Alaric's stuff
General ... Castle of Perseverance ... Mystery and Robin Hood plays ... John Oldcastle stuff
A nice thing about the material we're dealing with is that some of it hasn't been very much commented upon, and the kind of connections we're encouraging less so again. Finding your own way to essay questions and through online bibliographies to secondary material is something we'd like to encourage you to do! To this end, the guide to reading here emphasises that you should use online bibliographies. Rob’s list of reading is groovy too of course :-)
1. General stuff re. medieval drama
What do I just totally need to check out? The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre, ed. by Richard Beadle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). Paperback £17 odd or less and worth it. Particularly useful, I find, are chapters 2, 'The Theatricality of Medieval English Plays' by Meg Twycross, and 12, 'A Guide to Criticism of Medieval English Theatre'.
Also handy is issue 30 of Leeds Studies in English (1998), a festschrift for Peter Meredith. Any medieval drama you write on on this course, I reckon you're bound to find something useful here.
What else should I read? No set answer to this of course, especially as you're encouraged to choose your own essay topic (in consultation with los hombres of course). The best option is to search the International Medieval Bibliography (IMB), at http://www.lib.gla.ac.uk/Resources/Databases/index/shtml, for key terms like perseverance. This gives short summaries of articles/books so you should be able to find relevant material easily. You could also try searching the MLA (Modern Language Association) database (from the same URL).
Any ideas for essays? What about:
Some of our very earliest English drama. Though Cornish drama (on which see the Companion ch. 8) is attested before it (yay!). It's now in a manuscript called the Macro Manuscript (whose contents are called the Macro Plays), after an owner whose surname was Macro. But the manuscript as it is now bound contains manuscripts of different dates! They do all seem to come from East Anglia though.
Where do I get the text?
Online from Gerard NeCastro's site or, from within the University, from LION.
And there's a modernised version at Toronto. I do expect you to quote plays in the original in essays though!
Printed versions can be found by searching the Glasgow library catalogue for things like 'perseverance' and 'macro plays'. Particularly useful is the facsimile and transcription edited by David Bevington, The Macro Plays: The Castle of Perseverance, Wisdom, Mankind, The Folger Facsimiles, Manuscript Series, 1 (Washinton, D. C.: The Folger Shakespeare Library, 1972).
How do I interpret the text?
Although the glossaries of printed editions or the modernised version are dead handy for most purposes, if a particular term is confusing you or important to your argument, you should check its meanings in the Oxford English Dictionary, the Middle English Dictionary and, if appropriate, the Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue. Hard copies are available on floor 9 of GUL if you don't like the online ones.
You'll often encounter Biblical quotations, usually in Latin. These can generally be sourced easily at the Unbound Bible, searching of course the Latin Vulgate version. Texts of the Vulgate did vary, so it's usually best to search for a couple of key words.
What else should I read?
Interpretations of the performance of Perseverance seem to be dominated by Richard Southern, The Medieval Theatre in the Round, 2nd ed. (London: Faber, 1975). Worth knowing of even if you don't read it yourself.
A dead handy resource is a 50-minute video in GUL with about 15 minutes' blurb and extracts from the Toronto performance: 'The Castle of Perseverance': A Perspective, presented by Poculi Ludique Societas in association with Records of Early English Drama (Toronto: Media Centre, University of Toronto, 1980). [English vF162.C27 1980-P. Ask for it at the level 2 lending desk and watch it on level 4.]
You may also find the groovy East Anglian drama resources at virtualnorfolk useful.
If you can't face the IMB, try getting bibliography from the Companion, p. 357.
The idea that the ending of the play is not original, which came up in class, is in Jacob Bennett, 'The Castle of Perseverance: Redactions, Place, and Date', Mediaeval Studies, 24 (1962), 42-53. But the issue is also discussed by most editors.
Being such a helpful chap, have you made me any other resources?
Why yes. Perseverance is confusing for having Latin names for its characters in the stage directions. So here's a bilingual cast-list:
| Latin names (bad dudes and neutral) | Middle English names | Latin names (good dudes) | Middle English names |
| Humanum Genus | Mankynd | ||
| Anima | resun/sowle | ||
| Vexillatores | (heralds) | ||
| Mundus | Werld | Deus | God |
| Belyal | Belyal | ||
| Detraccio | Bakbyter | ||
| Malus Angelus | Bonus Angelus | Good Aungyl | |
| Caro | Flesch | ||
| Voluptas | Lykynge/Lust | ||
| Stulticia | Foly | ||
| Confessio | Schryfte | ||
| Penitencia | Penaunce | ||
| 'Vices' | Virtues | ||
| Superbia | Pride | Humilitas | Meknesse |
| Ira | Wrathe/Ire | Paciencia | Pacyens |
| Invidia | Enmyte | Caritas | Charity |
| Gula | Glutony | Abstinencia | Abstynens |
| Luxuria | Lechery | Castitas | Chastyte |
| Accidia | Slawth | Solicitudo | Besynesse |
| Avaricia | Coveytyse/Enuye | Largitas | Largyte |
| Mors | Deth | ||
| Garcio | ‘I wot neuere whoo’ | ||
| The four daughters of God | |||
| Misericordia | Mercy | ||
| Iusticia | Rythwysnes | ||
| Veritas | Trewþe/verite | ||
| Pax | Pes |
More famous than Perseverance. Performances are attested earlier but actual texts are later. Generally but not exclusively associated with craft guilds in cities. We're going to look at the Harrowing of Hell from the Chester Cycle, the Second Shepherds' Play from the Towneley Cycle. I also threw in Robyn Hod and the Shyrff off Notyngham and Robin Hood and the Friar as short, early examples of more secularly-orientated stuff.
