Carnival and the Morality Tradition Interludes and morality plays Who originally performed by clergy later servants or wandering players and paid for by aristocratic patrons Where indoors halls of great ID: 224740
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Slide1
Shakespeare’s Belly
Carnival and the Morality TraditionSlide2
Interludes and morality plays
Who?:
originally performed by clergy, later servants or wandering players and paid for by aristocratic patrons
Where?:
indoors – halls of great
households, inns
When?:
in between courses at household feasts and banquets –
interlude
literally means ‘in-between play’Slide3
Interludes and morality plays
Morality plays
Allegorical:
not directly
dramatising
Bible stories
‘Everyman’
figure, Virtues
and
Vices:
Performers cast in Vice roles were often expected to ad-lib (Wiles 2005: 4-5
);
The Vice would wear a motley coat and carry a wooden
dagger.
Mankind
was performed
during the winter festive season, c. 1470, probably for an aristocratic banquet somewhere in East Anglia (though it could have been performed in an inn).
Audience includes seated ‘sovereigns’ and standing ‘brothers’.Slide4
The Medieval HallSlide5
Mankind
All the characters in morality drama appeal directly to the audience, offering advice, injunctions, suggestions etc.
The opening
speech sets up
Mercy as the voice
of moral authority:
MERCY
.
Mercy is my name, that
mourneth
for your
offence.
Divert
not yourselves in time of
temptation,
That
ye may be acceptable to God at your going hence. (18-20)
On the other hand, Mischief, as David Wiles puts it, ‘is
at once the villain, whom the audience learn to shun, and the welcome game-maker who makes the play
possible’
(2005: 1-2
):
MISCHIEF
.
I say, sir! I am come hither to make you
game;
Yet
, bade ye me not go out in the devil’s
name,
And
I will abide. (68-70)Slide6
Mankind: body vs. soul
MANKIND.
My name is Mankind. I have my
composition
Of
a body and of a soul, of condition
contrary.
Betwixt
the twain is a great
division;
He
that should be subject, now he hath the victory. (193-6
)
MERCY
.
Distemper not your brain with good ale, nor with
wine!
Measure
is treasure: I forbid you not the
use;
Measure
yourself ever! Beware of excess! (235-7
)
TITIVILLUS
.
Arise, and
avent
thee! Nature compels!
MANKIND.
I will into
thi
[s] yard, sovereigns! and come again
soon;
For
dread of the colic, and eke of the
stone,
I
will go do that needs must be
done;
My
beads shall be here for whomsoever will else. (561-5)Slide7
Mankind: Vices
‘In
other early interludes written for professional troupes we find that the Vices are venial rather than deadly sins. They offer man a life of holiday pleasures. Pride is paired with Riot in
Youth
. Lust-and-liking and Folly in
Mundus et
Infans
set up
carnivalesque
freedom as an alternative to ecclesiastical discipline
.’
(Wiles 2005: 3)
New Guise, Nought and Now-a-Days as entertainers: dancers, singers, practical jokers and play-actors
Mixture
of scatological humour and blasphemy:
NOW-A-DAYS
.
I pray you heartily, worshipful
clerk!
To
have this English made in Latin:
‘
I have eaten a dishful of
curds,
And
I have
shitten
your mouth full of turds.’Slide8
Mankind: dramaturgy of sinning and redemption
NOW-A-DAYS
(to Mercy)
. When ye will, go forth your way!
Men
have little dainty of your
play
Because
ye make no sport. (265-7)
Inversion
of authority: mock Latin,
parodic
version of law court
Platea
dimension: local and topical
references
Audience participation: first the blasphemous Christmas carol, then payment to see
TitivillusSlide9
Mankind: dramaturgy of sinning and redemption
TITIVILLUS.
And ever ye did, for me keep now your
silence!
Not
a word! I charge you, pain of forty
pence!
A
pr
[et]
ty
game shall be showed you ere ye go hence. (590-2)
Breaking
complicity: the Vices’ cruelty becomes clear by the end of the play as they gleefully help Mankind to kill
himself.Slide10
Henry IV as morality drama
The morality play as model for the story of
the young Henry
V was already implicit in
the earlier drama
The Famous Victories of Henry V
(printed c. 1594).
Shakespeare follows this pattern to some extent…
KING
HENRY.
…Therefore, friends,
As far as to the sepulchre of Christ –
Whose soldier now, under whose blessed cross
We are impressed and engaged to fight –
Forthwith a power of English shall we levy,
Whose arms were moulded in their mothers’ womb
To chase these pagans in those holy fields
Over whose acres walked those blessed feet
Which fourteen hundred years ago were nailed,
For our advantage, on the bitter cross. (1.1.18-27)
PRINCE HARRY.
