche Fontanis: Studies in the Culture of Medieval and Early Modern Scotland, edited by Janet Hadley Williams and J. Derrick McClure (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars, 2013), pp. 165–77 [edited in this volume, chapter 3, Eds.]

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Thift and Dissait may be represented by dummies for the moment of execution, Falset, who continues to speak after the rope is put around his neck, is hanged in person: ‘Heir sall he be heisit up, and not his figure, and an craw [crow] or ane ke [jackdaw] salbe castin up, as it war his saull’.53 The text shows an interest in the mechanics of spectacle, and an awareness of the craft of representation. However, on stage the meaning of this episode is not articulated symbolically, but moralised practically in speeches from the Vices. Their words from the scaffold comically undercut the gravity of the spectacle while directly implicating local figures, probably familiar to the audience, in the corrupt behaviour they represent. Theatrically spectacular, the image of execution itself becomes more literal than emblematic. Although the play is conceived allegorically, it generally employs an allegory of social and type personification rather than of image and symbol. Although there are many such striking theatrical effects in the Thrie Estaitis, there is only one point where Lyndsay appears to draw directly on his own experience of formal ceremonial. This is in the procession to the parliament that opens the second act. As Lyon King, Lyndsay would have been familiar with and probably a crucial participant in parliamentary ritual. Although there is little direct evidence of Scottish practice until late in the sixteenth century, it seems likely that by Lyndsay’s time the Lyon King would have held a significant place in the procession to parliament, assisted in the ordering of rank as parliament sat, and may have ‘fenced’ the court and proclaimed the final legislation as it was ratified by the king.54 The suggestion that the character Diligence who performs many of these functions in the play, reflects or was even played by Lyndsay himself rests partly on the recognition of Diligence’s overlap with the role of the Lord Lyon. The parliament that is held in the second part of the Thrie Estaitis is summoned, fenced and ratified with correct ceremonial procedure; this provides a powerful framework of authority and validation for the satirically outspoken and combative encounters within the session. Lyndsay even adopts the formality of the ceremonial to enforce a crucial allegorical point. Just before the official proclamation of the laws that concludes the parliament, John the Commonweil – representing the wellbeing of the realm of Scotland – is incorporated into the centre of decision-making by investing him in parliamentary robes: ‘Heir sal thai claith Johne the Common-weil gorgeouslie and set him doun amang them in the Parliament’ (ll. 3802–3). The image is a vividly resonant stage exploitation of ceremonial procedure; but even here its force is less emblematic than literal. Innes of Learney has investigated the ceremonial clothing worn by those attending the early Scottish parliaments.55 John’s gorgeous robe signals the status to be accorded by the Estates to the prosperity of the nation; but it appears to reflect 53 ll. 4271–72. The Bannatyne manuscript of this section of the play has a similar but less explicit stage direction that does not mention the mechanism of the dummies: see Hamer, Works, II, p. 374. 54 See Thomas Innes of Learney, ‘The Scottish Parliament: its Symbolism and its Ceremonial’, Juridical Review, 44 (1932), 87–124. 55 Innes of Learney, ‘Scottish Parliament’, pp. 113–14, n. 3.

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actual ceremonial practice, rather than being simply a metaphor to express symbolic truth. The parliament is the one episode of the play where Lyndsay does make a serious transfer from ceremonial to theatrical practice. However, he does so by enacting existing ceremonial conventions rather than by developing a mode of drama that is itself ceremonial or by drawing on the power and process of ritual. Even here, the pageantry is not taken wholly seriously, but parodied and challenged for satiric purpose. At the opening of the second part of the play as the parliament is summoned, the Three Estates disrupt and challenge the serious import of the spectacle by their ludicrous travesty of the procession to the session. The audience are released from serious assent to the theatrical representation of the machinery of State by a strikingly inverted procession: ‘Heir sall the Thrie Estaits cum fra the palyeoun gangand [walking] backwart, led be thair vyces’ (ll. 2322–23). The tone is set, and the audience is given a comic distance and alienation from the reverence such ceremony is normally designed to inspire. The parliament called by King Humanitie at the prompting of Divine Correction functions in the play as a serious and thoughtful engagement with the processes of how a nation may reform; but it does not require a reverential and potentially disempowering acceptance of its ceremonial procedure. It will not be accidental that John the Commonweil, responding to the summons of complainants to the parliament, bursts from the audience onto the stage with rough and comic irreverence which disrupts any notion of official dignity: ‘Out of my gait! For Gods saik, let me ga! [. . .] (Heir sall Johne loup the stank [jump the ditch], or els fall in it)’ (ll. 2424–37). Overall, we might argue that in spite of his professional involvement in spectacle, Lyndsay – at least by this stage of his career – shows some of the reformer’s scepticism of ceremony and spectacle as semantic vehicles. This would be entirely congruent with the views on sacred imagery he expresses in Ane Dialog betwix Experience and ane Courteour, contemporary with the Thrie Estaitis. He accepts the traditional educative role of images ‘quhilk of vnleirnit bene the buikis’, but he argues vehemently against any more iconic value: In sic fyguris quhat fauour can 3e find? With mouth, and eiris, & eine [eyes] thocht they be maid, All men may se, thay ar dum, deif, and blynd.56 As playwright, he uses both allegorical images and ceremonial very powerfully in the Thrie Estaitis. But they seem designed to invite contemporary interpretation and debate rather than traditional assent; they are used to explore critical ideas rather than to express emotive or iconic truths. What might we learn from this survey of Lyndsay’s personal theatrical experience? It apparently enables him to move effortlessly between courtly indoor 56 Ane Dialog, l. 2327; ll. 2490–92.

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performance and the demands of large-scale outdoor theatre, drawing the intimate modes of one into the flamboyantly demonstrative practices of the other. He draws on and integrates elite and popular dramatic practices. In the field of ceremonial and heraldic performance Lyndsay seems interestingly transitional in his theatrical thinking, in a manner analogous to his religious position. He was clearly responsive to spectacle, and inventive, energetic, creative and authoritative in staging it both inside and outside formal drama. But in various works he also shows suspicions of the gap between public ceremonial and individual integrity, of potential hypocrisy, and of the capacity of image and emblem to deceive. In his religious thinking Lyndsay seems to have remained committed to the central sacraments and tenets of Roman Catholic faith; but he was eloquently sceptical of the pretension, hypocrisy and empty ceremonial, as well as the ethical abuses he identified in the Church. He was a powerful voice for reform, adopted as a beacon by the Reformed Kirk that was established so shortly after his death; yet to the surprise of near contemporaries as well as later generations, he seems not to have provoked significant criticism or attack by the Roman Catholic authorities of his own time. He demonstrates to us the complexity of the range of religious opinion out of which the Scottish Reformation grew. Lyndsay’s theatrical practice shares both the power and the ambivalence of this religious position. He was committed to and expert in the production of courtly pageantry; but in his own dramatic writing he shows himself sceptical, if not of spectacle itself then at least of unexamined and unchallenged spectacle as a serious semantic or theatrical tool. Like his religious and political views, the theatrical mode of his drama is finely balanced between spectacle and argument, between traditional stability and reforming challenge.

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11 THE SIXTEENTH-CENTURY COURT AUDIENCE Performers and spectators

In 1968, Jerzy Grotowski wrote, ‘At least one spectator is needed to make it a performance’. How do we define a dramatic audience? Of course we can be clear enough in general that it is an ‘assembly of listeners’ (OED), a body of people who hear or watch a theatrical event. The presence of an audience has even been seen as that which defines drama, Stoppard’s ‘single assumption, which makes [the actor’s] existence viable – that someone is watching’.1 But the sense of a clear division between performers and spectators that informs this notion of the audience inevitably restricts our understanding of the roles theatre can occupy and the ways in which it can work. It is perhaps another example of how modern assumptions about theatre can tend to blur our understanding of early theatrical events. Students of early drama have always known that the stage/audience relationships encountered in the medieval and Tudor periods do not always easily match the models offered by twentieth-century theatre. The social roles occupied by early theatre were different, and reception models were more various. Mystery plays, for example, engage their audiences in devotional as well as theatrical experiences, audiences who were often free to come and go, to view plays a-chronologically, with hiatus and repetition; morality drama offers allegories which enfold and include the audience into their theatrical fictions; even the staging strategies of early drama often question any secure divide between spectator and performer.2 In our own times there has been increasing interest in a participatory model for drama which recognises an ‘interactive relationship between theatre production 1 Jerzy Grotowski, Towards a Poor Theatre, edited by Eugenio Barba, with a preface by Peter Brook (London: Methuen and Co. and Eyre Methuen, 1975), p. 32. [This later edition is more easily accessible as the basis for a number of modern reprintings. Eds.] Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (London: Faber, 1968), II, p. 45. 2 See The Castle of Perseverance, in The Macro Plays, edited by Mark Eccles, Early English Text Society, 262 (London: Oxford University Press, 1969), 1–111, especially the staging plan (p. 1); ‘sittet rume and wel atwo / That men moȝt among eu go’, ‘The Cambridge Prologue’, in NonCycle Plays and Fragments, edited by Norman Davis, Early English Text Society, Supplementary Series, 1 (London: Oxford University Press, 1970), p. 115, lines 3–4. For some discussion of

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and reception’:3 but even this does not fully accommodate the open, fluid, often active role assigned to those who attended medieval and Tudor dramatic events. One area of early theatre practice where this can be seen particularly sharply is in the court entertainments of Henry VIII. These entertainments attracted little traditional dramatic study, since scripted drama generally played a relatively minor part in the shows, which consisted largely of dancing and spectacular display. But we have relatively rich records of production materials and constructions, and first-, second-, and third-hand eyewitness accounts that can often reveal more about the circumstances of performance than do play scripts. Shows of this kind have attracted increasing attention in recent years, as studies of the political significance of magnificence in the early sixteenth century have demonstrated their role in the creating and asserting of power.4 But by focusing specifically on the audience and reception of these events, we can see that they are not just generalised demonstrations of wealth and glamour: they are given their meaning very largely from the particular occasions and the particular spectators for whom they were performed. Both the theatrical strategies and the political significance of these non-repeated and non-repeatable events rely heavily on the selected audience and the selected moment. They can also reveal well how easily sixteenth-century theatre could be used to create and enact, as well as to reflect upon, policy. The object of this paper is to consider the complex role(s) of the audience in one specific evening of entertainment: the shows mounted in Henry VIII’s specially constructed ‘disguysing house’ on 5 May 1527. The audience consisted of the king, ambassadors from the king of France, with whom Henry was involved in peace and marriage negotiations, various other diplomats, and members of the court. The shows involved a Latin oration, choral singing, an allegorical debate between Love and Riches culminating in a combat at barriers, a spectacular pageant disguising with dances, and a series of masks. The elaborate building in which these took place and the events of the evening have been meticulously reconstructed by Sydney Anglo and others:5 my aim is to elucidate the very particular and intricate relationship with the original audience on which this entertainment, like others of its time, depended. stage/audience geography see Meg Twycross, ‘The Theatricality of Medieval English Plays’, in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre, edited by Richard Beadle and Alan J. Fletcher, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 26–74. 3 Susan Bennet, Theatre Audiences: a Theory of Production and Reception, 2nd edn (London: Routledge, 1997). 4 Sydney Anglo, Spectacle, Pageantry and Early Tudor Policy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969); Gordon Kipling, The Triumph of Honour: Burgundian Origins of the Elizabethan Renaissance (The Hague: Leiden University Press, 1977); Roy Strong, Art and Power: Renaissance Festivals, 1450–1650 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1986); John Scattergood, ‘Skelton’s Magnyfycence and the Tudor Royal Household’, Medieval English Theatre, 15 (1993), 21–48. 5 Sydney Anglo, ‘La Salle de banquet et le théâtre construits à Greenwich pour les fêtes francoanglaises de 1527’, in Le Lieu théâtral à la Renaissance, edited by J. Jacquot (Paris: CNRS, 1964),

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Looked at in its context it becomes clear that the different elements of this entertainment, conventional and ‘off the peg’ as they may seem, are both shaped by and and contribute to a very specific political process in which many of the audience were directly involved. It is also clear that the mixed and fluid nature of the show relied on an equally mixed and fluid relationship with the spectators who gave it meaning, so that the demarcation between ‘performer’ and ‘spectator’ throughout the evening became thoroughly elusive or even non-existent. The political context of the entertainment determined both the physical and mental make-up of the night’s audience. In late February 1527 a party of ambassadors had arrived from Francis I to enter into negotiations with Wolsey and Henry VIII. Francis wished to secure Henry’s alliance against the emperor Charles V, who held his sons in captivity; Wolsey, who was now playing a key role in foreign policy, wished to encourage Henry towards the French alliance, as a means of enhancing England’s role as a central and powerful mediator in Europe.6 Henry, in spite of his long-held ambition for the throne of France, now had more personal reasons for hoping to secure French support against the emperor for his planned divorce from Catherine of Aragon. The negotiations were difficult and laborious, but on 30 April 1527, in spite of strong popular antagonism to a French alliance, the French and English negotiators at Westminster signed a treaty of ‘perpetual peace’ between the two countries, who agreed to work together in all dealings with the emperor. Depending on Charles V’s responses to their overtures, Henry’s daughter, Princess Mary (then aged eleven), was to be married either to Francis himself or to his second son, Henry, Duke of Orleans. On 5 May, after a High Mass, Henry himself signed the treaty; the rest of the day was celebrated with a spectacular tournament, while in the evening the company was feasted and entertained in the newly built banqueting house and the adjoined ‘hous [. . .] for revells of dysgysyng and meskelyng’.7 The entertainment, then, had a very specific and politically hugely significant event to address; it took place in a highly elaborate, specially constructed building which, as has been thoroughly elucidated by Anglo and Thurley, had itself an important role in establishing Henry’s position in Europe.8

273–88; also Anglo, Spectacle, 211–24; Simon Thurley, ‘The Banqueting and Disguising Houses of 1527’, in Henry VIII: a European Court in England, edited by David Starkey (London: Collins and Brown, 1991), 64–69. 6 See Charles Giry-Deloison, ‘A Diplomatic Revolution? Anglo-French Relations and the treaties of 1527’, in Starkey, Henry VIII, 77–83. See also entries for 1527 in Calendar of Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII, edited by J. S. Brewer and others, 21 vols (London: Longmans H.M.S.O, 1872–1910), IV (1872), p. 2; see www.british-history.ac.uk/letters-papers-hen8>. 7 The National Archives, SP2/Fol. C, fol. 323 (quoted Anglo, Spectacle, p. 215). 8 Although the immediate audience for the festivities was strictly limited, Henry seems to have recognised the potential to enhance his prestige more widely. He apparently commanded that the lavish temporary structures ‘with Cupbordes, hangynges, and all other thinges [. . .] should stand still, for thre or foure daies, that al honest persones might see and beholde the houses & riches, and thether came a great nombre of people, to see and behold ye riches & costely devices’: Edward Hall, The Union of the Two Noble and Illustre Famelies of Lancastre and Yorke, edited by Henry Ellis (London, 1809), p. 724.

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The actual festivities did not simply accompany or celebrate a political event but were recognised as politically significant in themselves. The Milanese ambassador, who wrote home explaining the various European implications of the treaty, carefully pointed out in letters to his lord and to colleagues that ‘the festivities and triumphs and the sumptuous apparatus with which this most powerful king has entertained the French ambassadors has surpassed all the splendours of modern or ancient kings’.9 More pointedly, the Spanish ambassador (who as representative of the emperor was not invited) observed that the French diplomats were ‘entertained, as if their Master himself had been here’.10 The entertainments themselves were part of diplomatic currency and comment. The audience for the evening consisted largely of those most involved in the treaty and its implications: the king and his consort; the French, Venetian, Milanese, and other ambassadors resident in London (but specifically not those of the emperor) and many male and female members of the English court. The disguising house was carefully designed so that the audience were both surrounding the main action, and also forming a significantly ordered part of the spectacle itself. The Venetian ambassador Gasparo Spinelli was clearly much struck by both the personnel and the role of the audience, which he described minutely in a detailed account of the evening. The hall, he reported, was surrounded on three sides by three tiers of seats. The king and queen were set at the end under their cloth of estate: Within the space for the spectators, on the right hand side, in the first tier, the ambassadors were placed, in the second the princes [nobility], in the third those to whom admission was granted, they being few [emphasis mine]. On the opposite side, in the same order, were the ladies, whose various styles of beauty and apparel, enhanced by the brilliancy of the lights, caused me to think I was contemplating choirs of angels; they, in like manner, being placed one above the other [. . .] All the spectators being thus methodically placed, without the least noise or confusion, and precisely as pre-arranged, the entertainment commenced. One thing above all others surprised me most, never having witnessed the like anywhere, it being impossible to represent or credit with how much order, regularity, and silence such entertainments proceed and are conducted in England.11 The audience was dominated by the chief actors in the political negotiations and those closest to them: and Spinelli responds to them much as if they were themselves part of the spectacle they had come to witness. 9 Calendar of State Papers: Milan, edited by Allen B. Hinds (London: HMSO, 1912), I, 512; hereafter CSP: Milan; see . 10 Calendar of Letters and State Papers: Spain, edited by G. A. Bergenroth and others, 13 vols (London: H.M. Stationery Office, 1862–1954), III, 2, p. 182; hereafter CSP: Spain; see . 11 Calendar of State Papers: Venice, edited by R. Brown and others, 38 vols (London: HMSO, 1864– 1947) IV, p. 59 [hereafter ‘Spinelli’]; see

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The accounts of the running order of the evening suggest that the shows themselves might almost be seen as an extension and confirmation of the treaty negotiations, rather than a merely relaxing distraction for those who had completed them. The show opened with a lavishly dressed figure of Mercury, ‘clothed in clothe of golde, and over that a mantell of blewe silke, full of eyes of golde, and over his hed a cap of gold with a garland of Laurell set with beries of fyne gold’. This messenger: Made a solempne Oracion, in the Latin tongue, declaryng what Ioye was to the people of England and Fraunce, to here and knowe the great love, league and amitie, that was betwene the two kynges of the same Realmes gevyng greate praise to the kyng of England for graunting of peace, and also to the Frenche kyng for suying for the same, and also to the Cardinal for being a mediator in the same.12 This description is drawn from Edward Hall, the sixteenth-century English commentator, whose definite political bias in favour of Henry VIII often colours his descriptions. But, accurate or not, Hall’s report suggests a lively awareness of the potential political nuance that could be carried by such apparently formal and conventional entertainment. In Hall’s view the oration publicly asserted a popular support for the treaty that was well known to be lacking;13 the careful rhetorical balance of praise for the parties concerned then presents a view of the negotiations which, although ostensibly complimenting the French king, puts Henry in the controlling position, while endorsing, in this national and international forum, Wolsey’s central role in foreign-policy making. The show performs the version of truth that the court is to share, inviting or compelling public collusion from the French ambassadors in the audience. Mercury’s oration was followed by a sung and spoken allegorical debate. According to one eyewitness this traditional format was sharpened by Mercury’s presenting a request from a baffled Jupiter to pass over to king Henry the judgement ‘between Love and Riches concerning their relative authority’ (Spinelli, p. 59). An unremarkable compliment in such an entertainment, this nevertheless technically alters the theatrical dynamic by installing Henry within the theatrical event, no longer as separate onlooker.14 The debate is conducted first by groups of singers, and then by two figures representing Love and Riches who ‘plaied a dialog’ (Hall, p. 723); undecided, each side summoned three armed knights who fought a combat at barriers in the centre of the hall. The Venetian ambassador’s 12 Hall, Union, p. 723. 13 On popular dissent see, for example, Hall, Union, p. 721; or the remarks of the Spanish ambassador, CSP: Spain, p. 178. 14 Compare the much more politically significant use of this theatrical motif in the interlude presented before James V of Scotland in Linlithgow, 1540. See Greg Walker, ‘Sir David Lindsay’s Ane Satire of the Thrie Estaitis and the Politics of the Reformation’, Scottish Literary Journal, 16:2 (Nov 1989), 5–17.

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account appears to report that Love’s knights were victors; but Hall tells us that the debate was ended by ‘an olde man with a silver berd’ who ‘concluded that love & riches, both be necessarie for princes (that is to saie) by love to be obeied and served, and with riches to rewarde his lovers and frendes’ (Hall, p. 723). The substance of this debate, with its mixture of music, intellectual argument, and ceremonial conflict, sounds wholly conventional if not, as Anglo suggests, ‘trite’.15 Yet although suitably uncontentious for a treaty of perpetual peace, the traditional arguments must have been lent some particular edge by the occasion. The dialogue might initially appear to refer to the marriage planned for the princess Mary – in which case the Venetian ambassador’s memory of Love’s triumph would be ceremonially appropriate if literally untrue. But Hall’s report implies a more politically governmental interpretation, specifically addressing Henry’s position in the festivity as authoritative but generous provider, but more broadly raising issues of state harmony and the proper role of monarchy that would underlie all the courtly and political relationships in which the members of the audience were involved. While we cannot recover any particular nuances the debate may have conveyed, the political situation and the courtly audience make it less easily ‘conventional’ than it may now appear. The dialogue was succeeded by a spectacular pageant disguising: a wonderful mount appeared bearing eight lords in magnificent clothes who descended ‘and toke ladyes, and daunced divers daunces’ (Hall, p. 723). The mount then opened to reveal a cave in which sat eight damsels: the princess Mary, the marchioness of Exeter, and six others in ‘riche cloth of gold of tissue & Crimosin tinsel bendy & there heres wrapped in calles of golde with bonetes of Crimosin velvet on their heddes, set full of pearle and stone’ (Hall, p. 723). The appearance of the princess, the chief prize of the treaty, was clearly deliberate and striking. Spinelli asserts that she ‘produced such an effect on everybody that all other marvellous sights previously witnessed were forgotten’ as the audience ‘gave themselves up solely to contemplation of so fair an angel’ (Spinelli, p. 60). While obviously an extravagant compliment to the young princess and her father, this nonetheless underlines the fact that Mary was now the crucial performer. Not just her beauty and dancing skill, but her identity itself became an important part of the show for the rest of the onlookers. She was an embodiment of the terms of the treaty, displayed in performance. Mary’s participation makes the dancing, too, not just an aesthetic spectacle but a public statement of her position: ‘dancing thus they presented themselves to the King, their dance being very delightful by reason of its variety, as they formed certain groups and figures most pleasing to the sight’ (Spinelli, p. 60). After the signing of the treaty five days earlier the chief French ambassador had been taken to meet the princess and specifically permitted to dance with her (Spinelli, pp. 57–58): dance was clearly the accepted form in which the intimate implications of political marriage alliance might be tested and performed. 15 Anglo, Spectacle, p. 221.

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The eight ladies’ subsequent dance with the lords was interrupted by the sudden entry of a ‘mask’: six male courtiers richly disguised and masked, ‘there garments were long after the fashion of Iseland, and these persones had visers with sylver berdes, so that they were not knowne: these Maskers tooke Ladies and daunsed lustely about the place’ (Hall, p. 724). This ‘mask’ format had by 1527 become highly popular in Henry’s courtly entertainments.16 A team of courtiers, magnificently dressed in richly extravagant and matching costumes, masked ‘so that they were not knowne’ either to the audience or from one another, would ‘sodenly’ enter. At first the spectacular visitors would simply dance and leave again: an irruption of wonder, strange and exotic and yet, unlike professional performers, beneath the finery both known and equal in status to those they visited. Later in Henry’s reign the maskers would, as here, not dance only among themselves but choose partners from among the ‘spectators’, the masked disguiser entering a relationship both of performance and intimacy with the unmasked ‘spectator’. It was a performance mode that both dissolved and yet enhanced the separation between ‘performer’ and ‘onlooker’, joining the two together and yet dependent upon a playfully acute awareness of the distinction. What then followed was another popular but even further sophisticated version of the mask: Then sodenly the kyng and the viscount of Torayne were conveighed out of the place into a chambre thereby, & there quicklie they .ii. and six other in maskyng apparel of cloth of gold and purple tinsell sattin, greate, long and large [. . .] there faces were visard with beardes of gold: then with minstrelsie these .viii. noble personages entred and daunsed long with the ladies, and when they had daunsed there fill, then the quene plucked of the kynges visar, & so did the Ladies the visars of the other Lordes, and then all were knowen. (Hall, p. 724) Masking was an entertainment that seems always to have been performed not by entertainers but by the court to and for itself; but from very early on in his reign Henry had shown a lively enthusiasm for personal participation, delighting to show off his skill in dancing and glamorous grace. Initially it might seem that the purpose of the disguising is to make the king anonymous, first by putting on a mask, and then by appearing as one of an identically dressed team. On this particular occasion special efforts were made to uphold this fiction: Spinelli reports that the maskers were ‘all wearing black velvet slippers on their feet, this being done, lest the King should be distinguished from the others, as from the hurt which he 16 Sydney Anglo, ‘The Evolution of the Early Tudor Disguising, Pagent and Mask’, Renaissance Drama, NS 1 (1968), 3–44. See also Meg Twycross, ‘“My Visor is Philemon’s Roof”’, in Le Théâtre et la Cité dans l’Europe médiévale, edited by Jean-Claude Aubailly and Edelgard E. DuBruck, Fifteenth-Century Studies, 13 (Stuttgart: Hans-Dieter Heinz, Akademischer Verlag, 1988), 335–46.

