Lord Of Misrule Research Articles

Shadwell as Lord of Misrule: Dryden, Varronian Satire, and Carnival

Research Article| September 01 2000 Shadwell as Lord of Misrule: Dryden, Varronian Satire, and Carnival Kirk Combe Kirk Combe Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Eighteenth-Century Life (2000) 24 (3): 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1215/00982601-24-3-1 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Kirk Combe; Shadwell as Lord of Misrule: Dryden, Varronian Satire, and Carnival. Eighteenth-Century Life 1 September 2000; 24 (3): 1–18. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00982601-24-3-1 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll JournalsEighteenth-Century Life Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. The College of William & Mary2000 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Lords of Misrule: Mardi Gras and the Politics of Race in New Orleans.

Lords of Misrule: Mardi Gras and the Politics of Race in New Orleans.

Play Prepares Father Christmas's Future

Play Prepares Father Christmas's Future Jean Perrot (bio) Gifts and Toys: the Sacred and the Profane Santa Claus's future is as problematic as his past; yet, however seriously threatened the old fellow may be by feminist versions of his story and the disbelief of disenchanted children, it is a pleasure every year to see him merrily emerge from his wonderland and bring toys and games to parents and children alike.1 The legendary figure embodies in durable form a cosmic interplay between earth and heaven: gifts and toys are given to children, as they were once given to the newborn Child by the shepherds, but every child also stands in the place of the Child Jesus and is a divine gift to the family (Isambert 200-201). The unexpected mutation of the Nativity scenario was made popular by Thomas Nast's drawings in Harper's Weekly in the second half of the last century, but Santa Claus emigrated slowly to Europe. His radical invasion followed the Second World War, arousing a controversy in 1951 that included the famous article by Claude Lévi-Strauss on "Le Père Noël supplicié" [Father Christmas tortured] (1952). The supporters of the traditional Christmas scenario and the crèche opposed those who adopted a "pagan" character able to "fill a place left empty by de-christianization" (Lévi-Strauss 1952: 1580). The traditionalists burnt Santa Claus in effigy on the front steps of Dijon cathedral, while Santa Claus's pagan devotees managed to have a man clad in ritual garb land on a large store from an helicopter, to the utter dismay of their Christian opponents, who could not resort to such crude devices. This set of oppositions is fortunately less crucial today, but it still dominates contemporary interpretations of Christmas, leading, on the one hand, to religious representations of the Nativity scenes (Potter), and on the other, to pagan transformations of the Santa Claus myth. Nevertheless, one can find picture-books in which the two scenarios blend, such as Ce cher Père Noël [Dear Santa Claus] by Suzanne Palermo (1991), a book that has the very shape of a Christmas tree but that includes, among the toys hanging from its branches, a crèche showing the Nativity. Three symbolic representations of the Santa Claus figure serve to illuminate the historic interpretation of the legend as well as the changes through which it has passed. The first representation is that on a cover of the French Saint Nicolas magazine (independent of the American one), which shows one of the supposed predecessors of Father Christmas (Lépagnol 67). In this late-nineteenth-century illustration, we see the saint in the festive clothing of a bishop, holding the reins of his donkey in one hand; the celestial gift-giver is on the rooftops among a forest of smoking chimney pots and is preparing to deliver his load of toys. The picture is meant to remind children of the rewards that Saint Nicholas, appointed a bishop in the legends and songs of Lorraine and Belgium, was supposed to bring to children who had been good throughout the year. The toys, which can be seen on the back of his donkey or hanging from one of its ears, correspond to those in the nursery folklore of the time. A magic lantern, puppets, a Punch and Judy theater, a farm animal on wheels, a bull, a soldier, and a cannon give an idea of the games played by the readers of the magazine. A figure on a bicycle demonstrates that this collection of toys includes the latest applications of contemporary technology. The stiff posture of the saint and the inflexibility of the wooden toys signify some stiffness in the quality of the gift-giving. One of the puppets, however, represents a crowned fool, referring back to a secular character traditionally associated with the seasonal festivities in the "Christmas of the fools" (Lépagnol 16), well known in the English tradition as the Lord of Misrule (Coles 1990, 5). This image already illustrates the dual social role that the gift of toys is meant to fulfill. On the one hand, Saint Nicholas acts as a...

