Records of Early Drama: Wales ed. by David N. Klausner (review)

Abstract

DAVID N. KLAUSNER, ed., Records of Early Drama: Wales. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005. ISBN: 0-8020-907-9 (North America). London: British Library, ISBN: 0-7123-4911-1 (European Union). $250. In Records of Early Drama: Wales (the eighteenth volume of the University of Toronto/British Library series on Records of Early English Drama), David N. Klausner has diligently collected, organized, and annotated the essential legal and literary documents that describe the diverse secular and seasonal activities of music and drama in Wales from the sub-Roman period to 1700. This work should find a dedicated space in the libraries of literary scholars, novelists, musicologists and musicians, historians, anthropologists, geographers, or anyone with a passion for the life of Wales and its complex growth as a nation. Organized by Principality, Shire, Parish, Towns/Villages, and Households, this reference work lays the foundation for much future academic and popular exploration into the social history of Wales, its secular music and drama, and its celebration of a cultural and national life. Not since Marion Eames's historical novel of seventeenthcentury Wales Y Stafell Ddirgel (The Secret Room,' Landybie, 1969) has such a complete human portrait of drama, music, and entertainment paraded into textual existence-this time, it is reality rather than fiction. Exploring Klausner's editorial range of legal and literary documents, one shifts slowly from collecting official and mundane facts to pursuing questions more visceral as they arise from the silent space of human history surrounding even the smallest ephemera within the records: * Where do the native British 'still in heaps goe one pilgrimage to the wonted welles and places of supersticion, and in the nightes after the feasts...'? [d. 1572, p. 29] I want to go too-Pennant Melangell would be my favorite spot. * Upon what instrument does one of three unnamed suitors play when wooing Lady Agnes under her window at night while her husband is away at Parliament, and why does she eventually murder her husband with poison? Was one of her paramours really a priest? [d. 1572, p. 45] A flat-back bandora rather than a lute would offer more portability in such nocturnal circumstances. * Did the village of Dolbenmaen ever recover after William ap Evan does 'entertayne enterlude players at the same house where there were three persons vnknown disguised in change of apparel that acted sometymes in one habit & sometymes in another habitt behaveing themselues very disorderly and vncivill...'? [d. 1654, p. 65] Obviously, the person complaining has never seen or put on a costume -is this the beginning of drama critics? * Who is Thorny Mostyn, and why does he want a lute from London? [d. 1619, p. 70] The end-notes reveal all. * How do the streets of the village of Tregaron endure the effect of one Griffith ap Evan of Caron, tried and convicted for 'liuinge in vnlawfull Callinge, or Course of Life, but wandering vpp, & downe, with a taber, & pipe, roguinge & begginge'? [d. 1687, p. 87] Nowadays, the Welsh Tourist Board would probably hire him. * Why do two Welsh cobblers from Wrexam gang up and make 'a bloudie free vpon one Evan ap Iohn fiddler'? [d. 1624, p. 190] Was his playing that bad? * At a wedding feast, how does the poet Gruffudd Hiraethog survive his 'roast' and poetic castration while wading in the river Dee?-'and his leaden testicles, the basket of children / Lie reproachfully in the belly of a salmon.' [d. 1555, p. 373] Caveat: Never invite former students to a feast where alcohol is served. Such references just break the ice in this pageant of documents accounting native Welsh drama, feasting, and minstrelsy. Klausner opens his study with a very cogent and detailed topographical and historical background, including separate treatments of each shire with maps that outline the existing roads upon which the Welsh traveled from the later middle ages to the early modern period. …