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received lately on his left foot when playing at tennis he wears a black velvet slipper’ (Spinelli, p. 61). Even in disability the king is not to be singled out. In theory this produces a delightful social levelling as the king makes himself neither more nor less important than his companions. But the disguise in such courtly entertainment is clearly double-edged. If Henry is masked it is in order to demonstrate the real grace and splendour of his dancing performance, to prove his own capacity. For the performance to have its intended effect he actually needs to be recognised, concealing his identity only in order to confirm it. Castiligione, discussing exactly this kind of courtly masked play, explains: In this point the prince, stripping himself of the person of a prince, and minglinge himselfe equallye with his underlinges (yet in suche wise that he maye bee knowen) [emphasis mine] with refusynge superioritye, lett him chalenge a greater superioritie, namelye, to passe other men not in authoritie, but in vertue, and declare that his prowes is not encreased by his being a prince.17 If the king’s performance is to prove his natural superiority, then the person of the king must at some point, in some way, be seen through the mask: the accounts by both Hall and Spinelli show the vital significance for the entertainment of knowing that it is the king who performs. This seems to lie behind what had become the standard conclusion to such masks, that at the end ‘the quene plucked of the kynges vysar [ . . . ] and then all were knowen’. The pleasurably revealed identity of the king confirms his regal status and becomes a sign of the king’s gracious generosity to his courtiers. Of course the extra political significance of this particular mask is that the king is partnered in matching disguise by the French ambassador. The implication is that, while they are dancing, the two cannot be distinguished.18 The king confers honour on the viscount of Turenne, the representative of Francis I, by, as it were, sharing his identity with him in this spectacular performance. In fact the performance itself turned literally into a display of largesse on Henry’s part, for ‘then the kyng gave to the viscount of Torayn, the maskyng apparel that the kyng hym self ware & also the apparel that the viscount hym self masked in, which were very riche, for the whiche he thanked hym’ (Hall, p. 724). This kind of largesse was one Henry often used. There is a striking example in the 1511 celebrations for 17 Baldassare Castilione, The Book of the Courtier, translated by Thomas Hoby, 1561 (London: David Nutt, 1900), II, p. 117; quoted in Twycross, ‘Philemon’s Roof’, pp. 343–44. 18 There is a record of a disguising visit of Henry VIII to Wolsey where the identity of the king becomes the subject of a deliberately dramatised guessing game in which Wolsey is, apparently, unable to distinguish Henry from his masking companion, Edward Neville: see George Cavendish, The Life and Death of Cardinal Wolsey, edited by R. S. Sylvester, Early English Text Society, Original Series, 243 (London: Oxford University Press, 1959; repr 1969), pp. 341–43.

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the birth of his son, where ‘the kyng was dysguysed [In] a Garment of Sarcenet powderid wt Rosys and othir devysis of massy goold’ which he decided to donate to the ambassador’s servants. Turning even this generous gesture into a participatory performance Henry arranged for the recipients to be placed ‘at a certain place where he shuld passe by, when the dysguysyng was endyd, and that they shuld not ffere to pull & tere the said Garment ffrom his body’.19 Henry is clearly deliberately celebrating himself in his disguise as a reified emblem of magnificent liberality, giving away parts of his performing self as gifts and rewards. While Hall leaves his account of the entertainment at this point, Spinelli recalls a final moment which confirms both the political significance to its audience, and also the intricate interplay of spectator and participant. When the king and his disguisers unmasked: the Princess with her companions again descended, and came to the King, who in the presence of the French ambassadors took off her cap, and the net being displaced, a profusion of silver tresses as beautiful as ever seen on human head fell over her shoulders, forming a most agreeable sight. The aforesaid ambassadors then took leave of her. (Spinelli, p. 61) In this report the princess forms the political, sexual, and theatrical conclusion to the performance. As the gift that cements the treaty, the concrete manifestation of the binding of the two countries in amity, she is publicly presented to the audience and particularly to the French ambassadors. Her father’s dramatic releasing of her striking silvery hair from the elaborate disguising headdress provides a vividly theatrical moment of revelation. It is not wholly clear whether the loose virginal locks were a demonstration of Mary’s marriageable status; or whether on the contrary they confirmed the reported opinion of the viscount of Turenne that although very beautiful (molto bella) she was ‘so thin, spare and small (cosi magreta et scarma et picola) as to render it impossible for her to be married for the next three years’ (Spinelli, p. 58). Since the English position during much of the negotiation, despite pressure from the French, had been that the princess was as yet too young for marriage, it may well be that the apparently otherworldly appearance was seen as deliberately emphasising her delicate youth.20 Certainly, since Mary’s age was known by all involved to be an issue in the negotiations, the gesture would have invited conscious interpretation by the courtly audience and the ambassadors. After this apparently climactic moment the party then all returned to the banqueting house to round off the night’s festivities as dawn approached. We are fortunate in having such detailed evidence of this entertainment, since it reveals not only a good deal about what actually happened but also important 19 The Great Chronicle of London (Guildhall Library MS 3313), edited by A. H. Thomas and I. D. Thornley (London: George W. Jones, 1938), p. 374. 20 See Brewer, Letters and Papers: Henry VIII, IV, 2974, p. 1333.

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aspects of contemporary reaction to and understanding of these shows and their significance. The fact that both ambassadors and historians felt the performance worthy of such detailed record suggests that it was not considered as mere pastime. The amount spent on the banqueting and disguising houses, their decoration, and the evening’s shows was vast.21 It reflected not only the importance of the treaty and Henry’s wish to demonstrate his own international magnificence, but the weight attached to the festivities themselves. They were not just a relaxing interlude, not even simply a celebratory comment on the completed treaty, but an important diplomatic event which in itself contributed to the relationship between the two countries and how it was perceived by others. The seemingly conventional spectacle was carefully crafted towards specific political meaning, and Henry had determined performance roles for himself, the ambassadors, and his daughter which enhanced and extended the provisions of the treaty. These depended on a performance situation in which performers and spectators were often interchangeable. The king may be a gracious onlooker to whom performance is presented, yet he is also the agent and arbiter of the action, a disguised yet starring actor, a presenter of others’ performances. The ambassadors must, as audience, bear witness to the version of political events that the shows perform; but their leader also performs for others, with Henry, the league and amity between their countries and the gracious relationship of patronage that the English king extends to them. The princess, both watching and participating, performs for the French court and her own the political role she has been allotted. This complex theatrical situation depends upon a very particular and enclosed audience. It could not be engendered by professionals since much of the significance of the entertainment depends upon the ‘offstage’ identities of the performers. The political and personal relationships between the members of the carefully chosen audience are what constitute and give meaning to the entertainments they watch. Just as the shows themselves are political acts, as well as comments upon political acts, so the audience are performers as well as onlookers of the shows they see. The model of the masked disguising, in which unknown but known actors who are members of the audience dance with onlookers who become actors sums up the fluid interaction of ‘performer’ and ‘spectator’ in this subtly manipulated theatrical event.

21 Anglo, Spectacle, pp. 211–19.

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12 ‘MY LADY TONGUE’ Thomas Tomkis’s Lingua

This chapter was orignally presented as a paper at the 2002 Medieval English Theatre meeting at Nottingham, which took as its theme ‘Language and Languages’. The play it considers falls distinctly outside METh’s normal chronological range: Thomas Tomkis’s Lingua was first published in 1607, probably shortly after its first performance at the University of Cambridge.1 Although relatively late, it is an enlightening text to look at in the context of the 2002 theme because this is a play which personifies language itself, as a character on stage. Since it drew on traditional as well as more recent theories of language and modes of performance, it provides a certain meta-theatrical commentary on some of the issues raised at the meeting. Lingua is a play which can give us some theatrical insight into how language could literally be perceived on stage at the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth centuries. The play’s full title in the first edition is: LINGUA: or The Combat of the Tongue, And the five Senses For Superiority. A pleasant Comoedie. Although there is no attribution in the published text it is believed to have been written by Thomas Tomkis for student performance at Trinity College, Cambridge. The notebook of John Harington records in 1610: ‘A Note of things sent to London the 29th of Ianuary 1609 [. . .] a bundle of Comedies, rul’d: The combat of Lingua made by Thomas Tomkis of Trinity colledge in Cambridge’.2 Tomkis is known as a member of Trinity, taking his BA in 1600/1601, and as the author of another university comedy in English, Albumazar.3 Lingua combines, among other forms, two familiar theatrical genres: Plautine or Terentian comedy featuring intrigue, comic servants, witty repartee, and allegorical educational morality in the tradition of the Wit and Science

1 LINGUA: or The Combat of the Tongue, And the five Senses For Superiority. A pleasant Comoedie (London: G. Eld for Simon Waterson, 1607). Also in Robert Dodsley, Old Plays edited by W. C. Hazlitt (re-issued New York: Benjamin Blom, 1964), vol 9. 2 Notebook of John Harington, BL, Add MS 27632, cited in Records of Early English Drama: Cambridge, edited by Alan H. Nelson, 2 vols (London: University of Toronto Press, 1989), II, p. 853. 3 For further information see Thomas Tomkis, Albumazar: A Comedy [1615], edited by Hugh G. Dick, University of California Publications in English, 13 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1944), Introduction.

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plays.4 Its combination of showy academic wit with a degree of slapstick and student humour seems to confirm its university origins. The play was popular for the next fifty years, at least as a reading text, with five subsequent editions appearing before 1657.5 Apart from Lingua herself the play’s cast personifies, among others, the Five Senses, Common Sense, Memory, and Imagination, living in the land of Microcosm governed by the queen Psyche. The central action focuses on Lingua’s claim to recognition as a sixth sense of equal status to the others. In pursuing her ends she tricks the Five Senses into falling out with each other and is brought to a hearing before the court of Common Sense, where her claims are largely rejected. In revenge she poisons the Senses but is finally brought to book and imprisoned. Lingua is an ambivalent figure: she offers articulate and intellectually persuasive arguments in her own defence, yet is presented as treacherous and antagonistic to the other characters, and is largely undercut and repressed by the play. She is not the only focus of the drama: the Five Senses are engagingly allegorically explored both in the action and in the vividly detailed and elaborate emblematic shows each brings to the formal hearing. But for the purposes of this paper I want primarily to explore the figure of Lingua herself and what she can tell us about perceptions of language on the stage. What, first, does Lingua represent? It is not language as such but, as her name suggests, the tongue or spoken language. Visually the character is emblematised as the tongue: she is ‘apparelled in a Crimson Satten gowne, a Dressing of white Roses, a little Skeane tyed in a purple Skarfe, a paire of red Buskins drawne with white Ribband, silk garters, gloves etc’ (A3v). When imprisoned at the end of the play, she is put ‘vnder the custody of two strong doores [. . .] well garded with 30. tall watchmen’ (M4v). So Lingua is Speech; and not just speech but, significantly perhaps for a university play, vernacular speech. This play is one of the first Cambridge student comedies written and performed in English. Only about ten years earlier, in 1592, the Vice Chancellor and Heads of Colleges had complained to the Lord Chancellor about being asked to perform an English comedy for Queen Elizabeth: ‘how fitt wee shalbe for this that is moved, having no practize in this Englishe vaine, and beinge (as wee thincke) nothinge beseeminge our Studentes [. . .] wee much doubt’.6 Lingua herself lays claim to the academic and intellectual arts of rhetoric, and to ‘ancient Hebrewe [. . .] learned Greeke [. . .] the Romaine Eloquent’ (A3v) as well as modern languages. But within the university context her definition as primarily vernacular speech – while fascinating for the purposes of exploring theatrical language – immediately devalues her status. 4 There may also be a connection with the Oxford play Bellum Grammaticale (c.1583), which enacted a battle between the parts of speech. See G. C. Moore Smith, College Plays performed in the University of Cambridge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1923), p. 8. 5 See Tomkis, Albumazar, Introduction. 6 Records of Early English Drama: Cambridge, edited by A. H. Nelson, 2 vols (London: University of Toronto Press, 1989), I, 347.

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The most obvious and vivid way this is realised in performance is in her characterisation as a stereotypical unruly woman. From the opening moments and throughout the play Lingua is accused of the popular female vices: she speaks far too much, is presumptuous, ‘an idle prating Dame [. . .] decking your babling selfe/With vsurpt titles’ (A3r – v); she is sharp-tongued, bitter, rebellious, and idle. Her verbal alacrity is presented in accordance with the model Benedick lays on Beatrice in Much Ado about Nothing: ‘Here’s a dish I love not. I cannot endure my Lady Tongue’.7 Lingua self-consciously defines herself by the same feminine stereotypes. Exhorting herself to attack the Senses, she urges, ‘Fie Lingua wilt thou now degenerate:/Art not a woman, doost not love revenge’ (A4r – v). This particular characterisation is clearly in part an effect of the university context: it belongs to the traditional long-standing academic anti-feminist stance, interacting with undergraduate humour.8 The stereotype would provide a clearly defined and rhetorically familiar role to the male undergraduate who took the part. So Lingua’s characterisation has various contextual roots in both popular and academic tradition. But her female persona also contributes importantly to the ways in which she signifies and reveals contemporary perceptions of spoken language. I aim to explore this, first by looking into how the characterisation of Lingua relates to and dramatises aspects of medieval and sixteenth-century language theory, and then by examining in more detail one scene in the play, the hearing before the court of Common Sense, to see how the theoretical questions raised about speech and language are theatricalised. There is no obvious direct source for the play: Lingua seems to grow out of various developing concerns of several centuries of language theory, interacting with popular attitudes to both speech and women, all inflected by theatrical interests. This complex of academic, theoretical, social, popular, and theatrical ideas results in a figure who does not, I think, present a wholly coherent view of spoken language, but is certainly a striking dramatic character.9 The central conceit of speech demanding recognition as one of the five senses had been seriously proposed by Ramon Llull back at the beginning of the fourteenth century in his Liber de Affatu, hoc est de sexto sensu, though it had

7 William Shakespeare, The Complete Works, edited by Stanley Wells, Gary Taylor, and others, The Oxford Shakespeare, 2nd edn (Oxford: Clarendon, 2005), Much Ado about Nothing II. 1. 256–57. 8 The famous and influential near-contemporary Cambridge Latin comedy Pedantius made, in passing, the same academic joke that Tomkis elaborates so thoroughly, when the schoolmaster Pedantius explains to his pupil that ‘laurea, lingua sunt utraque foeminae generis, sed lingua potissimum’ [‘laurel and tongue are both of the feminine gender, but tongue more so’], ‘and so consequently silence might not by any means have bene of the feminine gender’ (REED: Cambridge, II, 848). 9 Apart from works mentioned in the footnotes, the following discussion of medieval and Tudor language theory has been informed by Marcia Colish, The Mirror of Language: a Study in the Medieval Theory of Knowledge (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1968), and Raffaele Simone, ‘The Early Modern Period’, in History of Linguistics, Volume 3: Renaissance and Early Modern Linguistics, edited by Giulio Lepschy (London and New York: Longman, 1998), chapter 2.

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apparently been very little developed since.10 Llull focuses on the crucial and positive function of speech in sharing ‘internal conceptions’ – both between the faculties themselves, and between human beings. He advocated, as Mark Johnston suggests, ‘recognition of speech as a sixth sense because, among other reasons, through speech men most share in loving, best help and understand each other, create knowledge and achieve virtue’.11 These positive arguments build on an already long-standing position, very influentially outlined by Cicero and dominant right through the middle ages and sixteenth century, a position which identified language as the foundation of civilisation itself, and of the pursuit of charity.12 Thomas Wilson’s Arte of Rhetorique (1560) shows this Ciceronian tradition almost unchanged in the mid sixteenth century: God, says Wilson, graunted [men] the gift of utteraunce, that they might with ease win folke at their will, and frame them by reason to all good order [. . .] Neither can I see that men could have been brought by any other meanes, to live together in fellowship of life, to maintaine Cities, to deale truly [. . .] if men at the first had not by art and eloquence, perswaded that which they full oft found out by reason’.13 Tomkis’s Lingua asserts her own worth in arguments drawn directly from this tradition, telling the queen Psyche, ‘Her Citties would dissolue, traffique would decay, friendshippes be broken, were not my speech the knot, Mercury, and Mastique, to binde, defende, and glewe them togither’ (F3r). But while this strand of medieval and sixteenth-century thinking on spoken language dignified it as the source of civilisation, more pragmatic and popular moral discussion of speech tended to focus on its dangers and abuse. From at least the eighth-century discussions of the Seven Deadly Sins developed a sub-category of vitia linguae – sins of the tongue – usually as a subsection of the vice of Gula [gluttony], through the association with the mouth.14 These sins almost all concern 10 Ramon Llull, Liber de Affatu, hoc est de sexto sensu, published as Affatus, edited by Armand Llinarès and Alexandre Jean Gondras, Archives d’Histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Age, 51 (1984), pp. 269–97. 11 Mark D. Johnston, ‘The Treatment of Speech in Medieval Ethical and Courtesy Literature’, Rhetorica, 4 (1986), 21–46; see also The Evangelical Rhetoric of Ramon Llull (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 66–69. 12 See Cicero, On Invention [De Inventione], translated by H. M. Hubbell, Loeb Classical Library, 386 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1949), 1, 2, 2–3; On the Orator [De Oratore], translated by E. W. Sutton and H. Rackham, Loeb Classical Library, 348 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1948), 32–34; On Duties [De Officiis], translated by Walter Miller, Loeb Classical Library, 30 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1913), 1. 50. 13 Thomas Wilson, The Arte of Rhetorique, edited by G. H. Mair (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1909), Preface, Aviir. 14 See Valerianus (eighth century) whose sins of the tongue include the theatre, in J-P Migne et al, comps., Patrologiae Cursus Completus: Series Latina, 52: Valerianus, XX Homiliae, cols. 706–12 (Harvard, 1894) [https://archive.org/details/patrologiaecurs123migngoog/page/n5 . Eds.]; Johnston, ‘Treatment of Speech’, pp. 26–28.

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the over-use of speech, and result in familiar lists such as that in the fourteenthcentury Book of Vices and Virtues, which compares the evil tongue to the barren fig tree, identifying the ten branches of that tree as: ‘ydel avauntyng, losengerie [flattery], apeyre [injure] a man bihynde hym, that is bakbityng, lesynges [lies], forswerynges, stryvynges, grucchynges, rebellynges, blasphemye, that is speke evele of God’.15 In the early sixteenth century Erasmus developed this ‘sins of the tongue’ discussion in humanist terms in his long treatise Lingua which, while gesturing at the positive uses of language, concentrates heavily on calumny and the destructive effects of uncontrolled speech.16 Tomkis does not appear to draw directly on any of this well-established anti-tongue literature. But the overall, largely unquestioned, antagonism to Lady Lingua in his play suggests that the dangers of speech were in the early seventeenth century still very thoroughly grounded in both common and academic consciousness. So far this brief survey of medieval and sixteenth-century attitudes broadly suggests a relatively clear, if oppositional view: language itself is valued as the source of human civilisation; but common speech tends to be regarded as dangerous to both individuals and society. The figure of Lingua in Tomkis’s play leans towards the dangers rather than the benefits of spoken language. But she is also given more positive arguments, and with her twin pages Mendacio and Veritas, she continues to demonstrate both strands of this debate. The sixteenth century saw new developments in ideas about language, especially under the renewed interest in classical learning. For the sake of clarity, although at the risk of over-simplification, this might be summed up in two aspects. On the one hand, as Martin Elsky has persuasively established, humanist scholars began to assert the primacy of speech over more conceptual views of language.17 Vives, for example, came to focus on sermo (the spoken word) rather than oratio (the interaction of language and reason) as the basis of language.18 The Italian Giovanio Pontano equally asserted, ‘we are not at all referring to that part of rhetoric which is called the oratorical power or faculty or art, but only to that common discourse itself by which men [. . .] [carry] out their daily tasks’.19 On the other hand, while the notion of speech gains a greater theoretical or academic status, the sixteenth 15 The Book of Vices and Virtues: a 14th Century translation of the Somme le Roi of Lorens d’Orléans, edited by W. Nelson Francis, Early English Text Society, Original Series, 217 (London: Oxford University Press, 1942), p. 55, lines 8–11. 16 Desiderius Erasmus, Lingua, in Collected Works of Erasmus, vol 29: Literary and Educational Writings, 7, edited by Elaine Fantham and Erika Rummel with Jozeph Ijsewijn (London: University of Toronto Press, 1989), 219–412, especially introduction, pp. 251–52. 17 Martin Elsky, Authorising Words: Speech, Writing and Print in the Renaissance (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1989), chapter 2: ‘The Humanists: the Primacy of Speech’. 18 See Elsky’s discussion of In Pseudodialecticos by Vives, in Authorising Words, pp. 36–37. 19 Giovanio Pontano, De Sermone 1, 3, 3–4; quoted by Charles Trinkaus in ‘The Question of Truth in Renaissance Rhetoric and Anthropology’, in Renaissance Eloquence: Studies in the Theory and Practice of Renaissance Rhetoric, edited by James J. Murphy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), pp. 207–20 (quotation p. 217).

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century also comes to focus on the inadequacies and dangers of language itself. By the time Lingua was performed, Francis Bacon is engaging seriously with the problems language poses for understanding: ‘let us consider the false appearances that are imposed upon us by words, which are framed and applied according to the conceit and capacities of the vulgar sort: and although we think we govern our words [. . .] yet certain it is that words, as a Tartar’s bow, do shoot back upon the understanding of the wisest, and mightily entangle and pervert the judgement’.20 Throughout his work Bacon is concerned with the insecurity of language and the uncertainty of the relationship between word and referent.21 The overall climate of opinion that lies behind Tomkis’s dramatic character is therefore complex and ambivalent: language and speech are blessings and curses, benefits and threats, enablers and hinderers of understanding. Although Tomkis engages only playfully with most of these issues, his Lady Lingua with her slippery eloquence very clearly reflects her ambivalent ancestry. A couple of more specific features of the play are worth raising in the context of medieval and Tudor language theory. One of the most obvious is the relentlessly female characterisation of Lingua. Is Tomkis’s personification based only in popular prejudice, or had the language theorists developed a feminised conception of speech, or of language itself, that might influence his characterisation? In spite of the familiar popular attitudes to women and speech, few of the earlier commentators on language, or even on the sins of the tongue, make any explicit connection between language and gender. In fact Erasmus in his treatise on the Tongue actually argues, ‘I would address myself especially to women, who commonly are reproached on this score, if I did not see all around me so many foul-tongued men that women appear subdued and restrained in comparison’.22 But there are, perhaps, glimpses of an unarticulated perception of speech as itself ‘feminine’ in some discussions. The Book of Vices and Virtues, for example, overtly ascribes its sins of the tongue more often to men than to women; but the figurative language used to describe these sins is predominantly female. Flatterers (losengeres, referred to as male) are said to be like mermaids or sirens, using a fair face to deceive. The liar (gendered male), ‘he fareth as a butre-flye, that lyveth bi the aier and hath no thing in hire guttes but wynd, and at every colour that sche seth [sees] sche chaungeth hire owne’.23 In this slippage of gender the qualities of language misuse are imaged as feminine, even while the abusers of language are presented as men. Nearer in time to Lingua we find similarly oblique confirmation of a feminised perception of language in Francis Bacon’s passing remark about satirical literature: ‘when princes and monarchs have suppressed actual and open rebels, then the malignity of people [. . .] doth bring forth libels and slanders, and taxation of 20 Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning and New Atlantis, World’s Classics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1960), pp. 154–55. 21 See Elsky, Authorising Words, pp. 170–74. 22 Erasmus, Lingua, p. 264. 23 Book of Vices and Virtues, p. 60, lines 27–31.