For
my part, I may speak it to my shame
,
I
have a truant been to
chivalry.
(5.1.93-4)Slide11
Falstaff as Vice
PRINCE HARRY.
…that
reverend Vice, that grey Iniquity, that father Ruffian, that Vanity in
Years…
(2.5.458-9
)
LORD CHIEF JUSTICE.
You follow the young prince up and down, like his ill angel. (Part Two, 1.2.150-1)
Bardolph
as junior Vice?
Francois
Laroque
describes
Falstaff as
‘Shakespeare’s
most extraordinary clown and expert in all tricks –
carnivalesque
jokes, theatrical ad-libbing, bibulous word games or superb comic monologues to obfuscate his lies or cover his bad
faith’ (2002: 70).Slide12
Falstaff as Vice
PRINCE
HARRY.
Pray God you have
not murdered
some of
them.
FALSTAFF.
Nay,
that’s
past praying
for.
I have peppered
two of them. Two
I am sure I have
paid – two rogues in
buckram suits. I tell thee what, Hal, if I
tell thee
a lie, spit in my face, call me horse.
Thou
knowest
my old ward – here I lay, and thus I bore my point. Four rogues in buckram let drive at me.PRINCE HARRY. What, four? Thou saidst but two even now.FALSTAFF. Four, Hal, I told thee four.POINS. Ay, ay, he said four.FALSTAFF. These four came all afront, and mainly thrust at me. I made me no more ado, but took all their seven points in my target, thus. (2.5.174-86)Slide13
Inversion of morality
PRINCE HARRY.
I see a good amendment of life in thee, from praying to
purse-taking.
FALSTAFF
.
Why, Hal,
’tis
my vocation, Hal.
’Tis
no sin for a man to labour in his vocation. (
1.2.104-5)
FALSTAFF
.
Company, villainous company, hath been the spoil of
me.
BARDOLPH
.
Sir John, you are so fretful, you cannot live
long.
FALSTAFF
.
Why, there is it: come sing me a bawdy song, make me merry. I was as virtuously given as a gentleman need to be; virtuous enough: swore little, diced not – above seven times a week, went to a bawdy-house once in a quarter – of an hour, paid money that I borrowed – three of four times; lived well and in good compass: and now I live out of all order, out of all compass. (3.3.9-19)Slide14
Falstaff as improviser and game-maker
‘Shall we have a play extempore?’ (2.5.282-3)
PRINCE
HARRY.
Do thou stand for my father, and examine me upon the particulars of my
life.
FALSTAFF
.
Shall I? Content. This chair shall be my state, this dagger my sceptre, and this cushion my
crown.
PRINCE
HARRY.
Thy state is taken for a joined-stool, thy golden sceptre for a leaden dagger, and thy precious rich crown for a pitiful bald crown. (2.5.379-85)
Falstaff improvises in iambic pentameter (2.5.395-401)Slide15
Carnival and Lent (Pieter Bruegel, 1559)Slide16
Carnival and Lent (Pieter Bruegel, 1559)Slide17
Falstaff as embodiment of Carnival
Falstaff as
‘All-
hallown
summer’ (1.2.157), a ‘roasted
Manningtree
ox’ (2.5.458), ‘
Martlemas
’ (
Part Two
, 2.2.86), ‘wassail candle’ (
Part Two
, 1.2.145
).
Social status: both a knight and a pickpocket
Anachronistic identity: ruffs, sack, playhouse, Pistol
Linguistic play:
‘If manhood, good manhood, be not forgot upon the face of the earth, then am I a
shotten
herring’
(2.5.128-9
); ‘
If I fought not with fifty of them, I am a bunch of radish’ (2.5.187).Slide18
Carnival and the Elizabethan stage
David Wiles:
‘The
Elizabethan theatre stood at a point of transition between the modern concept of theatre as part of a leisure industry and the medieval or pre-urban concept of drama as part of an
inversionary
or
carnivalesque
mode of living life
.’ (2005
: xii)
Theatres in the Elizabethan period were distinctly
carnivalesque
spaces, as Bristol argues:
‘Theatre occupies a marginal space as well as a marginal time. This is pragmatically true of the earliest Elizabethan playhouses, which were situated outside the formal jurisdiction of the city authorities, although they remained de facto an integral part of the city’s economic activity.’ (1983: 648)Slide19
Carnival and the Elizabethan stageSlide20
Carnival and the Elizabethan stage
Stubbes
equated theatre with carnival:
‘… some spend the Sabbath day (for the most part) in frequenting of bawdy stage-plays and interludes, in maintaining Lords of Misrule (for so they call a certain kind of play which they use), May games, church-ales, feasts, and wakes: in piping, dancing, dicing, carding, bowling, tennis-playing: in bear-baiting, cock-fighting, hawking, hunting, and such like; … whereby the Lord God is dishonoured, his Sabbath violated, his word neglected, his sacraments contemned, and his people marvellously corrupted and carried away from true virtue and godliness.’ (
Stubbes
,
Anatomie
of Abuses
)Slide21
The Saturnalian pattern
Barber considers ‘the tendency for Elizabethan comedy to
be
a saturnalia, rather than to
represent
saturnalian
experience’ (1972: 36
).
