EÖTVÖS LÓRÁND TUDOMÁNYEGYETEM BÖLCSÉSZETTUDOMÁNYI KAR

Doktori disszertáció

N. Streitman Krisztina

William Kemp: A Comic Star in Shakespeare’s England

Történettudományi Doktori Iskola Dr. Székely Gábor MTA doktora, egyetemi tanár Középkori és Koraújkori Egyetemes Történeti Doktori Program Dr. Poór János MTA doktora, egyetemi tanár

A bizottság tagjai:

Dr. Sz. Jónás Ilona MTA doktora, Dr. Géher István CSc, professor emeritus professor emeritus Dr. Szőnyi György Endre, MTA doktora, egyetemi tanár Dr. Velich Andrea Ph.D, docens Dr. Nagy Balázs Ph.D, docens Dr. Sebők Marcell Ph.D, adjunktus Dr. Novák Veronika Ph.D, adjunktus

Témavezető: Dr. Klaniczay Gábor MTA doktora, egyetemi tanár

BUDAPEST, 2011

Acknowledgments

I owe special thanks to many people who encouraged me and contributed to the success of this dissertation. I am grateful to Professor Gábor Klaniczay for his professional and personal care. His guidance, suggestions and constructive criticism have proven invaluable even as his support, encouragement and feedback have been fundamental to my work. He continues to inspire me and many others in the fields of Medieval and Early Modern cultural history. I am also deeply indebted to Professor Peter Burke who responded meticulously and instantly to all my queries, especially those concerning Early Modern popular culture and Renaissance cultural history. It was he who called my attention to Anu Korhonen‘s work which in turn shaped my understanding of a number of difficult aspects of folly. I owe a debt of gratitude to Andrea Velich who offered orientation in my research and pointed out important primary and secondary sources and their availability in London libraries. I am also thankful to Balázs Nagy for his goodwill, professional and technical guidance. I must render thanks to Emese Lafferton whose friendly encouragement, good- natured comments and criticism of the Conclusion helped clarify several concepts concerning the situation of madmen in the Renaissance and Michel Foucault‘s theory of confinement, thereby elevating the quality of my writing. I acknowledge Natália Pikli, Éva Petrőczi, Erzsébet Stróbl, Ágnes Juhász, Ágnes Matuska and Éva Eszter Szabó for their professional interest and friendly support; they were always willing to listen, sparing neither time nor energy. I am grateful to have had the assisstance of Noémi Najbauer who has been my precise, conscientious and faithful reader even on hot summer days. I thank Zsófia Szalay for help with the footnotes and the format of the dissertation. I acknowledge Andrea Székely for good cheer and her hospitality enabling me to perform research in London. I am also thankful to my colleagues at the Budapest Business School, at the Faculty of International Management and Business Studies for the opportunity to devote more time to my study during the 2010/2011 terms. I would like to express my gratitude to my sister-in-law for patient care of my children in the summers, to my parents who instilled in me the love of learning and to my sister, who was always a faithful fellow-in-arms during the most challenging times. Last, but certainly not least, I wish to thank those who are the closest to me: my children Andris and Dóri for their patience and my husband Péter for understanding me

2 and investing in me. Péter, I could have never written this dissertation without the trips to London you so generously sponsored and the treasury of books and copied materials I obtained while there. Thank you for the help in looking after the children, for encouraging me and believing in me more than I ever would.

3 Table of Contents

PREFACE ...... 6 I. INTRODUCTION ...... 7

1. MA THESIS ...... 7 2. AIMS, SOURCES AND PROBLEMS ...... 16 Sources ...... 20 Problems ...... 25 3. A SHORT BIOGRAPHY OF WILLIAM KEMP ...... 26 II. FOOLERY AND THEATRICAL WARS ...... 40

1. WILLIAM KEMP AND FOOLERY ...... 40 The Christian Concept of Folly ...... 40 Erasmus and Brant ...... 43 2. THE VARIETY AND SITUATION OF FOOLS ...... 48 Court Jesters ...... 48 Festival Fools ...... 52 The Actor Fools ...... 59 The Legal and Social Control of the Actors ...... 67 3. ATTACKS AGAINST THE THEATRE ...... 72 The Reasons for the Attacks ...... 74 The Enemies of the Stage ...... 75 The Central Role of the Fool in the Theatrical Debates ...... 83 Defenders ...... 85 III. KEMP AND ELIZABETHAN POPULAR CULTURE ...... 90

1. THEORIES OF POPULAR CULTURE ...... 90 2. CLOTHING-BODY-DANCE ...... 100 Nine Daies Wonder ...... 101 The Tollet Window ...... 105 Main Figures ...... 107 Comic Fellows ...... 117 Nakedness ...... 120 Colours ...... 124 Green, Wild Man ...... 125 Will Somer ...... 130 Green Kendal and Motley ...... 132 Accessories ...... 134 3. KEMP AS FALSTAFF: THE COMIC AND GROTESQUE BODY ...... 136 4. KEMP, THE MASTER OF THE STAGE JIG ...... 150 The Jig ...... 151 Tarlton’s and Kemp’s Jigs ...... 155 IV. NINE DAIES WONDER – THE GREAT CHALLENGE ...... 162

1. KEMP IN THE SHAKESPEAREAN COMPANY ...... 162 Structure ...... 162 Place of Residence ...... 165 Income ...... 166

4 Reasons for Leaving the Company ...... 167 2. KEMP, A LIFELONG WANDERER...... 176 Morris Dancing ...... 176 Morris at the Royal Court ...... 178 Morris on the Stage ...... 179 Morris in the Streets ...... 181 The Transformation of the Figure of Robin Hood ...... 183 Ballads ...... 184 Plays ...... 185 May Games – Robin Hood Games ...... 186 Summer King ...... 189 3. NINE DAIES WONDER – KEMP’S JOURNEY ...... 192 Improvisation, Fool Tradition ...... 194 Maid Marian ...... 197 People and Places ...... 200 Kemp and the Royal Court ...... 202 Kemp in Norwich ...... 203 V. CONCLUSION ...... 207

1. CHANGES IN THE CULTURAL LIFE AND MENTALITY AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY .. 207 2. KEMP AND ARMIN ...... 214 3. AVENUES FOR FURTHER RESEARCH ...... 221 BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 222 APPENDIX ...... 250

5 PREFACE

After years of teaching English and devoting my time and energy to my family and my young children, I was hired as a part-time instructor at Dániel Berzsenyi Teachers‘ Training College in Szombathely where I taught British history and civilization. I had always loved history, my second major at the university, so I was glad for the opportunity which oriented me towards the doctoral program in Early Modern World History. In my dissertation I have been able to combine my two favourite fields of interests—English and cultural history—and to use an exciting interdisciplinary approach. My aim, drawing upon abundant scholarship in early modern cultural history, was to reconstruct the mosaic of William Kemp‘s biography from the various contexts of the English Renaissance culture. My knowledge has increased and my personality has been shaped by the ‗resilient‘ nature of popular culture which Kemp embodied. He was a multi-faceted and autonomous personality; as a dancer and jig-maker he was humble enough to undertake traditional roles and remain faithful to his roots. He always returned to the community to which he belonged. At the same time he was brave enough to become an expert in his profession as an actor and a true representative of the new Elizabethan commercial theatre. Kemp‘s personality has become exemplary to me in the challenging years of research and has proven to be a true source of insight and delight.

6 I. INTRODUCTION

1. MA THESIS

I began my research and examined the different concepts of folly in my Master‘s thesis on Elizabethan fools which was written in 1991.1 I could not have written my MA thesis and dissertation without access to the discipline of ‗new history‘ and especially ‗new cultural history‘ or ‗socio-cultural‘ history.2 The concept of popular culture has become an important part of ‗new cultural history‘ and of historical anthropology as well.3 ‗New Cultural History‘ (NCH) which came into use at the end of the 1980s ―has suggested an emphasis on mentalities, assumptions or feelings rather than ideas or systems of thought and how imagination can interact with scholarship to broaden our view of the past.‖4 Four important theorists of ‗New Cultural History‘ have proven vital to me as I conducted my research; they are: Mikhail Bakhtin, Peter Burke, Norbert Elias and Michel Foucault.5 I first encountered this new and exciting history which enchanted me and under whose spell I remained at the university seminars on Medieval Europe held by my thesis advisor, Gábor Klaniczay. He introduced me to the great representatives of ‗new history‘ and their works. The ‗new history‘ which was written in deliberate reaction against the traditional history has come to be concerned with virtually every human activity.6 I also familiarized myself with the Annales group and the names of Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch who founded the journal Annales in 1929, as well as with the great representative of the next generation, Fernand Braudel.7 They have demonstrated

1 Krisztina Streitman, ―Az Erzsébetkori bolond a valóságban és a színpadon‖ [The Elizabethan Fool in reality and on the stage] (master‘s thesis, ELTE, 1991). 2 Johann Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages: A Study of Forms of Life, Thought, and Art in France and the Netherlands in the Dawn of the Renaissance trans. Fritz Hopman (London, Edward Arnold & Co, 1924). The first important and influential work about cultural history was Huizinga‘s book. 3 Peter Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (London: Temple Smith, 1978; rev. ed. Aldershot: Scholar Press, 1994), xxiii. Burke uses this terminology for the wider sense of culture which will pop out later. 4 Peter Burke, What is Cultural History? (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004), 3. 5 I will analyze Michel Foucault‘s works in the Conclusion. 6 Peter Burke, ―Overture. The New History: Its Past and its Future‖ in Peter Burke, ed. New Perspectives on Historical Writing (London: Polity Press, 2001), 3. 7 In Braudel's famous study The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean world in the age of Philip II (London: Coolins, 1972).

7 that economic, social and cultural history can meet the exacting professional standards set by the ‗traditional‘ or ‗Rankean‘ history for political history. 8 ―Traditional history offers a view from above, in the sense that it has always concentrated on the great deeds of great men, statesmen, generals, or occasionally churchmen. According to the traditional paradigm, history is objective and the historian‘s task is to give readers ‗the facts.‘9 Traditional historians think of history as essentially a narrative of events, while the new history is more concerned with the analysis of structures.‖ 10 The concern of new history with the whole range of human activity encourages them to be inter- disciplinary and to collaborate with social anthropologists, folklorists, economists, literary critics, psychologists, sociologists, and so on.11 This interdisciplinary approach has helped me to work with the scholarship on early modern history and cultural history and with Elizabethan theatre history and literary history at the same time. Another important question for me has been the change in mentality especially in connection with fools and laughter. The Civilizing Process, a study by the German sociologist Norbert Elias, proved especially thought-provoking.12 In Elias‘s book, emphasis falls on the gradual development of what he calls ‗civilization,‘ the rise of self-control (from the late Middle Ages to the eighteenth century). For Elias, the crucial development was the ‗social constraint towards self-restraint,‘ the internalisation of authority.13 In the Tudor and Stuart periods—as Keith Thomas writes in his article about the place of laughter in Tudor and Stuart England—―new standards of bodily control and social decorum‖ were developed.14 ―Bodily control became a symbol of social hierarchy. The cult of decorum led to a profound divergence between the streams of polite humour and folk humour.‖15

8 Burke, New Perspectives, 5. 9 Ibid., 7. 10 Fernand Braudel in his famous Mediterranean, dismisses the history of events (histoire événementielle) as no more than the foam on the waves of the sea of history. According to Braudel, economic and social change over the long term (la longue duree) and geo-historical changes over the very long term are what really matter. He gives importance to everyday life in contemporary historical writing. 11 Burke, New Perspectives, 6. 12 Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process: The History of Manners (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978). 13 Peter Burke gives a concise comparison of the three great theorist in his ―Civilization, Disorder, Discipline: Three Case-Studies in History and Social Theory‖, (Theoria 87, 1996), 21-35; and in The Postmodern Challenge ed. Strath and Witoszek, (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1999), 97-115. 14 Keith Thomas, ―The Place of Laughter in Tudor and Stuart England‖ (Times Literary Supplement, 21 January, 1977). 15 The new sensitivity of the eighteenth century concerning the fools will be discussed in the Conclusion.

8 Elias demonstrated how civilization alienated man from his own bodily manifestations. Klaniczay, when comparing Elias‘s point of view to that of Bakhtin, adds that ―this transformation was only possible because the popular culture of laughter suffered a radical breakdown and was pushed into the background.‖16 According to Burke, we can even reverse the cause and effect, i.e., it is probable that this transformation led to the breakdown of popular laughter, but there is no evidence to help one choose between these explanations.17 Michel Foucault emphasized not the ‗civilising‘ effect but ‗disciplining‘18—an attempt by the elites to control the behavior of ordinary people.19 Foucault who achieved fame in the early 1960s with the Birth of the Clinic 20 and Madness and Civilization might be called a philosophical historian of the human body. Discipline and Punish deals with the discovery, during the ‗classic age‘ (1650-1800), of the body as an ‗object of power‘ and with the relation between discipline and ‗the distribution of individuals in space.‘ Elias, Bakhtin and Foucault offered a grand interpretation of the social, cultural and political history of early modern Europe and extended the frontiers of history. 21 Elias focused on ‗civilization,‘ Bakhtin on ‗disorder‘ and Foucault on ‗discipline.‘22 They discovered neglected areas of the past, which were later called the history of popular culture, the history of the everyday, the history of the body and the history of social space. Elias emphasized self-control and accepted the idea of social or cultural evolution, while Foucault rejected state control and the rise of a ‗disciplinary society‘ and its apparatus of ‗surveillance.‘ Bakhtin complemented Elias‘s and Foucault‘s history from above with a ‗history from below.‘23 A group of western historians discovered Bakhtin in the 1970s and began to develop his ideas further.24

16 Gábor Klaniczay, ―The Carnival Spirit: Bakhtin‘s Theory on the Culture of Popular Laughter‖, in The Uses of Supernatural Power, ed. Gábor Klaniczay, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990), 19. 17 Peter Burke kindly helped me with his notes and offered this argument. 18 Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason (London: Routledge, 2001). 19 Burke, ―Civilization, Disorder, Discipline‖, xix. 20 Michel Foucault, Birth of the Clinic (London: Tavistock Publications Ltd.,1973). 21 Peter Burke, ―Civilization, Disorder, Discipline‖, 97 22 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish trans. Alan Sheidan, (New York: Pantheon Books, 1977). 23 Peter Burke, ―Civilization, Disorder, Discipline‖, 99-100. 24 Keith Thomas, ―The Place of Laughter in Tudor and Stuart England‖; Carlo Ginzburg, The cheese and the worms the cosmos of a sixteenth century miller (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980); Natalie Zemon Davis, ―The Reasons of Misrule‖, in Past and Present 50 (1971): 41-75; Peter Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (Temple Smith: London, 1978); Robert Muchembled, Popular Culture and Elite Culture in France [1978], English trans. Lydia Cochrane (Baton Rouge and London:University of Luisiana Press, 1985).

9 There was an extended encounter between history and anthropology from the 1960s to the 1990s. Anthropology inspired the work of the pioneers of historical anthropology such as Peter Burke,25 Keith Thomas, Natalie Zemon Davis26, Robert Scribner27 Carlo Ginzburg28 and Stephen Greenblatt. Burke observed the course of events in the field of popular culture and has called attention to the new research and also to the emerging problems in the revised reprint of Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe in 1994 and in the third edition of it in 2009.29 Stephen Greenblatt has moved from the history of literature to what he calls ‗the poetics of culture.‘ Like other literary historians in the group associated with the ‗new historicism,‘ he aims at re-placing literature in its historical or cultural context.30 In his Shakespearean Negotiations, he concentrated on what he called ‗exchanges‘ or ‗negotiations‘ between the two domains of literature and history.31 In his Renaissance Self-fashioning he enumerates the possibilities of the formation and expression of identity in sixteenth-century England. He investigates ―both the social presence to the world of the literary text and the social presence of the world in the literary text.‖32 ‗Micro-history‘ from the 1970s reflected a determination to concentrate on the history of ordinary people‘s lives and views.33 Its representatives, Carlo Ginzburg, Giovanni Levi,34 and others, from varied starting-points and with different historical

25 Burke, ―Mi a történeti antropológia?‖ In: Sebők Marcell, Történeti antropológia. Módszertani írások és esettanulmányok [Historical Anthropology. Methodological and Case Studies] ed. Sebők Marcell (Replika Könyvek: Budapest), 2000, 17-23. 26 Natalie Zemon Davis, The Return of Martin Guerre (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard U.P., 1983). In Hungarian: Translated by Sebők Marcell as Martin Guerre visszatérése (Budapest: Osiris. 1999). 27 Robert Scibner, Popular Culture and Popular Movements in Reformation Germany (London: The Hambledon Press, 1987). In his book Scibner also deals with the historical anthropology of the Reformation, carnival and ritual. Scribner also wrote about the early modern European culture. In Hungarian: ―A kora újkori Európa történeti antropológiája‖ In Történeti antropológia. Módszertani írások és esettanulmányok ed. Sebők Marcell. [Historical Anthropology. Methodological and Case Studies] (Replika Könyvek: Budapest, 2000), 157-183. Keith Thomas, ―The Place of Laughter in Tudor and Stuart England‖ in Times Literary Supplement, 21 January, 1977. 28 Ginzburg‘s work in micro-history proved to be succesful in academic circles and in wider public as well. The miller, Menocchio represents a typicality of his society in a way. Carlo Ginzburg, The cheese and the worms the cosmos of a sixteenth century miller (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980). For an overview of Ginzburg‘s book and his work see Gábor Klaniczay‘s postscript to the new Hungarian edition of The cheese and the worms to be published in 2011. 29 The general survey was first published in 1978. For details about Kemp‘s role in the Elizabethan popular culture see Chapter 2. 30 For further discussion of this matter see Kiss Attila and Szőnyi György Endre, ed. Újhistorizmus. [New historicism] Tematikus szám, Helikon irodalomtudományi szemle 44.1-2. (1998). 31 Stephen Greenblatt, Shakespearean Negotiations (Oxford: Clarendon, 1988). 32 Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 4. 33 Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973) 3-30. 34 Giovanni Levi, ―On Microhistory‖ in New Perspectives on Historical Writing, ed. Peter Burke (London: Polity Press, 2001), 97-120.

10 objectives in view, have all been able to demonstrate how the historical imagination can be applied not only to reconceptualizing the subject matter of history, but also to asking new questions of documents.35 The above- mentioned abundant and inspiring conceptual background has enabled me to place first the English Renaissance fool in general, then William Kemp, actor and dancer best known for being one of the original actors in William Shakespeare‘s plays specifically into the focus of my MA thesis and now of my dissertation. The project that intrigued me in 1991 was to illuminate and grasp the great complexity and richness of the concepts, symbols and changes of mentality around the Renaissance fool figure. In my Master‘s thesis my aim was to view English Renaissance culture and mentality and the cultural, social and religious changes at the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries through the prism of the fool figure. I have examined aspects of the representations of folly and its place in cultural and theater history, and my MA thesis has already addressed all the main points discussed in my dissertation. Discussions of Shakespearean comedy and the figure of the professional fool also appeared in my Master‘s thesis as did Will Kemp and his two fellows, Richard Tarlton and Robert Armin. In the first part of my MA thesis I analyzed the contradictory symbols of folly, the fool‘s relationship to laughter and freedom, to the grotesque, to death and the devil, and to sexuality. Mikhail Bakhtin‘s work on Rabelais36 provided the starting point for me as I approached the subject of the popular culture of laughter and the grotesque in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance and that of carnival,37 the temporary suspension of set hierarchies often termed ―licensed misrule.‖38 Although sometimes rigid and outdated in his concepts, his book is still a treasury never fully exploited and his analyses continue to exert a great influence on cultural historians of the Renaissance. Enid Welsford‘s work The Fool, His Social and Literary History39 turns to Francis Douce‘s Illustrations of Shakespeare40 and traces, from Antiquity, the customs

35 Peter Burke, History and Social Theory (London: Polity Press, 1992), 38-43. 36 For further discussion of Bakhtin‘s theory on the culture of popular laughter see Gábor Klaniczay, ―The Carnival Spirit‖, 10-28. 37 About the carnival there is abundant secondary literature dealing with this subject see eg. Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Carnival in Romans (New York: G. Braziller, 1979). From a literary point of view: Ronald Knowles, ed. Shakespeare and Carnival After Bakhtin (London: Macmillan Press, 1998) and M. D. Bristol, Carnival and Theater (New York and London: Routledge, 1985). 38 Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1984). 39 Enid Welsford, The Fool, His Social and Literary History (New York, N. Y.: Anchor Books, 1961).

11 and myths connected to fool figures worldwide. Although she covers too much ground in chronological terms, she pays close attention to particular moments in the history of folly not only in Europe, but in other parts of the world as well. She deals with the mythical buffoon Marcolf whose rustic wit made him a match to King Solomon 41 and whose pranks were attributed to Scogin, a poor Oxford scholar in the middle of the sixteenth century.42 Welsford relies heavily on examples taken from anthropology and often turns to the anthropological analysis which Sir James Frazer describes in his book The Golden Bough.43 Frazer collected a number of examples from Greece, Rome, Estonia, the Carpathians, Berlin, India and Tibet. Welsford is interested in Frazer‘s account of the Tibetan New Year Festival and the Tibetan King of the Years who represents the mascot and the scapegoat at the same time. Following the leads of Douce, Welsford and Frazer, I have also analyzed works on Marcolf and Scogin as the most famous English folk fool figures.44 Welsford briefly described the great seasonal festivals in Christian Europe and the fool‘s central role in them. She delienates the fool‘s main spheres of activity as court jesters in Renaissance Europe and in the English courts, his appearance in literature, his decline, and the figures of the Lord of Misrule and the stage clown as well. She lists the Elizabethan plays containing fools and the most important actors as well. Sandra Billington‘s and William Willeford‘s works also aided me in taking a closer look at the most famous English Renaissance fools.45 In my MA thesis I have also dealt with the relationship of the saint and the fool. I have touched on the notion of Christian ecstasy which appears in Erasmus‘s The Praise of Folly.46 I relied on M.A. Screech‘s interpretation as well47 when I discussed the relationship between laughter and prayer. I have also followed the changes in the

40 Francis Douce, Illustrations of Shakspeare, and of ancient manners: with Dissertations on the clowns and fools of Shakspeare; on the collection of popular tales entitled Gesta Romanorum; and on the English Morris Dance Vols. 1-2. (London, 1807). 41 Jan Ziolkowski, ed. Solomon and Marcolf, Harvard Studies in Medieval Latin (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2008). 42 Andrew Boorde, The First and Best Part of Scoggin‟s Jests (1542); Carew Hazlitt, ed. Shakespeare Jest- Books vol. II. (New York, N. Y.: Willis and Sotheran, 1864), 38-161. 43 Sir James Frazer, The Golden Bough (London: Macmillan, 1922). 44 For further discussion of this matter see Ziolkowski, Solomon and Marcolf; Boorde, The First and Best Part of Scoggin‟s Jests. 45 For details of Renaissance fools see Sandra Billington, A Social History of the Fool (Sussex: The Harvester Press, 1984); William Willeford, The Fool and His Scepter ( London: Edward Arnold, 1969); Maurice Lever: Le Sceptre et la marotte (Paris: Fayard, 1983). 46 Desiderius Erasmus, The Praise of Folly (1509) trans. Betty Radice (London: The Folio Society, 1974). 47 M. A. Screech, Ecstasy and the Praise of Folly (London: Gerald Duckworth and Co., 1980).

