Teaching with the Records of Early English Drama 9781442680401

Table of contents :
Contents
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction
SECTION I: VITAL EVIDENCE: THEATRE HISTORY
1. The Audience of Early Drama: REED and the Techniques of Historical Fiction
2. Using REED in Teaching the Whitsun Plays of Tudor Chester
SECTION II: DOCUMENTS IN ACTION: PERFORMANCE PREPARATION
3. 'It's as if I'm really doing research!'
4. Teaching without Texts: Early English Drama for Performance Studies Students
5. Using REED Chester for Classroom and Performance
SECTION III: CRITICAL ILLUMINATION: ENGLISH LITERATURE
6. Using Historical Documents in the Literature Classroom: Elizabethan and Jacobean Church Court Cases
7. Teaching Poems from Robert Herrick's Hesperides with the Aid of REED Documents
SECTION IV: DRAMATIC ACTIVITY: SOCIAL HISTORY
8. The Use of REED Documents in Teaching Early Modern English History
9. 'The husbandry and manage of my house': Teaching Women's Studies from the Records of Early English Drama Collections
10. Palaeography in the Undergraduate Drama Class: Teaching the Secret Life of Documents
SECTION V: ENTERTAINING RECORDS: LANGUAGE HISTORY
11. REED and Language Teaching
12. Going to HEL: REED and Diachronic Linguistics
SECTION VI: REFERENCES
13. Introducing Undergraduates to Documents in REED Collections
REED Collections
Works Cited
List of Contributors
Index

Citation preview

TEACHING WITH THE RECORDS OF EARLY ENGLISH DRAMA

STUDIES IN EARLY ENGLISH DRAMA 7 General Editor: J.A.B. Somerset

EDITED BY ELZA C. TINER

Teaching with the Records of Early English Drama

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London

www.utppublishing.com University of Toronto Press Incorporated 2006 Toronto Buffalo London Printed in Canada ISBN-13: 978-0-8020-9082-9 ISBN-10: 0-8020-9082-6

Printed on acid-free paper

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Teaching with the Records of early English drama / edited by Elza C. Tiner (Studies in early English drama ; 8) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-8020-9082-9 ISBN-10: 0-8020-9082-6 1. Performing arts - England - History - Study and teaching (Higher) 2. Theater - England - History - Study and teaching (Higher) 3. English drama — Study and teaching (Higher) 4. Great Britain — History — Study and teaching (Higher) I. Tiner, Elza C. II. Series. III. Title: Records of early English drama.

PN2587.T42 2006 792'.0942 C2005-905774-2

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for its publishing activities of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP).

Contents

Acknowledgments ix Abbreviations xi Introduction xiii SECTION I: VITAL EVIDENCE: THEATRE HISTORY 1 The Audience of Early Drama: REED and the Techniques of Historical Fiction 3 ALEXANDRA F. JOHNSTON

2 Using REED in Teaching the Whitsun Plays of Tudor Chester 14 DAVID MILLS

SECTION II: DOCUMENTS IN ACTION: PERFORMANCE PREPARATION 3 'It's as if I'm really doing research!' 27 MARY A. BLACKSTONE

4 Teaching without Texts: Early English Drama for Performance Studies Students 48 MARGARET ROGERSON and BETSY TAYLOR

5 Using REED Chester for Classroom and Performance 70 STEPHEN F. PAGE

vi Contents SECTION III: CRITICAL ILLUMINATION: ENGLISH LITERATURE 6 Using Historical Documents in the Literature Classroom: Elizabethan and Jacobean Church Court Cases 87 A N N E BRANNEN

7 Teaching Poems from Robert Herrick's Hesperides with the Aid of REED Documents 97 GLORIA J. BETCHER

SECTION IV: DRAMATIC ACTIVITY: SOCIAL HISTORY 8 The Use of REED Documents in Teaching Early Modern English History 117 ROSALIND CONKLIN HAYS

9 'The husbandry and manage of my house': Teaching Women's Studies from the Records of Early English Drama Collections 142 BARBARA D. PALMER

10 Palaeography in the Undergraduate Drama Class: Teaching the Secret Life of Documents 154 JAMES STOKES

SECTION V: ENTERTAINING RECORDS: LANGUAGE HISTORY 11 REED and Language Teaching 169 ABIGAIL ANN YOUNG

12 Going to HEL: REED and Diachronic Linguistics 176 ELZA C. TINER

SECTION VI: REFERENCES 13 Introducing Undergraduates to Documents in REED Collections 197 ROSALIND CONKLIN HAYS

Contents

REED Collections 211 Works Cited 213 List of Contributors 223 Index 227

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Acknowledgments

Research for and publication of this volume were made possible by generous funding from Lynchburg College, including a Summer Research grant in 2000, the Faculty Scholar Leave award in 2003, and a Faculty Development grant in 2005. Special thanks go to the following at Lynchburg College for their support: Vernon Miles, Dean; Nancy Whitman, Associate Dean; Kim McCabe, Dean, and Daniel Lang, former Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences; Thomas Allen, Chair of English; and Maria Nathan, Clifton W. Potter, Jr, and the Faculty Development Committee. As well, I owe thanks to Jacqueline Asbury, former Dean of the College, and to Peggy Pittas, former Assistant Dean for Faculty Development, for their ongoing encouragement during the early stages of this project; to James Koger, Professor of English, and Delores Wolfe, former Associate Dean, for their suggestions of resources in education and teacher preparation; and to Ariel Myers, Public Services Librarian, and all of the staff at the Lynchburg College Knight Capron Library for their assistance with numerous interlibrary loan requests. Thanks also go to Sally-Beth MacLean, Executive Editor, Records of Early English Drama (REED), for permission to consult materials at the REED archives, Victoria University, University of Toronto; to Caroline Suma, for access and guidance at the library of the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto; to Jenny Mendelson, Head of Reference, Robarts Library, University of Toronto; to the Alderman Library, University of Virginia, and to the University of Arizona Main Library, for use of their resources; and to the libraries of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, Toronto, and the Curry School of Education, University of Virginia, for use of their education collections. Special thanks go to Alan Somerset, SEED series editor, to Sally-Beth MacLean; and to Miriam Skey, Barbara Porter, and Suzanne Rancourt, editors at the University of Toronto Press, and Gord Oxley, typesetter, for their guidance and combined effort in

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Acknowledgments

bringing this volume to completion. I also wish to express my gratitude to Abigail Young, Associate Editor, REED, for her assistance in checking transcriptions of documents, to the Cartography Unit, Department of Geography, University of Toronto, for preparation of the county map, and to Patricia Kennedy for preparing the index. Last but not least, thanks go to my husband, Harold Butner, for his gentle encouragement and patience during the preparation of this volume.

Abbreviations

DNB Dictionary of National Biography EDAM Early Drama, Art, and Music EETS Early English Text Society MED Middle English Dictionary n.s. New Series OED Oxford English Dictionary o.s. Original Series S.S. Supplementary Series PLS Poculi Ludique Societas REED Records of Early English Drama REEDN Records of Early English Drama Newsletter TEAMS Teaching the Middle Ages Series

Map of English counties. Reproduced by permission of Records of Early English Drama.

Introduction

'But they haven't read!' Thus my colleagues complain about student reluctance or inability to read assigned texts. Several factors undoubtedly contribute to this inertia: an age of digital media, with less reliance on printed text than in previous eras; fast-response systems, such as internet search engines, where one can locate information quickly (often without screening for reliability); and teaching practices based on information transfer, Paulo Freire's 'banking concept' of education (348—59). Many students assume that the teacher has all the information and delivers it, so they can get it and give it back on a test or paper. When confronted with a text in unfamiliar English, such as a medieval or Renaissance play, students may feel even more compelled to wait for the teacher to 'tell them what the text says.' How, then, are we to draw students of the medieval and Renaissance (or early modern, depending on one's choice of historical terminology) eras into the process of self-directed reading? Certainly, at first glance, offering them a set of thick red volumes of primary sources such as the Records of Early English Drama (REED), with document extracts in the original languages and a plethora of pre1642 entertainment activities, does not appear to be a likely motivator. If students resist reading the fifteenth-century York Plays, it is unlikely that fifteenth-century York records, in Middle English with a northern flair (or sometimes Latin) will attract them at all. This volume presents surprising evidence to the contrary. Given contextual information, with structured support in using documents and translating language, the contributors explain how students take an interest in discovering new meanings in their assigned reading. The digging that they do informs their classes in new and unexpected ways. Who would expect to find an historical fiction writing assignment in a graduate course on early modern drama, to teach students about contemporary audiences for the plays (Johnston)? Who would expect to

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find a critical analysis of Herrick's poetry that produces an entirely new reading of his reminiscences about life in 'dull Devonshire' (Betcher), sending, as a colleague of mine would put it, 'whole careers of critical interpretation up in flames'? Who would expect to read about attempts to control 'local misbehaviour' that includes battles over maypoles and parishioners rebelling against puritan restraints (Stokes); getting a dog drunk and dressing it up like a priest (Hays); 'making out' against a summer pole with a bell on top (Palmer); or a minister performing England's Lie in the buff to a startled congregation (Brannen)? Resources in REED Publications What exactly is REED? Founded in Toronto in 1975 by an international group of scholars brought together by Alexandra F Johnston, REED is a research project, whose purpose, as stated on the flyleaf of each volume, is 'to find, transcribe, and publish external evidence of dramatic, ceremonial, and minstrel activity in Great Britain before 1642,' when parliament closed the London theatres. The project plan is regional: for each county and major city of Great Britain during this period, editors compile evidence, which is then edited and published in a volume. REED is in the process of publishing collections of records for the cities and pre-1974 counties of England and for Scotland and Wales. For a list of publications, please see 'REED Collections' in Section VI of this volume or the REED web site at http://www.reed.utoronto.ca/. REED collections in progress are listed at http://www.reed.utoronto.ca/cheznous.html. Given the name of the project, one might assume that these records are useful only for the study of drama. However, as the contributors to this volume demonstrate, REED provides a rich set of resources for several disciplines, including English literature, social history, women's studies, and historical linguistics. While REED is one of many series of edited primary documents that can benefit both research scholars and students, such as the publications of the Camden and Malone Societies, the REED series is unified and annotated in a way uniquely fitted to teaching. REED collections are grouped according to a consistent theme, drama and entertainment, and each publication in the series follows consistent editorial guidelines.1 Within each collection, documents are grouped by region (county or major city) and arranged chronologically from the earliest years for which information survives until 1642. The volumes provide introductions to explain the historical context of the documents, plus English glossaries and translations of material in languages other than English, usually Latin or Anglo-Norman. REED is also actively engaged in exploring electronic publication. Thus these editions were produced with an eye to making them accessible not only to scholars, but also to college and university students at various levels

Introduction xv of familiarity with the materials. Each volume includes the following: • Introduction about history, drama, and entertainment in the region • Document descriptions • Variety of document types, including accounts, letters, diaries, civil and ecclesiastical court records, civic registers, and evidence from great households • Document extracts illustrating a wide variety of entertainment activities • Chronological arrangement of entries by parish in county collections • Translations of all documents in Latin and other foreign languages • English and Latin glossaries for reading aids • Supplementary materials in appendices, such as Patrons and Travelling Companies lists, now becoming available in a growing Patrons and Performances Web Site compiled by Sally-Beth MacLean and Alan Somerset: http://link .library, utoronto.ca/reed/ Documentary evidence includes records of parishes, towns, civil and ecclesiastical courts, and wills, diaries, letters, and household accounts. The period covered (up to 1642) includes the years when the drama of Shakespeare developed, providing a new context for the understanding of drama from this period.. The Revolution in Conceptions of Early Drama REED has sparked major changes in our understanding of theatre history, putting faculty and students on guard against drama anthologies that imply, by their arrangement, a development from liturgical to vernacular plays. The linear evolutionary model for drama assumed that, based on liturgical practices, religious drama was first developed for performance inside the church, and gradually moved out of doors to the churchyard and then the streets.2 REED publications show that no such linear development ever took place. Liturgical drama coexisted with civic entertainments in a variety of forms throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance. REED has also debunked the myth of a pervasive 'cycle' form, a sequence of plays from Creation to Doomsday, as a common form for biblical plays all over England. The Chester Whitsun and York Corpus Christi plays, also known as the Chester Mystery Cycle (or Chester Cycle] and York Mystery Plays (or York Plays) are the only two genuine English 'cycle' plays extant. Parishes put on a variety of biblical plays and entertainments on feast days such as Whitsun (Pentecost) and Corpus Christi.3 The records are thus filling a large gap in our knowledge of various types of dramatic activity and local entertainment in England in the

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medieval and Renaissance periods and as a result are changing the ways in which we draw conclusions about surviving dramatic texts. Teaching Context These changes are influencing classroom practice. While much has been written on how to teach drama and other literature in the classroom, with emphasis on the texts, another level of study, that of context, also deserves attention. This perspective is not meant to detract from the critical possibilities for interpretation of a text, but to provide students with additional resources to illuminate their understanding of the time, place, occasion, and language in which the text was written. Awareness of context aids the student critic, dramaturge, performer, reader, and audience. Moreover, the word context can point in a variety of directions, from the circumstances under which a play was written and produced, to the social or political interests driving the promotion or suppression of drama and entertainment in a particular region, areas often beyond the scope of a single textbook or anthology. Unlike previous teaching guides, this volume focuses on ways to teach context from primary documents that provide insight into the circumstances and religious and political issues affecting performers, readers, and audiences in England prior to 1642. In conjunction with this volume, teachers of early drama might also wish to consult Approaches to Teaching Medieval English Drama, edited by Richard K. Emmerson and Approaches to Teaching English Renaissance Drama, edited by Karen Bamford and Alexander Leggatt, both published by the Modern Language Association. These two collections discuss ways to teach the dramatic texts of each period. Another good example of a teaching text specific to a given author is Teaching with Shakespeare, edited by Bruce Mclver and Ruth Stevenson. For teaching of other genres, also valuable are the journal Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching and the Teaching the Middle Ages series of conference proceedings. A useful general guide to methods for teaching students of history to use documentary evidence is David Kobrin's Beyond the Textbook, for which REED collections would provide an ample repository of materials. While the Approaches collections and the present volume are aimed primarily at instructors in colleges and universities, Kobrin's book suggests that the instructional applications offered in them might also benefit students in secondary schools. Kobrin asks questions about history textbooks that are equally applicable to literary anthologies: 'Is the history presented in textbooks "accurate"? Who writes textbooks, and why? For teachers and students, what is lost and what is gained by relying on a textbook?' (4). The standard textbook for most literature courses is an anthology of excerpts from several works or a critical edition of one or more

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works by a single author. Echoing Kobrin, in her article 'Renaissance/Early Modern Studies' Leah Sinanoglou Marcus discusses how the autonomous authority of the standard edition of a Renaissance text is breaking down, through the availability of manuscript facsimiles and hypertext editions (51-5). In response to similar concerns about the limitations of textbooks and anthologies, all of the authors in this volume have devised ways to teach with evidence from primary sources to supplement standard textbooks, anthologies, and critical editions in their courses. This volume is divided into sections according to the main subject areas of the papers: theatre history, performance studies, nondramatic literature, social history, and historical linguistics, each illustrating a specific discipline in which the REED documents provide resources for students. The papers represent courses at a range of institutions, including both undergraduate and graduate levels. Section I, 'Vital Evidence: Theatre History,' offers ways to teach the historical contexts of early English drama; Section II, 'Documents in Action: Performance Preparation,' demonstrates how the documents are used to train students in theatre production, performance, and design; Section III, 'Critical Illumination: English Literature,' moves beyond the study of drama, to show how documents provide historical contexts for the interpretation of literature; and Section IV, 'Dramatic Activity: Social History,' discusses how REED documents may serve as resources for religious, political, or local history and women's studies; Section V, 'Entertaining Records: Language History,' discusses the rich resource of local and administrative language that REED collections provide for studies in historical linguistics. In Section VI, 'Introducing Undergraduates to Documents in REED Collections,' with an annotated bibliography by Rosalind Conklin Hays and a list of REED publications, provides descriptions of different kinds of documents for students using REED collections and lists other resources that may help students understand particular classes of documents. Other thematic groupings are also possible, as the papers cover a range of critical approaches and teaching methods. This volume is not intended to provide exhaustive coverage of any one of these areas, but to offer access routes, starting points for further exploration. Critical Strategies No matter what one says about critical theory, it is certain to go out of fashion. New criticism has replaced humanism; modernism gave way to postmodernism; historicism has evolved into new historicism; new historicism, renamed cultural poetics, entered into dialogue with cultural materialism, and most recently, joined other critical perspectives, from gender, race, and class to anthropological,

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physical, and mental topography.4 In this family, rather than attempt to decide what (or who) takes priority, the best one can do is to show the multiplicity of critical options suggested by the papers. This approach undoubtedly heralds its own passing, but one only lives once — even in the classroom. In 'Reading REED,' an article written when REED was in the earlier stages of its publication series, and in a review entitled '"Fragmentation and Redemption'" published in 1990 and 1991 respectively, Theresa Coletti raises important issues about the multiplicity of types of evidence in REED for literary and cultural studies. One is the problem of how to select and interpret a variety of sources to create a unified understanding of the past. In assembling evidence, past or present, one is always telling a story, but is it accurate? Whose story is it? Another is the problem of a collection of excerpts: does one ever get the whole story from them? On what basis (or bias) does one create that interpretation? History is always a form of rhetoric, whether in narrative or quantitative form, however carefully one marshals the evidence. Individual interpretation and incomplete information can lead to many possible accounts of the past. REED editors and students continually face this problem in producing and using the volumes. In a critical universe where symmetry and order are expected, the fragmentation of surviving evidence and variations in selection may seem heretical. Yet that variation in selection and interpretation of texts is what teaches our students, not to mention editors of textbooks and anthologies, to think critically, to come to terms with the dialogue between text and context, time and place, document and literary work. The authors in this volume wrestle with these issues and carry them into the classroom, to engage their students in the ongoing dialogue about historical method and textual interpretation. In the following sections on critical themes in the papers, 'core questions' highlight avenues for exploration with REED in the classroom. Historical Contexts for the Study of Drama Core questions: To what extent does knowledge of historical context illuminate our understanding of a text? How do we get an accurate 'reading' of this context from documentary evidence? The themes in the following sections are examples of specific issues in relating texts to historical contexts. For each thematic study, one could ask the same question: how does the documentary information alter or aid our reading of a text from the time? The study of historical documents and literary texts cannot replace the time machine, which, if it were available, would offer the researcher the possibility of direct observation of past productions and performances of plays. At best, from this distance of time and culture, one cannot claim to have an accurate 'reading'

Introduction xix of a play from its text or related documents, but one can Use these materials to make an approximation, both of interpretation and production of the play. Mary A. Blackstone's essay illustrates ways to make such connections in three types of survey courses: (1) introductory theatre, (2) theatre history, and (3) medieval and Tudor and Stuart drama for Theatre or English majors. She shows how the records provide evidence of production, uses that evidence in modern performances of early plays, and makes connections with contemporary critical analysis of both plays and performance. For those interested in the history of production, Margaret Rogerson and Betsy Taylor have compiled and tested an anthology of documentary evidence from REED in response to interests expressed in surveys of their students. Touching on a fraction of the available REED evidence, their anthology includes starting points for research on acting styles, civic management, funding, costumes, sets, music, playing places, and players in medieval and early modern England. Taking a different approach, Johnston's students construct the lives of three hypothetical audience members from documentary evidence, to understand the historical context and audiences of provincial, civic, and school drama in regions such as York, Cambridge, Reading, and Shrewsbury. As an example of the study of extant plays and related documents in a specific region, essays by David Mills and Stephen E Page on the Chester Mystery Cycle in conjunction with REED Chester, examine the documentary evidence and antiquarian accounts of these plays, inviting students to distinguish fact from fiction in their readings of historical sources. Mills's classes, with ready access to the city of Chester, examine first-hand the physical terrain and documentary evidence related to the production of the plays. From Hawai'i, a location distant from Chester, Page's students putting on the Chester Mystery Cycle find intersections of culture and language across time and space. Past and present contexts become sites of controversy and discussion, as students research the documents to produce the plays. These essays show students how to read both literary texts and historical documents, which provide many answers, facts, and fiction, an important discovery for students seeking the truth and learning in the process to think. Social (Mis)Conduct and Political Control Core question: To what extent do the documents reveal tensions of ecclesiastical and civic authority, local resistance, and its containment or liberation? According to Catherine Gallagher and Stephen Greenblatt, a culture may be viewed as a kind of text, or the concept of text becomes a metaphor through which to study a culture. The result is that a multiplicity of figures and writings emerge as potential sources of textual information:

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Teaching with the Records of Early English Drama There has been in effect a social rebellion in the study of culture, so that figures hitherto kept outside the proper circles of interest - a rabble of half-crazed religious visionaries, semiliterate political agitators, coarse-faced peasants in hobnailed boots, dandies whose writings had been discarded as ephemera, imperial bureaucrats, freed slaves, women novelists dismissed as impudent scribblers, learned women excluded from easy access to the materials of scholarship, scandalmongers, provincial politicians, charlatans, and forgotten academics - have now forced their way in, or rather have been invited in by our generation of critics. (10)

REED provides examples of such unconventional personnel, whose voices and lives peer through the documents published in the volumes, many of them engaged in acts of defiant resistance to the power structures of their communities. From clerks' notes taken during ecclesiastical court trials in Cambridgeshire, a REED volume in progress, Anne Brannens students learn of a man accused of treating penance as play, a rowdy group carting a man on a pole, accompanied by music, and a third group led by a miller, thoroughly drunk, all impersonating ghosts. These examples, which her students read in the original early language, lead one to explore the definition of what constitutes 'dramatic activity,' an issue raised by Coletti in '"Fragmentation and Redemption"' (9-10). Like Brannen, Hays uses ecclesiastical records of disorderly conduct in her survey course on Tudor and Stuart history; she sees them as examples of local tension over religious and political authority, resistance and control. Her examples include cases of defamation and libel, the performance of scurrilous songs, and a late-night dancing party where a daughter's virginity may have been compromised by the wiles of her parents' guests. Hays also highlights excerpts from REED volumes to illustrate connections between urban politics and civic celebrations and the response of local custom to changing religious authority during the English Reformation. In many of these essays, students are introduced to legal documents not normally found in their textbooks, thus extending their concept of a social or written 'text.' For example, James Stokes draws on a court order, which the students learn to read not only in the original language, but also in the original handwriting from a photograph of the document. In 1617 a Glastonbury judge ordered that a young couple be led down the main street and whipped, accompanied by two fiddlers, for 'their lewdness in begetting the child on a Sunday while coming from dancing.' Taken in the context of other records from REED Somerset, Stokes shows that this document is part of a wider, nearly eighty-year program of suppression of festive practices in Glastonbury. Thus it is understandable that Robert Herrick would look back, in his Hesperides, with nostalgia on past May celebrations enjoyed before his arrival in Devonshire. As Gloria J.

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Betcher demonstrates, REED evidence from that county invites an entirely new critical reading of Herrick, one in which the poet's work subverts, yet is contained by, suppression of festival culture in his own time. Through REED, students explore the idea of text as culture and culture as text. Women's Roles

Core question: What do the documents tell us about the roles and expectations of women in society, as administrators, patrons, audience members, or even participants in the making of theatre? REED is also a mine of information about the lives of women in the cities and towns of England prior to 1642. Women meted out justice, served as churchwardens, fought in battles, performed onstage, and suffered discrimination. Barbara D. Palmer's extensive research on records from the West Riding of Yorkshire and from Derbyshire has uncovered evidence of women's activities as household managers. Household accounts illuminate the customs, food, and entertainment in upper-class families; these are primary sources for representations of class in women's roles, such as that of Perdita in Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale. Women were not always gracious and submissive: Palmer describes an historical play performed for Elizabeth I in which women (played by Captain Cox and his troupe of male actors), defeated an army of Danish invaders (REED Coventry, 272, 275). Personal bequests of musical instruments to and from women offer glimpses of their possible participation in entertainment. Palmer's assignment for student research on women, an anthology of excerpts from REED collections, includes unexpected evidence of provincial female performers. To get a sense of audience for provincial plays, Johnston's assignments include researching, from REED, the customs and life of bourgeois provincial women, one subgroup in the great mix that attended the plays during the many summer festivals. REED is revealing a growing list of women who were patrons of household and touring companies; evidence for this can be found in the appendices 'Patrons and Travelling Companies' in the published volumes and also the online Patrons and Performances database compiled by Sally-Beth MacLean and Alan Somerset: http://link.library.utoronto.ca/reed/. Extracts in Abigail Ann Young's essay show not only the variety of languages (Latin, Anglo-Norman, English) available in REED, but also attitudes towards women, often with a sexual theme. For example, in a court deposition describing an argument between neighbours, one man yells at another, telling him he ought to sit home and make a chastity belt for his wife. In another libel case, a man calls his female neighbour a 'hoore' (Young 174). Thus REED is helping students gain access to information about women's lives, challenging traditional assumptions

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about uniformity of perceptions of women, female behaviour, and values in early modern England. Sexuality and Religiosity Core questions: How do the documents provide evidence of local beliefs about sexuality, morality, and religious piety? Where are there points of tension? Wherever there is trouble over religion, sex is not far behind. In early modern England, religious controversies were both initiated and resisted through acts of public protest, some sexual in nature. The evidence generally turns up in church courts. Brannen's students explore the definition of 'drama' in an example of an accusation brought to an ecclesiastical court in Helpston, 1608, where a minister, accused of contracting 'the French pox' called his congregation to see a play, England's Lie, which he performed au naturel, to prove his innocence. One could ask what moral and political issues lay behind this response to his parishioners or did he just lose his mind (or his clothes)? Betcher, Palmer, and Young all refer to REED excerpts documenting attempts to regulate disorderly or immoral behaviour, often enacted as a form of public protest against ecclesiastical repression. The punishments were often equally theatrical. Stokes describes attempts to repress recreations in the county that are taken not merely as entertainment but as causes of moral downfall; his main example for palaeographical analysis, the Glastonbury court ruling regarding the couple accused of begetting a bastard child after attending a dance is one such case. Other evidence from ecclesiastical courts includes a minister charged with lewd behaviour with a woman while watching a puppet play in 1584. In Somerset and elsewhere, controversies erupted over maypoles, questioned as symbols and causes of depravity. Stokes shows how contemporary tensions over sexuality and religiosity were often reflected in reactions to local entertainment and in the use of theatrical display in public punishment. He also points out how such primary evidence aids understanding of Shakespeare's language in Much Ado about Nothing, The Merchant of Venice, and Measure for Measure. Language

Core question: In periods of history when several languages coexisted for administration, record keeping, and everyday conversation, in addition to regional varieties of a given language, how do language differences in primary documents aid our understanding of a culture and its writings? One of the most common complaints (or excuses) that students will make for not reading their assigned texts is the difficulty of the language. REED volumes

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are no exception. On the one hand, as Young delineates, REED offers a fascinating array of linguistic evidence to the student of medieval and early Modern English. The texts are edited in the original languages: most of the earlier ones are in Latin, a few in other European languages, others in Anglo-Norman, gradually giving way by the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to Middle and early Modern English. As I show in my essay, for students of historical linguistics REED collections are a powerful resource for evidence of the development of Middle and early Modern English regional varieties and structures that survive today. Ability to recognize regional varieties of English aids the student in locating the origins of a text, such as the northern English York Plays. Dialect differences also mark character identity, sometimes for comic effect, such as Mak imitating 'a southern tooth' to deceive the other shepherds in the Towneley Second Shepherds' Play. In Chaucer's Reeve's Tale, the two students Aleyn and lohn speak in northern English. They are tricksters, out to catch the miller, who regularly cheats his customers. In a humorous way, the northern dialect sets the students apart from the other characters in the tale, including the reeve, who uses East Midland English. On the other hand, some students might well panic: 'If I can barely read the assigned play or poem, how am I expected to get through examples in REED collections?' To assist students, REED has provided translations of all non-English texts, including Latin and Anglo-Norman. Another layer of assistance is in the English and Latin glossaries in each volume. Several of the authors in this book also show how the instructor can prepare assignments to extend the linguistic — and thus reading — skills of the average undergraduate student in interpreting early texts and documents. Page, with his students in Hawai'i, probably faced some of the most difficult linguistic hurdles when assigning REED to his class. As a result, his essay offers some of the best advice for dealing with language differences: he identifies where students are likely to experience linguistic and cultural gaps. His solution is to provide his class with a glossed version of assigned REED texts (see his Appendix I), which frees his class to explore the production evidence for the Chester plays. Blackstone follows a similar procedure in her large introductory theatre course. Brafmen provides copies of documents together with transcriptions in the original spelling, and then reads and explains them to the class. Hays modernizes the spelling in REED excerpts and provides a brief word list defining unfamiliar terms, as shown in the appendix to her paper. Others involve the students in the translation process. Blackstone's students work in groups to gloss the REED texts in preparation for an oral presentation, with the aid of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), Middle English Dictionary (MED), and the glossaries in the REED

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volumes. Betcher puts her students to work in pairs translating the assigned documents, using excerpts from the REED glossaries and the OED, as shown in the appendix to her paper. This process of glossing and translating teaches students to be aware of past spelling conventions, words no longer in the language, and unfamiliar terms for playing places, staging, costumes, and properties. Without hesitation, Stokes introduces his class not only to translating the language but also to deciphering the original handwriting. He hands out a copy of an original document and begins a lesson on social history and drama with one in palaeography. To find out why the young couple in Glastonbury was ordered to be whipped in public, his students have to read the text, get past the 'blobs, squigglies, pointy things, snakes,' to relate sound and sense and find the sentence (no pun intended). By overcoming linguistic and palaeographical challenges in the primary texts, as Stokes puts it, the students are 'reentering the mysterious landscape of what it is to learn to read.' Teaching Strategies Both undergraduate and graduate students at a wide range of institutions can do more complex reading than one might initially expect. Courses in colleges and universities commonly rely on textbooks and anthologies, together with the professors' lectures, perhaps an old system going back to medieval education, when the cost of texts and the time involved in their production meant that many students had to rely primarily on listening, note taking, and memorization, plus copying as needed from shared books. Perhaps the medieval florilegium is the precursor to our modern anthology. Now we have printed anthologies of texts, glosses, and commentaries in the form of textbooks, and the added resource of a glossed florilegium of primary documents, or REED, that can serve as a starting point for student research. Many of the authors here also provide their students with copies of original documents, the greater context for a reference to drama or entertainment, and then involve their students in figuring out what the texts say. For this reading and translation process to work, the students must take initiative, and thus many of the assignments described in the essays shift the action from the professor to the students. The authors use a range of classroom techniques other than lectures, including class discussions, group workshops, presentations, anthologies of record excerpts, and examination questions. In each essay, sample assignments suggest ways of involving students in REED resources for different levels, from undergraduate literature, drama, or performance studies courses, to graduate courses on specific aspects of theatre history, authors, or plays. Appendices following each essay include specific instructions for the assignments.