Northrop
Frye (‘The Argument of Comedy’, 1948):
‘…
the action of the comedy begins in a world represented as a normal world, moves into the green world, goes into a metamorphosis there in which the comic resolution is achieved, and returns to the normal world.’ (Palmer 1984: 80
)
(Is
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
‘closed off’ in this sense? Is
Henry IV
?)Slide22
Audience complicity
Falstaff’s direct address:
Kempe’s
stand-up?
‘
There’s honour for
you’
(5.3.32-3
).
As with the medieval Vice
, the dark side of Falstaff’s moral ambivalence becomes clearer as the play progresses:
PRINCE
HARRY.
I did never see such pitiful rascals.
FALSTAFF.
Tut, tut, good enough to toss, food for powder, food for powder. They’ll fill a pit as well as better.
Tush
, man, mortal men, mortal men. (4.2.64-7)
FALSTAFF.
I have led my ragamuffins where they are peppered; there’s not three of my hundred and fifty left alive, and they are for the town’s end, to beg during life. (5.3.35-8)Slide23
Audience complicity
PRINCE HARRY.
Why, thou
owest
God a death.
Exit
FALSTAFF.
’Tis
not due yet. I would be loath to pay him before his day. What need I be so forward with him that calls not on me? Well,
’tis
no matter; honour pricks me on. Yea, but how if honour prick me off when I come on? How then? Can honour set to a leg? No. Or an arm? No. Or take away the grief of a wound? No. Honour hath no skill in surgery, then? No. What is honour? A word. What is in that word ‘honour’? What is that ‘honour’? Air. A trim reckoning! Who hath it? He that died o’ Wednesday. Doth he feel it? No. Doth he hear it? No.
’Tis
insensible, then? Yea, to the dead. But will it not live with the living? No. Why? Detraction will not suffer it. Therefore I’ll none of it. Honour is a mere
scutcheon
. And so ends my catechism. (5.1.126-40)Slide24
Audience complicity
But Harry gets there first!
PRINCE
HARRY.
I know you all, and will awhile
uphold
The
unyoked humour of your
idleness.
Yet
herein will I imitate the
sun,
Who
doth permit the base contagious
clouds
To
smother up his beauty from the
world,
That
, when he please again to be
himself,
Being
wanted, he may be more wondered
at
By breaking through the foul and ugly mistsOf vapours that did seem to strangle him.[…]I’ll so offend to make offence a skill,Redeeming time when men think least I will. (1.2. 192-214)Indeed, at the end, his father tells him: ‘Thou hast redeemed thy lost opinion, / And showed thou mak’st some tender of my life, / In this fair rescue thou hast brought to me’ (5.4.46-9).PRINCE HARRY. I shall hereafter, my thrice-gracious lord, / Be more myself. (3.2.92-3)Slide25
Complicating the morality reading
KING HENRY.
I’ll make a voyage to the Holy Land
To wash the blood off from my guilty hand. (
Richard II
, 5.6.49-50)
KING
HENRY.
My blood hath been too cold and temperate,
Unapt to stir at these indignities,
And you have found me; for accordingly
You tread upon my patience. But be sure
I will from henceforth rather be myself,
Mighty and to be feared, than my condition,
Which hath been smooth as oil, soft as young down,
And therefore lost that title of respect
Which the proud soul ne’er pays but to the proud. (1.3.1-9)Slide26
Complicating the morality reading
KING HENRY.
And
then I stole all courtesy from heaven,
And dressed myself in such humility
That I did pluck allegiance from men’s hearts,
Loud shouts and salutations from their mouths,
Even in the presence of the crowned King.
Thus did I keep my person fresh and new,
My presence, like a robe pontifical –
Ne’er seen but wondered at – and so my state,
Seldom but sumptuous, showed like a feast
And won by rareness such solemnity. (3.2.50-9)Slide27
Hotspur’s morality play
HOTSPUR
.
Shall it for shame be spoken in these days,
Or fill up chronicles in time to come,
That men of your nobility and power
Did gage them both in an unjust behalf,
As both of you, God pardon it, have done:
To put down Richard, that sweet lovely rose,
An plant this thorn, this canker, Bolingbroke?