12 names of the fool from ―buffoon‖ to ―clown.‖ I have mapped and briefly characterized the different types of fools: the domestic fool, the festival fool, the court jester and the actor fool or clown. I have listed and described the most important Renaissance English fools: the Tudor kings‘ most famous court jesters, Will Somers and Jane, Thomas More‘s domestic fool Henry Paterson,48 and the many-sided professional fools: Richard Tarlton, William Kemp and Robert Armin. The list ends with Archie Archibald, the last Stuart court fool.49 The second part of my MA thesis was a scrutiny of the figure of the fool in English Renaissance drama and festivals. First I highlighted the practices and mentalities which made fools such pivotal elements in Renaissance culture. My work has been greatly influenced by Bakhtin‘s vision of Carnival and the guiding principle of his book, the culture of popular laughter.50 His model of the common features of the carnival-type festivities such as Feast of Fools, Feast of the Ass, Easter also proved useful.51 According to Bakhtin, the ritual revels represent ―the world of ideals;‖ this ―inside-out world‖52 more or less incorporated rites of misrule and social inversion. 53 Bakhtin emphasized the role of the fools because according to him they represent the carnival spirit which is ―free from all laws and restrictions.‖54 I have also relied on Burke‘s classic theory of the battle between Carnival and Lent and his description of the changes of popular culture in early modern Europe. I have concentrated on his description of the first phase of ―the reform of popular culture‖ between 1500 and 1650.55 The economic situation and the religious atmosphere also determine how we think about cultural life and entertainment. R. H. Tawney and Max Weber, in their well

48 John Southworth, Fools and Jesters at the English Court (Phoenix Mill: Sutton Publishing Limited, 1998); Anu Korhonen, Fellows of Infinite Jest, The Fool in Renaissance England (Turku: University of Turku, 1999). 49 Nick Page, Lord Minimus, The Extraordinary Life of Britain‟s Smallest Man (London: Harper Collins Publishers, 2001). 50 For Bakhtin‘s theory on the culture of popular laughter see especially Klaniczay, ―The Carnival Spirit‖, 10- 28. 51 The most important ones in England were Epiphany, the Feast of The Three Magi on the 6 of January, the Carnival period from Epiphany to Ash Wednesday, Saint George‘s Day on the 23 of April, May Day (electing a Summer King or Robin Hood, and a Maid Marion), Midsummernight‘s Day, Harvest festivals, the Feast of Fools or of the Boy Bishop from the 6 of December to 28 of December. 52 Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 11. 53 Ibid., 9. 54 Ibid., 260. 55 Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe, 207. Burke‘s theory will be discussed thoroughly in Chapter 1 in the festival fool part.

13 known studies56 reflect on the effects of the changes in religion and early modern capitalism on the mentality of the age. Weber analyzed the cultural roots of the Western European and American economic system. According to Burke, in the period from 1500-1800 the ethic of the reformers‘ ‗this worldly asceticism‘ was in open conflict with a traditional ethic ―which involved more stress on the values of generosity and spontaneity and a greater tolerance of disorder.‖ 57 Tawney also concentrated on analyzing the structures in his work and rejected ‗Rankean history‘ and the narrative of events. I have tried to refine their concepts by giving precise details of the cultural life concerning the fool and Shakespearean comedy in Elizabethan England. Fools were so strongly present in Renaissance culture that they also appeared in festivals and in plays. Billington‘s history stresses the fact that the Renaissance fool was a representative of a disappearing tradition, but in its last phase, the tradition was so vigorous that it carried the fool over into the field of professional entertainment.58 Among the several festivals in which fools play an important role, I emphasized the reign of the Lord of Misrule and May Day. I have analysed the different types of fools in the comic works of William Shakespeare and his contemporaries, such as Robert Greene‘s Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, Thomas Nashe‘s Summer‟s Last Will and Testament and Shakespeare‘s As You Like It, and I highlighted the importance of Falstaff‘s character. The third part of my MA thesis covered the most important changes which took place from the beginning of the seventeenth century concerning the theater, the court, popular culture and madness. Here I relied mainly on Burke‘s categorization of the different periods in popular culture59 and on Michel Foucault‘s view of the gradual ousting of madmen from society in this period.60 After the completion of my MA thesis, I became acquainted with Anu Korhonen‘s thought-provoking and impressively documented work entitled Fellows of

56 Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and ―The Spirit of Capitalism‟‟ trans. Peter Baehr and Gordon C. Wells (London: Penguin Books, 2002); R.H. Tawney, Relegion and the Rise of Capitalism (London: Pelican Books, 1926). 57 Burke, Popular Culture, 213. 58 Billington, Social History of the Fool, 226. 59 Burke, Popular Culture, chapter 8, ―The Triumph of Lent‖, 208-243. 60 Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason (London: Routledge, 2001). I will elaborate on his chapter ―The Great Confinement‖ in the Conclusion. See also idem, The Birth of the Clinic: An Archeology of Medical Perception (New York: Vintage Books, 1975).

14 Infinite Jest, The Fool in Renaissance England, which has completed the missing gaps in my understanding of the complicated concept of foolery.61 In her novel study fools and laughter are examined in the context of the English Renaissance. She has collected the contemporary written primary source materials and illustrations, all the while stressing the importance of oral culture concerning folly and its performance. She has concentrated on examining the representations of folly on its various cultural levels. Korhonen has classified fools into three groups according to where they lived, performed and worked, and she has enriched the categorisation with the philosophical and theological concepts of folly.62 She has examined the fool‘s various means of communication, his appearance and body techniques.63 She has highlighted the Renaissance fool as the representative of a disappearing tradition, which at the end of the sixteenth century carried him over into the field of professional entertainment. Korhonen has argued that the fool provides a panorama of Renaissance mentalities and that as a popular entertainer, the fool was a representative of popular culture. 64 Korhonen has also described the changes in the fool tradition in the sixteenth century. 65

61 Anu Korhonen, Fellows of Infinite Jest, The Fool in Renaissance England (Turku: University of Turku, 1999). I am grateful to Peter Burke who called my attention to Anu Korhonen‘s work and Gábor Klaniczay who borrowed the book for me. 62 Anu Korhonen, Fellows of Infinite Jest, 86-100. 63 Ibid., 145-177. 64 Ibid., 18. 65 Ibid., 185-233.

15 2. AIMS, SOURCES AND PROBLEMS

With the germs of the important ideas from my MA thesis in mind, I have investigated the documents and secondary literature of the Elizabethan period and the life and career of the three comic stars of the Shakespearean theater: Richard Tarlton, William Kemp and Robert Armin. In my present study I wish to narrow down the notion of foolery to a period of time and to a particular person. I have chosen William Kemp as the focus of my dissertation and propose to discuss the scope of his professional achievements in his active years from the 1580s to 1616. I have opted to concentrate on him because for me he is the most exciting of the three famous Elizabethan fool actors (i.e., Tarlton, Kemp, Armin) due to his autonomous and uncontrollable personality. He is a representative both of the medieval roots of Renaissance popular culture and of the new era of commercial theatrical life. Through careful study of his life and career the great cultural and political changes of the turn of the century are made evident. My study is an original contribution to scholarship in that I attempt to meet the demand for a complete panorama of Kemp‘s profession, personality and of the cultural and historical context in which he lived. Each chapter of my dissertation delineates a different sphere of Kemp‘s activities and cultural background. The First Chapter reveals his cultural roots in the tradition of foolery, and seeks to identify his place in the theatrical cross-fires of London, while the second defines Kemp‘s relationship with various elements of contemporary and medieval popular culture and his forms of communication. In this context I scrutinize his most important theatrical role as Falstaff, as well as his jigs, in which genre he reached outstanding results. The Third Chapter examines his most stable and successful theatrical company, the Lord Chamberlain‘s Men, while collating the differences between the guiding principles of Shakespeare‘s and Kemp‘s artistic aspirations and considering his motivations for leaving the Company. I illuminate the reasons for the popularity of morris dancing and of Robin Hood in the sixteenth century through the analysis of Kemp‘s diary, Nine Daies Wonder. In the conclusion, I take a closer look at the changes in mentality and theatre and the role of the fool at the turn of the century through the new comedian of the Lord Chamberlain‘s Men, Robert Armin.

16 It was my aim to provide a focused treatment and to arrange the information about Kemp into a tightly specific scheme instead of presenting it in a generalized manner. Although Kemp was a great actor, his art unfortunately spoke to the here and now and has not remained for posterity in written or other permanent form. His name has, more or less, sunk into oblivion. With this study I hope to revive Kemp‘s greatness and importance in the well-known Shakespearean theatrical world. I depict him, the comic star of Elizabethan England, in a new light, as the great rival and equal in the theatrical life to Shakespeare and to other leading playwrights such as Ben Jonson and Thomas Heywood. I emphasize that Will Kemp was a versatile, autonomous, flexible, talented and successful personality. Given the stormy political, economic and cultural conditions of the 1590s and the turn of the century, only exceptional personalities could achieve what he did. He was a multi-faceted person. In the beginning of his career he was the general entertainer to Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester.66 He also performed diplomatic services and was solo artist, professional dancer, the leading comic actor of the Globe, share-holder and actor-manager in one person. Kemp was flexible in finding the niche he could fill in Elizabethan entertainment and possessed the full knowledge of fool tradition as well. He combined various elements of contemporary popular culture and at the same time was an outstanding representative of the new commercial theatrical life. Kemp was an independent, self-made man and his self-fashioning is similar in some respects to the other talented middle-class artists analyzed by Stephen Greenblatt in his Renaissance Self-Fashioning.. His life also exemplifies Greenblatt‘s thesis. In the words of Greenblatt in the early modern period ―there was a change in the intellectual, social, psychological, and aesthetic structures that govern the generation of identities.‖67 According to Greenblatt in the sixteenth century there appears to be an increased self-consciousness about the human identity as a manipulable, artful notion. This conception, widespread in the Classical world, was lost in Christianity, which cultivated a growing suspicion in connection with constructing selves. Kemp, as I will argue, was an autonomous figure whose personality was able to develop fully only in

66 Leicester, Robert Dudley, Earl of (1533-88). Favourite and leading minister of Queen Elizabeth I, he favoured an active pro-Protestant, anti-Catholic home and foreign policy, to which he gave practical form in leading a disastrous expedition to the Netherlands to aid the Dutch in their revolt against Spain. He was a generous patron of the arts. 67 Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning, 2.

17 the early modern period. A powerful alternative began to be articulated in this period. Greenblatt writes that ―[a]s a term for the action or process of making, for particular features or appearance, for a distinct style or pattern, the word had been long in use, but it is in the sixteenth century that fashion seems to come into wide currency as a way of designating the forming of a self.‖68 Although common opinion about him is that after leaving the Globe he was not at the pinnacle of the world of entertainment as were Shakespeare and his company, I regard him successful especially as a professional entertainer, and my aim is to demonstrate his success, which lasted until the end of his life. I also highlight Kemp‘s close relationship to the mythical figure of Robin Hood and illuminate it from the angle of morris dancing. Scholars of Elizabethan culture have ignored the significance of the green Kendal, its association with the costume of Robin Hood and of the fool. Amidst the political, religious and intellectual skirmishes and professional competition around the theatre, I focus on the central role which was played by Kemp the comic actor, the fool. The work of scholars of Elizabethan culture has also been crucial in writing my dissertation. Their research filled blanks and spaces to allow me to undertake a coherent treatment of Kemp‘s portrait and career. These scholars, however, have only partially dealt with Kemp and their work has not concentrated on Kemp, at least not from as many aspects as my current study. I am indebted to great historians and stage historians who have given me invaluable information about Shakespeare‘s and Kemp‘s age, life and career. 69 Edmund Kerchever Chamber‘s The Elizabethan Stage is still unsurpassed on the facts of London‘s theatrical life.70 I have also consulted Andrew Gurr‘s influential

68 Ibid. 69 I have consulted a number of recommended books generally on Tudor England: G.R. Elton‘s England under the Tudors (London: The Folio Society, 1997); idem, The Tudor Constitution: Documents and Commentary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965); John Guy, Tudor England (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988);idem, ed., The Tudor Monarchy (London: Arnold, 1997); idem, ed. The Reign of Elizabeth I, Court and Culture in the Last Decade (Washington: Folger Institute, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); A. Fletcher, ed. Relegion, culture and society in early modern Britain. Essays in honour of Patrick Collinson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Cristopher Haigh, Elizabeth I. (London and New York: Longman, 1988); David Starkey, Elizabeth: Apprenticeship (London: Chatto and Windus, 2000); Alan Stewart, The Cradle King: A Life of James VI & I (London: Pimlico, 2004); L. Stone, The Crisis of the Aristocracy: 1558-1641 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965); Roy Strong, The Cult of Elizabeth: Elizabethan Portraiture and Pageantry (Cambridge. Cambridge University Press, 1977); Penry Williams, The Later Tudors: England 1547-1603 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998). 70 Edmund Kerchever Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage 4 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1945).

18 books, especially The Shakespearean stage 1574-1642.71 My understanding of the period‘s social and theatrical history has been shaped by Glynne Wickham‘s Early English Stages.72 For information about actors on the Elizabethan stage I have relied on Edwin Nungezer‘s A Dictionary of Actors,73 Muriel Bradbrook‘s The Rise of the Common Player, John Payne Collier, Memoirs of the Principall Actors in the Plays of Shakespeare, G.E. Bentley, The Profession of the Player in Shakespeare‟s Time 1590- 1602. John Southworth gives an overall panorama on English court jesters in his Fools and Jesters at the English Court 74 For the Shakespearean company I have drawn on T. W. Baldwin‘s The Organization & Personnel of the Shakespearean Company, Virginia C. Gildersleeve‘s Government Regulation of Elizabethan Drama, David Grote‘s The Best Actors of the World75 and Andrew Gurr‘s books The Shakespearean Playing Companies and The Shakespeare Company, 1594-1642.76 For the description of the fool‘s costumes I have consulted Leslie Hotson‘s Shakespeare‟s Motley.77 For information on Elizabethan jigs I have turned to Charles Read Baskervill, The Elizabethan Jig78 and for morris dancing I refer to John Forrest‘s The History of the Morris Dancing 1458-1750.79 David Wiles‘s Shakespeare‟s Clown, Actor and Text in the Elizabethan Playhouse and Chris Harris‘s Will Kemp Shakespeare‟s Forgotten Clown for giving me remarkable details about Kemp‘s portrait. Wiles and Harris concentrated on Kemp, but Wiles dealt with him from a literary point of view, while Harris, himself an actor, has

71 Andrew Gurr, The Shakespearean stage 1574-1642 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); idem, The Shakespeare Company, 1594-1642 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 72 Glynne Wickham, Early English Stages, 3 vols. (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963). 73 Edwin Nungezer, A Dictionary of Actors (New York, N.Y. Ithaca, 1929). 74 Muriel Bradbrook, The rise of the Common Player (London: Chatto & Windus, 1962); John Payne Collier, Memoirs of the Principall Actors in the Plays of Shakespeare (London: Printed for the Shakespearean Society, 1846); G. E. Bentley, The Profession of the Player in Shakespeare‟s Time 1590-1602 (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1984); John Southworth, Fools and Jesters at the English Court (Phoenix Mill: Sutton Publishing Limited, 1998). 75 T. W. Baldwin, The Organization & Personnel of the Shakespearean Company (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984); Virginia C. Gildersleeve, Government Regulation of Elizabethan Drama (New York, N.Y.: Burt Franklin, 1961); David Grote, The Best Actors of the World (Westport, N.Y.: Greenwood Press, 2002). 76 Andrew Gurr, The Shakespeare Company, 1594-1642 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Idem, The Shakespearean Playing Companies (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996). 77 Leslie Hotson, Shakespeare‟s Motley (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1952), 109-10. 78 Charles Read Baskervill, The Elizabethan Jig (New York, N. Y.: Dover, 1965). 79 John Forrest, The History o f the Morris Dancing 1458-1750 (Cambridge: John Forrest – James Clarke & Co. Ltd., 1999).

19 written a brief account about Kemp‘s life and career.80 For Kemp‘s relationship with Shakespeare I draw on Wiles‘s above mentioned work as well. The view that Kemp returned to the Chamberlain‘s Company in 1599 can be found in David Grote‘s The Best Actors of the World, and a different opinion about the reasons Kemp left the Company in James H. Forse‘s Art Imitates Business: Commercial and Political Influences in Elizabethan Theatre.81 For the discussion of Kemp‘s theatrical roles I am indebted to Bente A. Videbaek‘s The Stage Clown in Shakespeare‟s Theatre, David Grote‘s The Best Actors in the World, Forse‘s Art Imitates Business, and, in my discussion of his role as Falstaff, to Wiles‘s Shakespeare‟s Clown.82

Sources

The source material of performances, dances, jigs and jokes is problematic because the primary interest of Kemp and his fellow professionals being performance, they did not record their stage routines or their ideas of the profession. In this study, the primary sources consist of printed material. The most important type of source material is the popular literature of the Elizabethan age. Some of these texts were not thought of as having any particular scholarly value; they were produced solely for entertainment. Jestbooks and printed versions of drama open the door to characters like Kemp and his fellows who were usually not found in serious literature. In jestbooks, stories about Kemp and his fellow comedians, Tarlton and Armin were told for decades after their deaths, and these jests circulated in oral form for many years. Even though the fool stories do not offer reliable information about the actions of Kemp, they are still valuable as sources for understanding how (artificial) fools were perceived, how they were expected to behave, on what these expectations were based, and what people thought of the commercial theater and entertainment. This approach makes it possible to use primary sources which were not intended as commentary on fools.

80 Chris Harris, Will Kemp Shakespeare‟s Forgotten Clown (Oxford: The Kylin Press, 1983); David Wiles, Shakespeare‟s Clown, Actor and text in the Elizabethan playhouse (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 81 David Grote, The Best Actors of the World; James H. Forse, Art Imitates Business - Commercial and Political Influences in Elizabethan Theatre (Bowling Green: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 2001). 82 Bente A. Videbaek, The Stage Clown in Shakespeare‟s Theatre (Westport, N.Y.: Greenwood Press, 2000); David Grote, The Best Actors of the World; Forse, Art Imitates Business, Wiles, Shakespeare‟s Clown.

20 The most rewarding source materials I have been able to access are the works of Kemp, Tarlton and Armin. Armin wrote a jestbook, a collection called Foole upon Foole, or Six Sortes of Sottes (1600), later published as an augmented edition under the heading A Nest of Ninnies. In this book Armin tried to portray six natural fools, recounting comic incidents that had happened to them and describing their individual features. Some popular jestbooks recounted stories and pranks of their protagonists, e.g. Armin‘s Quips upon Questions, or, A Clownes Conceite on Occasion Offered (1600)83 Scoggin‟s Jests,84 Tarlton‟s Jests.85 In these jestbooks, the stories are usually very brief, describing only one short scene and paying little attention to the fool‘s character. They are nevertheless valuable in revealing the mental universe surrounding the comic actors. My most important source is Kemp‘s diary Nine Daies Wonder: performed in a Daunce from London to Norwich86 in which Kemp describes his journey, gives information about the state of morris dancing in Elizabethan society, records his jigs and working method while providing insight into Elizabethan society. It is a short booklet which is eminently easy to read, and we can discover and enjoy the atmosphere of Kemp‘s cheerful and simple mentality. Rowland, The Singing Simpkin (1585) and several of Kemp‘s jigs appear in Baskervill‘s The Elizabethan Jig.87 Another large collection of source material belongs to the genre of drama. Renaissance culture and theater saw the actor fool a distinct type who could entertain, and he acquired a very prominent place on the stage. He appears for example in John Heywood‘s A Play of the Weather (1533)88 Henry Chettle‘s Kind Hart‟s Dream (1592),89 John Davies‘s Scourge of Folly (1610)90 Thomas Heywood‘s Apology for Actors (1612),91 Thomas Nashe‘s Almond for a Parrat (1590), Pierce Penniless (1592)

83 Robert Armin, Collected Works of Robert Armin, ed. J. P. Feather, ( New York, N.Y., 1972); idem, Quips upon Questions, or, A Clownes Conceite on Occasion Offered (1600) Vol. 1. (London: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1972). 84 Boorde, First and Best Part of Scoggin‟s Jests. 85 W. Carew Hazlitt, ed. Shakespeare‟s Jestbooks, vol. II. (New York, N. Y.: 1864). 86 William Kemp, Nine Daies Wonder: performed in a Daunce from London to Norwich (Edinborough, 1600); with an introduction and notes by Rev. Alexander Dyce (London, Parliament Street: Printed for the Camden Society by John Bowyer Nichols & Son, 1884). A single copy survives, among the collections of the great antiquary Robert Burton, now in the Bodleian Library in Oxford. 87 Baskervill, The Elizabethan Jig, 444-449. 88 John Heywood, A Play of the Weather [1533] (London: The Tudor Facsimile Texts, 1909). 89 Henry Chettle, Kind Hart‟s Dream (London, 1592). 90 John Davies, Scourge of Folly (London, 1610). 91 Thomas Heywood: Apology for Actors (New York: Garland, 1973).

21 Summer‟s Last Will and Testament (1600),92 Gabriel Harvey‘s Pierces Supererogation (1593),93 The Three Parnassus Plays (1598-1601),94 Robert Greene‘s The Honourable Historie of Frier Bacon and Frier Bongay(1594)95 and in Anthony Munday‘s John a Kent and John a Cumber (1595).96 Apart from these plays I have concentrated on Shakespeare‘s plays,97 both because Kemp was his actor and fellow and because Shakespeare provided an outstanding and influential treatment of the fool, which has had lasting impact on the later generations as well. Tourists and ambassadors are a major source of information, and I draw extensively on Thomas Platter‟s Travels in England, 1599.98 For details about theatrical life in London and for the situation of actors I have relied on correspondences, diaries and letters, i.e., Henslowe‟s Diary,99 Robert, Earl of Leicester‘s Correspondence,100 The Diary of John Evelyn101 and Letters of Thomas Wood Puritan (1566-1577).102 For information on Elizabethan London especially on festivals and processions I have drawn on John Stow‘s The Survey of London 103 and Henry Machyn‘s The Diary of Henry Machyn, Citizen and Merchant-taylor of London from A.D. 1563.104 The Roxburghe Ballads105 and The Shirburn Ballads have also proved useful concerning jigs and Robin Hood ballads.106 Other important resources on royal ceremonies, pageantries and festivities which were important for me concerning the green wild man, Robin Hood and morris damcing are John Nichols, The Progresses and Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth

92 Thomas Nashe, The Works of Thomas Nashe, vol.3 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1958). 93 Gabriel Harvey, Pierces Supererogation (London, 1593). 94 The Three Parnassus Plays (1598-1601) ed. J. B. Leishmann (London: Ivor Nicholson & Watson Ltd., 1949). 95 Robert Greene: The Honourable Historie of Friar Bacon and Friar Bongay [1594] (London: The Tudor Facsimile Texts, 1914). 96 Anthony Munday, John a Kent and John a Cumber [1595] ed. J. Payne Collier (London: The Shakespeare Society, London, 1851). 97 William Shakespeare, The Complete Works (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988). 98 Thomas Platter‟s Travels in England, 1599 ed. and trans. Clare Williams (London: Jonathan Cape, 1937). 99 R. A Foakes, ed., Henslowe‟s Diary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 100 Correspondance of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leycester, During His Government of the Low Countries: 1585-86 ed. John Bruce (London: Camden Society Publications, XXVII, 1844). 101 John Evelyn, The Diary of John Evelyn (London: Oxford University Press, 1959). 102 Letters of Thomas Wood Puritan ed. Patrick Collinson (London: The Athlone Press, 1960). 103 John Stow, The Survey of London (London: 1598; 1603). 104 Henry Machyn, The Diary of Henry Machyn, Citizen and Merchant-taylor of London from A. D. 1563 ed. John Gough Nichols (London: The Camden Society, London, 1848). 105 Charles Hindley, ed., The Roxburghe Ballads. A collection of Ancient Songs and Ballads, written on various subjects, and printed between the year MDLX and MDCC vol I-III (London, 1873). 106 Andrew Clark, ed. The Shirburn Ballads 1585-1616 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907).