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Class Discussions Almost all of the courses described here involve discussions, many in combination with other activities. For a sophomore-level course in drama, Brannen discusses original documents, with transcriptions, in class, to raise questions as to what constitutes dramatic activity, in preparation for a paper about a production that they have seen. In my graduate course on the history of the language, students search REED documents for evidence of forms to illustrate the development of the language from Middle to early Modern English. Students do the assignment independently and then share their findings in class discussions. Many discussions take place in workshop groups within a class. Group Workshops For second- and third-year undergraduate students in literature, Mills sets study questions for juxtaposed reading of the Chester Mystery Cycle and material from REED Chester, which he presents for students to discuss in their tutorial groups. His workshops are neatly arranged with anticipated objectives, or learning outcomes, followed by reading, instructions for preparation, and questions for group discussion. Betcher's early modern literature survey students work in pairs to translate the documents that they need for understanding the local context of Herrick's Hesperides. Follow-up includes a take-home quiz and class presentation of their translations for discussion. Oral Presentations In her undergraduate history class, Tudor and Stuart England, Hays distributes parish records from the period of the Henrician and Edwardian reformations and asks small groups of students to look for evidence of parish drama and entertainment. The ensuing torrent of questions may lead students to a greater understanding of recent interpretations of the process of religious change. Hays's other assignments include small group analysis of REED documents that illustrate changing symbols of local political authority, links between guilds and civic celebrations, or local political thinking about the relation between city and sovereign. The groups eventually share their findings in formal oral presentations. In Johnston's graduate course on Elizabethan theatre, groups research and present the lives of three hypothetical audience members from surviving documentary evidence, thus gaining contextual information about the society in which plays were performed. Page has his graduate students in medieval drama give ten-minute oral reports. Using study questions, they search REED Chester

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in preparation for discussion of the editorial apparatus and content of the records, and then go on to a production of the plays. For undergraduate courses, Blackstone sets questions for study groups to answer as they read the documents; for example, in the introductory theatre course they present diagrams of staging, and in an upper-level theatre course they present reconstructions of a play. Research from REED can lead to student-generated florilegia relevant to specific topics in the history of theatre and related disciplines. Anthologies of Records Based on responses from student surveys and their own research, Rogerson and Taylor have created an anthology of excerpts from REED publications as part of the reading list for their theatre history course, to supplement the lectures. Palmer invites students to compile a similar anthology of excerpts from REED for topics relevant to women's studies. Her essay suggests terms and sample entries as starting points for the exercise. All of these strategies aid students in preparing for their final examinations. Examination Questions For her upper-level (senior and graduate) medieval drama course, Brannen sets examination questions, with sample documents, which students receive ahead of time for preparatory analysis. Students have previously discussed in class similar problems based on evidence from copies and transcriptions of original documents. Sample responses from students on examinations are included in the appendix to her essay. In his history of drama and Shakespeare courses for English majors, Stokes provides sample examination questions asking students to show how their reading of documents informs their understanding of Shakespeare's plays. Thus, these teaching applications engage students in reading beyond the confines of the page and prepare them to enter the vital world of early English drama in the context of related disciplines. In each essay, there is evidence of active participation in research and analysis, drawing students past the note taking and memorizing of information, into another world, that of the editor, historian, literary critic, or linguist. To find out how, REED on! Editorial Policies Excerpts from REED cited in essays as part of assignments are presented as closely as possible to the format used in the class, to preserve individual teaching

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strategies as an illustration of options for presentation. Thus, if an instructor has chosen to modernize spelling or to present the material in the original language with editorial symbols used in REED publications, such decisions are specified in the individual essays where relevant.

NOTES 1 For a detailed comparative discussion of REED editorial guidelines in the context of edited primary source collections, see Alexandra E Johnston, 'Records of Early English Drama in Retrospect,' in Toronto Edits, ed. Gillian Fenwick, U of Toronto P, forthcoming. I thank Professor Johnston, Director, REED, and Professor Thomas C. Allen, Chair of English, Lynchburg College, for their generous advice in the preparation of this introduction. 2 Wickham, in Early English Stages 1300 to 1600, is among the first to challenge the evolutionary model. 3 Alexandra F. Johnston, 'Parish Playmaking before the Reformation,' in The Late Medieval Parish, ed. Clive Burgess and Eamon Duffy, Harlaxton Medieval Studies 14, forthcoming, explains, 'The civic and guild plays from York and Chester ... (with the few other possible cycles from Coventry, Newcastle and Beverley) are anomalies not the norm' (typescript 4). In this article, Johnston also provides background to the realization that the N-Town Play and Towneley Plays, once thought to be cycles, are in fact manuscript compilations, anthologies of biblical plays. See also Johnston, 'The Feast of Corpus Christi in the West Country.' 4 For examples of these critical developments, see Barry, Beginning Theory; Ryan, Literary Theory; and Hamilton, Historicism; on new historicism and its developments with particular attention to early modern English drama, see Greenblatt's seminal essay 'Invisible Bullets'; Brannigan, New Historicism and Cultural Materialism; the editors' introduction to Redrawing the Boundaries; Middleton, 'Medieval Studies'; and Marcus, 'Renaissance/Early Modern Studies.' For a dialectical closing of the critical circle, a challenge to new historicism and a call for a return to formalistic analysis, see, for example, McAlindon, Shakespeare Minus 'Theory.'

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SECTION I Vital Evidence: Theatre History

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1 The Audience of Early Drama: REED and the Techniques of Historical Fiction ALEXANDRA F. JOHNSTON

There are not many fields in the humanities where the scholarly understanding of the material has shifted in the last thirty years as profoundly as it has in early drama. New research in early theatre has been moving forward on three interrelated paths - the editing of die surviving external evidence through REED; the reediting of the texts of much of the extant corpus of dramatic material (including the radically new approach to editing Shakespeare taken by the new Oxford edition that treats each printed version of a play as a separate witness to performance); and the many research productions of all forms of early drama and ceremony from liturgy to court masque that have been mounted since the first revival of the York Plays in 1951. Although these paths have, to some extent, been parallel, research in each area informs the others. The evidence that is being edited and published by REED cannot be treated in isolation. It is part of the wider work being done in the field of early drama by many scholars, editors, and critics. It has also become part of the innovative reconsideration of late medieval and early modern English history that has been re-examining the old political and constitutional approaches to the period and identifying (often with the use of REED research) new social and cultural dimensions of this age of profound social and religious change. Students of early drama must be encouraged to go beyond the narrow field of drama to explore the new hypotheses being proposed in related fields. The drama that flourished in London and all over the kingdom before 1575 (and continued in the provinces long after diat) was essentially communal in nature, growing from and integral to the community that sponsored it. This mimetic activity was entwined in the lives of the audience who were, at times, part of the performance and who certainly experienced the 'illusion' in the quotidian surroundings of their religious community, town, parish, or household. With the exception of the few late sixteenth-century purpose-built theatres in such provincial towns as Bristol, performances came to the audience or grew out of the social,

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religious, and political experience of the audience. People did not leave their world to enter a special space to be entertained as passive voyeurs. Rather, performance, ceremony, and customary practice were part of the fabric of everyday life. When Beaumont sets up his complex triple plot in The Knight of the Burning Pestle (1613), he is exploiting the clash in perception of the nature of the relationship between audience and performance, between the professional exclusiveness of the boy company trying to perform a romantic comedy and the communal instincts of the grocer and his wife. As audience they are anything but passive. They insist that their apprentice, Raphe, have a part in the play and revel in the traditional 'dramatic turns' that he performs as a May lord, the master of the muster, and the hero in a fustian romance who dies with lingering buffoonery. They also think little of the standard of music presented and send for the waits of Lambeth to improve the performance. The running commentary they maintain on the stage action, breaking the 'frame' again and again, provides us with a wealth of insights into the nature of the expectation of an audience brought up in the world of community performance. One way to help our students to understand early drama is to draw them into the lives of the people who made up the audience. These were people who might themselves have been occasional performers in a parish event or a civic play, a school drama or a court masque. We must encourage students to discover for themselves the complexities of the relationship between mimetic, musical, and ceremonial activity and to understand the lives of the people who lived in the late medieval and early modern periods. Using the techniques of writers of historical fiction, we can help our students capture the vanished world of the late medieval and early modern period. One way is through the direct use of the records published in the REED series supplemented by selected other material. REED volumes are not 'easy reads.' They are meant to provide accurate and complete resource material for researchers. However, with a little bit of imagination, they can enable a class to discover the rich variety of mimetic and musical activity that surrounded the ordinary citizen and made him or her a receptive and discerning member of any audience. I had occasion to experiment with this approach with two classes of graduate students. The course was called 'Elizabethan Theatre: The Inherited Tradition' and covered the entire Canadian academic year, twenty-six weeks. The normal number of students for a graduate course at the University of Toronto is twelve. The reading list started with the York Plays and ended with The Knight of the Burning Pestle and included all forms of biblical drama, civic ritual, religious, educational, and political moralities, Protestant polemic, royal compliments, and court entertainments. The last plays - The Tempest and The Knight of the Burning Pestle — went beyond the Elizabethan period but were read as examples of how the traditions of the earlier

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period informed even the Jacobean professional drama. I provided the class with a detailed and comprehensive bibliography that included all the new research that has appeared in the last few decades. Where a book was not yet available in the library or an article was in a journal not easily accessible, I put my own copies of the books and photocopies of the articles on reserved shelves where they could be consulted. Any other general books, articles, or reference series such as the Dictionary of National Biography (DNB), however, were left for the students to find in the university library system. After an introductory lecture, I divided the class into three groups and gave them specific instructions about the assignment that was centred on three fictitious and semifictitious people: John Bachiler, mercer of York; Robert Millington, gentleman; and Jane White (nee Wilson), bourgeois provincial wife (see Appendix). The year was 1575 and the students' task was to discover what drama, music, ceremonial, and folk custom one of these three people could have experienced during his or her lifetime. I invented these 'people' and their biographies with some care in order to provide the students with several different directions to explore for each person. John Bachiler was both involved in playmaking himself as a pageant master for the Mercers Guild and a city alderman, and a potential audience member for everything that was performed in York during his lifetime. His 'life' provided an opportunity for the group to use REED York to learn how the cycle of York Plays was performed in general and also to learn the duties of a pageant master in the production of the Mercers' play of the Last Judgment. The years that Bachiler was pageant master (1536 and 1537) were difficult ones in the life of the cycle. Some of the sponsoring guilds had fallen on hard economic times; the city was following a policy of active intervention to allow some of the guilds to continue performing their pageants. An exploration of that aspect of the life of the cycle enabled the students to appreciate the level of concern and also 'hands on' direction that the city council undertook in the period. Fifteen thirty-six was also the year of the Pilgrimage of Grace, when the city of York and the clergy of York Minster opened Bootham Bar to the rebels, sheltering them in the cathedral. They would pay dearly for this action in 1541 when Henry VIII visited the city. The mayor and aldermen greeted the king at the boundaries of their jurisdiction and fell on their knees while the recorder of the city read an abject apology for the errors committed by them during the rising that had 'greuously heynously and traitoryously offendyd' the king 'in the most odyous offence of traterus rebellyon.' (REED York 1:274). Bachiler would have witnessed this ceremonial humiliation of the civic officials. In this way the students were able to see the power of the monarch who had undoubtedly commanded the city to atone for its offence by this very public act. The records in REED York for the years of the life of Bachiler also provide information about the lost Creed and Pater Noster Plays, the Ridings

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of St George and Yule and Yule's Wife, the Corpus Christi Procession until 1557, the many travelling entertainers who visited the city, and the city waits or musicians. From this evidence the students were encouraged to put the York Cycle into its wider local context. Moving beyond the strict confines of the REED volume, I included the detail of Bachiler's activities as a trader in the Low Countries. This would have brought him in contact with the plays and processions of Europe; thus the students were led to explore the continental influence on English drama and ceremony. In this way they were encouraged to consider how a merchant travelling abroad in pursuit of his trade could have been the audience of a different kind of performance and perhaps brought back new ideas about drama along with his merchandise. Finally, by extending Bachiler's life into the late 1560s and early 1570s, I provided an opportunity for the students to learn about the suppression of the religious drama by Dean Matthew Hutton and Archbishop Grindal working with the Ecclesiastical Commission of the North. The suppression first of the Creed Play in 1568, then of the York Plays in 1569, and finally of the Pater Noster Play in 1572 is a complex story of competing jurisdictions and beliefs. The internal dispute in the York city council in 1572 where two Protestant aldermen refused to attend the mayor at a performance of the Pater Noster Play demonstrates how strongly opinions on religion were felt. The group working on the life experience of Robert Millington studied the career of an amateur performer as well as someone who could have been an audience member for Tudor professional theatre both at court and in the city. Both Eton and its sister college, King's College, Cambridge, where he received his formal education, included in their statutes the stipulation of playmaking in which the students were required to take part. The group of student researchers had the opportunity to explore the upbringing of a young gentleman who was born two years after the dissolution of the monasteries and who grew up among the emerging Protestant ruling elite. I sent young Robert to Eton because the Eton records will be included in my forthcoming collection of the records of Buckinghamshire, and I was able to give my students access to my unpublished research. However, the records of Eton are readily available in earlier editions by David Blewett and T.H. Vail Motter. Placing Robert in Eton in 1550 gave my students the opportunity to look at the influence that Nicholas Udall's years as headmaster of the school had on the kind of drama that the Eton boys performed. Although no accounts survive from the school from the period of Udall's tenure, the costume lists make clear that before Udall, the boys were engaged mainly in boy bishop performances and after Udall, the boys had access to costumes in which they could perform Tudor interludes. It was also possible for the group to take a side look at the career of Udall and his relationship with Thomas Cromwell and the Protestant playwrights of the Henrician

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period, who appear to have been mounting a deliberate Protestant propaganda campaign using drama. Robert's progression to Cambridge then allowed the group to use REED Cambridge to gain some understanding of university theatre. Cambridge was particularly appropriate since it is the university that produced so many of the 'University Wits' who wrote for the early professional theatre. Robert's association with the Sidney family allowed the group to explore the Sidney circle with its rich cultural and political life. Similarly, his time in Leicester's household gave the students the opportunity to read some of the more recent work on Leicester and his associates - especially his involvement as a major Protestant patron. His connections to both the Sidneys and the Dudleys led the students to discover the performance of Sidney's Lady of May for the queen at Leicester's home in Kent and also the more famous and extensive entertainment of the queen by Leicester at Kenllworth. Finally, his time in London as a minor courtier allowed the group to investigate what was going on in London before the building of the professional theatres. Millington would have had the opportunity to see civic ceremonials such as the Lord Mayor's shows and other London-based entertainments. The group also had the opportunity to explore the court records to come to an understanding of what Millington could have seen or taken part in at the court itself. He was only thirty-five at the time of the exercise and perhaps the kind of individual who would have been a regular patron of the new purpose-built theatres in.the 1570s and 1580s. The life of Jane White was a much less public one than those of the two men. However, exploring her life first in the Thames valley and then in Shrewsbury allowed the students to come to an understanding of the mimetic and ceremonial life of a small parish and also of a sizable market town that did not have a large biblical play. I chose to have her grow up in the parish of St Laurence, Reading, again because I have edited the records of that parish for the forthcoming REED Berkshire collection and have used the material extensively in several of my articles. These records are available in a highly idiosyncratic form in a late nineteenthcentury edition by the then curate of the parish, Charles Kerry. St Laurence was a particularly active parish with biblical plays, Robin Hood activities, a king play, morris dancers, and a Resurrection play, as well as a very elaborate pre-Reformation liturgical tradition with Palm Sunday prophets and a complex Good Friday ritual. As a girl, Jane could have been part of the women's Hock gathering for the parish and also one of the parish backstage crew for the biblical plays. It is unlikely that she would have acted, but she could have helped with the costumes and props. The records of that particular parish allowe4 the students to come to an understanding of parish life and dramatic activities in the pre-Reformation period. St Laurence's was the major parish in the bustling cloth town of Reading. As a town, it was not incorporated until 1542 and thus is an example of how life in the towns

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of England varied enormously because of the different ways they were governed. The great Benedictine Abbey of Reading was the overlord of the town; the abbot functioned as the lord of the manor. This meant that until the abbey was dissolved in 1539, there was no mayor, no aldermen, no organized guild structure — in other words, the only organizations capable of putting on plays in such towns were parish based. This political reality enabled students to acquire some understanding of the complexity of civic jurisdiction and power and the relationship between the independence of civic governments in towns and cities that were incorporated like York and those that were not, like Reading. No matter how prosperous such towns became from the wool trade, they could not themselves mount plays as York or Chester or Coventry did. I chose to have Jane and her husband move away from Reading the year of the dissolution of the abbey since at that time all parish mimetic activity came to an abrupt halt. There was nothing to replace it at the new municipal level. However, their move to Shrewsbury took the Whites to a county town that did not have the tradition of regular civic drama but did have many other activities, including the reception of travelling players. Using REED Shropshire, the students had the opportunity to see the musical and mimetic activities of a county town within the context of the surrounding countryside. By placing John White within the orbit of the Lord President of the Marches of Wales, I provided an opportunity for the students to come to an understanding of the lesser courts outside London where entertainment was a feature of the daily life of the officials. The attendance of their son at Shrewsbury School gave this group, as well as the group working on Robert Millington, a chance to obtain some understanding of school drama and the education of Philip Sidney. In particular, in the mid-century, Shrewsbury sponsored the large scale Protestant drama written by the headmaster of Shrewsbury School, Thomas Ashton. The last recorded performance was in 1569. This information provided the group with the chance to look at how drama was used in the political/religious controversies of the early years of Elizabeth's reign. Finally, by allowing this group to see the entertainment patterns of the century through the experience of a woman, I provided the possibility of exploring the relationship of women to performance traditions. Each group was pointed in a particular direction for specialized bibliography. For example, I suggested that the group working on Bachiler read Elsa Strietman's article on Dutch drama in The Theatre of Medieval Europe and my 1995 article on the York Mercers and the Low Countries. For the group working on Millington, I recommended Alan Nelsons Early Cambridge Theatres: College, University, and Town Stages, 1464-1720 and Sally-Beth MacLean's 1993 article on Robert Dudley's players. All the recent work published on parish drama, especially my English Parish Drama edited with Wim Hiisken, was suggested for the group assigned to Jane

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White. Each group was encouraged to use the apparatuses of the relevant REED volumes to follow the leads in the Select Bibliography and the notes. The exercise was conceived for a class of twelve so that there could be four students in each group. My plan was that they should work together with an initial meeting to 'parcel out' the subthemes in each assignment. For example, I hoped that one student would research Bachiler's activities as a pageant master for the Judgement play; another the years of dramatic activity in York between the Pilgrimage of Grace and the Rebellion of the Northern Earls (1568); another the suppression of religious drama in York; and another what he could have learned in the Low Countries. Before their presentation, I hoped the students would reconvene and decide how they were going to present their 'character' and his mimetic activities. I have used the exercise twice. The first class was much smaller than I had anticipated, and so there were not enough students to allow each aspect of these three 'biographies' to be explored in depth. However, even in less than optimum circumstances, the exercise did accomplish its purpose. Although there were no smaller 'group' meetings as I had hoped, the class came back together after their week of research to share their insights, astonished at the amount and variety of mimetic activity they had found. Each student reported his or her findings independently. Their own experience of the theatre had been almost entirely as spectators, and they were amazed at how much opportunity there was in the sixteenth century for 'hands-on' theatrical experience. They drew from the exercise the sense that communal custom, ceremony, dancing, music, and playmaking were integral to the lives of each of these three disparate figures. The most successful 'character' for this group was Bachiler, as the students felt he had greater reality since he is 'rooted' in a REED volume. Once the students assigned to Millington had made the analogy to the thoroughly documented biographies of Sidney and Henry Unton, they were able to gather a well-rounded picture of his activities. The least successful assignment was that of Jane White. It was difficult for that group to come to terms with the reality of an anonymous bourgeois woman of the mid-century engaged in dramatic activity unfamiliar to the students. The second time I did the exercise I had enough students to have them work in teams. This time the most popular figure was Millington. The four students who opted to research his life reported in a television 'talk show' format, with one student acting as moderator and three presenting three aspects of Millington's theatrical experience. The group doing Bachiler turned their reporting over to a truly gifted member of the class who presented Bachiler's experience in the form of a journal discovered by his wife after his death, thus entering into the spirit of 'historical fiction.' The student presented each activity brilliantly, modelling her prose on the language of the York House Books as they appear in REED York and

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other editipns. I knew the source of each of her points and was able to appreciate her skill in weaving them together in her narrative, but the rest of the class simply sat back and listened to the seamless story of one man's life as a playmaker in York. Again, the group from this class investigating Jane White was the least successful because one member of the group insisted on using anachronistic feminist theory to interpret Jane's life. Both classes were dominated by beginning doctoral students who were facing their comprehensive PhD exams. Their major concern was 'coverage'; they wanted a course that would concentrate on reading the majority of the standard late medieval and early modern play texts. The form of the exercise I adopted was designed to make a very broad general point about the context of the plays quickly as the background to what usually became a rather conventional text-centred course. In other contexts, the study of a fictitious figure could be woven into the reading of particular texts. For example, an aspect of Bachiler's life could be explored while studying Everyman. Everyman s Dutch origins could trigger a study of other plays of the Netherlandish Chambers of Rhetoric such as Man's Desire and Fleeting Beauty. Millington's experience at Eton could be explored when a class is studying Nicholas Udall's Ralph Roister Doister or other school plays. His life in London and the court could be supplemented by studying the entertainments offered to Elizabeth printed in Nichols's Progresses of Elizabeth and Sidney's Lady of May to give the students some sense of standard of performance expected in court compliment. Studying a figure like Jane White could add much to a course that read Robin Hood or any of the short biblical plays that are now being identified as parish plays such as the N-Town Woman Taken in Adultery or even the N-Town Passion Play. The New Romney records in REED Kent: Diocese of Canterbury supplemented with James Gibson's analysis of that play in English Parish Drama will help the students understand how a parish could produce a play as large as the Passion Play. Conversely, the general framework can work on a smaller scale. Rather than adding features to the already full assignment, it would have been equally possible to take only one or two aspects of these biographies as a smaller assignment depending on the size and experience of the class. For example, using REED Shropshire, Jane White could be made costume mistress for the performance of Milton's Comus commissioned by the then Lord President of the Marches of Wales, the earl of Bridgewater, and performed in Ludlow in 1634. Other assignments could be based on other REED collections. One that might fit well into a cultural studies course would be to provide a biography of a teenaged novice in the priory of Worcester. As REED Herefordshire/Worcestershire documents, Prior More was a major patron of drama, paying many troupes of local players. This assignment would give some sense of life in a religious house that could be supplemented by other evidence

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such as my 1993 and 1995 articles on the records of Bicester Priory. Another lively assignment emphasizing the place and importance of the town or civic customary activities would be to invent a participant in the Wells May Game, 1608. The rich detail provided by the Star Chamber records of the dispute that arose over the production of the games in REED Somerset is well worth exploration. The components of the 'historical fiction' exercise could also be part of a larger 'package' that would include the use of videotapes of play productions - for example, the York Plays or Everyman for the Bachiler assignment and Robin Hood for the White assignment, thus combining all three strands of recent scholarship records, texts, and performance.

12 Alexandra F. Johnston Appendix: Assignments On the first day of class, the students were provided with an eighteen-page general bibliography that included medieval, Tudor, and Stuart texts and facsimiles, records volumes, other texts from the period (lyrics, religious treatises, educational treatises, etc.), monographs and articles on theatre history and criticism, art, music and other related forms, theory, and social, religious, economic and political histories, and a nine-page bibliography specifically related to the York Plays. They are also given the following assignment sheet: ENG 2475Y Initial Assignment This course may take one of several directions, as we will discuss together during the first meeting today. However, before the second meeting of the class a week from today, I want all of you to be part of one of three investigations into the sixteenth-century world of ceremony and mimesis. First, please read my article 'The Inherited Tradition: The Legacy of Provincial Drama.' Second, you will be divided into three groups to do the three research tasks outlined below. The intention is that you will meet together before the next class. Your results will be presented orally in class by a spokesperson chosen by the group. The year is 1575 The task is to discover what drama, music, ceremonial, folk custom, etc., one of three people could have been exposed to during their lifetimes. Below I provide some leads on where to begin but let your instincts take you beyond the items specified from the longer reading list or from other leads you pick up. 1. JOHN BACHILER, MERCER OF YORK

Bachiler is only semifictitious. He did exist and was a pageant master for the Mercers in the years 1536 and 1537. (Only those details are true. The rest of his biography is made up.) He was a member of the city council during the sixties especially 1568 and 1569. He was still taking an active interest in the affairs of the city in 1572. In his younger days he was active in trading with the Low Countries and frequently visited there. Bibliography: see the York supplementary bibliography especially the text of the York Plays; REED York; my articles on the Creed and Pater Noster Plays, trading with the Low Countries, and the City as Patron; and Elsa Strietman's article on Dutch

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drama, 'The Low Countries.' Also, read Everyman and be prepared to comment on its Dutch origins. The early drama group at the University of Toronto, Poculi Ludique Societas (PLS), has performed several Dutch plays in translation. For more information, please contact Linda Philips (Artistic Director of the PLS) and visit the PLS website at http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/--plspls/. 2. ROBERT MILLINGTON, GENTLEMAN

Entirely fictitious - but modelled on Sir Henry Unton and Sir Philip Sidney. Born in 1540; godson to Lady Mary Sidney; went to Eton at age ten and King's College, Cambridge, at age fourteen; spent time in various Protestant noble households including Leicester's; spent time in London as well after the accession of Elizabeth; minor figure at court by 1575. Bibliography: The 'Unton appendix,' a typescript of a part of my unpublished REED Berkshire collection; the DNB and The Complete Peerage for details of the families I mention in the 'Unton appendix'; the Eton records, part of my unpublished REED Buckinghamshire collection; see also books about school drama and Nicholas Udall. See also REED Cambridge edited by Alan Nelson and his book Early Cambridge Theatres: College, University, and Town Stages, 1464—1720; SallyBeth MacLean's article on Robert Dudley's players, 'The Politics of Patronage'; Paul White's book, Theatre and Reformation: Protestantism, Patronage, and Playing in Tudor England; and his more recent piece with Norman Jones on Leicester and Gorboduc, 'Gorboduc and Royal Marriage Politics: An Elizabethan Playgoer's Report of the Premiere Performance'; and the biographies of Sidney and Leicester. The unpublished research will be put on a separate shelf for students to consult. 3. JANE WHITE (NE~E WILSON)

Entirely fictitious. By now quite elderly. Born in the parish of St Laurence in Reading, Berkshire; married John White in 1525 and together they moved to Shrewsbury in 1538; had a son at Shrewsbury School (where Sidney later attended). Bibliography: Reading, Berks, records from my unpublished REED Berkshire collection (especially those from St Laurence parish); all the articles on parish drama on reading list written by me or by Sally-Beth MacLean (or both) and other parish pieces in my collection of essays English Parish Drama; REED Shropshire and the articles written by Alan Somerset and listed in the Select Bibliography of the Shropshire volume. Again, the unpublished research will be set aside for students to consult.

2 Using REED in Teaching the Whitsun Plays of Tudor Chester DAVID MILLS

In this essay I describe a master plan for workshops to involve students in archival research related to their study of early drama. I describe the workshops within the context for which they were originally designed. Though devised initially for a specific package of modules, they have subsequently proved adaptable to different structures and contexts. I offer two special options on early drama at the University of Liverpool in which small numbers of students may enrol from year to year, and I am also a member of the teaching team delivering a broader 'medieval literature' module which students - typically, some fifty second (Part I) and third (Final) year students — may choose in order to fulfil our requirement to include an 'early literature' module in their program. Within the twelve weeks allotted to our modules, those students each week will have a lecture, a one-hour tutorial meeting of six or seven students, and a communal workshop of sixty to ninety minutes. Usually two or three weeks of the module introduce the students to medieval plays, and I will normally have one week to introduce them to the English play cycles. Students seem to approach the plays with a number of preconceptions deriving from 'romantic' notions of the Middle Ages and the old-fashioned evolutionary view of drama. The plays are regarded as rather childish retellings of biblical stories — with which many students are in any case no longer familiar. They are also considered as the naive productions of 'ordinary illiterate folk' staged in the streets of a town on farm-carts - vehicles that many of the students will never have seen. Finally, the plays lie on the page as a piece of writing; they are rarely reconceived in visual terms. My optional courses allow me space to address these problems fully. In both these and the larger course I use Chester's records, because that is my known specialization and because the students will know Chester, which is only thirty miles from Liverpool, and may have visited it. I can use the workshop schema as the basis for introducing my special option groups to the use of records, and arrange for them to visit Chester to see originals in the City Archives. But I can proceed

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in a more leisurely fashion with twelve weeks for a dedicated course, and can set assignments that require the students to use REED Chester to theorize about the ways plays might have been performed. A particular problem here is that the library usually possesses only one set of REED volumes. I can set only one assignment for each volume, so library resources dictate the assignments. Teaching would be facilitated if REED were available on a networked CD-ROM. With my large 'medieval literature' workshop group I have used the Workshop 2 program below because it provides a self-contained and quite wide-ranging program that challenges the students' assumptions. A particular advantage of using records in this way is that the students experience the process of interpretation for themselves and are therefore driven to question their own beliefs. In practice, there is never enough time to explore the documents adequately. Unlike the option group, the group on this course will never have the opportunity to examine the other documents in Workshops 1 and 3, though they will be made aware of their existence and importance. British universities are subject to national scrutiny by a Quality Assurance Agency that requires documented transparency of the aims, methods, and effectiveness of both the overall module and the individual teaching session. The correlation between documented claims and actual teaching performance is subject to regular rigorous internal and external scrutiny and evaluation. Tutors are therefore required to provide not only a schema for the session but also a statement of learning outcomes by which the effectiveness of the session can be assessed and the means by which those attainments can be evaluated. The students are told in advance of these learning outcomes and have preparatory work set. They evaluate the module by questionnaires, and their attainment of the learning outcomes is evaluated through written assignments and examination. At the start of the workshop I tell them the shape of the session. Control passes progressively from tutor to students. The session begins with information and occasional questions from me and ends with the students working in groups with REED's transcripts of the documents. Suggestions for further work and preparation for the next session conclude the workshop. I approach the workshop with certain hopes, but the progress of the session is unpredictable and not all goals will necessarily be met; in fact, new and more interesting agenda may emerge from the discussions. The process of investigation and the interest it stimulates are ultimately the most important things, and it is essential to use the schema flexibly, as a basis rather than a prescription. REED remains the basis of the workshops, but the play text itself is the focus of the work and is used to provide additional performance evidence. I also want the students to appreciate what lies behind REED's cleanly printed pages, and so I show or circulate facsimiles of documents, and refer to or visit local archive collections with my special groups. And, to give a sense of spatial relationships, I show a larger version of the 1572-1618 map in REED Chester (Ixxiii).