Primary texts?
The Chester and Towneley texts are both online at Gerard NeCastro's site or, from within the University, from LION. NB that LION unhelpfully calls the Second Shepherds' Play 'Alia eorundem'. They're in print most handily in the many editions of A. C. Cawley's Everyman and Medieval Miracle Plays (London: Dent)
Robyn Hod and the Shyrff off Notyngham is here and Robin Hood and the Friar here.
How do I interpret the text?
Although the glossaries of printed editions or the modernised version are dead handy for most purposes, if a particular term is confusing you or important to your argument, you should check its meanings in the Oxford English Dictionary, the Middle English Dictionary and, if appropriate, the Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue. Hard copies are available on floor 9 of GUL if you don't like the online ones.
You'll often encounter Biblical quotations, usually in Latin. These can generally be sourced easily at the Unbound Bible, searching of course the Latin Vulgate version. Texts of the Vulgate did vary, so it's usually best to search for a couple of key words.
Secondary?
For Chester see Companion ch. 4, 'The Chester Cycle', by David Mills. There's a bibliography there too of course (p. 352), but I totally recommend the aforementioned International Medieval Bibliography.
For Towneley as above, but ch. 5, 'The Towneley Cycle', by Peter Meredith, and pp. 352-53 for bibliography.
Secondary reading for the Robin Hood texts is listed in the introductions to the editions. Ah, the joys of online editions! But see also John Marshall, ' "goon in-to Bernysdale": The Trail of the Paston Robin Hood Play', Leeds Studies in English, 30 (1998), 183-209.
4. The Theatre of Justice and Heresy (week 7, 24th Feb)
What I'm keen to do here is to try and unpack what drama or theatre can mean in a medieval context, and to try and put medieval English drama into one of the various historical contexts available for it: the anxiety over religious instruction, lay participation and so forth which characterises much of our period. To do this, we're focusing on one John Oldcastle, a knight of Henry V who was eventually executed in 1417 as a heretic. Our earliest account of his trial of 1413 was intended by the Archbishop of Canterbury as the basis for vernacular anti-Lollard preaching: how similar is it to a script? How similar or different are the dramatic dialogues of a trial linked with the royal court from any of the many ludes performed there? Was the court, or the church, itself a theatre? Oldcastle's burning was a public spectacle in a place which also saw royal processions, fairs and no doubt dramatic performances. Was it as much entertainment as The Castle of Perseverance? Was it also a morality play, of sorts? Moreover, Oldcastle, as hero and villian to the opposing forces of the Reformation, also had a long career in renaissance drama, giving us an opportunity to look at his dramatic afterlife too. Whatever we make of his trial, it eventually became theatre.
Our required reading for this session is the translated extract from the early account of the trial here and the play by Michael Drayton et al., Sir John Oldcastle, Part One (1599). This is online at LION, so you'll have to access it from the university network; print it out to take home if need be. http://www.lib.gla.ac.uk/Resources/Databases/lion.shtml.
Beyond this, the session is experimental, and where it goes will depend on you and the folks leading the session. You should do some reading on at least one of the themes suggested here (though don't feel restricted to the suggested texts), to help develop your perspectives on the material, and on the other texts studied in the course:
Lollardy
Lollardy is central to the trial and to the medieval debate over the use of the vernacular in religion.
Richard Rex, The Lollards (London: Palgrave, 2002). An excellent and handy survey.
Margaret Aston, Lollards and Reformers: Images and Literacy in Late Medieval Religion (London: Hambledon Press, 1984).
The fantastic heresy material at virtualnorfolk. Particularly interesting as this region attests to so much medieval drama.
Later retellings
A retelling of the trial, based on our text, was published by John Bale (also a playwright) in 1544. I have used it (with due credit) for some sections of my own translation. See Select Works of John Bale, D.D., Bishop of Ossory, Containing the Examinations of Lord Cobham, William Thorpe, and Anne Askewe and the Image of Both Churches, ed. by Henry Christmas, Parker Society, 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1849), pp. 2-59. For more on Bale, see the introduction to The Complete Plays of John Bale, ed. by Peter Happé, Tudor Interludes IV–V, 2 vols (Cambridge: Brewer, 1985–86).
Other retellings are relevant passages from Holinshed’s Chronicle, The Mirror for Magistrates etc. (available on handouts). All the Renaissance material relevant to this session is available in Peter Corbin and Douglas Sedge (ed.), The Oldcastle Controversy (Manchester and New York, 1991), which also explains the relationship between Oldcastle and Shakespeare’s 'old lad of the castle', Falstaff.
On Oldcastle’s literary development, see further R. Fiehler, ‘How Oldcastle Became Falstaff’, Modern Language Quarterly, 16 (1955), 16–28.
Other spectacles: power, preaching, justice
Finally, the trial and Oldcastle’s later execution can be seen in dramatic terms alongside the many other spectacles held in medieval cities.
Gordon Kipling, Enter the king: theatre, liturgy, and ritual in the medieval civic triumph (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998)
Dave Postles, 'Penance and the Market Place: A Reformation Dialogue
with the Medieval Church (c. 1250–c. 1600)', Journal of
Ecclesiastical History, 54 (2003), 441–68 (available online on campus; if the link doesn,’t work, just search using www.scholar.google.com)
City and Spectacle in Medieval
Europe, ed. by B.A. Hanawalt and K.L. Reyerson, Medieval Studies at Minnesota, 6 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994). Some articles are directly relevant; others may be of comparative interest.
There's an article in the 1998 number of Leeds Studies in English emphasising links between medieval theatre and preaching, but I can't remember which. I'll put a reference here in due course, but it should be easy enough to find.