22 I107 and the Laneham‟s Letter.108 An invaluable source I utilized in the first chapter when writing about the debates around the theatre is James I‘s Book of Sports (1618).109 For information about the Elizabethan underworld and their relationship with actors and theatrical life in London I have drawn on the documents about The Elizabethan Underworld (Collection of Tudor & Early Stuart Tracts).110 and I have also consulted the Malone Society editions.111 I have also consulted the parish documents about Kemp and guild documents about Armin‘s life, The Apprentice Books of the Goldsmiths‟ Company, The Court Minute Books of the Goldsmith‟s Company, The Parish Registers of St. Bontolph Aldgate.112 My thinking about the theatrical fights in London has been strongly influenced by Tanya Pollard‘s excellent sourcebook, Shakespeare‟s Theatre.113 It is a representative portrait of the sources concerning theatrical debates and enabled me to find the key sources I need. The debates around the theater, the writings of antitheatricalists and the defenders of the stage are enourmously valuable because they give information about the theatrical life and of the actors of the day. There are sermons and other religious writings against the theater, and playwrights and poets have also written against the theater. Primary examples are John Northbrooke‘s A Treatise Against Dicing, Dancing, Plays, and Interludes, with Other Idle Pastimes (1577), Stephen Gosson‘s The School of Abuse (1579), Plays Confuted in Five Actions, (1582) Anthony Munday‘s A Second Third Blast of Blast of Retreat from Plays and Theaters (1580), Philip Stubbes‘s Anatomy of Abuses, (1583) Ben Jonson‘s Preface to Volpone, (1607)114 and William Prynne‘s Histriomatrix: The Player‟s Scrouge (1633).115 It was mostly men from the theatrical world who defended the stage and actors. In Thomas Lodge‘s A Reply to Stephen Gosson‟s School of Abuse, in Defence of Poetry, Music, and Stage Plays (1579), Sir Philip Sidney‘s The Pilgrimage of

107 John Nichols, The Progresses and Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth, 3 vols. (London, 1823). 108 Robert Laneham ( Langham), A Letter,Whearin part of the entertainment unto the Queenz maiesty, at Killigwoorth Castl, in warwick Sheer, in this soomerz progress. 1575 iz signified (1575) Medieval and Renaissance Texts (Leiden: Brill, 1983). 109 James I. Book of Sports: The Kings Maiesties Declaration to His Subjects Concerning lawful Sports to be used (London: Bonham Norton and John Bill, 1618). 110 A.V. Judges, ed. The Elizabethan Underworld: Collection of Tudor & Early Stuart Tracts and Ballads (London, New York: Routledge, 1930). 111 Malone Society, Collection Vols.1, 2, 3,10 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1907). 112 Goldsmiths' Court Minute Book (Goldsmiths‘ Hall, London). 113 Tanya Pollard, Shakespeare‟s Theatre (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004). 114 Pollard, Shakespeare‟s Theatre, 198-206. 115 William Prynne, Histriomatrix: The Player‟s Scrouge (New York, N. Y.: Garland, 1974).

23 Parnassus, Apology for Poetry, (1615) and Thomas Heywood‘s An Apology for Actors, (1612) the writers elaborated the beneficial effects of plays. Political figures played a crucial role in the controversies surrounding the theater. The lord mayor of London, the aldermen, and other city authorities, the Privy Council and the Master of the Revels were often involved in correspondence about plays. Their letters, records, and legal statutes and the various State Papers constitute important documents about the situation of the theater and actors. 116 Other excellent contemporary sources are the documents of city authorities,117 e.g. The Repertoires of the Court of Aldermen (1560-1599).118 Royal proclamations are cited from A Book Containing All Such Proclamations as Were Published during the Reign of the Queen Elizabeth,119 and Tudor Royal Proclamations,120 correspondences from the Remembrancia from the Corporation of the City of London and the Privy Council121 and the Landsdowne Manuscript122 which contains an act for the regulation of plays, and competing petitions to the Privy Council from a playing company and the Corporation of London.

116 Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, of the Reigns of Edward I, Mary, and Elizabeth 7 vols. ed. R. Lemon and (later) M. A. E. Green (London, 1856-71). 117 A. B. Beaven, The Aldermen of the City of London, 2 vols.(London, 1908-13). 118 London, Corporation of London Records Office, Repertoires (10-19). 119 A Book Containing All Such Proclamations as Were Published during the Reign of the Queen Elizabeth, ed. Humphrey Dyson (London, 1618). 120 P. L. Hughes and J. F. Larkin, ed. Tudor Royal Proclamations, The Later Tudors 1553-1587 (New Haven & Ld.: Yale University Press, 1969). 121 Remembrancia, I-II. 9-238. (reprinted in MSC, preserved among the Archives of the City of London, 1579-1664). 122 The British Library, MS, Vol. II.

24 Problems

The lack of primary sources and their reliability generated most of the difficulties which surfaced as I wrote my dissertation. In response I have formulated questions in every chapter which reflect the emerging problems concerning Kemp‘s life and career. Although my questions sometimes remain unanswered, they may inspire other scholars of Elizabethan popular culture to search for the answers. My research touching these problems has taken me in directions I had not anticipated. In the Introduction some questions arise in connection with Kemp‘s biography, namely that his exact date and place of birth, the details of his private life, references to his religious denomination are missing. The First Chapter treats the different kinds of concepts, traditions and predecessors informing Kemp‘s art. I take a closer look at the roots of Kemp‘s profession, the abundant concepts of the tradition of foolery and its representatives. It turns out that Kemp had numerous enemies who attacked the institution of the theater, the comic actors and Kemp himself. But in the primary sources only Shakespeare, his company, the ―Shakerags,‖ Richard Johnson and Ben Jonson appear. Who might the others have been? In the Second Chapter the questions posed concern Kemp‘s role in Elizabethan popular culture and his connection to the margins of society. What form of communication did he choose? His appearance as the fool and as Robin Hood, as well as his dancing the different figures of the morris dance, were certainly a mode of communication. Were jigs and morris dancing as important to him as was playing in the theater? Can we consider jigs and morris dancing a worthy rival of the legitimate arts? Did Kemp really play the great role of Falstaff? The uncertainty extends to his theatrical roles as well. In the Third Chapter I have formulated questions concerning Kemp‘s role in the Lord Chamberlain‘s Men and successive career choices. What kinds of relationships and conflicts did he have? What were the reasons he left the company? Was it a victory or a failure for Kemp to face the challenge of morris dancing from London to Norwich? What was his relationship to Robin Hood the hero of May Games and processions? The examination of the contemporary documents, the research and theories concerning Elizabethan culture and theater offers further scope for elaborating my opinion and for answering the questions posed in each chapter.

25 3. A SHORT BIOGRAPHY OF WILLIAM KEMP

PROSPERO Gentle breath of yours my sails Must fill, or else my project fails, Which was to please. (The Tempest, Epilogue. 11-13.)123

It may seem unusual that I would briefly discuss Kemp‘s life here, but I think it belongs to the Introduction, because the information given below is vital for understanding the further chapters. Kemp‘s probable date of birth is 1549.124 According to Chris Harris, the actor who performed Kemp‘s jigs and recorded Kemp‘s biography in a little booklet, Will Kemp came from the family of Hendon Kempes of Middlesex.125 Little is known about Kemp‘s early life until the mid 1580s. Sometime around 1586-88 Kemp was working as an apprentice to Richard Tarlton.126 Kemp‘s physical appearance, like that of Tarlton, was a very important element in his character as an entertainer. He was a man of powerful build127 and as Baldwin indicates ―of large joint.‖128 Kemp possessed a solid physique, great stamina, and athletic prowess, all of which helped him to accomplish the wild leaps and jumps and to keep the pace that was expected of him.129 Tarlton‘s squint marked him as a comedian, and Kemp‘s ―ill face‖ served the same purpose. Others may have addressed him as ―Master Kemp,‖ but he refers to himself as plain ―Will Kemp‖ and often presented himself as the common Englishman.130 At the beginning of his career he admired Thomas Deloney, the writer who highlights and celebrates the exploits of shoemakers and clothiers. 131 At the beginning of his career, Kemp was a servant of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester.132 The Earl of Leicester was a very influential patron in Kemp‘s life and

123 Virginia Mason Vaughan and Alden T. Vaughan ed., The Arden Shakespeare: The Tempest (London: Tompson Learning, 2003). 124 Harris, Will Kemp Shakespeare‟s Forgotten Clown, 55. This date appears in Harris‘ research. 125 Ibid. 6-7. 126 There is evidence that Kemp worked on Tarlton's scenario The Seven Deadly Sins which demanded great skills in improvisation. The play was very popular but unfortunately has not survived. 127 I write more about the importance of the clown‘s appearance in Chapter 2. 128 Baldwin, The Organization & Personnel of the Shakespearean Company, 243. 129 Wiles, Shakespeare‟s Clown, 24. 130 Ibid. 131 Later, according to Kemp‘s Nine Daies Wonder they had conflicts probably because of the rivalry between actor and playwright. This matter is discussed in Chapter 3. 132 For further discussion about Leicester‘s patronage, see Eleanor Rosenberg, Leicester, Patron of Letters (New York, N. Y.: Columbia University Press, 1955).

26 Leicester‘s Company was his first theatrical troop in which he learned his craft and started to play and dance professionally.133 Leicester‘s players visited Ipswich in 1580, Kemp toured with them. After the company had been paid, 6d (an old form of the pound) were also paid for ―carrying a letter to Mr Kempe,‖ which turned out to be an invitation to come and perform.134 In December 1585 Kemp was certainly part of the entourage of the would-be governor of the Low Countries as he made a festive progress from Flushing to the Hague. After Leicester left the country, it is very probable that Leicester‘s company split into two separate organizations: an acting company in England and a company of musicians, including Kemp and his boy. Some members of the company of Leicester‘s men still regularly performed in the countryside from 1585 to September 1588. The same company also acted in London but appeared at court only once on 27 December, 1586. The entourage to the Low Countries included fifteen actors and twelve musicians who all helped Leicester to repay the splendid entertainment that he received from his hosts. A document that proves that Kemp visited to Denmark in 1586, with his fellow actors Thomas Pope and George Bryan,135 can be found at the Old Court Theatre in Copenhagen.136 The Danish household accounts for August and September 1586 record ―36 daler paid to William Kempe, instrumentalist, for 2 months board for himself and a boy, by name Daniel Jonns, which sum he had earned from June 17 when he was engaged, theretill 1 month granted on his dismissal, in all 3 months, each month 12 daler.‖137 After entering the Hague, Leicester sent his players home. He paid twelve pounds as a reward and for the expenses to his players, and ―WILLIAM KEMP, THE PLAYER‖ got a remarkable sum of one pound.138 Kemp had a close and personal relationship with Leicester.139 The latter employed Kemp for many tasks and services, including the strengthening of diplomatic relations. For example, Leicester acted as money-changer for Kemp in his bedchamber using some of his gambling funds to change a gold coin that Kemp had received from

133 Sally-Beth MacLean, ―Tracking Leicester‘s Men: the patronage of a performance troupe‖ In Whithfield, Paul and Suzanne R. Westfall, ed. Shakespeare and Theatrical Patronage in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 134 Malone Society, Collections, Vol. 2 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1907), 271. 135 They were to become actors in Shakespeare‘s company. 136 Harris, Will Kemp Shakespeare‟s Forgotten Clown, 8. 137 See Elsinore pay roll in: Nungezer, Dictionary of Actors, 216 138 Roy C. Strong and J. A Van Dorsten, Leicester‘s Triumph (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1964), 84. 139 Ibid., 84.

27 the German Count von Hohenlo140 who was an important new ally.141 When Kemp returned to England, he carried with him correspondence from Philip Sidney. In 1586 Kemp took part in a show based on the labours of Hercules which was performed after the St George‘s Day dinner in Utrecht Holland.142 (It was written down by by the earl‘s own herald, Segar).143 Two weeks later, when Leicester went on an excursion out of town to view the troops Kemp was involved in some clowning, 144 Leicester‘s account records payment ―to William Kemp after his leaping into a ditch before your Excellency and the Prince Elector went a-walking at Amersfoort: five shillings.‖145 Although Kemp was not a court jester to the Queen as Tarlton had been, he evidently was able to take up that role in Leicester‘s court in the Netherlands. Serious fighting was about to begin in the Netherlands and Kemp‘s talent was employed for diplomatic purposes again. Leicester tried to pursue the King of Denmark as a military ally, so Kemp, diplomatic letters in tow, went to London where a Danish ambassador was engaged in important negotiations. In London Kemp had the opportunity to come in contact with a group of Leicester‘s musicians who were part of the Danish retinue.146 When the ambassador‘s mission ended, Kemp boarded his ship along with five other English actors, probably from Leicester‘s Company and arrived at Elsinore in June 1586. The five were described as ―Instrumentalist and Tumblers‖ and included Kemp himself who was described as an ―instrumentalist‖ and was accompanied by a boy. We know from John Southworth, that the solo entertainer was well established under Elizabeth‘s reign, and enjoyed royal patronage.147 Kemp was primarily a solo comedian in the first part of his career; music, dance and working abroad must have done much to refine his non-verbal performance skills. When Kemp and his five

140 John Bruce, ed. Correspondance of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leycester, During His Government of the Low Countries, 1585-86 (London: Camden Society Publications, XXVII, 1844), 246. 141 There is another anecdote about an incident between Kemp and Leicester‘s nephew, Philip Sydney. Wiles, Shakespeare‟s Clown, 31-32. 142 Bruce, Correspondence of Leicester, 34. It can be known from an account of 1584 that at such events knights would appear in role, would deliver an appropriate speech, commonly designed to provoke laughter. In a miniature of Essex dressed for tilting, there is an illustration of such a comic servant. 143 Bruce, Correspondence of Leicester, 32. According to Eleanor Rosenberg Segar‘s account was later incorporated in Stow‘s Annales of England (1615). In Eleanor Rosenberg, Leicester, Patron of Letters (New York: Columbia University Press, 1955), 312. 144 Stow, Survey of London, 716; Roy Strong, Cult of Elizabeth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 134-46. 145 Bruce, Correspondence of Leicester, 258. 146 Wiles, Shakespeare‟s Clown, 32-34. 147 Southworth, Fools and Jesters at the English Court, 127. John Lockwood, jester to Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary and Elizabeth, was the first solo entertainer.

28 colleagues moved on to Saxony to Christian I, he also accompanied Leicester‘s players in the Low Countries.148 They played at banquets and in particular demonstrated their leaping skills. After Kemp's departure in 1586,149 the other five members were also sent on 25 September, 1586 to Christian I of Saxony. In the correspondence concerning their future activity they were called ―instrumentister.‖ It was difficult to persuade them to go so far into a country whose language they did not know, so an interpreter was needed. Christian himself recounts how they entertained him with instrumental music and acrobatic performances. ―Funf Instrumentisten und Springern aus England‖ remained with him till 17 July, 1587 according to the Dresden account. 150 Kemp‘s duties at Elsinore must have been similar: to play his instruments, to demonstrate his athletic English dancing, and to provide such other forms of table-side entertainment as he had in his repertoire.151 After Kemp left Elsinore, he probably went back to England.152 In 1587 the Queen founded her own playing company and as a consequence Leicester‘s Men performed annually before Elizabeth, though they remained a prestigious company. They were the oldest company under royal patent (1574) and thanks to Leicester they enjoyed high favour. In 1588, the year of the Defeat of the Armada, Tarlton died. Kemp came to fill the vacuum that remained after him, and he also represented the many-sided entertainer with his jigs and other popular performances. Tarlton had been the Queen‘s jester, but there is no evidence that Kemp had any contact with the court except in his capacity as a player in theatrical plays. Leicester also died in 1588, and after his death the situation changed. 153 Patronage worked well in the first half of the reign of Elizabeth, but Leicester‘s death was a loss both to the arts and to the cause of radical Protestantism. There were various reasons for this; other patrons were not so generous and the finances of the country were depleted. In both political and cultural life numerous negative events happened in the second half of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I.154 Kemp, being a professional of the theater, did not have an opportunity to secure a patron like Leicester. Kemp took to

148 Eleanor Rosenberg, Leicester, Patron of Letters, 314. 149 Thomas W. Baldwin, The Organization and Personnel of the Shakespearean company, 74-7. 150 Ibid., 75. 151 Baldwin, The Organization & Personnel of the Shakespearean Company, 25. 152 Wiles, Shakespeare‟s Clown, 31-33. 153 I will make clear the different problems after 1585 in Chapter 3. 154 John Guy uses the expression ―The Second Reign of Elizabeth I‖ in his book The Reign of Elizabeth: Court and Culture in the Last Decade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). These problems will be discussed in Chapter 3.

29 working with theater companies in the 1590s. From a solo comedian Kemp became a regular company member; this marked a transition in his career from patronage to commercial theater.155 In 1588 the first important phase of Kemp‘s career ended, and now close to thirty-five156 he joined the Lord Strange‘s Company157 which had merged with The Admiral's Company in 1590.158 Thomas Pope, John Heminges, Augustine Phillips, and George Bryane, also from Leicester‘s Company, joined Strange‘s men. Heminges and Phillips together with Kemp had probably belonged to the playing branch of the Leicester's Company.159 (The musicians formed another, separate branch). Although Kemp continued to perform in postludes written for him, 160 he was now part of a company and he was also a sharer.161 This company kept the licenses of two patrons which allowed the actors to tour the countryside in two separate companies and to have the combined strength of actors in a full repertory company in London.162 This gave the company advantages during the plague years when London theaters were closed. The most famous of Kemp‘s jigs, Rowland, also emerged after the closing of the theatres.163 From this time on until his death, Kemp was clearly the preeminent comedian in England. In 1590 Thomas Nashe164 probably dedicated the anti-Martinist tract An Almond for a Parrat to him with the following words as ―jest-monger and vice-gerent general to the ghost of Dick Tarlton.‖165 The pamphlet, presumably written by Nashe, also reflects his fame even on the Continent166:

Camming from Venice the last Summer, and taking Bergamo in my waye homeward to England, it was my happe soiourning there some foure or fiue dayes, to light in felowship with that famous Francatrip Harlicken, who perceiuing me to

155 Wiles, Shakespeare‟s Clown, 38. 156 Baldwin, The Organization & Personnel of the Shakespearean Company, 244. 157 Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, II, 91; Baldwin, Organization & Personnel of the Shakespearean Company, 79-80. Although Chambers doubts that Leicester‘s Men passed directly into the service of Lord Strange , Baldwin holds that Strange‘s group was formed by the combination and reorganization of Leicester‘s two companies. 158 Gurr, Shakespeare Company, 24. 159 Baldwin, Organization & Personnel of the Shakespearean Company, 80-81. 160 Wiles, Shakespeare‟s Clown, 35, 43. 161 Baldwin, Organization & Personnel of the Shakespearean Company, 96-98. 162 Gurr, Shakespeare Company, 25. 163 Baskervill, Elizabethan Jig, 226-7. 164 Thomas Nashe, Almond for a Parrat [1590] ed. Ronald B. McKerrow, The Works of Thomas Nashe (London: A. H. Bullen, 1904-10). 165 Nashe‘s asserted that Kemp‘s fame had reached Italy by this time. According to Wiles Nashe‘s dedication to Almond for a Parrat (London, 1590) is fantasy. Although Arlecchino purported to be a Bergamask, no player of the part really came from Bergamo. 166 Dictionary of Actors, 216. According to Nungezer, Nashe wrote the dedicatory epistle.

30 be an English order and maner of our playes, which he termed by the name of representations: amongst other talke he enquired of me if I knew any such Parabolano here in London as Signior Chiarlatano Kempino. Very well (quoth I), and haue beenebeetle oft in his company. He hearing me say so, began to embrace me a new, and offered me all the courtesie he colde for his sake, saying, although he knew him not, yet for the report he had hard of his pleasance, hee colde not bee notbeein loue with his perfections being absent. 167

In 1592 Strange‘s Men produced a new play entitled A Knack to Know a Knave. The play includes an episode entitled ―Kemp‘s applauded merriments of the men of Gotham in receiving the King into Gotham.‖168 During the Christmas of 1593 Strange‘s Men were successful at court.169 The first of two plays produced in January 1594 was The Jealous Comedy and The Tragedy of the Guise.170 Due to the outbreak of the plague playhouses were closed by law and the actors were without work. The leading actor, Edward Alleyn decided to leave London with a select band of Lord Strange‘s Men. On 6 May the Privy Council gave a special license to the players to tour the countyside.171 At the end of 1594, after Lord Strange‘s death, Kemp and many of his fellows entered into the service of the Lord Chamberlain. During this period Kemp and Burbage became the most famous actors of their generation. 172 In 1601/2 they appeared in front of Cambridge students in The Three Parnassus Plays as the archetypes of common players of comedy and tragedy.173 The five years of Kemp‘s association with Shakespeare seem to have been an unusually stable, fertile and successful period for them both. At the same time, even as he filled his Shakespearean stage roles and was a leading comic actor of the Chamberlain‘s Company where he could freely improvise and had a unique relationship with the audience, Kemp continued to have success with his jigs. He published the text and melody of three of them in 1595.174 Kemp had many performance skills. Although his main talent lay in the direction of jigs and non-verbal performances, he was also good at learning long monologues.175 Kemp‘s performances must have been spontaneous,

167 The Travels of Three English Brothers, ed. J. Hodgets (London, 1607). 168 Nashe, Stange Newes [1592]; Works, (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1958), 286-7. 169 Chambers, Elizabethan Stage, II, 123. This is noted in the patent of May 1593. 170 Grote, Best Actors of the World, 210. 171 Chambers, Elizabethan Stage, II, 123. 172 Richard Burbage (1567-1619). A contemporary and associate of Shakespeare, Burbage was the first player of a number of Shakespearean roles: Henry V, Hamlet and Lear. He was noted for his performances in tragedy. He held shares in the Globe and Blackfriars theatres, which were built by his father James Burbage. 173 J. B. Leishmann, ed. The Three Parnassus Plays (London: Nicolson and Watson, 1949), 339. 174 See Chambers, Elizabethan Stage, II, 325-7. 175 The further discussion of this problem, see Peter Joseph Cockett, ―Incongruity, Humour and early English comic figures: Armin's natural fools, the Vice, and Tarlton the Clown‖ (Ph.D. dissertation,University of Toronto, 2001).

31 however, and he did not like being restricted by the script, so his appearances were often placed at the end of a scene to allow him to extemporize.176 But by the end of the 1590s several problems appeared in the Company.177 The greatest was the historical conflict of interests between the comedian and the playwright, between Shakespeare and Kemp.178 Kemp and Shakespeare had different views concerning the theater and the role of the actor and playwright. They carried equal status in the company.179 Their aims in the theatrical world were different, and they pursued divergent paths. Shakespeare wanted to build a prestigious and profitable company and Kemp continued his spontaneous and uncontrollable role which was strongly rooted in popular culture.180 Kemp often wanted to represent the common Englishman who has a casual and intimate relationship with everybody he meets. In the above-mentioned complex historical period, censorship became more and more important, and Kemp‘s spontaneous and improvisatory performances were impossible to be placed under tight control. His art was considered more and more dangerous for the Company and his personality unpleasant for Shakespeare. 181 The expectations of the more aristocratic audience also changed.182 The audience no longer appreciated fooling separate from the play, and their tastes and opinion were primarily important to Shakespeare who wanted to attract a more sophisticated and wealthier audience. This conflict marks the end of the ―players‘ theater‖183 and the beginning of the increasing dominance of the playwright over theatrical production values. The disagreement grew into a conflict and Kemp, being a star comic, did not give in. He became Shakespeare‘s rival. In the 1590s the conflicts within the company were temporarily resolved, but in 1599 the cooperation between Kemp and Shakespeare ended abruptly.184 He signed the lease for the Globe theatre in February but was gone by the fall.185

176 Wiles, Shakespeare‟s Clown, 106-107, 119. 177 J. Payne Collier, Memoirs of the Principal Actors in the Plays of Shakespeare (London: Printed for the Shakespeare Society, 1846); Chambers, Elizabethan Stage, 326; Gurr, Shakespeare Company , 87. 178 Wiles, Shakespeare‟s Clown, 36; Grote, Best Actors of the World, 79-81. 179 James Shapiro, 1599: A year in the life of William Shakespeare (London: Faber and Faber, 2005), 45-47; Nungezer, Dictionary of Actors, 217; Southworth, Fools and Jesters at the English Court, 168. 180 This will be the main topic of the second part of Chapter 3. 181 Cockett, ―Incongruity, Humour and early English comic figures‖, 12. 182 Gurr, Shakespeare‟s Theatre, 66; Robert Weimann, Shakespeare and the Popular tradition, Studies in the social dimension of dramatic form and function (London: John Hopkins University Press, 1978), 191. 183 Cockett, ―Incongruity, Humour and early English comic figures‖, 10. 184 Kemp‘s reasons for leaving the Chamberlain‘s company is in focus in Chapter 3. 185 According to Grote he returned for a while.