Map of Chester

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Appendix: Three Workshops Learning Outcomes At the end of these three workshops you will be able to 1 identify the different kinds of documents containing external evidence of dramatic activity 2 collate and evaluate that evidence 3 formulate and evaluate theories of production and performance 4 deploy and test those theories in relation to specific play texts Preparation I require the students to bring (1) The Chester Mystery Cycle in either the Early English Text Society (EETS) or the Colleagues Press edition; (2) copies of specified documents (see individual listings); (3) reading list, list of dates of Chester productions, list of manuscripts for study, with call-numbers. A week in advance, I ask them to gain a general sense of the overall shape of the Cycle from the play titles and to start reading the plays. I also ask them to look at one or more of the REED volumes in the library or our departmental collection to familiarize themselves with the REED format. I take to each meeting a copy of REED Chester, overhead projector acetates of the map of Chester (Ixxiii) and some of the documents; and the very useful Mystery Plays Study Pack published by the Chester City Archives, which contains facsimiles of original documents held in the archives, such as Newhall's proclamation for the plays and the relevant description of the production by David Rogers. (I would use PowerPoint in preference to overhead projector acetates if facilities allowed.) Because the venue is a studio, I can rearrange the room in advance to avoid a lecture format and facilitate small-group work. Workshop 1: Drama in the Corporate Town Learning Outcomes At the end of this workshop you will be able to 1 identify and evaluate the different kinds of documents evidencing Chester's Whitsun Plays

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2 read the semiotics of Chester's townscape 3 recognize the interconnection between site and performance Preparation Students are asked to look up in OEDIMED: town, mystery, pageant, and guild, and consider their implications for town government and drama. 1. INTRODUCTION TO DOCUMENTARY STUDY

* Q. What is a 'town'? * Q. What was a 'guild' and what did it do? * Q. What sorts of records do towns and other organizations keep? My first aim is to set civic drama in the wider context of a town as a social, political and economic entity, distinguishing corporate from noncorporate towns and presenting ceremonial as emblematic of hierarchy and power. Ceremonial involves organization and expenditure, which appear in legislative and accounting records, but these provide only limited evidence of what went on. We rarely find descriptive or interpretive documents. 2. CHESTER'S DOCUMENTS

* Q. What different kinds of documents do you recognize in the set you have been asked to study? Here I introduce the REED mission statement, show students REED Chester, and draw their attention to volumes listed on their reading list. The workshop is also a pilot study on how to use such volumes. I classify the examples as literary (the play text and Banns); topographical (map); legislative (civic orders); financial (guild accounts); and antiquarian (David Rogers's Breviary of Chester History). 3. CHESTER'S TOPOGRAPHY

I show an overhead projector slide of the map of Chester c.1577, published 1612—17 in George Braun and Francis Hohenberg, Civitates Orbis Terrarum (cf. REED Chester Ixxiii). * Q. What do you consider to be the major features of the city? I explain that the city and its buildings are the backdrop to the plays. I ask the groups to examine the map for about five minutes and each to identify one additional feature on the projected map. I want them to recognize the demarcation of urban as opposed to rural space, bounded by the city walls, and to notice the River Dee with its implications of a north-south slope, and the cruciform pattern of Roman streets with the network of lanes. I want them to identify major

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buildings (St Werburgh's Abbey/the Cathedral; the Castle, with St Mary's Church; St Peter's Church; St John's Church, outside the walls; the Roodee). I tell them about the Pentice, using the image from REED Chester (Ivii). 4. THE SEMIOTICS OF THE TOPOGRAPHY

* Q. Who occupied these spaces? I will indicate each: the castle, the earl of Chester; the cathedral, the bishop of Chester (from 1540) - previously the abbot; the Pentice, the mayor; St John's, the former cathedral, the bishop of Lichfield and Chester. I mention town houses and the Rows. 5. THE CORPUS CHRISTI PROCESSION

Groups look at the Early Banns (REED Chester 33-9). * Q. What do the final stanzas of the Early Banns suggest happened on Corpus Christi Day in Chester in the early sixteenth century? * Q. What route did it follow? * Q. What significance might this route have? * Q. Why refer to the mayor and his brethren? I hope that the groups will quickly identify procession, sacrament, clergy play, torches, and crafts in order; and trace the route from St Mary's to St John's. They may recognize that the route links two centres of power and note that the mayor authorizes the occasion. 6. THE WHITSUN PLAYS

Groups are now directed to the opening stanzas of the Early Banns. * Q. What information do the opening stanzas convey? * Q. What does the last stanza of the Banns tell us? * Q. When in the year were the plays performed? * Q. Why do we need Banns? I hope that the students will pick up on mayoral authority and civic order and dignity in the announcement; the plays manifest civic power. They should pick out the final reference to Sir John Arneway, which I shall have to gloss as the supposed first mayor of Chester and ask why he might be worth mentioning. Whitsun and the three-day performance have to be brought out. The fact that we have Banns indicates that an annual performance could not be assumed, and there is a need to advertize and 'sell' the plays. Follow-up This is the moment to show the facsimiles from the Mystery Plays Study Pack and

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explain how students can obtain copies for themselves. I would hope that this might stimulate interest in archival research. Workshop 2: The Organization of a Performance Learning Outcomes At the end of this workshop you will be able to 1 2 3 4 5

collate different versions of a document identify inconsistencies and gaps within the account formulate theories to address those problems test your theories against the play text appreciate the complex considerations involved in a play production

Preparation I ask the students to read the extracts from David Rogers's Breviary of Chester History; also Plays 3 (Noah's Flood), 4 (Abraham, Lot, and Melchysadeck; Abraham and Isaac)., 17 (The Harrowing ofHell), and 24 (The Last Judgement). 1. DAVID ROGERS'S BREVIARY OF CHESTER HISTORY

The basis for this discussion is the descriptions of the production in the versions of Rogers's Breviary of 1609 (REED Chester 238-52), 1618-19 (REED Chester 324-6), 1622-3 (REED Chester 355), and 1636-7 (REED Chester 435-6). * Q. What must you bear in mind in using these documents as evidence for the production of the plays? I explain the overall nature and purpose of the Breviary and locate the description of the plays in the description of Chester's 'Lawdable Exercises.' I recall that the plays were suppressed in 1575 and the Breviary accounts begin in 1609. I would expect the students to note the time gap and the subsequent time gaps between the versions of the Breviary, and also the difficulty of distinguishing David Rogers's Voice' from that of his father Robert, from whose notes he worked. Possibly they might consider the ultimate, if unknown, source, Robert's evidence, and the point-of-view. 2. INTERROGATION OF THE DOCUMENTS

Before turning to the documents I comment on their presentation in REED Chester (1609) as base text with collation, and subsequent versions presented in extract only where there are significant variations from 1609, and then with

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collation where necessary. (MS Harley 1944 appears only in collation.) The groups then look at the versions of the Breviary, concentrating on the 1609 version and adding in the later versions as time allows. * Q. What is the play's route and what significance is ascribed to it? How does this route compare with that of the Corpus Christi Plays and Procession? What navigational problems does it pose? * Q. What did a pageant wagon look like? Consider, as you design it, the dimensions and the logistics of navigation. * Q. What other arrangements had to be made? In a plenary session, we trace the route on the map, with its linkage of abbey and Pentice and recall the previous week's work. New power centres contrast with old ones. We consider manoeuvring wagons through the lanes and controlling them on the sloping streets. When the groups come to draw their plans of pageant carriages, there is always some amusement and much criticism. Trying to produce 'a highe place made like a howse with 2 rowmes beinge open on the tope ... and they stoode vpon vj wheeles,' invariably student designers forget dimensions and weight; the carriage is made impossibly wide, top-heavy, and too big to propel. A number of major issues arise (the lower room, a cover on the top and curtains, the number and placement of wheels). At this point I ask * Q. How do you turn the carriage through ninety degrees to go into the lanes? On occasion I have used a Lego model to illustrate the problem! 3. OTHER ARRANGEMENTS

This can generate a more general discussion, with further supplementary questions. I would hope for at least three points — the reading of the Banns; the erection of stages/stayes in the streets; and the need to coordinate the movement of the carriages by a relay of messengers. The last is particularly important since I can ask: * Q. How was such coordination possible when the plays are of unequal length? Thus we can agree that the written text is not necessarily a guide to actual performance time, given the potential for stage business. 4. THE BREVIARY AND THE TEXT

Each group is given one of the specified plays to consider; if necessary, this can be continued in a tutorial. * Q. How far does your text confirm what Rogers says? What contradictions do you find? What details of production are there that Rogers does not include? The answer will be different in each case. The Flood needs an ark with a mast

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and sail and a mechanism for the dove. Play 4's introductory and concluding speeches incorporate the relays of messengers. Play 17 s hell, earthly paradise, and heaven may imply a three-tier set. Play 24, with the rising dead, Christ descending in clouds, and the devils taking the damned to hell while the redeemed go up to heaven, suggests a three-tier set with a lifting device. The evidence suggests that individual plays have individual staging requirements, often of considerable elaboration. Follow-up We have David Rogers's 1637 Breviary In our Special Collections (Liverpool University MS 23.5), and so I can arrange with the Special Collections Librarian for the individual groups to look at it and see other medieval manuscripts in our collection. Workshop 3: Income and Expenditure Learning Outcomes At the end of this workshop you will be able to 1 understand the basis of guild accounting 2 recognize the value and limitation of such accounts for our understanding of dramatic performance 3 apply that information to particular plays Preparation Students are asked to look at the guild accounts specified and to read Plays 7 (Painters, The Shepherds); 11 (Blacksmiths, The Purification: Christ Before the Doctors); and 16 (Bowers, Stringers, Fletchers, and Coopers, The Trial and Flagellation of Christ); and the two sets of Banns. 1. SELLING THE SHOW

The groups examine the Early and Later Banns (REED Chester 34-9, 240-7) for about ten minutes, directed to specific sections. * Q. Why read Banns at all? * Q. What features are singled out for particular mention in the Early Banns? * Q. How do the equivalent sections of the Later Banns differ from the earlier description?

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We need to remind ourselves that the plays were not an annual event. The Early Banns also reassure that Corpus Christi and its play continue, which may suggest they were originally written when the civic play moved to Whitsun. I would hope that we would identify the emphasis upon spectacle, and especially the carriages, in the Early Banns and on the content in the Later Banns, with their repeated allusions to 'the storye,' in the sense of 'the biblical story.' We should draw out the confident style of the Early Banns and the defensive and justifying tone of the Later Banns, including their uneasy ending. 2. PRICING THE SHOW

Examples of company play accounts are issued to different groups: the Smiths' accounts of 1567, 1568, 1572, 1575 (REED Chester 77-8, 84-6, 90-1, 105-6); the Painters' accounts of 1568, 1572, 1575 (REED Chester 81-4, 91-3, 106-8); and the Coopers' accounts of 1572, 1575 (REED Chester 95-6, 108-9). * Q. What do these accounts tell us about the production in respect of carriage, text, Banns, scenery and properties, costumes, music, rehearsals, players, incidentals? The responses to this question will be diverse, though some general points will emerge. For example, I would hope that students might notice that the carriage is in two parts — the bed, berridge, or carriage, which can be dismantled, and the wheels, which are iron bound and have to be fitted — and that it has 'howsinge' or a superstructure, and was painted or gilded. A ladder is mentioned (Coopers). Once set up it had to be guarded (Smiths). 'Putters' were paid to push it through the streets. They should also note the existence of a master copy or 'Original' of parchment, and individual parts called 'parcels' were also copied (Painters 1575). There is additional information about reading/riding the Banns, and particular emphasis has to be placed on references tc music. I also want students to consider where the money was spent — who earned what and how much was consumed in food and drink. 3. COMMENTS ON THE ACCOUNTS

* Q. How does one year's accounts compare with the others? * Q. Looking at the relevant plays, what other information might you as a modern producer need to stage them? Where might you find other useful guidelines? * Q. How much did it all cost and why do it? The same items do not always recur and things that we might expect (e.g., angel's costume for the Smiths) are not included. Sometimes this could be because the production had changed, or more probably, because some things did not need to be renewed, or were provided without cost. Little information

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is provided about scenery, or how the actors were chosen. We could look to records elsewhere, in England and on the continent, and at paintings. Students should add up the costs and attempt a modern equivalence. They can finally speculate on the multifunctional nature of these occasions in a town. Follow-up I would like to invite students to enrol for a tour of the playing sites of Chester and a visit to the City Archives to see original documents relating to the plays, although in practice I can offer this opportunity only to my small option groups. There is, in the end, no substitute for seeing the spaces and what remains of the buildings, and actually handling the documents themselves.

SECTION II Documents in Action: Performance Preparation

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3 'Its as if I'm really doing research!' MARY A. BLACKSTONE

During my first two years of university, I pursued an honours degree in chemistry. Across the hall from the undergraduate lab where I spent many afternoons completing laboratory exercises with my peers, one of my professors had his research lab. He and his research colleagues would scuttle in and out through the frosted glass door to the lab while I tried to position myself so that I could get a peek at what went on inside. To this day I have no idea what his area of research was, but fortunately my honours program also enabled me to study with professors in the English and Theatre Departments who took a different approach. A creative writer in the English Department did a public reading from his work and encouraged me to attend, and another English professor gave me an autographed offprint of an article he had published in an area related to one of my essay assignments. In Theatre the director of a production of Three Sisters, for which I had auditioned, invited me to join the senior research seminar he was teaching in conjunction with the production. In what was one of my best undergraduate experiences, I became a participant in that professor's research towards the production, and I got to see what was involved in the research of scholar/directors. At the end of my second year I changed to a double major in English and Theatre, and I have never regretted it. I offer this personal anecdote in part to begin by declaring my biases. The evolution of my approach to teaching has its origins in my own experiences as a student. I expect this is not unusual for those of us engaged in university teaching, and I expect as well that the area of our research expertise has much to do with professorial models who opened the door to research approaches and directions which were exciting, fresh, and potentially rewarding. For this reason, I have made considerable use of records of early English drama in the classroom in nearly twenty-five years of teaching, which correspond roughly with the era of REED publications that first began in 1979. My involvement as a postdoctoral fellow

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in the production of REED's early volumes while I was also teaching my first university courses clearly influenced my inclusion of the records in course materials and assignments, but simultaneous involvement in the University of Toronto drama group, the PLS, also enabled me to participate in production-based experiments inspired by information derived from the records. Together these experiences strongly influenced the direction of my future research and gave me the materials and insights that would help make early English drama and theatre come alive in the classroom. Despite my defection from the discipline, to some extent my initial training as a chemistry student continued to inform the cross-fertilization of my research and teaching interests. Records and dramatic texts along with critical and theoretical materials combine to form hypotheses for testing in classroom and production laboratories as well as in publications. By relating records to the pedagogical levels and objectives of particular students and courses, it is possible to incorporate them into a variety of institutional and disciplinary contexts ranging from undergraduate, introductory courses involving students from a broad spectrum of disciplinary backgrounds to more senior courses for English and/or Theatre majors. While I have nearly always incorporated an archival or records component into at least one of the major assignments in my honours and graduate courses, I have found such a component useful in assisting a high school student completing a medieval theatre project for her international baccalaureate program. Wherever I have taught — a small, liberal arts college in the United States or larger and medium-sized institutions in Canada - the archival materials constituting the basis for much of my research have also figured prominently in my teaching. The pedagogical objectives for the use of REED materials and others have varied with the range of teaching situations, but my general goals as well as student responses have been remarkably similar. The records connect students with periods, places, and people that initially seem distant and disconnected from the present. The primary materials discourage broad generalizations and comfortable preconceptions about a period to reveal unacknowledged biases or to prompt students to question their assumptions about drama and performance in general. Archival materials can engage students actively in the work of the theatre historian and help them appreciate the importance of understanding the context of a dramatic work, including the social, economic, and political hegemony within which the dramatic performance may have functioned as a lively and dynamic site for negotiation. The students may not have access or skills to make use of early documents in a record office, but REED editors and other scholars have rendered the texts of selected records accessible by county or town through chronological ordering, translations, glossaries, and indexes. REED and other publications

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like the Malone Society's Collections volumes help the student lift the drama off the page by thinking practically about it as performance and confronting the challenges of details that do not always add up easily. Through such publications students can rediscover the naked boys of Chester, Robin Hood games and 'church ales' (as principal sources of parish revenues!), minstrels hired to motivate medieval labourers, a Shropshire quarry used as a fifteenth-century theatre, Elizabeth's elaborate reception on progress at Cowdray, the Queen's Men as they leap off a Norwich stage into a fatal affray, and the seat for God 'when he sail sty vppe to heuen' (55) in York's Last Judgement play. They can get a small taste of the excitement which keeps REED editors slogging through folio after folio of a fourteenth-century Latin bishop's register written in a minimalistic anglicana hand — or inching line by line through sixteenth-century court proceedings written in such a cursive secretary hand that it would seem they were never intended to be read. REED's carefully edited texts may not actually be the primary documents themselves, but for many students, they offer a window into the world of primary research. Students (even at the graduate level) frequently respond to REED materials with a high level of anxiety ('This isn't in English!'; 'I spent hours on this and I still can't make any sense out of the text!'; 'Will this be on the final exam?'). Some students cannot get beyond this point. However, the majority of students usually get 'hooked' by the excitement of discovery that the records make possible — even for a second-year theatre student in Regina, Saskatchewan. After initial examination of REED texts, a recent undergraduate student raised a number of anxious questions in class regarding the relative weight of the mark allocated for the assignment in the overall grading scheme for my course. She found the records 'confusing' and did not know 'what to make of them.' After some one-onone guidance, she did very well in the assignment (to be described in detail below) and soon after that, when she came to discuss extending her work for the initial REED assignment into her major paper, her enthusiasm bubbled over with the explanation, 'It's as if I'm really doing research!' Clearly not all students undergo such a sea change, but several of my students, like her, have gone on to pursue graduate work and archival research, and a good part of the credit for this must go to the interest which REED materials can spark in early English performance and drama. A key to sparking such interest, however, has to do with connections - connecting the REED material with course objectives and other texts, the broader contexts of time and place, and specific research challenges relating to postmodern as well as medieval performance and cultural practice. Following are a few examples of ways to use records to realize specific pedagogical objectives in several different types of undergraduate courses, with especially effective connections for making the most of REED publications in the classroom.

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The Large Introductory Theatre Course Most Theatre Departments offer a first-year introductory course. When I taught it first at the University of Alberta and later at the University of Regina, the course introduced students to the various careers and aspects of theatre as a discipline within the context of a one-semester historical survey of theatre from its origins through the twentieth century. Viewed by the departments as an opportunity for recruitment, the courses consisted of 100-150 students (some Theatre majors but mostly nonmajors). Such survey courses attempt a one-semester jog-trot through theatre history, often in a large lecture format that does not serve the highly interactive discipline of theatre, the students' motivation in taking a theatre course, or the quality of what they learn about theatre and retain for the long term. Even the best-intentioned authors of the historical survey texts normally used in these courses must reduce 'theatre' to a chronological progression summarizing whole periods of history with very broad generalizations. Frequently inaccurate or at best boring, they lack the detail to make history interesting and meaningful. One of the more popular and substantial texts for such a course is Oscar G. Brockett and Franklin J. Hildy's History of the Theatre, which covers medieval theatre in Europe in a thirtyfour-page chapter (2003 ed., 72—105). In discussing vernacular religious drama, Brockett and Hildy note that these dramas combined 'stylization with realism' and that the 'stylization gives way to realism in most of the incidents that deal with miraculous occurrences, which usually depend on convincingly illusionistic details' (2003 ed., 84). A subsequent section on special effects explains that many of these details involved 'flying' but cites no specific examples of texts or performance records (2003 ed., 93—4). For the one example noted in this section (five minutes of continuous rain in a 1501 production of Noah's Flood at Mons), they give no source. Although revised from earlier editions which found two-tier pageant wagons unworkable and asserted that 'no clear description of an English pageant wagon has survived' (1987 ed. 130), their current section on stages (2003 ed., 88-91) allows for the possibility of acting on two-tiered wagons, but cites no specific examples. REED publications clearly provide excellent resources for augmenting such textbooks and courses. However, the challenge is how to fit the primary material into the course schedule, which allows a maximum of three hours of class time for medieval theatre — sandwiched in between Greek theatre and Oedipus the King on one side and early modern English theatre and Twelfth Night on the other. I have asked the students to read several short dramatic texts for this section — folk, liturgical, and biblical dramas (all included in my own supplemental course text). My objectives in this section are to connect medieval theatre with the ritual, festivals,

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and religious practices that informed Greek theatre while emphasizing the variation of dramatic styles and staging peculiar to the Middle Ages. I also want to confound comparisons with Sophocles' dramaturgy and Greek staging that would lead students to regard medieval theatre as unsophisticated, simplistic, and less stageworthy both now and in the Middle Ages. Students need a specific, memorable example of medieval theatre to connect with Brockett and Hildy's generalizations and demonstrate the viability of the two-tiered pageant wagons. Finally, I also want to introduce the importance of the theatre historian and dramaturge within the context of play production and broaden their understanding of what is involved in theatre history as an academic program and a career. I spend roughly two of the three hours focusing on biblical plays and their staging with particular attention to York's Last Judgement. I ask the students to describe the dramatic action in the play and identify the essential characters. I then hand out a one-page copy of the Mercers' pageant document from REED York (1:55-6) and a one-page glossary of difficult words used in the document. I explain briefly the nature of the source volume, the REED series, and the inventory document. This background prompts further explanation of the connection between the guilds and the cycle pageants with specific reference to the wealth and prestige of the Mercers' guild in York. I then read the inventory aloud suggesting that students add their own punctuation to help clarify references. Reading aloud helps them recognize words that might seem unfamiliar on the page, and it also helps them make sense of potentially confusing Roman numerals. Their homework at the end of this first class on The Last Judgement is to review the inventory in conjunction with the play text and come to the next class prepared to draw or describe how the staging of the play might have looked in medieval York. I mention that so far as I know there is not a definitive interpretation of this document and that there are likely to be several justifiable interpretations. In the next class after sharing actual diagrams brought in by some individual students or study groups, I draw a 'compiled' reconstruction of the pageant wagon according to directions from the class. I question their suggestions only when I do not understand what I am supposed to draw or when there is significant disagreement within the class as to how information should be interpreted. I note points of irreconcilable disagreement on the board. Some students work really well in this constructive mode, and when they have gone as far as they can, I ask other students who operate more comfortably in a critical mode to respond to the compiled drawing and identify remaining key problems or questions. Comments usually focus on the relative position of heaven, earth, and hell; the staging ('He never seems to leave heaven in the play text!') and engineering challenges of God's flight up to heaven; and the complete absence of any reference

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in the inventory to Jesus, the central figure throughout much of the play. Usually a student during this discussion 'discovers' that it would have been dramaturgically as well as practically effective to have God and Jesus played by the same person. I do not try to tie up all the loose ends, though. Instead I emphasize that the process in which they have just been engaged — that of detailed analysis and synthesis followed by critique and questioning - is the real stuff of theatre history as opposed to the construction of generalizations in texts like Brockett and Hildy's History. This type of theatre history has immediate practical dimensions and applications in the context of present day reconstructions and productions of plays from any period. An important question for the class to explore is whether this is a productive endeavour from a theatrical perspective - i.e., can postmodern audiences relate to a production of medieval drama? To conclude, I show brief excerpts from the first (1977) PLS production of the York Cycle chosen to give the students a sense of how the nuts and bolts of the inventory were interpreted, how the devils and bad souls interacted with the audience to engage them, and how Jesus' return to heaven was handled technically and received by the audience.1 Before showing the video excerpts, I usually caution the students that they should not regard the staging as definitive and that they should watch it with the same critical attitude to which they subjected their own drawing. A critique of the PLS production would also provide a good conclusion to this section of the course, time permitting. Despite the comparatively short time spent on The Last Judgement-, I have been surprised by the number of students who specifically refer to these two classes in their teaching evaluations as being among the most successful in the course. Students also carry on beyond the introductory course to take my medieval theatre course (discussed below) so I do get a second chance to give the students a richer understanding of the period than was possible in three class hours. A Second Level Foundational Course for Theatre Majors In the Theatre Department we offer four one-semester core courses taken by all students in our BA, BFA, and BEd programs. The purpose of one of these courses, Historical Approaches to Theatre, is to give students the basic skills, the methodological and theoretical foundation, to undertake historical research in an academic setting or the context of professional or amateur production. When teaching this course, I introduce the basic connection between theatre and history, and progress from a focus on types of evidence, basic skills, and methodology associated with archival research to a variety of historical approaches such as theatre reconstruction, new historicism, feminism, and gender studies. Students

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complete two major assignments, one of which requires them to undertake a project relating to materials in the university archives and another involving research in support of a production of a play in the department s season. In order to introduce them to documentary evidence, I turn again to REED, this time spending much more time on the nature of the editorial project itself, the types of documents and records included and excluded, and the overall process leading up to the actual published volume. I show examples of the medieval and early modern documents REED editors have transcribed, usually eliciting awe as I decipher the texts. It becomes clear that a knowledge of different scripts and in some cases, Latin, is necessary for such work. I emphasize the detailed, careful, and time-consuming nature of archival research while conveying the excitement of discovery and the detective-like process whereby researchers work out the puzzle of early theatrical production piece by piece, making the creative leaps and connections essential to both insightful history and compelling theatre. Next, I turn the class over to the students (numbering 20—30), who have prepared for that day's class by reading York's Last Judgement play, the York Mercers' pageant inventory (REED York 1:55—6), and selected entries from the Mercers' accounts for 1463 (REED York 1:95-6), thirty years later than the inventory. I ask the students to work in groups of three or four to reconstruct aspects of a 1433 production of the play. Half the groups receive a list of questions relating to set construction and special effects, and the other half receive a list relating to costumes and props. Set Construction and Special Effects • Examine the play text for clues regarding essential elements in the set construction and design. Create a list with reference to specific passages and line numbers in the text. • What special effects are required and/or suggested by the play text? • Identify all elements of the set itemized in the 1433 inventory and look for suggestions as to how it was constructed. This should take the form of a list including specific words from the inventory and line numbers as well as glosses for any difficult words. • Are there any special effects alluded to in this inventory? • Synthesize the evidence drawn from the play and the inventory into a drawing of the set for a 1433 production. Be prepared to identify which evidence led you to include each particular element of the set. • Examine the 1463 accounts for any information about how the set might have changed and/or any other ongoing special effects or elements of the set.