Lords of misrule

In March this year, Index's former Asia specialist returned home for three months after an absence of 29 years. It was a dispiriting experience

Mock Kings in Medieval Society and Renaissance Drama by Sandra Billington

Reviews193 This tendency to misread the status of performance with dramatists like Beckett and Shepard, and even the slipperiness that plagues the terms "drama" and "performance" throughout the book, should not be overstressed: they may point as much to the difficulties involved in theorizing performance as they do to the book's unwillingness to define. It is probably true that contemporary drama is undergoing shifts that resemble those evident in performance theater (and in the work of individual performance artists like Carolee Schneeman and Rachel Rosenthal, or directors—like Akalaitis—who assume a deconstructive stance toward classic texts) even if Vanden Heuvel hasn't yet clarified the vocabulary for discussing this trend. That this book may finally be more secure with the subject of "Dramatizing Performance" than it is with the more vexed issue of "Performing Drama" does not invalidate its many achievements or the importance of the questions it raises. With Performing Drama/Dramatizing Performance, Michael Vanden Heuvel has claimed a place among those theorists (Philip Auslander and Elinor Fuchs come to mind) who discuss the most challenging work in contemporary performance theater and who manage to engage theatrical issues that always seem to reside on the boundaries between disciplines. STANTON B. GARNER, JR. University of Tennessee, Knoxville Sandra Billington. Mock Kings in Medieval Society and Renaissance Drama. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991. Pp. xiv + 287. $79.00. Sandra Billington's book is set up in the same way that the "Yale dissertation" used to be set up in American graduate studies until about twenty years ago. After identifying a distinctive literary pattern, she traces it through several key texts, noting its permutation in each. In her case, the pattern is "the mock king pattern," and the texts are several Renaissance English plays, including some of the best known by Shakespeare, from the Henry Vl plays to The Tempest. This model for a comparative study of literature is exemplified by Thomas Greene's The Descent from Heaven and A. Bartlett Giammatti's The Earthly Paradise in the Renaissance Epic. Perhaps its best known representation in studies of English Renaissance drama is Howard Fclperin's Shakespearean Romance. Billington employs this classic critical model with admirable learning to illuminate her subject in some new ways. Though she knows C. L. Barber's Shakespeare's Festive Comedy and refers to it several times, she avoids covering the same ground and brings fresh insight to several non-Shakespearean comedies, especially Beaumont and Fletcher's A King and No King (pp. 188- 96). Troilus and Cressida, King Lear, and Antony and Cleopatra are an unusual group, to say the least, but Billington's reading makes sense of them as "festive tragedies" that borrow from the mock kings of winter festivals (Christmas, St. Stephens, Twelfth Night, Epiphany), though for reasons explained below I think she makes more of some plays' associations with court festivities than evidence permits. Angelo as a mock king presiding over a world of misrule is a fresh 194Comparative Drama approach to Measure for Measure, while Billington's observation that "Every leading character who arrives on [Caliban's] island, apart from Ferdinand, fancies himself a king" (p. 248) is a new idea convincingly elaborated. Moreover, Billington does more than find a changing pattern in certain texts: focusing on medieval folk custom, she notes how it changed with social and political changes in the course of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. After a brief introduction, Part I of the book (four chapters out of eleven total) details the extent to which mock kings and lords of misrule were associated with actual political disruption in the late Middle Ages and then lost that association in the sixteenth century. What is noteworthy about her argument here is that it relates directly to Stephen Greenblatt's proposition about political subversion and containment , l For Billington points out that political use of the folk custom declined as the centralized power of the Tudors gained in effectiveness, while at the same time the pattern of the folk custom became increasingly frequent and sophisticated in drama. To put Billington's argument in Greenblatt's terms, the Tudors successfully contained real subversion (i.e., real political disruption), and the evidence...