32 There are different theories about exactly when and why Kemp left the Chamberlain‘s Company.186 As an equal and after 1599 an important rival of Shakespeare‘s, Kemp had become a menacing element for his own company and for his fellow and playwright Shakespeare. His art embodied the traditional elements of popular entertainment: the loud jig, the energetic and unrestrainable morris dancing, free improvisation and clowning, and an intimate and welcoming relationship with the audience of common people.187 With these two great conflicts in the background Kemp was still astonishingly flexible. He continued his other enourmously successful activities, morris dancing and jigging.188 Even if Kemp‘s rivals, the playwrights, wanted to create refined and academically respectable forms of drama, they had to admit that the above-mentioned entertainments were popular even in private playhouses until the middle of the seventeenth century.189 Kemp returned to the Curtain, which was situated in the poorer part of the city, the north of London, and continued to play his jigs, dance his morris dances and present his bawdy humour. His art remained very popular there and the audience was happy to welcome him back.190 Three playhouses: the Curtain, the Fortune and the Red Bull in the northern part of the city presented jigs with great popularity191 (the theatres south of the river did not have a reputation for obscene jigs). In 1600, when the theatres closed for Lent, Kemp set off on his famous morris dance to Norwich, a distance of 114 miles. In his published diary, the Nine Daies‟ Wonder Performed in a Daunce from London to Norwich, he writes about his journey in details. The dancing took nine days, but bad weather meant that the whole trip lasted for more than three weeks. He was happy dancing with a butcher; he spoke as an equal to the ―honest fellows‖ he met on the road or accepted hospitality from country gentry. 192 By the time he finished the journey, Kemp was probably one of the most famous men in the

186 Chambers, Elizabethan Stage, 327; Wiles, Shakespeare‟s Clown , 37; Grote, Best Actors of the World, 81- 99; Shapiro, Best Actors of the World, 48; Southworth, Fools and Jesters at the English Court, 168; Forse, Art Imitates Business , 121-139. Kemp‘s piracy is discussed in chapter 3. 187 Shapiro, 1599: A year in the life of William Shakespeare; Nungezer, Dictionary of Actors; Southworth, Fools and Jesters at the English Court. 188 For further discussion of this matter se Baskervill, Elizabethan Jig. 189 Michael Hattaway, Elizabethan Popular Theatre (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982), 68. 190 See Wiles, Shakespeare‟s Clown, 40-43. 191 Gurr, The Shakespeare Company, 114. 192 Kemp, Nine Daies Wonder, 10.

33 kingdom, and his undertaking brought morris dancing great popularity in court, festivals and the stage as well. He became a ―nine days wonder,‖ but was remembered long after the nine days were up.193 Because of his financial difficulties he took many wagers but many of the bettors disappeared when he came to collect on his return, so it was not a profitable venture. Even though he spread his nine days‘ dancing over a month, the dance testifies to his stamina, especially considering the poor condition of the roads in February. As a morris dancer he was an athlete and he moved fast; ―my pace in dancing is not ordinary‖ as he expressed it.194 He often emphasized his outstanding dancing skills; for example in his pamphlet Nine Daies Wonder he despises ―thin-breeched‖ ballad singers. Kemp also had the traditional morris dancer‘s talent for leaping.195 He could leap ditches that proved too wide for his companions.196 Not long after his dance he wanted to tour France and visit Rome. The entertainment scene in Europe had changed since Kemp‘s visit as a Court entertainer in Denmark and Germany almost fifteen years before. By 1600 Commedia dell‘Arte troupes had great popularity in Italy, Germany and France and were touring the various courts of the time. The highly specialized and disciplined companies had a different style and Kemp‘s stunts and his morris dance were no longer in vogue. He does seem to have offered to morris dance over the Alps but received no financial backing for the idea.197 We can follow his journeys to Europe in contemporary sources. He met the famous traveller Sir Anthony Shirley in Rome, in the summer of 1601.198 Shirley gave an account of their meeting in Italy which reveals that he found Kemp in dire financial straits. John Day, with Rowley and Wilkins, dramatized the meeting a few years later. Kemp‘s financial hopes were not realized. He returned home by 2 September 1601. Twelve weeks later he went to Münster with a group of English actors after a tour of the Low Countries. An older man called

193 Nine days wonder, seven-day wonder: something or somebody is amazing, but only for a short time. In Hungarian: ―Minden csoda három napig tart.‖ 194 Kemp, Nine Daies Wonder, 8, Wiles, Shakespeare‟s Clown, 70. 195 Morris dancers were expected to leap high and also great distances in this very energetic dancing which was widespread in the sixteenth century in popular festivals and in the court as well. With a dramatic plot played by 6 or 8 dancers, it was characterised by high leaping, fighting, mimed action, individual rather than concerted of figured action, dancing in a circle or around the room, rhythmic stepping, beating time with implements, and the use of dancing bells. I deal with morris dancing thoroughly in Chapter 3. 196 Harris, Will Kemp Shakespeare‟s Forgotten Clown, 47. 197 Forrest, The History of the Morris Dancing, 272. 198 Nungezer, Dictionary of Actors, 215.

34 ―John Kemp‖ was in charge.199 An ―English John‖ was a generic name for a clown.200 Kemp wandered through Germany where his jigs were very much in vogue; four texts of his jig of Rowland survive from the period 1599-1603.201 On his way home Kemp established the possibility of making a successful tour. He gathered ten younger actors in London, and returned to the continent in the new capacity of actor-manager. In Münster his company performed five plays on five nights, but since these were in English, the success of enterprise depended on other elements. The company carried lutes, citherns, fiddles, pipes and dances and jigs (in German) were performed at the beginning and at the end of the plays. Kemp was seen in Italy during the spring of 1601, but by 2 September, he was in Germany and returned to England by Christmas. According to an entry in the diary of one William Smith of Abingdon, on ―1601, Sept. 2. Kemp, mimus quidam, qui peregrinationem quandam in Germaniam et Italiam instituerat, post multos errores et infortunia sua reversus: multa refert de Anthonio Sherly equite aurato, quern Romae (legatum Persicum agentem) convenerat.‖202 In London he joined the Worcester‘s Men203 who had been playing in the countryside since 1555. Kemp and the actor playwright Thomas Heywood were the central figures in the company.204 At least three actors followed Kemp and left the Chamberlain‘s Men. John Duke, Christopher Beeston and Robert Pallant 205 became sharers with Thomas Heywood and Kemp. In June 1600 the Privy Council declared that there were to be only two playhouses, the Fortune and Globe. A year later they complained about an unlicensed and libellous play at the Curtain and some months later they noted that the number of plays and playhouses increased. 206 (Although Worcester himself was in the Privy Council, he allowed his own company to be established in London.) The new company leased the small inn called the Boar‘s Head and later also the Rose and the Curtain. They were very successful and were invited to court in January

199 Chambers suggests that it was a ‗relative‘. 200 Baskervill, Elizabethan Jig, 93,127-8; Chambers, Elizabethan Stage, 326. 201 Nungezer, Dictionary of Actors, 215. 202 J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps, Ludus Coventriae (London: Printed for the Shakespeare Society, 1841), 410. 203 Grote, Best Actors of the World, 102. 204 They served as payees for a performance at court given on 3 January. 205 He had been with Strange‘Men, and may also have been hired by the Chamberlain‘s. 206 Chambers, Elizabethan Stage, IV, 329-35.

35 1602. 207 In March 1602, the Privy Council accepted the new circumstances and issued a new order limiting London to three companies called Chamberlain‘s, Admiral‘s, and Worcester‘s.208 Kemp probably played in Heywood‘s plays, especially in Nobody and Somebody.209 In 1602 Kemp, typically enough, needed money. Philip Henslowe lent him money for ―start–up‖ costs to begin playing, and for personal use to buy clothing for himself and his ―boy.‖210 We cannot be sure of the date and cause of Kemp‘s death. Some suggest that he was accidentally killed by a rapier while acting at the Globe, others claim that he died abroad while on a theatrical tour.211 There was an epidemic of the plague in the summer of 1603 as a result of which 30,000 Londoners died. The common opinion is that Kemp was one of them. An item in the burial register of St. Saviour's Southwark reads ―1603, November 2nd, William Kempe, a man.‖212 Martin Butler concludes in his Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry that Shakespeare‘s former colleague ―may or may not have been ‗Kemp, a man‘ who was buried at St Saviour‘s, Southwark, on 2 November 1603.‖ He is not the first to cast doubt on this identification originally made by Edmond Malone. 213 If Kemp was indeed this ‗man,‘ it is strange that as comic star his profession was not mentioned in place of merely ―a man.‖ But there is also evidence that Kemp, the actor, was alive in 1605, along with Armin and other players at the Blackfriars.214 Some of the aldermen of the City of London complained about them to the Privy Council, noting that ―[w]hereas Kempe, Armyn, and others, plaiers at the Black Fryers, have again not forborne to bring upon their stage one or more of the worshipfull aldermen of the City of London, to their great scandal and to the lessening of their authority, the Lords of the right honorable the Privy Counsell are besought to call the said Players before them, and to enquire into the

207 Grote, Best Actors of the World, 110. 208 Chambers, Elizabethan Stage, II, 226, 230, IV, 335. 209 Wiles, Shakespeare‟s Clown, 40. Wiles mentions four of Heywood‘s dramas in which Kemp probably played. Kemp‘s theatrical roles will be discussed in Chapter 3. 210 R. A Foakes, ed. Henslowe‟s Diary, 196. Philip Henslowe (c. 1550 - 1616). Henslowe was an Elizabethan theatrical entrepreneur and impressario. His modern reputation rests on the survival of his "Diary", a primary source for information about the theatrical world of Renaissance London. 211 Harris, Will Kemp Shakespeare‟s Forgotten Clown, 50. 212 Wiles, Shakespeare‟s Clown, 41. 213 Martin Butler, ed. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). (Martin Butler has written the entries of Kemp and Armin). 214 Harris, Will Kemp Shakespeare‟s Forgotten Clown, 50.

36 same, that order may be taken to remedy the abuse, either by putting down or removing the said theatre.‖215 Katherine Duncan-Jones in her lecture titled Kempe‟s Later Career argued that Kemp died much later than 1603, perhaps as late or later than 1610.216 Thomas Dekker‘s Gull‟s Horn-book, printed in 1609, includes the following remark which confirms Katherine Duncan-Jones‘s argument: ―Tush! tush! Tarleton, Kemp, nor Singer, nor all the litter of fooles that now come drawling behinde them, never plaid the cloumes more naturally then the arrantest sot of you all.‖217 According to Duncan-Jones, there are half a dozen allusions to Kemp in print from the years between 1603 and 1612. The key piece of evidence suggesting that Kemp was alive and still performing as late as November 1610 occurs in the household accounts of Henry, seventh Baron Berkeley (1534–1613).218 Duncan-Jones writes that ―[i]n late years, Berkeley, as Smyth tells us, regularly economized on his household expenses by going to stay with friends and kinsfolk, taking the opportunity to get rid of various hangers-on. His favourite residences were those of Lady Hunsdon (Elizabeth Carey, née Spenser) in West Drayton, Middlesex, and the Blackfriars in London. While staying there he paid ―in reward to William Kempe, my Lady Hunsdons man, 4s. 4d.‖219 From this record it seems that Kemp enjoyed the patronage of Lady Hunsdon. 220 In Duncan-Jones‘s view it is also possible that Kemp—if he was alive and active between 1603 and 1612—appeared in some early Jacobean plays, including plays by Shakespeare. The intellectual, social, psychological, and aesthetic changes in the sixteenth century were complex and dialectical. As Greenblatt says, ―[t]here was a new social mobility, but there was a new assertion of power by both family and state to determine

215 Harris, Will Kemp Shakespeare‟s Forgotten Clown, 52. The baptism of George, son of William Kemp of St. Giles, Cripplegate, can also refer to the actor. 216 Katherine Duncan-Jones, ―Shakespeare's dancing Fool: Did William Kemp live on as ‗Lady Hunsdon‘s Man‘?‖ (paper presented at the Early Modern Research Centre Conference titled Controversy, Protest, Ridicule, Laughter, 1500-1750 at the University of Reading, England July, 2010.) It has appeared as an article as well: Katherine Duncan-Jones, ―Shakespeare's dancing Fool: Did William Kemp live on as ‗Lady Hunsdon‘s Man‘?‖ in TLS 15 August, 2010. www.entertainment.timesonline.co.uk. Last consulted 2011-08- 22. 217 Thomas Dekker, The Gull‟s Horn Book (London, 1609). 218 Berkeley‘s household accounts, extracts from which were published in the Newsletter of Records of Early English Drama (REED) in 1983. (Duncan - Jones‘s examples are taken from the volume of accounts covering the years 1605–1613.) 219 Duncan-Jones, ―Shakespeare's dancing Fool‖. 220 Lady Hunsdon (1552–1618) was the widow of Sir George Carey, 2nd Lord Hunsdon, who, as Lord Chamberlain, had been both Kemp‘s patron and Shakespeare‘s in the second half of the 1590s. She was also a notable patron in her own right; as a young woman she was generous to her distant relative Edmund Spenser, as well as to Thomas Nashe and others.

37 all movement in society as well.‖221 There is profound social and economic mobility in Kemp‘s and Tarlton‘s case, and in Kemp‘s a restless geographical mobility as well. Tarlton‘s stage career brought him both social and financial elevation.222 It is a conventional notion that neither Tarlton nor Kemp had ambitions for the solid benefits of gentility.223 Though Kemp did not accumulate money or come to possess a courtly title, he became widely famous in different fields of entertainment and was an outstanding professional. He moved out of a narrowly circumscribed social sphere into a realm that brought him in close contact with the powerful and the great. He was in a position as well to know, with some intimacy, those with no power, status, or education at all. So he had an exceptional situation and could obtain insight into every section of Elizabethan society. When we examine Kemp‘s career it can be seen that he belonged to an upwardly mobile profession and was a special representative of his kind. His aim was probably different from that of his fellows like Tarlton who, for example, was the Queen‘s jester and became the Master of the Fencing and a permanent Groom of the Chamber or others like George Bryan who became a permanent Groom of the Chamber in 1603 and Thomas Pope who died as a gentleman in 1604, holding shares in both the Globe and the Curtain.224 Pope and Shakespeare were not the only members of the Chamberlain‘s Men to become gentlemen; Robert Armin, Kemp‘s successor as clown, and Augustine Phillips, who wrote or performed jigs, also acquired coats of arms. John Singer, clown for the Admiral‘s Men was another, like Tarlton before him, became a Groom of the Chamber. Thomas Sackville, who migrated to a German court and played the clown ―John Posset,‖ invested his earnings in a silk business around 1603 and became very rich.225 Kemp was a lifelong wanderer, so accumulating money and becoming a gentleman were probably not his greatest aims, and it was most likely difficult for him to settle down and build a stable life with a family, a house and land. 226 Yet he became

221 Ibid., 1. 222 He wrote plays and pamphlets, some of them are lost, some are extant eg.: Seven Deadly Sins,Tarlton‟s Jests. One of his most famous role was Derick in the Famous Victories of Henry V. 223 In Wiles, Shakespeare‟s Clown, 37; Grote, Best Actors of the World , 77-99; Forse, Art Imitates Business, 121-139; Nungezer, Dictionary of Actors; 217, Chambers, Elizabethan Stage, II, 327. 224 George Bryan and Thomas Pope were the two actors who played with Kemp in Denmark and went to join the Chamberlain‘s Men. 225 Nungezer, Dictionary of Actors, 64, 282, 287, 309, 328. 226 Ibid.

38 a famous professional entertainer who was well-known all over the country and in Europe as well.

39 II. FOOLERY AND THEATRICAL WARS

POLONIUS Though this be madness, yet there is method in‟t. (Hamlet, II.2. 193–206.)1

1. WILLIAM KEMP AND FOOLERY

William Kemp, the comedian who is in the central focus of my study, scrutinized and imitated natural fools2 in his different roles, so it is important to examine the figure of the fool from intellectual, theological and philosophical points of view to understand his background and motivations. Kemp and his fellow comedians used the various layers of the complex concept of folly in their performances as artificial fools and professional actors. Scrutinizing the concept of folly helps us to see the background of Kemp‘s functions, roles and spheres of activity in the England of his day more and more clearly. The different functions and characteristic features of the three types of fools3: the court jester, the festival fool and the fool actor were also the sources of Kemp‘s wide-ranging activities and roles in Elizabethan England. The court fool most likely stands the furthest from his character, though at the beginning of his career he was a kind of court jester in Leicester‘s4 court in the Low Countries, and his master, Richard Tarlton, was indeed court fool to Elizabeth I. These roles must also have been very influential in forming his art as a performer.

The Christian Concept of Folly

Korhonen, whose study focuses ―on fools and laughter in the context of the English Renaissance‖,5 provides an introduction to the theology and philosophy of folly and states

1 Anne Thomson and Neil Taylor, ed., The Arden Shakespeare: Hamlet, (London: Thompson Learning, 2006). 2 The terms ―artificial and natural fool‖ are used in academic scholarship eg.: Anu Korhonen uses them in her book about Renaissance fools, John Southworth also in his work about English court jesters, M. A. Screech in his study on extasy and the Praise of Folly. 3 Anu Korhonen illuminated these three types of fools in the second chapter of her book Fellows of Infinite Jest: The Fool in Renaissance England (Turku: University of Turku, 1999), 30–70. 4 Earl of Leicester, Robert Dudley (1553–88). Favourite and leading minister of Queen Elizabeth I, he favoured an active pro-Protestant, anti-Catholic home and foreign policy, to which he gave practical form in leading a disastrous expedition to the Netherlands to aid the Dutch in their revolt against Spain. He was a generous patron of the arts. 5 Korhonen, Fellows of Infinite Jest, 10.

40 that the intellectual history of folly has a close connection to theology.6 The fools were special considering their salvation because usually they were not able to devote themselves to God and follow a Christian way of life.7 In the Bible an important set of arguments can be found in defense of folly.8 The view of the New Testament concerning the innocent and the childlike could easily be applied to fools. According to St. Matthew and St. Luke the highest truth was hidden from the wise and prudent, and was revealed only to the childlike. ―At that time Jesus said, ‗I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants.‖ 9 Erasmus writes, ―Boys, old men, women, and fools are more delighted with religious and sacred things than others, and to that purpose are ever next the altars; and this they do by mere impulse of nature.‖10 St. Paul‘s rhetoric of madness and wisdom in particular was vital in discussing fools.

For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, ‗I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.‘ Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God‘s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God‘s weakness is stronger than human strength.11

Folly could become a special element of wisdom if it was used to serve God.12 St. Paul himself said he was a fool for Christ, and suggested others, who were seriously committed to God following him: ―[l]et no man deceive himself. If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.‖13 He was convinced that the apostles had a special kind of foolery with which they were to fulfill their task. ―For I think that God has

6 For further discussion of this matter see Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, W.R.Trask trans. (Harvest/HBJ Publishers, 1957); A. Fletcher, ed. Relegion, culture and society in early modern Britain. Essays in honour of Patrick Collinson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). 7 See more about it in ibid, 86–100. 8 Desiderius Erasmus, Praise of Folly (1509), trans. Betty Radice (London: The Folio Society, 1974), 100– 110. Erasmus in his Praise of Folly listed thirty Bible passages from which the learned theologian could deduce that Dame Folly dominated even God himself. 9 Matt. 11:25, Luke 10:21. 10 Erasmus, Praise of Folly, 72. 11 1 Cor. 1:19–27. 12 Korhonen, Fellows of Infinite Jest, 89. 13 1 Cor. 3:18–19.

41 exhibited us apostles as last of all, as though sentenced to death, because we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels and to mortals. We are fools for the sake of Christ, but you are wise in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong. You are held in honor, but we in disrepute.‖14 The tradition of holy folly15 which is rooted in medieval theology still played an important part of the interpretation of the folly of Renaissance fools, 16 although holy fools were not as widespread in the sixteenth century as in the Middle Ages.17 Nicholas of Cusa developed the idea of Christian fool tradition which was defined by St Paul in his works especially in his treatises Idiota de sapientia and De docta ignorantia. He asserted St Paul‘ opinion about humbleness which is the best way to reach salvation. As human wisdom is only temporal, eternal wisdom could only be found in God and in reliance on him. According to Nicholas of Cusa, the more learned a man was, the more clearly he would see his own ignorance. God would then reveal himself to the innocent; fools represented well the simple and innocent because they could not sin and did not have evil aims.18 Fools were considered to be in a state of spiritual peace as Erasmus writes: ―they had no fear of death, no pangs of conscience, no shame, envy or ambition, no terror of impending disaster and no strain of hope for future bliss – and despite all this, lacked even the ability to sin.‖ He continued about fool‘s happiness: ―[a]fter living a life full of enjoyment, with no fear or awareness of death, they move straight off to the Elysian fields where their tricks can amuse pious souls who have come to rest.‖19 The Old and the New Testaments differ in their treatment of fools and folly. In the Old Testament, the basic distinction of the wise and the foolish is that a wise man should know God and his divine laws, his main aim in life to reach salvation, but others who did not care about their soul and the eternal punishment waiting for them behaved in a foolish way.20 The Old Testament view of folly was summarized in Psalm 53 and 14:

14 1 Cor. 4:9–10. 15 On holy fools, see Roy Porter, Mind-Forg‟d Manacles. A History of Madness in England from the Restoration to the Regency (London: Penguin Books, 1990). Erasmus also mentions them at the end of his Praise of Folly: ―in all his life, and without hypocrisy, does a holy man fly those things that have any allience with the body and is wholly ravished with things eternal, invisible, and spiritual‖. 16 See Korhonen, Fellows of Infinite Jest, 89. 17 For further discussion of this topic see Sergey A. Ivanov, Holy Fools in Byzantium and Beyond (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). 18 Nicholas of Cusa, Of Learned Ignorance, trans. Germain Heron (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1954), 7-8. 19 Erasmus, Praise of Folly, 58–60. 20 Sandra Billington, The Social History of the Fool (Sussex: The Harvester Press, 1984).

42 Fools say in their hearts, ‗There is no God.‘ They are corrupt, they commit abominable acts; there is no one who does good.

Have they no knowledge, those evildoers, who eat up my people as they eat bread, and do not call upon God? There they shall be in great terror, in terror such as has not been. For God will scatter the bones of the ungodly; they will be put to shame, for God has rejected them. 21

The wise King David was often depicted in the company of a fool in medieval psalters; the two figures appeared as exact opposites by means of their clothes and accessories. The king's courtly costume proved him wise, while the fool was often naked which signalled his alien and wild nature which was far from civilization. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, fools were used as images of sin and evil, imitating the natural fools was also considered evil. The Christian concept of folly embodies contradictory meanings: the figure of the fool could represent both ultimate good: he was innocent and close to God, and ultimate evil: a symbol of sin and weakness, someone who is separated from God.

Erasmus and Brant

These two contradictory aspects of folly appear in two famous humanists‘ influential works: Desiderius Erasmus‘s Praise of Folly and Sebastian Brant‘s Ship of Fools.22 Brant‘s thoughts were strongly influenced by the theological interpretation of folly as sin, while Erasmus‘s Stultitia laughed freely at the follies of the whole mankind. In Renaissance thinking the fool was a union of contradictions. Folly governing the whole world was an idea shared by a number of scholars and writers in most European countries. It was a cultural commonplace present both in the popular mind as well as in the thinking of the learned.23 The fool figures originated from a long intellectual tradition in Humanism,24 but the scholars who dealt with the figure of the fool were also familiar with domestic fools, the court jesters and natural fools as well.

21 Psalm 53. See also Psalm 14. 22 Sebastian Brant, Das Narrenschiff [1495] (Stuttgart: Reclam Verlag, 1995). In Hungarian: A Bolondok hajója, ford. Márton László (Budapest: Borda Antikvárium, 2001). 23 Korhonen, Fellows of Infinite Jest, 102. 24 For Momus and Democritus, see Erasmus, Praise of Folly, 1, 39, 73, 75. The ancient characters: Democritus, the laughing philosopher was seen as a wise fool, or a great ancient sage who laughed at the world in his contemplative solitude, because all men were so foolish. Momus, the laughing god acquired an important position in Renaissance thinking; Erasmus reflected on him while assessing the place of laughter in Renaissance society, and saw him as a court jester in the Olympian palace of the gods. When

43 Dame Folly or Stultitia personated folly in Erasmus‘s Praise of Folly. The Moria, Moriae Encomium: Stultitiae Laus which was dedicated to his friend, Thomas More; (the title is a play on his name).25 ―But who the devil put that in your head? you‘ll say. The first thing was your surname of More, which comes so near the word Moriae (folly) as you are far from the thing… [it] being dedicated to you, it is no longer mine, but yours.‖26 The humanistic Christianity that More practiced in his public and private life could be associated with the kind of folly, the moria, praised in this book: ―[s]uch is your incredible affability and sweetness of temper that you both can and delight to carry yourself to all men a man of all hours.‖27 Erasmus‘s serene view of the world full of fools was popular in England and had a significant influence on the world view of many writers, including those writing of fools like Kemp, Tarlton, and Armin. Dame Folly says: ―[e]very man is the more happy in how many respects the more he is mad; and if I were judge in this case, he should be ranged in that class of folly that is peculiarly mine, which in truth is so large and universal that I scarce know anyone in all mankind that is wise at all hours, or has not some tang or other of madness.‖28 Erasmus‘s Praise of Folly was an academic work, directed mainly at an educated public which could recognize and find delight in his allusions and jokes. At the same time, the book became enormously popular and one of the best known texts of the humanist tradition as well. For Erasmus, fools stood for the whole human race, he quotes from the first chapter of Ecclesiastes: ―stultorum infinitus est numerus‖ ―[t]he number of fools is infinite.‖29 Fools were seen as representatives of all people; everyone was a fool in his own way and this idea added to folly an egalitarian emphasis. 30 According to Erasmus, most men surrender to his baser instincts, lacked full control of themselves, so everybody was foolish in a way. Dame Folly boasts: ―[m]en embrace me

he speaks about More at the beginning of Moriae he says: ―in the whole course of your life have played the part of a Democritus.‖ 25 Ibid., 1. 26 Ibid. 27 Ibid. 28 Ibid., 32. 29 Ibid., 101. The second famous quotation is from from Cicero: ―stultorum plena sunt omnia‖. Robert Armin used this quote as a motto in A Nest of Ninnies. 30 Barbara Swain, Fools and Folly During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1932). According to Barbara Swain the idea of the whole world as a kingdom of fools had taken a strong root in the minds of sixteenth-century people.