34 Mary A. Blackstone • Are there any areas where the group disagreed as to how the set was constructed or the nature of special effects? Are there any outstanding questions the group was unable to resolve? • What other types of primary evidence would be helpful to you in answering these questions and/or finalizing a reconstruction of the 1433 production? Costume and Properties • Identify all of the characters in the play and examine the play text for clues as to essential elements of their costume and/or suggestions that might contribute to their design. Create a list with reference to specific passages and line numbers in the text. • What properties are required and/or suggested by the play text? With whom would they be associated? • Identify all elements of costume (including head gear, masks, make-up, etc.) which are itemized in the 1433 inventory and connect them with specific characters in the play. This should take the form of a list including specific words from the inventory and line numbers as well as glosses for any difficult words. • Are there any properties listed in this inventory? With whom would they have been associated? • Synthesize the evidence drawn from the play and the inventory into basic drawings of costumes for each of the characters as in a 1433 production (including any properties associated with the character). Be prepared to identify which evidence led you to design specific elements of costume and associate certain characters with particular properties. • Examine the 1463 accounts for any information about how the costumes and properties might have changed. • Are there any areas where the group disagreed as to how the costumes might have looked or properties might have been used? Are there any outstanding questions the group was unable to resolve? • What other types of primary evidence would be helpful to you in answering these questions and/or finalizing a reconstruction of the 1433 production? Since this course usually meets twice a week for an hour and a half, I try to reserve half an hour for the groups to meet for the first time and begin addressing their questions, but I expect them to meet again to finalize their response to the questions as well as their drawings before presenting their findings in the next class. I place a copy of the two REED York volumes on reserve in the library and encourage students to make use of the glossary in that text and/or the MED

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and/or the OED, but I make it clear that I do not expect them to go further afield to search out other primary or secondary sources for this assignment. I am really less interested in 'right' answers and more interested in seeing them begin to develop a sense of the research process along with the ability to synthesize, critique their own conclusions, and formulate further questions. This alone is sufficiently time-consuming for the length of class time and percentage of class mark that I can allot, but it helps them understand that work with archival materials is extremely time-consuming. I wish I could say that this exercise alerts them to the amount of time their own archival project may take so that they will begin work on it well before most start the average essay, but the assignment is only moderately successful in shifting this apparently ingrained behaviour. During the first group meeting, I circulate among the groups to answer any questions as to how they should proceed. Students usually register considerable angst about the unintelligibility of the inventory. I suggest that they try reading it aloud as a group to begin sorting out the relevant passages. By the second class, the point of presenting their findings, a spirit of competitiveness and anticipation has set in as one by one the groups report, using overheads to present their lists and unveil in climactic fashion their drawings. Sometimes the degree of pride in the completed assignment relates directly to the extent of angst registered during the previous class, but the students are also quite critical of their own work and that of others. The design students in the course are usually more knowledgeable than others regarding the need to understand period costume and theatrical costuming practice before effectively translating such archival material into designs. They also point out that if the plays were regularly performed over a period of years, costuming may have changed according to the styles of the day. Because theatre programs also require students to take several courses in fine arts outside of theatre, the class often includes some who have taken art history. The rainbow listed in the Mercers' inventory might seem an oddity to most in association with The Last Judgement, but these students sometimes argue for an examination of contemporary art work (possibly from medieval York itself) that might reveal its symbolic significance as well as other symbolic designs painted on the curtains or costumes but not described in the inventory. Seeking out specific depictions of the Last Judgment and associated characters would be their next step in the process of reconstructing a medieval production of the play. This discussion should lead to recognition that much more research would be needed to support an historical reconstruction of the play and to a sense of the next steps in the process. Once they arrive at this understanding, I talk about the first PLS production of the cycle of York Plays and The Last Judgement in particular. Everyone involved in the practical world of theatre must function at some point as a theatre historian — theatre history is not simply something done by

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academics on a piece of paper. I promise to begin the next class with a full showing of the PLS Last Judgement and ask them to review their notes before the next class to identify the key questions and points of confusion that remain from our discussion and watch carefully to see how the PLS resolved them. As part of their class participation mark, early in the course, each student must choose from a group of selected articles beyond the readings assigned for the whole class. On a designated day, they make a five- to ten-minute presentation to the class explaining the historical approach taken in the article and its relevance to the material under discussion in that class. The object is to extend the range of historical approaches with which they are familiar and thereby the range of options they consider for their own work. Megan S. Lloyd's article 'Reflections of a York Survivor' documents and analyses audience response to and participation in the 1998 PLS production of the York Plays. She uses this as a catalyst for considering the nature of its original audiences in York and their response. In 'Craft Guilds and City' R.B. Dobson takes quite a different approach. This article also connects the cycle with twentieth-century production by examining the motivations behind the cycle's revival for the Festival of Britain in 1951, more than 400 years after the last production. This provides the frame for Dobson's primary focus on the medieval guild structure and the politics that may have contributed to the rise of the York Plays, and emphasizes for students the fact that theatre must be examined not only within a historical context but also as a dynamic force contributing to the direction of history. All of this takes approximately four and a half to five hours of class time, but within the overall scheme of the course, the York records assume an ongoing profile and importance. That section becomes both a touchstone and a springboard as students undertake their own archival projects and later examine the archival and material evidence which contributed to the reconstructed Third Globe and Robert Sarlos's reconstructive work on both The Triumph of Peace and the Luzerner Osterspiel (see 'Performance Reconstruction' in the course text, Interpreting the Theatrical Past, 198-229). The section on the Mercers' pageant also sets up a much broader discussion later in the course regarding the relative importance of 'positivist' archival research and editorial projects in an age when some postmodern theory and practitioners of new critical and historical approaches have set themselves up in opposition to such research and the value of its potential contribution to future scholarship. My point is that in a 'postpositivist' era, archival materials and meticulously edited publications cannot be an end in themselves; what you do with them makes them 'positivist' or 'postpositivist.' The value of REED's volumes derives from the selection and ordering of the records according to specific editorial principles that create a reference work for researchers from a number of disciplines,

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but as with any reference work, we must use REED publications with due attention to the 'history' engendered by the editorial principles. What other 'histories' emerge if we return to the original documents to understand the wider context or to discover records excluded by the editorial principles and/or lacunae in the records that betray a bias in or limitation to the archival sources themselves? To connect this discussion with specific postmodern historical approaches, as well as to open up 'the frosted glass door' to my own research endeavours, I ask students to read an article written by myself and Cameron Louis, 'Towards "A Full and Understanding Auditory": New Evidence of Playgoers at the First Globe Theatre.' The article provides a full transcription of a previously unnoticed PRO document concerning an affray involving audience members at the Globe in 1612. It was discovered while Louis was doing research towards his REED Sussex volume. Our subsequent archival digging to identify the participants and connect the PRO document with other documentary materials depended on skills and knowledge largely developed during our time working with the REED project. The essay focuses, therefore, on the complex, real-life drama which led to the affray, the backgrounds of the six playgoers (predominantly privileged and recusant), and ways in which this new information alters our perceptions regarding audience response to the plays of that period. The silent woman at the centre of the affray provokes consideration of how such a woman would have responded to dramatic characters (like the Duchess of Malfi, for instance), and the playgoers' recusancy leads to the possibility of a less than homogenous audience, some of whom may have responded contrary to hegemonic expectations when viewing a scene such as the one at the shrine of Our Lady of Loretto in the same play. The discussion of this article feeds into a section focusing on Moliere, his Schoolfor Wives and substantial excerpts taken from the edition of records, French Theatre in the Neo-classical Era, 1550—1789, published in the monograph series Theatre in Europe: A Documentary History. In a previous section of the course, students have already read Bruce A. McConachie's 'Using the Concept of Cultural Hegemony to Write Theatre History,' and in conjunction with this section they are asked to read Tracy Davis's 'Questions for a Feminist Methodology in Theatre History,' both included in Interpreting the Theatrical Past. Again breaking the class up into groups, I ask the students to use one or both of these articles to inform the approach to the play and the records which they will take in producing a detailed essay outline for presentation to the class. This in-class exercise prepares them for their major paper, and judging from those essays, it usually succeeds in driving home the point that 'positivist' records provide useful ammunition in the application of postmodern historical approaches. This course is the last time most of our BFA theatre production students will focus on historical research, but even among this group of students its assignments

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seem to engender a fearless and enthusiastic attitude towards documentary and archival materials. My colleagues who work with the students in subsequent acting, directing, and design projects agree as to its impact on the quality of their future work, and initial feedback from alumni working professionally or in graduate school suggests that the impact carries beyond the academic program. Senior Undergraduate Courses in English and Theatre At the University of Regina, two one-semester senior courses are cross-listed between our English and Theatre Departments. One concerns Medieval Theatre and Drama and the other Tudor and Stuart Theatre and Drama. Both usually have under twenty-five students, mostly majors from the two departments with a few others from areas such as Religious Studies, History, and Education. Many of the students have already had a course on Chaucer and/or Shakespeare. Again, I make considerable use of REED and other archival materials in both courses as I lecture and prepare the class for discussion. In introducing Mankind in the medieval course, for example, I note the East Anglian provenance of the Macro manuscript in which it survives as well as the East Anglian dialect of the text, and I augment this with an East Anglian map showing place names mentioned in the play and locations associated with the people it identifies. I then overlay this map with another highlighting places in East Anglia for which we have records of dramatic performances over roughly a twenty-five-year period beginning in 1465, the earliest date usually associated with the play. I have constructed the map from REED and Malone Society sources as well as Ian Lancashire's Dramatic Texts and Records of Britain. The development of electronic itineraries for performers identified in the REED volumes and the translation of these itineraries into maps for further analysis have been important components of my research career. Sharing these research results with students in my medieval and early modern theatre courses (including Shakespeare) has become an important mechanism for drawing them into the world of records research as well as exploring the value of my research findings. In the Tudor and Stuart course, students read texts of entertainments created for Elizabeth's progresses, most of which are taken from Nichols' Progresses of Elizabeth, but one is the Cowdray entertainment published in REED Sussex (188-97). In explaining the significance of these entertainments I show students the Marcus Gheeraerts painting of Elizabeth standing on a map of England with her feet planted in Oxfordshire to commemorate a visit to Sir Henry Lee's Ditchley estate, also in the early 1590s (Harvey, frontispiece). I then connect the progresses and painting with Clifford Geertz's broader anthropological analysis of 'the ceremonial forms by which kings take symbolic possession of their realm' journeying

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'around the countryside,' marking 'it like some wolf or tiger spreading his scent through his territory, as almost physically part of them' (125). I show a map depicting Elizabeth's progresses in the 1590s, and then another map derived from REED and other sources charting the appearances of the Queen's Players over the same period. Like the cartographers who received considerable support from the queen and her privy counsellors, the players may have been responsible for 'marking' the queen's territory, extending her control over and imaginative association with the evolving nation state. I purposely complicate the proposed politics and 'symbolics of power' by providing details of an affray and resulting murder involving the Queen's Men while in performance at the Red Lion in Norwich in 1583 (REED Norwich 1540—1642 70-6). The origins of the altercation in a highly territorial scuffle over admission to the inn yard, the subsequent chase through the streets of Norwich, the resulting murder of a local citizen for which no one was ever brought to justice despite the efforts of civic authorities - these elements underscore the fact that the ultimate negotiated meaning of the 'symbolics of power' in performance may differ from what a ruler might intend.2 All of this dovetails nicely with the next assigned text, The Famous Victories of Henry V, a play in the Queen's Men's repertoire that profiles the height of English territorial accomplishments with which the Tudors liked to be associated - as well as unprincely behaviours from which they strove to disassociate themselves. When using records in a lecture/discussion format in both of these courses, I have found it important to connect the archival material clearly with the plays of the period. Otherwise, many students who are used to studying primarily literature will fail to follow or appreciate the significance of the records. As with the previous courses, however, it is important to go beyond the lecture format and actually engage the students in working directly with the records themselves. The medieval course emphasizes the variety of entertainment and performance that characterized European culture in the Middle Ages. To augment a standard edition of plays, then, I have created my own course text that has evolved over the years to contain nearly three hundred pages of illustrations, records, texts, and relevant articles. In order to support an early section of the course dealing with secular pageantry at court and in the provinces, this text includes excerpts (both accounts and texts) from REED volumes pertaining to fifteenth-century royal visits to York (REED York 1:146-52), Bristol (REED Bristol 7-8, 10-14), Hereford (REED Herefordshire/Worcestershire 113-15), and Worcester (REED Herefordshire/Worcestershire 406-11). It also contains two Worthies Pageants (Nos 51, 53) excerpted from The Commonplace Book of Robert Reynes ofAcle:An Edition of Tanner MS 407 (235-6) as well as John Lydgate's mummings as published in the EETS edition of his minor poems (668-701).

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In the past I simply treated the REED excerpts as texts with little substantial explanation about REED or how these excerpts - or any of the medieval texts used in the course, for that matter - had arrived on their plate in digestible form. Under those circumstances, though, the students seemed confused by and uninterested in what they regarded as strange and not particularly dramatic entertainments. By including the REED material, I had hoped to make them aware of the volumes as a resource for the course papers and presentations, but in practice few students actually used the records in the early days of my teaching the course, apparently because they found the volumes intimidating. Although the organization and apparatus of the REED volumes ultimately help make the information they contain more accessible and meaningful, in my experience, the average undergraduate initially encounters difficulty in figuring out how to find useful information in the volumes. Gradually I realized that for success in helping students appreciate the variety of medieval performance as well as the importance of REED and related scholarship, I have to make room for a discussion of the archival and textual work needed for this section of the course. I now devote approximately half a class to introducing the nature and challenges of archival work, and the process of editing records and texts with reference to samples of manuscripts as well as the REED volumes and their apparatus. Although I have done this introduction myself, most recently I have asked my colleague from the English Department, Cameron Louis, to do it because he edited both REED Sussex and the Reynes's commonplace book from which we study the Worthies Pageants. Both approaches seem to work, but clearly the latter option has considerably more impact because Louis can talk with immediate passion about the specific challenges and rewards of editing a REED volume. As a result, when we move on in the class to discuss the royal visits and the Worthies Pageants, students take more interest in the texts and derive stronger insights into the nature and importance of the performative experience they reflect. Coming after an initial section concerned with mummers and Robin Hood plays (including Adam de la Halle's Lejeu de Robin et de Marion), this section gives students a better grasp of these texts and takes our discussion of the similarly presentational but considerably more difficult mummings by Lydgate to a much higher level. Students themselves have quickly moved the discussion to a concern with the relative position of pageantry and performance, devisers and performers in the political and social hierarchy of the period. The class has derived interesting parallels between the effects that the civic entertainments and Lydgate's mummings seek to achieve. The introduction to REED also sets up the first assignment in the course, an oral presentation of no more than ten minutes. Each student must select from one of two types of topics (see my appendix) - both of them requiring use of REED volumes placed on reserve in the library. Apart from getting the students to use

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the volumes, this assignment helps underscore a central feature of all of my senior level courses. Class time is only one aspect of teaching: students must also consult with me individually about their approach to presentations and papers so that they arrive at topics of a substantial but manageable and interesting nature. The difficulty of the REED materials provides an especially strong motivation for students to establish a pattern of coming to see me early and often. With the first group of presentations on 'some aspect of medieval entertainment records' (see appendix), Group 1 students require considerable guidance in choosing and narrowing the focus. I usually suggest additional primary or secondary sources that could be useful. For instance, Lancashire's Dramatic Texts and Records of Britain is frequently valuable if students choose a topic that cuts across geographical locations — e.g., the travels of late medieval minstrels. Malone Society Collections volumes for Lincolnshire and Norfolk and Suffolk can be similarly important. In an effort to maximize the effects of the students' efforts, I may also identify sources, including REED volumes, of marginal value for some topics. For instance, while many REED editions provide interesting insights regarding the medieval treatment of fools, REED Somerset has little to offer on this subject. I purposely keep the topics for this presentation wide open so that students have considerable latitude for choice. As a result, they have rewarded me with a great variety of reports ranging from detailed studies of all entertainment in one location over a particular period to broader studies comparing changes in civic entertainments in two separate locations, or more general examinations of types of Christmas celebrations and the treatment of particular performers. Because the records demonstrate that medieval performance practices did not have a set cutoff date somewhere in the fifteenth century, students can include sixteenthcentury records in their presentation as long as it remains sufficiently focused within the ten-minute time slot. The Group 1 topics seem to be most popular with stronger students, who have frequently expanded their research into substantial final papers — one of which received the Orlene Murad Prize, a $450 award given annually by the English Department for the best essay written for a course pertaining to the medieval or early modern periods. The paper compared the changes in civic entertainments in Chester and Coventry between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and explored their connection with economic, social, and political changes that also occurred at the same time. Initially, I expected all students to derive their topics in the fashion expected of Group 1. I gradually came to realize, however, that students who might have difficulty with the openness of that topic could actually work well with records if given a more specific topic. In some cases they could demonstrate greater strength in the important challenge of interpreting a set and limited selection of records than their counterparts in Group 1. I also have a good number of theatre design

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students in the course eager to be let loose on the rich potential offered by medieval pageantry. They need to be challenged by other students who may lack their background in design but have equally strong or stronger abilities in interpreting medieval records and/or researching relevant contemporary images. Group 2 (see appendix), then, gives presentations during our section on the mystery plays and focuses on the York Mercers' Pageant documents, but in this course they must provide full renderings and/or maquettes and carefully explain the evidence they used from the play, the records, and/or contemporary visuals to determine the components of the set or costume and their design choices. I underscore the fact that rather than artistic ability, care in analysis, synthesis of evidence within the design, and clarity in presentation are the grading criteria. Consequently, English majors as well as Theatre students have done well with this assignment, and the discussion of the video of the PLS 1977 production of The Last Judgement usually proceeds at a very high level. Final project/paper topics also regularly develop as a result of this assignment. For instance, having designed the costumes for the devils in The Last Judgement, students have become interested more generally in the depiction of devils and related figures on the medieval stage as reflected in REED materials - or in the use of masks and what REED volumes along with surviving material evidence can tell us about them in the Middle Ages. Most recently, I had one theatre design student complete a spectacular reconstruction of selected costumes for the Field of the Cloth of Gold based on Edward Hall's Chronicle (610-20) and a contemporary painting of the event (Williamson 109) with an accompanying analysis of their connections with costuming traditions developed in conjunction with medieval tournaments. A final, quite different, example comes from my Tudor and Stuart course. Again, I have compiled my own course text to supplement the standard anthologies I have used. The compiled text contains the 1556 Norwich Mayor's Pageant from REED Norwich 1540-1642 (38-43) that all students read in conjunction with the play, Respublica. I place on reserve a copy of The Interlude of Wealth and Health, Albert Feuillerat's Documents Relating to the Revels at Court, W.R. Streitberger s Court Revels, and a copy of REED Norwich. In the list of potentially useful resources attached to the course syllabus I include a special section on the Marian period that supplements more general texts listed elsewhere (including all of the REED volumes). This is one of three sections in the course from which students are asked to choose a topic on which they will prepare a ten-minute presentation: (1) the Norwich waits, (2) Norwich during the reign of Mary, (3) events and circumstances surrounding the performance of Respublica, (4) Mary's court and Privy Council, (5) Marian martyrs and the circumstances of their execution, (6) royal performers under Mary and their travels, (7 & 8) The Interlude of Wealth and Health (two presenters).

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The Marian presentations are intended to augment the readings assigned for the whole class and inform discussion of the role of writers, performers, and performance within the power structure of the period. At least half of the topics require direct use of REED Norwich and/or other records sources, and I contribute materials (especially maps) derived from my own research on the period. The presentations on Mary's court and Marian martyrs also frequently draw first-hand from documentary evidence and REED. With the latter topic, for instance, I usually encourage the student to have a look at records in REED Coventry relating to John Careles, the martyr who was temporarily released from jail in 1556 so that he could play in the city's pageant (207-8, 569-70). These two topics in particular provide an opportunity for students from History and sometimes Religious Studies to shine. Mary's volatile but comparatively short reign also makes for an assignment easily contained within approximately three hours of class time. Again, this assignment generates interest in the use of documentary evidence and opens doors to broader theoretical and critical discussions and research. Some students have expanded their presentation topics into final papers comparing their findings with respect to a particular Marian text and records with texts and records from another period. These examples of the ways in which I use REED demonstrate how to adapt them to give students experience working with documentary evidence at all undergraduate levels. Because of their innately cross-disciplinary and culturally wideranging nature, REED publications can appeal to students from a variety of program backgrounds, interests, and expertise. Beginning students from all disciplines require a narrowly focused topic and/or set of questions, a limited and specific selection of records, and direct assistance in reading and translating them. Intermediate students may be able to take more responsibility for interpreting the records themselves, but they need careful guidance so that they understand the nature of the archival material and the REED volumes and something of the local and theatrical context to which they relate. In particular, they need to be walked through the various levels of the volumes' apparatus. Senior undergraduates, however, can take responsibility for contextualizing the records and for synthesizing them with other primary and secondary material. They can also be expected to work with a broader selection of records and undertake more detailed and critical analysis. In honours and graduate-level seminars on medieval and early modern drama and theatre, I discuss REED in the first class as I introduce the bibliography, but after that I expect students to consult REED and other primary sources as a matter of course as they prepare their seminars. Depending on the topic, I expect extensive use of records and detailed analysis of them as part of their presentations. I encourage students who have a problem using the records to meet with me, but most students seem capable of working with them without any special

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assistance. Here in Regina, however, honours and graduate students in English are required to take a bibliography course for which I have given guest lectures on my area of research. I spend as much as an hour and a half talking about my research and more generally about work with archival materials. Because a discussion of REED is always part of that presentation, those students become familiar with the editorial project via another course in their program. At all levels, I would say that REED material becomes most meaningful, interesting, and therefore successful as a teaching resource if it is connected to something: dramatic texts, socio-cultural context, live performance for postmodern as well as early English audiences, and real research interests and enthusiasm. For me, all of these connections are also the components of strong research, and it is through the 'frosted glass door' which opened this essay that I also wish to conclude it. At least at my own institution, performance review criteria and university planning documents pay much lip service to the important connection between research and teaching. The day-to-day reality experienced by most faculty, however, is that teaching is a major impediment to research. For most of us charged with teaching a full load of courses from the introductory to honours and graduate levels, it is difficult to give students the experience of doing 'real research' and communicate an infectious enthusiasm for our own research area if we are struggling just to find a few hours to work on that research. The problem of finding time and focus is compounded for researchers like myself, who must teach a broad range of introductory as well as senior courses outside their research specialty. Fortunately, I have been able to teach in departments that have given me considerable latitude in developing the content of courses and regular access to senior courses in my research area. Fortunately, as well, my teaching career has coincided with the evolution of a growing list of REED publications that have made it easier for me to open that 'frosted glass door' and draw students into the world of archival research which first inspired me to become a theatre historian and university teacher.

NOTES 1 I use the video of this production rather than that of the 1998 production because I was personally involved in the earlier production and can augment it with anecdotal information about how aspirations to incorporate some elements identified in REED materials ultimately failed to be realized. This makes it easier to discourage an assumption that the video version is definitive and encourage critique and comparison with the students' work. 2 The next time I teach this class I intend to experiment with having students act out the incident by taking the parts of the principal figures involved in the affray.

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Appendix: Assignments STUDIES IN THEATRE OF THE MIDDLE AGES Angels and Devils, Our Contemporaries?: Medieval Theatre, Then and Now Theatre 351English 327 Instructor: M. Blackstone Department of Theatre, University of Regina Oral Presentation Assignment Students will make one presentation (of no more than 10 minutes) on a topic chosen from either Group #1 or Group #2. Students will be graded on their oral presentation and need not provide a written text of the presentation to the instructor. Given the nature of the REED materials, students may assist with the clarity and effectiveness of their presentation by preparing overheads or a handout for the class citing key records to be discussed (and any necessary glosses/translations) and, possibly, noting major points to be made in the presentation. Students must fully document their sources by reference to A List of Works Consulted (including all visual, electronic, and print sources) that will be made available to all members of the class (the instructor will provide photocopies of handouts if she receives them no later than three days in advance of the presentation). Presenters should encourage and be prepared for questions and related discussion following their presentation, and other students should be prepared to ask questions and participate fully in discussion. The quality of participation in discussions relating to the work of other presenters will be a factor in each student's presentation mark. Other factors will include accuracy and attention to detail, presentation and analysis of specific examples, the quality of insights derived from the records, clarity and organization, the scope of material consulted, and the student's ability to synthesize it within the requested time frame. GROUP #1 Students will report on some aspect of medieval entertainment records as published in the REED series. The presentation will demonstrate a familiarity with the relevant records as well as (depending on its relevance to the topic) the local geographical and historical context and/or the wider social/cultural and/or performance context. Other primary and secondary material may be consulted beyond the REED volumes, but the focus of the presentation should be clearly grounded in an analysis of REED documents. Once students have identified records from a REED publication of interest to them, they should meet with the

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instructor who will provide guidance in identifying other relevant material and in focusing the topic for presentation. Given the fact that medieval performance practices carried on beyond the fifteenth century and REED volumes cover all early periods up to 1642, students may, after consultation with the instructor, wish to incorporate sixteenth-century records into their research. All presentations should be well organized around a clear thesis. Supporting audio-visual materials are welcome, but students should make certain that their presentation is adapted to the time allotted. GROUP #2 Students will do an in-depth study of The Last Judgement from the York Cycle, the Mercers' Pageant documents (both included in the course text) and related contemporary materials in order to reconstruct a fifteenth-century production of the play in York. Renderings and/or maquettes of the design element in question are a requirement. Fabric swatches are desirable but not required. Students are assured, however, that relative artistic skills and talent will not be factors in the grading. In designing set, costumes, and properties, students should include only those items specifically referred to in the inventory or accounts - unless they wish to argue for reasons why the item would not have been referred to in those documents. For matters of style and design (particularly painting), students should be able to justify their choices on the basis of other contemporary textual or visual material and so use of these items in the presentation will also be necessary. Students should note and attempt to resolve any discrepancies between apparent requirements in the text of the play and the contents of the inventory and accounts. PRESENTATION TOPICS: GROUP #2

• Identification of all components of the set and depiction of how the set might have looked and operated in 1433 and 1463. This should be done with reference to contemporary images of the Last Judgment, heaven, etc. Students will work in groups of two on this presentation topic only. • Identification and depiction of all elements of attire (including any makeup, wigs, masks, hand properties, etc.) for God and Jesus with reference to contemporary images and descriptions of these characters • Identification and depiction of all elements of attire (including any makeup, wigs, masks, hand properties, etc.) for the Angels with reference to contemporary images and descriptions of these characters • Identification and depiction of all elements of attire (including any makeup, wigs, masks, hand properties, etc.) for the Apostles and relevant Saints with reference to contemporary images and descriptions of these characters

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•Identification and depiction of all elements of attire (including any make-up, wigs, masks, hand properties, etc.) for the Devils with reference to contemporary images and descriptions of these characters •Identification and depiction of all elements of attire (including any make-up, wigs, masks, hand properties, etc.) for the good and bad souls with reference to contemporary images and descriptions of these characters

4 Teaching without Texts: Early English Drama for Performance Studies Students MARGARET ROGERSON and BETSY TAYLOR

In 1982, Alexandra Johnston, Director of the REED project and a tireless promoter of the academic utility of the material in the REED volumes, posed the question 'What if no texts survived?' at a symposium at Western Michigan University. The essay published in 1989 under the same title argued that those dramatic texts that have by chance survived represent only a small part of the history of medieval and early modern drama and that we can conjure up much more and a much greater variety of dramatic activity — by studying the records made available through the ongoing REED series. The paucity of dramatic texts is indeed lamentable, but subsequent developments in the REED project suggest that, besides adding to the corpus of published records, the efforts of the REED editors may also, over time, increase the stock of literary remains. The experience of Elizabeth Baldwin, who unearthed a seventeenth-century comedy in her search for documentary material for REED Cheshire, gives us hope that more texts may have survived than previously thought possible. In this essay, we give an account of our experience in developing a teaching segment in an environment that was, in traditional terms, textless. The apparent dilemma of teaching students about early English drama without literary texts can, with the help of the REED volumes, become a creative opportunity. Theoretically, of course, nothing is more daunting for teachers of early English literature like ourselves than the thought that our students have not and will not read those precious literary texts that are available to us. In the Department of English at the University of Sydney, we have over many years taught early drama to textbased students, relying on published anthologies or our own in-house collections of literary materials. In the program that we are describing here, however, there is no expectation that the students will read any of the plays to which an individual lecturer might refer; in fact the program deliberately sets out to explore the concept of theatrical performance with only passing reference to literary texts.

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For seven years (1997-2003) we have participated in a survey course conducted outside the English Department and designed for students in a specialist Performance Studies program at the university.1 The course, PFRM 2001: Histories of Theatre and Performance, is a core requirement for all students in the program. Some of the undergraduates who take this program may aspire to become actors or to be involved in other work in the theatre industry, but a high percentage of them will probably go on to teach drama at secondary school level.2 The lecturers for the course are drawn from a variety of sources: some are based in the Department of Performance Studies itself, others in the Faculty of Architecture and in departments within the Faculty of Arts that teach some elements of performance, drama, or theatre history, such as Classics, French, German, History, Italian, Music, Southeast Asian Studies, and English. The course is designed to situate Western theatre practice in a wider performance context and to introduce students to key periods in the history of theatre and performance and to the forensic nature of performance reconstruction. The aim is to develop an understanding of theoretical and methodological issues arising from theatre historiography and intercultural studies. The focus is on source material other than play texts. Early English drama is presented in two one-hour lectures that we deliver, and a one-hour tutorial conducted by staff from the Department of Performance Studies. All lecturers in the course are asked to provide two 'readings' to be used as a basis for the tutorial program, and in the past we have used, with some success, William Tydeman's An Introduction to Medieval English Theatre' and Peter Meredith's 'Putting on Plays in the Fifteenth Century.' Clearly, only the essentials can be touched on in such a restricted teaching time frame. We are aware of the danger of overgeneralization and are, at the same time, determined to offer a broad and glittering view of the early theatre that will not be overshadowed by the grand panorama of the Shakespearean theatre that the students will encounter elsewhere. In our experience with this course so far, we have been concerned primarily to dispel the unhappily widespread notion that English theatre began with Shakespeare and that any dramatic activity before the late sixteenth century was quaint, primitive, or folksy. We endeavour to direct the imaginations of the students away from London and the Globe to the provinces and to the professional theatre world outside the capital. The students who come into the Performance Studies program do not necessarily have any firm grounding in English literature or social, cultural, or political history. Many of them, for example, are surprised to learn that purpose-built theatres only began to appear in London in the late sixteenth century and that these theatres were closed in 1642. These are gaps that we have taken into account in the lecture presentations over the past few years.

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In 1997 and 1998 the REED volumes provided a good deal of colourful material for the lectures, as did the vituperative effusions of the antitheatrical tracts of William Prynne, among others, and visual materials collected by scholars like Clifford Davidson, especially his Illustrations of the Stage and Acting in England to 1580. We attempted to map out the range of dramatic activities documented by REED and thereby to expand the notion these students have of 'the dramatic.' Similarly, we used photographs and videos of modern performances of medieval plays to stimulate thinking about performance spaces and techniques other than those already familiar to our students. By the end of the 1998 program, we decided that it was time to change the format of our presentation; we wanted to be more than an interesting curiosity in a series of guest lecturers. We felt that our method of giving information was not provoking the level of student interaction with the source material that we believed possible. We were also conscious of the fact that it is not enough to provide what we think the students need to know; we must also respond to what they want to know. To this end, we asked students enrolled in the course in 1998 to complete a survey (see Appendix I) that was designed to elicit a course content wish-list, as well as to assess the level of satisfaction with the current contribution from the English Department. Because we were intending to use REED as the basis for meeting this wish-list, we confined student choices to areas that the published volumes could cover. In a section of the survey, following the customary teacher-assessment oriented questions at our institution, we asked students to indicate whether they were interested in knowing more (in a numbered range from 1 'yes, a lot' to 5 'not at all') about a series of topics, all of which we had touched on in the lectures. The question was as follows. Would you like to know more about the following aspects of early English drama? • acting styles • civic involvement in theatrical activities • costume design • costume materials and fabrication • financing of plays • lighting • liturgical drama • modern productions and adaptations • music • performance spaces • professional and amateur players

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• scenery • secular dramatic activities (mummings, May games, Robin Hood plays, etc.) We chose the topics to give us a clearer knowledge of areas that we might modify or expand in future teaching. When we looked at the results, we were also alerted to those areas that seemed important to us, but that the students we had taught valued less highly, such as civic involvement, the financing of plays, and other performance events. Because we see as a priority the contextualization of early English drama and performance practices within the medieval community, we determined that we would, in future, attempt to present the social dimension in such a way as to convince the students of its significance. Lists of expenses, for example, although they may seem mundane, even trivial, show the worth that the community attached to these enterprises, but, as teachers, we needed to learn how to introduce the appropriate topics and direct students to source material in an effective and enjoyable way. Even for a constituency as specialized as Performance Studies students, it is important to break down the unexamined, unexpressed preconceptions about the nature of theatrical activities as separate from the community as a whole. One of the expressed aims of the PERM 2001 program is to encourage students to contextualize current Australian practices that are familiar to them across the broad spectrum of performance modes provided in the lectures. Increased familiarity with medieval theatre could be extremely effective in breaking down the perceived barriers between high art and popular theatre. When we put together our survey, we asked students to indicate whether they knew anything about early English drama before beginning the course, thinking that there might be some significant variation in their responses that could be linked to their degree of prior knowledge of the area. As it turned out, there was none, but the students expressed an interest in all the topic areas on the list, which encouraged us to take the matter further. Overall, the students asked for a good deal more discussion of the following: • modern productions and adaptations • music • acting styles The second priorities were: • performance spaces • scenery • costume design

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• professional and amateur players • secular dramatic activities (mummings, May games, Robin Hood plays, etc.) Last on the list were: • • • • •

civic involvement in theatrical activities lighting liturgical drama financing of plays costume materials and fabrication

The results were, to a large extent, unsurprising. Students in this course are naturally interested in approaching the history of the theatre from where they are now and from the point of view of contemporary performance practice. This is indeed one of the forensic aspects of current scholarship that is opening up new ways of understanding the early drama, as stressed by a number of contributors to The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre, in particular John Marshall. In planning ways to strengthen our contribution to this course, we considered feedback from students reported by the Performance Studies tutors, as well as survey findings. In a previous year, we had introduced students to Philip Butterworth's suggestions about acting styles that may have been suited to the performance space available in the narrow streets of medieval York. In one of the lectures, students were asked to take roles in the York Crucifixion and to experiment with a short section of the text to try to recreate the actor/audience dynamics of Butterworth's theory. The tutors reported a high degree of student interest in and satisfaction with this approach. Clearly, personal involvement and practical demonstrations are appropriate pedagogical methods in the context of a course of this kind. Fortunately, recent, well-filmed video records cater to the enthusiasm for modern production. We have used the video records of the 1998 wagon productions of the York Cycle in Toronto and York, and the 2002 York Guild production to good effect.3 The only disadvantage of this captivating material is that it could tend to confirm the impression that wagon performance of biblical plays was 'the theatre' available to the English audience before the age of Shakespeare. The York videos expose students to a modern record of experimentation with only one form of medieval theatre, specific to one particular place. To avoid overemphasis on the York phenomenon, we decided to present the students with a selection of materials from the REED volumes to use in their tutorial program as a supplement to the lecture survey of the range of theatrical

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activities of the period. While continuing to refer the students to the Tydeman article in the lectures and in their recommended reading list, we proposed to replace it as a tutorial 'reading' with our own short anthology of extracts from the REED volumes. As part of the tutorial exercise, tutors were able to direct students to the anthology as a base from which to develop their own imaginative recreation of the medieval theatre. We designed the anthology to be similar to Peter Meredith and John E. Tailby's collection of documentary material for the study of European medieval and early modern theatre, although on a much smaller scale. This project, admittedly, produced a collection of extracts from what are already collections of extracts, and we might well be accused of decontextualizing the material too much and running the risk of creating false impressions. In our approach, we are mindful both of these inherent dangers and of the needs and interests of our constituency. These are not scholars who expect to use the material to write a history of the early English theatre; they are, rather, specialist undergraduate students concerned to understand theatre practice in previous and present times. We stress to them that the information that we are giving them applies to particular places at particular times and that a full interpretation of the material - far outside the scope of their own endeavours in the course - would require careful attention to time, place, and social and political conditions obtaining in that place and at that time. We also direct those who are interested in exploring the topic further to the modernized spelling texts of the York and Chester plays, which they can read alongside the extracts from the REED volumes in the anthology, and to a bibliography of recent scholarship. From the material in their tutorial classes, we asked the students to try to derive some idea of medieval and early modern practices. Below we demonstrate the effectiveness of the REED material and our approach by presenting some of the details of the anthology that we developed based on the topics listed in the 1998 survey, describing how we used it in 1999 and 2000, and explaining how we modified our practice in 2001. As a result, we continued to cover the topic area of 'modern productions and adaptations' in the lectures, with extracts from video recordings that students can view more fully at their leisure in the library. In addition we drew greater attention in the lectures to survivals in modern performance practices and activities that appear to reflect elements of early performance, such as processional and outdoor performances in Sydney, the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade, and current liturgical practices of the churches. We touched on other survey topics in the lectures and developed them in the tutorial by structuring the student discussion around our anthology of REED extracts. We tailored the anthology for students at the undergraduate level. We also encouraged interested students to explore the REED volumes further for them-

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selves. Our immediate aim was to introduce students to the discipline of scholarly interpretation of documentary material. The REED material, though not quite unprocessed, is very much rawer than the type of material they are likely to encounter in their general textbooks on theatre history. We envisaged the events and experiences of early performances located in a past of their own, distinct from a manufactured past that fits in with notions of inevitable evolution. Much of our interpretation of this past is a connecting of the dots, a pattern of reconstruction linking moments of concrete documentary evidence. It is important for the students to become aware of the kind of material that forms the 'dots' of known fact and to encourage them to discover that other patterns of interpretation may be possible. Thus we hoped to arouse scepticism about glib and seamless accounts of the history and development of the English theatre. General Plan of the Anthology The entries selected from the REED volumes follow roughly the order of topics listed in the student survey. Entries in English are presented with modernized spelling, punctuation, and numeration, and brief glosses of difficult words and phrases. Those entries in Latin or French are presented in the translated versions provided in the volumes. A brief account of the documentary sources is included with the extracts. As an adjunct to the REED material, we now include an historical time line to help students locate, for example, major political and cultural events, last known performance dates of 'medieval' plays and developments such as the building of permanent playhouses in London. List of Extracts from REED and Accompanying Introductory Remarks In the anthology we give the extracts in full. Here we give only the REED references. 1. Acting styles There is no concrete evidence about performance styles favoured by medieval actors, but some starting points for theorizing are suggested by the following extracts. (1) REED YORK, HOUSE BOOKS (1476) 1:109, LL. 5-23.