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states, which is of the same kind with rebellion, but more feminine’.24 Although both are undertaken by men, rebellious action is seen as male, rebellious language as female. Overall I think it remains likely that Tomkis’s primary motivation towards his vividly stereotyped female characterisation is the joke of popular academic anti-feminism. But as with these various theoretical commentators, his feminised theatrical personification implies an inexplicit but potentially powerful feminised conception of language itself. Another important issue of language theory concerns the relationship of speech to memory and imagination. This emerges especially in the scene where Lingua is called to account before the court governed by Common Sense, who is supported by Memoria and Phantastes. These are two delightful, and delightfully costumed, figures. Phantastes, or Imagination, is dressed: in a white Satten dublet of one fashion, greene velvet hose of another. A phantasticall hat with a plume of fethers of severall colours, a short taffata clooke, a paire of Buskins cut, drawne out with sundry coloured Ribands, with scarfes hung about him, after all fashions, and of all collours, ringes, Iewells [jewels], a fanne, and in every place other od complements. (D1v/D2r) Memoria, visualised as ‘an old decrepit man, in a black Veluet Cassock’ (D3v), offers us a comically irascible perception of the changing values of early-modern historicism: in the old days, he claims: there was few things committed to my charge, but those that were well worthy the preserving, but now every trifle must be wrapped up in the volume of eternitie. A rich pudding-wife, or a Cobler cannot die but I must immortalize his name with an Epitaph: A dog cannot pisse in a Noblemans shoe, but it must be sprinkled into the Chronicles, so that I could never remember my Treasure more full, & never emptier of honorable, and true heroycall actions. (D4r) This presents a delightful comment on the shifting nature of historiography anticipating some of the class and contextual concerns of twentieth-century new historicism.25 The play does not itself develop very fully Lingua’s relationship with either memory or imagination. But it is plainly no coincidence that it is Memoria and

24 Bacon, Advancement of Learning, p. 99. 25 As David Mills helpfully pointed out at the Medieval English Theatre meeting, Memoria’s anxieties may well be a response to the effects of Protestant values on the writing of history.

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Phantastes who sit with Common Sense to judge her. If we look right back, for example, to Llull’s account of the working of speech in the Liber de affatu, the relationship of speech to both imagination and memory is central. Speech, argues Llull, represents ‘imaginable concepts’ to the imagination, which can then present them to the soul; equally, speech manifests the operations of memory, thus activating and enabling them.26 Moving forward several hundred years to Bacon’s analysis of language at the beginning of the seventeenth century, we find the same concepts underpinning his analysis of speech. Bacon presents language as one of the four ‘arts intellectual’. These arts define the processes of cognition: ‘man’s labour is to invent that which is sought or propounded; or to judge that which is invented; or to retain that which is judged; or to deliver over that which is retained’.27 Language belongs to the fourth of these arts: the ‘delivery’ of that which is invented in the imagination, judged (according to Lingua’s allegory by Common Sense) and retained in the memory. From the Middle Ages right into the early seventeenth century language is therefore understood in essential relation to the processes of imagination and memory. Although Tomkis does little to develop their interactions, the characters of Lingua are not an arbitrary or original selection but continue long-standing insights into the processes of language. Having probed a little into the intellectual background that contributes to the personification of Lingua, it is worth looking more closely at the central confrontation in the play: the judgement that is finally passed on Lingua’s relationship to the Senses. How does Tomkis dramatise this core moment of his theatrical analysis of language? Lingua presents both an attack on the senses and a defence of her own status. In her attack she argues, broadly following the analysis of Llull, that ‘a sense is a facultie, by which our Queene sitting in her priuy chamber hath intelligence of exterior occurrents’ (F3r). Lingua is herself, she says, ‘of this nature’. But she argues that the Five Senses are in fact fallible in their function, deceiving Common Sense with ‘false evidence’. O how these senses muffle common sense: And more, and more with pleasing objects strive, To dull his judgement and prevert [sic] his will To their be-hests. (A4r) Language, she implies, can offer a defence against the imperfections of sensory perception. Lingua then moves to justify her own position. She draws readily on familiar Ciceronian rhetorical argument about the civilising function and status of

26 Johnston, Evangelical Rhetoric, p. 68. 27 Bacon, Advancement of Learning, pp. 141–42.

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language; but another plank of her defence seems to relate to more recent linguistic theorising. She points out how language escapes the temporal limitation of the senses: for their knowledge is only of things present, quickly sublimed with the deft file of time; whereas the tongue is able to recount thinges past, and often pronounce things to come, by this meanes re-edifying such Excellencies, as Time and Age doe easily depopulate. (F2v) Bacon similarly, if in more complex terms, reflects on this capacity of language: the affection beholdeth merely the present; the reason beholdeth the future and sum of time. And therefore the present filling the imagination more, reason is commonly vanquished; but after that force of eloquence and persuasion hath made things future and remote appear as present, then upon the revolt of the imagination reason prevaileth. (p. 170) Bacon argues that language’s eloquence and persuasion enables reason, by rescuing it from the physical and temporal limitations of the present. So these arguments given to Lingua, although only lightly and wittily developed, plainly reflect a familiarity with the concerns of contemporary language theory. This theoretical alertness makes all the more interesting – if slightly surprising – the response of the Five Senses and the judgement of Lingua. The Senses are not brought on to argue their case against her in person, but simply present to the court a list of articles or allegations. The first of these offers an academic in-joke to the university audience: ‘Imprimis [. . .] under pretence of profiting the people with translations, shee hath most vilye prostituted the hard misteries of vnknowne Languages to the prophane eares of the vulgar’ (F3r – v). As vernacular speech, Lingua is dragging down the elite community of academia, opening up access to its ‘hard misteries’, making it easy. The second article, of profound philosophical importance, is skipped over in an undeveloped allegorical reference: ‘Art 2: Item, that she hath wrongfully imprisoned a Ladie called Veritas’ (F3v). These first two articles are, effectively, the only rationally based objections put forward. The remaining eight turn to traditional anti-feminist insult, familiar but wholly unexamined: ‘she’s a witch’, ‘she’s a common whore’, ‘she’s a Backbyter’, ‘shee lends wiues weapons to fight against their husbands’, ‘she is an incontinent Tel-tale’ (F3v). What we have is a complete shift of register. There is no attempt to present arguments to counter Lingua’s reasoned propositions: popular anti-feminism is offered as a (theatrical) answer in itself. This is in fact explicitly summed up in the final article: ‘Art 10: Item (which is the last and worst) that shee’s a Woman in euery respect and for these causes not to bee admitted to the dignitie of a 183

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Sense’ (F3v). Common Sense accepts the allegations of the Senses as ‘vnanswerable’ and pronounces: wee iudge you to bee no Sense simply, onely thus much we from henceforth pronounce, that all women for your sake shall haue six Senses, that is seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, touching, and the last and feminine sense, the sense of speaking. (I4r) This scene of judgement sums up particularly sharply the conflicting complex of both influences and techniques in Tomkis’s presentation of Lingua. Academic knowledge of language theory, intellectual undergraduate humour, popular views of speech and of women, theatrical impulses towards sharply defined, familiar and comic performance – all these feed into the dramatised allegory. The play moves freely between registers: theoretical argument about language in one direction can therefore effectively be countered by theatrical antifeminist images in the other. Lingua herself embodies these conflicts: while her arguments, often very respectable, draw on ongoing debates about the nature of language itself, her behaviour enacts the role of the stereotypical malicious and scheming woman. The impulses of theatrical performance interact with, and in the end override, intellectual analysis of the phenomenon and functions of speech. Ultimately no really coherent view of language, or of speech, emerges from this interplay of ideas and dramatic strategies. What the play offers is a delightful forum for ‘playing’ with the conflicting notions of language that it tosses about for the pleasure of its audience.

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13 THE POLITICS OF UNREASON Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis and the practices of folly

The interaction of folly with politics is a familiar and well-established theme in sixteenth-century literary discourse. It also has a vivid visual tradition. Pictures from at least the fourteenth to the late-sixteenth century show the persistence of images of direct confrontation between fools and secular authority. The principles that such images illustrate may be very different: the illumination from the fifteenth-century Ranworth Antiphoner which shows a motley-clad fool confronting a sceptred and throned King David depicts the opening words of Psalm 53: ‘The fool has said in his heart, there is no God’.1 In a similar meeting in Raphael I. Sadeler’s 1588 engraving Le Bouffon et le Roi, the court fool sets a jester’s cap on the king to mark the illusory quality of his authority.2 Either king or fool may hold the moral authority, but they testify to a familiar visual encounter. For good or for bad, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries Folly has something important to say to political power. We may well assume this is now a dead tradition, fascinating but confined to its early-modern period. But although the visual codification of the encounter has faded, we can still recognise the demonstrative impulse to folly as an intervention in politics today. On 19 July 2011, the proceedings of the select committee of the Parliament of Westminster in London, investigating serious allegations against News Corporation, briefly dissolved into chaos as a custard pie was thrown into the face of Rupert Murdoch, chairman of the international organisation. Although its cultural formula is now less clearly articulated, its images less familiar, this event clearly resonated with Renaissance practices. The pie-thrower, later identified as a part-time stand-up comic Jonny Marbles (a semi-professional fool?), presented himself as a voice of common humanity, breaking into the dignity of official proceedings with a harmless but physically humiliating comic attack. The aim seemed to be to expose Murdoch, the figure of authority, as beneath the trappings himself a mere fool like his attacker, thus dissolving the frustrating distance between the powerful and the powerless. Immediate responses to the moment 1 www.broadsideparishes.org.uk/bspicons/antiphoner/david_fool.htm [accessed 16.1.2019] 2 www.meisterdrucke.uk/fine-art-prints/Raphael-I-Sadeler/285266/The-Fool-and-the-King,-1588-. html [accessed 16.1.2019]

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extended the parallels with sixteenth-century practice. To the delight of the media and public comment, Murdoch’s wife leapt to his defence, inadvertently providing a striking enactment of a ‘world-upside-down’ attack of woman on man, a young wife defending an elderly husband.3 Mixed public reactions at the time revealed disagreement as to where moral authority was understood to lie in this confrontation, whether with Murdoch and his wife, or with the figure of the fool. But it suggests that in the twenty-first century, folly’s encounter with political power remains active and expressive, even if we have lost its formal traditions. This is the context for this chapter’s exploration of David Lyndsay’s Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis, a lively, large-scale allegorical drama performed in Scotland in 1552 and 1554.4 It is a play which draws vividly on familiar Fool traditions, to make its own forceful intervention in the politics of mid-sixteenth-century Scotland. Most overtly, it closes with a classic sermon joyeux from the character of Foly himself, who ‘hing up his [fools] hattis on the pulpet’ (l. 4489) and preaches on the text ‘Stultorum numerus infinitus [The number of fools is infinite]’.5 Foly addresses the broad vision of universal social foolishness, by offering his fool’s caps to merchants, old men, clergy, and kings. But he also applies the lessons of folly to the current political situation in Europe, mocking the aggression that was flaring between the Emperor, the French king, and the Pope in 1552, the date of the first known production of the play.6 Lyndsay’s chief focus throughout the play is on immediate political issues for Scotland, addressing such problems as Church abuses and corruption, the oppression of the poor through unjust taxes, and the failure to educate and support the lay community. Through Foly’s sermon at the end these contemporary local issues are set into a wider international and universal context of folly. Foly’s sermon is a very explicit example of foolery which shows clear influence from established European traditions such as Brant’s Ship of Fools. But all through the play, Lyndsay draws on a variety of traditions of folly to expose and challenge the political processes of his own time and country. He even includes an interruption of Parliament by a fool-figure, although unlike Jonny Marbles, the Westminster piethrower, Lyndsay’s fools are safely contained within a dramatic performance. That framework of performance allows the spectators to enjoy and at times support the antics of his disruptive fools; it encourages the audience to reflect on the resonances of their lèse majesté, rather than being caught up into the immediate social disruption. It is worth exploring these resonances, as well as the mechanics of Lyndsay’s

3 The film of this event and of Wendy Deng’s response is readily available on YouTube. 4 David Lindsay, Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis, edited by R. J. Lyall (Edinburgh: Canongate, 1989), pp. vii–xiv; hereafter abbreviated as Thrie Estaitis. 5 Vulgate, Ecclesiastes 1. 15. Later translations rendered the Hebrew text differently. For a preaching fool from Durer’s woodcuts for Sebastian Brant’s Ship of Fools (1497), see www.spaightwoodgalleries.com/Media/Old_Masters/Durer/Durer_Fools/Durer_Fools_Preaching_Fool_97.jpg [accessed 16.1.2019]. 6 Lindsay, Thrie Estaitis, p. xiii.

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fools’ political challenges, in relation to the literary and dramatic folly traditions of the time. Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis is naturally and rightly thought of in comparison to Erasmus’s In Praise of Folly, Brant’s Ship of Fools, sotties and other kinds of European folly literature.7 But in mid-sixteenth-century Scotland, folly traditions were not only confined to literary or dramatic representation. Lyndsay and his audience also drew on local practices of foolery that themselves often carried a political dimension. Comparing the play with these active practices, as well as with European literary traditions, may help us to understand further how folly might work not only as an engaging dramatic or literary representation, but as part of the political dynamic in mid-sixteenth-century Scotland. In his sermon at the end of the Thrie Estaitis, Foly projects onto the audience the biblical text so often associated with foolery (‘Stultorum numerus infinitus’), as he tries to sell his hats to them. But the text also reflects back over the play itself, which is thick with fools of different kinds. In this, the Thrie Estaitis is closely linked to and quite probably influenced by French sotties. Scholars have often pointed out the analogies of Lyndsay’s play in plot and characters, as well as in topic, both with the genre of the sottie and even with specific examples.8 But more important than any particular parallel is the overall conception of folly itself and how that might be realised in dramatic mode. Heather Arden has a helpful analysis of the sotties with their focus on infinite folly; she points out that these dramas used fools to play a richly contradictory set of roles: ‘[the] complex nature of the fool enabled the authors of the sotties to develop the three roles of evildoer, accuser, and victim [ . . . ] The fool had the remarkable ability to represent any and all of the roles’.9 Arden’s evildoer fool dramatises ‘all the misguided, wrongheaded, silly, self-destructive behavior that mankind could devise’. As victim, the fool represents ‘the simple-minded [. . .] the meek of the earth, and for this reason he came to stand for the downtrodden – the victims – of society’.10 Finally, as accuser, the fool acts as the truth-teller, the revealer of wrong, because ‘he alone was given the right to speak his mind openly’.11 7 These key works were available in Scotland in the mid-sixteenth century. The 1523 edition of Erasmus’s Stultitia Laus was owned by a man who may well have been the schoolmaster of Cupar, Lyndsay’s home town, at the time of the production of the Thrie Estaitis there in 1552. Alexander Barclay’s English translation of Brant’s Ship of Fools was owned by one John Chepman early in the sixteenth century. See John Durkan and Anthony Ross, Early Scottish Libraries (Glasgow: John S. Burns, 1961), pp. 98, 176. 8 See Anna Jean Mill, ‘The Influence of the Continental Drama on Lyndsay’s Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis’, Modern Language Review, 25 (1930), 425–42; Claude Graf, ‘Sottise et Folie dans La Satire des Trois États’, Recherches anglaises et américaines, 3 (1970), 5–21; Lindsay, Thrie Estaitis, p. xxiii–iv; Peter Happé, ‘Staging Folly in the Early Sixteenth Century: Heywood, Lindsay, and Others’, in Fools and Folly, edited by Clifford Davidson, Early Drama, Art, and Music Monograph Series, 22 (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1996), 73–111 (pp. 101–02). 9 Heather Arden, Fools’ Plays: a Study of Satire in the ‘Sottie’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 163. 10 Arden, Fools’ Plays, p. 164. 11 Arden, Fools’ Plays, p. 163.

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These conflicting roles map persuasively onto the characters and action of the Thrie Estaitis. Lyndsay’s play presents the audience with a fertile, if at times confusingly varied and even contradictory, cast of different kinds of fool. Some are wrongdoers – either mischievous or vicious. So Flattery, one of the three Vices who abuse King Humanitie, is explicitly presented as a fool, introducing himself to the audience: Se ye not Flatterie, your awin [own] fuill, That yeid [went] to mak this new array? Was I not heir with yow at Yuill? (ll. 629–31) He is not only a classic fool, but speaks as a figure the audience might have expected to encounter during Christmas festivities. The chief villains of the play, the corrupt members of the Spirituality, are also, as in many sotties, eventually revealed as wearing fools’ costumes underneath their clerical robes: as Henrie Charteris reported of the 1554 production, ‘thay denudit of thair upmaist garmentis, thay war fund bot verray fulis’.12 So vice – and in this play that means largely political vice – is folly. But this is also a play where vice is exposed and truth revealed by fools: Foly himself in his final sermon challenges and uncovers the foolish vices of all classes. More significantly, within the body of the play the character of John the Common-Weill acts as the righteous accuser of the Spirituality. John the Common-Weill does not wear the distinctive costume of the professional fool, but he embodies much of the manner and behaviour of folly. He bursts into the ceremonial dignity of the Parliament of the Three Estates to present his complaint, with a comic slapstick somewhat reminiscent of Jonny Marbles’s pie-throwing. In rough, tattered clothes he emerges from the spectators, leaps over (or falls into) the stream, and greets the king with a cheerfully colloquial challenge to the formal etiquette of the assembly, and with a wise and fearless speaking of his mind against the powerful (ll. 2424–73). Theatrically, he carries some of the force of Marcolf, the comically wise and outspoken peasant-fool who challenges the intellectual wisdom of Solomon in the well-known medieval dialogue between Solomon and Marcolf.13 So in the Thrie Estaitis folly is not just the wrong-doer, but also the challenger of wrong, the political truth-teller. Finally, the Poor Man of Lyndsay’s play, with his rags and comically forthright but helpless complaints against oppression, acts as the simple fool, the powerless

12 Henrie Charteris, The Warkis of the Famous and Vorthie Knicht Schir Dauid Lyndesay of the Mont (Edinburgh: Henrie Charteris, 1568), Preface, fol. + 2r. 13 Anon., [T]he dyalogus or co[m]munyng betwxt the wyse king Salomon and Marcolphus (Antwerp: M. Gerard leeu, [1492]). STC 22905. A recent dual language edition is The Dialogue of Solomon and Marcolf: A Dual-Language Edition from Latin and Middle English Printed Editions, edited by Nancy Mason Bradbury and Scott Bradbury, TEAMS editions (Kalamazoo, MI.: Medieval Institute Publications, 2012).

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victim of the Spirituality who is defended by John the Common-Weill. There are even more types and examples of fools in the play, especially in the two farcical interludes in the Banns and in the interval. In the Banns, a sexually successful ‘Fuill’ wins the young wife of a jealous old man from her many suitors, while in the interval a foolish Sowtar (shoemaker) and his wife are divorced by a fraudulent Pardoner in a farcical arse-kissing ceremony. Altogether this range of conflicting but interacting characters reinforce Foly’s claim in his concluding sermon about the inescapable universality of folly. More particularly, they cast the whole dynamic field of politics as an arena of folly. Wise fools challenge the selfsatisfied and corrupt fools who are in authority, and expose them to the innocent fools who are ruled by them, both on stage and in the audience. This powerful image of multivalent and all-embracing folly clearly relates to the wittily ambivalent traditions of classic fool literature. But it is not a purely literary conceit: in mid-sixteenth-century Scotland, folly traditions were not confined to literary or dramatic representation. Lyndsay and his audience were familiar with a wide range of festive fool activity and behaviour that itself often carried a political dimension. Folly practices seem to have embodied a recognised visual and metaphorical language that had a place in the real world of politics. These local practices also feed into the play, inflecting not only the action of the Thrie Estaitis, but also the likely audience response. They create a semantic ambience by which folly’s intervention in politics on-stage can be recognised and interpreted in relation to the audience’s experience of such activity in their own social and political lives. To explore how Lyndsay tapped into these cultural practices, I will highlight three areas of fool activity in sixteenth-century Scotland: the keeping of fools at court and in noble households; the practices of outspoken comic truth-telling in flytings and advice literature; and the traditions of the ‘Abbot of Unreason’, the temporary mock-rulers who organised and governed festive civic entertainment. The records of the Scottish royal court show how fools were maintained by the monarch right through the sixteenth century, as well as documenting the occasional patronage of fools belonging to other noble households.14 Unfortunately little information is recorded about what these fools actually did at court, or how they were considered.15 Some were clearly ‘natural fools’ – those with intellectual handicaps tended by carers, like Curry, a fool of James IV.16 We find regular 14 For a selection of these records, see Anna Jean Mill, Mediæval Plays in Scotland (1924; repr. London: Benjamin Blom, 1969), pp. 313–33, where she gives extracts from the Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer of Scotland, edited by Thomas Dickson and others, 13 vols (Edinburgh: H. M. General Register House, 1877–1978); hereafter LHTA. 15 For the difficulty in discovering evidence of fools’ activities, see John Southworth, Fools and Jesters at the English Court (Stroud: Sutton, 1998). 16 For discussion of the blurred distinction between ‘natural’ and ‘artifical’ fools see Enid E. H. Welsford, The Fool: His Social and Literary History (London: Faber and Faber,1935), p. 119, and Peter Cockett, ‘Performing Natural Folly: The Jests of Lean Leanard and the Touchstones of Robert Armin and David Tennant’, New Theatre Quarterly, 22.86 (2006), 141–54. For Curry, see Priscilla Bawcutt, Dunbar the Makar (Oxford: Clarendon, 1992), p. 59.