44 in their minds, express me in their manners, and represent me in their lives, which worship of the saints is not so ordinary among Christians.‖31 M.A. Screech in his book Ecstasy and the Praise of Folly deals with the last pages of Erasmus‘s work and in it he finds the description of religious ecstasy. Screech has tried to grasp what this praise of ecstasy means, both in itself and within the wider context of Erasmus‘s conception of the philosophy of Christ.32 According to Screech, Erasmus worshipped a God who saved the world by an act of divine madness: the mission of his Son as the incarnate Christ. God incarnate also acted like a madman and so did his disciples. And so – according to Erasmus – do his true followers in all ages. ―One of the forms in which this madness is found is the bewildered, ecstatic amazement of those who, some time in their lives, either by special revelation or by the word of God transmitted in speech or writing, catch a glimpse of the face of their transfigured Lord. It is then that they see for a moment the glorious majesty hiding behind the cloak of that lunatic Man of Sorrows who was the manifestation of a God who had, as it were, given up hope of saving the world by wisdom, deciding to save it by an act of infinitely costly madness‖ argues Screech.33 For Erasmus, ecstasy is the highest manifestation of Christian folly. As I have already mentioned, St. Paul in the Letter to the Corinthians depicts Folly as a characteristic of the Christian life. The implications of this divine folly penetrate to the very kernel of what Erasmus believed the Christian religion to be. One of the reasons his contemporaries found his ideas hard to grasp and so deeply offensive to their traditional piety is that the theme of the madness of God is more at home in Greek Christianity than in western Catholicism.34 Erasmus also found folly and ecstasy in many other parts of the Bible, for example in John 10:20, where Christ‘s enemies exclaim, ―He hath a devil. He is mad‖ (mainetai: insanit). For many were saying what they had said before more than once, whenever Christ revealed their secret counsels and whenever he said or did anything surpassing human power: ―He is a daemonic, and, he is mad‖. The next phrase is, ―[w]hy listen to him?‖ (quid eum auditis?). Erasmus renders this as: ―[t]he things he says are lacking in

31 Erasmus, Praise of Folly, 41. 32 M. A. Screech, Ecstasy and the Praise of Folly (London: Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd, 1980). 33 Ibid., xviii. 34 Among the Greek fathers Erasmus‘ favourite was Origen and from the Moria onwards, Erasmus‘s philosophy of Christ has much in common with Origen: an astonishment which, in the Moria, makes him seem mad to the ordinary run of mortal men. (Origen flourished at the beginning of the third century. The publication of his works in the sixteenth century was an important event.) Erasmus also drew from the great early Latin fathers, especially Jerome, Ambrose and Augustine.

45 common sense (carent sensu communi). What is the use of listening to him?‖ They said to Christ, who was for them a raging lunatic, without plain, everyday wisdom. 35 In the later passage, the amazement of the Christian man leads him towards the contemplation of the wisdom of God. In both cases the Christian man is astonished. This astonishment in the Moria, makes him seem mad to the other people. Such an ecstasy in which a man or woman embraces poverty, martyrdom, chastity, to leave all one‘s goods, resist the trends and thinking of the world—is to surpass the level above of average humanity; it is to live outside ourselves and above ourselves.36 The kind of insanity which Folly finally praises is a kind of Christian joy. In this – and indeed in his general conception of ecstatic rapture – Erasmus was heir to a long tradition: mediaeval writers sometimes wrote about this more perfect life of the charitable ecstatic in monastic or semi-monastic terms.37 The last pages of the Moria are full of Erasmus‘s interpretation of the philosophy of Christ, with subtle humour and laughter. In different parts of Europe the same topic of foolery appeared using different symbolic interpretations. Sebastian Brant in his Ship of Fools depicted the human race traveling on a ship specially destined in transporting idiots. Their destination was Narragonia, the land of fools and Narragonia symbolized human society. The fools in Brant‘s Ship of Fools represented varied characteristic features and different layers of society.38 While Praise of Folly, was a joyous, playful academic writing Ship of Fools was a bitter protestation to contemporary moral corruption. Brant was also enormously influential in creating a vision of universal folly which was then adapted to philosophical and popular use. Brant didn‘t see foolishness as funny, for him folly represented the greatest human sin: the ignorance of one‘s spiritual development which is needed for salvation.39 As Welsford writes: ―The fool was worthless character that lurked beneath the veneer of wealth, learning, and respectability.‖40 Thanks to its exceptionally skillful illustrations the Ship of Fools became a bestseller. Presumably Albrecht Dürer created the illustrations for the Ship of Fools; they

35 See Screech, Ecstasy and the Praise of Folly, 66. 36 Ibid., 67. 37 Ibid., 68. 38 Korhonen, Fellows of Infinite Jest, 102. 39 Korhonen, Fellows of Infinite Jest, 103. 40 Enid Welsford, The Fool: His Social and Literary History (New York: Anchor Books, 1961), 237.

46 were woodcuts, the most common form of illustration used in sixteenth-century books. Folly and and other elements of the world upside down appeared as a moral analysis of society; this topic also inspired Bosch‘s and Brueghel‘s paintings.

47 2. THE VARIETY AND SITUATION OF FOOLS

Court Jesters

The court fool was closely linked with knowledge and academics: scholars with the fool‘s cap on their heads appear already at the beginning of Brant‘s Ship of Fools.41 In Erasmus‘s Praise of Folly42 a lot of scholars engage in the fool‘s ring dance; linguists, poets, writers, lawyers and a sea of theologians all linked hands.43 A typical court jester became the embodiment of free speech as he mocked his master and other people, and told the whole truth about them.44 ―Take notice of this contemptible blessing which Nature has given fools, that they are the only plain, honest men and such as peak truth.‖45 Korhonen explains, ―The ugly and deformed fool was contrasted against the fashionable and well- groomed courtiers, and his lack of reason and control mirrored against the sense of authority surrounding the sovereign. Also, the fool‘s lack of manners functioned as a direct denial of the values of decorum in courtly society. Despite all this, the fool was seen as a cunning jester, hitting upon sore points and exposing the vanity of court life.‖46 The fool‘s folly had its ready counterpart in his master‘s folly in keeping and enjoying him:

―They are moreover the favourites of kings, so much so that many rulers can‘t eat a mouthful or take a step or last an hour without them, and they value their fools a long way above the crabbed wiseacres they continue to maintain for appearance‘s sake. The reason for their preference is obvious, I think, and shouldn‘t cause surprise. Wise men have nothing but misery to offer their prince, they are confident in their learning and sometimes aren‘t afraid to speak harsh truths which will grate on his delicate ear, whereas clowns can provide the very thing a prince is looking for, jokes, laughter, merriment and fun. And, let me tell you, fools have another gift which is not to be despised. They‘re the only ones who speak frankly and tell the truth, and what is more praiseworthy than truth.‖47

The French courtly system, where every monarch had one fool en titre d‘office and possibly others in a minor position, never took root in England. The most famous Renaissance French fools were: Triboulet, Francis I‘s court jester, Brisquet and Thony,

41 Brant, Das Narrenschiff, 11. 42 Erasmus, Praise of Folly, 49–55. 43 For further discussion of this matter see Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason (London: Routledge, 2001), 39. 44 For an overview of Renaissance court jesters in England see Korhonen, Fellows of Infinite Jest, 101. For further discussion of court jesters generally see Beatrice K. Otto, Fools are Everywhere: The Court Jester Around the World (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2001). 45 Erasmus, Praise of Folly, 30. 46 Ibid., 30. 47 Erasmus, Praise of Folly, 59–60 in Korhonen, Fellows of Infinite Jest, 50.

48 who served in the court of Henry II, Francis II, Charles IX. Mathurine, the only woman jester and Master Guillaume were Henry IV‘s and Louis XIII‘s entertainers. His successor was Chicot, Henry III‘s coxcomb, and the last French court jester was Angely, Louis XIV‘s fool.48 The court life of the Tudor monarchs were usually structured in a looser manner.49 Henry VII was the first of the English monarchs who took a natural fool with him on his formal progresses: his successors down to James I followed this custom.50 Henry VII‘s court jester was John English who performed together with the interlude players in 1503 when they took a play to Scotland for the wedding of Princess Margaret to the Scottish king.51 Among the Tudor rulers‘ court jesters, Henry VIII‘s Will Somers is certainly the best known. He was often mentioned in documents of court revels even during Edward VI‘s time, when he received clothes, daggers, baubles and ladles that he used in his performances.52 His intimate relationship with the king can be seen in two paintings, the first of which is a contemporary portrait featuring the king and his fool pictured together in one of the royal apartments.53 This picture can be found in a psalter made for the king‘s personal use by the French artist, Jean Mallard, around the year 1540. The picture illustrates the above-mentioned Psalm 53, ―The fool says in his heart, There is no God!‖ Somers can be identified in the background of the large family portrait of 1545 as well. 54 The best account of Will Somers can be found in Robert Armin‘s Foole upon Foole of 1600, reprinted in an expanded form as A Nest of Ninnies in 1608.55 Jane, a female innocent (female fools were rare in European courts) was painted as a female equivalent and partner to Will Somers on the great family portrait of Henry VIII. She belonged to Queen Mary. There was an almost continuous succession of fools at Elizabeth I‘s court.56 The first was Jack Grene, followed by Monarcho and then, in the 1580s the above mentioned

48 For an overview of French court jesters consult Maurice Lever: Le Sceptre et la marotte (Paris: Fayard, 1983), 169–204. 49 John Southworth Fools and Jesters at the English Court (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 1998), 64-104; 114- 154. Southworth offers a short presentation of the English court jesters. 50 Sydney Anglo, The Court Revels of Henry VII: A Study Based upon the Account Books of John Heron, Treasurer of the Chamber (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1960), 41. 51 Muriel Bradbrook, The Rise of the Common Player (London: Chatto & Windus, 1962), 17. 52 John Nichols, The Progresses and Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth, 3. vols (London: 1823), 84–88. 53 Somer‘s apparel will be analyzed in Chapter 2. 54 See more about the paintings in Southworth, Fools and Jesters at the English Court, 95. This painting will be discussed in Chapter 2. 55 Robert Armin, Collected Works of Robert Armin, ed. by J.P. Feather (New York, N.Y.: 1972). 56 For details about Elizabethan progresses where fools and jesters also appeared see Zillah Dovey, An Elizabethan Progress (Phoenix Mill: Sutton Publishing, 1999) and Otto, Fools are Everywhere.

49 Richard Tarlton came on the scene. The fool of Elizabeth‘s declining years was John Garret. Elizabeth included in her household a female dwarf called Ippolyta the Tartarian, also known under the name Thomasina.57 Thomas Brandon and James Lockwood served at the court and were often on tour. Brandon was particularly active in the 1520s and 1530s and Lockwood from 1541 to 1572.58 Though very little is known about them, their existence is important, because they were the first in a series of semi-independent jesters who entertained in courts, guildhalls, manors and taverns during the Tudor period.59 Not only the monarchs, but the aristocracy too enjoyed the company of numerous fools, some of them naturals and some temporary performers. Cardinal Wolsey‘s fool was Sexton, his nickname was Patch.60 John Heywood, the contemporary minstrel and interlude writer, used both of the fool‘s names in one of his poems as well.61 In another source, in Cavendish‘s Life and Death of Cardinal Wolsey we can find the strong mutual bond that sometimes existed between natural fools and their patrons.62 After Wolsey‘s death Patch became Henry VIII‘s fool in 1529. The last two remarkable jesters were Archy Armstrong, James I‘s fool, and Jeffery Hudson, the dwarf belonging to Charles I and his wife Henrietta Maria. Hudson was ―without any deformity, wholly proportionable.‖63 Besides the court fools who served at court, many performing fools only came to visit and entertain the monarchs. Despite the court jester‘s privileged and traditional position as a constant entertainer of the monarch, he also had special duties during court festivities; fools, for example, performed alongside lords of misrule at Christmas celebrations.64 (He also represented the ancient belief that the king needed a shadow, a shield to protect him from evil influences.65) As the king‘s confidant and the

57 Southworth analyses the Privy Purse Expenses in Fools and Jesters, 62. 58 Ibid., 126–127. 59 Ibid., 128. 60 George Cavendish, ―The Life and Death of Cardinal Wolsey‖ in Two Early Tudor Lives ed. R.S. Sylvester and D.P. Harding, (London?: Joseph Grove?, 1761?). (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1962) 105–107. 61 The Proverbs and Epigrams of John Heywood (London: Spenser Society, 1967), 106. 62 Sylvester and Harding, Two Early Tudor Lives, 106. 63 J. Wright, The History and Antiquities of the Country of Rutland (1684), 105. 64 John Doran, The History of Court Fools (London: Richard Bentley, 1855), 99–104. 65 See Edmund K. Chambers, Mediaeval Stage, 2 vols, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1903, 1967), vol.2. 387–388; Welsford, The Fool: His Social and Literary History, 72. Although Welsford refuses the connection between the court fool and the festival fool except for their dress and behaviour, she argues that the festival fool is a ritual character who often represented the scapegoat and acted as a sacrificial victim.

50 representative of the freedom of speech,66 the fool figure became a strongly political tool.67 In the popular imagination the fool represented the voice of the ordinary people in the court. According to Erasmus, the fool‘s secret was to tell the truth without giving offence: ―For whatever a fool has in his heart, he both shows it in his looks and expresses it in his discourse.‖68 On the real situation of fools Michel Foucault in his highly influential study, Madness and Civilization, suggests that the sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century world was curiously open to madness.69 Madness and folly were the bridge between reality and imagination. He writes: ―[t]he borders of rationality had not been determined as stationary frontiers, but could be moved according to need. Thus the fool‘s folly could easily be interpreted as wisdom. At the same time, however, a need emerged to isolate all kinds of deviancy, folly and madness. This had a crucial part to play in the process in which the fool all but vanished. Fools were not separated from their communities in the Middle Ages and in the Renaissance; they were not treated as patients but belonged to the sphere of sanctity. Dangerous madmen were separated, but their isolation was considered a holy pilgrimage, spiritual exile. The fool was a sign of God‘s anger and mercy, so the social isolation was a spiritual adaptation, settling in the world.‖70 Korhonen in her book on Renaissance English fools gives a well-documented description of the legal framework concerning the mentally disabled.71 ―It was structured around Prerogativa Regis, a legal document which contained the basic principles of royal jurisdiction.‖72 When a person was declared mentally disabled, he was automatically dispossed of his wealth and entrusted to a caretaker. Sandra Billington has written about the practice of fool-hunting: members of the aristocracy looked for possible fools while they were travelling in the countryside.73 The incident of the ―discovery‖ of the fool in the countryside often appear in the biographies of fools as well. The fool-hunters had two aims: there was a constant demand to find new fools, and it was a possibilty to acquire

66 See Leslie Hotson, Shakespeare‟s Motley (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1952), 96–98.; Enid Welsford, The Fool : His Social and Literary History, 159. 67 See Korhonen, Fellows of Infinite Jest, 55. 68 Erasmus, Praise of Folly, 59–60. 69 Foucault, Madness and Civilization, 42–66. 70 Ibid., 42–43. 71 Korhonen, Fellows of Infinite Jest, 32–44. 72 Ibid., 32. Prerogativa Regis originated in the thirteenth century, and it was still in effective use in the early modern period. Under the reign of Henry VII and Henry VIII, a new legal court called the Court of Wards and Liveries was gradually introduced. There were different tests in existence to prove a person a natural fool. 73 Korhonen, Fellows of Infinite Jest, 35.

51 wealth, because the fool‘s properties and money was handled by his master.74 The financial motive of acquiring a domestic fool also appears in jestbooks. But it was not the only motivation. A funny fool – whose position was similar to a privileged household pet - could become a symbol of the status of an affluent family. A fool from a poor family without connections and wealth were simply taken care of by his relatives.75 When poor fools could not even lived with their families it often happened that the whole village looked after them and enjoyed their merry-making. The custom that fools frequently called their masters uncles – which also suggested a stable family environment- was still followed under James I‘s reign. In England the first institutions for fools (houses of correction) were built in 1575, the most famous was Bedlam and it was so well-known that it often appeared in contemporary plays and popular literature.76

Festival Fools

There are strong links between the traditional festivals and the tradition of folly: the most typical occasions where fools appeared were the great seasonal festivals such as Christmas, New Year, Carnival, May and Midsummer.77 According to Bakhtin, the fools ―were the constant, accredited representatives of the carnival spirit in everyday life out of carnival season.‖78 Freedom of the festival and the freedom of the fool to do and say whatever he wanted are strongly linked. Welsford highlights the connection between court fools and festival fools in traditional festivals: ―the two divergent types of fool come to be reunited in the person of ‗the Lord of Misrule‘, ‗the Abbot of Unreason‘, ‘the Prince of Fools‘ who is none other than the traditional mock-king and clown who has adopted the appearance and behavior of

74 Billington, Social History of the Fool, 32–33. 75 For details consult Korhonen A Social History of the Fool, 34. 76 I will address the most important points of the changes of the legal and institutional treatment of folly in the Conclusion. 77 Peter Burke, Popular Culture (London: Temple Smith, 1978), 24. 78 Mikhail M. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World [1941, 1965], trans. Hélène Iswolsky (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), 8.

52 the court jester‖.79 According to Welsford ―The English Lord of Misrule was on the whole a conservative, law-abiding and somewhat stately personage.‖80 Enid Welsford,81 Peter Burke,82 Sandra Billington,83 and François Laroque84 have shown that foolery was a major part of popular entertainment in England, though it was not as much at home in the English cultural climate as it was, for example, in the French. Natalie Zemon Davis examines the organizations of Misrule in her influential book called Society and Culture in Early Modern France.85 In the chapter entitled ―The Reasons of Misrule‖, she examines town festivities in the later Middle Ages and in the sixteenth century. The urban festivals sponsored by clerics - namely ―the Feast of Fools‖ were celebrated at Christmastime, when a choirboy or chaplain would be elected bishop and preside while the minor clergy burlesqued the mass and even confession, and led an ass around the church. Bakhtin also analyzed some of the rituals particularly well-documented in France, rituals in which laughter plays the leading role. ―In this sense they are close to their relatives: carnival and charivari.‖86 During ―Easter laughter‖ the priest could tell jokes and funny stories from the pulpit and ―Christmas laughter‖ was expressed in merry songs. Burke in his Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe delineates the mock mass in which the clergy wore masks or women‘s clothes, ate sausages, played cards: it was a real enactment of the world upside down. He says, that ―in England before the Reformation, the occasion took the milder form of the feast of ‘the boy bishop‘ or ‗Childermass.‘‖87 By the late fifteenth century this topsy-turvy saturnalia was being slowly banished from the cathedrals, and generally laymen initiated all popular recreations. They were not, however, ―official‖ affairs in the sixteenth-century as French city

79 Welsford, The Fool: His Social and Literary History, 198. Also see: chapter IX, The Lord of Misrule. Enid Welsford has suggested that the role of the clown would point to the possibility of the village idiot having sometimes been chosen as the mock king. She also points out that in addition to the mock king himself, all the mummers as well could be regarded as fools, since they were clearly ―beside themselves‖ and acting in a foolish way. 80 Ibid., 216. 81 Ibid., 211. 82 See Burke, Popular Culture. 83 Billington, Social History of the Fool, 36 84 François Laroque, Shakespeare‟s Festive World, Elizabethan Seasonal Entertainment and the Professional Stage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 3. 85 Natalie Zemon Davis, Society and Culture in Early Modern France (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1975) 97–121. 86 Bakhtin, Rabelais, 78. 87 Burke, Popular Culture, 192.

53 governments ordinarily did not plan and finance them as they did the great Entry parades for royalty or other important personages or the parades in celebration of peace treaties. The festivities were organized by informal groups of friends and family, sometimes by craft or professional guilds and confraternities, and very often by organizations that literary historians have called ―sociétés joyeuses” (or ―fool- ―societies‖ or ―play acting societies‖) but Natalie Zemon Davis calls them Abbeys, ―since that name comes closest to what they usually called themselves - the Abbeys of Misrule. These abbeys gave different names to their officers, but certain common themes were prevalent: power, jurisdiction, youth, misrule, pleasure, folly, even madness.88 Peter Burke in the chapter on the World of Carnival of his Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe has tried to reconstruct from ―the fragmentary evidence which has survived‖89 the structure of the early modern European Carnival.90 According to him there are three recurrent elements of Carnival:91 procession, competitions and performances (plays and games). ―There were three major themes in Carnival, real and symbolic: food, sex and violence.‖92 In lots of games the central figures were the Falstaffian Carnival and the thin figure of Lent in England the male ‗Jack a Lent.‘93 Burke sees the carnivalesque also as different rituals of popular justice of which the most well-known was the public mocking or ‗public defamation‘: the charivari.94 Burke has launched the phrase ‗the reform of popular culture‘ to depict the ‗systematic‘ attempt to change the culture of common people by the educated from about 1500 -1650 and 1650 to 1800. He emphasized that the reform movement should be seen as a whole, but it is also vitally important to know that it was not ―monolithic, but took different forms from region to region and from generation to generation.‖95 Catholic and Protestant reformers were not equally hostile to popular culture and not for the same reasons.96 The division of reformers into Catholic and Protestant is still too simple; there

88 Davis, Society and Culture, 98. 89 Burke, Popular Culture, 182. 90 Ibid., 178–204. 91 Burke has drawn mainly on Italian and German examples. 92 Burke, Popular Culture, 186. Carnival was a festival of destruction with verbal agression as well. 93 Burke, Popular Culture, 185. 94 Burke, Popular Culture, 198. 95 Burke, Popular Culture, 207. 96 I will write about the reasons and the participants of the debates against popular recreations and theatre in the next section below.