While theatre criticism as we know it does not survive from this period, evidence from York suggests that there was an awareness of different levels of competence and ability among the players. It also shows one method used by the York city

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council, who had overall administrative control of the performance, for ensuring a high standard in the plays presented by the local guild groups on Corpus Christi day. (2) REED COVENTRY, CAPPERS' RECORDS (1534, 1554, AND 1555) 1534: 139, L. 29-140, L. 2.

1554: 198, LL. 6-16. 1555: 202, LL. 28-38. Records of payments to players are one indication of the value attached to performance. Where texts no longer exist, the relative amounts paid to different actors can give us some idea of the nature of the roles, their length, and importance. The enigmatic 'Mother of Death' appears to have been a relatively small part in the Coventry Cappers' play of the Harrowing of Hell and Resurrection of Christ. The change in payment for this role, from 4 d in 1534 to 8 d in 1555, may indicate a revision of the play and an enlargement of the part. With the exception of this role and those of the four knights, the payments to the other players are unchanged, despite the fact that the records are twenty years apart. (3) REED CHESTER, ROGERS' BREVIARY (1608-9) 247, LL.

6-32.

Self-consciousness about dramatic impersonation seems to be a postmedieval phenomenon. The impropriety of impersonating God that troubled later thinking about religious drama in England is not mentioned even in those antitheatrical works that have survived from the medieval period. Concern over this matter is evident, however, in the post-Reformation Banns of the Chester plays, recorded in the Breviary of Chester History of Archdeacon Rogers. The Banns defend the tradition of religious performance in the city and absolve the players of any blasphemy. (4) REED CAMBRIDGE, LIFE (AND DEATH) OF MR. SAMUEL FAIRCLOUGH (1614-15) 1:543, LL. 1-36; 544, LL. 6-14. Towards the end of the sixteenth century and in the early seventeenth century, there was a considerable feeling - and self-consciousness - about the propriety of young men playing female roles. The polarized responses to one young man's refusal to play a female role in a Cambridge college play reflect the great cultural changes that were taking place at this time. 2. Civic involvement (1) REED YORK, A/Y MEMORANDUM BOOK (1399) 1:11, LL. 2-23, TRANS. 2:697-8.

Large cities, like York and Chester, presented religious plays that involved the civic

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authorities and the citizens through their membership of recognized craft and professional guilds. The city, as a community, saw its honour involved in the presentation of the plays. God, community honour, and 'profit,' perhaps both worldly and spiritual profit, are integral to the event. (2) REED DEVON, ASHBURTON, ST ANDREW'S CHURCHWARDENS' ACCOUNTS (14871564) 17-30, TRANS. 330-8; SELECTED ENTRIES, INCLUDING SOME IN ENGLISH. No plays are known to have survived from the town of Ashburton in Devon. While Ashburton is not a major civic centre like York or Chester, records of payments kept by the churchwardens of St Andrew's church show an ongoing involvement in customary performance activities over a long period of time. (3) REED DEVON, MAYORS' COURT ROLL, EXETER (1413-14) 82, L. 29-83, L. 27, TRANS. 357-8. Exeter had a large-scale civic play that is now lost. It too was performed as an expression of the city's honour. On one occasion in the early fifteenth century, part of this play was omitted from the presentation. The blame for this was placed at the door of one John Benet, whose offence was interpreted as an insult to the honour of the whole community and as specifically directed against the mayor and other city officials. (4) REED CHESTER, EARLY BANNS (1539-40) 33, LL. 6-24; 38, L. 31-39, L. 9.

Civic pride and involvement are expressed in the Early Banns of the Chester plays. 3. Costume designs and materials (1) REED YORK, MERCERS' PAGEANT DOCUMENTS (1433) 1:55, L. 7-56, L. 3.

The York Mercers' 'pageant indenture' is an inventory of the possessions of the guild that could be used in the performance of their play in 1433. It can be read alongside the surviving version of the guild's play of the Last Judgement and is important for an understanding of scenic effects, such as the rainbow and the 'brandreth,' a device for transporting Christ between the higher level of heaven and the lower level of the earth. It also has a number of useful references to costume, including the 'sirk wounded,' which represented the wounded body of Christ, and double-faced masks for the devils. (2) REED COVENTRY, DRAPERS' ACCOUNTS (1567, 1572) 1567: 474, LL. 20-39. 1572: 259, L. 41-260, L. 4.

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The range of different fabrics and colours chosen for the Coventry Drapers' play of the Last Judgement, as well as the costs involved in the actual making of the costumes, give an indication of the care taken over the visual impact of the play-1 ers' garments on the sixteenth-century audience. (3) REED CAMBRIDGE, ST JOHN'S COLLEGE REGISTER OF INVENTORIES (1548-9)

1:159-62. (i) THE PREAMBLE OF THE 1548-9 INVENTORY, 159, L. 36-160, L. 2. (ii) SELECTIONS FROM 160-2, ESPECIALLY 162.

St John's College, Cambridge, had a strong tradition of theatrical performances, especially of Greek and Latin plays. Taking part in plays and in the composition and presentation of literary and rhetorical pieces, was mandatory for the students at this time (see the Queens' College regulations, below 9 (4)). The properties and costumes at St John's College were in the care of the Lord of Christmas, who was responsible for appropriate entertainments during the Twelve Days of Christmas. See also the references to making, mending, and washing costumes in 2 (2) above, REED Devon, Ashburton. 4. Financing of plays and other performance events (1) REED YORK, B/Y MEMORANDUM BOOK (1475) 1:105, LL. 7—11.

We would know very little about the style of performances in the medieval and early modern period if people had not been held accountable for the money spent on productions. Guilds responsible for civic plays required their members to contribute money, sometimes called 'pageant money' or 'pageant silver,' to help cover the expenses involved. (2) REED YORK, HOUSE BOOKS (1529) 1:249, L. 41-250, L. 2.

If guilds fell on hard times and were unable to meet production expenses on their own, they might enter into agreements with other guilds to contribute financially or hand over responsibility for their play entirely to another guild. See also the entry for the play called Fergus, 5 (2), (i), below.

(3) (i) REED NORWICH 1540-1642, CHAMBERLAINS' ACCOUNTS VII (1541-2) 6, LL. 19-38. (H) REED COVENTRY, CAPPERS' RECORDS (1584) 303, LL. 22-4 AND 303, L. 34304, L. 16. Meticulous record keeping helps us to form some idea of the expenses involved in preparing for performances and the kind of provision made for the performers.

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5. Lighting (1) REED SHROPSHIRE, BRIDGNORTH, MERCERS', DRAPERS', AND IRONMONGERS' COMPANY BOOK (1511-12) 1:16, L. 36-17, L. 12. Most of the plays and other performance events of this period were presented outdoors in daylight. Numerous references in the REED volumes to torches and candles appropriate for ceremonies and processions give an indication of the materials that could be used for artificial lighting. (2) (i) REED YORK, A/Y MEMORANDUM BOOK (1431) 1:47, L. 27-48, L. 8, TRANS.

2:732-3. (ii) REED COVENTRY, LEET BOOK I (1457) 37, LL. 2-7.

Problems arising from a lack of adequate light for outdoor performances are found in the records from York and Coventry. (3) (i) REED CAMBRIDGE, KING'S COLLEGE MUNDUM BOOK (1552-3) 1:179, LL. 278, TRANS. 2:1126. Cambridge college records have some interesting references to lighting for indoor performances, including one of a stage effect of lightning. (ii) REED CAMBRIDGE, STOKYS' BOOK (1563-4) 1:234, LL. 10-20.

A detailed record of stage illumination is found in the account of the entertainments provided by the scholars of King's College for Queen Elizabeth I on her visit to Cambridge in 1563—4. 6. Liturgical performance The REED volumes provide little detailed information about liturgical ceremonies, perhaps because these were a customary part of the church services and involved little additional expense. REED YORK, STATUTE BOOK (1220-5) 1:1, LL. 6-9, TRANS. 2:687-88.

York has an early record of liturgical practice. There are references in various volumes to the activities of boy bishops. These involve ceremonies associated with the services during the Christmas period and Advent, especially the feasts of St Nicholas (6 December) and Holy Innocents (28 December).

7. Music Records of payments to minstrels and other musicians occur frequently in the

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REED volumes. They convey the impression that music, in a wide range of forms, was a constant adjunct to official civic activities and an essential part of life in the great houses of England. It was integral to the services and ceremonies of the church and had an important role in secular and religious drama. (1) REED CUMBERLAND/WESTMORLAND/GLOUCESTERSHIRE, STAFFORD, HOUSEHOLD ACCOUNTS OF EDWARD STAFFORD, DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM (1503-20) 356-9, USing, for the Latin entries, the translations on 396-9 (selections, including the 1515-16 reference to the pageant in the interlude and the 1516-17 account for the morris dance).

The household accounts of Edward Stafford, duke of Buckingham, show how important musicians were, especially at times of feasting and celebration. (2) REED NORWICH 1540-1642, CHAMBERLAINS' ACCOUNTS DC (1588-9) 92, LL. 22-8 AND MAYORS' COURT BOOKS XII (1589) 93, LL. 23-35.

Sir Francis Drake's request for the town waits, the official musicians of Norwich, to go to sea with him on his voyage to Portugal in 1589 shows both the importance of music at this time and the esteem in which these men were held by their community and by others outside that community. Norwich had reason to regret the fame of their musicians as three of them died on the voyage. (3) REED COVENTRY, WEAVERS' ACCOUNT BOOK (1561) 218, L. 41-219, L. 15.

Payments for singers and the player of a portable organ are listed among other expenses for the Coventry Weavers' play of the Purification of Mary and Christ with the Doctors in the Temple. This is one of many recorded examples of the place of musicians in local playmaking. (4) REED CHESTER, CITY WAITS (1539-40) 43, LL. 9-25.

Musicians were a means through which civic honour could be expressed and, as in the case of theatrical events, their activities had to be controlled by local authorities. At Chester, it was found necessary to regulate the working hours of the waits, to ensure 'the worship and pleasure' of the city. 8. Performance spaces

The many different kinds of outdoor and indoor performance space listed in the REED volumes are a reminder that we should not be misled into thinking that there could be only one style of staging for each one of the various performance genres during this period. (1) (i) REED YORK, MERCERS' PAGEANT ACCOUNTS (1462) 1:95, LL. 3-23.

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Margaret Rogerson and Betsy Taylor (ii) REED YORK, MERCERS' CHARTULARY (1501) 1:188, L. 42-189, L. 11. (ill) REED CHESTER, CORDWAINERS AND SHOEMAKERS' RECORDS (1549-50) 49,

L. 30-50, L. 41 (SELECTED ENTRIES).

Pageant wagons, stages on wheels that were moved by men through the city streets, are well documented at York and Chester. (2) REED YORK, A/Y MEMORANDUM BOOK (1399) 1:10, L. 38-12, L. 9, TRANS.

2:697-8. At York, civic regulations governed the number and location of playing places in the city streets where the performances of the Corpus Christi play could be held. (3) REED COVENTRY, SMITHS' ACCOUNTS (1498) 91, L. 40-92, L. 2.

The Coventry Smiths' play of the Trial and Crucifixion of Christ seems to have been performed on a pageant wagon drawn by horses, perhaps because of the guild's association, as blacksmiths, with horses. (4) (i) REED NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE, SLATERS' ACCOUNTS: BRAND MS 10 (1568) 57, LL. 19-34.

(ii) REED NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE, MILLERS' ORDINARY (1669 COPY): ENROLMENT BOOKS (1578) 62, LL. 11-30. At Newcastle upon Tyne, portable stages, or pageant 'cars,' were carried instead of being wheeled around the town, possibly because of the steepness of the streets. Performances were apparently given at specified playing places. (5) (i) REED SHROPSHIRE, SHREWSBURY, MERCERS', IRONMONGERS', AND GOLDSMITHS' COMPANY BOOK (1555-6) 1:205, LL. 14-22. (ii) SHREWSBURY, DR. TAYLOR'S HISTORY (1568-9) 1:214, LL. 14-19. (iii) SHREWSBURY, THOMAS CHURCHYARD, THE WORTHIES OF WALES (1586-7) 1:243, LL. 1-20. Shrewsbury was noted for holding performances in a quarry. (6) REED SOMERSET, SOMERTON, ST MICHAEL'S CHURCHWARDENS' ACCOUNTS (1607-8) 1:220, LL. 5-10. At Somerton, the church 'house' (a building for the use of the parish) was used for performances. (7) REED HEREFORDSHIRE/WORCESTERSHIRE, DIOCESE OF HEREFORD, ARTICLES OF ENQUIRY OF BISHOP HERBERT WESTFALING (1592) 58, LL. 21-7.

Post-Reformation objections were raised against the use of churches or their precincts for unseemly activities, including plays.

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(8) (1) REED BRISTOL, WILL OF NICHOLAS WOOLFE (1613-14) 195, LL. 35-9, 196, L. 10-197, L. 4. (H) REED BRISTOL, WILL OF SARAH BARKER (1637) 242, LL. 8-11, 25~9. Bristol seems to have had two purpose-built playhouses in the early seventeenth century. 9. Professional and amateur players (1) REED CUMBERLANDfWESTMORLAND/GLOUCESTERSHIRE, GLOUCESTER, ACCOUNT OF ALMS,

EDWARD i (1283-4) 290, LL. 11-13, TRANS. 388. A thirteenth-century document records a gift to schoolboys for their performance of 'miracles' of St Nicholas.4 (2) (i) REED CAMBRIDGE, KING'S HALL ACCOUNTS 5 (1412-13) 1:19, LL. 22-7, TRANS. 2:1059. (ii) REED BRISTOL, MAYOR'S AUDITS (1535-6) 46, LL. 3-4. The records frequently refer to the hiring of professional entertainers for special occasions. (3) REED BRISTOL, MAYOR'S AUDITS (1540-1) 50, L. 42—51, L. 7.

The REED volumes contain many entries relating to the visits of travelling companies, which claimed noble or royal patronage. (4) REED CAMBRIDGE, QUEEN'S COLLEGE CODEX CHADERTONIANUS (1546) 1:147, LL. 16-30, TRANS. 2:1117-18 Amateur performances by the students at Cambridge were seen as a necessary part of the curriculum, as is evident in the statutes of Queen's College. See also 1 (4) above. 10. Scenery (1) REED YORK, HOUSE BOOKS (i486) 1:137, LL. 37-9, 139, LL. 26-40, 142, LL. 32-6. Records of royal entries provide information about spectacular scenic effects. (2) (i) REED COVENTRY, DRAPERS' ACCOUNTS (1565) 229, L. 30-230, L. 40 (selected items to show scenic effects in the Last Judgment play: raised platforms for the angels, hell mouth, and the three worlds to be set on fire). (H) REED CAMBRIDGE, QUEEN'S COLLEGE MAGNUM JOURNALE (1540-1) 1:120, LL. 34-7, 121, LL. 7-10, 16-17, TRANS. 2:1110.

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Lists of expenses for the plays also provide information about some of the devices and effects that were employed. See also 3(1) above. 11. Secular dramatic activities The REED volumes' contain many references to secular performance activities, some of them involving dramatic texts, and many that are unscripted, customary, and carnivalesque. (1) (i) REED BRISTOL, RICART'S CALENDAR (1478-9) 10, LL. 11-18. (ii)

REED LANCASHIRE, JOURNAL OF NICHOLAS ASSHETON OF DOWNHAM (1617-

18) 146, LL. 39-40. 'Mumming' is a broad term that could be used of scripted masques or as a general term for revelry, specifically while wearing a mask. (2) (i) REED SOMERSET, WELLS, CORPORATION ACT BOOK 2 (1497-8) 1:251, L. 38252,1.6, TRANS. 2:841. (ii) REED LANCASHIRE, BURNLEY, LETTER OF EDMUND ASSHETON TO WILLIAM FARINGTON (1580) 6, LL. 30-41. Robin Hood plays and games were popular and widespread during this period. Some references to Robin Hood, like the Ashburton one (above, 2 (2)), may refer to fund-raising activities by men dressed in Robin Hood or Little John costumes rather than dramatic performances. (3) (i) REED CUMBERLAND/WESTMORLAND/GLOUCESTERSHIRE, KENDAL, DIOCESE OF CHESTER: CONSISTORY COURT PAPER (1625-6) 201, LL. 11-25 (MAYPOLE AND CROSSDRESSING). (ii) REED CHESTER, MIDSUMMER GIANTS (1563-4) 71, L. 34-72, L. 14 (MIDSUMMER SHOW). (Hi) REED YORK, HOUSE BOOKS (1572) 1:369, LL. 1-20 (YULE AND YULE'S WIFE).

Seasonal celebrations frequently involved performance activities and theatrical devices. (4) (i) REED CUMBERLAND/WESTMORLAND/GLOUCESTERSHIRE, TEWKESBURY, LETTER FROM JOHN VEYSEY, BISHOP OF EXETER, AND OTHERS TO WOLSEY (1525-6) 335, LL. 13-24. (ii) REED LANCASHIRE, LIVERPOOL, TOWN BOOK 2 (1571-2) 39, LL. 21-8.

(iii) REED CHESTER, MAYORS' LIST 10 (1529-30) 26, LL. 29-30 and ALLEGED LETTER TO AN UNKNOWN NOBLEMAN FROM THE MAYOR AND CORPORATION OF CHESTER (1531) 484, LL. 8-12, 14-24.

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'Interlude' is a general term for a short dramatic performance and could be used of moral and religious plays or light, secular entertainments. See also Stafford, 7(1), above. Testing of the Anthology in Class 1999 and 2000 In 1999 and 2000 the anthology was used as a 'reading' in the tutorials. Its contents were mentioned briefly in the lectures but the students were left to explore its possibilities in the small-group teaching forum with the guidance of the Performance Studies tutors. This was a useful exercise from which we received feedback in the form of comment from the tutors and approaches from a small number of students looking for further assistance through private consultation. The material was, in general, well received, but there was clearly a need for more direction from us to facilitate the reading of the 'difficult' language of the extracts. Testing of the Anthology in Class 2001 By 2001, with an enrolment in excess of two hundred, we decided that it would be prudent to devote the first of our two lectures entirely to the anthology so that the students could be primed before going into the peer group tutorial discussions. Our aim was to reassure them through practical demonstration that it was worth tackling the 'difficult' language and that the sense of obscure passages could be achieved partly by reading them (theatrically) aloud. While still promoting the basic messages of our lectures in earlier years, we structured the hour around a performance in tandem of reading, explaining, and contextualizing the items of information in a selected number of the extracts. This exercise in decoding the REED materials was designed as a platform from which the tutors and the students could launch their own explorations and link the medieval practices with other lecture materials and with the concerns of the program as a whole. Following this change of procedure, it was time to take another formal student survey. In addition, we thought it appropriate to include a formal survey of the Performance Studies tutors who had been working with the anthology and who also, as part of their duties, regularly attended all the lectures in the program. The student survey was distributed through the tutors after the lectures and the tutorial discussion based on the REED extracts. Participation was optional and anonymous and we received a response from one third of the total enrolment. The questions asked of the students were:

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Margaret Rogerson and Betsy Taylor 1. Did you find the extracts from the Records of Early English Drama (REED) volumes in your course booklet helpful for your understanding of Early English theatre? Please circle one of the numbers (the range was from 1 'not at all' to 5 Very helpful'). (Space was left for any comments.) Response: 88% rated the helpfulness of the extracts at 3 and above. 2. Do you think you might use the REED volumes for further research into early drama (no/yes)? Response: 73% said 'yes' to the possibility of using REED volumes independently. 3. How difficult did you find the language of the extracts? The range was 1 'not at all' to 5 Very difficult.' Response: 65% rated the difficulty of the language at 3 and above. 4. Following the two lectures, were you surprised that there was so great an interest in the revival (and adaptation) of medieval plays in England? The range was from 1 'not at all' to 5 Very surprised.' Response: 68% rated their surprise at 3 and above. 5. Have you seen any productions of medieval plays (no/yes)? Response: 70% said 'no' they had not seen productions. 6. Would you be interested in taking part in productions of medieval plays (no/yes)? Response: 66% said 'yes' they would like to take part. 7. (This section invited general comments.) Response: 21% made written comments. These were all enthusiastic and covered issues such as ways in which they would like to participate in productions (as actors or backstage helpers), the content of the extracts themselves, and the way in which the medieval material fitted into PFRM 2001 as a whole.

Clearly, there is room for us to do more, especially in the area of facilitating access to the language of the extracts, although there is a willingness on the part of most students to persevere with it. In general, we were pleased with the response to our experiment in 2001 and felt that it improved on our previous method of leaving the students to make what they could of the raw extracts without specific guidance through the lectures. The short survey (Appendix II) we gave to the four Performance Studies tutors confirmed the student responses but also endorsed the REED material as an excellent pedagogical tool for stimulating student discussion. There were many details to grab the attention and break the ice — for example, the amount of money spent on drink at rehearsals, the blending of the sacred and the secular, and the unexpected sophistication of stage machinery. Although the tutors responded diversely to the individual points, there were two topics that stood out. One was the usefulness of the REED extracts for illustrating points relevant to

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the investigation of current theatre practice and theory; the other was the value of reading the extracts as an analytical exercise that illustrated the difficulties of recontextualizing source material from different times and different places. PFRM 2001 covers a number of theoretical approaches to theatre including those of Mikhail Bakhtin, Bertolt Brecht, Richard Schechner, and Victor Turner. The relationship of medieval theatre to such theories can be demonstrated readily from the base we have provided. In using the anthology with Performance Studies students, we envisaged that their reading of the REED extracts would encourage them to recreate their own impressions of the diversity of early theatre and recognize the wealth of documentary resources available to them. While this project is designed to use REED to facilitate teaching without play texts, we believe that it can also be accommodated to text-based programs and can be incorporated into our existing in-house anthology of early drama texts that includes examples of liturgical plays, Robin Hood plays, and royal entertainments, as well as biblical dramas. The annual request for our participation in the program attests to the success of our approach and the effectiveness of the REED anthology as a teaching device. As current convener of PFRM 2001, Dr Ian Maxwell puts it: The medieval material ... keeps coming back as a critical component for a number of reasons. Most importantly, we feel that it is the most useful material for us to frame the question of historiography of performance, as well as providing an important link between theories of ritual and the emergence of 'theatre' in the West.5

NOTES 1 We are grateful to Dr Ian Maxwell and Dr Paul Dwyer from the Department of Performance Studies for their support in the preparation of this paper. PFRM 2001 has been retitled 'Being There: Theories of Performance.' We gratefully acknowledge Professor Alexandra Johnston's permission to use REED material for our pilot project. 2 A major in Performance Studies is a prerequisite for students intending to take Drama as a subject in a Diploma of Education or Master of Teaching program at the University of Sydney. In 1998, 240 students were enrolled in Histories of Theatre and Performance. Information about the Department of Performance Studies is available on the internet at http://www.arts.usyd.edu.auw/departs/perform/index.shtml. 3 The entire York Cycle, organized by the PLS, was presented at four stations in Toronto on 20 June 1998. In York, eleven plays from the cycle, with Jane Oakshott as Executive and Artistic Director, were performed at five stations on 12 July 1998.

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4 In the translation provided in REED Cumberland/Westmorland/Gloucestershire (388), 'clericis ludentibus miracula sancti Nicholi' is given as 'to the clerics playing the miracles of Saint Nicholas' (the problem of identifying these 'clerics' is discussed by Peter Greenfield in the Endnotes on 421-2). However, the translator, Dr Abigail Ann Young, has communicated to us that she now considers that clericis refers to boys attending a school attached to a monastic establishment. 5 Email correspondence with Margaret Rogerson, 22 January 2002.

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Appendix I

Department of English Survey for Performance Studies Students 1998 (PFRM 2001) Thank you for agreeing to fill in this survey. It will be a great help to us in the planning of early Drama teaching. 1. Did you know anything about early drama in England (before Shakespeare) when you began this unit of study? Please circle one of the numbers: a lot 1 2 3 4 5 nothing 2. If you did have some knowledge of early English drama: (a) Had you previously taken one of the English Department courses in early drama? yes no (b) Are you currently enrolled in ENGL2007: Drama: Classical to Renaissance? yes no (c) Did you have a specific interest in early drama before you began this unit of study? Comments? 3. Before you began this unit of study, were you conscious of a distinct division between medieval and Renaissance drama? yes no 4. Has the early English drama component of this unit of study modified your understanding of the history of English theatre? Please circle one of the numbers: a lot 1 2 3 4 5 not at all Comments? 5. How much has a knowledge of early English theatre contributed to your understanding of postmedieval drama? Please circle one of the numbers: a lot 1 2 3 4 5 not at all 6. Was the knowledge of early English theatre helpful for: (a) Shakespeare yes no

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(b) Other Elizabethan and Jacobean drama? yes no (c) Twentieth-century theatre (e.g., Brecht)? yes no Comments? 7. Would you like to know more about the following drama? Please circle one of the numbers. • acting styles yes, a lot 1 2 • civic involvement 1 2 in theatrical activities • costume design 1 2 • costume materials 1 2 and fabrication • financing o f plays 1 2 • lighting 1 2 • liturgical drama 1 2 • modern productions 1 2 and adaptations • music 1 2 • performance spaces 1 2 • professional 1 2 and amateur players • scenery 1 2 • secular dramatic activities 1 2 (mummings, May games, Robin Hood plays, etc.)

aspects of early English 3 3

4 4

5 5

3 3

4 4

5 5

3 3 3 3

4 4 4 4

5 5 5 5

3 3 3

4 4 4

5 5 5

3 3

4 4

5 5

not at all

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Appendix II

Department of English Survey for Performance Studies Tutors 2001 (PFRM 2001) We would be very grateful for your feedback on student reactions to the Records of Early English Drama extracts used in tutorials. 1. How did your students react to the extracts from REED? Liked them Disliked them Indifferent? Comments? 2. What kinds of discussion did the extracts provoke?