Routs and Reyes

T HERE has been much discussion, if not controversy, over what constitutes the origin of the English Morris, and it seems a pity that some arguments reveal a reluctance to consider early evidence on its own merits without relinquishing nineteenthand twentieth-century conceptions. I should like to put all such contentious arguments to one side and approach the sixteenth-century dance called 'Morris' via other dances of the same period and earlier, in which men were the chief participants. There are two in particular; one called a route and the other a ray or rey. 'Rout' can, of course, mean an aggressive rising of men and, according to the OED, so too can 'Rey'. It appears that this meaning is sometimes attached to the word when it is used in a dance context, as though the ambiguity was applied deliberately. Most of the sources at our disposal are literary, which is an obvious disadvantage. If there were historical attestations there would be no problem, but since there are not, detective work applied to chronicles and literature is the only alternative. The unifying factor in the references, to which I shall be drawing attention initially, is the beribboned or tattered state of dress. Following this is a discussion of its possible origin. The most famous dancing march called a 'route' is that in Phillip Stubbes's Anatomie ofAbuses, written in 1583,' in which he attacks the exuberant practices of young men on Holy Days. According to Stubbes, the followers of the 'Lord of Misrule' elected for the day could number up to a hundred, all dressed in liveries

On Recovering the Lost Norwich Corpus Christi Cycle

On Recovering the Lost Norwich Corpus Christi Cycle Alan H. Nelson For the whole of this century, the Corpus Christi plays from Nor­ wich, England, have masqueraded under the title of the Norwich Whitsun plays.1 But it seems certain that the plays were never acted at Whitsun (Pentecost) before 1559, and it is possible that they were not produced at all after that date. The misunderstanding behind this appellation has obscured the true history of the plays, and has led such a sensitive scholar as V. A. Kolve to judge that the civic authority responsible for the plays “never rose to the Corpus Christi occasion with the sustained intelligence characteristic of the six or seven other English towns whose records survive in greater detail.” 2 The document primarily responsible for the confusion is a petition offered by the Norwich Guild of St. Luke, dated St. Matthew’s day (September 21), 1527.3 It reads in part as follows: where of longtime paste the said Guylde of Seynt Luke yerly till nowe hath ben used to be kept and holden within the citie afore­ said [Norwich] upon the Mundaye in pentecoste weke, at which daye and the daye next ensuyng many and divers disgisings and pageaunts, as well of the lieffs and martyrdoms of divers and many hooly Saynts, as also many other light and feyned figurs and picturs of other persones and bests; the sight of which dis­ gisings and pageaunts, as well yerly on the sayd Mondaye in pentecoste weke in the time of procession than goyng about a grette circuitte of the forsaid citie, as yerly the Tuysday in the same weke the lord named the Lord of Misrule at Tumlond within the same citie, hath ben and yet is sore coveted, specially by the people of the countre; beforse wherof yerly at that time more than any other tymes in the yeer the people of the countre have used abundantly for to resort to the said citie. . . . This document has universally been taken as a true account of the Norwich Corpus Christi play in 1527, and “of longtyme paste.” 4 Such an interpretation cannot be correct. The production sponsored by St. Luke’s Guild consisted not of scenes from sacred history, but of disguisings and pageants of the lives and martyrdoms of saints; and also fig241 242 Comparative Drama ures and pictures of people and animals. On Whitmonday these went in procession through the city of Norwich, and on Whittuesday some sort of festivity was conducted by the Lord of Misrule at Tombland, an open area just outside and west of the cathedral close. The events of Monday probably bore some resemblance to the midsummer shows of Chester and London, or to the great procession of Brussels, all of which had pageants, and none of which were plays.5 Having described the pageants which were a traditional part of the procession, St. Luke’s Guild next pleaded present financial impoverish­ ment. The Guild requested that other guilds of the city make a con­ tribution to the procession, in particular “that every occupation wythyn the seyd Citye maye yerly, at the said procession upon the Monday in Pentecost weke, sette forth one pageant . . . .” The civic author­ ity hearing this petition regarded it with favor: “ It is by auctoritie aforeseid agreed and enacted, that every occupacion within the seid Citie shall yerly from thenseforth fynde and sette forth in the said pro­ cession one such pageaunt as shalbe assigned and appoynted by Master Maier and his bretheren aldermen, as more playnly appereth in a boke thereof made.” The pageants to be sustained in the future by the various craft guilds were not listed as part of the petition, but were recorded in­ stead in some other book. Therefore we do not know precisely what was anticipated by St. Luke’s Guild or by the Council. But we can say this: either the craft guilds were expected to take over pageants which had traditionally been presented in the Whitmonday proces­ sion; or they were expected to add new pageants to the procession. If the former, then the procession remained substantially unchanged. If, however, new pageants were to be added...