54 were many variations in the toleration and attack of popular culture.97 According to Burke this movement is associated with the reform of the church, the Protestant and Catholic reformations in early modern Europe.98 François Laroque in the first part of Shakespeare‟s Festive World, Elizabethan seasonal entertainment and the professional stage, has stated that the festive traditions of the calendar still flourished in the Elizabethan period in English towns and villages.99 Festivity is not really connected to the written word, oral transmission was predominant in popular festivity, and its essence lay ―in the music, the dancing, the movement and colour and also in the shrieks of joy and boos of derision from the crowd spectators in the background.‖100 According to Laroque whose main field of interest is the influence of local and oral traditions on Shakespeare and his contemporary playwrights, says, that Puritanism had made little impact except upon the elite of the workers in the towns in the Elizabethan period.101 He insists that ―the spirit of the festivals endured unimpaired, the sometimes violent games of Shrove Tuesday, Hocktide and May Day still drew the crowds, to the delight of some and the scandalized indignation of others. What had changed since the Middle Ages was above all the development of a new awareness of what festivals and popular games and sports represented, for they now seemed to establish an ideological division between two rival Englands.‖102 Consequently, there are limits of investigating ―the forms of behaviour that have now died out‖ and ―a field of study in which sociological and literary elements are closely intertwined.‖103 So Laroque had to scrutinize traces scattered through a wide variety of documentation: ―texts of ballads, mimed dramas and other festive performances that have been sung and acted in the English countryside since very ancient times.‖104 They were only collected and written down from the second half of the eighteenth century. The seasonal festivities organized for royal progresses are well known due to the texts and evidence collected by John Nichols.105 The texts of pamphlets and speeches of civic and princely

97 I will highlight the different attitudes of the Protestants especially the Puritans towards the theatre and entertainment in the next section. I will also touch upon the difference between the Protestant and Catholic reformers in the Conclusion as well. 98 Burke, Popular Culture, 217. 99 Laroque, Shakespeare‟s Festive World, 3. 100 Ibid. 101 For an overview of the English festivals see François Laroque‘s work on Shakespeare‟s Festive World, 3. 102 Laroque, Shakespeare‟s Festive World, 4. 103 Ibid. 104 Laroque, Shakespeare‟s Festive World, 3. 105 See Nichols, Progresses. For details about royal entertainment also consult Enid Welsford, The Court Masque: a study in the relationship between poetry & the revels (New York : Russell & Russell, 1962);

55 festivals and accounts of the price of costumes and the artists‘ fees are recorded, and the documentation of many local and seasonal festivals can be found in parish registers, judicial or ecclesiastical court hearings, sermons and homilies.106 The reign of the Lord of Misrule was a central element of the English folk festival. Here I must refer to Bakhtin‘s outstanding work on Renaissance popular culture where he propounds his famous theory about ―the festival life of the folk‖: the carnival, one of the heroes of which is the Lord of Misrule 107 to Davis‘s and Burke‘s above- mentioned works.108 All of them emphasize the central role of the ‗Kings‘ or ‗Abbots‘ of Misrule who led organized clubs or fraternities in the carnivalesque happenings.109 Lords of misrule appeared three times a year: as a part of Christmas festivities, and during the spring and summer festivals.110 The winter celebrations—which started at Christmas and went on until Epiphany—were perhaps the most energetic of the festivities.111 Lords of misrule had been part of the festival tradition from the fourteenth century and they remained popular until the mid-seventeenth century.112 Lords of misrule were not seen as fools proper, but there were many thematic and functional points of contact between the two. The term misrule was used to refer both to the anarchy and disorder that resulted from tyrannical and arbitrary government and also to the joyful pandemonium that ensued when the world was turned upside-down and festive confusion reigned.113 In fact, writers of antitheatrical pamphlets such as Stubbes exploited this linguistic ambiguity and represented the May festivals as diabolical pastimes and the ―Lord

Andrea Velich, ―Feasts and Festivities in the relationship of London and the Tudor court‖ in Aetas, 1999/4. 106 Fur further discussion of this matter see Laroque, Shakespeare‟s Festive World, 3–4; Peter A. Bucknell, Entertainment and Ritual 600 to 1600 (London: Stainer and Bell, 1979); D. M. Bergeron, English Civic Pageantry: 1558-1642 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1971). R. C. Hassel, Renaissance Drama and the English Church Year (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979). 107 Bakhtin, Rabelais. We can find a good summary of the carnival theory and its relationship to laughter in Natália Pikli ―The Carnival and Carnivalesque Laughter, Falstaff‘s Mythical Body‖ (PhD diss., ELTE, 2000). 108 Davis, Society and Culture, 95–117. ―The reasons of misrule‖. 109 Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe, 184; Davis, Society and Culture, 100.We can already find an abbot of misrule in Carmina Burana, the manuscript of 254 poems and dramatic texts written in Latin, Middle High German and Old French from the eleventh or twelfth century and from the thirteenth century. They were written by students and clergy and Goliards (mostly students) who satirized the Church. The Carmina Burana is the most important collection of Goliard and vagabond songs. The 13th poem is about an Abbot of Misrule : Ego sum abbas (I am the abbot) ―I am the abbot of Cockaigne and my assembly is one of drinkers, and I wish to be in the order of Decius, and whoever searches me out at the tavern in the morning, after Vespers he will leave naked, and thus stripped of his clothes he will call out: Woe! Woe! what have you done, vilest Fate? the joys of my life you have taken all away!‖ 110 About the circles of festivities and its relationship to popular culture in Early Modern Europe see Burke, Popular Culture. 111 For further discussion of this matter see for example Billington, Social History of the Fool; Glynne Wickham, Early English Stages, 3 vols. (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963). 112 Edmund. K. Chambers, The Medieval Stage; idem, The English Folk Play (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933). 113 Welsford, The Fool, 200.

56 of Misrule‖ as a rival Satan.114 But such attempts to equate popular festivity with the Devil‘s Sabbath were less influential in England than in France.115 It turns out from allusions of contemporary texts that the Lord of Misrule presided over the popular spring revelries, not only in winter festivals and Christmas. This figure could be the result of an amalgamation of the Lord of Misrule of Christmas festivals with the Summer Lord, who used to organize the May game.116 According to Burke, when festival is discussed, ritual inevitably comes into the picture. The meaning of a popular hero such as Robin Hood is modified by the ritual with which he was presented as a hero of ballads and also of May games.117 The coming of spring was celebrated with the May game, which included mumming and Morris dancing.118 These allowed Robin Hood and his merry men, including a fool, to take a central part in the festival imagery. The rule of the Summer King started with Midsummer celebrations and sometimes continued to the end of August.119 The symbolism associated with Robin Hood plays is very close to that of the world upside-down, as this tradition engaged in social inversion: the mighty were put down from their seats, while the humble rose to power.120 During the second half of the sixteenth century and the seventeenth century, Robin appeared with a festival queen, Maid Marian.121 Since the Middle Ages the tradition of devilry had been a source of comedy that figured in Mystery and Morality plays and in the Mummers‘ burlesque sketches in which a clown or a Vice figure played the character of Beelzebub. Robert Weimann makes the same point in connection with the figure of Harlequin. The pagan Herlekin (like the more modern Erl-könig) was ―connected with the fairies‖ and was followed by a train of witches and hairy creatures; he was branded a ―devil‖ by mediaeval theologians, and made

114 Philip Stubbes, Anatomy of Abuses (London, 1615). 115 For an overview of early modern popular beleifs see Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic – Studies in Popular Beleifs in XVIth and XVIIth Century England (London: Penguin, 1991). 116 Laroque, Shakespeare‟s Festive World, 5; John Forrest, The History of the Morris Dancing 1458-1750 (Cambridge: John Forrest – James Clarke &Co. Ltd., 1999), 105–117. 117 Burke, Popular Culture, 180. 118 For further discussion of festivities see Ronald Hutton, The Rise and Fall of Merry England : The Ritual Year, 1400-1700 ( New York, Oxford University Press, 1994). 119 See more about the Summer King in David Wiles, The Early Plays of Robin Hood (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1981). 120 Laroque, Shakespeare‟s Festive World; David Wiles, ―Robin Hood as Summer Lord‖ in Robin Hood: An Anthology of Scholarship and Criticism ed. Stephen Knight, (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1999), 77–99. 121 I am going to examine the figures of Robin Hood and Maid Marian and their relation to morris dancing and Kemp in Chapter 3.

57 his early appearance on the stage as a comic devil and prince of the fairies in the Jeu de la Feuillee (1262).122 This distant association of the burlesque with agricultural fertility rites underlying beliefs in fairies and witches explains, to some extent, this remarkable conjunction of laughter and devilry. As Laroque points out: ―Renaissance descriptions of the nature of Satan, the character of hell and, above all, the ritual activities of witches shared a vocabulary of misrule...‖123 He continues about Renaissance drama in connection with festivities and rituals: ―Rather than drawing their subjects from classical antiquity, as Racine and Corneille, writing for an educated elite in France, were soon to do, the Elizabethan dramatists often preferred to tap ‗romances‘, medieval legends or the traditions and myths attached to celebrating the calendary festivals.‖124 The carnivalesque characters of midsummer included a fool-like wild man or ‗wood-wode‘ who was supposed to dress up in animal skins and green foliage.125 This foliage was often made of green Kendal, the same kind of cloth out of which the costume of Robin Hood and his group were made. Evidence of the pagan influence is certainly detectable in the iconographic theme of the ‗Green Man,‘ which seems to go back to the 126 fourth or fifth century AD. It is quite frequently to be found in the form of ornamental sculpture on cathedral capitals or church pews. The green man in its various guises became a figure both frightening and comic, and in folk belief the personification of madness as well.127 The most important figures of the popular festival represented by Kemp throughout his professional life—the Lord of Misrule, Robin Hood, the Green Man—are linked partly through their function and through the green Kendal cloth. Elizabethan theatre was far from being an isolated refuge devoted to playing out a strictly defined liturgy dictated by tradition and convention. On the contrary—far above written poetry and prose, which reached only a limited educated layer of society— Elizabethan theatre responded to the demands and tastes of the public and was geared

122 For further discussion of this problem see Robert Weimann, Shakespeare and the Popular Tradition in the Theater (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978). 123 Laroque, Shakespeare‟s Festive World, II. 3. 124 Laroque, Shakespeare‟s Festive World, II. 3. 125 In the rich secondary literature concerning wild man in medieval arts see: Richard Bernheimer, Wild Men in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1952; New York: Octagon books, 1979). Northop Frye writes about the ‗green world‘ to which Shakespeare‘s characters often escape in his Anatomy of Criticism: four essays (London: Penguin, 1990). 126 Pertaining green man‘s abundant literature see Sir James Frazer, The Golden Bough (London: Macmillan, 1922). In Hungarian: Az Aranyág, trans. Bodrogi Tibor and Bónis György (Budapest: Századvég Kiadó, 1993), 71–82. Kathleen Basford, The Green Man (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2004); D. Wiles, The Early Plays of Robin Hood.; Stephen Knight Robin Hood: An Anthology of Scholarship and Criticism. 127 The symbol of green wild man and its association with the fool is discussed in Chapter 2 as well.

58 towards the popular element of society. The fact that theatres were designed to be easily reconverted into arenas for various kinds of animal fights shows clearly the close links of the theatre with other forms of popular entertainment.128 It is also clear that Elizabethan theatre was first and foremost a place of amusement and did not necessarily represent high culture, or learned communication. At the same time theatres had to be financially successful, so those involved in the art were forced to take into consideration the requirements both of the Court and of the City. This duality resulted in continuous instability.

The Actor Fools

The growth of the cities, especially London was crucial considering the situation of actors in the period that coincides with Kemp‘s theatrical activity. London underwent an immense and rapid growth and became the main centre of the secular, professional, commercial and popular theatre by the end of the sixteenth century.129 Until the growth of the cities actors needed to travel to find new audiences who had not seen and heard everything before but now they could remain fixed because the city‘s growing population provided the required audience. 130 Changes in government structure also led to the rapid centralization of the country‘s politics and finances in London and this also encouraged the playing companies to cut down on touring. The professional theatre became a significant economic enterprise and was inseparable from the new institutions and practices of contemporary cultural life.131 The influx of people into London generated significant economic growth.132 The construction of buildings specifically designed for theatrical productions immediately expanded the potential of the theater business, and gave it a sense of solidity.133 The theatre historian Andrew Gurr estimates that up to twenty-five thousand people attended theatrical performances in London each week between 1580 and 1640, for

128 For further discussion of this matter see Stephen Greenblatt, Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare (New York and London: W.W. Norton, 2004), 20; idem, Renaissance Self – Fashioning (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984). 129 For further discussion of this matter see Andrea Velich, ―London and Henry VII‖ (ELTE: Ph.D diss. ELTE, 2002). Idem, ―Society and Culture during Henry VII‖ in Rubicon, 1995/9. 130 For further discussion of this matter see Haigh, Cristopher. Elizabeth I. London and New York: Longman, 1988. 131 Jean E. Howard, The Stage and Social Struggle in Early Modern England (London and New York: 1994), 45. 132 Steven Mullaney, The Place of the Stage (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1988), 2-26. 133 Janette Dillon, Theatre, Court and City 1595-1610 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 1–43. In her work, in the first chapter on the City, court and theatre Dillon refines the engagement between theatre and the city and looks at them in conjunction with the court in the period between the 1570s to the first decade of the seventeenth century.

59 a total of about fifty million visits.134 The changes in the cities surely led to the ‗commercialization‘ of the theatre and the fool, the rise of publicity, stunts and stars. At the same time these changes generated various tensions: the members of the London stage companies did not fit in the old categories of society.135 In the first half of the sixteenth century the popularity of the stage fool was continually growing and after the mid-sixteenth century, allusions to him can be found everywhere.136 The influences for developing the fool characters came from various directions. I will now elaborate on the different traditions which the stage fool could draw upon. The stage fool was a synthesis of at least three medieval entertainers: the Lord of Misrule from folk and court festivities, the minstrel and the Vice figure. These characters should not be seen as the fool‘s predecessors or origins, since they were all contemporary with the fool, at least to some extent. Fools of later periods, from the sixteenth century onwards, could however use the earlier traditions in their own performances. Although the Lord of Misrule has been discussed in the part concerning the festival fool, I will now concentrate on the pivotal aspects of Kemp‘s and Richard Tarlton‘s character as clowns who often embodied the Lord of Misrule. As Tarlton was Kemp‘s master; he greatly influenced Kemp‘s art and career in many respects delineated below. As I have mentioned before, a large number of Renaissance Londoners had moved to the metropolis in the 1570s and 1580s.137 The majority of Tarlton‘s and Kemp‘s London audience must have been visitors or first generation immigrants. The clown‘s popularity was a response and a kind of defence of the countryside against the huge city.138 Wiles suggests that the theatrical clown, the role very often played by Tarlton and Kemp, ―helped to foster in Londoners a new sense of community, shared values, and active participation in the making of a culture.‖139 The clown could be seen as an urban version of the Lord of Misrule; through the clown everybody could take part in adopting common values or creating and maintaining cultural consciousness. Traditional clowning at folk festivities and fairs and marketplaces was very important and contributed especially to the

134 Andrew Gurr, The Shakespearean Stage 1574-1642 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 102- 103. 135 David Mann, The Elizabethan Player. London and New York: Routledge, 1991. 136 Edmund K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Theatre (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1945); Bradbrook, The Rise of the Common Player, 97–98. 137 Andrea Velich, ―Immigrants in London in 15-16th centuries‖ in Aetas, 1996/1. 53-74. 138 David Wiles, Shakespeare‟s Clown, Actor and Text in the Elizabethan Playhouse (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 139 Ibid., 23.

60 emergence of the stage clown. Tarlton‘s and Kemp‘s art were very much rooted in the misrule tradition they often played the fool, the rustic, the Christmas and Summer Lords and took part in the ceremonial combat which was one of the Lord of Misrule‘s central activity.140 (Edward VI‘s Lord of Misrule engaged in combat with William Somers, the famous court jester in the royal household.)141 Kemp‘s range extended from the country clown to the witty domestic servants, even to knights in the case of Falstaff, thus reflecting the fool roles that Francis Douce mentioned in his classic categorization of clowns according to which one important class of fools was that of the clown.142 According to him clowns fell into three subcategories: a mere country bumpkin, a witty rustic and a shrewd servant. All these types presumably existed in real rustic life, but they were not called fools until they entered the theatre. On the stage, fools often appeared in a rural environment, for example the playwright Thomas Dekker personified Rusticity as ―thou Lady of Clownes and Carters, Schoolemistres of fooles and wisacres.‖143 A fool frequently wore rustic clothes and was familiar with rustic customs and had simple and ready wit; he was the antithesis of urban refinement and distinction.144 He was popular among artisans and laborers as well as of the bourgeoisie and the nobility.145 In the Elizabethan theatre, ‗the clown‘ was a special category of player, a skilled professional actor, not written for and played by boys or students.146 David Wiles‘ subject in his influential book Shakespeare‟s Clown is the role of the clown, and he focuses on the clown Will Kemp. According to Wiles the term ‗clown‘ does not appear before the Elizabethan period and the word entered the language because it expressed a new concept: the rustic who because of his rusticity represented a ridiculous figure.147 The word was borrowed from Low German, with an etymology from the Latin colonus, a peasant, and denoted a rustic simpleton. To be a ‗clown‘ meant the obverse of being ‗gentle.‘148 The use of ‗clown‘ referred to a type of comic performer whose

140 Wiles, The Early Plays of Robin Hood, 12-14. 141 Albert Feuillerat, ed., Documents Relating to the Revels at Court in the Times of Edward VI and Queen Mary, vol. XXI (Louvain, 1908), 73. 142 Francis Douce, Illustrations of Shakespeare, and of Ancient Manner:With Dissertations on the Clowns and Fools of Shakspeare; On the Collection of Popular Tales Entitled Gesta Romanorum; And on the English Morris Dance (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees and Orme, 1807), II, 303–304. 143 Thomas Dekker, The Guls Horne-booke (1609), ( London: Scholar Press, 1969), 3. 144 Ibid., 15, 19–20. 145 Wiles, Shakespeare‟s Clown, 5; Burke, 92; R. Weimann, Shakespeare and the Popular Tradition, 186. 146 Ibid., 63. 147 Ibid., 61. 148 Wiles, Shakespeare‟s Clown, 62.

61 figure may be traced back to Tarlton, in whose person the twin meanings of ‗comedian‘ and ‗rustic‘ were perfectly merged. The clown as a festival figure can be seen in the roles of Tarlton and Kemp.149 They both represented the new clown figure who was the epitome of the country bumpkin; he was naive and penniless, liked drinking and eating, (especially drinking), established intimate relationship with the audience during improvisations, dancing, singing and mock fighting.150 Tarlton was a cheerful, stocky man with quick wit. He hid his intelligence by wearing a simple guise: the russet suit, button‘d cap and boots of a country rustic. 151 His skill at handling the audience was very popular, and he had a witty remark for every occasion, a skill Kemp shared with him. Various stories and jokes about him or his jests circulated in endless variations during the last decades of the sixteenth century. Tarlton‘s spheres of activity were in different places: the court, the stage, the tavern, and the banqueting hall. He was a member of the Queen‘s Men when the company was formed in 1583 to the time of his death in 1588. He played at the Curtain and two tavern theatres where the Queen‘s Men were licensed to play, the Bell and the Bull, and he also toured with the company. He was famous for his improvisations, which were performed at the end of a play when members of the audience threw up clever rhymes with the aim of outwitting the comedian, whose task was to give an instant riposte. Tarlton‘s and Kemp‘s jigs, extempore merriments often were solo turns. Tarlton‘s art represented the first stage of separating clowning from the traditional folk sports which in style and subject it still recalled. He—like his other apprentice, Armin—studied real rustic simpletons. He was master of ‘activities‘ and also became the Master of Fencing.152 Kemp learned from him physical skills, especially dancing, and following his master, he became even more outstanding at jigs. Tarlton‘s second sphere of activity was the tavern. Tarlton‘s father lived in Ilford and kept taverns in Colchester and in London, so he was familiar with the place and its activity linked to it. At court and in private houses Tarlton‘s function was to appear at

149 Wiles, Shakespeare‟s Clown, 23. 150 There is evidence that Kemp worked on Tarlton‘s scenario The Seven Deadly Sins which demanded great skills in improvisation. The play was very popular but unfortunately has not survived. 151 Wiles, Shakespeare‟s Clown, 11-23. Wiles summarized Tarlton‘s life and career in the second chapter of his book. 152 Bradbrook, The Rise of the Common Player, 164.

62 banquets as a tavern fool or table-side jester.153 He was a businessman like Kemp, and they wanted to plant their feet firmly in different spheres in the uncertain world of London professional entertainers. Tarlton kept The Saba tavern in Gracechurch Street, and another tavern in Paternoster Row. The Bell and the Bull also stood in Gracechurch Street. The connection between the tavern and the theatre were close. The inns were used for performances in winter, and as Glynne Wickham has shown, these performances usually took place indoors, not in the yard.154 Tarlton‘s figure appears in contemporary plays. Thomas Nashe describes some impressions of his stage performances: Tarlton ―first peept out of his head‖ and ―the people began exceedingly to laugh.‖155 Henry Peacham remembers seeing him act the part of a third son at the deathbed of his rich father.156 His costume is described by Henry Chettle in his Kind–Hartes Dreame of 1592 where he claims to have recognized Tarlton‘s ghost by his ―sute of russet, his buttoned cap, his taber, his standing on the toe, and other tricks.‖157 Tarlton was the author of published ballads and a very popular morality play, The Seven Deadly Sins. First acted by the Queen‘s Men with Tarlton playing the fool, the play was revived by Henslowe for Lord Strange‘s Men at the Rose in 1592, presumably with Kemp as the fool. Tarlton‘s friend and fellow actor, Robert Wilson, was very good at extempore acting and wrote comedies like The Three Ladies of London with fool figures (Simplicity) in it.158 The fool also had many characteristics in common with the minstrel who traveled from one place to another entertaining those who were willing to pay.159 The term minstrel could refer to almost any kind of performer: singers of songs and ballads, musicians with fiddles and pipes, performers of comic sketches. These skills were often united in one performer.160

153 Wiles, Shakespeare‟s Clown, 14. Four inns were regularly used for acting between 1575 and 1596 in London. The inn provides an audience ready assembled, it could make a profit from selling refreshments to the playgoers as well. 154 Wickham, Early English Stages. 155 Thomas Nashe, Pierce Pennilesse (1592), R. B. McKerrow ed. The Works of Thomas Nashe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958), 188. 156 Henry Peacham, The Truth of our Times: Revealed out of one Mans Experience, by Way of Essay (1638), 103–105. 157 Henry Chettle, Kind - Hartes Dreame (1592), ed. G. B. Harrison (New York: Bodley Head Quartos, 1923),12. 158 It was first published in 1584. 159 Peter Happé, ―The Vice: a Checklist and An Annotated Bibliography‖ in Research Opportunities in Renaissance Drama 22 (1979):17–23.; ―The Vice and the Popular Theatre‖ 1547-80 in Poetry and Drama 1570-1700 ed. Anthony Coleman and Anthony Hammond (London and New York: Methuen, 1981), 12–31. 160 Wickham, Early English Stages; Bradbrook, ―From Minstrel to Comedian‖ Chapter 1 in The Rise of the Common Player, 17–37.

63 Fools who traveled around like minstrels were known to approach great houses in the country and offer their services in order to entertain the people of the house. John Southworth in his book about English court jesters also deals with the so-called player fools. He argues that these early players traveled and played in groups of three or four, and their use of masks enabled them to play a variety of roles.161 Henry VII employed four men described as ―lusores regis, alias, in lingua Anglicana, les pleyars of the Kyngs enterluds‖ in 1494.162 Their leader was a man called John English; they received five marks a year and, when not required at court, went on tour like other minstrels.163 According to Southworth, the first recorded instance of a royal fool who was permanently a professional player as well is John Scot during the reign of Henry VII. (Scot appears in Henry‘s Privy Purse accounts on New Year‘s Day, 1495).164 In 1494/5, the king‘s interluders were listed as John English, Edward May, Richard Gibson and John Hamond. In 1503 they accompanied Henry‘s daughter, Margaret, to Edinburgh for her marriage to James IV of Scotland.165 Some fools traveled in larger groups of actors, but they could also wander about alone, even though the regulations against idlers and vagabonds were quite strict.166 During the sixteenth century, the conditions of traveling entertainers gradually deteriorated, as traditional hospitality in its many forms was diminished. The attitudes towards vagrants grew harsher and the possibilities for minstrels and traveling fools to find employment became more limited. Only licensed companies were allowed to exist and remained successful and profitable. The so called Laneham Letter written by John Laneham, a member of the Earl of Leicester‘s Men, about the princely pleasures of Kenilworth for Elizabeth I, is the sole surviving literary production of the first Elizabethan acting company.167 There were no plays in the repertoire, but Kemp and his fellows played music and entertained the company. The third source for the stage fool, the Vice figure of the moralities, was already well-known in the theatre as a comic character representing both sin and the Devil. Vice appeared first as a dramatic character in the plays of John Heywood, himself a minstrel: the

161 See more about the player fools in Southworth, Fools and Jesters at the English Court Chap. 14 ―The Player Fools‖ 154–172. 162 Chambers, Medieval Stages, II, 256. 163 Chambers, Medieval Stages, II, 256, 187. 164 Southworth, Fools and Jesters at the English Court, 156. 165 Chambers, Elizabethan Stage, II, 79. 166 See more about the regulations in this chapter below. 167 Muriel Bradbrook, The Growth and Structure of Elizabethan Comedy, (London: Chatto & Windus, 1955), 141–162.