5 Using REED Chester for Classroom and Performance STEPHEN F. PAGE

With the intention of demonstrating both the variety and vitality in medieval and early Renaissance drama, I determined to use REED volumes as much as possible in my graduate course in medieval drama at the University of Hawai'i. The class texts ordered for the course, English 675, were David Bevington's venerable Medieval Drama, the collection of essays edited by Richard Beadle in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre, and David Mills's modernizedspelling edition, The Chester Mystery Cycle. The course was designed to follow the sequence of readings in Bevington's anthology: liturgical drama, English cycle plays, noncycle plays, and Tudor interludes, with the last class devoted to an informal discussion of the native elements in two well known, frequently taught Renaissance plays, Marlowe's Dr. Faustus and The Jew of Malta. The course sought to examine all of these dramas as literary texts and dramatic records, concerned with character, structure, theme, iconography, and performance possibilities; to read either one of the English cycle plays (York Plays or Chester Mystery Cycle) or biblical play compilations (Towneley or N-Town Plays) in its entirety; and to perform publicly a play from the selected group of plays, in this case The Coming of Antichrist from the Chester Mystery Cycle. In deciding on a group of plays to read and from which to select a play to perform, I chose the Chester Mystery Cycle for two reasons: (1) accessibility of its Renaissance English both for my students, and the potential audience of the play and (2) its definite original locale with a large number of records relevant to its performance. This choice, of course, meant that students were studying works that could have been performed as late as 1575, a date which brought the cycle within a reasonably familiar sphere of reference, that is, within Shakespeare's lifetime. Eight students, mostly first-semester MA candidates, enrolled in the course. They all had taken an undergraduate Shakespeare class, though only one student

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in the class had anything more than the basic introduction to medieval literature through a standard English literature survey. None of the students were committed to medieval, Renaissance, or drama studies as a focus of his or her graduate work. The class met once weekly except during the last quarter of the semester, when additional meetings took place for play rehearsals. In the first class meeting, I presented a brief explanation of the purpose, content, and editorial apparatus of the REED volumes and assigned each of the eight students in the class one of the collections of records in the series on which to report, beginning the third week of the semester. Excepting REED Chester — for reasons I will explain later - the first reports scheduled were those with records of the major civic Corpus Christi plays: REED York, Coventry, and Newcastle upon Tyne, followed by reports in succeeding weeks on REED Cumberland/Westmorland/Gloucestershire, Devon, Lancashire, Herefordshire/Worcestershire, and Shropshire. The library lacks REED Norwich 1540—1642 and Cambridge, but these, or the volumes in the Malone Society's Collections series, could also be assigned. The first reports, those on REED York, Coventry, and Newcastle upon Tyne, followed two weeks of class readings and discussions of liturgical and twelfth-century church drama and coincided with the beginning of discussion of the plays in Mills's and Bevington's editions and with appropriate readings in Beadle's anthology. Students were asked to read the introductory material in their assigned REED volume, to examine the records for features that they found particularly interesting or curious, and to report their findings to the class. Reports were to be presented informally, about ten minutes long, roughly divided between comments derived from reading the editorial apparatus and the records themselves. As students made their reports, it was incumbent on classmates that preceded them to note similarities and differences with their own findings. The class discussions of the reports necessarily became longer as the semester progressed, but the extended time devoted to discussion was offset by a decreased need for my presenting background information. For example, the first encounter in the records with waits — official civic musicians, usually players of wind instruments, charged to perform at ceremonies and festivities — necessitated my general explanation of their function in the context of town life during the late medieval and early modern period. Students subsequently began to notice details of the waits' employment, such as their monopoly on wedding entertainment in Newcastle. The extensive and various dramatic performances from region to region were often a point of discussion as the reports progressed. The Corpus Christi/Whitsun plays received particular attention in the reports and discussion - focused as the class was on the plays of Chester, which became for the class the benchmark of dramatic activity. Students remarked at the variety of dramatic responses to the Corpus Christi impetus, ranging from the elaborate civic performances at Chester,

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York, Coventry, and Newcastle, to Kendal's very late (1601), stationary guild pageants, and Hereford's twenty-seven pageants, perhaps tableaux. These were contrasted with apparent non-cyclical productions, such as Worcester's five Corpus Christ! pageants, three presented on Corpus Christi Sunday, the remaining the following week. Also gaining students' attention were single performances of plays on topics different from those of biblical or Passion plays, such as Shrewsbury's irregularly presented Whitsun plays, which offered saints plays, a Passion play, and the lost play of Anot andMagot (REED Shropshire 1:205, 2:318-19). These kinds of juxtapositions help draw forth critical understanding of the production of religious drama. Students began to notice the variety of organization, commitment to, and control of performance or entertainments. They took notice of staging details, an element of production stressed in the class discussions and augmented by an extensive slide collection of the Chester Mystery Cycle, and the Towneley and N-Town Plays performed at the University of Toronto in the 1980s. For example, students noticed unique staging practices, such as Newcastle's response to terrain in the carrying of its pageant 'cars' by porters and the building of a sand embankment on which to rest the pageants; they recognized correspondences with present-day processionals in which large images of patron saints are displayed. As the class turned its attention from the REED volumes devoted to the records of the major towns to those of counties, the numbers of travelling companies impressed the students. They noted that at least some county towns could expect a number of visits from professional troupes in a given year and came to recognize that a town like Gloucester, which by 1585, when at least six patronized troupes performed, could have achieved considerable dramatic sophistication and that smaller towns on routes frequented by such troupes could also witness high-calibre performances. Students were also attracted by and curious about the folk drama, particularly Robin Hood plays. This interest was particularly apparent in the discussion of REED Devon, which seems to be more persistently specific in citing records of Robin Hood, as opposed to the more generic May games of other volumes assigned. Generally, the exercise in having students report on the REED volumes was successful in demonstrating the variety of drama available and its distribution according to population, with more densely populated centres enjoying spectacles of considerable magnitude and complexity in the two centuries before Shakespeare. Nevertheless, in spite of this general success, students were not as engaged with the REED volumes as I might have hoped. The kind of close examination of the particulars of the records, which would enable students to grasp the complex realities of the different circumstances - religious, economic, and political that promoted, impeded, and otherwise affected the production of dramatic

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activity was not taking place. Students overlooked details, such as those concerning the preparations for performances and costuming, and predominantly made more general observations. It was apparent from the first of these reports that students tended to rely on their reading of the introductory material more than on selecting and investigating interesting details from the records themselves. The key problem, as students later revealed, was the difficulty with the language. Because of their limited experience with late medieval and early modern English, students found the readings (even those in the Bevington and Mills texts) difficult and hesitated to give the records a close examination. After the first presentations, I required students to consult with me prior to presenting their report so I could assess their comprehension and suggest topics deserving investigation in their assigned volumes. This requirement succeeded somewhat in eliciting more detailed examinations of those particular topics in individuals' reports, but the students listening to the reports and charged with comparing findings in their own volumes were generally at a loss when issues arose that were not addressed in the introductions to their volumes or were not topics to which I had directed them. In short, students did not come to 'own' their assigned volumes as I had hoped they would. None attempted to write a final paper focusing on the REED materials; all opted for a more traditional literary analysis of the plays. Because, of course, the REED volumes are not intended to be classroom texts, the problem the instructor must face is how to make the records of drama functional for undergraduates and beginning graduate students. My intention in designing the course was to have all students examine REED Chester after having had individuals report on other areas of the country, a plan which would make the discussion of the Chester records coincide with the class's preparations for the play at the end of the semester. In retrospect, and in planning to teach the course again, I would invert this progression and devote classes early in the semester to a directed examination and discussion of the Chester records, including the editorial apparatus of the REED volumes and the types of records (e.g., churchwardens, household, civic accounts) students are likely to encounter, as well as inform students about supplementary works that would aid independent investigations of their respective volumes. Given the disparity of linguistic experience between the editors of the volumes and some students, it is inevitable that the latter will encounter unfamiliar words for which there are no glosses. To ameliorate some of the problems students had already encountered and to engage in a more directed examination of the records, I developed a glossed version of REED Chester up to 1600 and assigned the students to write responses to study questions in preparation for their discussion in class. For the gloss, words that I anticipated would be difficult were annotated in

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the margin of a photocopied version of REED Chester. Even with senses and forms provided in the REED Chester English Glossary, distinctions between regularly occurring and significant words in the records can be daunting to students who have always read early English literature in modernized editions and with text and gloss on the same page. For example, beyrech (carriage or transport) and barage (drink money) display multiple, often similarly spelled forms — thirty for the former and seven for the latter, including the homographic form berage (228, 1. 32 and 326, 1. 30). On the other hand, the twenty fairly dissimilar forms of goodtides (Shrovetide) - including gated (52,1. 9), goutted (51,1. 13), orgowtyt (62, 1. 9) - can retard and frustrate a student's consideration of the content of the records. Generally, glosses were provided for the first several occurrences of a word and its various forms. I entered this glossed version (see Appendix I for a sample page) in the library's closed reserve along with Clopper s edition. Students' reactions to the gloss were universally positive, noting that they spent less time seeking words in the glossaries and could concentrate better on working with the records. In future renderings of the course, early attention to the kinds of language problems these students were experiencing, it is hoped, will enable other students to negotiate more easily, on their own, the records in other volumes. Obviously, making such a gloss for a number of volumes in the REED series, such as would have been necessary for the eight reports, would be a particularly time-consuming chore; it was practical in this case only because of the single volume involved. In a revised course, an early focus on the Chester records would also entail an introduction to the use of the OED for words that are not glossed, such as axel(l)tree, (axel; 53, 11. 17, 18 and 78, 1. 7); huddes (hoods, 81, 1. 32); bars (city gates, 121, 1. 20); suinge (accompanying, 70, 1. 11); and walshe (Welsh, 23,1. 32; the word could be found, however, in the REED Chester Index, where it is cross-referenced). Similarly, although the volume provides a useful drawing of the frequently mentioned Pentice (Ivii), the building annexed to St Peters Church and used for official civic functions, reference to the OED entry for penthouse provides a more useful explanation of its function than does REED Chester, which does not gloss the word. When students encounter unfamiliar and unglossed words, they can also be encouraged to seek similar records for clues because sometimes even the OED will not help. For example, a search in the OED on disk for the word bewes, as it appears in the REED Chester Smiths, Cutlers, and Plumbers' guild entry for 1574—5 — 'for making the bewes gowne 4 d for knetting of our bewes house tat Rid before vs at Midsamar viij d' (105, 11. 36-7) - will turn up the headwords bough and beau, neither one of which makes sense in the context of the record. The sense of the word can be clarified, however, by the guild's entry for the preceding Midsummer. The latter makes clear that bewes is boy's and bewes house is boy's hose in its report of expenses for 'a payre of hosse for

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him that ridd,' for 'makinge his apparell,' and for fetching 'gere for the child' (100, 11. 4—5, 10). In addition to an introduction to the OED, the conventions of early modern orthography should be explained. Students should be alerted to the interchangeable nature of /' and y, that u is often spelled v, that p and y can represent modern th, that ^represents modern F, and so forth. It is also useful to explain monetary denominations and their abbreviations. The study questions (Appendix II) were successful in getting students to delve into the details of the Chester records more thoroughly than they had with the earlier assigned volumes. For example, question 4 demands that students see that several Latin records concerning the rental of city property by craft guilds records which are not obviously connected with dramatic activities — do become significant if one considers those records from the point of view of later ones which explicitly indicate that the rental properties were being used for the storage of the guilds' pageant carriages. Similarly, part of question 9, which concerns an agreement between the guilds of the Vintners and Dyers, on the one hand, and the Goldsmiths and the Masons, on the other, requires students to understand the agreement - that these guilds would share the expenses and use of the carriage — and then to use the evidence of the Early Banns (1539—40) to discover that this arrangement worked because the parties involved put forth their plays on successive days of Whitsuntide. After this discovery, students were quick to point out that this pageant wagon would necessarily have to have been adaptable to different ornament and perhaps even different superstructure design to accommodate the Three Kings, Slaughter of Innocents, and Antichrist plays, respectively, and that crews would be busy striking and refitting the carriage between performances. Students' reactions to study questions were positive, and their ability to examine the material improved; they were relieved to have this kind of direction for confronting such an array of unfamiliar material as presented in the REED volumes. It still remains to be seen whether the skills learned in dealing with the study questions concerning the Chester records will be generalized and transferred to independent work on other volumes. Two additional points concerning the study questions are worth mentioning. Question 13 asks students to trace the procession that Rogers describes in his Breviary. Students were unable to do this because of the much reduced size of the map of Chester, reproduced from Civitates Orbis Terrarum, 1572—1618 (REED Chester Ixxiii); it is unreadable and can be used only for the most general orientation to city geography. Clearer, good-sized versions of a map are available in print and online and would seem to be a necessity in tracing processional routes, locating sites mentioned, such as the Roodee or Roode Eye - where a number of civic activities took place, including a 'triumph' of The History of Aeneas and Queen Dido (73,11. 13-14) - and getting a sense of the physical spaces and

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features of the town which performers and spectators had to negotiate. A larger rendering of the map is pasted in the back cover of Sally-Beth MacLean's Chester Art. Also useful is John Speed's early seventeenth-century map reproduced in Clifford Davidson's Illustrations of the Stage and Acting in England to 1580 (26). The low resolution of maps is a problem in the early REED volumes, but later ones contain specially commissioned maps; see for example REED Bristol (IxxxiiiIxxxvi). Finally, it should be noted that although other volumes of the series provide students with a list of saints' days and feast days, Chester does not (a partial list is supplied in Appendix IV). Students will necessarily have to become familiar with the revised edition of C.R. Cheney's Handbook of Dates for Students of English History. The results of my attempts to make REED Chester more readily accessible, that is, my adding the marginal glosses and study questions and supplying a better map, significantly improved the students' engagement with the Chester records in comparison with their work on the other independently studied volumes. Clearly, students had carried away some details of performance in Chester as revealed in the records. In overhearing my drama students speaking with students from the University of Hawai'i's Department of Theater and Dance (who likewise had little familiarity with early English civic plays) during rehearsals of the Antichrist play, I found they referred to the REED Chester records several times. On one occasion, one of the Theater and Dance graduate students indicated that we needed to rehearse several more times to 'get it right.' One of students from the drama class responded, pointing out that the guild records from Chester suggest that there were only a few rehearsals before the performance, and that our rehearsal schedule was not unlike that suggested by the Chester records. Unfortunately, and unlike the plays of the Smiths, the Cordwainers, the Painters, and the Coopers, no records of expenditures exist for the Dyers' Antichrist play. The play was chosen because of its spectacular qualities; because it provided a number of parts for inexperienced actors and afforded parts for some well trained and talented actors from the Theater and Dance Department; and because the thematic concern of good against deceptive evil, if not the precise subject matter, was accessible to its modern audience, in this case primarily of Asian and Polynesian ethnicity. In preparing a performance, one may wish to choose a play for which REED Chester provides little documentation. In the case of the University of Hawai'i Dyers' play, the instructor's primary goal was to use the production as a teaching tool that could provide a sense of what a fifteenthor sixteenth-century Chester production might have been like, as opposed to, for example, an indoor, modern dress, single performance. Other factors directed the choice of play, including student interest, acting and technical capabilities, and potential audience reception. In other circumstances, the selection

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of a play for which REED Chester provides extensive documentation could only enhance the classroom and performance experience. For undergraduate class work, one may wish to be more selective in assigning material from the REED volumes than was the case for this course. For example, one of Chester's guild accounts or the Early Banns can provide a great deal of material for discussion and paper topics. Or alternatively, the instructor may wish to assign particular topics to be addressed in a given class period, such as traveling companies, waits, May games and folk drama, school dramas, and so forth; students can study their respective volumes and compare their discoveries. With larger classes, students could be assigned to report on specific chronological periods, say twenty-five years, within the volumes. Such synchronic studies could thus focus coherently on what the records show was taking place in various regions of the country at a given time. Or alternatively, one might examine diachronically how the situation in any given place changed from one period to the next. The REED volumes can be a very effective teaching tool, but for many of our students — who have little background in the language and culture of late medieval and early modern England or in the use of documentary primary sources such as REED — we need to make accommodations for full effectiveness.

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Appendix I: Annotated expense list from REED Chester 1549-50 (49)

49 / C H E S T E R 1549-50 Item peyde to the wyettes of shorresbere xij d Item peyd to the menstreies that dey that wye toke in wyllyam leneker xij d

f 14

5

Item peyd ffor gleyves iij s iiij d Item peyd ffor beff & chesse vs Item spende at the [elc! eyldermans housse on ex wyenesdey ouer the shotte v s 10 Item sspende the thovrdey after viij s

f 14v Item spende at the good man hardborens on oure bretheren Item spende at wyllyam Rychardssons apon menstreies Item spend the same tyme to the wyettes of shuresbere Item peyde at wyllyam aucokes deyner . Item to the wyettes

xij d 15 viij d xij d vs viij d 20

Item spend at wysson tryde on the sumakers of shovressbere iij s iiij d Item spend ouer the shotte 'on' [si ssent martens even Item gcyven to the wyettes

iijs vj d 25

ff 16-16v* (Whitsun) Ihesu The expense to oure pley

30

Item peyd ffor Rcydeng the banes xix d Item peyd ffor a dosyn bordes to the carych ij s viij d Item peyde ffor ij plankes for lasses viij d Item payd ffor iij gyse & haffe a sper xij d 35 Item peyd ffor neyles viij d Item peyd ffor ffrcytyng of the weyles xvj d Item peyd ffor wryght notte & the beyrech iij s iij d Item peyd ffor iij strykc of wyete x s iij d Item peyd ffor ij eyrdes & a hauffe of flaxson clauth to make *$ meyre madelentes coute xxij d Item payd ffor bakyng of godes brcde iiij s viij d

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Appendix II: Questions for Investigating REED Chester 1 What evidence suggests that the date of 1268 for the beginning of the cycle plays in Chester and that a monk named Ralph Higden translated them into English is spurious? 2 What is the earliest date for which evidence of a Corpus Christi play in Chester exists? What is that evidence? Could plays have been going on before that date? If so, what makes you think so? 3 Other than the Corpus Christi plays, what other dramatic activities do you find prior to 1450 and in the periods 1451-1500, 1501-34, 1535-75, and 1575—1600? Which of these seem to be produced for special occasions and which are part of the regular cycle of festivities in Chester? Where are they performed? What does this tell us? 4 Beginning in 1437-8, a number of records indicate that guilds were renting land from the city and later (1538—9) from the Carmelite friars. Why has the editor of the Chester volume included these documents? Why are some of the guilds mentioned in official civic records but many others, which are known to have presented plays, are not? 5 What type of staging did Chester's pageants employ? What is your evidence for this? 6 What is the function of the minstrels? 7 Why do you think the city would prohibit people from going outside the city for weddings and ales, as indicated in the records for 1514-15? In what sense is the 'ale' being used here? (You may have to use the OED). 8 The year 1531—2 presents a number of interesting items, not the least of which is the order to bring the plays forth. How does this proclamation differ from the banns of the N-Town Playt What are the purposes of the plays according to this official city proclamation? How do these purposes compare with a strictly religious purpose? 9 What is the agreement reached between the Vintners, Dyers, Goldsmiths, and Masons? Consider your answer in light of the organization described in the Early Banns. Compare the Early Banns of 1539-40 with the information of

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the Assembly Files for 1531-2; what do you notice? How often are the Whitsun Plays performed? What would seem to be the atmosphere during the performance of the plays as indicated by injunctions? 10 What actually takes place on Corpus Christi Day? 11 Compare the list of plays in the Early Banns with the play performed in 1421 by the Ironmongers, the Carpenters, and the Fletchers, Bowers, etc. 12 Compare the Early Banns with those in Rogers' Breviary. What is the purpose of the introduction of the later banns? What changes do you note in the different descriptions of plays, and, most important, how do those descriptions compare with the plays you've read from the Chester Mystery Cycle? Is 'Whitsun Plays' an accurate term for the Chester Mystery Cycle? 13 On the map, trace the pageant procession that Rogers describes. How do the records of Smiths, etc., in 1560-1 appear to confirm this itinerary? How does this route compare with that of the Corpus Christi Day procession? 14 Describe the events that take place on Shrove Tuesday (10 January) involving the Drapers, the Saddlers, and the Shoemakers, and the reasons for changing these events. (See especially the record for 1539-40.) 15 Describe the duties and activities of the waits of Chester. Why is the circuit of the city that they follow important? Are the waits the same as the minstrels? 16 Describe the evidence for dramatic or semidramatic activities taking place within the Cathedral, and St Mary's, St Michael's, and Trinity Churches. 17 Review the accounts of the Smiths, the Shoemakers, and the Coopers, or the Painters and summarize their preparations for staging their plays. Compare the items that the guilds purchased with the plays as we have them. 18 What are the years for which we know the Chester Whitsun Plays were performed? Looking at the Mayor's List for 1571—2 and the Assembly Books for 1574-5, what seems to have brought about the end of the Chester plays? Why would the city magistrates have agreed to put on the plays, presuming that they knew of the sentiments of church officials in York and Canterbury?

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19 Read through the records and describe the circumstances of the Midsummer Show and Watch. Find evidence of the accuracy of Rogers's claims about the Midsummer Show: 'There hath binne taken awaye some thinges and reformed that weare not decente: wherein the wisedome and godlye care of those Magistrates that did remoue awaye thinges either sinfull or offensiue' (REED Chester 252,11. 26-9).

Appendix III: Map of Chester

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Appendix IV: Chester Records Saints Days and Feast Days Candlemas (Purification of the Virgin) Corpus Christi Day St Dunstan St Edmund St George Holy Innocents' Day St John the Baptist Lady Day (Annunciation) St Loy St Luke St Martin Midsummer Day Shrove Tide (Goodtides) Shrove Tuesday St Stephen Trinity Sunday Whitsunday (Pentecost)

2 February Thursday after Trinity Sunday 19 May 20 November 23 April 28 December 24 June 25 March -25 June (Translation) 18 October 11 November 24 June 3 days preceding Ash Wednesday Tuesday preceding Ash Wednesday 26 December Sunday after Whitsunday 7th Sunday after Easter

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SECTION III Critical Illumination: English Literature

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6 Using Historical Documents in the Literature Classroom: Elizabethan and Jacobean Church Court Cases ANNE BRANNEN

That primary historical documents can be useful in history classes seems obvious, at the college level certainly, though they have also lately been used at the secondary level and even in primary classes.1 They allow students to examine for themselves, and to judge as best they can, the sources used by scholars in creating history. That primary historical documents might also be relevant to literature classes is not inherently obvious. However, I do find them to be useful in drama courses, where I have been assigning entries from the Elizabethan and Jacobean church courts of Cambridgeshire in order to illustrate for my students how difficult it is to define 'drama,' thereby reinforcing for them the vexed relationship of the texts we study to the field of dramatic presentation at large. I have included historical documents in two separate courses, given over several semesters. One is a sophomore class on drama, which attracts both English majors and students using the course to fulfil liberal arts requirements; the other is a mixed senior and graduate class in medieval drama, which attracts, from the undergraduates, both English majors and education majors specializing in English literature. The entries that I use come from the Ely and Peterborough diocesan records.2 They consist of clerks' notes taken during the course of church trials, with occasional notes added later, and concern people from throughout Cambridgeshire who were presented to the court for allegedly breaking canon laws. I have in my possession a large collection of records of dramatic activity from these church court records, but the entries I use in class have been chosen precisely for their ambivalent relationship to dramatic activity, and are unusual records for documents of their type. In class, I present three entries, not in chronological order but in an order based on the questions they inspire (Appendix I). In the first case, from Haddenham, 1577, a Cambridgeshire man, Oliver Kette, is accused of not properly performing the penance prescribed for him after an earlier church court case — specifically,

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he is accused of 'making a game play' of penance. In the second, one of the examples of Cambridgeshire charivaris, several men from Waterbeaeh are presented for carting John Lawrence around on a pole, to the accompaniment of music and the throwing of grain. In the last, one Arche, a miller of Hinxton, is accused of getting extremely drunk, and going over to a house where the wife had just died, taking several of his drunken buddies with him, at which point the drunks pretended to be ghosts. For each of these entries I provide, besides the transcriptions, photocopies of the originals; though not necessary for my primary purposes, the unreadability of the originals, which are in secretary hand, as well as being full of Latin abbreviations, makes concrete for my students the trust that they put in the editors of their history and literature texts. The extent to which the documents are unreadable surprises them, and causes them to think about where it is that we get historical information, and who it is that deciphers it for us. And the exercise brings to the forefront of their minds the process by which their texts are written, and the kinds of decisions that go into the information they receive. I consider this a useful effect; nevertheless, it is not crucial, since the primary focus of the class is to look for some of the boundaries of 'dramatic activity.' I give this exercise, in either class, fairly early in the semester, two or three weeks in. By that time, the students in both classes are used to being asked to think about the works in our textbooks as scripts, representing the possibility of artistic fulfilment rather than its end, as well as to considering questions about the relationship of these scripts specifically to an attending audience and generally to a larger community. Nevertheless, enough of the semester remains so that the questions we consider in the exercise can be useful, carried in their minds while we read texts in the remaining weeks, and pondered over while studying for the midterm. In addition, the students in the medieval drama class will have previously discussed the unclear nature of the boundary between ritual and drama, and hence are familiar with the difficulty of defining dramatic activity, though this exercise will expand their notions of the difficulty. After handing out the copies and the transcriptions, I read them through with the class. I explain what the entries say, where they come from, and why the alleged behaviour was illegal in England at that time, and answer questions about the content of the entries. I then divide the class into small groups of four or five students and ask them to answer the question, 'Does this first activity - making fun of penance - represent dramatic activity?' I do not explain what I mean by dramatic activity; if they ask for a definition I tell them they need to define the term, that I would like to hear how they tackle the problem. After a few minutes of discussion in groups, I put the answers on the board. The example of 'making fun of penance' is usually decided fairly quickly. It has always seemed clear to my students that it does not represent 'dramatic activity.'

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It represents 'horsing around,' the sort of activity many of them might engage in themselves, with no thought that they might, in any way, be involved in anything associated with 'art.' The quality of Oliver Kette's penance has led the churchwardens of Haddenham to accuse him of making fun of the process; it is only, my students agree, a coincidence of language that the act has been likened to a 'game play,' which sounds to them not very much like a stage play anyway. Told that, at the time, the words 'game' and 'play' were nearly interchangeable, and that if the context was not clear they would have no means of telling whether the entry meant a game or a play or both, they are for the most part unimpressed. They can see that the entry might tell us something about the definition of these words and how they were used, as well as the attitude the churchwardens had towards plays, but consider that unimportant. I then ask them to answer my first question as applied to the charivari; does it represent dramatic activity? Although the first example seems to my students not to represent dramatic activity, the charivari generally does. Students in the medieval drama class, especially, are able to recognize the charivari as a form of ritual, and both classes note the presence of music, and the odd activity of 'throwing grains out of a pail,' which obviously has some sort of meaning to the community. In short, the incident seems to students to have some connection, even if slight, to dramatic activity, with a certain known structure, even if there was no written or memorized script. The last example brings up a great deal of controversy, providing the most, and the most fervent, disagreement.3 Many of my students feel very strongly that getting drunk and pretending to be a ghost should not be considered dramatic activity. They find it hard to explain why, though they often centre the difficulty on the issue of planning. The activity was not planned, they tell me, and unlike the charivari, doesn't represent a ritual commonly observed by the community. I ask if they would say that improvisational theatre is not dramatic activity. No, they say, improvisational theatre is drama, because you tell people ahead of time that you'll be improvising. I point out that we do not know that the ghosts did not announce at the inn where they got drunk that they were planning to go over to John Swan's house. But they could not have planned it for a long time, students counter. It could not have been announced more than a few hours ahead of time (especially since Swan's wife had only died that day). Well, I ask, how long do you have to plan an activity before you do it, to make it count as dramatic activity? Three months? A week? Five minutes? Where do you draw the line? The arbitrary nature of the objection becomes obvious. Other objections turn out to be arbitrary, as well. But there are always a few students at least who argue that the example does represent a dramatic activity, simply because these people were pretending to be something they were not. I ask if that means that children who dress up at

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Halloween are engaging in dramatic activity - this provides a contemporary example closely related to the one we are discussing. There is always much disagreement and discussion, but eventually almost all (though not completely all) of the students decide that both the contemporary child ghouls and the ancient adult ghouls perform some sort of dramatic activity - not one of high culture, certainly, but an activity that, even if at the low end of a spectrum, lies on a continuum of 'dramatic activity' nonetheless. When I then ask my students to go back to' the first example, wherein Oliver Kette made fun of the churchwardens and his penance, the answer that seemed so clear earlier is now more complicated for many of them. They can see that arguments could be made that the activity lies on the spectrum of dramatic activity. When then asked to decide what relationship these incidents have to the works in our textbook, the students can easily see that the scripts in the textbook represent evidence of activity from the high end of the spectrum, activities for which textual evidence exists. For the students in the drama genre class, this view of the breadth and variety of the field reinforces their understanding of one of their paper assignments, wherein they are asked to write about not the plot or even the acting of a production they see concurrent with the class, but about the effects of the production, and its interaction with the audience. It is an assignment they have never been given so far, and requires them to think differently about drama than they ever have - even the theatre students find this to be so. The exercise concerning the nature of dramatic activity helps to shake their minds up, so that they can more easily pay attention to aspects of a production they are used to ignoring. Indeed, much of my own work in both classes (and whenever I am discussing scripts) centres not on the language of the text, but on aspects of production. The 'dramatic activity' exercise helps here, too. The more the students can be encouraged to consider the three-dimensional, nonliterary aspects of theatre, the better off they will be, in my classes. In the sophomore drama genre class, as a cap to the activity, we turn to the introduction of the text we are using (which I will have chosen for the breadth of its selections and the truth and clarity of the introductions and notes to the plays) in order to see how our editors have explained the issue. Our current text, for instance, states that drama shares with such other literary modes as lyric poetry, the novel, the epic, and romance the ability to represent and challenge social, political, philosophical, and esthetic attitudes. But unlike most literature, drama has generally been composed for performance, confronting the audience in the public, sociable confines of a theater ... (Worthen 3)

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This is a definition that, though it addresses both the communal nature of drama and its nonliterary aspects in performance, nevertheless focuses on drama that can be represented by scripts. Such a definition is appropriate, when used in an introduction of a collection of scripts, since it addresses drama specifically as an art form that leaves literary artefacts. When read against the entries we have been working with, the limitations of this approach, however, are obvious. The medieval drama students, on the other hand, have the opportunity to confront the problem again directly in one of their exams, when I give them an entirely different church court entry and they write an essay arguing whether it does or does not represent dramatic activity. This incident is the most interesting of the examples I give them, concerning a pastor, Thomas Greenhall, in the parish of Helpston (in the Soke of Peterborough) who, in 1608, called his parishioners into the chancel after services to see a play, England's Lie, at which point he took off all his clothes and walked around the chancel naked, so that they could observe that, contrary to local rumour, he did not have the French pox (Appendix II). I give them the entry ahead of time, so that they have time to think about it before the exam, and so that I am sure they understand what it says. As one might expect, graduate responses to the question usually reveal a greater depth of knowledge of the field, and a greater willingness to wrestle with difficult questions, than undergraduate responses do. And they typically find the question fascinating; in fact, I caution them on the exam not to spend so much time answering the question that they harm the rest of their performance on the exam. The question is most difficult for the undergraduates, of course, and some of them give shallow answers, unable to push the issues very far, or uninterested in the problem, though in either case I do not think it hurts them to have to try anyway, even if they cannot manage it. But most of the undergraduates also find themselves fascinated by the discussion of the definition of drama; that it was even in question is amazing to them, and it does not hurt that the examples I have provided are in themselves entertaining. These students often give answers on the exam that show a great deal of care and thought. Examples of both graduate and undergraduate responses to the question are provided in Appendix II. To ask students to decide for themselves whether a given incident constitutes some form of dramatic activity, even if it is a low, inartistic, annoying form of dramatic activity, is to help make concrete in their minds the difficulty inherent in defining drama itself. One of the most interesting parts of my own job, outside the classroom, is deciding whether these entries provide evidence of dramatic activity. To ask students, 'Should this material be included in a collection of records of dramatic activity?' is to cause them to wrestle with the issues for themselves, even if for one day only; almost always, they find it interesting as well.