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payments to ‘ye lad yat kepit Currye’,17 and ‘be ye kingis command giffin to Curryis modir [mother]’18 as well as for food, drink, clothing and accommodation. Curry was later married to another natural fool, ‘Daft Anne’.19 Yet we know very little about what he did to entertain the court. There is a payment ‘to ye lityll fithelar [fiddler] callit Curryis fithelar’,20 which suggests performance of some kind. But Curry is held up to laughter in a poem of Dunbar’s for twice shitting in his saddle, which suggests rather the comedy of unintended and undignified physical mishaps.21 We are now of course uncomfortable with this kind of humour directed at this kind of person, which makes it difficult for us to assess its cultural function in its own time. Thomas More in Utopia articulates one contemporary attitude to such fools, which helps illuminate the issue: They sette greate store by fooles. And as it is great reproche to do to annye of them hurte or iniury, so they prohibite not to take pleasure of foolyshnes, for that they thinke doth muche good to the fooles. And if any man be so sadde and sterne, that he cannot laughe nother at their wordes nor at their dedes, none of them be commytted to his tuition: for feare lest he would not ordre them gentilly and fauorably enough.22 This Utopian view of mutual benefit suggests that such fools were probably regarded as innocents whose incomprehension was a legitimate source of laughter because it revealed the innate folly of all human beings. Later, stories were recorded of a Scottish natural fool and dwarf who is said to have served the court in the reign of Mary Queen of Scots – Jemy Camber, who is described as a ‘fatt Foole naturall’.23 In his collection Foole vpon foole, Robert Armin, himself a professional actor-fool in Elizabethan London, recounts Camber’s story claiming that as a natural fool ‘his wit, indeed [. . .] is just none at all, but merry and pleasing’ (B4r), and that with his fat belly and diminutive stature ‘his very presence made the king much sport’ (B3v). Armin’s tales suggest that this sport again consisted largely of physical practical jokes played against the uncomprehending fool: ‘How Jemy this Fat foole swet almost to death, and LHTA, I, 275. LHTA, II, 104. LHTA, III, 369. LHTA, II, 103. Dunbar gives another court fool, Sir Thomas Norny, a backhanded compliment, explaining that ‘He fyld [fouled] neuer sadell in his dais, / And Curry befyld tua [two]’: ‘Of Sir Thomas Norny’ (‘Now lythis off ane gentill knycht’). See William Dunbar, The Poems of William Dunbar, edited by Priscilla Bawcutt, 2 vols (Glasgow: Association for Scottish Literary Studies, 1998), I, 143, ll. 47–48. 22 Thomas More, A fruteful, and pleasaunt worke of the beste state of a publyque weale, and of the newe yle called Vtopia, translated by Ralph Robinson (London: Abraham Veale, 1551), sig. N8r-v. 23 Robert Armin, Foole vpon Foole, or Six sortes of sottes (London: [E. Allde] for William Ferbrand, 1600), fol. B3v; STC 772.3. See Sandra Billington, A Social History of the Fool (Brighton: Harvester, 1984), pp. 35–36. 17 18 19 20 21

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never knew the reason’ (C1r), or more alarmingly ‘How this Fat foole jemy was stung with nettles, and how after unknowen to himself, helped to make his owne grave’ (C3r). Fools like these are certainly, in Arden’s phrase, ‘innocent victims’; but the roughness of the jokes played on them suggests that they do not really function as individual objects of pity or sympathy, but rather as emblems of wider human uncomprehending foolishness. There is perhaps an interesting comparison to be made with, for example, Lyndsay’s character of Pauper, a ragged and simple poor man who angrily but helplessly seeks redress from the courts. In the interval of the Thrie Estaitis, Pauper rudely climbs up into the King’s empty throne where he is trapped by the steward Diligence – who takes away his ladder, laughs at his unsophisticated lack of understanding, and castigates him as ‘the daftest fuill that ever I saw!’24 The play clearly acknowledges Pauper as a victim who is both innocent and oppressed; yet this apparently does not demand reverential treatment from either the virtuous characters of the play or from the audience. Like Jemy Camber or Curry, the innocent fool may be acknowledged as blameless and even oppressed but is nonetheless a legitimate target of rough mockery and ridicule. Not all court fools were ‘natural’, but we know even less about the activities of the so-called ‘artificial fools’. They are identified in the accounts largely in terms of their duties as messengers or other court workers, and it is often from other sources that we find they also carried a role as fools.25 On occasion they are dressed in more elaborate and expensive clothing than the known natural fools, a fact possibly suggesting more deliberate performance roles. John Bute, for example, in 1511 was provided with relatively costly red and yellow cloth to make ‘ane Coit of ye fassoun of ye sey wawis [sea waves]’.26 Clothing of this kind seems to have become satirically associated with performances involving foolishly extravagant court employees. In a 1540 interlude, which is generally thought of as a precursor to the Thrie Estaitis, we find that the three foolish, boasting courtiers are also dressed in elaborate parti-coloured red and yellow, colours which had by then become a visual reference to the livery colours of the Scottish royal court.27 Such flamboyant clothing may similarly suggest the costume of Flattery in the Thrie Estaitis: he is a fool, dressed in ‘gay [. . .] new aray’, who is also one of a group

24 Thrie Estaitis, line 2015. 25 John McCrery, for example, receives a number of payments for clothing, horses and unspecified duties in the Lord High Treasurer’s Accounts, 1525–32. He is identified as ‘fatuus’ in the Household Books, and as a fool by Lyndsay in ‘The Complaint’. See Sir David Lyndsay: Selected Poems, edited by Janet Hadley Williams (Glasgow: Association for Scottish Literary Studies, 2001), p. 50, lines 283–84. 26 LHTA, IV, 263. Sir Thomas Norny was given satin gowns in 1505 and 1506 (LHTA, II, 109 and 307). 27 LHTA, VII, 276–77. For an account of the interlude see Greg Walker, The Politics of Performance in Early Renaissance Drama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 125–38.

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of three corrupt courtiers.28 So it is possible that the court fools of this kind had already come to occupy a role of providing satiric commentary on the behaviour and excesses of the court, and that this is picked up in the two trios of courtly vices we find in the Thrie Estaitis. Both natural and artificial fools, then, appear to hold roles which in different ways expose the failures of understanding and behaviour of the courtly household; both provide models which Lyndsay develops. Apart from those designated and kept as fools, we find that other members of the Scottish court deliberately drew on traditions of folly, both in creating entertainment and for more serious purposes. There is a general sense that the sixteenth-century royal court of Scotland was less formal in manner, and more irreverently outspoken than that of England. English commentators noted with surprise the freedom with which James VI was addressed by his subjects, and both James IV and James V were the subject of raucously outspoken poems about their sexual exploits.29 The court apparently enjoyed flamboyantly farcical comedy, both physical and verbal, as we see in the virtuoso insults of the tradition of flyting, or the undignified slapstick of a poem like Dunbar’s ‘Ane Dance in the Quenis Chalmer’. Perhaps it is not surprising that in the enclosed world of the court this sort of disruptive foolery was sometimes used to proffer more serious political advice. Lyndsay himself gives us an excellent example of this. His ‘Answer to the Kingis Flyting’ not only accuses the young James V of ‘fukkand [fucking] lyke ane furious fornicatour’ (l. 49), but offers a ludicrous picture of the king ruffling a kitchen maid, throwing her across a ‘stinking trough’ and then weltering with her in the dregs of the overturned brewing vat. This sort of ridiculous sexual and (literally) filthy comedy is a characteristic of fool behaviour.30 It is echoed in a story Foly tells on his entrance in the Thrie Estaitis about his encounter with an angry sow in a midden (ll. 4315–41); and it is more explicitly enacted by the Fool in the Banns farce who steals the key to the young wife’s chastity belt (ll.170–75). But Lyndsay’s outrageous attack on his monarch is not only a joke. The poem also carries a serious criticism of James’s irresponsible behaviour, even though it is couched in words and images that invite rudely bantering laughter. As king, not yet married and without heirs, James V is not only losing respect but risking the future stability of his country by such behaviour, says Lyndsay: Quharefor, tak tent [wherefore take care], and your fyne powder spair, And waist it nocht, bot gyf [unless] ye wit weill quhair.

28 According to Arden, this ‘three-of-kind’ trio is a motif commonly linked to the sottie: ‘Because of the prevalence of three-of-a kind characters, I would argue that a short satiric play with a trio of similar characters is almost certainly a sottie’, Arden, Fools’ Plays, p. 37. 29 See Calendar of State Papers: Scotland, edited by J. Bain and others, 11 vols. (London and Edinburgh: HMSO, 1898–1936), IX, p. 707; see < www.british-history.ac.uk/search/series/cal-statepapers-scotland >; ‘This hinder nycht’, in Dunbar, The Poems, I, pp. 245–47; ‘The Answer to the Kingis Flyting’, in Lyndsay, Selected Poems, pp. 98–100. 30 www.britishmuseum.org/collectionimages/AN00062/AN00062616_001_l.jpg [accessed 17.1.2019]

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[...] And, speciallie, quhen that the well gois dry, Syne [Then (you)] can nocht get agane sic stufe [such stuff] to by [buy]. (ll. 34–42) This disruptive, ridiculing folly is certainly primarily to be enjoyed; but its humour also becomes the vehicle for political criticism. In the Thrie Estaitis, the truth-telling John the Common-Weill shares in this tradition of provoking disrespectful, foolish but critical laughter. Like Lyndsay himself with the young James V, John uses the tools of comic sexual humiliation to undermine and expose the powerful. Challenged to confess his faith in Holy Church before the Spirituality, he responds: I trow Sanctam Ecclesiam – But nocht in thir [these] bischops nor thir freirs, Quhilk will for purging of thir nears [kidneys] Sard [fuck] up the ta raw [one row] and doun the uther. The mekill Devill resave [take] the fidder [cartload]. (ll. 3037–41) John’s tone is less bantering, more fiercely critical than Lyndsay’s. But he uses the same mechanism of publicly inviting bawdy laughter against the politically irresponsible. The irreverent truth-teller foolishly and comically threatens the dignity of the powerful, exposing them as the real fools. John the Common-Weill in fact uses the same techniques as had apparently been vividly demonstrated in real life in the late 1520s by one Alexander Furrour. Brought to examination for heresy, Furrour twisted his trial into a comical challenge to the adulterous cleric who had seduced his wife. His explicit sexual jokes not only exposed the corrupt hypocrisy of the clergy but re-defined his clerical judges as helplessly foolish butts of his performance.31 Lyndsay co-opts this mode of political-theatrical intervention in John’s attack on the Spirituality. As audience we are permitted to enjoy and participate in the bawdy language of folly, which is sanctioned by its use in exposing vice and challenging corruption. Folly practices with a potentially political edge, therefore, seem to be familiar both in and beyond the royal court. But there is another more official institution established throughout Scotland at the time that demonstrates how widely embedded the language of folly also was in civic organisation. From well before the sixteenth century it was the practice of many burghs to elect seasonal kings, who oversaw festivity, entertainment, and civic ceremony for 31 John Knox, History of the Reformation in Scotland, edited by William Croft Dickinson, 2 vols (London: Nelson, 1949), I, pp. 18–19. For a penetrating and subtle exposition of the theatrical power of Furrour’s challenge, see John J. McGavin, Theatricality and Narrative in Medieval and Early Modern Scotland (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 20–25.

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the year. These kings had many different names, but the commonest are terms that link directly to the practices of misrule and folly: the ‘Lord of Inobedience’, the ‘Abbot of Na Rent’, the ‘Abbot of Unrest’ and – most commonly of all – the ‘Abbot of Unreason’.32 Abbots of Unreason were regularly chosen in burghs all across Scotland from at least the mid-fifteenth century: they are figures who sum up the rich tensions and ambivalence around the public practice of folly. They hold a significant municipal office, and were selected, paid and authorised by the burgh council; yet their titles openly associate them with foolery and a challenge to authority and reason. These mock rulers were put in charge of a kind of licensed folly: a 1553 statute in Aberdeen reminded its abbots that their role was ‘halding of the guid toun in glaidnes and blythnes wyth dansis, farsis, playis and gamis in tymes convenyent’.33 In this role the Abbots of Unreason were, paradoxically, supported by a tight legal bureaucracy: they were formally appointed, rewarded from council revenues, and given authority to enforce appropriate participation from their fellow-citizens. Men could be fined for failing to ride out in procession with the Abbot of Unreason on feast days. The office was in fact not always welcomed, largely because the responsibility, time, and expense weighed heavily; various records survive of citizens trying to escape their appointment as Abbot of Unreason, apparently because of its burdensome duties.34 This does not sound as though unreason or folly was a dominant element of the role. But the official sanction and authority of the Abbots of Unreason was at times in tension with the disruptive, festive foolery they were appointed to promote. Their foolish excess might get out of hand: in outlining the duties of the role, Aberdeen had actually been attempting to rein in its Abbots who had been sponsoring ‘our mony [too many] grit [. . .] ryetous [riotous] & sumptuous banketing [. . .] nother profitabill nor godlie’.35 Even in their official activities, there were regular payments to citizens whose property had been damaged during the Abbots’ events. Sir Walter Scott records a story from 1547 in which an official delivering letters of excommunication from St Andrews to Borthwick Castle was first ducked in the millpond by the Abbot of Unreason and then forced to eat the letters in a glass of wine.36 The little we know of the official games the Abbots sponsored suggests that these too drew openly on folly traditions. One of their chief responsibilities was the May play or game, involving the participation of the citizens in celebrating the bringing home of summer. It is not clear how far these games involved scripted performance, but one speech survives from the presenter of such a May play – a dwarf called

32 33 34 35 36

See Mill, Mediæval Plays, pp. 21–33. Mill, Mediæval Plays, p. 150. See Mill, Mediæval Plays, pp. 220 and 250–51. Mill, Mediæval Plays, p. 150. See Mill, Mediæval Plays, pp. 28–29, n2.

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‘Welth’.37 His performance routines are very much like those of the comic Vices of the Thrie Estaitis or even of Foly himself: in his monologue he tells a story of the adventurous journey he has taken to Edinburgh, gives a playfully fantastic introduction of himself and his ancestors, and all through enters into direct and intimate teasing interaction with the spectators. The Abbot of Unreason, then, is a figure poised between authority and folly, between political power and a challenge to that power. The putting on of plays was part of the duty of the Abbot of Unreason and these plays were supported by the authorities – just as the 1554 Edinburgh production of the Thrie Estaitis was financed by the burgh and patronised by the Queen Regent. But it seems that, as often as not, these plays and games presented themselves as festive, foolish, and disruptive of the very authority that licensed and supported them – just as the Thrie Estaitis publicly but comically challenged both political and ecclesiastical authorities. This potential for fertile ambivalence was recognised at the time. The title of the Abbot of Unreason entered into the political discourse of the day, with the image of the role available as a means of conceptualising political relationships. So John Knox records a resonant sermon directed against the church establishment in the 1530s: he reports on a Friar who delivered a ‘sermon of the Abbot [of] Unreason, unto whom and whose laws; he compared the prelats of that age; for they were subdued to no laws, no more than was the Abbot [of] Unreason’.38 Unreason, or folly, is subject to no laws; as such, it can offer a powerful image of corrupt authority. Knox, like Lyndsay, caricatures the ‘Prelats of that age’ as fools who deny both social and spiritual laws. But by virtue of standing outside the law, Unreason is also the very instrument by which such corruption is exposed. Corrupt clergy are not only themselves images of the Abbots of Unreason, but may be challenged and exposed by others adopting the same role, as was shown in Knox’s story of Alexander Furrour. This leads us yet again to the motif of universal folly: as Brueghel’s image of the Feast of Fools proclaims: all are fools, so the best fools are those who accept their own folly.39 Lyndsay exploits this image tellingly in the Thrie Estaitis: universal folly asserts the fundamental likeness between the ruler and the ruled, the corrupt and the innocent. All are fools, and ‘the number of fuillis ar infinite’ (l. 4506). Lyndsay demonstrates how the use of this motif of universal folly is a means by which political antagonism can be played out, while still asserting the strength of the community as a whole. Kings and commoners, abusers and

37 ‘The Maner of the Crying of ane Playe’, in The Asloan Manuscript, edited by William Craigie, Scottish Text Society, New Series, 2 vols (Edinburgh: Scottish Text Society, 1923–25), II, pp. 149–54. 38 Knox, History, I, 17. 39 www.mfa.org/collections/object/the-festival-of-fools-514556 [accessed 17.1.2019]. The final verse of the picture’s caption is translated: ‘Yet there are numbskulls who behave themselves wisely / And grasp the true sense of numbskulling / Because they accept their own folly / Their numbskulls will hit the pin best’. See Keith P. F. Moxey, ‘Pieter Bruegel and the Feast of Fools’, The Art Bulletin, 64.4 (1982), 640–46.

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victims, the players and the audience, are all fools. In the final note of the play Diligence leaves the audience with an invitation to share with him in folly behaviour: Now let ilk man his way avance: Let sum ga drink and sum ga dance. Menstrell, blaw up ane brawl of France: Let se quha hobbils best! (ll. 4663–71) Laughter is not only a means to attack abuses but a unifying political force. The Thrie Estaitis is an exceptionally powerful example of the uses of folly as a means of intervening in politics. Lyndsay clearly had an easy familiarity with the European literary and dramatic traditions of folly to which his own play contributes. Yet he is also working in a country in which folly practices were active in social and civic life. Both at court and in the burghs, these practices created a climate in which Folly might enter political discourse; these are deftly exploited both in the characters and situations of the Thrie Estaitis and in the relationship it establishes with its audience. Lyndsay thus draws on traditions which are European and local, humanist and popular, literary and social, creating a play whose sources and effects both vividly assert the universality of folly.

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14 LAUGHING AT NATURAL FOOLS

The sixteenth century saw an explosion of folly discourses, many of which invoked what has now become a familiar distinction between ‘natural’ and ‘artificial’ fools.1 The natural fool was the individual with a mental impairment of some kind who might be kept as a source of entertainment, especially in noble or royal households, up until the earlier seventeenth century. For some wealthy households, portraits of such fools survive, suggesting the value that might be invested in them. The unimpaired artificial fool, on the other hand, consciously crafted witty discourse and entertaining behaviour for professional purposes. The natural fool was an object of interest to philosophers, commentators and theologians discussing the relation of folly to rationality, the interpenetration of wit and folly, and how we can all be defined as fools.2 This chapter, however, does not consider these more philosophical questions but looks at something rather simpler and more immediate – though also for us probably more unsettling: how did natural fools make people laugh, and what was the function or effect of that laughter? These are not easy questions for us to discuss in the twenty-first century. We are looking across a marked cultural divide, since we no longer think it acceptable, or even understandable, to treat those with mental impairments as a source of laughter. This makes it difficult for us to evaluate this Tudor institution. Modern unease, even with reading about the ways natural fools were used for entertainment, makes it hard for us to think through and analyse the cultural and theatrical implications of their role. But it is a project worth undertaking, if we are to understand many of the wider ramifications of folly discourses, of cultural attitudes and of performance practices in the early modern period. This issue was already raised

1 The history of fools has been well documented in Enid E. H. Welsford, The Fool: His Social and Literary History (London: Faber and Faber, 1935), Sandra Billington, A Social History of the Fool (Brighton: Harvester, 1984), and John Southworth, Fools and Jesters at the English Court (Stroud: Sutton, 1998). 2 For a survey of contemporary philosophical and legal discourse and reflection on the natural fool, see Jonathan Andrews, ‘Begging the Question of Idiocy: The Definition and Socio-Cultural Meaning of Idiocy in Early Modern Britain: Part 1’, History of Psychiatry, 9.33 (1998), 65–95; and ‘Begging the Question of Idiocy: The Definition and Socio-Cultural Meaning of Idiocy in Early Modern Britain: Part 2’, History of Psychiatry, 9.34 (1998), 179–200.

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by one of the most influential early commentators on the Fool, Enid Welsford, who pointed out in her classic study: ‘My concern, however, is not with the ethical but with the aesthetic significance of the subject’.3 Is it possible for us, also, to look beyond our own ethical terms and try to understand the aesthetic and cultural value that sixteenth- and seventeenth-century society seems to have derived from their relationship with the natural fool? We might begin from a revealing reflection on these values by Thomas More. In the Utopia he articulates one Tudor attitude to natural fools, which may help to illuminate the phenomenon. The Utopians, he says, have singular delite & pleasure in foles. And as it is a greate reproche to do to annye of them hurte or injury, so they prohibite not to take pleasure of foolyshnes. For that, they thinke, dothe muche good to the fooles. And if any man be so sadde, and sterne, that he cannot laughe neither at their wordes, nor at their dedes, none of them be committed to his tuition: for feare least he would not intreate them gentilly and favorably enough: to whom they should brynge no delectation (for other goodness in them is none) muche lesse anye proffite shoulde they yelde him.4 This may seem to us a conflicting view: fools are to be protected and treated kindly; but pleasure at their limitations and laughter at their words and deeds is not only legitimate and encouraged, but understood as beneficial to both parties. Men who cannot take such pleasure are seen as incomplete human beings, while laughter is apparently not recognised as humiliating or aggressive to the fools. This is of course a Utopian view, with all the ironies that may involve, although we should remember that More himself kept a natural fool who by all accounts was well-loved and valued within his household.5 In spite of their ambivalent context, More’s words suggest that laughing at natural fools should not be easily dismissed as simply callous or barbaric; it could be an ethically, and certainly a theatrically, more complex response than we are now likely to believe. From this starting point, I aim to explore the contemporary discourse around the natural fool as entertainer. That discourse is sometimes explicit, as commentators reflect on the implications of natural folly; but more often it is only implicit, arising incidentally from accounts and descriptions of fools and their activities. I will not pursue the moral or allegorical paradigms by which the folly discourses sometimes interpreted fools as symbolic figures. Rather I will focus on what was understood as the immediate pleasure or entertainment value 3 Welsford, The Fool, p. 26. 4 Thomas More, A Frutefull Pleasaunt, [and] Wittie Worke, of the Beste State of a Publique Weale, and of the Newe Yle, Called Vtopia [ . . . ], translated into Englishe by Raphe Robynson, 2nd edn (London: [Richard Tottel for] Abraham Vele, 1556), fol. 96v. 5 For an account of More’s fool, Henry Patenson, see Noeline Hall, ‘Henry Patenson: Sir Thomas More’s Fool’, Moreana, 27.101–02 (1990), 75–86.

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they offered, how spectators judged and responded to that pleasurable encounter, and what they thought they (and perhaps the fools themselves) gained from it. While there is some discursive reflection around the figure of the natural to draw on, my focus will be primarily on some texts that give us raw material – texts that describe or enact these encounters, recording the natural fool in action. Central here are works by Robert Armin, well-known as a professional actor with the Lord Chamberlain’s (later the King’s) Men specialising in fools’ parts.6 In 1600, Armin first published a work called Foole Vpon Foole, which offered vivid brief histories of the lives and habits of six real-life fools.7 Armin lays stress on the fact that his subjects are all naturals: ‘’tis no wonder for me to set downe fooles naturall, when wise men before theyle be unprofitable, will seeme fooles artificiall’ (sig. A2r). His selection of fools ranges from the iconic Will Somer, Henry VIII’s fool, to fools kept by contemporary gentry or in hospitals, with some of whom Armin claims personal acquaintance. The work seems to have been popular: a second edition appeared in 1605, and in 1608, Armin published an expansion, A Nest of Ninnies, addressed specifically to university students.8 Foole Vpon Foole is an invaluable source of information, not only about the fools and their behaviour, but about their relationship with those who patronised them, the ways spectators reacted to them, and the responses that Armin solicits from his readers. Much of the pleasure of Armin’s histories lies in the distinctive personalities and behaviour of the six fools he describes. Whether these arise, as he frequently suggests, from personal acquaintance with the fools or with those who report their stories, or whether they are simply creations of his lively and unaffected style, this conveys an illusion of authenticity that is an important feature of the work’s appeal. But is it possible to draw from the particular portraits any broader principles about natural fools? A place to start may be the ‘contents list’ he provides on his title page: Six sortes of sottes A flat foole A leane foole and A merry foole

A fatt foole A cleane foole A verry foole.

6 For a biography of Armin, see David Wiles, Shakespeare’s Clown: Actor and Text in the Elizabethan Playhouse (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 136–63. 7 Robert Armin, Foole Vpon Foole, or Six Sortes of Sottes (London: [E. Allde] for William Ferbrand, 1600). 8 Robert Armin, A Nest of Ninnies Simply of Themselues without Compound (London: T. E[ast] for Iohn Deane, 1608). This version introduces an allegorical, moralised frame for Armin’s fool stories, a dialogue between a personification of The World, and a supposed philosopher, Sotto. Between them these debaters offer satirically learned allegorised interpretations of the behaviour and significance of the fools in the inset stories. I am avoiding this version, in order to concentrate on Armin’s direct presentation of the natural fools themselves.