And shall it in more shame be further spoken
That you are fooled, discarded and shook off
By him for whom these shames ye underwent?
No; yet time serves wherein you may redeem
Your banished honours, and restore yourselves
Into the good thoughts of the world again… (1.3.168-80)Slide28
Falstaff as figure of pathos?
KING
HENRY V.
I know thee not, old
man. Fall
to thy
prayers.
How ill white hairs become a fool and jester!
I have long
dreamt
of such a kind of man,
So
surfeit-swelled
, so old and so
profane;
But
being
awake,
I do despise my dream.
Make less thy body hence, and more thy
grace.
Leave gormandizing; know the grave doth gape
For thee thrice wider than for other men
. (Part Two, 5.5.45-52)Hal verbally (and perhaps literally) ‘kills’ Falstaff by stripping him of his festive timelessness and locating him within (towards the end of) a human lifespan. Double-meaning of ‘old’: ‘Old Jack Falstaff’ is enduring, established, always renewed, representative of ‘all the world’; ‘old man’ is near death.Slide29
Henry IV as saturnalia?
C. L. Barber:
‘The
implications of the
saturnalian
attitude are more drastically and inclusively expressed here than anywhere else, because here misrule is presented along with rule and along with the tensions that challenge rule. Shakespeare dramatizes not only holiday but also the need for holiday and the need to limit holiday
.’ (1972
: 192
)
PRINCE
HARRY.
If all the year were playing holidays, / To sport would be as tedious as to work (1.2.201-2)
PRINCE
HARRY.
What, is it a time to jest and dally now? (5.3.55)
‘My
own view… is that the dynamic relation of comedy and serious action is
saturnalian
rather than satiric, that the misrule works, through the whole dramatic rhythm, to consolidate rule
.’ (Barber 1972
: 205
)Slide30
Henry IV as saturnalia?
For Terry Eagleton, carnival is
a
licensed
affair in every sense, a permissible rupture of hegemony, a contained popular blow-off as disturbing and relatively ineffectual as a revolutionary work of art (1981: 148).
In this version of carnival, argues
Baz
Kershaw,
the prevailing order is strengthened, for at the end of the
carnivalesque
day the revellers return to a living whose rules are set by the dominant ideologies, with energies dissipated and their sense of the liberality of the regime re-animated. The temporary transgression of a hierarchical normality is a strategy for reinforcing it in the long run. (1992: 73)Slide31
Henry IV as subversive?
Play-acting as means of adopting other identities – and their accompanying
world-views…
‘All spectators perceived in this environment that their own identities and moral codes existed in relation to opposites and alternatives. No one mode of organizing experience … had any overriding validity, any fixed hierarchical precedence, within the physical ambit of the playhouse.’ (Wiles 2005: 93
)
Everything in relief; mockery not so much invalidation as
recontextualisation
of a particular set of
values?Slide32
Henry IV as subversive?
For
Bakhtin
, carnival offers something very different: ‘the chance to have a new outlook on the world, to realize the relative nature of all that exists, and to enter a completely new order of things’ (1965: 34).
‘Carnival with all its images, indecencies, and curses affirms the people’s immortal, indestructible character. In the world of carnival the awareness of the people’s immortality is combined with the realization that established authority and truth are relative.’ (
Bakhtin
1965: 256)Slide33
References
Bakhtin
, M. (1965)
Rabelais and His World
, trans. H.
Iswolsky
, Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Barber, C. L. (1972)
Shakespeare’s Festive Comedy: A Study of Form and its Relation to Social Custom
, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Bristol, M. D. (1983) ‘Carnival and the Institutions of Theatre in Elizabethan England’,
ELH
, 50: 4, 637-654.
Eagleton, T. (1986)
William Shakespeare
, London: Basil Blackwell.
Gurr
, A. (2002)
Playgoing
in Shakespeare’s London
(2nd ed.), Cambridge:
C. U. P.
Kershaw, B. (1992)
The Politics of Performance: Radical theatre as cultural intervention
, London: Routledge.Slide34
References
Laroque
, F. (2002)
‘Popular Festivity’
in
Leggatt
, A. [ed.]
The Cambridge Companion to Shakespearean Comedy
, Cambridge: C. U. P., pp. 64-78.
Palmer, D. J [ed.] (1984)
Comedy: Developments in Criticism
, London: Macmillan.
Rackin
, P. (1991)
Stages of History: Shakespeare’s English Chronicles
, London:
Routledge
.
Weimann
, R. (1987)
Shakespeare and the Popular Tradition in the
Theater
: Studies in the Social Dimension of Dramatic Form and Function
, Baltimore/London: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Wiles, D. (2005) Shakespeare’s Clown: Actor and Text in the Elizabethan Playhouse, Cambridge: C. U. P.