64 Play of the Wether and Play of Love written between 1519 and 1528. They contain three or four roles, and Southworth assumes that Henry VII‘s ‗old players‘ (John English and his fellows) played these roles.168 In Heywood‘s plays Vice is not a wicked figure.169 Heywood had a very strong influence on the process through which Vice was molded into a figure with a central dramatic role.170 Though the focus of my dissertation is not the literature of the age, I have studied those of Shakespeare‘s plays in which the fool figure was best represented. I have concentrated on Kemp‘s roles,171 but it should be mentioned that the fool figure often appeared in the works of Shakespeare‘s contemporaries as well.172 Fancy and Folly already appear in Skelton‘s Magnificence. (1522)173 Robert Greene‘s Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (1589) has Ralph Simnell as jester to Henry III, and Ben Jonson‘s Every Man Out of His Humour (1599) features Carlo Buffone. The fools Nano, Androgyno and Castrone in Jonson‘s Volpone (1607) are grotesque characters. A joint effort by Thomas Dekker, Henry Chettle and Haughton, Patient Grissil (1600), has Babulo as jester to Grissill‘s father. Coney-catchers appear with fools in the Third part of Coneycatching (1592), and in News from Heaven and Hell (1593). Court fools lurk in Middleton‘s No wit no help like Womans (1627) and The Spanish Gypsy (1623). In John Webster‘s The Duchess of Amalfi (1620) real madmen play the playwright and actor William Rowley who, between 1611 and the early 1620s and in collaboration with Thomas Middleton, wrote and acted some of the popular clown roles of the period. The madmen entertain the guests in their play The Changeling.174 In John Marston‘s The Malcontent (1604) Bilioso has a jester called Passarello, or Sparrow, who is a shrewd wise fool. There are clowns in Marlowe‘s Faustus as well.

168 Southworth, Fools and Jesters at the English Court, 157. 169 Ágnes Matuska has scrutinized Vice in her dissertation and in her other writings as well. Ágnes Matuska, The Vice-Device: Iago and Lear‟s Fool as Agents of Representational Crisis (Ph.D dissertation, JATE, 2002). Matuska Ágnes: “Masking players, painted sepulchers and double dealing ambidexters‖ in Yearbook of the Spanish and Portuguese Society for English Renaissance Studies, (2008), 45-59. Matuska and Happé both agree that Heywood‘s vices are manipulative but not malicious. 170 Francis Hugh Mares, ―The origin of the Figure Called ‗the Vice‘ in Tudor Drama‖, The Huntigton Library Quaterly 22, (1958-1959/1): 11–29. 171 I will list Kemp‘s roles in chapter 3. 172 For a good summary of the actor fools see Welsford, The Fool: His Social and Literary History Chapter IV: ―The Stage-Clown‖, and Chapters XII, XIII, XIV in, 277–317. 173 Ibid., 244. This matter is also discussed in chapter XI: ―The Court Fool in Elizabethan Drama‖, 243–273. 174 See more about it in L. Barber, Shakespeare‟s Festive Comedies: A Study of Dramatic Form and Its Relation to Social Custom (New York: Meridian Books, 1967). Bradbrook, The Growth and Structure of Elizabethan Comedy, ed. cit., 11–42; Welsford, The Fool: His Social and Literary History, Chapter XII, 277–290.

65 Two plays feature Will Somers: When You See Me You Know Me (1604) by Samuel Rowley and Thomas Nashe‘s Summer‟s Last Will and Testament (1592). In the anonymous play Misogonus (1570) the character Cacurgus, called ―jester‖ by one character is several times referred to as ―Will Summer‖, by then a generic term.175 Thanks to the flourishing London stage Tarlton and Kemp had an opportunity to become professional actors to create their own version of fool figures who corresponded to their own qualities and abilities, they could adapt traditional folly to the needs of the theatre of their age. Theatre was not seen as an independent art form but was constantly compared to other forms of entertainment such as bear-baiting, and thus those performing in plays were also associated with various kinds of stage practices and traditions.176 Fools were very much part of this fluctuation of theatrical meanings, which also made it easy to incorporate influences from different traditions into the fool‘s stage routine. Professionalism was essential to actor fools; they were clever performers. Tarlton for example had such natural and quick wit that his lack of education never caused him any disadvantage.177 Social contradictions can be seen concerning the fool. Rustic fools were very strongly associated with a golden age of merriments which was only just passing. In parallel with this, in the 1590s, a contemptuous attitude towards people living in the countryside appeared.178 The fool pointed out the ridiculousness of the old ways of life, and a similar experience was no longer possible in urban surroundings.179 The character of folly no longer depended on the humorous nature of rural themes as its topic, but adopted new models for creating laughter. Popular culture linked fools, festivals and the rustic environment, which were all important sources for comedies in the theatre. At the same time, both the religious sphere and the learned elite stressed the vulgarity, obscenity and impropriety of the clown‘s antics, and wanted to suppress the manifestations of laughter in the sphere of popular culture as well.180 However by the end of the sixteenth century, the difference between the city and the country increased, and the citizens constituting the audience wanted to see topics

175 Beatrice K. Otto, Fools are Everywhere: The Court Jester Around the World (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2001). 176 Greenblatt, Renaissance Self – Fashioning, 47–49. 177 W. Carew Hazlitt (ed.), ―Tarlton‘s Jests‖ in Shakespeare‟s Jest Book (1611) (New York, 1864), II, 189– 250. 178 For further discussion of this problem see Bradbrook, The Growth and Structure of Elizabethan Comedy, 11–27, 61–77; idem, The Rise of the Common Player, 39–67, 162–178. 179 Wiles, Shakespeare‟s Clown, 23. 180 Laroque, Shakespeare‟s Festive World, 40–42.

66 which interested them and not jokes concerning the stupidity of peasants. Although jokes about clown presumably were growing a bit stale, most plays still portrayed rustic comic figures. At the same time the culture of festive inversions and misrule gradually became threatening. Kemp as an actor fool fit perfectly into the atmosphere of the early period of Elizabeth‘s reign until the later period, when political, economic and personal problems accumulated,181 and his personality and the notions he symbolized became too frightening and revolutionary for the social order.

The Legal and Social Control of the Actors

The population grew much faster than did the capacity of industry to provide employment, so poverty and the number of the poor increased dramatically.182 This was happening at a time after the Reformation, when the traditional way of providing for the poor, through the charity of the monasteries, had disappeared. 183 Real wages were falling throughout the period and many people were unemployed. As I have already mentioned in the Introduction, actors enjoyed exceptional social and economic mobility; they had a close contact both with the margins and the elite of the society.184 Actors were often listed among the vagabonds and petty criminals, especially in legal contexts, and had important role in vagrant, oral literature and in Elizabethan popular culture as a whole.185 Paola Pugliatti, in her Beggary and Theatre in Early Modern England writes about the common features of actors and vagabonds: ―The common denominator among the different categories of people, the players and vagabonds, is that they all shared vagabondage as their way of living; they exercised their different activities in the streets and in markets. They were all considered to be irregular, disordered and potentially subversive because they were uncontrollable. The control and restraint of their

181 This matter is discussed in Chapter 3. For an overview about this period see John Guy, The Reign of Elizabeth I, Court and Culture in the Last Decade (Washington: Folger Institute, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). 182 For further discussion of this matter see Andrea Velich, ―Poverty in London in the 16th century‖ in Urbán Aladár Emlékkönyv. (Budapest: Argumentum, 2002), 11-32 183 Margot Heinemann, Puritanism and Theatre, Thomas Middleton and Opposition Drama Under the Early Stuarts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 22. 184 Greenblatt, Renaissance Self -Fashion , 4. 185 For further discussion about the situation of the Elizabethan underworld see Gamini Salgado, The Elizabethan Underworld (London: The History Press Ltd., 2005); L. Beier, Masterless Men, The Vagrancy Problem in England 1560-1640 (London: Methuen, 1985).

67 activity was therefore simply one among the many measures of public order taken by the authorities to check riots and disorders.‖186 In the Tudor and early Stuart period, vagrants were considered a physical and philosophical threat, because their nature was to cross boundaries.187 Pugliatti in her book explores some of the implications of that ―philosophical threat.‖ The attitude towards vagrants was what Jonas Barish has called ―the anti-theatrical prejudice.‖188 This perspective implies, on the one hand, ―a reading of vagrancy and mendacity as practices founded on simulation, disguise and self-transformation while, on the other, it enables us to shed light on the reasons why unregulated and unlicensed theatrical activities were equated by the English law with unregulated and unlicensed begging.‖189 (Players were joined by people who exercised their professions in the streets and were often prosecuted as vagrants: jugglers, tinkers, beast-tamers, gypsies and so on; but also, less regularly, by prophets, preachers and even bards.190) The monarchs generally supported the actors, but the city of London put significant pressure on the monarch to restrict players and their licences.191 In 1559, shortly after Elizabeth I came to the throne, she passed a statute requiring that all plays be licensed by authorities before being performed. As a result, every play was carefully ―seen and allowed‖ before presentation. In her second proclamation concerning plays in 1559, Elizabeth issued an important edict which established a definite system of licensing plays. The new proclamation made mandatory supervision by the municipal officers in towns and by Lord Lieutenants and Justices of the Peace in shires. In 1569 the first city precepts appeared prohibiting players to perform on Sundays and holy days. 192 In 1572 a statute was issued which declared that those theatrical companies which were not in the service of some noblemen to be rogues and vagabonds and subject to penalties.193 Before presentation, plays had to be permitted by the persons appointed by the Lord Mayor and Aldermen; and the utterance of unchastity or sedition at performances

186 Paola Pugliatti, Beggary and Theatre in Early Modern England (London: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2003), 1. 187 Ibid. 188 Jonas Barish, The Anti-theatrical Prejudice (Berkeley–L.A–London: University of California Press, 1981). 189 Pugliatti, Beggary and Theatre, 1. In 1545, in a proclamation issued by Henry VIII, players are listed among vagrants. 190 A. V. Judges (ed.), The Elizabethan Underworld: Collection of Tudor & Early Stuart Tracts and Ballads (London, New York: Routledge, 1930). 191 Dillon, Theatre, Court and City, 15. 192 Virginia C. Gildersleeve, Government Regulation of Elizabethan Drama (New York, N.Y.: Burt Franklin, 1961), 30. 193 Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, I, 279.

68 were punished by a fine and the fourteen days‘ imprisonment specified by the proclamation of 1559. In 1606 players were forbidden from using oaths on stage.194 The effect of the Act was to define the actors‘ status, restrict the number of licensed troupes, to stop poor strollers from wandering in the country and as a result the institutions of commercial players appeared in Shoreditch and on the Bankside.195 However, according to Pugliatti ―the few sparse records witnessing the enforcement of the law as regards players, if compared to the much more numerous records that concern the prosecution and punishment of beggars, reveal a discrepancy in the actual treatment of the two groups of people. The subsequent versions of the poor law seem to have underestimated the fact that, while the general public could be led to consider certain vagrant beggars as criminals, the same could not be expected with regard to all the categories of ‗performing‘ people that the law assimilated to rogues and vagabonds. Even beggars were not generally seen as a danger, at least in certain contexts.‖196 Christopher Hill says that ―in many areas there was considerable sympathy for sturdy beggars,‖ and he adds: ―few villagers, few artisans near the poverty line, would lightly believe that original sin was the sole cause of vagabondage, that men took to the road for the fun of the thing, that all beggars should be punished, that property was more important than life.‖197 If the population and the local authorities generally did not condemn and prosecute vagrants, they must have been even more reluctant in taking legal action against players. Players who were caught with false licenses, or who were prohibited to perform were either sent away or fined or convicted for a day or two and then set free if they promised not to commit the same offence in the future; sometimes they even got some money. Pugliatti searches for the answer for the reason and nature of the fear of these uncontrollable elements which was so strong that it encouraged the general public to equate the different activities and categories of people. She provides a good summary of the different scholarly opinions, she takes into consideration Gildersleeve‘s, Chamber‘s, Wickham‘s, Heinemann‘s and Montrose‘s points of view.198 Virginia Gildersleeve argues that the legislation only aimed at suppressing the ‗great social trouble‘ of vagabondage and

194 Ibid., 33. 195 Peter Roberts, ―Elizabethan Players and Minstrels and the Legislation of 1572 against Retainers and Vagabonds‖ in Anthony Fletcher, Peter Roberts (ed.), Relegion, Culture and Society in Early Modern Britain (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994), 29–40. 196 Pugliatti, Beggary and Theatre, 4. 197 Christopher Hill, ―Puritans and the Poor ‖ in Past and Present 2. (1952): 32-50, 43. 198 Pugliatti, Beggary and Theatre, 6–7.

69 that, in the statutes, ―[t]he status of players is touched on only incidentally.‖ Then Gildersleeve adds: ―[t]hough they wandered in such company at times, players, as players, were evidently not vagabonds in the eyes of the law. Players who disobeyed the government regulations were liable to be considered such, as were other masterless and lawless men.‖ She therefore concludes that ―but for a courtesy and a legal fiction, they were vagabonds and liable to a whipping seems inaccurate and unjust.‖199 Glynne Wickham agrees with Chambers‘ contrasting opinion, he discusses the statutes in which ―all players in interludes‖ were equated with vagrants as provisions specifically aimed against acting were created. Companies of noblemen could obtain a license to perform from ―two Justices of the Peace at the least, whereof one to be of the Quorum, where and in what shire they shall happen to wander. In practice, this could only mean that these actors were obliged to abandon acting, or, if they were to continue, then they must do so either as resident amateurs or as professionals with rights of travel so sharply curtailed as to prohibit ―happening to wander...‖200 Louis Montrose comments on the fear of ‗impersonation‘ in connection with the 1572 statute concerning the players.201 He links ‗unstable identity‘ with ‗roguery‘, implying that rogues and players shared the same ‗protean‘ quality. I emphasize here the existing fear of players and the comedians or clowns especially after 1590. They were considered similar to the characters of the underworld. Kemp‘s main conflict with Shakespeare and his company, with the City and the Court, came from his association with contemporary popular culture. Gildersleeve reveals the nature of the national legislation. She points out that this legislation can be divided into three parts: the licensing of plays, the licensing of players, and the licensing of playing places.202 She dealt with the general regulation of the drama by the central government, through parliamentary statutes, royal proclamations, council orders, and patents, applying to the country at large. This includes the laws and patents concerning the status of players and the licensing of them, the licensing of playhouses, and, in general, the development of the power of censorship.203 A system of state-controlled censorship emerged in 1578 when the Queen‘s Privy Council expanded the post of Master of the Revels, a figure responsible for court

199 Gildersleeve, Government Regulation, 30–31. 200 Wickham, Early English Stages, II, 105. 201 Louis Adrian Montrose, The Purpose of Playing: Shakespeare and Cultural Politics of the Elizabethan theatre (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 55. 202 Gildersleeve, Government Regulation, 5. 203 Ibid., 4–44.

70 entertainment, to oversee the theatrical life of the country.204 The Master of the Revels was an official of the King‘s household, subordinate to the Lord Chamberlain and originally concerned only with the management of court entertainments.205 He was also responsible for reading and expurgating plays before performing at Court. The first sign of the extension of this power to outside performances is found in the royal patent to Leicester‘s players issued on 7 May, 1574, which granted the players the privilege of performing throughout the kingdom, provided that their plays ―be by the Master of our Revels (for the time of being) before seen and allowed.‖206 He had the right to select the plays for court performance, but this function could be stretched to other purposes. The other part of the patent confers on him very extensive powers over all drama. The licensing of plays was a profitable business, so it was in the interest of the Master of the Revel to extend this authority as much as possible. In 1581 he was appointed to review the contents of all plays, ordering cuts or revisions, and refusing permission to perform. In 1594 he assumed responsibility for licensing playhouses, plays and playing companies; and in 1610 he was authorized to license plays for printing and performance. The Master‘s licensing authority grew constantly and was thoroughly established in and about London. It could never have been well established all over the country. The men who served as Masters of the Revels (Edmund Tilney, from 1578-1610, and Sir George Buc, from 1610-22) seem to have been sympathetic to the playing companies. They made cuts mainly to protect them from legal charges of slander and libel, rather than to restrict their ideas. The controversial issues consisted of the satiric and negative treatment of particular people, religious or political debates.207

204 Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, I, 71–106. 205 For further discussion of this matter see Edmund Kerchever Chambers, Notes on the History of the Revels Office Under the Tudors (London: A. H. Bullen, 1906). Chambers, ed., ‗Dramatic Records: The Lord Chamberlain‘s Office‘ Malone Society Collections (Oxford: Malone Society, 1931). 206 Tanya Pollard, Shakespeare‟s Theatre: A Sourcebook (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004), 303. 207 Gildersleeve, Government Regulation, 44-89. She gives a detailed account about the Master of the Revel.

71 3. ATTACKS AGAINST THE THEATRE

Although the royal court supported the theatre and it was also very popular among people in Elizabethan and Jacobean England, theatrical life and everything connected with it— playwrights, plays, actors and audiences—were often opposed and criticized. I have already mentioned Burke‘s influential phrase ―the reform of popular culture.‖ He uses this phrase ―to describe the systematic attempt by some of the educated (the leadership usually was in the hands of the clergy) to change the attidutes and values of the rest of the population.‖208 Commercial theatre was an essential factor of popular culture and the ‗educated‘ wanted to control it as well. Laughter also had a special place and role in popular culture. Keith Thomas in his thought-provoking article about the place of laughter in Tudor and Stuart England notes that ―laughter appeared as a potentially subversive force, needing careful control.‖209 There were attempts to suppress many kinds of subversive laughter which had flourished largely uncontrolled. As Thomas writes: ―[t]ime- honoured rituals came to appear so menacing. So long as the social hierarchy itself went unchallenged, the rites of inversion could be safely tolerated; their very levity reflected underlying security. But once men had begun to question the principles of that hierarchy, then the annual ritual which emphasized its arbitrary nature came to seem positively dangerous.‖210 He continues by noting that ―[t]he rites of misrule as the ritual of the boy bishop, the village lords of misrule, Christmas revels, mumming, maypoles and May Day had been attacked by many medieval churchmen continuously after the Reformation.‖211 Hostility to the different elements of popular culture such as ―actors, plays, songs, ballads, dances, bear-baiting, bull-fights, cards, chap-books, charivaris, charlatans, dicing, fairs, folktales, fortune-telling, magic, masks, minstrels, puppets, taverns and witchcraft‖212 could be found in Catholic Europe as well.213 For example in Spain, the Church also waged war on the stage and wanted to suppress the theaters.214 The difference between Protestant

208 Peter Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (London: Temple Smith, 1978), chapter 8, 208- 222. 209 Keith Thomas, ―The place of laughter in Tudor and Stuart England‖ Times Literary Supplement, (21. January, 1977): 78. 210 Thomas, ―The place of laughter‖, 80. 211 Thomas, ―The place of laughter‖, 79. 212 Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe, 208. 213 E. N. S. Thompson, ―The Controversy Between the Puritans and the Stage‖ Yale Studies in English, vol. xx. (New York: 1903). 214 Barish, The Antitheatrical Prejudice, 122.

72 and Catholic approach can be expressed with Peter Burke‘s words: ―Catholic reform tended to mean modification; Protestant reform was more likely to mean abolition.‖215 Protestant reformers regularly accused the theater of propagating idolatry and spectacular rituals and festivities associated with Catholicism which represented for them the devil, whose followers worshipped things of the flesh, not of the spirit.216 A division of the reformers into Catholic and Protestant is too simple; among the Protestants there were great differences in England as well; the Puritans and members of the Church of England held different views.217 According to Barish ―[t]he protracted campaign against the theatre were only part of this much wider movement to stamp out all those sources of entertainment which involved the temporary suspension or inversion of the social order.‖218 There was a constant fight for and against popular entertainment, especially the theatre; and the ‗culture of laughter‘ widely influenced popular drama and festivities of the sixteenth century. It is true, that the reformation of popular culture began, but it was a much slower and longer process becoming much more dominant in cultural life and mentality in the eighteenth century.219 Among the harshest critics of the theatre there were a lot of moralists and religious figures who wrote the most prolific and determined writings against the stage.220 Political figures: the lord mayor of London, the aldermen, the Privy Council, the Master of the Revels and other city authorities also played a pivotal role in the controversies surrounding the theatre;221 their correspondences about plays, the laws and legal statutes concerning them comprise important documents.222 Many of the supporters of the theatre were poets or playwrights.

215 Barish, The Antitheatrical Prejudice, 209. 216 Ibid., 161-6. 217 The problem of Catholic and Protestant reformers will be also discussed in the Conclusion. 218 Ibid., 81. 219 In the Conclusion I will delienate about the changes in mentality in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. 220 Pollard, Shakespeare‟s Theatre, xvi. 221 For further discussion of the situation of the Privy Council see Michael B. Pulman, The Elizabethan Privy Council in the Fifteen-Seventies (Berkeley: Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1971). E.K. Chambers and W.W. Greg ed., ‗Dramatic Records of the City of London: The Repertories, Journals, Letter Books‘ Malone Society Collections Vol.I, Part 1, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1907-1911). 222 R. Lemon and ( later) M. A. E. Green ed., Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, of the Reigns of Edward VI, Mary, and Elizabeth 7 vols. (London, 1856-71); A. B. Beaven ed., The Aldermen of the City of London, 2 vols.(London, 1908-13); London, Corporation of London Records Office, Repertoires (10-19); Humphrey Dyson ed., A Book Containing All Such Proclamations as Were Published during the Reign of the Queen Elizabeth (London, 1618); P.L. Hughes and J. F. Larkin, ed., Tudor Royal Proclamations, The Later Tudors, (1553-1587)(New Haven &Ld.: Yale University Press, 1969); Remembrancia, I-II. 9-238;

73 The Reasons for the Attacks

First I will elaborate on the general moral and political concerns against the theatre raised by its critics. There were numerous reasons: a throng of people gathered around the commercial theatres and they represented the hotbed of riots and disorder in the eyes of the authorities and there was a danger of plaque as well.223 If over fifty people died of the plague in a week in London, theaters were shut down for a long time, even as long as a year.224 As vagrants, beggars, cony-catchers and prostitutes were close to the theares, it was also feared that they might draw people into misbehaviour and laziness. (The authorities in London tried to regulate theatrical life and popular entertainment, playhouses had to be based in the so called ―liberties:‖ in suburbs which were outside the city limits and were not subject to the authority of the lord mayor.)225 The religious and moral arguments emphasize the pagan origins of plays and highlighted their sinful content: murder, lust, incest, and adultery. As Tanya Pollard writes in the Introduction of her invaluably useful sourcebook Shakespeare „s Theatre: [m]ore abstract and philosophical approaches explore fears about intrinsic dishonesty in an art form constructed of mimesis and the instability of a world in which selves are protean, capable of changing identity with clothing and speech.‖226 Theatrical life was associated with a negative moral influence on the audience, with the loss or confusion of identity and with the danger of seizing a deceptive social position one did not deserve. 227 As the plays were often performed on Sundays and holy days, the stage was considered a rival to the pulpit, so Churches feared they were losing believers and also funds. As Anthony Munday writes about it in his antitheatrical tract, ―The temple is despised, to run unto theaters; the Church is emptied, the yard is filled; we leave the sacrament to feed our adulterous eyes with the impure and whorish sight of most filthy pastime.‖228 There was also an anxiety about social change because the theatre emerged when England, especially London were undergoing rapid social and economic changes. The shareholders in London playing companies were both servants to the monarch or to an

Pollard, Shakespeare‟s Theatre, 302. F. P. Wilson, ed., ‗More Records from the Remembrancia of the City of London‘ Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1954. 223 Heinemann, Puritanism and Theatre, 28. 224 David Grote, The Best Actors of the World (Westport, N. Y.: Greenwood Press, 2002), 77. 225 Heinemann, Puritanism and Theatre, 3. 226 Pollard, Shakespeare‟s Theatre, xv. 227 Jean E. Howard, The Stage and Social Struggle in Early Modern England (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), 27. 228 Anthony Munday, Second and Third Blast of Retreat from Plays and Theaters in: Pollard, Shakespeare‟s Theatre, 67-68.