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He identifies his six fools not, initially, by name, but by largely physical characteristics. He then opens each history with a verse description that focuses first and foremost on the generally misshapen physical appearance of the fool. Of Jack Oates, the flat fool, he explains: ‘His upper lip turned in, but that was stranger,/His underlip so big t’might sweepe a manger’ (sig. A3r); of Jemy Camber, the fat fool: ‘A yarde hye and a nayle no more his stature [ . . . ]/One eare was bigger than the other farre:/His fore-head full, his eyes shind like g [sic] flame,/His noze flat and his beard small yet grew square’ (sig. B3v); of Lean Leanard: ‘A little head, high forehead, one squint eye,/And as he goes he holdes his necke awry:/One hand stands crooked and the other right’ (sig. C4r). These descriptions draw us into immediate and intimate physical proximity to the fools; they offer their bodily idiosyncrasies both as a marker of identity and as an accepted source of fascination and humour. As Armin remarks of Jemy Camber, his ‘very presence made the King much sport’ (sig. B3r). Pictures of sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century fools show similar interest and pleasure taken in representation of the detail of their physical appearance. This focus on the body informs one important strand of the humour and entertainment generated by the natural fools in Armin’s tales. Apart from fascination with their features, undignified physical mishaps are a commonly repeated source of laughter, from Jack Miller, the clean fool, who burned off his beard and eyebrows by thrusting his head into a hot oven in search of pies, to Lean Leonard, who almost choked himself on the feathers of his master’s favourite hawk, which he killed and tried to eat raw. The gross physicality of the body is a key feature in generating laughter at the natural. Humour like this offers a Bakhtinian delight in the body as distorted, leaky, reductive. This is intensified in the case of the natural fool, who has less control over his physical faculties and impulses. Armin emphasises, for example, how several of his fools are ‘dribling ever’, with the natural’s ‘muckinder’, or handkerchief, always prominent.9 The cheerful acceptance of the natural fool as a physical spectacle presumably underlies the common impulse to play practical jokes on him. Unlike the professional fool, the natural is significantly more likely to be the target than the initiator of jests. Many of the tales report laughter provoked by deliberately setting the fool up as the victim of a trick which results in physical indignity or pain. So, for example, in one jest someone spreads butter mixed with itching powder under the saddle of Jemy Camber, the fat Scots fool. Armin explains: The trotting of his Mule made the mingled confection lather so, that it got into his breeches, and workt up to the crowne of his head, I to the sole of his foote, and so he sweate profoundlye: still he wipt and he wipt, sweating more and more, they laught a good to see him in that taking. (Foole Vpon Foole, sig. C1v)

9 See Foole Vpon Foole, sig. D3r, and A Nest of Ninnies, sig. G1r.

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Jests of this kind are rarely simply private or personal interactions between trickster and fool. They are generally set up or exploited as deliberate performances: the discomfiture of the fool is staged to an audience, either contrived as, or turned into, a spectacle. Jack Miller’s burned face is a particularly rich example of such performance. Armin reports that the fool was persuaded to ‘thrust in his head into the hot Oven’ by the boy actress of a visiting company of players, who ‘dressed them in the Gentlemans kitchin, & so entred through the Entry into the Hall’. After his painful accident, ‘Jacke was in a bad taking with his face, poore soule, and lookt so ugly, and so strangely’ that the boy, making his own first entrance as the lady in the play, was overcome with laughter at the memory ‘and could goe no further’. When he explained to the audience what had put him off his stride, Jack was called out on stage so that all the spectators could share the joke: ‘but he so strangely lookt, as his countenance was better then the Play’ (sig. D3v). This accident, painful and disfiguring to Jack, is not only a source of uncontrollable laughter to the boy actor who initiated it; it is then staged to the audience in the hall in order to extend the pleasure of the jest. A network of performance events surrounds the incident, culminating in the spectacle of the battered body of the fool itself both becoming and outdoing the play. Many of the incidents Armin describes, whether involving spontaneous actions by the fools or tricks played upon them, are similarly ‘staged’ to public view, perceived as or transformed into performance and spectacle. There is a good deal in this that we are likely to find troubling today: laughter at physical appearance and deformity, painful jokes practised against those who are unable to defend themselves, and the readiness to turn both physical and mental impairment into spectacle. It may be worth looking at the contemporary discourses of folly to see if they can help us to understand more clearly what such jests might have meant and how they might have been received in their own time. One place to start is with discussions not of folly itself, but of laughter. Aristotle’s influential explanation of laughter was much repeated throughout the Middle Ages and early modern period, and it has an obvious connection here: in the Poetics, Aristotle explains that we laugh at ‘some defect or ugliness which is not painful or destructive’.10 The body of the natural fool could be understood as fitting this category: the fool is physically deformed, and though he himself may suffer bodily pain, it is of a relatively minor kind which does not affect others. However, Aristotle’s definition implies a certain distance and superiority in the spectator which does not seem fully to account for the cheerful laughter Armin describes. More’s report of the Utopians laughing at fools also suggests that laughing at the defective or ugly is not, or at least should not be, quite what is happening in these encounters. He explains: ‘To mocke a man for his deformitie, or for that he lacketh anye parte or lymme of his bodye, is counted greate dishonestye and reproche, not to him

10 Aristotle, The Poetics, translated by S. H. Butcher (1902), in Project Gutenberg (2008): , section V. [accessed 20 January 2019]

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that is mocked, but to him that mocketh’ (fol. 96v). While More fully accepts that the fool’s body may generate permissible laughter, he appears to distinguish this from the cruel ‘mockery’ at deformity. There may, then, be other factors at play, beyond Aristotle’s definition. Early modern analysts tend to emphasise laughter as itself a radically physical phenomenon.11 Erica Fudge quotes Laurent Joubert’s Traité du Ris (1579), which tells us that when laughter goes on for a long time the veins in the throat become enlarged, the arms shake, and the legs dance about, the belly pulls in and feels considerable pain; we cough, perspire, piss, and besmirch ourselves by dint of laughing, and sometimes we even faint away because of it.12 Laughter is profoundly and even grotesquely rooted in the body. Joubert’s description, in fact, echoes the very kinds of physical features and actions Armin describes in his fools. It might almost seem as though the naturals not only provoke laughter in others, but embody laughter itself. Certainly, hilarity seems to have been commonly accepted not just as a reaction to fools, but as a symptom or behaviour of fools. William Phiston, in his conduct book, The Schoole of Good Manners, translated from French in 1595, points out that ‘To laugh at every thing, betokeneth a foole’; he advises young men not to ‘stirre and shake thy body in laughing’. Fools themselves, he explains, link laughter grossly to the body: ‘These are wordes of fooles to say: I was like to be pisse my selfe with laughing: I had almost burst with laughing: I was like to haue died with laughing: or I had almost sounded [swooned] with laughing’.13 Through laughter, the gross physicality of the fool himself is actually reflected into those who laugh at him. One of Armin’s stories demonstrates the interdependence of this process of mutual laughter especially effectively. Jack Miller was a natural with a speech impediment, who was often asked to perform at feasts. At one, he ‘began in such manner to speake with driveleing and stuttering, that they began mightily to laugh’. One demure and straitlaced gentlewoman, in attempting to suppress her own laughter at Jack (‘because shee would not seeme too immodest with laughing’), found herself erupting in a fart. To her blushing embarrassment, this was quickly detected by the company, and ‘this jest made them laugh more’. The company then ‘so hartily laught’ that one old gentlewoman fell into a fit, and ‘shee was nine or tenne daies

11 For a full discussion, see Erica Fudge, ‘Learning to Laugh: Children and Being Human in Early Modern Thought’, Textual Practice, 17.2 (2003), 277–94. 12 Laurent Joubert, Treatise on Laughter, translated and annotated by Gregory David De Rocher (Alabama: University of Alabama Press, 1980); cited by Fudge, ‘Learning to Laugh’, p. 280. Orig. Laurent Joubert, Traité du Ris, etc (Paris: Nicolas Chesneau, 1579). 13 William Phiston, The Schoole of Good Manners. Or, a New Schoole of Vertue, etc., translated by W[illiam] F[iston] (London: I. Danter for William Ihones, 1595), sigs. B7v–B8v. Orig. L’ABC ou instruction pour les petits enfants (Antwerp: C. Plantin, 1564).

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ere she recovered’. Physical mishap and laughter spread through the company in escalating delight, gradually drawing everyone into the whirlpool. As Armin concludes: ‘Thus simple Jack made mirth to all, made the wisest laugh, but to this day gathered little wit himselfe’ (Foole Vpon Foole, sig. E1r-v). It is clear that the fool is understood as not only laughable himself, but the cause of both laughter and laughableness in others. Laughing at the reductive physicality of the natural can draw the spectator into the fool’s own sphere, partly dissolving the sense of separation and hierarchical superiority between the two that initiated the jest. However, it was not only the physical that provoked laughter. As More pointed out, the ‘sad and stern’ man ‘cannot laughe neither at their words, nor at their dedes’. The naturals were rarely capable of the conscious or sophisticated verbal wit of the artificial fool, although some of the high-functioning natural fools like Will Somer were reported to be valued for their repartee. Yet many of them did offer verbal comedy or even wisdom. Such verbal entertainment tends to be one of two kinds: either the fools’ words reveal their laughable lack of comprehension of social and intellectual skills; or they may be valued for their truth-telling, their inability to use words to deceive, to flatter or to lie. Lack of understanding is central to many stories of naturals. Jemy Camber was apparently renowned for misunderstanding and misuse of words: one ‘marvelous hot day: O says Jemy how colde the weather is (so wise hee was that hee scrace [sic] knew hot from colde)’ (sig. C1r). John i’the Hospital, a natural fool who lived at Christ’s Hospital and was personally known to Armin, ‘was of this humour: aske him what his coate cost him, he would say a groate: what his cap, band or shirt cost, all was a groate, aske what his beard cost, and still a groote’ (sig. F2v). Laughter seems to be prompted by the obvious naivety and lack of understanding such words betray. Armin gives us a vivid example of how such incomprehension might be deliberately staged as entertainment in a scene from his play, The Two Maids of MoreClacke (1609).14 The play has a significant part for John i’the Hospital, a part which Armin appears to have composed for himself to play.15 Sir William Vergir, an affectionate patron of the natural fool, sets him up in a performance for sport, to demonstrate how he ‘Utters much hope of matter, but small gaine’ (vii.140 [p. 129]). Summoning John, he tells his dinner guests that they will hear a schoolboy ‘Aske him [John] such questions as his simplenes/Answeres to any: sirra let me heare ye’ (vii.146–47 [p. 130]). The boy then ‘apposes’ John with a mock schoolroom catechism: Boy:. John: Boy:

John, how many parts of speech be there? Eight, the vocative, and ablative, caret nominativo O. What say you to reddish [radish] Jacke?

14 Robert Armin, The History of the Two Maids of More-Clacke, edited by Alexander S. Liddie (New York: Garland, 1979); hereafter Two Maids. 15 Armin mentions in the preface to the printed edition: ‘I would haue againe inacted John my selfe, but [ . . . ] I cannot do as I would’ (ed. Liddie, p. 104).

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John: Boy: John: Boy: John:

That it does bite. Ha, ha, ha. [...] I’le give thee a point Jack, what wil’t do with it? Carri’t home to my nurse. I’le give thee a fooles head Jack, what wilt to do with it? Carri’t home to my nurse. (vii.146–64 [p. 130])

Similar delight is generated at the uncomprehending answers of the natural fool to simple classroom propositions in John Redford’s Wit and Science, where Idleness attempts to teach the natural fool Ignorance to read.16 Both plays stage performances of the apposition which invite laughter, both at the natural’s incomprehension and at his patent inability to learn any better. Like most of the laughter at fools, this kind of joke may seem both obvious and deliberately non-intellectual. But it is worth exploring how it was theorised at the time, how laughter at failures of understanding was thought to work.17 There is presumably a significant element of self-congratulation involved, as the spectators recognise the gap between the natural’s skills and their own. Hobbes’s famous characterisation of laughter is apposite: ‘The passion of Laughter is nothyng else but a suddaine Glory arising from suddaine Conception of some Eminency in our selves by Comparison with the Infirmityes of others’.18 We can congratulate our own cleverness in contrast to the natural’s incomprehension. Armin himself at times acknowledges and encourages just this sense of superiority, celebrating our difference from the fools we laugh at. When he introduces us to Leane Leanard, for example, he explains that his purpose in describing him is ‘that people seeing the strange workes of God, in his differing creatures, we that have perfect resemblance of God, both in sence and similytude, may the better praise his name, that we differ from them whose humors we read, see and heare’ (Foole Vpon Foole, sig. C4v). Yet this pious explanation does not seem entirely to account for the apparent mixture of emotions Armin describes in these interactions. The natural’s comical ignorance involves the less ‘glory to ourselves’ in contemptuous comparison to him, because he is not responsible for it and can do nothing to change it. More, yet again, in his discussion of fools remarks how unwise it is to ‘imbrayde anye man of that as a vice, that was not in his power to eschewe’ (Vtopia, fol. 96v). It is no glory to us to be cleverer than the natural, because he cannot learn to be 16 See Meg Twycross, ‘“Say Thy Lesson, Fool”: Idleness Tries to Teach Ignorance to Read’, Medieval English Theatre, 33 (2011), 75–121. 17 For discussion of varying early modern theories of laughter see Quentin Skinner, ‘Why Laughing Mattered in the Renaissance: The Second Henry Tudor Memorial Lecture’, History of Political Thought, 22.3 (2001), 418–47, and Matthew Steggle, Laughing and Weeping in the Early Modern Theatre, Studies in Performance and Early Modern Drama (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 11–24. 18 Hobbes, The Elements of Law (BL Harl. MS 4235, fo. 36r), quoted by Quentin Skinner, ‘Why Laughing Mattered’, p. 423.

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other than he is. An early seventeenth-century sermon preached on the death of a famous Pomeranian fool, Hans Miesko, explains almost admiringly how fools cannot ‘be influenced or corrected, neither with words nor with deed, neither with threats nor with punishment. They stay as they are’.19 Laughter at the natural’s ignorance is therefore not simply in scorn of his willfulness or laziness; it is not critical or satirical. It is perhaps revealing that Armin’s descriptions of the naturals’ patrons and guardians suggest that they frequently treated their charges like small children, acknowledging the fools’ lack of responsibility for their actions with a combination of discipline and affection. John i’the Hospital’s nurse in The Two Maids of More-Clacke speaks to him in just this way: ‘Wipe your nose, fie a sloven still, looke ye be mannerly, hold up your chinne, let me see ye make your holiday legge, so my chucking, that’s a good lambe, do not cry’ (vii.197–200). John’s ignorance is presented as charming rather than culpable, his performances laughed at but also congratulated. This is not quite the same as glorying in the fool’s inferiority. Quentin Skinner alerts us to alternative Renaissance positions on laughter, one of which locates it not in scornful superiority but in joy and pleasure. In particular, he cites a number of writers who link laughter to affectionate observation of the behaviour of children: Italian commentators observe that ‘we often laugh and show our joy when we meet [ . . . ] our children’; or ‘a father and mother receive their little children with laughter and festivity’.20 Laughter at the natural fool seems sometimes motivated at least in part by this kind of affectionate pleasure. These reactions may even be engineered, using the fool’s lack of comprehension or discrimination, to create a spectacle of childlike delight. Jemy Camber, for example, is several times described as being tricked by his masters into believing that he has successfully run at the ring, or won a race up the Royal Mile in Edinburgh, when of course he was capable of no such thing. The king and lords who set up the deceptions are said to derive great enjoyment not so much from the tricks played upon Jemy, but from his pride in his own supposed achievements: ‘It was sport enough for the King a month after to heare him tell it’ (Foole Vpon Foole, sig. C3r). The jest depends on the gap between the king’s understanding and the fool’s; but the point seems to have been not simply to expose and laugh at the natural’s limitations or ignorance, but to enjoy his celebration of himself. These mixed responses may underlie a general readiness to enjoy transgressive behaviours and displays of ignorance on the part of the fools, because they are recognised as blameless. This notion of blamelessness, of the harmlessness both of the naturals and of the laughter they provoke, is especially strong in recorded reactions to the fool: ‘this innocent Idiot that never harmed any’ (Foole Vpon 19 Cited by Ruth von Bernuth, Wunder, Spott und Prophetie: Natürliche Narrheit in den ‘Historien von Claus Narren’, (Tübingen: M. Niemeyer, 2009), p. 250: ‘nicht einreden und corrigiren, weder mit Worten noch der that / weder mit drawen noch straffen / bleiben wie sie sein’. I am grateful to Dr Sabine Rolle for translations of quotations from this sermon. 20 Skinner, ‘Why Laughing Mattered’, p. 435.

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Foole, sig. F1v). Accounts often emphasise the specific value of the fools’ function to lighten care with harmless fun, especially for those who themselves carried heavy responsibilities. Hans Miesko was praised because, the preacher Cradelius remembers, ‘with his presence [and his] entertaining talk of adventures he drove out many and varied melancholy and sad thoughts from those who bore a heavy burden’.21 Will Somer is similarly frequently presented as having an important role in managing the moods of Henry VIII. Armin repeats one incident in which ‘the King upon a time being extreame melancholy & full of passion, all that Will Somers could do, wold not make him merry’ (Foole Vpon Foole, sig. E3v). Somer is then remembered as having staged a series of what are plainly, and probably deliberately, rather meaningless jests to gradually lure the king back into a good humour. The fool can thus offer a legitimate escape from responsibility, from intellectual and emotional demands. His harmless humour might therefore have a valuable moral and social function. This is of course part of the natural’s recognised status as the ‘innocent’, the other term which is often used to identify him. The natural fool is morally innocent because he does not have the wit to make ethical judgements, or thus to sin. This is another feature which links him to the child. In John Heywood’s Witty and Witles, a dramatised debate about fools, the advocate for the natural fool explains: Wher God gyvythe no dys[c]ernyng God takethe none acownte; In whyche case of acownt the sot dothe amownt, For no more dysernythe the sott at yeres thre score Then thynosent [the innocent] borne wythe in yeres thre before.22 The fool, like the infant, is incapable of ‘discerning’. As the play explains, this innocence lies at the root of the natural’s spiritual advantage over others, an advantage that counteracts his impairment in this life, which is his certainty of salvation. Incapable of sin, the natural is thus incapable of damnation: ‘the wytles ys sewer of salvashyon’ (l. 357). His innocent lack of discernment equally accompanies the general perception that the natural fool cannot deceive and cannot lie. The sermon on Hans Miesko praises him for embodying ‘the common saying: fools and children usually tell the truth’.23 This kind of innocence is presumably one foundation for the ‘wise fool’ so fascinating to the Tudor stage. The natural, it

21 Bernuth, Wunder, Spott und Prophetie, p. 248: ‘mit seiner gegenwart / kurtzweiligen Ebenthewrlichen geschwetz und vornehmen unter den schweren Regiments unnd Haussorgen viele unnd mancherley Melancholische und trawrige gedancken vertrieben’. 22 John Heywood, Witty and Witless, in The Plays of John Heywood, edited by Richard Axton and Peter Happé, Tudor Interludes (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1991), p. 64 (lines 345–48). 23 Bernuth, p. 248: ‘das gemeine Sprichwort: Narren und Kinder reden gemeinlich die Wahrheit’. Modern explanations of mental impairment recognise similar traits as characteristic of various conditions: for example, we are encouraged to understand the social difficulties experienced by those with autism as arising from an inability to lie, or to understand anything but literal truth.

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is assumed, can see truth undistorted by the complexities of deception, imagination or intellect, even if he cannot fully understand its implications. Armin’s real-life fools, in fact, rarely if ever display this sort of unconscious wisdom, although the traditional tales of Will Somer suggest that he, like Hans Miesko, was certainly remembered as having had this capacity. But Armin’s stories suggest that the natural’s fundamental innocence was recognised by spectators, and might at times contribute to the pleasure taken in their performances. Innocence makes it possible for onlookers to laugh at behaviour that in a non-fool would be culpable or annoying rather than funny. Spectators are often credited with recognising and accepting the natural’s lack of malicious intent, thus allowing them to enjoy what would otherwise be unacceptably unsociable or challenging behaviour. An anecdote of Jack Oates shows how this might operate. Jack one day stole a quince pie that was being made with great effort and expense for a special feast for his master, Sir William. The pie was hot, and Jack ran away and ‘leapes into the Moate up to the arme-pittes, and there stood eating the Pye’ (Foole Vpon Foole, sig. B2v). When this was reported to Sir William and his guests, ‘they laught and ran to the windows to see the jest’. After a furious exchange between Jack and the Cook, the pie was eaten and the fool came out of the moat. Yet in spite of the loss of the pie, Jack was not held accountable or punished, and laughter remained the dominant response to the spectacle: ‘the Knight and the rest all laught a good at the jest, not knowing how to mend it [. . .] to chide him was to make worse of things then twas, and to no purpose neyther’ (sig. B3r). The innocence of the fool excuses the theft, and in fact encourages Sir William to accept it as a jest against himself. While the innocence of the fool could provoke this kind of tolerant laughter, that response was closely tied to an evaluation of his mental incapacity. This could subtly but significantly affect the perception of his behaviour as either entertaining or insulting. Another anecdote of Jack Oates illustrates this very precisely. A very eminent nobleman came to visit Sir William, whose wife ‘as is the Courtly custome, was kist of this Noble man’ (Foole Vpon Foole, sig. A4v). Jack Oates immediately started up and boxed the nobleman’s ear: ‘knave quoth hee kisse Sir Willies wife?’ Sir William was mortified and ordered Jack to be whipped, ‘but the kinde Noble man knowing simplicity the ground of his error, would not suffer it’. At this point, then, the fool’s lack of understanding excuses his behaviour, allowing it to be forgiven and even laughed at as innocent. But the story then has a revealing sequel. Armin reports that ‘Jacke seeing they were sad, and hee had done amisse, had this wit in simplicity to shaddow it’. He approached the Earl with an attempt at deliberately witty wordplay. Shaking the nobleman’s hand, he apologised for his mistake, ‘knowing not [y]our eare from your hand being so like one another: Jacke thought he had mended the matter, but now he waa [sic] whipt indeede and had his payment altogether’ (sig. A4v). This anecdote highlights very exactly the boundaries of the licence allowed to the natural fool. When his invasive truth-telling behaviour is spontaneous, and understood as springing from natural innocence or simplicity, it can be tolerated and even enjoyed. But if 207

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it is seen as conscious – when Jack attempts to perform the artificial fool’s crafted mockery to manipulate others and their opinion of him – it becomes culpable. Once he strays beyond his natural limitations, he loses his licence; there is no laughter, and he is held responsible and punished for insolence.24 From the various ways in which the natural fools are recorded as generating laughter, it is plain that they provoked mixed and sometimes conflicting responses of scorn and affection, superiority and identification. The same conflicts can be seen in the broader social attitudes that form the context for the entertainment role of the fools. It is undeniable that there appears to be a general social acceptance of aggressive behaviour towards natural fools. Heywood’s Witty and Witles is particularly graphic about this. One character asks, Who cumth by the sott, who cumth he by, That vexyth hym not somewey usewally? Some beate hym, some bob hym, Some joll hym, some job hym, Some tugg hym by the heres, Some lugg hym by the eares [...] Not evyn mayster Somer the Kyngs gracys foole But tastythe some tyme some nyps of new schoole. (ll. 29–34, 41–44) Heywood implies that it is normal for people to torment natural fools. He suggests that even the most valued and highly patronised of household fools can expect a degree of casual violence. More, in spite of his own affection and tolerance for naturals, confirms this social response. In the Confutation of Tyndale’s Answer, he tells a story of his own fool, Henry Patenson, who had accompanied him on a visit to Brussels.25 The anecdote is perhaps the more revealing because it is not told in order to illustrate any point about attitudes to naturals; it is rather introduced as a playful allegorical example to help explain an issue of theological controversy. The treatment of the fool is incidental rather than central to the story. More records that, out in the streets, Patenson was observed by the passers-by in Brussels, some of whom ‘caught a sporte in angryng of hym/and out of dyvers corners hurled at hym suche thynges as angred hym, and hurte hym not’. In response, he tells us, Patenson collected stones, ‘not gunstonys, but as harde as they’, proclaimed that those who had not tormented him should leave, and then threw back his stones 24 Armin emphasises this difference in another tale which sets Jack Oates against a deliberate jester: ‘Here you have heard the difference twext a Flat foole natural, and a Flat foole artificiall, one that had his kinde, and the other who foolishly followed his owne minde’ (Foole Vpon Foole, B2r). 25 Thomas More, The Confutation of Tyndale’s Answer, edited by Louis A. Schuster et al., The Yale Edition of the Complete Works of St Thomas More, Vol. 8, 3 vols (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1973), vol II, 900.