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NOTES 1 See, for instance, Kobrin, Beyond the Textbook, for discussion of primary sources in secondary classrooms; for history teachers in primary and secondary classrooms, a host of material is available on the Internet, from sources such as the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Digital Classroom (http://www.archives.gov/ digital_classroom) and The Ohio Historical Society, Primary Sources (http://www .ohiohistory.org/resource/teachers/primary.html). 2 Thanks go to Peter Meadows, Keeper of Ely Diocesan Records [CUL], and to Jenny Moran, Public Services Manager, Northamptonshire Record Office, for permission to quote from these records. When I started my project, the Soke of Peterborough was part of Cambridgeshire; it has since officially broken off, but is still included in my collection. 3 I have written on this entry elsewhere; see my article 'Creating a Dramatic Record: Reflections on some Drunken Ghosts.'

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Appendix I: Church Court Entries Discussed in Class Presented here are the court case entries I use in the classroom, in the order I present them. All transcriptions are my own; I have presented only the accusations themselves, not the accompanying material explaining the life of each legal case. I do give the students the original spelling, as it appears here.

Haddenham, 1577: Notatur yat he hathe misvsed the Churchewardens and Inquirers of Hadnaham, in vtteringe slanderouse woordes againste them, sayeinge yat they be false forsworne men, & yat he wyll so prove them, and further sayeinge, that he cowlde fetche as honest men as they oute of Hencote hundreth, and yat he vnreuerentleye & rudelye behaved him selfe in the churche there when he did his penance (which heretofore was enioyned him by his ordinarye) and in thend he made a game playe of k the matter and sayd, nowe I haue made an end, this I maye thanke lohn Hall of, whoe ys noe mans frend, which was verye offensyve to ye people there present. (Cambridge University Library, Ely Diocesan Records D/2/10a, 34r) Waterbeach, 1601: Presentatur, That Robert Barker and leffrye Marshe did bringe lohn Lawrence vpon a cowlestaffe into the Churchyard, & set him downe at the Chauncells end, Mathew lerney, Peter lobson, lohn Seth, & Reekwood a fidler were in the companye of them that caryed him, this was done vpon Easter Munday in the morninge an hower before morninge prayer, & that lohn Lawrence did throwe graines out of a paile. (Cambridge University Library, Ely Diocesan Records B/2/18, 4lr) Ickleton, 1592: [Arche, a miller] was so dronken, Atne samee«e nighte that the wyfe of lohn Swan departed this life, that he did counterfet him selfe a spirit havinge with him also diuerse other Companions abusing them selves in the same order. (Cambridge University Library, Ely Diocesan Records B/2/12, 23r)

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Appendix II: Church Court Entry Used on Exams, and Sample Answers Presented here is the church court entry I use on an exam in the medieval drama class. The class is given a copy of the entry before the exam, and I make sure they understand its meaning. As with the entries in Appendix I, the transcription is mine; only the accusation is presented, not the accompanying court notes; however, since this is for an exam, the spelling has been normalized, so as not to confuse the issue. Helpston, 1608: Thomas Greenhall, pastor of Helpston, is accused: 'upon a Sabbath day about a fortnight or three weeks since, immediately after morning prayer was ended, in Helpston church, he called up the congregation into the chancel there, and told them they should see a play, such a one as they never saw, called England's Lie, and the people, being come up into the said chancel, he (the said Greenehall), in the presence of them all, did in the said chancel, or in the vestry there, strip himself stark naked (saving he had his stockings on), and then did walk once or twice about the communion table (being in the said chancel), in most brutish and unseemly manner. To which Greenehall says that because it was reported that he had the French pox, he did upon a Sunday, as aforesaid, walk naked, as aforesaid, in the said chancel of Helpston before the congregation then gathered together once about the communion table, so that they might see whether he had the pox or not.' (Northamptonshire Record Office, Peterborough Diocesan Records 33, 73v) Following are examples of some of the best responses I've gotten to the problem of whether or not the incident given above is an example of dramatic activity. The best of the undergraduate responses are carefully reasoned, and show the students' interest in the problem. One student argues that the episode was drama: Before taking this course, I would have strongly disagreed that England's Lie was an example of dramatic activity. I would have upheld that this was merely a fit [given] by an angry, yet creative, priest. Although I would have conceded that Greenhall's actions were dramatic, I would not have considered them drama. However, now having studied drama more in depth, I do notice elements of drama in this incident. First, it is titled: England's Lie. It is also announced and therefore premeditated. Even though there is no dialogue in this play, there is a progression of action, [so therefore] a plot. England's Lie was also performed for a specific purpose to an intended audience. Greenhall wanted to prove to the people of his church that

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he did not have syphilis. England's Lie also has a very purposeful setting; it is as absurd and insulting for Greenhall to walk nude around the altar as it was for the people to accuse him. Finally, [the entry] includes acting directions, as he walks 'in a brutish and unseemly manner.' My studies of drama have reminded me that there is a whole spectrum of drama, including formal plays, street theater, and improvisation. Drama includes events involving conflicting forces. In England's Lie, the contrasting forces are the accusers and the accused, Thomas Greenhall. Greenhall reacts to his accusers using drama; his short and simple play powerfully proves its point.

Another undergraduate argues the opposite position: The episode with Thomas Greenhall and the presentation of the so-called play, England's Lie, qualifies as a mere parody of dramatic theater, though it possesses qualities of actual drama. Certain evidence exists to attest to the dramatic status of England's Lie, such as the announcement of the play to the parishioners, as well as the title itself. These characteristics do suggest a certain amount of planning and preparation for the 'performance.' Also the episode possesses a dramatic quality due to its shocking nature, and an obvious conflict exists. However, the nature of the conflict serves as one of the non-dramatic characteristics of the so-called play, because the conflict exists between the pastor and the audience members, who are not a part of the 'play.' Conflicts oftentimes do exist between actors and audience members, but they do not serve as the sole conflict of the entire performance. The obvious lack of plot also supports the idea that this episode, while it may be dramatic, is not drama. In addition, further evidence can be found in the absence of characters and dialogue between characters. Finally, despite the existence of a prevailing theme in the 'play' of not spreading rumors, the direct involvement of the pastor himself in the real life rumor reduces the play to an emotional response or dramatic reaction, rather than an actual work of drama.

Graduate student responses to the question are generally more sophisticated and complex. Here, condensed somewhat, is an argument that the entry does indeed represent drama: England's Lie is an example of dramatic activity ... In the case of England's Lie, as in the case of much Medieval drama, modern elements of what is considered drama can be found, [but it is more Medieval in that] it proves to be more of an iconographic representation (that uses the body) than an extended enactment of a plot per se ... Modern drama is characterized, generally, by a single author who controls production of the play. Helpston fits that bill; he gives his play a title, calls the congregation/

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And last, a graduate student who disagrees, with an argument not complex but clear and succinct: Thomas Greenhall advertises a play and successfully gathers together an audience in anticipation of such. Instead of delivering a performance in which roles are played and action is represented, Thomas struts around, brutishly and in the most unseemly manner, naked, save his hose. The purpose: to show his gossipy congregation that the rumor that he has the French pox is false. The congregation sees Thomas as he is, and the performance is over. This is not a dramatic activity, since there are no roles being played, no action being represented as the production unfolds, and no conflict which must in one way or another come to a head and make an attempt at resolution. There is an audience that is present in expectation of such, and the audience is cleverly duped to anticipate one thing only to receive another (in a brutish and unseemly manner). This does not meet all the conditions sufficient to constitute the presence of dramatic activity. [It] approaches dramatic activity in a strange, brutish, and devious way, but still falls short of such.

7 Teaching Poems from Robert Herrick's Hesperides with the Aid of REED Documents GLORIA J. BETCHER

Critical interest in Robert Herrick's poetry has experienced something of a rebirth in the last fifty years. More recent criticism, produced since the three-hundredth anniversary of Herrick's death in 1674, portrays Herrick less often as merely a quaint observer of Devon country life, and instead, situates him as a serious, political commentator on mid-seventeenth-century events.1 Despite these advances in scholarly appreciation, however, those who teach Herrick in American public universities still cannot count on students being able to engage effectively with the poems of Hesperides. Frustration with students' critical shortcomings, coupled with the need to provide a narrative structure within which students might easily grasp Herrick's poetic vocabulary, could lead some educators to take refuge in traditional Herrick criticism, even though much of it reduces Herrick's poems to the status of quaint relics. Using excerpts from REED volumes to aid in the teaching of Herrick's Hesperides has helped me to avoid such reductionism in my teaching of undergraduates at Iowa State University, an American land-grant institution. REED documents and textual notes, whether disseminated via handouts and class lectures or assigned as supplementary materials on library reserve, enable students to engage with the poetic text in more meaningful ways. Land-grant universities, as one of their missions, make higher education accessible to all who are interested in learning.2 The wide spectrum of students enrolling in courses ensures that those taking my early modern literature surveys exhibit a cross-section of critical skills. Inevitably, in each class some students struggle merely to understand the archaic language of the texts; some are prepared to consider the significance of the words in their cultural context; and members of a third, smaller group, well-versed in critical analysis and somewhat familiar with the period and its more commonly taught texts, are able to consider the dialogue between text and context in order to produce new readings. This short essay focuses on only three ways in which REED volumes can be used to help this diverse community of

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students engage with Herrick's text: by providing concrete details that improve lexical comprehension, by illustrating aspects of cultural context, and by offering historical evidence with which to interrogate critical assumptions. These examples by no means exemplify all the ways in which REED documents might aid in the teaching of Herrick's Hesperides, but they offer options to reductionism that can help to bridge the gap between students' abilities and Herrick's text. From the outset of Hesperides, in the first four lines of 'The Argument of His Book,' Herrick encapsulates his intent to 'sing' of English festival culture and its emblems, including 'May-poles, Hock-carts, Wassails, [and] Wakes': I Sing of Brooks, of Blossomes, Birds and Bowers: Of April, May, of June, and/w/y-Flowers. I sing of May-poles, Hock-carts, Wassails, Wakes, Of Bride-grooms, Brides, and of their Bridall-cakes ...

(H-\, 11. 1-4)3

Poems such as 'Corinna's Going a Maying,' 'The May-pole,' and 'The Wake' echo these themes throughout the collection and, along with Herrick's bucolic rendering of fields and flowers, have seemed to critics to epitomize West Country festival culture, even though Herrick himself appears to have found Devon a lessthan-perfect pastoral realm. For many of my students in their first survey of early modern literature, however, the allusions to English festival culture in Herrick's 'Argument' mean little; the archaic vocabulary raises a barrier to reading and understanding even this short poem. Because the readers' cultural sphere does not include maypoles, wassails, and wakes, a disjunction forms between the signifiers and what they signify. These novice readers, however, must be able to comprehend the words on the page before they can begin to interpret the cultural significance of this work and other Herrick poems. Bringing REED evidence to bear on the poetic text in this instance can improve students' understanding of the words at a basic lexical level. When presented with account entries, court records, textual notes, and glossary items from REED, students are able to conceptualize more effectively the subject matter of the poems. For the sake of illustration, let us take the maypole, the festive icon perhaps most familiar to American students. In The Rise and Fall of Merry England, Ronald Hutton describes the Elizabethan May Day festivities and surveys their initial popularity and attrition at length (115-19). By the fourteenth century and into the early modern period, maypoles were not erected just on May Day, but were in use across Britain for springtime celebrations, which often included bringing in greenery from the surrounding countryside (Hutton 30). Herrick portrays this celebratory shaft in a number of poems, including 'The Maypole':

Teaching Herrick's Hesperides with the Aid of REED Documents 99 THe May-pole is up, Now give me the cup; I'le drink to the Garlands a-round it: But first unto those Whose hands did compose The glory of flowers that crown'd it. A health to my Girles, Whose husbands may Earles Or Lords be, (granting my wishes) And when that ye wed To the Bridall Bed, Then multiply all, like to Fishes.

(H-695)

While the erection of a maypole as described here by Herrick might seem straightforward to those familiar with the custom, most American students encounter the maypole only in elementary school, where they more than likely come to know it as a broomstick draped in crepe-paper streamers and paper flowers, held just shy of erect in a classmate's fists. Such a spectacle hardly warrants poetic acclaim. Thus it is no wonder that students trivialize the 'garlands' and the 'glory' of the flowers here described. Nor do students see any clear connection between the 'maypole' they remember being held by little Susie Olson, age seven, and the mating ritual Herrick associates with the maypole of his poems. Though a few students in each class might pursue a Freudian interpretation of this poem because it features a long, thin object that is standing erect, even those budding theorists cannot grasp fully what the word 'May-pole' would have signified to an early modern audience if they possess no point of cultural reference. REED Devon provides the early modern points of reference these students need and, at the very least, offers them a more majestic object of poetic veneration in the form of the maypole raised at Plymouth. In 1574-5 that city's Receivers' Accounts record expenditures for acquiring and fitting out a fine maypole: Iti?m payed for bryngyng home of the maye pole & for wages of one botes company Itmi payed to Anthony Ballerd for iij yerdes of canvas for the toppe armor of the maye pole Itmi for a yeird & halff of clothe to make a fflagge for the maye pole Item for payntyng of the Toppe armers & the fflagg

viij s xviij d xij d xvj d

Item payed for makyng of the benche & for bordes aboute the maye pole xvj d (REED Devon 243)

100 Gloria]. Betcher Even more elaborate preparations for the Maypole and ensuing celebration are recorded in Plymouth accounts for 1576—7, which also include expenses for other elements of the May Day celebration: iiij d xiiij d iij d iiij d iij d ij d vij d

. . . Item payed for a sparre for the maye poll Item payed for a dile bord for the banke thereof Item payed for xiiij sheles for posstes to the same Item payed to lohn downe to ffyll the pytte Item payed to his brother to helpe hym about ye same Item payed to Martyn ffeltwell to helpe hym Item payed for ye toppe for the maye polle Item payed to Roger Hewett for makyng the auncyent Item payed to lohn Crosse for worke about the same poll

v s iiij d xij d

Item payed to Nicholas Glanfyld for iiij yelles & q«arfer of Crymsyn taffata at xij s ye ell Itmi payed for vij ell^ iij quarter & di. quarter of whytt sarcenett at vj s the ell Item payed to one that Went to Tavistick for ye same silk Item payed for di. C bord nayles for ye maye poll Item payed to Sprie for payntyng of the maye polle

Ij s xlvij s iij d xyj d vj d vs

(REED Devon 245-6)

Of course, to my students these records initially might appear just as lexically opaque as Herrick's verse, and so I ask them to work in pairs to translate the REED entries into modern English (see Appendix: Document Translation Assignment). First, we translate the 1574-5 Plymouth entry together in class, noting the early modern word forms and formulaic language of the record. Then I ask each pair to translate two items from the above extract of the 1576—7 Plymouth entry using the OED and photocopied excerpts from REED glossaries, which I provide. More enterprising students, those interested in consulting the glossaries of actual REED volumes rather than the photocopied excerpts, can use the volumes on reserve in the library. During the next class period, after a day of work on the assignment, the groups present their translations to their classmates, who annotate their own copies of the records. This group activity allows us to discuss the specific circumstances surrounding the construction of the two maypoles,

Teaching Herrick's Hesperides with the Aid of REED Documents 101

while at the same time it gives the students practice with basic research methodology. By the completion of the assignment, members of the class have grasped that Plymouth's maypole was no amateur, broomstick contrivance. This expensive spar was shipped in with the aid of a company of boatmen, decorated, and erected annually by the citizens of Plymouth for their May Day festivities. The city paid to purchase canvas and cloth, including silk and sarcenet, from which to make the top armour, the flag (called the auncyent in the 1576-7 accounts), and the streamers. According to the 1577-8 accounts, these pieces of trim were painted before they were mounted on the pole itself, which was also painted: 'It«n payed to the paynter for staynyng of the maye pole ij streamers toppe armours & a fflagge this yere ix s viij d' (REED Devon 247)4. Finally, funds went towards erecting the pole. Herrick is right to cheer this feat in his poem, as it could be quite a production. In Plymouth several community members expended effort to raise the maypole, filling in the pit, which held the spar, and constructing the bank around it. To complete the process, workers placed benches and tables around the pole area for those attending the festivities.5 Through these REED entries and their own translations/annotations, students are able to gain a sense of what the signifier 'May-pole' might have meant to Herrick and his early audience. With this understanding, they can begin to appreciate more fully the context within which the maypole functioned in the communities of England. These records from Plymouth demonstrate that, throughout the 1560s and 1570s, that city's maypole functioned as a symbol of communal spirit.6 Such was the case throughout the country, as maypoles brought together members of parishes — sometimes in ways unacceptable to religious reformers and royal authorities. Again without the aid of REED documents, students thinking of young Susie Olson clutching the makeshift maypole in a school classroom might find it hard to comprehend that festivities associated with this shaft could scandalize anyone. Yet, traditional activities that church and royal authorities came to view as scandalous are just what Herrick describes in lines 43-56 of'Corinna's Going a Maying': There's not a budding Boy, or Girle, this day, But is got up, and gone to bring in May. A deale of Youth, ere this, is come Back, and with White-thorn laden home. Some have dispatcht their Cakes and Creame, Before that we have left to dreame: And some have wept, and woo'd, and plighted Troth, And chose their Priest, ere we can cast off sloth:

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Many a green-gown has been given; Many a kisse, both odde and even: Many a glance too has been sent From out the eye, Loves Firmament: Many a jest told of the Keyes betraying This night, and Locks pickt, yet w'are not a Maying.

(H-l78)

Indeed, REED Devon makes it clear to students that Herrick's depiction of sexual hi-jinx on May Day was not just the wishful thinking of a lusty bachelor vicar. Documentary evidence confirms that church and royal authorities came to associate maypoles with rebellion, danger, and fornication. A 1595 entry from the Quarter Sessions Order Books for the County of Devon links the suppression of these celebrations to the offensive nature of events that occurred during them in the past: ... Itmi wheras before this tyme, yt was ordered and decreed ... for the Avoydinge of soundry disorders, and abuses, that do arrise, by Revels, and Churche, or p^rishe ales ... that the same should be vtterly abolished & put downe ... [It ys]fforasmytchAs the said Churche or p^rishe Ales or drynkinges I Revells, Mayegames, Playes, and suche other vnlawfull assemblys ... ys A Speciall cause that many disorders, cowtemptes of Lawe, and other enormytyes, are there perpetrated and cowmytted to ... the dishonor of Almighty god, encrease of Basterdy and dissolute liff, and of very many other Mischeiflfes and incowvenyences to the great hurt of the Common Wealth, It ys nowe ordered Agreed and concludyd vpon, that there shall not be any Maye games, playes, Churche or p^rishe Ale[s] ... vpon payne to be punshed accordinge to the lawes (REED Devon 293-4)

Numerous incidents at revels, church ales, May games, and other local celebrations during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries led to the repetition of royal orders like this one for the suppression of such events. One such repetition was occasioned by the 'seuerall manslaughters committed at two Church ales' within Devon in July 1615, twenty years after the first order was given (REED Devon 296). If the phrasing of these court records proves too cumbersome for the comprehension of some students, other seventeenth-century records serve just as well to confirm Herrick's portrayal of May Day's more licentious features. For example, in 1634, in the town of Dartmouth, Devon, a mob raised a maypole to celebrate the publishing of the Book of Sports, seemingly in anticipation of the rebirth of festival culture in their county. The rebellious nature of the act did not meet with the approval of local justices, as this entry reports:

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103

upon the coming forth and publishing of the book for sports, a company of younkers on May-day morning before day, went into the countrey, to fetch home a May pole with Drumme and Trumpet, whereat the neighbouring Inhabitants were affrighted, supposing some enemies had landed to sack them, the Pole being thus brought home, and set up, they began to drink healths about it, and to it, till they could not stand so steady as the Pole did, whereupon the Major and Justice bound the ringleaders over to the Sessions, whereupon these complaining to the Archbishops Vicar Generall, then in his visitation he prohibited the Justices to proceed against them in regard of the Kings book. (REED Devon 69)7

That year at Glastonbury, Dorset, according to an entry from William Whiteway's diary, the erecting of a maypole turned deadly: ...while the people were busy setting up of a maypole, it fell on th(.) head of a son of one of the most forward as he ran out the streete, & beate out his braines. (REED Dorset 205)8

The same REED collection includes a court record for the next year, 1635-6, relating to some illicit activity associated with a maypole in Spettisbury, Dorset. This court examination reports an incident involving the respondent Anne Barter, who, 'about Whitsuntyde at the setting vpp of a may pole in Spettisbury in a Close,' had an assignation with one Allan Lodge. The report goes on to reveal that 'there in the night tyme the said Allan Lodge had the vse and Carnall knowledge of this Respondemes body...' (REED Dorset 275)9 For modern American undergraduates vexed by laws against under-age drinking, sanctions for after-hours partying, and worries about sexually transmitted diseases, these records help to invest Herrick's seemingly sedate lines with an immediacy that might not be apparent in the lines themselves. As Leah Sinanoglou Marcus has noted in her article 'Disestablishing Shakespeare,' with regard to the teaching of Shakespeare's plays, understanding 'motives and underlying conflicts' allows students to appreciate characters and to 'feel instantly more at ease with texts that may seem overwhelmingly alien at first' (108). This increased empathy helps students to bridge 'historical distance' (Marcus 108). Many of their own 'traditional' university pastimes have been labelled rebellious and dangerous and have been suppressed by any number of different authorities, from parents and police to public safety officers and residence-hall staff. If, after making an analogy between the suppression of their pastimes and the suppression of those of early modern England, I ask my students to imagine themselves as young people of Herrick's Dean Prior, seeking out the woods on May Day morning to meet their lovers, they inevitably become more engaged in

104 Gloria]. Betcher the issues raised by reading the poem in light of the records. New questions suddenly occur to them: What's wrong with meeting your boyfriend in the woods to make out? If May Day was a traditional festival, didn't the kids' parents play the games once too? Wasn't being opposed to something they'd participated in rather hypocritical? Who would go along with suppressing the festivals if everybody was doing it? Why should the authorities care if the teenagers wanted to have sex? And, as long as they were careful not to get caught, why would the lovers care what the church or the courts had to say? Who were they hurting anyway? What about the kid at Glastonbury who had his head smashed in? If their children were getting hurt during these festivals, then why didn't parents put a stop to them themselves? Why did orders have to come from the authorities, and why didn't people obey those orders if they were for their own good? Who says it was good for them?

Channelling all of this creative energy into a useful discussion of early modern Devonshire can prove difficult; however, it is possible to refocus comments by extrapolating from specific, student-centred questions to general culture-centred themes equally relevant in Herrick's day. Such relevant issues include, among others, power and control, the conflict between different value systems, and traditional practice versus legal obligation. This last issue is illustrated well by the repeated call for the ending of traditional festivities in the Quarter Sessions. If the people of the parishes had immediately and unilaterally obeyed royal orders, the authorities could have avoided twenty years' worth of repeated admonishments to end the festivities. When students come to a more immediate appreciation of why church and royal authorities saw maying as a corrupting influence, they are consequently better able to see how the perceptions of those involved in the traditional festivities might differ greatly from the 'official' perceptions documented in court records. Appreciating this discrepancy leads them to understand why resistance from the populace often confronted the authorities whose edicts suppressed the festivals, condemning the rebellious acts, unruly crowds, and clandestine coupling of young people on May Day.10 Having dispelled the spectre of Susie Olson and her crepe-bedecked broomstick and replaced it with a clearer vision of what a 'May-pole' signified in Herrick's day, the instructor teaching with the aid of REED documents might urge the more theoretically advanced students to conduct their own research projects, which could involve consulting REED collections as a supplement to other research materials. Considering the presence or absence of historical evidence to

Teaching Herrick's Hesperides with the Aid of REED Documents 105

corroborate Herrick criticism could lead these students to offer revisionist readings of works already well studied. For example, a student might choose to investigate how the references to Devon and festival culture in Hesperides relate to the poet's West Country life. Are such references truly autobiographical and, thus, the direct result of Herrick's life at Dean Prior, Devon, as traditional criticism holds? Are they, perhaps, more representative of a festival culture that was present throughout England, as recent critics would have it? Or could it be that the truth lies even farther past the line of traditional scholarship; could it be the very absence of festival culture in the southern part of 'dull Devonshire' - not its presence or its waning influence - that might have inspired Herrick to grow nostalgic for festivals that he had enjoyed elsewhere in England in earlier days? Students approaching this issue as careful researchers would no doubt receive a confused and tangled message from the strands of Herrick criticism. REED documents offer a means by which these careful readers might sort out each strand in the critical tangle and begin to assess its accuracy. To understand this dilemma we need only consider the position of a student faced with the following critical observations. In 1903, Edmund Gosse hailed Herrick's 'brilliant pictures of the country life around him in Devonshire' (58), and seven years later Frederic Moorman, noting the intimate connection between the poem 'Corinna's Going a Maying' and the country atmosphere of Herrick's parish, stated that 'the charm with which the poet has invested his description of the May-day festival accords with the life of Dean Prior rather than with that of Westminster' (69). These fanciful analyses portray an almost sublime connection between the poet's life and his poetry. More than half a century after Gosse, however, Mark Reed questioned the likelihood of such an intimate geographical connection, writing, 'If probability seems to point to strong influence by Dean Prior on ... parts of Herrick's verse ... the fact is also that scholarship can do nearly nothing to prove the influence' (135). Such commentary, the student reader might assume, should mark a turning point in Herrick criticism, but further exploration will lead the investigator to still more readings grounded on the assumption that the festivities described by Herrick were part of his life in Devon. Take, for example, Roger Rollin's comments on the poems 'The Meddow Verse or Anniversary to Mistris Bridget Lowmari and 'The Parting Verse, the Feast There Ended,' which appear in the revised, 1992 edition of his book Robert Herrick.11 Of these poems — which are traditionally believed to commemorate the coronation of Dean Prior resident Bridget Lowman as May queen - Rollin asserts, 'There is no reason to doubt that the May Day festival which both poems ritually frame actually took place' (159). Yet, examining the historical record through the lens of REED documents and other secondary sources, the student will find no support for this assertion;

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in fact, REED evidence suggests that readings of Hesperides have not gone far enough in distancing the content of Herrick's poems from his life in Devon.12 As the student researcher explores REED Devon and consults secondary historical studies, the virtual absence of maypoles, Hock-carts, wassails, and wakes from the historical records of south Devon parishes after 1620 quickly should become apparent.13 Furthermore, evidence of Devon's widespread popular religious and political allegiance to the reform movement should make it even more problematic to assume either that Herrick's experience with maypoles, Hock-carts, and other elements of English festival culture could have resulted from his days in Devon or that his poems clearly depict a festival culture present throughout that county after the sixteenth century (Hutton 118-19, Stoyle 204-26). Noting this proof of religious reform and the striking absence of evidence of surviving festival culture after 1620, the student might conclude that Herrick's references to festival culture are, in fact, not references to current or even recent practice in the area around his parish. If this student conducts her research thoroughly, that is, by first investigating politics, religion, and society in early modern Devon, and by then studying the entries in REED Devon and comparing them to entries in other REED volumes, she might conclude that, while other areas of England still observed or had revived ancient customs in the mid-seventeenth century, these practices were virtually absent in large areas of Devon even after the publication of the Book of Sports in 1633.14 This inquiring student might well ask, Where are the maypoles, Hock-carts, and other trappings of English festival culture in Herrick's 'dull Devon-shire? (H-51,1. 4). The research topic and process recounted above should prove viable for students, as my own research has shown that REED Devon evidence supports a revised reading of Hesperides. Rather than depicting Devon's lost, festival culture as representative of a national loss, or portraying the decline of rural traditions within Devon itself, the poems might represent Herrick's intense nostalgia for pleasures he experienced in the past.15 Given his poignant, poetic recounting of his exiled state in the spiritless West Country, it would not be difficult to see how the missing festival culture of 'dull Devon-shire could have inspired Herrick to pen his poems, which so graphically depict a desired rural festivity. Herrick implies that little enlivened his days in south Devon, clearly showing his dissatisfaction with parish and county life in poems such as 'Discontents in Devon,' in which he laments, MOre discontents I never had Since I was born, then [sic] here; Where I have been, and still am sad, In this dull Devon-shire ...

(H-51, 11. 1 -4)

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The later poem 'His Lachrimae or Mirth, Turn'd to Mourning' echoes this sadness, recalling the happier days before Herrick 'went/To banishment/Into the loathed West ...' (#-371,11. 7-9).16 The poet's distaste with the unrefined society of Dean Prior is patently clear in the opening lines of 'To Dean-bourn, a Rude River in Devon, by Which Sometimes He Lived': DEan-bourn, farewell; I never look to see Deane, or thy warty incivility.

(H-86,11. 1-2)

The people of Dean Prior and their ways Herrick decries as 'rockie,' '... currish; churlish as the seas;/And rude (almost) as rudest Salvages ...' (11. 8, 11-12), in short, not the sort with whom he socialized in London. Indeed, the poems of Hesperides depict Devonshire as a land of savage churls, a loathed and dull county, in which Herrick felt exiled from the courtly refinements and entertainment of London. Is this really a county which cheered on Hock-carts bringing in the harvest and celebrated Bridget Lowman's reign as Queen of the May? A student researcher will find little evidence that festive culture survived around Dean Prior in the mid-seventeenth century. Dean was in the middle of a predominantly puritan region that appears to have begun moving away from traditional festival practices early in the seventeenth century. Following the wave of official opposition to such traditions and, between 1604 and 1628, the frequent prosecution of churchwardens who held ales, parish records throughout Devon reveal virtually no references to the rural traditions Herrick emphasizes in his 'Argument.'17 He would, it seems, have had little opportunity to come into contact with such festivity in south Devon during his years at Dean Prior. Of course, after reading Herrick's poems and the historical record, a student will not necessarily reach the conclusions reviewed above; to arrive at her readings of Herrick's poems, she must follow an inductive process, asking her own questions and seeking answers from her readings of the text and supplementary resources. Whether a student's reading, ultimately, agrees with mine is of less consequence than whether she has gained analytical skills and increased her own critical confidence during the research process. My role in this process should be facilitator, not dictator. But even the best of my students need guidance when framing their research questions and determining an appropriate research strategy. If students are not confident in their approach, the waves of often-contradictory critical commentary can easily overwhelm their interpretive voices, leaving them at sea amidst the schools of critics. With no clear historical point of reference, they might feel the same lack of grounding as their classmates did when first introduced to a maypole that was not a broom. To these neophyte critics, REED

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evidence seems safer, more anchored in facts, than literary criticism, because it has the authority of history behind it.18 And while we educators who regularly work with records know that these sources, too, are merely texts that interpret past events, our students can only reach that same conclusion through examining the historical record for themselves. The REED series helps them to do that by making the distant past and archaic literature of a foreign land accessible. In its own way, then, REED supports the land-grant mission. Its collections enable even those students who never leave Iowa to engage more effectively with British literature and to explore another culture, if only through readings in a class such as mine.

