Lydgate's Mummings and the Aristocratic Resistance to Drama

Abstract

Lydgate's Mummings and the Aristocratic Resistance to Drama ROBERT EPSTEIN In an article in PMLA in October 1998, W. B. Worthen declared "a conceptual crisis in drama studies."1 Over the last two decades, the field ofperformance studies has coalesced around assertions ofthe primacyoftemporal performance over the presumed authorityofthe written text; thus drama studies, from which performance studies emerged, has been left in a critical quandary. The essentialproblem,Worthen says, is that "the burgeoning of performance studies has not really clarified the relation between dramatic texts and performance."2 Also in 1998,DerekForbes staged Lydgate's MummingatHertfordat Hertford Casde, the location ofits original performance, and dien published his adapted text along widi an account of the production under the tide Lydgate'sDisguisingatHertford Castle: TheFirstSecular Comedy in theEnglish Language.3The subtide is erroneous,butForbes'sproductionwas die firststage presentation ofthis or anyofLydgate's mummings since tiieir original performances in the late 1420s.4 To accomplish his restaging,however,Forbeshadto make numerous alterationsto Lydgate's textbeyond simplyupdatingthe language—includinghavingan actor in die role ofKing HenryVI, and providing dialogue for players who were originallymute. Like theater in the twenty-first century, Lydgate's fifteenth-century mummings inhabitthe interstices between drama and performance, between performanceand textTheyhavedramaticqualitieswithoutseeming to qualify fully as drama. They are performance texts, but the relationship ofthe text to the performance is deeply vexed. Are they die scripts ofaperformedwork, or do theycommemorate aspectacle andtiierefore belong to thatgreat"other" category ofliterature, the"occasional"work? 337 338Comparative Drama But though they exist in a critical twilight, they are significant to theater history, ifprimarilyas textualevidence ofrudimentaryearlydrama.5 To literary criticism, they are virtually invisible. It is axiomatic that literary history is biasedtoward high art at the expense ofpopular culture; that it chooses the elite over the demotic; that it favors the secular over the religious ; that itprefers the capital to die provinces. Nonetheless, TheNew History ofEarly English Drama has index entries neither for "Lydgate" nor for"mumming,"whileWilliamTydeman,writing in the recent Cambridge Companion toMedievalEnglish Theatre, mentions the mummings onlyto dismiss them in a single paragraph as associated with the"sterile pageantsinaureateverse"thatLydgateproducedforceremonialoccasions.6 The "mumming" has a complex and often obscure history of shifting generic boundaries. An essential feature, as the name implies, is silence , and a "mumming" most often describes a dumb-show, a performance by nonspeaking actors; as such it is an ancient form that survives today in English Christmas mummings. The courdy entertainments known as mummings constitute the prehistory ofthe celebrated Stuart masque.7Theaterhistorianshave hypothesized thattheyderive fromthe quête, me ancient custom in which groups ofmasked individuals would enter noble households for impromptu and often coercive exchanges of gifts,"apracticethatlies somewherebetween seekingdonations andholdingpeople to ransom."8This disorderlycustom, itis said,was eventually overtaken, stylized, and controlled bythe aristocrats themselves.9 Lydgate's mummings comprise seven texts that appear exclusivelyin two manuscripts byJohn Shirley, six in Cambridge, Trinity College MS. R.3.20, and one in Bodleian LibraryMS.Ashmole 59, part 1.10 The central and intractable question is the relationship ofthese texts to the occasions from which they arise. Since they are texts, the designation "mummings" increases the generic confusion, and Shirley's typicallyloquacious introductions onlymuddythe water further. They are all associated with festive occasions (to use a deliberately vague phrase) for the royal court or for the wealthiest representatives ofthe London merchant class. But on the few occasions when scholars have analyzed the mummings at any length, they have been hard pressed to explain the exact nature of the performances and die exact function ofthe texts." The textknown as die MummingatBishopswood is, according to Shirley, Robert Epstein339 a"balade ... sentebyapoursyvanttotheSliinevesofLondon."TheMwmmmg atEltham is "a balade" by Lydgate "for a momyng tofore pe kyng and be qwene." The MummingatLondon is a "devyse ofa desguysing," and the Mumming at Windsor a "devyse of a momyng."12 It is most likely that most ofthese poems were deictic texts read aloud by a herald while disguised performers mimed allegorical scenes, as is suggested by Shirley's heading to the Mummingfor theMercers ofLondon: "And nowe filowebe alettre made inwyse ofbaladebyDaun Iohan,broughtbya poursuyaunt in wyse of mummers desguysed to fore pe mayre of London, eestfeld, vpon pe twelffepe night ofCristmasse, ordeyned ryallych by pe worthy merciers...