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against the crowd, inflicting some bloody injuries. Patenson’s stone-throwing is then interpreted as an allegory of the unjust exertion of power, based on the jest that although the fool had excused himself for his indiscriminate retaliation by warning the innocent in the crowd to leave before he hurled his missiles, he could not realise that they did not understand English. More raises no questions about the tormenting of the natural and his angry response, which form the context and background for this parable; he passes no judgement on either the crowd’s or Patenson’s behaviour. Mutual aggression seems to be expected and tolerated, reported as familiar and attracting no particular reproach. Apart from such everyday random violence, the household fool might also expect physical punishment, even for faults he might not understand. As Wolsey is reported to have reminded Will Somer, ‘A rod in the schoole,/And a whip for the foole/Is alwayes in season’.26 Armin’s stories of fools certainly confirm that rough treatment is both normal, and acceptably productive of laughter, even from kindly and protective patrons. He tells a sad tale of Jack Miller who, entranced by the clown in a company of visiting players, ran after them across a frozen river. Although he got safely across, he was scolded for doing something so dangerous. At this, ‘he considered his fault, and knowing faults should be punished, he entreated Grumball the clowne whom he so deerely loved to whip him but with rosemary, for that he thought wold not smart: but the Players in jest breecht him till the bloud came which he tooke laughing: for it was his manner ever to weepe in kindness, and laugh in extreames’ (Foole Vpon Foole, sig. D4v). Violence, along with laughter, seems to be accepted by both sides as part of the contract between the fool and his protectors. On the other hand, there is plenty of evidence of apparently real and deep affection of masters for fools. This is attested from many quarters, and Armin is explicit about the intimacy often involved. His narratives are full of phrases asserting, for example, ‘he loved the foole above all, and that the household knew’ (Foole Vpon Foole, sig. B1r); ‘the Knight [ . . . ] made no small account of his welfaire’ (sig. B2v); ‘though the Gentleman loved his hauke, yet he loved the foole above’ (sig. D2r); ‘many [ . . . ] so much loved him, that they were loath to disease him’ (sig. E2r). Such love is apparently not only a personal idiosyncrasy of warm-hearted individuals; it is asserted in some discussions of folly as the appropriate response to the innocent. Hans Miesko’s sermon urges: ‘one should show [fools] goodness and love, take them in, host, clothe, feed them [ . . . ] protect, shield and defend them, and not abandon them even at the time of death’.27 This affection, as Armin’s anecdotes reveal, often plays significantly into the ways in which the fool’s behaviour was understood, valued and laughed at. This mixture of aggression and affection, contempt and delight that informs social attitudes to these fools helps us to estimate the value that was placed on the 26 A Pleasant History of the Life and Death of Will Summers and How Hee Came First to Be Knowne at the Court (London: I. Okes for F. Grove and T. Lambart, 1637), sig. C1v. 27 Bernuth, p. 251: ‘sondern ihnen viel mehr alles gutes und liebes bezeigen / sie auffnehmen/ Herbergen / Kleiden/ Speisen [ . . . ] sie schutzen/ beschirmen und verteidigen / auch im Tod nicht verlassen’.

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laughing encounters with them. On the one hand, scornful laughter at the deficiencies of the fool justifies violence against him and should sharpen the spectator’s gratitude for his own capacities. Hans Miesko’s sermon tells us that by fools ‘we are reminded of sin, of the wrath of God and his punishment as well as of the gifts of soul and body, which we received from God, so that we use them properly’.28 On the other, affectionate laughter at the harmless simplicity of the fool may acknowledge his superior innocence and spiritual grace. The sermon also claims that the fool’s ‘natural lack of reason, and spiritual wisdom’ teaches us as much as ‘the life of one of the wisest, most talented and respected of men’.29 The sermon thus suggests opposing interpretations of the fool, yet in both laughter depends on, and reinforces, the sense of difference, of our separation from the natural who is either less, or more, than ourselves. Yet Armin’s accounts suggest that at times laughter could work to draw the spectators into a shared identity with the natural. We may be invited or even compelled to recognise the fool’s deficiencies, mental and physical, as our own; laughter can establish a bond rather than a division. So the natural may not be different from us, but intensely and comically the same. A famous sixteenth-century epitaph to a fool laments: Lobe, God have mercye on thy innocent sowle, Whyche amonges innocentes I am sure hath a place, Or ellys my sowle ys yn a hevy [sad] case; Ye, ye, and moo foolys mony one, For folys be alyve, Lobe, though thou be gone. [...] Nowe God have mercye on us alle, For wyse and folyshe alle dyethe; [...] God amend alle folys that thynke themselfe none.30 This may, of course, record a romanticised view, tinged with nostalgia and a reverent attitude towards mortality. But it does confirm that laughing at natural fools can be understood to have included responses significantly more complicated than simple mockery. In the fool, the spectacle of difference and deficiency combines with and plays against a recognition of the innate and shared folly of all human beings.

28 Bernuth, p. 251: ‘dz wir dadurch nicht alleine erinnert werden der sunde / Gottes Zorn und strafe / sondern der gaben des gemuthes und Leibes / die wir von Gott empfangen haben/ das wir sie recht gebrauchen’. 29 Bernuth, p. 249: ‘seinen naturlichen unverstandt und Geistliche Weissheit’; ‘als an einem der weisesten hochbegabtesten unnd wolverdienesten Mannern’. 30 ‘Elegy on Lobe, Henry VIII’s fool’, Nugae Poeticae. Select Pieces of Old English Popular Poetry, Illustrating the Manners and Arts of the Fifteenth Century, edited by J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps (London: John Russell Smith, 1844), pp. 44–46.

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15 THE PLACES OF FOOLERY Robert Armin and fooling in Edinburgh

‘Foolery, sir, does walk about the orb like the sun, it shines everywhere’.1 So says Feste, voiced, as we believe, by Robert Armin in the first performances of Twelfth Night. The words are Shakespeare’s, but Armin in his own writing seems to confirm both the geographical spread and the peripatetic nature of fooling. In the most immediately engaging and lively of his works, Foole Vpon Foole first published in 1600, he offers conversational anecdotes of six household fools.2 These are ‘naturals’, individuals with mental impairments rather than the witty ‘artificial’ fools of contemporary drama, and Armin is at pains to assert their historical actuality: he reports names of real and recognisable patrons, known places, often claiming or re-constructing eyewitness accounts.3 While it is impossible to verify all his facts, which are plainly polished in the interests of comic entertainment, this assertion of actuality is an important factor in the purpose and effect of his narratives. But whether genuine reporting, traditional anecdote or rhetorical exercise, Foole Vpon Foole is one of the very few works that gives us some insight into the kinds of laughter provoked by the natural fool, and thus into a form of entertainment and a habit of mind that we now tend to find uncomfortable and alien.4

1 Twelfth Night, III. 1. 37–38. 2 Foole Vpon Foole, or Six sortes of Sottes (London: [E. Allde] for William Ferbrand, 1600). This first, and a second edition in 1605, were published under (fairly transparent) pseudonyms, first ‘Clonnico de Curtanio [Clown of the Curtain] Snuffe’, and then ‘Clonnico del Mondo Snuffe’, referring to Armin’s employment with the Chamberlain’s men especially in Clown roles. In 1608 he issued under his own name a revised version of the tales with an extensive allegorical moralising framework, A Nest of Ninnies Simply of Themselues without Compound (London: T. E[ast] for Iohn Deane, 1608). 3 John Southworth points out that the distinction between fools born with impairments and those who ‘pretended folly to fulfil a professional, comedic role’ was familiar in Europe from at least the twelfth century: John Southworth, Fools and Jesters at the English Court (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 1998), p. 5. The distinguishing terms ‘natural’ and ‘artificial’ are commonly used through the sixteenth century. 4 For discussion of natural fooling as a form of entertainment see Sarah Carpenter, ‘Laughing at Natural Fools’, Theta, XI (2014), 3–22 [ edited in this volume, chapter 14, Eds.] < http://umr6576. cesr.univ-tours.fr/publications/Theta11/fichiers/pdf/Carpenter.pdf >

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One interesting feature of Armin’s narration is a sense that the force of this kind of foolery often rested significantly in physical space. The interaction of the body of the natural fool with his environment, and the spectator’s vivid awareness of the concrete and social spaces of that environment, are important elements in the meaning and impact of fool-generated laughter. The six fools Armin describes are all located in particular places: the City of London, Greenwich, Haughton in Nottinghamshire, Mansfield, Esam [Evesham] in Worcestershire. The furthest flung from London is the Scots fool Jemy Camber, whose antics are played through Edinburgh. Armin’s stories of Jemy Camber are rooted in local and geographical detail, details which both give the fooling its power and also suggest fascinating glimpses of actuality. While we can never fully untangle fact from fiction, or information from rhetorical persuasion, the tales thus appear to offer us a range of insights – both historical and theoretical – into the life and times of a Scots royal fool, into Armin himself, and also more broadly into the role of space and place in sixteenth-century foolery. Exploration of Armin’s narrative inevitably raises questions of how we can interpret and trust stories told about performances, especially stories that are themselves presented as rhetorical forms of record, instruction or entertainment. John J. McGavin’s Theatricality and Narrative in Medieval and Early Modern Scotland addressed the complexities involved in reading such narratives, showing how the original performance and its meanings for its first spectators is filtered through the purposes of the later narrator, who constructs a re-imagined performance for later audiences of readers both present and future.5 This chapter takes a similar approach to uncovering the wide-ranging, rich and subtle implications that can be uncovered from this kind of theatrical anecdote. Armin himself may be the place to start, both as the narrator of the stories of Jemy Camber, and as a known man of the theatre and actor of Shakespearean fools’ parts.6 He presents his little book of fools in a deliberately conversational, direct style that itself seems to imitate the immediacy of performance, offering his readers the impression that they are being addressed by the narrator’s authentic voice. The rhetorical form of the work, where each fool is introduced by a graphic physical description in verse followed by tales crafted to recall the colour and exaggeration of pub stories, must put us on guard as to their factual veracity; but throughout the work Armin seems concerned to validate the reality both of his naturals and of his own relationship to them. He indicates which stories he has heard from others, where he had been an eye-witness, which fools were 5 John J. McGavin, Theatricality and Narrative in Medieval and Early Modern Scotland (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007). 6 For compact details of Armin’s career, see E. K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, 4 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1923) II, pp. 299–300; for a fuller account, David Wiles, Shakespeare’s Clown: Actor and Text in the Elizabethan Playhouse (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 136–63.

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well-known to contemporaries and even, as with Henry VIII’s Will Somers, where he feels the tales are probably apocryphal: ‘How soeuer these three [. . .] [jests of Will Somers] [ . . . ] came in memory, and are for mirth inserted into Stage playes, I know not’ (E3v). Where he refers explicitly to his own experience, as with his account of his presence among ‘Lord Shandoyes Players’ on tour in Worcestershire, nothing appears to contradict the truth of his assertion ‘that this is true, my eyes were witnesses, being then by’ (E1r). Armin does not claim to be an eyewitness of Jemy Camber, and indeed it is clear from his tales that Jemy is long dead. To locate the narrating voice we must therefore ask how he gathered the stories of this mid-sixteenth-century Scottish fool. In the introductory verse description he claims: ‘what at that time Iemy Camber was/As I haue harde Ile writ, [‘as I have heard, I’ll write’] and so let passe’, while also mentioning that he ‘neuer red’ more of him (B4r). Such phrases may be no more than line-fillers; but the carefully constructed informality of the tales makes it seem unlikely that Armin is depending on written sources. The textual evidence rather suggests that what Armin wrote derived originally from an English ear listening to a Scots speaker. The very name of the fool, ‘Jemy Camber’ looks like an English transcription of the Scots ‘Jemmy (Jamie, Jimmy) Campbell’, while the brief epitaph cited at the end of the tale clearly tries to reproduce the sounds, as well as the vocabulary, of a Scots rhyme: He that gard all men till ieare, Iemy a Camber he ligges heere: Pray for his sale, for he is geane, And heere a ligges beneath this steane. (C3v) [‘He that caused all men to jeer, Jemmy a Camber he lies here: Pray for his soul, for he is gone, And here he lies beneath this stone’.] Armin might presumably have heard the stories from a Scotsman visiting South: such an encounter is recorded in William Turner’s New booke of spirituall physic (1555), where an anecdote of an earlier Scots royal fool is introduced as ‘a tale whych was tolde me of an honeste man borne and brought vp in Scotland’.7 It might also be possible, though less likely, that an Englishman returning from Scotland could have reproduced the sounds and details recorded. We know, for example, that one of Armin’s later associates in the newly established King’s Men, Laurence Fletcher, had visited Edinburgh in the 1590s, along with Martin

7 William Turner, A nevv booke of spirituall physik for dyuerse diseases of the nobilitie and gentlemen of Englande (Emden: Egidius van der Erve, 1555), fol. 8r.

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Slater, both actors with presumably tuned ears who worked both in England and Scotland.8 Jemy Camber’s story might encourage us, however, towards another possibility. In it, Armin shows a surprisingly detailed knowledge of Edinburgh geography, at times making telling comparisons with his own city of London, as we shall see. When Jemy is sent for a sea trip we are told, ‘Well to Leeth was he sent, which is the Harbour towne of such Ships as arriue at Edinborough: neere [nearer] they cannot come, which is some myle from the Citty’ (B4r). More locally, ‘this Fat foole vsed euery day to goe from the Abbey in the low towne [i.e Holyrood Palace], vp the Hil [now known as the Royal Mile] into the Citty of Edinborough’ (B4v); and further afield: ‘Iemy was lost in the Kings company once of purpose, but fiue myle from the Citty, at the Earle Mortons castle at da Keeth’ (C2r).9 The narrator knows where locations are in relation to each other – that the playfield at the Greenside is between Edinburgh and Leith, that the main city graveyard is ‘in the high town’ off what is now the High Street. He is also interested in what he reports as local language and customs: the word for a measure of drink: ‘a choppin of wine (for so they call it there)’ (C2v); or that unmarried mothers wore distinctive dress: ‘a broken Virgin, one that had had a barne (as there they are knowne by theyr attyre) wearing a loose kerchiffe hanging downe backward’ (B4v – C1r).10 The implications of this local knowledge are tellingly underlined when he reports how a quip of Jemy Camber’s came to be used as a familiar colloquial catch phrase: ‘and so long time after this iest was in memory, yea I haue heard it my selfe, & some wil talk of it at this day’ (emphasis mine; B4r).11 Echoing his claim in an earlier tale that ‘mine eyes were witnesses’, this is obliquely an assertion that Armin has himself been present in

8 English acting troupes had visited Scotland periodically from 1589 when James VI first invited the Queen’s Men in preparation for his marriage to Anna of Denmark. Fletcher’s company are recorded as performing both at court and elsewhere in 1594, and in 1599 when James forced the Kirk to withdraw an embargo on their public performances in Edinburgh. See Chambers, Elizabethan Stage, II, pp. 265–70, and Anna Jean Mill, Mediæval Plays in Scotland (1924; repr. London: Benjamin Blom, 1969), pp. 299–305. 9 ‘da Keeth’ is Dalkeith, the seat of the Earl of Morton. Like ‘Jemy Camber’ this spelling seems to reflect an English ear listening to a Scots’ elided ‘l’. 10 For distinctive dress worn by penitents in the late sixteenth century, see Margo Todd, The Culture of Protestantism in Early Modern Scotland (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002), pp. 143–49. 11 The phrase involved was ‘hit or misse quoth Iemy Camber’, which Armin claims became a jest in the Scottish court applied to an unmarried girl doing penance at the High Cross for bearing an illegitimate child. Lines from Helenore: or the Fortunate Shepherdess, first published in 1768, where a young man accosts an unwilling girl, suggest there could be something behind Armin’s story: ‘“Aw, bonny lass,” says he, “ye’ll gee’s a kiss, / And I sall set ye right on, hit or miss.” / “A hit or miss I’ll get, but help of you, / Kiss ye sklate-stanes, they winna weet your mou’ [ = I can go right or wrong without your help; kissing slates doesn’t get your mouth wet, i.e., doesn’t have any unfortunate consequences! Eds.]”’. See Alexander Ross, Helenore, or the Fortunate Shepherdess, a poem in the broad Scotch Dialect, 2nd edn (Aberdeen: J. Chalmers, 1778), p. 64.

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Edinburgh, validating the truth of Jemy’s stories by his personal knowledge of where they occurred. This assertion of presence plainly contributes to the effect of authenticity that Armin wishes to convey to his readers, and which is an important feature of all his fool tales. As such, we might be the more inclined to understand it as a rhetorical trope rather than a true report. But the accuracy of the apparently superfluous details he provides might lead us to suspect that they do derive directly from the narrator’s experience rather than from an intermediary. It seems less likely that a writer who had never visited Edinburgh would pick up and choose to relay this kind of local colour from another raconteur. If we accept this rhetorical subtlety as circumstantial but suggestive evidence that Armin had indeed visited Edinburgh, then it is tempting to place him among the ‘Inglis comedians’ who had visited Scotland in the 1590s, even possibly accompanying Fletcher and Slater to Edinburgh. All of this might offer a new hint about Armin’s life before he joined the Chamberlain’s men; more certainly, it helps us to understand his narratorial stance in the story of Jemy Camber, and what it reveals about his understanding of fooling. If Foole Vpon Foole can suggest possible information about Armin, it also throws potential, if uncertain, light on Jemy Camber himself and foolery at the Scottish royal court. No surviving evidence is known from Scotland to confirm this fool’s existence, but the clues Armin provides outline a figure who is by no means necessarily fictional. Armin claims that Jemy, a natural fool and dwarf just over ‘a yarde hye’ and now long dead, ‘Seru’d [served] this Kings Father all his life time through’ (B3v). ‘This King’ being, in 1600, James VI, his father was the ill-fated Henry, Lord Darnley, thus placing Jemy as active in the late 1560s. This timing, though unexceptionable, perhaps creates a certain awkwardness in the claim that Jemy served as king’s fool ‘all his life time through’. Darnley arrived in Scotland in February 1665, and his brief reign, from his marriage to Mary Queen of Scots on 29 July 1565 until his dramatic death on 10 February 1567, lasted less than two years. This gives scant space for a lifetime’s service, whether the life in question was that of the king or the fool, and conflicts oddly with the statement that Jemy was first brought to the court from his birthplace of Stirling in his youth. But an elastic view of times past in a foreign land is perhaps not especially surprising, and such generalised statements seem different in character from the precision the narrative accords to various particular episodes of Jemy’s life. In other respects, Darnley would appear to fit comfortably with many aspects of Armin’s tales. In his short reign in Scotland he was known for his taste for what many considered idle pastimes, dismissively summed up in John Knox’s remark: ‘As for the King, he past [passed] his time in hunting and hawking, and such other pleasures as were agreeable to his appetite, having in his company gentlemen willing to satisfy his will and affections’.12 This, along with evidence of his apparent tendency to domineering 12 John Knox The History of the Reformation in Scotland in The Works of John Knox edited David Laing, 2 vols (Edinburgh: Wodrow Society, 1846–48) II, 514.

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arrogance, might fit well with the relationship Armin portrays between Jemy Camber and his king. Although natural fools were often treated with what now seems casual oppression, the tricks played on Jemy seem more elaborately manipulative than those Armin records in his stories of other fools. Darnley was associated with household fools in both England and Scotland. In the years immediately before he went to Edinburgh in 1565, accusations were laid against his mother, Margaret, Countess of Lennox, claiming: ‘She loves not the Queen [Elizabeth I], as she has suffered these two years a fool in her house uncorrected to rail upon her’.13 Darnley appears to have been accustomed to a household in which the ambiguous licence allowed to the natural fool might freely be drawn into rashly indulged personal desire for power. In Scotland, records from immediately after his marriage refer to the ‘foulz du Roy’, with red and yellow livery clothes provided for at least two separate individuals.14 Neither of the names mentioned match Armin’s fool although one, James Geddie, does share a given name. But the other is just possibly a more promising candidate: in August 1565 a set of clothing for ‘Foyser, the fule’ is followed by a payment ‘to ane man that keipis him’.15 As a natural fool of limited understanding Jemy would undoubtedly have needed a keeper of this kind. Other passing references also fit what we know of Darnley’s short reign. The Earl of Huntly, to whom the King entrusts Jemy’s care, had very recently established friendly relations with the crown; while a sea-trip on the Firth of Forth, along with the gunfire that terrifies the fool, matches records of increased sea traffic to the island artillery base of Inchkeith in the months immediately following the marriage.16 None of these wisps and echoes, of course, provides firm evidence that Jemy Camber was Darnley’s fool, but the cobweb of association would tend to support, rather than to undermine, the picture that Armin creates. If so, the stories of Jemy Camber give us a remarkably rich insight into actual practices of foolery at the royal court in sixteenth-century Scotland.

Place In recent decades anthropologists, social scientists and literary theorists have developed new interests in ideas of space and of place, building on the premise

13 ‘Elizabeth: May 1562, Item 26, article 12’, Calendar of State Papers: Foreign, edited by William B. Turnbull and others, 23 vols (London: HMSO, 1861–1950), V, pp. 10–25; see 14 Inventaires de la royne descosse douairiere de France: catalogues of the jewels, dresses, furniture, books, and paintings of Mary Queen of Scots, 1556–1569, edited by Joseph Robertson (Edinburgh: Bannatyne Club, 1863), p. 156. 15 Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer of Scotland, edited by Thomas Dickson and others, 13 vols (Edinburgh: H. M. General Register House, 1877–1978), XI, p. 386, (hereafter LHTA). Foyser does not sound like a family name of the period. 16 Knox, History, II, 512; LHTA, XI, 515–22.

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that ‘all behaviour is located in and constructed of space’.17 There is now a rich field of theoretical exploration and modelling of human interaction with space and its cultural significance.18 Such thinking can inform our understanding of practices of art and performance, encouraging reflection on the ‘exchanges between the work of art and the places in which its meanings are defined’.19 Armin’s accounts of sixteenth-century natural fooling provoke just such reflection on how the negotiation of space within place gives meaning to performance – in this case the fool’s behaviour and the kinds of laughter it generated. The places in which fooling occurs have important, and sometimes different, implications for the first spectators and for subsequent readers. The comedy of natural fools often arises from a special relationship to the most immediate of physical spaces. The body of the natural was itself understood as a source of laughter, in a way that we now tend to find distasteful, as shown in Armin’s delight in Jemy Camber’s stunted height, ‘middle thicke’ and ‘flat nose’ – ‘whose very presence made the King much sport’ (B3v). The interaction of such unusually formed and co-ordinated bodies with their physical surroundings generated a pronounced strand of farcical humour seen in all of Armin’s fool tales. Jemy frequently finds himself in uncomfortably close physical interaction with his material environment. When butter mixed with itching powder is spread under his saddle: ‘The trotting of his Mule made the mingled confection lather so, that it got into his breeches, and workt vp to the crowne of his head, I [aye] to the sole of his foote [ . . . ] they laught a good to see him in that taking’ (C1v).20 Or when a laundress’s daughter tricks him into hiding under her bed: ‘vnder he creepes stark naked, where hee was stung with nettles: [. . .] there he lay turning this way and that way, heere he stung his leg, heere his shoulder, there his buttockes: [. . .] there lay hee in duraunce’ (C3v). Body interacts with space in ways which provoke painful discomfort in the subject but laughter in the witnesses, by emphasising the undignified helplessness of physical humanity. Such clashes between bodies and spaces are common across all the fool tales, but are distinctively extended in the stories of Jemy’s exploits. This fool is several

17 Setha M. Low and Denise Lawrence-Zúñiga, The Anthropology of Space and Place: Locating Culture (Malden, Mass.; Oxford: Blackwell, 2003), p. 1. The generally assumed relation between the two concepts is broadly summarised in de Certeau’s notion that ‘space is practised place’: thus ‘the street geometrically defined by urban planning is transformed into a space by walkers’, Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, translated by Steven Rendall (Berkeley, Calif.; London: University of California Press, 1984), p. 117. 18 For an overview of the ‘spatial turn’ as taken up in medieval studies, see Space in the Medieval West: Places, Territories, and Imagined Geographies, edited by Meredith Cohen and Fanny Madeline (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2014); and Barbara Hanawalt and Michal Kobialka, Medieval Practices of Space (Minneapolis; London: University of Minnesota Press, 2000). 19 Nick Kaye, Site-Specific Art: Performance, Place, and Documentation (London; New York: Routledge, 2000), p. 1. 20 The affirmative aye ‘appears suddenly about 1575, and is exceedingly common about 1600 [. . .] it was at first always written I’ (OED sv aye, Etymology).