NOTES 1 In The Complete Poetry of Robert Herrick, editor Patrick traces the origin of this critical awakening to the publication of Musgrove's short study The Universe of Robert Herrick, which inspired critics to begin 'to perceive that the poems contain hitherto neglected depths, subtleties, and complexities' (xiii). Since 1974, for examples of this heightened critical perception, see among others Schleiner, 'Herrick's Songs and the Character of Hesperides; Rollin and Patrick, 'Trust to Good Verses'; Marcus, 'Herrick's Hesperides and the "Proclamation Made for May'" and The Politics of Mirth; Coiro, 'Herrick's "Julia" Poems'; Rollin, Robert Herrick; and Guibbory, Ceremony and Community from Herbert to Milton. 2 For Iowa States vision of its land-grant mission, see Charles, 'Land-grant Universities Born from Radical Idea.' 3 The numbering in Patrick's edition is followed for all citations of Herrick's poetry in this paper. Patrick preserves the capitalization of the original 1648 edition, which used capital letters for the first two, three, or more letters of a poem's opening word. 4 Though the 1576-7 entry does not specify how the silk and taffeta were used, they likely were the makings for the streamers. The fabric might have retained its red and white colours, though it is possible that the white sarcenet was dyed as the streamers were in 1577-8 (REED Devon 247). 5 Wasson notes that it is difficult to tell at this point whether the 'bordes' referred to are merely pieces of thin-sawed timber or an actual table (REED Devon 555). Since the city provided benches, it seems likely that these 'hordes' are tables set up for those watching or participating in festivities. 6 Elsewhere in Devon, Exeter records confirm that revellers celebrating May Day in that city drank quite lustily at the 1588 celebrations (Hutton 234). These receipts do not appear among the REED Devon entries since they record no activity related to dramatic, paradramatic, or musical performance.

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7 In Loyalty and Locality, Mark Stoyle sees the quick suppression of this sole instance of festive dissent in south Devon in the early Stuart period as a sign of the predominantly puritan sentiments of the population of Dartmouth (224—5). The roots of Dartmouth's displeasure with May games in general might have lain deeper in the past, for as Hutton notes, even before the games were suppressed, Dartmouth seems not to have adopted the common practice of raising a maypole (28). 8 William Whiteway's Diary, London, British Library, Egerton MS. 784, includes local, national, and international events from 1618 to 1635 of interest to the puritan, Dorchester merchant. 9 This deposition, preserved in Dorchester, Dorset Record Office, PE/WM: CP2/8, item 90, was taken, among a large number of other depositions in cases of fornication, before the peculiar court of Wimborne Minster. 10 Stoyle sees the survival of church ales as a relatively accurate gauge of a parish's religious and political leanings — those parishes where church ales survived well into the seventeenth century were religiously conservative and supported the royalist cause whereas parishes in which church ales were effectively suppressed at the end of the sixteenth century were typically puritan and parliamentarian in sympathies (225-6). The exception to this rule is the east Devon district around Collumpton and Halberton, both parliamentarian strongholds. In Collumpton, church ales were held regularly until 1612, and a single reference to a 1616 'stocke ... collected ... for the sellinge of churche ale' (Stoyle 225, quoting the Devon Quarter Sessions order books, 1592-1647, 6, f. 356) suggests a possible continuance of the festivities for a short time. The 1631 erection of a maypole in Collumptom, Stoyle believes, 'might perhaps be dismissed as the action of a few individuals, and thus as unrepresentative of the attitude of the community as a whole' (225-6). In Halberton, records confirm the existence of ales as late as 1621. Although Stoyle is at a loss to explain these late survivals of the old traditions, he remains confident that the wealth of evidence from the rest of Devon bears out his thesis that royalist parishes retained their traditional festivities longer than their puritan counterparts. Rector Thomas Trescot's Sermon before Sir Robert Foster, Justice of Assize, presented at the Exeter Assizes of 7 August 1642 (published as The Zealous Magistrate [London, 1642] 25), expresses puritan sympathies clearly when it links the contempt for God's holy laws to 'prphanation (sic) by Bacchanalian Revellings, and Heathenish Maygames, with other like filth, and ordure...' (quoted in REED Devon 206). Herrick, who became vicar of Dean Prior in 1629, arrived in the county long after the regular celebration of the traditional festivities came to an end but in good time to experience the fervour of puritan reform. 11 Rollin's 1992 edition of Robert Herrick is a revision of his 1966 edition for Twayne's English Author Series. The author claims that 'the reader who compares this [second edition of the] book with the original edition will find that ... the text ... has been

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12

13

14

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Gloria]. Betcher

almost completely rewritten' (ix), but the observations regarding Bridget Lowman appear to remain unrevised. Still, the fact that Rollin saw no need to revise his thinking on the Bridget Lowman poems suggests that he sees nothing inaccurate about his assessment despite the developments in Herrick criticism between 1966 and 1992. Dean Prior's church ales, which appear in extant records from 1566—9, warrant discussion in REED Devon (Ixi-lxii) but only under the section on editorial procedures. Excerpts are not included among the records as there is no evidence that entertainment was provided at the ales. Records of entertainment after the 1560s in parishes surrounding Dean Prior in south and mid-Devon are likewise absent from the collection, aside from the Totnes records which confirm payments to the prince's players in 1623-4, to 'his 'Majesties Servants' in September 1625, and to 'serten players' in 1633-4 and receipts from players caught drinking on the sabbath in 1631-2 (REED Devon 282—3). Stoyle's analysis and mapping of pre-Civil War conservatism and the occurrences of revels, maypoles, and church ales confirm that, between 1600 and 1642, maypoles and church ales appear in records from only four parishes in south Devon and from only two parishes in mid-Devon bordering on south Devon; revels do not appear in extant records for these areas at all (223). What is more, REED evidence confirms that, aside from the disputed raising of the Dartmouth maypole in 1633, records of these festivities in south and mid-Devon are absent from the records after church ales cease to be recorded in 1622 (REED Devon bdi). Ashburton held its ale until that year, while Stoke Gabriel's apparently ended in 1621, Dartington's in 1616, and Harberton's in 1607. Newton Abbot, which figures in Stoyle's analysis, is not included among the REED list so it is unclear when their church ales were held. See, for example, Stoyle for the rarity of festival activity, especially maypoles and church ales, between 1600 and 1642 (224—6). The editorial procedures of REED Devon preclude the inclusion of all references to maypoles and the celebration of May Day; only those celebrations that involved music or other entertainment meet the collection's editorial requirements (Ixii-lxiii). However, the decline in the festival's celebration is clear from the decrease in the number of this type of entry for locations that traditionally held May Day festivities. While Hutton acknowledges that 'it is difficult to tell how far the Book of Sports reversed the decline in the old seasonal merry-making' (198), Stoyle's analysis of the Devon evidence for festival survival clearly shows no significant increase in festival culture in areas of Devon where puritanism and parliamentarian sympathies were strongest (222-5). Exactly where and when Herrick might have encountered festival culture outside Devon is difficult to say. The details of Herrick's life between 1592 and 1607, when he would have been a schoolboy, are unknown. However, from 1607 to 1613, he served as an apprentice goldsmith under his uncle, Sir William Herrick, in London. It is during these years that Herrick likely might have taken poetic inspiration from

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spending time outside London on one of his uncle's holdings. Sir William owned land in thirteen counties and was known to travel between his holdings during his time off from his London trade (Scott 38-9). Other time away from London came in 1613 when Herrick entered St John's College, Cambridge, later transferring to Trinity Hall, where he completed his BA and MA by 1620 (Patrick xvii). 16 'Loathed' is an adjective Herrick uses only six times in Hesperides; of those six times, three pair 'loathed' with references to Devon: 'Discontents in Devon' (//-51), 'To His Household Gods' (H-278), and 'His Lachrimae or Mirth, Turn'd to Mourning' (//-371), and one, with a reference to country life, 'Upon Himself (H-456). 17 That a reformer such as John Southmead of Moreton, a parliamentarian parish in central Devon, could be hailed as God's 'instrument to abolish Wakes, Revells, maypoles and Maygames ... not only in his owne, but in many parishes adjacent' (Stoyle 219, quoting the vicar of Moreton) suggests that puritan forces within the county would not brook inappropriate festivity in their region. See notes 12 and 13 above for more on record evidence of festival survival after 1600. 18 In this essay, I have not sought to cover the ways in which one might use REED documents to help students understand documents as texts, which is another viable use of the collections. In fact, while I have striven to avoid reductionism in my teaching of Herrick, I have erred on the side of being reductionist in my treatment of REED documents. In explaining how these records might be used as a means to illustrate Herrick's poems, I do not intend to endorse this as the sole way a teacher might utilize the dialogue between the poems and the records. For a group of more advanced students of literature or students using REED collections for research, one could and should address important issues of textual analysis that bear upon interpreting the records themselves. In front of a diverse classroom population, however, I leave any in-depth examination of these issues aside in lieu of helping students to develop basic interpretive skills; therefore, I have passed over these issues in this essay.

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Appendix: Document Translation Exercise to Accompany Robert Herrick's 'The May-Pole' This exercise consists of two components: (1) a translation exercise to be completed with a partner, and (2) a short-answer section to be completed by each student working independently. Follow the instructions below to complete both parts of the assignment successfully. Both parts are due at the start of our next class. Translation Exercise: Working with a classmate 1. Translate the two items from the 1576—7 Plymouth entry that have been assigned to you. You may use any resources at your disposal, but the most helpful will be the OED (available in the library) and the excerpts from REED glossaries that I have provided for you (REED volumes are also available on reserve in the library if you want to examine other glossary entries). 2. E-mail one copy of your completed translation to me at [e-mail address here] by 5p.m. the evening before class Thus I can collect all of the translations together into one document for in-class discussion. 3. During the next class period, present your translation to your classmates so that they can annotate their own copies of the records. Explain what your items mean and which resources you used to arrive at your translation. Independent Essay Assignment: In a typed, short essay (no more than 300 words), address the following issues for 50 take-home quiz points. 1. Which words in your assigned items do you think your classmates might find hard to recognize or understand? What makes these words more difficult for a modern reader to grasp? (Consider changes in definition, spelling, word use,

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etc., from early modern times to today.) If your lines contain no words that you think would be difficult to recognize or understand, explain what characteristics of the text would make it possible for a classmate to read your lines without any research aids. 2. Explain how the Plymouth entry of 1574—5 (which we translated in class) and the items that you translated for today could be used to illuminate the meaning of Herrick's poem 'The May-pole' for a class such as this one.

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SECTION IV Dramatic Activity: Social History

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8 The Use of REED Documents in Teaching Early Modern English History ROSALIND CONKLIN HAYS

In the summer 1999 issue of Albion Robert Tittler made an eloquent plea to North American historians of sixteenth and seventeenth century England. Citing changes in our 'fundamental perspectives' in the recent past, Tittler charges those who teach the history of early modern England with the necessity of 'fiddling with the canon or treating canonical issues in innovative ways' so that the 'Tudor and Stuart' course may 'recapture its lustre and reflect the breadth and excitement of current scholarship' (200, 202—3). Among the perspectives he suggests we should incorporate in the syllabus are 'the anthropology of popular religion,' urban society, and political culture (203). In this essay I will argue that for the historian teaching an undergraduate course in early modern England, the volumes published by REED are a treasure trove of primary texts that may be used effectively to introduce and engage even reluctant students with some recent interpretations. University instructors in the United States can assume that most of their students know very little about history in general or early modern England in particular. American college students often have never analysed primary sources, and they often have very little experience thinking about any sort of change over time. Moreover, the occasional student with a strong background and some sophistication in historical thinking is often sitting next to a reluctant peer who enrolled in the course only to meet a distribution requirement, and both may read and write much less quickly than they can search the Internet. The university instructor who hopes to engage such students inside and outside the classroom, to spread acquaintance with issues and concerns that arise from the study of early modern England, and to bring the more capable students to an initial understanding of recent scholarship must catch students' attention, play to a variety of learning styles, and design ways of introducing ideas, theories, and information that also involve students in source criticism and 'historical thinking,' often for the first time. Apart from the obvious usefulness of relevant pictures or the occasional film, skilfully

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incorporating primary texts remains the most effective way to interest students and lead them relatively painlessly to an understanding of the past and the ways in which historians think about it. As the mission statement proclaims at the outset of each volume, REED editors printed their excerpted texts as 'external evidence of dramatic, ceremonial, and minstrel activity,' and not to provide a general fund of documents to illustrate the 'local perspective as a key to understanding some of the central issues of the period' (Tittler 200). In fact, since REED prints materials only if entertainment activity is involved, in selecting excerpts to publish, REED editors often omit passages that might be of great value to historians with different interests. I do not suggest that REED collections are suitable resources for undergraduate historical research in any but a narrow range of topics. But REED volumes offer the teacher of undergraduates in history a wealth of superbly edited texts that may provide rich, multilayered illustrations of the kinds of evidence that support recent historical scholarship. There is generally a REED document somewhere that will shed light on almost any aspect of local history. While many of the ground-breaking monographs cited by Tittler are much too dense and intricate to assign to the average undergraduate, and the lecturer must use ingenuity to weave their findings into a revised narrative, REED documents are much more accessible. They aid in quite different ways the teaching of two different broad themes in early modern English history: popular religion and social control on the one hand, and the evolution of urban culture on the other. I will assume a one-semester survey of Tudor and Stuart England and assume also that one is teaching a class of about twentyfive students, all of them in at least their second year, only half of them with any course work in history on the university level. Suppose one has already discussed the Break from Rome in a relatively canonical way, having asked the students to read one or two of the Reformation statutes and having introduced the chronology of sixteenth-century official policy before 1559 in the sorts of terms used by Robert Whiting (1-2). The students are coasting; one or two have begun to think of Tudor English men and women as surprisingly docile about the change in religion, but most don't really imagine sixteenth-century men and women as people. As part of a packet (see Appendix, Part I), one distributes (in English translation and modernized spelling and with REED's permission, of course) REED excerpts from the churchwardens' accounts of St Andrew's, Ashburton, in Devon for the years 1530-1 through 1563-4 (REED Devon 22-30, 334-8).' Next one explains what a churchwarden's account is, where Ashburton is, and informs the class that the accounts survive for the years 1479-1580 and that the students have in their hands all similar entries for the years after 1530-1. The accounts relate routine payments for maintaining the parish playing clothes, receipts when the clothes are hired out, and occasional

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payments for making new costumes. As Whiting points out, the payments cease abruptly after 1547-8, and resume in 1553-4, only to end in 1559-60. In groups of about five, the students work with the accounts for a while and see what they can tell about the parish that the document represents. For a time students will wrestle with the contents, wondering why they are looking at documents referring to small-town dramatic productions. They will notice that the costumes are painted and that one tunic is for 'Robert Hode.' Discovering that many performances are at Christmas, they will also ask what is meant by Epiphany and Corpus Christi Day. They will laugh about the devils' heads and rattle-bags purchased in 1542—3. Eventually, some student will ask 'Where are the excerpts for the years between 1547-8 and 1553-4? Did you leave them out? And why do the payments for plays stop in 1559-60?' It should not take more than ten minutes after that (if you are lucky) for the class to figure out that perhaps the gaps have something to do with external policy and to begin asking questions: 'What do plays have to do with religion? How did the central government interfere with what villages did? How did ordinary people react to Henry VTII's actions? Those of Edward VTs government? Mary's? What were those actions anyway?' If students are actively asking questions like these, they may really want to understand some of the complexities of Whiting's thesis about the process of conversion. Summarizing his analysis of the pattern of religious change in southwestern England, Whiting contends that the decline of popular support for the traditional activities and institutions was in reality both more sudden and more drastic than has usually been assumed. Until circa 1530 the overall level of this support would appear to have remained high. By 1547, nevertheless, it had already started to diminish, and in Edward's reign, in most places, it experienced a devastating collapse. Even in the favourable conditions of Mary's reign its recovery was no more than partial, and after the accession of Elizabeth it again slumped. (145)

The Ashburton records will have shown the students that parish support for the drama was interrupted early in the reign of Edward VI, revived under the reign of Mary, and ended finally shortly after Elizabeth's accession. The records of Ashburton parish's support of players thus provide an example of the chronology of Whiting's interpretation, as well as a rich example of the 'financial' evidence on which his thesis partly depends. Students who might not want to hear about the content of traditional religion or its suppression and who might find Whiting's analysis of the slow decline of popular Catholicism boring are much more likely to be engaged if the explanations seem to respond to their own questions. The

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fortunate teacher may further provoke their interest with a brief summary of Part II of Eamon Duffy's The Stripping of the Altars (379-593, especially 57982). They may even come to understand the complexities of the kinds of evidence used by Whiting and Duffy: after all, only indirect evidence like the Ashburton accounts supports Whiting's contention that Edwardian and Elizabethan officials suppressed the drama 'designed not only to extend the religious knowledge of its spectators but also to reinforce their religious commitment [to traditional religion]' (201). REED documents may function in a different way to lead students to an understanding of the changing character and interests of local communities depicted by social historians. Marjorie Mclntosh, Controlling Misbehavior in England, 1370—1600, analyses the prosecution of eleven kinds of offences in urban and borough courts, church courts, sessions of the peace, lesser public courts, and market centre assembly books. Her stress on the continuous development of such attempts at social control in an era of 'profound changes in local demographic, economic, and social structures' helps to dismantle artificial barriers between late medieval and Tudor England (23). Students will find interesting her conclusion that there was a 'general increase in concern with wrongdoing across the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries,' as well as her analysis of the social ecology that led different communities and courts to seek ways to control or punish perceived misbehaviour (209 and passim). Using primary texts to illustrate and explain some of the offences she discusses may make Mclntosh's analysis vivid for students. Scattered through many REED collections are entries that exemplify community concerns with social wrongdoing, particularly in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and particularly in the records of church courts, borough courts, and quarter sessions. Such records are not at the core of Mclntosh's study, which focuses first on local courts in smaller communities; my aim is, however, to find documents that exemplify particular types of offence. The instances of such offences in REED collections may not be entirely typical, but they are often vivid and thus serve as good examples for teaching purposes. In Bere Regis in 1590, for example, a minstrel named Thomas Whiffen seems to have brought a defamation case to the church court — an example of the rising number of defamation cases Mclntosh says came partly to replace earlier local accusations of scolding (58). Egged on by the vicar, who thought the minstrel a poor musician, one Henry Gerard told Whiffen, 'Thow arte a knave and an arrant knave, thow mightest haue turned att home and make splites to bottome a seeve like a cuckold knave, and not to treble vs here' (REED Dorset 123). From Cleobury Mortimer, Shropshire, one William Fennel was hailed before the archdeacon of Ludlow's court for Burford deanery for making and singing a scurrilous rhyme, which is succinctly reproduced in REED Shropshire (1:51).2

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A relatively late case from East Brent, Somerset, is one of many REED reports of disorderly conduct in alehouses or drunkenness that could serve to illustrate Mclntosh's 'Disorder Cluster' of offences (68-81).3 In this instance the several malefactors, who frequently played at fives on the sabbath, spent one Saturday at the Red Lyon Inn first getting a dog drunk and then making it hold a tobacco pipe in its mouth and wear a black coat so it would look like a priest. The ringleader appeared before both the bishops court and the quarter sessions (REED Somerset 1:106-9). Brought before the bishop's court at Wells in 1605 was John Hooper of Mells, Somerset, accused of keeping Will order' in his house many sabbath nights, assembling young persons to dancing 'att vnseasonable tymes of the night,' when the company may have defiled his daughter; the court suspected him and his wife of keeping a 'howse of bawdry' (REED Somerset 1:162—3). Mclntosh's cluster of offences relating to poverty may be illustrated by a Shrewsbury presentment for hedge-cutting and by any one of a number of instances of vagrants brought before the borough courts in Shrewsbury and Norwich (REED Norwich 1540-1642 90, 145,150,191-2; REED Shropshire 1: 279-80, 318-19). Our hypothetical course will naturally also have covered a number of topics not readily susceptible to REED illustration. As a prelude to an experimental exploration of urban culture, the course might make yet another excursion into local history, asking the students to read and discuss David Underdown's Fire from Heaven as an eminently readable entry into a wide range of subjects, including changing patterns of agriculture and other production in the countryside, rural and small town culture, puritanism, local conflict in the early seventeenth century, expeditions to the Americas, and so on. One might accompany this reading with excerpts from the Star Chamber case Condytt v. Chubbe (REED Dorset 173-98) which features prominently in Underdown's account, but even in its excerpted form the case is difficult to read; it is probably enough to ask students to read the first and third of the three libellous poems that served as exhibits in die case as examples of the bitter religious rhetoric that could consume towns of the period (179-80, 182-3). Finally, REED collections include documents that are of great potential use in helping students discover aspects of the rhetoric and political forms used by urban elites in the early modern period. Since reading enough to discover anything of the particular political culture of any given town is time consuming, it may again be useful to divide the class into small groups, making each group responsible for reading documents relating to one town and reporting on them to the group as a whole. The mechanics of the assignment may also be important. Each group must have (1) individually duplicated copies of some material about its town (generally this can be excerpted or duplicated from the introduction to the relevant REED volume) and individually duplicated copies of the texts on which they will report (unfortunately it is probably again necessary that these include a

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version of the documents in modernized English spelling); (2) specific, but somewhat open-ended directions on what to look for; (3) a day or two to read the documents before (4) a class period given over to group discussion and planning of the report; (5) an assigned day on which to report and a time limit for the presentation; and (6) clearly stated obligations to interest their classmates when reporting and to learn from their classmates when listening. Although the REED York, Coventry, and Bristol collections each contain a wealth of records that would be splendid for assignments, I propose here to look at REED from other cities, partly because of the advantages of directing students to diverse kinds of records and many different English towns, and partly because some historians probably already use other records from Coventry or York. A preliminary introduction to techniques of analysis may be necessary. Charles PhythianAdams's article on Coventry might be a useful example of an analysis of urban ceremonial, as might some passages from David Harris Sacks's study of Bristol (131-46, 170-93). Either of these essays would have the advantage of presenting an analytic model based on records different from those any group of students would read: ideally each group of students would struggle to develop a fresh and independent interpretation of a collection of documents. After some such preliminary discussion I would assign the following tasks to different groups: I. Exeter: Excerpts from Receivers' Account Rolls and Mayors' Court Roll, 1408-9, 1409-10, 1412-13, 1413-14, and 1433-4; Hooker's Commonplace Book (1590), and Hooker's Description of the Citie of Excester (1590) (KEEV Devon 80-4, 94-5, 166-72, trans. 355-9, 370-1). These passages allow the student to contrast two very different attitudes towards civic celebration, particularly including the growing civic emphasis on symbols attending the presence of civic officials; the excerpts also include just enough payments to entertainers with aristocratic patrons for some students to guess that towns' tips to entertainers remembered the patron. A detailed illustration of this assignment is given in the Appendix, Part II. II. Newcastle: Excerpts from the ordinaries of various guilds: Coopers (1427), Smiths (1437), Barbers (1442), Walkers (1477), Weavers (1525), Tanners (1532), Saddlers (1533), Goldsmiths, Plumbers, Pewterers, Glaziers, and Painters (1536), Tailors (1537), Curriers, Feltmakers, and Armourers (1545), Cooks (1575), Millers (1578), Housecarpenters and Joiners (1579), Slaters and Bricklayers (1579), Masons (1581), Joiners (1589), and Waits (1677); royal visits in 1603 and 1639 (REED Newcastle upon Tyne 3-8, 17-23, 58, 62-3, 71-2, 140, 158, 164-8). Students should try to discover subtle differences in pretty formulaic language and to develop an understanding of the relationship between guilds and town celebrations.

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III. Chester: Mayors List 1498-9, Assembly Files 1531-2 (f 12), Early Banns, 1539-40, Assembly Books 1555-6, Midsummer Giants and Mayors List 1563-4, Assembly Books, 1598-9, Mayors List 1599-1600 (REED Chester 21-2, 27-8, 31-9, 56, 71-3, 193, 197-9). The excerpts provide a fairly continuous view of changing civic celebration at Chester. An ambitious group might also want to look at some Chester payments, particularly those from the guild accounts. IV. Norwich A: The rhetoric of the various displays with which Norwich greeted the queen in 1578 is worth a lot of attention, but the text is too long for one group (even if one leaves out the Latin and Greek). Group I may analyse Norwich's depiction of the relationship between city and sovereign on the day on which the city welcomed the queen (REED Norwich 1540—1642 247-9, 251-61). V. Norwich B: The visit of Queen Elizabeth, 1578, continued; the assigned passages have the advantage of inserting some humour in the midst of rather cumbersome shows (REED Norwich 1540-1642 269, 295-7, 304-6, 315-30). Ideally, discovering that cities' political rhetoric and forms seem to change will lead students to ask what else is changing. What is the relationship between urban and national governments? What is happening to the economies of different towns? The population? The social structure? If Dorchester was dominated by a stern clergyman, what was happening to larger towns? Any one of the uses of REED documents discussed in this essay is independent of all the others. In most cases other REED documents could easily substitute for those suggested. Faculty teaching at institutions with relatively small libraries, for instance, may have easy access only to some REED volumes or to a few at a time. At any level of availability, however, the kinds of documents REED prints are useful and engaging tools for historians who want to interest students in recent interpretations of early modern England. REED documents can indeed help us treat 'canonical issues in innovative ways,' as Tittler urges; for some time to come REED volumes are likely to provide a rich resource for students of history.

NOTES 1 Modernizing spelling makes an enormous difference to students unfamiliar with earlier forms of English. That is why, for example, Norman Davis published a students' edition of The Paston Letters. Similarly, in undergraduate courses on Shakespeare or late sixteenth- and seventeenth-century drama (the period of most of the REED texts discussed here), instructors regularly assign editions utilizing modern spelling. In the text

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of this essay I have preserved the original spelling in REED documents, while the sample assignments in the appendix provide modernized spelling for students. Readers may consider whether or not undergraduates would find the original orthography confusing. Documents presented with the original spelling preserved are more likely than modernizations to reveal local variations in dialect or pronunciation, of course. Such issues, are, however, not likely to arise very often in an introductory course in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English history, and when they do, the instructor may make parallel versions of a document available. Depending on the ability of the class, it is most important to engage students with primary documents in a form that they are likely to understand. It is probably not advisable, however, to modernize the spelling of surnames in primary sources, unless one can do so with absolute certainty. 'Hode' and 'Hood' (as in the document quoted in the Appendix, 128) were both English surnames, as were 'Bound' and 'Bond' (see 128, 129). The 'Robert Hode' discussed on 128 may or may not have represented Robin Hood, and students should have the opportunity to raise that issue, as well as considering whether William Bound, William Bownd, and William Bond were all the same person. 2 On the other hand, a Norwich musician was pilloried for Vnfitting Songes' in 1554, but it is not clear that the songs were defamatory (REED Norwich 1540-1642 33-4). 3 She classifies scolding and defamation in a 'Disharmony Cluster' which also includes eavesdropping and nightwalking; I have found no REED examples of either, although there were many disorderly evening entertainments. The 'Disorder Cluster' also includes sexual offences. But Mclntosh is specifically interested in cases brought outside the church courts; jurors pressed such cases apparently less frequently on moral grounds than because the offence seemed likely to create disharmony in the community (69-74). The REED cases I have found charging sexual offences were brought to the church courts.

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Appendix: Sample Assignments I. Excerpts from the Churchwardens' Accounts of the parish of St Andrew, Ashburton, Devon, 1530-1 to 1563-4. Adapted from records printed in REED Devon. [The records in the student pack modernize the spelling of the English records and include translations of records in Latin (REED Devon 22-30, trans. 334-8). The assignment is discussed above on 118-19]. Every part of England was divided into parishes, or local communities. The focal point of the religious parish was the parish church; large parishes might also have one or more subordinate chapels. Each year the minister and people of each parish chose officials called churchwardens to administer the finances of the parish and to take care of church properties. The accounts of churchwardens record parish revenues and expenditures. The documents in your packet are excerpts from the churchwardens' accounts of the parish church of Ashburton, an inland town in the southwestern English county of Devon; the town was on an important road between the city of Exeter and the coastal town of Plymouth. There is a continuous run of such churchwardens' accounts for the parish, 1479-1580, apparently representing all of the revenues received by and all the payments made by the churchwardens during those years. Included in your packet are all references to payments the churchwardens made to support parish drama or entertainment between 1530-1 and 1580 as well as all records of money they received associated with drama or entertainment. From the high Middle Ages until the 1970s English money used units called pounds, shillings, and pence. Twelve pennies (twelve pence, abbreviated as 12 d.) equalled one shilling (1 s.). Twenty shillings (20 s.) equalled one pound (£1 or 1 li.). The accountants didn't always bother to convert from pence to shillings: thus 16 d. is the same amount of money as 1 s. 4 d., and 33 s. 4 d. is the same amount of money as £1 13 s. 4 d. Because of enormous changes in purchasing power since the sixteenth century, there is no accurate way of converting sixteenth-century sums into modern equivalents. It may be helpful for you to think of an ordinary Tudor wage labourer as earning about % of a shilling (8 d.) for a day's work. Please read these excerpts carefully. Before the next class meeting make a list for yourself of everything we can tell about drama and entertainment in Ashburton from the evidence provided by the parish churchwardens' account. In class you will work with your group to construct a portrait of parish drama and entertainment in Ashburton. Ashburton: St Andrew's Churchwardens' Accounts Note: Each account covered income and expenses from 6 May in one year to

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5 May the following year. Thus, the first entry records payments made between 6 May 1530, and 5 May 1531. Sometimes the scribe would insert additional words above the line. Such insertions in the entries below are enclosed in diamond brackets: see for example (16 d.) in the entry for 1532-3. Material crossed out or missing in the original is indicated by square brackets. Editorial omissions of material not related to drama and entertainment are indicated by dots. I have modernized the sixteenth-century English spelling (some entries are translations from Latin), and changed numbers originally in Roman numerals to their modern equivalents, but preserved the scribes' capitalization and most of their punctuation. A short list of definitions of words you may not know follows the series of entries. 1530-1 ... And (they seek allowance) of 16 d. paid for the keeping of players' clothing there this year ... And of 7 s. 9 d. beyond the 2 s. 8 d. collected for two robes and three tunics bought for the players this year.

1531-2 ... And (they seek allowance) of 16 d. paid for the keeping of players' clothing there this year. And of 7 s. 9 d. paid for players' clothing and the making of the same this year. And of 16 d. given as a reward to players at Christmas-tide within the period of this account [this year] ...

1532-3 ... And 8 s. 4 d. paid to John Wyndyett Tailor for keeping of the bells collars & for keeping of the playing Clothes (16 d.) this year ... 1533-4 Item 8 s. 4 d. paid to John Wyndyett tailor for keeping of the (7 s.) bells & the playing (16 d.) Clothes this year ... ... And 2 s. Rewarded & allowed to the players of a Christmas game that played in the said Church this year ...

1534-5 ...And of 8 s. 4 d. paid to John Wyndyett Tailor for keeping of the bell (7 s.) collars & keeping of the playing clothes (16 d.) this year ...

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... And of 24 s. 4 d. paid to the stainer for painting of the [