The Old Lad of the Castle

Although two or three meanings have been extracted from Prince Hal's pun, there is perhaps yet another sense to be derived from these lines. Hal and Falstaff, revelling at the Boar's Head, are discussing the perils of highway robbery. Falstaff tries to dodge the painful subject of penalties, but Hal leads him back to it, till he pleads that resolution should be no longer fobbed with the curb of old father antic the law. When from time to time, Grand Christmas was kept at the Inns of Court, or the universities, Lords of Misrule were elected, each being attended by his great officers of state. Malefactors were committed to custody, and put in the Tower or Castle, which was in fact the stocks. For example in i56i, at the Inner Temple, Prince Palaphilos was attended by his Lieutenant of the Tower wearing a fair white armour, nest of feathers in his helm and pole axe in his hand followed by four men in white harness, bearing on their shoulders the Tower, which was afterwards placed near the fire.' At the famous Gray's Inn sports of i594, after the Night of Errors, when tumults obliged the students to abandon their show, leaving the stage to the common players and Comedy of Errors, one personating Sorcerer was charged with causing the mishaps. The prisoner was arraigned at the Bar, being brought thither by the Lieutenant of the Tower (for at that time the stocks were graced with that name); being tried by jury of twenty-four, he was acquitted, and all the chief law officers of the Prince of Purpool were commanded to the Tower instead (Gesta Grayorum, Malone Society Reprint,

Lord of Misrule

Lord of Misrule

Christmas, the Upstart

IN the year of our Lord 1935, there is no holiday more generally honored in New England, and none more loved, than the anniversary of the birth of Jesus Christ. The many happy ways in which the day is celebrated at the present time make it particularly hard for us to realize that not one hundred years ago the festival was regarded disapprovingly by the great majority of New Englanders. Christmas is, nevertheless, no more than an upstart in New England, and Thanksgiving and even the Fourth of July can boast a more ancient and a more general observance. That Christmas was under a ban in colonial times is a fact fairly well known, but the survival of that ban into the middle of the nineteenth century has received little attention in print. In view of the virtual neglect of this point, the publication of still another article on Christmas may, perhaps, be justified.' At the opening of the seventeenth century, Christmas had been established as a regular holiday in England for hundreds of years. The festivities were not of the sort we know to-day. Far from being the new-born Son of Man, the infant to whom the three kings brought their gifts, Christ served rather as the Lord of Misrule, patron of riotous celebration. It was in his name that the wassail-bowl passed and toasts were given, and before the prolonged feasting was over, the jails were usually filled with drunken roisterers. To pious churchmen, all this intemperate brawling was offensive, and as the Puritans grew in strength during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, they favored the idea of completely abolishing the observance. More prudent counsel, more knowledge of human nature, would have suggested an in-

Lord of misrule

Lord of misrule

XXXVIII. Observations on the Christmas Diversions formerly given by the Lord of Misrule, and on the King's Office of Revels and Tents: chiefly from Papers preserved at Losely, near Guildford, in a Letter from William Bray, Esq. Treasurer, to Samuel Lysons, Esq. Vice President

Amongst many curious papers preserved at Losely, near Guildford; the ancient seat of the Mores, and now possessed by their descendant James More Molyneux, Esq. are accounts relating to the Christmas Diversions given by the Lord of Misrule, and relating to the King's Office of Revells and Tents. The former may serve as an addition to the account of the Lord of Misrule, given by our late worthy Secretary, Mr. Brand; the latter I do not remember to have seen in print.

XXXIX. Copy of an Appointment of a Lord of Misrule; communicated by William Bray, Esq. in a Letter to Samuel Lysons, Esq. F.R.S. Vice President

I lately addressed to you some account of a person known by the title of Lord of Misrule, whose office it was to amuse the King and other great men by his frolicks during the twelve days of the Christmas holidays. I have since met with an account of the power with which he was invested in the Mansion House of Richard Evelyn, of Wotton in Surrey, Esq a gentleman of considerable fortune, who always kept open house during those days of mirth and jollity; but, who being High Sheriff of Surrey and Sussex in 1634, seems to have called in the assistance of this officer to celebrate the feast with more than usual ceremony. Perhaps it may serve as a supplement to the former Paper, but you will make what use of it you please.