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times elaborately tricked into mistaking his relationship to his spatial environment. In one episode Jemy accompanies the royal party to the playfield, where the King and nobles tilt for a glove. He is invited to try the sport, ‘but the gloue lay still, and Iemy could not doe it’ until a footman jokes that he would do better blindfolded. Accordingly he ‘was blinded with a scarfe: while another tooke vp the gloue, and was ready for the iest: Iemy runnes [. . .] they all shoute aloude and crye rarely well done, and one vnblindes him, while another puts the gloue on the speare’ (C1v). To his amazement, Jemy has ‘succeeded’ in dextrous domination of space and speed. Rowdy play with a quintain is characteristic of fool humour, with the physical skill required for the game contrasting with physical mishap visited on the fool or his opponents.21 But in Jemy’s case the fun is not in simple physical action; the trick is rather to disrupt his spatial understanding, replacing his secure relationship with his surroundings with an illusion. Jemy is convinced of his success, ‘and bragged all that day not a little’, believing that he had excelled at this courtly sport. For the spectators, the pleasure seems to have lain not in any physical humiliation of the fool but in the delightful gap between their own superior understanding and control of physical space and Jemy’s misapprehension of how he has engaged with it. A similar jest, this time centred on Jemy’s running ability, plays out more widely across the geography of Edinburgh. One day the king laid a bet on the fool in a mock-race staged against a royal footman, ‘from the Abbey vp the hil to Cannegate’ (C2r).22 After enjoying the sight of Jemy struggling to run ‘as swift as a pudding would creepe’, the king ‘caused him to haue a mixed drinke to cast him in a sleepe’(C2v). The fool was then carried to the top of the hill and when he woke ‘neuer lookes behind him: and seeing Cannegate so neere him, had not the wit to wonder how hee came there, but layde holde on the ring of the gate, and stayde to bee seene’ (C2v). As with the glove trick, Jemy is delighted with his own apparently easy triumph while the onlookers applaud and laugh at his boastful misapprehension. The race up the Canongate has a different dimension, however, in its use of more public space; running from the royal palace of Holyrood up the Canongate to the city port of Edinburgh, it clearly involves a range of street spectators along the route. When Jemy wakes from sleep, ‘seeing people still about him’ he claims victory, grasping the ring of the city gate. His illusory success and the humorous spectacle it provided are thus mapped onto the public places of Edinburgh and the resonant locations of palace and city gate. This tale 21 Drummond of Hawthornden, for example, records a farce in France culminating in an energetic sequence in which an unfaithful wife ‘hides’ her lover as a quintain figure. When tilted at by her husband, ‘the image going abut took him a bastonado’, a jest very much in line with physical fool humour. Drummond’s fascinating accounts of these 1607 performances are recorded in the Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, Hawthornden MSS vol 7: Drummond’s Miscellanies I, NLS MS 2059. 22 This is rare moment where Armin’s geographical names are mistaken. The street that runs up from the Abbey is the Canongate; at its head the finishing line for the race was the gate into Edinburgh, the Netherbow Port.

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includes allusions to other episodes of play which reinforce such significance of local space, distance and location in the construction of foolery. At one point Jemy confidently proposes that the race should be run not up the Canongate, but ‘from Edinborough to Barwicke, which was forty myles in one day’ – a ‘thing vnpossible’ (C2r). An earlier episode is then recalled when Jemy was deliberately lost returning from ‘the Earle Mortons castle at da Keeth’ and abandoned to make his own way home. His journey, ‘but fiue myle from the Citty’, took seven days, supported by ‘meate from heauen’, or rather the King’s kitchen, secretly left for him while he slept (C2r-v). For the first spectators or hearers these episodes rely on easy familiarity with the places and spaces of their own city, pleasurably reimagined through Jemy’s uncomprehending negotiation of impossible terrain by quasi-magical means. Local places are both made strange, and made comically new, by the fool’s performance across them. These episodes reveal how important the sense of shared and familiar place seems to have been for the original audiences of Jemy’s foolery. Yet in retelling the tales Armin clearly expects that the stories will continue to have value for readers in different times and places. Since for these readers familiarity with the places cannot be assumed, do the tales mean differently, provoke laughter and thought by other means, for the new audience of readers? Armin frequently urges the universality of foolery, concluding Foole Vpon Foole: ‘Wise men and fooles all one end makes’ (F3r). He presents the original spectators as feeling both callousness and affection towards the natural as an example of ‘unaccommodated man’, prompting later readers to share these responses without necessary reference to specific times and places. Many fool-jests are not bound to place: they may depend on verbal play and misunderstanding, inappropriate use of gesture or manner, a range of jokes based on the natural’s often uncomprehending relationship with his society. Nonetheless, in the stories of Jemy Camber place remains significant. Armin not only takes noticeable pains to describe the Edinburgh locations, but invests them with recognisable social and cultural significance that enables his readers to find further meanings in the comical events they enjoy. We have seen how Armin is careful to convey to his readers the geography of Edinburgh, helping them to envisage how streets, buildings and places relate to each other and how Jemy plays the fool across the map of the city. Distance and relation play their part in locating the reader in the city, lending a spectator’s view to the action described. But it appears that Armin also wanted to create for his readers a sense of familiarity in the distant locations he describes, a sense that cultural as well as geographical understanding of space is important in responding to the foolery. His conversational narrative is addressed directly to his own contemporary readers, whom he clearly envisages as primarily London-based. He opens the tale of Lean Leonard, for example, explaining that although it is set in ‘the merry Forrest of Shearewood [. . .] I thinke it not amisse to tell it at London’ (C4v). His accounts of his two London-based fools, Will Sommers and John i’the Hospital, both assume familiarity with named locations: Greenwich Park, Blackwall, Windsor, Christ’s Hospital, Newgate Market and Ivy Lane. 219

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One fascinating aspect of Jemy Camber’s story is that we find Armin not just explaining the geography of Edinburgh, but mapping it onto that of London. He uses London comparisons and parallels to lend a familiarity not only to the physical geography but to the cultural significance of the Edinburgh locations. So he introduces Jemy as ‘borne in Sterlin but twenty myles from Edinborough this Kings birth towne, as Greenewich is our gracious Queenes’ (B4r), establishing the royal relationship between outlying town and capital in the two pairs of towns.23 Jemy’s race route is similarly familiarised as he is set to run ‘from the Abbey vp the hil to Cannegate, (which stood entring to Edinborough, as Ludgate doth to London) and the Kinges place about Temple barre’ (C2r). This London reference parallels with startling precision not only the distance involved, but the resonant civic relationships between Holyrood Abbey, the Canongate that leads from it up to Edinburgh, and the Netherbow Port at its head, one of the gates into the city. In London, Temple Bar marked the division between Westminster with its abbey and royal palace and, not London itself but the Liberty of the City; in the same way the precinct of the royal palace of Holyrood Abbey opened not into Edinburgh but the independent burgh of the Canongate. From Temple Bar, Fleet Street ran about half a mile up to Ludgate, one of the gates of the City of London proper, just as the Canongate led up to the Netherbow Port, the toll gate into the City of Edinburgh. Whoever first made this comparison must have had a clear political and social, as well as physical, understanding of the geography of the two cities, and Armin clearly expects his London readers to recognise the implications of the parallel. By these means, Armin creates for London readers a social as well as a spatial map by which to understand Jemy’s Edinburgh foolery, thus lifting its significance beyond the first performances enjoyed by the Scottish royal court. Foole Vpon Foole’s readers are enabled to locate the anecdotes in geographically distant but culturally recognisable space. This reinforces Armin’s narrative emphasis throughout his stories on the universal accessibility and significance of the natural fool. Most of his tales are of household fools, kept by nobility or royalty in their own homes for their private entertainment. But Armin chooses many anecdotes where these fools move out of the court, or the master’s house, into more public spaces where wider groups of spectators can see and interact with them. Will Sommers is presented in Greenwich Park encountering poor neighbours and relatives, Lean Leonard ‘at a Shoomakers stall’ fighting with a ‘country Plow Iogger’ (C4r-v), while Jack Miller was ‘welcomed to all places, and bar’d of none’ (E1r). It may be significant that Armin ends his collection with John i’the Hospital, a natural fool maintained by the City Fathers rather than a noble patron, who roams across London and is presented as a son of the city, ‘one of Gods creatures, though some difference in persons’ (F1v). Jemy Camber we also most often see out and 23 While James VI was in fact born in Edinburgh Castle, he was moved to Stirling within weeks and spent all his infancy and childhood there; its royal relationship with Edinburgh is mirrored in that between Greenwich, birthplace of Elizabeth, and London.

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about across Edinburgh rather than at court, and the Edinburgh he moves through is made the imaginative property of Armin’s London readers who are encouraged to perceive him in environments they can share. Armin thus presents social space as an important setting for his tales; but in what ways does this affect the meaning of foolery? In the case of Jemy Camber, the first courtly spectators and the later reading public, having different relationships to the places involved, may well have found different sources of laughter and understanding in the fool’s antics. The jests which are initiated by the king and court most often appear to generate laughter as a reassertion of their own élite control of place. Although Jemy derives much pleasure from the deceptions played on him, he is also implicitly if not explicitly mocked for his patent failure to manage courtly space, and to control his own body within places designed for courtly practice. This is the case, for example, in the relatively benign trick played on him at the tilting ground. This particular environment was the place of courtly play, the ‘potence’ [post from which a ring was suspended for tilting], the structure at the heart of the game in which the nobility demonstrate their skill. While Jemy was delighted with his illusory success, in laughing at it the nobles reinforce their effortless domination of this elite space and their consciousness of their own inimitable skill. Jemy’s race up the Canongate carries similar meanings. The space he passed through, from the royal palace to the city gate, was a transitional one. The Canongate was an independent burgh, but it was lined with noble houses and its associations were with Holyrood Abbey and the royal residence rather than with the city itself.24 Jemy’s imagined success, but public failure, in traversing this space between palace and city is engineered by the King who sets him on, has him drugged and carried to his goal, and then transported in the royal coach back down the hill. The purpose of the jest seems to have lain in the public demonstration of the gap between courtly domination of the route, and Jemy’s own patent inability to negotiate it. Royal pleasure reportedly lay equally in maintaining Jemy’s illusion of triumph, since ‘it was sport enough for the King a month after to heare him tell it’ (C3r); but this is presented as a gratification for the monarch rather than the fool. Though careful of Jemy’s well-being, the court seems to confirm the Hobbesian view that ‘Laughter is nothyng else but a suddaine Glory arising from suddaine Conception of some Eminency in our selves by Comparison with the Infirmityes of others’.25 It is true that Jemy’s encounters with non-courtly audiences can be similarly exploitative and indeed more obviously detrimental to him. The hawker who cons 24 For information on the reputation of the Canongate, see John MacKay, The History of the Burgh of Canongate with Notices of the Abbey and Palace of Holyrood (Edinburgh: Seton and MacKenzie, 1879), pp. 6–8. [accessed 21 Jan 2019]. 25 Hobbes, The Elements of Law (BL Harl. MS 4235, fo. 36r), quoted by Quentin Skinner, ‘Why Laughing Mattered in the Renaissance: The Second Henry Tudor Memorial Lecture’ History of Political Thought, 22 (2001), 418–47 (p. 423).

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him out of five crowns for a salad, or the laundress’s daughter who traps him naked under her bed in the nettles, both cause him discomfort and distress while gaining money and satisfaction for themselves. But neither appears to manipulate the fool in order to confirm their own eminence, or to persuade him of a false success in order to laugh at his real failure.26 Armin’s readers, too, may have a rather different response to the king’s jests. Their connection to the places where these episodes occur is mostly unlike that of the first courtly audience. While Armin helps his readers to understand these social spaces, they would not be likely to read themselves as dominating the tilting ground or the thoroughfare between palace and city. Jemy’s failures may still be comical, but later readers do not have the social relationship with these places that marks a gap in status between him and themselves. In fact he might just as easily be understood as offering a wholesome corrective to the social superiority of the court. This was a common interpretation of the natural fool of the period, who was often represented as innocently challenging the social pretensions of wealth and position. A particularly apt example is offered by the anecdote of James V’s natural fool, John Lowes (fl 1539–41), recorded in 1555.27 ‘Thys symple man stode in a place where as many lordes & other gentlemen cam by’ and was rebuked by a courtier for not saluting them (fol. 8r). Asking how to know a lord from another man, he was told he would know the lords by the velvet and gold they wore. The next day ‘standynge at the court gates’, he saw ‘a great sort of byshoppes & other lordes mules [. . .] trapped with veluet & costly trimmed wyth golde’ and cried out to each ‘gued daye my lorde’ (fol. 8v). Thus, says the narrator, the simple fool could ‘ouer throwe the opinion of many wyttye yonge men, whyche describe a lorde, or a gentle man onely by costlye apparel’ (fol. 9r). It is an interesting circumstance that this tale is similarly given extra point by its location, in Edinburgh ‘at the court gates’ of Holyrood Abbey. Jemy Camber does not offer such simple wisdom, and does not speak out against the pretensions of rank. But his presence and behaviour in the public streets seem to suggest a similar role, pointing up, if only tacitly, the self-satisfaction of the monarch and the court ‘who likewise soothed the King’ (C2r). By his clumsy and uncomprehending blundering through courtly and city space he confirms the common universalising role of the natural fool, who levels humanity to its simplest and least sophisticated form. This is a common theme throughout Armin’s fool tales, and it is notable that in his final Jemy Camber anecdote he reverts to it more explicitly, drawing on another Edinburgh location to reinforce the point. Discomfited by his painful encounter with the laundress’s daughter, Jemy refuses to return

26 The trope of deceiving a foolish victim into believing that he is other than he is in order to generate laughter at his expense, sometimes by extravagant means such as were used on Jemy Camber, is interestingly frequent in Shakespearean plays. The tricks played on Bottom, Malvolio, and especially Christopher Sly in The Taming of the Shrew all have echoes of Jemy’s misadventures. 27 Turner, Spirituall Physik, fols. 8r–9r.

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to court: ‘I will not quoth he, I will goe make my graue’ (C3v). He then rides up ‘to the churchyard, in the high towne’, the original Edinburgh burial ground behind St Giles Cathedral, where he finds the Sexton digging graves:28 [L]end mee thy spade sayes Iemy, and with that digs a hole, which hole he bids him make for his graue [. . .] and on the sodaine, within two houres after dyed: of whom the Sexton telling, he was buried there indeed. Thus you see fooles haue a gesse at wit sometime, & the wisest could haue done no more nor so much. (C3v) Although presenting it as an undignified fool-story, Armin creates a poignant scene with its pre-echoes of Hamlet and its final assertion of the universality of both mortality and the wisdom of fools. By setting this scene as an encounter between Jemy and a gravedigger, in the public graveyard rather than the court, its resonances are opened to all readers. Foole Vpon Foole remains an engagingly approachable work, showing Armin’s considerable skill in presenting a comic tale in vividly conversational and direct style. Through the studied light-heartedness of his stories he also offers surprisingly detailed insights into the theatrical and social history of the late sixteenth century, while the understated subtlety of his narration gives us a revealing means of understanding the early-modern phenomenon of natural foolery. In the tales of Jemy Camber he is especially sensitive to the spatial and social geography of two capital cities and its contribution to the value and pleasures fooling may have offered. From them we can perceive the varying significance of space and place – for the original sixteenth-century fool and his spectators, for Armin’s first seventeenth-century readers, and for the serious understanding we can still derive from his funny stories.

28 This burial ground was gradually discontinued from mid 1560s, transferring to Greyfriars. This would fit well with the proposition that Jemy served Darnley (who died in 1567).

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Books (with Meg Twycross), Masks and Masking in Medieval and Early Tudor England, London: Ashgate, 2002. Recipient of David Bevington Award for Best New Book in Early Drama Studies 2004, by the Medieval and Renaissance Drama Society.

Edited books The Materials of Early Theatre: Sources, Images, and Performance, essays by Meg Twycross, ed. by Sarah Carpenter and Pamela M. King, Shifting Paradigms in Early English Drama Studies in Variorum Collected Studies (Abingdon: Routledge, 2018). ‘The Best Pairt of our Play’: Essays in Honour of John J. McGavin, ed. Sarah Carpenter, Pamela M. King, Meg Twycross, and Greg Walker, Medieval English Theatre, 37 & 38 (2015 and 2016). ‘The Royal Court of Scotland’: REED Pre-Publication Collections, 2014 < http://reedprepub.org/royal-court-of-scotland/> (Records of performance activity from the unpublished Scottish Treasurer’s Accounts (1579–85), edited and introduced. Ongoing). Joyous Sweit Imaginatioun: Essays in Honour of Professor R.D.S. Jack, ed. Sarah Carpenter and Sarah Dunnigan, SCROLL (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2007). Porci Ante Margaritam: Essays in Honour of Meg Twycross, ed. Sarah Carpenter, Pamela King, and Peter Meredith, Leeds Studies in English, New Series XXXII (Leeds: School of English, University of Leeds, 2001).

Articles and book chapters ‘Sixteenth-Century Courtly Mumming and Masking: Alexander Montgomerie’s The Navigatioun’, in Early British Drama in Manuscript, ed. by Tamara Atkin and Laura Estil, British Manuscripts (Turnhout: Brepols, 2019). (with Louise Gardiner and Philip Bennett), ‘Chivalric Games at the Court of Edward III: The Jousting Letters of EUL MS 183’, Medium Aevum, 87:2 (2018), 304–342. ‘“Jupiter . . . Appointed His Majesty as Judge”: Classical gods and the performance of monarchy’, Theta, 13 (2018), 67–83 https://sceneeuropeenne.univ-tours.fr/theta/theta13. ‘Researching Court Performance’, The Routledge Research Companion to Early Drama and Performance, ed. by Pamela M. King (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016), pp. 137–52.

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‘Laughter and Sin: Vice Families in Tudor Interludes’, Theta, 12 (2016), 15–38. https:// sceneeuropeenne.univ-tours.fr/theta/theta12 ‘Performing the Scriptures: Biblical Drama after the Reformation’, in The Bible on Stage: Theatrical Traditions in Medieval England, ed. Peter Happé and Wim Husken (Leiden: Brill, 2016), pp. 12–41. ‘The Places of Foolery: Robert Armin and fooling in Edinburgh’, Medieval English Theatre, 37 (2015), 11–26. ‘Laughing at Natural Fools’, Theta, 11 (2014), 3–22. https://sceneeuropeenne.univ-tours. fr/theta/theta11. ‘Towards a Reformed Theatre: David Lyndsay and Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis’, The Yearbook of English Studies, 43 (2013), 203–22. ‘“Gely with tharmys of Scotland England”: Word, Image and Performance at the Marriage of James IV and Margaret Tudor’, in ‘Fresche fontanis’: Studies in the Culture of Medieval and Early Modern Scotland, ed. Janet Hadley Williams and J. Derrick McClure (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2013), pp. 165–177. ‘David Lyndsay and George Buchanan: Contrasts in Reforming Theatre’, International Journal of Scottish Theatre and Screen, 5:2 (2013), 4–26 ‘Verity’s Bible’, Medieval English Theatre, 33 (for 2011, pub 2013), 58–74 ‘The Politics of Unreason: Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis and the practices of folly’, Theta, 10 (2013), 35–52 https://sceneeuropeenne.univ-tours.fr/theta/theta10 ‘Plays and Playcoats: A courtly interlude tradition in Scotland?’, Comparative Drama, 46:4 (2012), 475–96 ‘Respublica’, for The Oxford Handbook of Tudor Drama, ed. Tom Betteridge and Greg Walker (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 514–30. ‘New Evidence: Vives and Audience-response to Biblical Drama’, Medieval English Theatre, 31 (2009) pub 2011, 3–12. [Repr. In European Theatre Performance Practice, 1400–1580: Critical Essays on European Theatre Performance Practice, ed. Philip Butterworth and Katie Normington (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014).] Dramatising Ideology: Monarch, State, and People in Respublica and Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis’, Theta, 9 (2011), 95–112. https://sceneeuropeenne.univ-tours.fr/theta/ theta9. ‘Scottish Drama until 1650’, The Edinburgh Companion to Scottish Drama, ed. Ian Brown, (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011), pp. 6–21. ‘“To thexaltacyon of noblesse”: A Herald’s Account of the Marriage of Margaret Tudor and James IV’, Medieval English Theatre, 29 (2007), pub 2009, 104–120. ‘Masking and Politics: The Alison Craik Incident, Edinburgh 1561’, Renaissance Studies, 21:5 (2007), 625–636. ‘Love and Chastity: Political Performance in Scottish, French and English Courts of the 1560s’, Joyous Sweit Imaginatioun: Essays in Honour of Professor R.D.S. Jack, ed. Sarah Carpenter and Sarah Dunnigan, SCROLL (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2007), pp. 111–28. ‘Performing Diplomacies: the 1560s court entertainments of Mary, Queen of Scots’, Scottish Historical Review, LXXXII: 2 (October 2003), 194–225. ‘My Lady Tongue: Thomas Tomkis’s Lingua’, Medieval English Theatre, 24 (2002), 3–14. ‘Scottish Guising: Medieval And Modern Theatre Games’, International Journal of Scottish Theatre, 2:2 (December 2001). https://ijosts.ubiquitypress.com/articles/237/ [accessed 31 March 2020]

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(with Graham Runnals) ‘The Entertainments at the Marriage of Mary Queen of Scots and the French Dauphin Francois, 1558: Paris and Edinburgh’, Medieval English Theatre, 22, (2000), 145–161. ‘David Lindsay and James V: Court Literature as Current Event’, in Vernacular Literature and Current Event in France, England and Scotland on the Eve of the Reformation, ed. J and R. Britnell (London: Ashgate, 2000), pp. 135–152. ‘The Sixteenth-Century Court Audience: Spectators or Performers?’, Medieval English Theatre 19 (1997), 3–14. ‘Women and Carnival Masking’, Records of Early English Drama, 21: 2 (1996), 9–16. ‘Masks and Mirrors: Questions of Identity in Medieval Morality Drama’, Medieval English Theatre, 13:2 (1991), 7–17. ‘Early Scottish Drama’, in The History of Scottish Literature Vol 1: Origins to 1660, ed. R.D.S. Jack (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1988), pp. 199–212. ‘Drama and Politics: Scotland in the 1530s’, Medieval English Theatre, 10:2 (1988), 81–90. ‘Walter Binning: Decorative and Theatrical Painter (fl 1540–94)’, Medieval English Theatre, 10:1 (1988), 17–25. ‘Morality Play Characters’, Medieval English Theatre, 5:1 (1983), pp. 18–28. (with M. Twycross), ‘Masks in Medieval English Theatre’, Medieval English Theatre 3:1, 7–44; 3:2, 69–113; 4.1, 28–47 (1981–82). Extract re-printed in Medieval English Drama, ed. Peter Happé, Casebook Series, Macmillan 1984. [Repr. In European Theatre Performance Practice, 1400–1580. Critical Essays on European Theatre Performance Practice. Edited by Philip Butterworth and Katie Normington (Ashgate, 2014)]. ‘Lear’s Fool: Another Proverb’, Notes and Queries, 26:2 (1979), 128–29. ‘Source of Johan the Evangelist’, Notes and Queries, 25:6 (1978), 501–03.

Forthcoming ‘Performing Chivalry: The Combat between Anthony Woodville, Lord Scales and Antoine, the Bastard of Burgundy, 1467’, in Performance, Ceremony and Display in Late Medieval England: Proceedings of the 2018 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. Julia Boffey (Donington, Lincolnshire: Shaun Tyas/Paul Watkins Publishing, 2020).

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Abbot of Unreason 189, 194–195 Albumazar, comedy of 176 allegory 49, 66; moral 19; see also drama; play ambassadors 41, 47, 66–67, 70, 74, 76, 86, 88–89, 99, 106, 108, 166–170, 172–174; see also Randolph, Thomas Amor 97, 101; Mutuus Amor (Buchanan) 84; Trionfo d’Amore (Petrarch) 103 Anne Boleyn 126 Anglo-Scottish relations 78, 83 Anglo, Sydney 30, 98, 166–167, 170 Arbeau, Thoinot 76 Archibald Douglas, Earl of Angus 21 Arden, Heather 187, 191, 192n28 Aristotle 201–202 Armin, Robert 190, 199–223; Foole Vpon Foole 190, 199–200, 203–209, 211, 215, 219–220, 223; Two Maids of MoreClacke 203, 205 Arran (Earl of) 71, 119, 137 Arthur, Prince of Wales 30, 33, 41–42, 48–49; see also Katherine of Aragon Arthur, Thomas 15–17, 19 Augustine see St. Augustine Austin, J. L. 41 Axton, Marie 78 Bacon, Francis 68, 78, 180, 182–183 Bale, John 16 ballade 34, 57 ballat 12–13 banquets 10, 12, 40, 45n24, 67, 72, 73, 79, 82–87, 103–105, 166n5, 167; banquetting-house 173–174 Bar-le-Duc 102 Bawcutt, Priscilla 40 Betteridge, Thomas 15n29

Bible: English 70–71, 139; Geneva Bible 140; of Henry VIII (“Great Bible”) 135–137; Latin 144; Reformed 141; see also Verity; Vulgate biblical drama 125–132 Binning, Walter 62 blamelessness 191, 205; see also fool body politic 114–115, 120 Boke Named the Governour see Elyot, Thomas Book of Vices and Virtues 179–180 Bothwell (Earl of) 31, 41, 71–72, 95 Bourdeille, Pierre de (Seigneur de Brantôme) see Brantôme Brantôme 72, 99, 101–102 Brant, Sebastian 186–187 Brueghel, Pieter 195 Buchanan, George 71, 73, 84–87, 90, 93–94, 103, 120 Burdeaulx, Charlis 88 Bute, John see John of Bute Bynning, Walter see Binning, Walter Camber, Jemy 190–191, 200, 203, 205, 212–223 Cambridge, University of 175–176 Castelnau, Michel de 102 Castiliglione, Baldissare 172 Catherine de Medici 65, 76, 98–103, 106; and spectacle, use of 69, 89, 94, 108 Catherine of Aragon 167; see also Katherine of Aragon Cecil (secretary to Elizabeth I) 79–80, 82–83, 93, 103, 105 Charles V (Emperor) 155, 167 Charles IX 67, 89n130, 98–102, 104 Charles of Austria (Archduke) 104, 107 Charles the Bold 27n9, 33, 36

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Charteris, Henrie 188 Charteris Robert 8n3, 139–141 Chartier, Roger 98 Chaseabout Raid 87 chastity 107, 130 Chastity 82–84; and Verity 134; see Love; Love/Chastity debate chastity belt 192 chastity/marriage debate 87 Chatelherault (Duke of) 71, 79 Chaucer 49–50 Chenonceaux, château de 69, 100 Chisholm, John 93 Christ: life of 124, 129–132, 142; word of 138 Christ’s Hospital 203, 219 Christ’s Law 139; see also Verity Christmas season: celebrations during 9, 11, 15, 17–18, 188; court festivities 87, 95; Gray’s Inn interlude 112; plays performed during 110, 119 Cicero 178, 182 Coldingham 72 Comedies of Plautus and Terence 175 common good 114 ‘commoning’ 76n60 Common Sense, court of 176–177, 181–184 commonweal: concept of 114–116; ideologies of 121; see also John the Common-Weill commonwealth 119–120 Complaynt of Scotland, The see Wedderburn, Robert Corpus Christi cycle 131 Craigmillar 94 Cromwell, Thomas 8 cross-dressing 71, 88 d’Auvergne, Martial see Martial d’Auvergne Dalkeith, castle of 32–33, 36, 37n28, 214n9 Damville (son of the Constable of France) 71 dance 9; Catherine de Medici, court of 101; costumes for 12, 15; François II, court of 69; Henri II, court of 69; James (Lord), wedding of 72–73; Margaret’s dancing for James 33–34; at marriage of Mary Queen of Scots to François II 56; Mary Stewart, court of 71, 75–76; and masking 10, 77, 80, 85; political implications of 170; see also Orchésographie dans, dansis 10, 12, 65, 75, 194

Darnley (Lord) 74, 85–89, 94, 215; as fool 216; murder of 95, 108 David (King) 185 Deceit 112; see also Dissait d’Elboeuf (Marquis) 71, 73 Diana (goddess) 87, 106–107 Diane de France (Duchess of Angoulême) 102 Diehl, Huston 157 Diligence 191, 196 discord and division 78; see also Furies Discorde, personification of 66, 81; ‘captive’ 67; and Pallas 82; as a woman 98–99 disguisings 9–10, 48; controversial 70; courtly pageant 47, 73, 166, 170; Elizabethan 67, 99; games of 15; headdress 173; at marriage celebrations 33; pageant car 41, 49; purpose of 171 ‘disguysing house’ 166, 174 Dissait 147, 152, 161–162 Donaldson, Gordon 65 drama 1–3, 7; allegorical 184, 186; attitudes to 148; and audiences 125–126, 165; Catherine de Medici, court of 101; and ceremonial 41; civic 13; court 15, 20, 22; courtly interlude 151; debate 23; formal 16, 164; Elizabeth I, court of 96, 107–108; Henry VIII, court of 150, 166; James IV and James V, courts of 8–10, 14; morality play as 49, 165; More’s attitude toward 130; political allegorical 110–120; and/as politics 22, 24, 62, 78–79, 81, 96, 100; Passion 127, 131; pre-Reformation 8; production of 64, 126; and spectacle 62; spoken 13; see also biblical drama; Lyndsay, David; performance; Respublica; Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis dramatic tradition 10, 53, 147; of folly 196, 206; see also folly dramatis personae 145 Du Bellay 52 Dudley, Robert 78 Dunbar, William 12–13, 20, 190; ‘Ane Dance in the Quenis Chalmer’ 192; Thrissil and the Rois, The 46–50, 161 Dysart, Michael (Sir) 14–15, 19, 22–23 échevins 54–55 Edinburgh: James V 21; fooling in 211–223; Madeleine de Valois, entry

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into 159; Margaret Tudor, entry into and reception at 26, 27n7, 31, 37, 40, 43–47, 153; Mary Queen of Scots 52, 58–64, 68; Royal Mile 205; Satyre of Thrie Estaits performed in 110, 113, 119, 148–149, 160, 195; and Thrissil and the Rois 161 Edington, Carole 148 Edward IV 33 Edward VI 113, 117, 135 Elizabeth I of England 65–67; comedies performed for 97, 176; court of 96, 98; as dancer 70, 107; entertainments of 96, 97; and Margaret, Countess of Lennox 216; and Mary Queen of Scots 69–96, 104–108; as Pallas 82; performances by 75; plays aimed at 79, 108–109; as spectator 78; and theatrical diplomacy 106; and Veritas Filia Temporis 136 Elsky, Martin 179 Elyot, Thomas 26, 30 English, John 49–50 Erasmus 128, 179–180, 187 Eros 82, 103 Erskine, Thomas (Sir) 155–156 Eure, Thomas (Sir) 8, 19 fable 49, 50, 120 Falsehood 112 Falset 147, 152, 161–162 farce 10, 12–13, 23, 69, 146, 194; farcewithin-a-farce 151; by Lauder 61; Mary of Guise, performed for 61; sexual 192 fars 12–13 Feast of Fools 195 flatterers 180 Flatterie (Flattery) 112, 142, 147, 150, 152; as a fool 188, 191; and Spirituality 136; and Verity 133, 138 Flatterye 17, 150 Fleming (Lord) 73–74 Fletcher, Laurence 213–215 Foix, Paul de 76 Folly 147; and political discourse 196 folly: and laughter 197–210; and misrule 194; performance of 3; practices of 185–196; see also Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis folly discourse 197–198, 201 folly literature 187 folly traditions 189, 192, 196 Foly (character of) 186–189, 192, 195 Fontainebleau 100–103

fool: artificial 192, 197; costumes for 17, 63; court 19, 21, 189, 191; and dance 10; maintained 2; natural 2, 190–192, 197–210, 212, 216–218, 220, 222; as truth-teller 187–188; wisdom of 223; see also Armin, Robert; Camber, Jemy; Lowes, John Fool (character of) 151, 185; tradition of 186; see also Feast of Fools foolery 152, 194, 219, 221 Foole Vpon Foole see Armin, Robert Foolish Virgin 67, 99 fort-holdings 67, 74, 91–94 Fortitude (Virtue of) 45 Foulis, James (Sir) 160 Fradenburg, Louise Olga 36 Francis I 167, 172 François I 53, 154; see also Francis I François II 54, 69, 74, 100; marriage to Mary Queen of Scots 52–64 François de Lorraine 99 Fudge, Erica 202 Furies 78, 82 Galbraith, Thomas (Sir) 44 Geddie, James 216 Gilleam Tabernar 13 Glasebury, Henry 29 Goldstein, James 158–159 Gorboduc (play) 78, 82, 95, 107–108, 126 Gray, Douglas 40 Gray’s Inn Christmas interlude of 1526 112 Gray (Lady) 35 Greff, Joachim 131 Grévin 52 Grotowski, Jerzy 165 Grumball the clowne 209 Guise (Cardinal of) 106 Guise (duke of) 60 Guise dynasty 54; see also Marie de Guise; Mary of Guise Guise (monsieur de) 56 Guzmán de Silva, Diego 106–108 Hadley Williams, Janet 155 Haines (translator) 132 Hall, Edward 35, 36n26, 112, 169–173 Hall, John 67 Hall, J. T. B. 99, 101 Hamlet (Shakespeare) 223 Harington, John 175

229

INDEX

Henri II 53, 69, 90, 154; and Diane de France 102; death of 100 Henry VII 26, 29, 42–43, 45, 48 Henry VIII 7, 15, 22–24, 33; court entertainments of 150, 166, 169, 171–173; disguising house of (1527) 166; divorce 22; and Edward Hall 169; fools of 199, 206, 213; and Francis I 167; ‘Great Bible’ of 1539 135–137; and Mary Queen of Scots 53 Henry, Duke of Orleans 167 Henry, Lord Darnley see Darnley Henryson, Robert 12–13 Heralds 11, 18, 22, 57–58, 148–149, 153–157, 159–161, 164; heraldry 17 Heywood, John 7, 20; Play of the Weather 15–16, 19, 24, 125, 150; Witty and Witles 206, 208 Hobbes, Thomas 204, 221 Holyrood 21, 26, 43, 72, 80; Abbey church of 36, 214, 220–222; Madeleine’s death at 159 Holyrood Park 74 horse: artificial 57, 60, 64; in royal weddings 37–38 household, royal 9, 14, 17–18, 20–21, 23, 34, 56, 65, 73, 87, 93, 107, 166n4, 191–192, 197; noble households 189, 198, 208, 209, 211, 216, 220, Humanitie see King Humanitie Huntly (Earl of) 79, 216 Inglis, James (Sir) 11–14, 19, 21–23 interlude 2, 12–14; anti-papal 24; courtly 7–10, 14, 16–20, 24, 135, 149–151; and disguisings 49–50; drama 150; Elizabeth as spectator of 106; Epiphany 18–20; by Lyndsay 95; by Ronsard 101; Thrie Estaitis, precursor to 191; tradition 7–24, 146–147; see also Linlithgow Jack Miller (fool) 200–202, 209, 220 Jack Oates (fool) 200, 207, 208n24 Jack, Ronnie 103 James I of England 53 James III of Scotland 44–45 James IV of Scotland 8, 68; flagship 20; fools and follies 189, 192–193; and Inglis 22; and Lyndsay 22, 154–155; marriage to Margaret Tudor 7, 25–39, 40–51; mother 21; ‘robe royal’ 18–19;

sexual exploits of 192; stepfather 21; Tournament of the Black Lady 9–10, 91 James V of Scotland 8–10, 53, 96; and Dysart 22–23; fool of 222; funeral of 157–158; and Inglish 22; livery colours 17; and Lyndsay 149–150, 154–155, 193; marriages of 22–23, 59n12, 68, 159; and Mary Queen of Scots (daughter) 53; minority 14; sexual exploits of 192; treasurer 137 James VI 67, 74, 89, 95, 215; birth of 220n23 James (Lord) see James Stewart, Earl of Moray James Stewart, Earl of Moray 14–15, 72–73; Elizabeth’s disapproval of 86; marriage of 79; rebellion of 87; as Regent 77, 95 Jewish peoples, representation of 131 John i’the Hospital 203, 205, 219–220 John, Lord Fleming 73 John of Bute 21, 191 John the Common-Weill 111–120, 144, 162–163, 188–189, 193 Jones, Whitney 114–115 Joubert, Laurent 202 Jousting 9, 35, 38, 48, 106, 155, 224 Judas 130 Juno 106–107 Justice (Virtue of) 45 Katherine of Aragon 30n15, 33n19, 36n26, 41, 48, 167 King Humanitie 119–121, 147, 151, 163, 188 kingship 21; and chivalry 154; ‘contractual’ 120; ideologies of 117, 121; models of 118–120 Kipling, Gordon 41, 48–49, 98, 161 Knox, John 65, 68, 70, 72–76, 83, 86, 195 Latimer, Hugh 115 Lauder, Henry 160 Lauder, William 61–62 laughter 20, 127, 129–132, 202; bantering 192 critical 193; at fools 190, 197–210, 211–212, 217–219, 221–22 Lean Leanard 200, 204, 219–220 Leith 71, 159, 214; siege of 74 Lennox (Earl of) 85 Leslie, John 35, 68, 83, 157 Linlithgow 8, 18; interlude at 95, 147–150, 156

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Lindsay, Robert see Pitscottie Lingua (play) see Tomkis, Thomas Lisle (Lord) 137 Llull, Ramon 177–178, 182 Lorraine (Duke of) 56, 68 Lorraine, France 53 Lorraine, François de 99 Lowes, John 222 love: alluring 85; courtly 36, 38, 161; and marriage 86 Love 83, 87, 138; Mutual 82–83; debate with Riches 166, 169; triumph of 170 Love/Chastity debate 67, 82–84, 87, 97–109 Lyall, Rod 146–147 Lydgate, John 50 Lynch, Michael 67, 89, 91 Lyndsay, David (Sir) 11–12; ‘Deploratioun’ 159–161; Dreme, The 115; Historie of Squyre Meldrum 155–158; Testament of the Papyngo 153–154; see also Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis Mair, John 120 Malchus 132 Marbles, Jonny 185 Mar (Earl of) 72; see also James Stewart, Earl of Moray Margaret, Countess of Lennox 216 Margaret Tudor see James IV Marie de Guise 159, 161; see also Mary of Guise marriage see François II; James IV; James V marriage narrative 36; in Thrissle and the Rois 46, 50–51 Martial d’Auvergne 72 Mary of Guise 23, 53–54, 56, 61, 74; as regent 59, 95–96, 110, 113, 119 Mary Queen of Scots 52–54; see also François II; Mary Stewart; Mary Stuart Mary Stewart 66–69, 71, 78, 95–96 Mary Stuart 61, 98–99, 108, 113 Mary Tudor 110, 113, 119, 128, 136, 167, 170 masking costumes 67–68, 71, 73, 83, 89 maskrie 12, 15, 72, 88 masks, masking 60n12, 65, 72–94; and marriage 86; Nottingham 67, 80, 82, 93, 99; political implications of 84, 93; speeches 92; Stirling 92–94; wedding 87; see also masques Mason, Roger 120 Masons (Society of) 131

masques 57, 77, 89, 96 McCrery, John 21 McFarlane, Ian 87 McGavin, John J. 1–3, 125, 212 Meldrum see Lyndsay, David Mercury 168 Melville, James (Sir) 75, 91, 93 Miesko, Hans 205–207, 209–210 Milan, ambassador of 168 Mill, Anna Jean 23, 146, 148 Miller, Jack see Jack Miller mommeries 57 monarch 7, 110–121; accountability of 120; and courtly allegiances 78, 80; English 84, 104; entertainments of 189, 221–222; female 98, 100; generosity of 74; manipulation of 21; and marriage 97–98; masks in honour of 87; and performance culture 65, 75, 108; power of 19, 118; Scottish 2, 104; ‘two bodies’ of 66, 77 Monarchy (figure representing) 119; and the State 111; and Vice 119 monarchy (notion of) 118; and Church 96; and commonweal 117; as deus ex machina 118; French 96; role of 170 Montmorency 81, 99 moralite, moralité 23, 50, 146 morality play 2, 49–50, 165 Moray (Earl of) see James Stewart, Earl of Moray More, Thomas 128, 130, 190, 198, 202–204, 208–209 Murdoch, Rupert 185 mystery plays 165 Nemours (Duke de) 72 noblesse 30; exaltation of 27–28, 153 Norfolk (Duke of) 75 Northumberland (Duke of) 113 Northumberland (Earl of) 29–30 Notre-Dame cathedral 52, 55–56, 63 Nottingham: masks, masking 67, 80, 82, 93, 99 Nottinghamshire 212 Oates, Jack see Jack Oates Ogilvie, Walter 42–48 oratio 179 Order of the Garter 67, 99, 102 Order of St Michael 88 Orestes 95, 108 Otterburn, Adam (Sir) 160

231

INDEX

Pagez, Bastien 74, 93 Pallas 69, 81–82, 86, 100 parliament 17; and king 8; and marriage of Elizabeth I 108; and monarch 19; Scottish 54, 95; in Thrie Estaitis 113, 118–120, 147, 162–163, 188 Parliament of Heaven 134–136 Parliament of Westminster 185 Patenson, Henry 208–209 Pauper (character of) 112–113, 116, 118, 191 performance 1–3; act of 132; of amity 84, 105–106; attitudes to 38; and ceremonial 41, 50; chivalric 156; choral 47; comic 184; court 9, 22–24, 66–68, 100–109, 149, 153; dance 76, 101; decorative 103; of deference 36; defining features of 25– 26, 28; of diplomacy 65–96; and display 65; dramatic 13, 46, 186; experience of 120; of funeral 160; of generosity 31, 74; of graciousness 35; of grief 158; live 48, 125; of magnificence 29; and marriage 27, 37, 39, 40–51; mask 101; and national harmony 51; outdoor 8, 60, 160–161, 164; and participation 77; political 69, 83, 97–109; of power 118; practices of 133, 152, 197, 217; production of 148; and representation 98; royal 71; scripted 194; and spectacle 28, 66; and spectators 26, 165–174, 186; sung 12; stage 133, 137; theatrical 20, 145; tournament 155; traditions of 146; witnessing 39, 102, 125; see also folly; fool performance context 106, 126–129 performance culture 62, 65, 68, 78–79 performance games 7–8, 152, 194 performance studies 25 performativity, theories of 25, 41 Peter (Apostle) 127, 130, 132 Petrarch 101–104, 106–108 Philip II of Spain 104, 136 Phiston, William 202 Pickering, John 95 Pitscottie, Robert Lindsay of 10–11, 13, 73–74, 91, 160 Pitscottie see Lindsay, Robert play 1– 2; appearance and definition of word 10–14; Latin 92; and playcoats 7–24; role-play 94; see also morality play; performance playcoats 7, 9–12, 14–22, 150 playfield 110, 113 playtext 9, 127, 131

Pontano, Giovanio 179 presence (feature of) 28; see also stage presence Primaticcio 67, 99 Protestantism 73, 113; and bible, translations of 140; and Catholicism 2, 145; cause of 135; of Elizabeth I 70–71, 96, 136; and humanists 130; imagery of 137; and late medieval drama 131; Lords of Congregation 74; and Lyndsay 145, 148, 161; and preaching 144; reforming thought of 128, 138 Protestant uprising 69, 100 Prudence (Virtue of) 45 Prudentia 81–82 Rambouillet (French ambassador) 88 Randolf, Thomas 67, 72–73, 79–80, 82–88, 103–106 Ranworth Antiphoner 185 Rastell, John 7 realm (concept of) 114–115 Redford, John 204 Reformers 62n22, 83; Lyndsay as 148, 152, 163; Knox as 65; Moray as 73 Respublica (character) 20n46, 113, 115, 117–119 Respublica (play) see Udall, Nicholas Riccio, David 88 Riddy, Felicity 156 Ripa, Cesare 98 Robert Lindsay of Pitscottie see Pitscottie Ronsard, Pierre de 52, 101–104 Roo, John 112 Ruegger, E. 69, 90, 100 Runnalls, Graham 52, 60 Sadeler, Raphael I. 185 Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis, Ane (Lyndsay) 8, 23, 62, 146–164; books and texts in 133–145; and folly 185–196; and Mary of Guise 96, 110, 113; and monarchy, critique of 110–121; performance of 96, 110; reforming tendencies of 61, 110–111 Scott, Walter (Sir) 194 sermo 179 sermon joyeux 147, 186 Seven Deadly Sins 178 Shakespeare, William 211–212; Much Ado About Nothing 177 Shaw, Elizabeth 14

232

INDEX

Shrovetide 82–83; 1564 97, 104; 1565 97; celebrations 100 Shrove Tuesdays 79, 106 Shrove Sunday 103 Silva see Guzmán de Silva, Diego Skelton, John 7; Magnyfycence 16, 20 Skinner, Quentin 205 Slater, Martin 214–215 Smith, Thomas 114–115 Somer, Will 199, 203, 206–209, 213 Sommers, Will 219–220 sotte 199–200; see also fool sottie 23, 146–147, 187–188, 192n28 soupper 33, 39, 48 soupper du roy 56–57 Spain, ambassador of 168 spectacle: of ceremony 41, 159–161; chivalric 155; of confrontation 133; court 90–94, 153; decorative 16; and entertainment 80; and impersonation 84; at Fontainebleau 101; fool as 200–201, 210, 218; funeral as 157; and language 109; marriage/wedding as 29, 36, 44, 50, 72–74; Mary’s reign as 89; mechanics of 162; and performance 26, 28, 66; performers of 27; political 2, 62, 69, 71; and show 78; and spectator 105; triumphant 13; see also Catherine de Medici; tournament Spens, David (Sir) 20 Spinelli, Gasparo 168, 170–173 stage presence 116–117 Stanley, Edward (Sir) 51 St. Augustine 126 St. Francis 57 St. Giles Cathedral 223 St. Giles Kirk 60 St. Gillais, Mellin de 90 Stirling 15n32, 44, 67, 74, 85, 89n126, 90–94, 157n39, 215, 220, , Stoppard, Tom 165 Strong, Roy 98 Sweden, ambassador of 74 Tabernar, Gilleam see Gilleam Tabernar tabronar 17–18 tailor 16–17, 19, 21, 73; see also Arthur, Thomas Temperance 45 Temperantia 81–82 Tennent, John 157

Thomas, Andrea 14 Thomas of Lancaster 153 Thom Edgar (tailor) 21 Thrissil and the Rois see Dunbar, William Thurley, Simon 167 Tiepolo (Italian ambassador) 70 Tomkis, Thomas: Lingua (play) 175–184 tournament 9, 25, 41, 149, 153–156, 167; chivalric 160 Tournament of the Black Lady and Wild Knight 9–10, 91 Towneley plays: Killing of Abel 130 Treaty of Edinburgh 74 Treaty of Perpetual Peace 41, 167 Tretise of Miraclis Pleyinge, 129 Triumphal arch 45n20, 66–67, 99; floats 80 Turenne (viscount of) 171–173 Turner, William 213 Udall, Nicholas: Respublica 110–121 utopia 190, 198, 201, 204 Valois, Madeline de 154, 159 Venice, 168–170 Veritas 179, 183 Verity 133–145 Vices 19, 112, 116, 118, 152, 161–162; Avarice 113; comic 195; Gluttony 178; political 119, 147, 188; and Verity 133; see also Book of Vices and Virtues; folly vices 20, 81, 111, 117; courtly 192 Virtues: Cardinal 45; knights of 86; Prudentia 81–82; Temperantia 81–82 virtues 110; Verity as personification of 134; vices disguised as 112, 147 Vives 125–132, 179 Vulgate (Latin) 138–139, 141 Walker, Greg 1–3, 7n1, 118 Wedderburn, Robert: Complaynt of Scotland, The 115, 150 wedding see marriage War of Religion 69 Whittingham, William 140 Wilson, Jean 67, 70 Wilson, Thomas 178 Wit and Science plays 176-77 Wolsey (Cardinal) 112, 167, 169, 172n18, 209 Young, John 26–39

233