74 aristocrat and also enterprising businessmen.229 As Jean E. Howard writes, ―What the antitheatricalists did seem to recognize more clearly than their opponents was the disruptive effect of a burgeoning marketplace, in which the commercial theatre was implicated, on traditional understanding of one‘s social ―place.‖ The sixteenth century was not only a time of increased poverty but it witnessed the beginnings of England‘s first ―consumer society.‖230

The Enemies of the Stage

The prejudice against the stage has often been identified with Puritans and their total hostility to art, culture and beauty. However this association is problematic, and has led to a number of misleading strereotypes. The word Puritan was already used in the seventeenth century, however, to define a religious and a political alignment.231 The word was used in several senses and contemporaries seem to have thought that a person might be a Puritan in relegion without being ‗puritanical.‘232 Not all early modern commentators were convinced that the theatre and the church were enemies.233 Several religious figures actually wrote and acted in plays during this period. The actor Nathan Field, whose father was a Puritan and a preacher, described the theater as a godly enterprise. Leicester and Walsingham were noted patrons both of Puritans and players.234 The 3rd Earl of Pembroke, Shakespeare‘s patron, was considered a leader of the Puritan group in James I‘s government, and his brother the 4th Earl, joint dedicatee of the First Folio, was a Parliamentarian in the Civil War. Margot Heinemann illuminates and grasps the complexity of Puritanism and scrutinizes the scholarly opinions about this notion.235 Cristopher Hill also defines the term Puritan widely, to describe something which was already important in Elizabethan times

229 Howard, The Stage and Social Struggle, 46. 230 Ibid., 31. 231 Jeremy Goring, Godly exercises or the devil‟s dance? Puritanism and Popular Culture in pre-Civil War England (London: Dr. William‘s Trust, 1983), 3-28. 232 Patrick Collinson, ―Elizabethan and Jacobean Puritanism as Forms of Popular Relegious Culture.‖ In The Culture of English Puritanism, 1560-1700 (London: Macmillan, 1996), 150-171. 233 Patrick Collinson, ―Elizabethan and Jacobean Puritanism as Forms of Popular Religious Culture‖ in The Culture of English Puritanism, 1560-1700 (London: Macmillan, 1996), 32-58. 234 Patrick Collinson, ed., Letters of Thomas Wood, Puritan, 1566-1577 (London: University of London, The Athlone Press, 1960), 1-31.The collection includes a correspondence between Wood, the mercer and the earls of Leicester and Warwick and throws light on Leicester‘s religious views and on his relationship to the Puritan movement. 235 Heinemann, Puritanism and Theatre, 20-30.

75 and increasingly up to the Civil War.236 Trevelyan also defined Puritanism in broad terms as ―the religion of all those who wished either to purify the usage of the established Church from the taint of Popery or to worship separately by forms so purified.‖237 This definition describes a broad, varied and even contradictory movement as pertains to its social basis as well as to political and religious way of thinking and strategy. James I described Puritans to his first Parliament in 1604 as ―a sect rather than a religion—ever discontented with the present government and impatient to suffer superiority, which maketh their sect unable to be suffered in any well-governed commonwealth.‖238 The different social groups‘ movements of discontent and opposition to absolute royal power at this period cannot be described as ‗Puritan City‘ in contrast to ‗Anglo-Catholic court.‘ The main basis was the allience of the ‗industrious sort of people‘—the merchants, craftsmen, manufacturers, outside the privilidged oligarchies, yeomen and the more prosperous tenant farmers, the Puritan gentry, Justices of Peace and some Puritan lords. It is true, that the so called ‗new‘ aristocracy—those endowed with valuable monastic lands during the Reformation—supported and patronized consistently the Puritan preachers and writers.239 (They were the Herberts, Russels, Dudleys and Sidneys.) However, the reformation of the Christian religious tradition, the passionate concern that England should actively support the Protestant cause in Europe cannot be always equated with their immediate economic interest.240 Some critics of the theater, notably John Northbrooke, John Rainolds, William Prynne and Philip Stubbes seem to have been associated with Puritanism. However other critics of the theater, such as Stephen Gosson, forcefully attacked Puritanism in writing, and others, such as Anthony Munday was never linked with the Puritan vocation. Many religious antitheatricalists had official positions in the Church of England and it suggests at least an implicit opposition to Puritans who harshly criticized the established church.

236 Cristopher Hill, ―The definiton of a Puritan‖ in Society and Puritanism in Pre-Revolutionary England (London: Mercury, 1966) 13-29. 237 Heinemann, Puritanism and Theatre, 21. 238 A Discourse Concerning Puritans (1641) Quoted in Hill, ―The definiton of a Puritan‖, 23. 239 For further discussion about the culture of the Puritanism see C. Durston & J. Eales ed. The Culture of English Puritanism 1560-1700 (London: Macmillan, 1996); Frere W. H the late Rev. ed. Puritan Manifestoes. (London: S.P.C.K. 1954); W. Lamont, Puritanism & Historical Controversy (Sussex: UCL Press, 1999). Leland Ryken, Wordly Saints The Puritans As They Really Were (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1990). 240 See more about the mentality of the age in: Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and “The Spirit of Capitalism” trans. Peter Baehr and Gordon C. Wells (London: Penguin Books, 2002); R. H. Tawney Relegion and the Rise of Capitalism (London: Pelican Books, 1926).

76 The so called Marprelate tracts 241 became widely known in London and the figure of Martin Marprelate appeared on the stage as well and proved to be dangerous because Martin Marprelate attacked the bishops very wittily and his satire was really appropriate and original.242 But not only the Church but also its Puritan opponents condemned Martin for treating the matter with such levity.243 Generally, in contemporary plays Puritans were often mocked 244 and bishops showed little inhibition about permitting it.245 In 1589 Edmund Tilney as Master of Revels, closed the theatres on account of the grotesque representations of Martin Marprelate; writing for or against Martin had become politically dangerous.246 (Kemp presumably participated in the Marprelate controversy as well.) According to Heinemann the above mentioned facts indicate a different and more complex relationship between drama and people‘s religious and political attitudes.247 The growing censorship and patronage of the court over the theatre must have alienated many Parliamentary Puritans from playgoing in the years immediately before the Civil War, but to consider all Puritans hostile to the theatre and the arts especially in Kemp‘s lifetime is, however, to misunderstand the depth and complexity of the intellectual movements of this period.248 It can be concluded that the Reformers, i.e., the Puritan opposition were at first not at all, and never completely hostile to the stage, and indeed they used it for a while as a valuable means of influence. Puritans‘ criticism against the public stage was not always directed at drama in principle but at the wickedness of disguise or impersonation, at the danger of the idleness of players, at the deceptive social athmosphere in the commercial theatres and the sinful content of the plays. I will enumerate the most important representatives of the anthiteatrical debates. John Northbrooke, a clergyman was the first author who wrote a treatise against the theatre in 1577 blaming the popular entertainment of his day:

241 Marprelate tracts were extreme Puritan attacks, printed against the bishops of the Anglican church between 1588-97. Martin Marprelate (mar a prelate or Marre-Martin) was a pseudonym adopted by different authors. Professional writers were hired to write counter-tracts. 242 Elizabeth Appleton, An Anatomy of the Marprelate Controversy 1588-1596: Retracing Shakespeare‟s Identity and that of Martin Marprelate (N. Y. Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2001), 5. 243 The Marprelate tracts are also discussed by Eva Petrőczi, ―An English and a Hungarian Anti-Episcopal Dialogue from the Sixteenth and the Seventeenth Century‖ in Puritans and Puritanicals (Budapest: Balassi Kiadó, 2005), 13, 61-68. 244 William P. Holden, Anti-Puritan Satire (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1954), 94-146. 245 Thomas, ―The place of laughter‖, 78. 246The Privy Council agreed with Tilney and a letter was sent to the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Mayor of London and the Master of the Revels requesting strict censorship of the theatre. The letter to the Archbishop is also recorded in Pappe with an Hatchet (1589) a writing involved in the Marprelate controversy. Appleton, Anatomy of the Marprelate Controversy, 32. 247 Heinemann, Puritanism and Theatre, 22. 248 Jacquline Eales, ―A Road to Revolution: The Continuity of Puritanism, 1559-1642‖ in The Culture of English Puritanism, 1560-1700 (London: Macmillan), 184-210.

77 I am persuaded that Satan has not a more speedy way and fitter school to work and teach his desire, to bring men and women into his snare concupiscence and filthy lusts of wicked whoredom, than those places, (the Theater and Curtain) and plays, and theatres are: therefore it is necessary that those places and players should be forbidden and dissolved and put down by authority. … Watching them in a special open place, where they were accustomed upon the festival days to sport and dance most idly and wantomly…. For the feast days were to this end instituted, that the people should assemble together, to hear (not plays) but the word of God. … Alas my sonne, notwithstanding all this, are not almost all places in these our days replenished with Juglers, Scoffers, Jeasters, and Players, which may saye and doe what they lyst, be it neuer so filthilye and fleshlye, and yet are suffered and hearde with laughing and clapping of handes.249

According to Northbrooke, fools ridiculed everything which fostered bad behaviour; the theatre stands for idleness whose effects can be seen in the increase of vagrants and masterless men all over England.250 Stephen Gosson was another harsh critic of the theatre;251 in The School of Abuse written in 1579, he argued that the writing, printing, reading, and even reciting of plays can be a good thing, but acting them is inevitably evil. Gosson explained that impersonation, which involves both self-transformation and lying is treacherous, an unlawful violation of nature and God‘s will. He wrote about the change in pastimes and the bad influence of the ‗new‘ entertainment on people as well: ―[t]he exercise of both was shooting and darting, running and wrestling, and trying such masteries as either consisted in swiftness of feet, agility of body, strenghts of arms, or martial discipline. But the exercise that is now among us is banqueting, playing, piping, and dancing, and all such delights as may win us to pleasure or rock us asleep.‖252 He warned the women about the threats of theatergoing in the afterword of the treatise To the Gentlewomen Citizens of London: ―none ought to haunt and frequent those thetres and places where interludes are, and especially women and maids.‖ He also emphasizes the sexual dangers of going to these places: ―[f]or thes plays instruments and armour of Venus and Cupid, and to say good sooth, what safeguard of chastity can there be, where so many faces look upon her, and again she upon so many?‖253 and he continued: ―[b]lazing marks are most shot at; glistering faces chiefly marked; and what followeth? Looking eyes have liking hearts; liking hearts

249 Pollard, Shakespeare‟s Theatre, 3. 250 Howard, The Stage and Social Struggle, 3-16. 251 Stephen Gosson, The School of Abuse (1579), Plays Confuted in Five Actions (1582) in Pollard, Shakespeare‟s Theatre, 19-34; 84-115. In 1579 he wrote his first attack on theatre, The School of Abuse, Thomas Lodge wrote a rebuttal to Gosson, after reading Lodge‘s rebuttal in 1580, Gosson studied classical and religious authors who wrote about the theatre, and penned a militant attack, Plays Confuted in Five Actions in 1582. 252 Gosson, The School of Abuse, in Pollard, Shakespeare‟s Theatre, 26. 253 Ibid., 29.

78 may burn in lust. We walk in the sun many times for pleasure, but our faces are tanned before we return; though you go to theatres to see sport, Cupid may catch you ere depart.‖254 Gosson‘s argument about the theatre was intensified in his Apology of the School of Abuse (1579) and the condemnation of the stage was accomplished in his Plays Confuted in Five Actions (1582): ―[p]lays are the inventions of the devil, the offerings of idolatry, the pomp of wordlings, the blossoms of vanity, the root of apostasy, the food of iniquity, riot, and adultery; detest them [….] Players are masters of vice, teachers of wantonness, spurs of impurity, the sons of idleness; so long as they live in this order, loath them. God is merciful; his wings are spead to receive you if you come betimes. God is just, his bow is bent and his arrow drawn, to send you a plague if you stay too long.‖255 Anthony Munday was an actor and playwright, but as an actor he was not very successful. According to contemporary writings he was booed off the stage. He responded by writing a complaint against the theatre in 1580 and in spite of this, he later returned to it again.256 (In 1581- 82 he was appointed to a minor position in Elizabeth I‘s court probably because he was involved in writing and testifying against English Catholics who had returned from abroad and he also wrote several other tracts against Catholics. His treatise against plays and actors A Second and Third Blast of Retreat from Plays and Theaters257 was published with the arms of the corporation of London, so it can be assumed that the authorities who opposed the stage sponsored his work.) In his treatise against plays and actors A Second and Third Blast of Retreat from Plays and Theaters Munday emphasized the negative effects of playing on the Sabbath, audiences‘s addiction to pleasure and its consequences for moral behaviour: ―[d]iscourses to counterfeit whichcraft, charmed drinks, and amorous potions, thereby to draw the affection of men, and to stir them up unto lust.258 [….] So that in the representation of whoredom, all the people in mind play the whores. And such as happily came chaste unto shows return adulterers from plays. For they play the harlots, not them only when they go away, but also when they come. For as soon as one lusteth after a filthy thing, while he

254 Gosson, The School of Abuse, in Pollard, Shakespeare‟s Theatre, 31. 255 Gosson, Plays Confuted in Five Actions, in Pollard, Shakespeare‟s Theatre, 111. 256 In 1578 or 1579 Munday tried performing as an improvisational player like Kemp but he was booed off the stage. 257 It was published in 1580, as the work of ―Anglo-phile Etheo‖ is generally attributed to Munday, based primarily on similarities between the author‘s description of himself and Munday‘s life. 258 Munday in Pollard, Shakespeare‟s Theatre, 77.

79 hasteneth to that which is unclean, he becometh unclean.‖259 Munday‘s criticised the theatre which had a harmful influence on its audience: ―[o]nly the filthiness of plays and spectacles is such as maketh both the actors and beholders guilty alike. For while they say nought, but gladly look on, they all by sight and assent are actors, that truly may be applied unto them that saying the apostle: How that not they which commit such things are worthy of death, but also they which favor them that do them.‖260 Philip Stubbes‘s The School of Abuse was a bestseller and Stubbes became perhaps the most influential critic of his age.261 He was attacked several times because he probably held Puritan symphathies and penned strict moralizing writings. He was associated with Martin Marplete controversies and was harshly satirized in Nashe‘s Almond for a Parrot.262 He did not refuse every kind of entertainment or ―exercises‖ but wrote about their evils: ―I have entreated of certain exercises, usually practiced amongst us, as namely of plays and interludes, of dancing, gaming, and such other like, I would not have the so to take me as though my speeches tended to the overthrow and utter disliking of all kind of exercises in general: that is nothing my simple meaning. But the particular abuses which are crept into one of these exercises is the only thing which I think worthy of reprehension.‖263 He argued that ―all stage-plays, interludes, and comedies are either of divine or profane matter‖ and he sees nothing wrong with good plays.264 But there are plays that are ―mixed and interlaced with bawdry, wanton shows, and uncomely gestures.‖265 He also condemned songs and ―the horrible vice of pestiferous dancing‖ providing participants with opportunities for ―filthy groping and unclean handling,‖ and so acting as ―an introduction to whoredom, a preparative to wantonnesse, a provocative to uncleanness, and an introit to all kinds of lewdness.‖266 Stubbes hated the idea of theatrical self-fashioning,

259 Munday, A Second and Third Blast of Retreat in Pollard, Shakespeare‟s Theatre, 66. 260 Munday, A Second and Third Blast of Retreat in Pollard, Shakespeare‟s Theatre, 68. 261 Pollard, Shakespeare‟s Theatre, 115-6. 262 Elizabeth Appleton in her book An Anatomy of the Marprelate Controversy 1588-1596- Retracing Shakespeare‟s Identity and that of Martin Marprelate investigated the writings and the possible participants as well. According to her the writers involved in the Marprelate controversy were the Puritan brothers and scholars Gabriel and Richard Harvey on the one side and Thomas Nashe, Robert Greene, John Lily, William Shakespeare, Richard Lichfield on the other (all of them associated with their patron, Edward de Vere, earl of Oxford). 263 Stubbes, The School of Abuse in Pollard, Shakespeare‟s Theatre, 117. 264 Stubbes, The School of Abuse in Pollard, Shakespeare‟s Theatre, 118. 265 Ibid. 266 Philip Stubbes, The School of Abuse in Pollard, Shakespeare‟s Theatre, 115.

80 also condemned the self-transformation of actors.267 In his Anatomy of Abuses the fear of ―counterfeitability‖ of social identity can be recognized as well: in his views some people could dress, eat and live in a manner not in harmony with their traditional place in the society.268 Ben Jonson, who was a playwright and a critic at the same time also often criticized the theatre. He identified the role of the poet as being ―to imitate justice and instruct to life.‖269 As a critic, he emphasized the importance of disciplined craftsmanship and rules: ―[t]he doctrine, which is the principal end of poesy: to inform men in the best reason of living. And though my catastrophe, may, in the strict rigor of comic law, meet my censure, as turning back to my promise, I desire the learned and charitable critic to have so much faith in me to think it was done of industry.‖270 Jonson as a playwright frequently complained about the humiliation of having to write for an uneducated ‗multitude:‘ ―the unskillful are naturally deceived and, judging wholly by the bulk, think rude things greater than polished, and scattered more numerous than composed.‖271 According to Jonson the popular audience encouraged playwrights to write plays that appeal to the lower instincts and could not appreciate the artistic refinement of his plays.272 ―Jests that are true and natural seldom raise laughter with the beast, the multitude. They love nothing that is right and proper.‖ 273 In his view playgoers, went to the theater in order to show off their fashionable clothes and gaze at others‘ and so compete with the performances.274 ―Stage poetry‖ was filled with ―profanness, unwashed bawdry, buffoons, fools and devils and antique relics of barbarism.‖275 His thoughts about entertainers could form the basis of the probable conflict between Jonson and Kemp.276 ―I will condescend into the opinion of the wise: otherwise am I to be pardoned, though I stand earnest and stiff against that which is contrary to virtue; disagreeing from good relegion;

267 The anthitheatrical polemic becomes the reverse of the Renaissance self-fashioning depicted by Stephen Greenblatt. Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-fashioning, 1-3. 268 Howard, Stage and Social Struggle, 35. 269 Ben Jonson, Preface to Volpone (1607) in Pollard, Shakespeare‟s Theatre, 204. 270 Jonson, Preface to Volpone in Pollard, Shakespeare‟s Theatre, 203. 271 Jonson, Discoveries (1641) in Pollard, Shakespeare‟s Theatre, 298. 272 James Redwine, ed., Ben Jonson‟s Literary Criticism, (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1970). 273 Jonson, Discoveries in Pollard, Shakespeare‟s Theatre, 299. 274 Jonas Barish, ―Jonson and the Loathed Stage‖ in The Antitheatrical Prejudice (Berkely: University of California Press, 1980). 275 Jonson, Preface to Volpone (1607) in Pollard, Shakespeare‟s Theatre, 201. 276 For details see Chapter 3.

81 furthest from civility, and may neither by argument of reason, nor power of learning, be defended.‖277 A play was usually published ―as acted by such and such a company, or as sundrie time shewed upon Stages‖ or even ―most stately shewed‖ or as ―played before the Queen‘s most excellent Majesty.‖ The 1594 quarto of A Knack to Know A Knave advertises proudly that it is ―[n]ewly set forth, as it hath sundrie tymes bene played by E. Alleyn and his Companie. With Kemps applauded Merrimente.‖ Jonson changed this custom: he asserts that it will be ―as it was first composed by the author‖ presumably superior to and different from the acted version. The name of the company is not even mentioned. His thinking was also different from that of Shakespeare and of Kemp concerning playwrights, directors and actors. Jonson condemns attraction to clothes as a source of pleasure and a basis of identity. For him clothes were costumes designed to accompany studied gestures and mannered speech. As such, they formed part of the construction of artificial personalities, a false attempt to compete with nature. Apparel was part of disguising and it was considered bad in a very complex way by Christian morals, the theologians and preachers from the medieval times and in the Renaissance as well. Elizabethan regulations stipulated who could wear certain colours, materials, and styles of clothing. Disguising and masking were considered morally harmful and as threats to the social order and political stability because they implied the intention to hide or change one‘s own nature and it is against God‘s wish who created for everybody an appearance, a social position and a gender.278 Because women were not allowed to act on the public stage, female roles were played by boys. Critics worried that male actors and spectators ran the risk of being feminized and becoming attracted to other men. Cross-dressing also raised concerns about the stability of class divisions: lowborn actors could violate sumptuary laws. Jean E. Howard in The Stage and Social Struggle in Early Modern England points out that moral criticism often signals political struggle: ―clothing was a terrain where certain struggles over class and gender hierarchy were most obviously played out in sixteenth century England.‖ She adds: ―The worry seems to be that social distinctions are erased by indiscriminate acqusition of sartorial finery: distinctions, for example, between

277 Jonson: Preface to Volpone in Pollard, Shakespeare‟s Theatre, 202. 278 Ágnes Matuska, ―Masking players, painted sepulchers and double dealing ambidexters‘ on duty‖, SEDERI Yearbook of the Spanish and Portuguese Society for English and Renaissance Studies, (2008), 2.

82 men and women, between chaste and modest women and whores, between gentlemen and commoners.‖279 William Prynne‘s Histriomastix: The Player‟s Scourge written in 1633 may be considered as the culmination of the anti-theatricalist debate and it was also the last tract before the closing of the theatres in 1642.280 He also raised objections to the negative effects of the effeminate ―apparel‖ of actors in the plays: ―[t]he apparel in which they are acted, which is first of all womanish and effeminate, belonging properly to the female sex, therefore unlawful, yea, abominable unto men…‖281 He also calls attention to the dangers of acting womanish parts: ―[m]ay we not daily see our players metamorphosed into women on the stage, not only putting on the female robes, but likewise the effeminate gestures, speeches, pace, behaviour, attire, delicacy, passions, manners, arts and wiles of the female sex, yea, of the most petulant, unchaste, insinuating strumpets that either Italy or the world affords? What wantonness, what effeminacy parallel to that which our men-women actors, in all their feminine (yea, sometime in their masculine parts) express upon the theatre?‖282

The Central Role of the Fool in the Theatrical Debates

Kemp as a comic star who often played the role of the fool and the Vice was probably a central figure in the fierce struggle around the stage because he embodied the very essence of those features of the theatrical life which were considered the most perilious in the eyes of its critics. Kemp, as the leading comedian also had a special status in the company, it can be seen for example in a stage direction found in the second quarto text of Romeo and Juliet. It says, ―[e]nter Will Kemp.‖ According to Wiles this line shows ―how Shakespeare‘s mind could not separate the actor from the role.‖ The scene anticipates Kemp‘s appearance with the musicians after the play is over, when he will return to sing and dance his jig.‖283 In anti-theatrical texts the Vice and the fool are frequently mentioned together as synonyms for actors and also to describe their immoral and corrupt behaviour. They

279 Howard, The Stage and Social Struggle, 32. 280 As a militant Puritan Prynne also wrote an attack on contemporary mores highlighting the dangerous effeminacy of long hair in men. See Chapter 2 where I elucidate the question of appearance. 281 William Prynne, Histriomastix: The Player‟s Scourge in Pollard, Shakespeare‟s Theatre, 291. 282 William Prynne, Histriomastix: The Player‟s Scourge in Pollard, Shakespeare‟s Theatre, 290. 283 Wiles, Shakespeare‟s Clown, 88.

83 represented the dangerous side of actors and theatre; their roles might have stood for the idea of play in general and encapsulated role-playing better than any other role.284 ―Playing the vice‖ in the following quotation from Stubbes‘s Anatomy of Abuses, refers to acting: ―[i]f you will learn falshood; if you will learn cozenage; if you will learn to deceive; if you will learn to play the hypocrite, to cog, to lie, and falsify; if you will learn to jest, laugh and fleer, to grin, to nod, and mow; if you will learn to play the vice, to swear, tear, and blaspheme both heaven and earth… etc., and commit all kind of sin and mischief, you need to go to no other school, for all these good examples may you see painted before your eyes in interludes and plays.‖285 Fools and their extemporising epitomized the profession of acting and the inherent corruptness of playing in theatre as a whole.286 Shakespeare probably also attacked Kemp‘s improvisations because Hamlet certainly did and warned players: ―[a]nd let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them, for there be of them that will themselves laugh to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too, though in the mean time some necessary question of the play be then to be consider‘d. That‘s villainous, and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it.‖287 Fools may represent not only players but playwrights as well, since characters improvising on stage become creators, they present something created at that moment.288 There was an anxiety around extemporising and it is the same anxiety that roots in the interpretation that actors—as Prynne points out—―uncreate themselves […] and make themselves […] either men, nor women, but monsters (a sin as bad, nay worse than any adultery, offering a kind of violence to God‘s own work.)‖289 Playwrights and poets also create ideas they had imagined. Sidney describes the poet as ―lifted up with the vigor of his own invention, doth grow in effect into another nature: in making things either better than nature bringeth forth […] he goeth hand in hand with nature, not enclosed within the narrow warrant of her gifts, but freely ranging only within the zodiac of his own wit.‖290 In

284 See Philip Stubbes in his Anatomy of Abuses (1583) Pollard, Shakespeare‟s Theatre, 121-2. Also in Histriomastix Prynne is complaining about the negative tendency that ―witty, comely youths‖ devote themselves to the stage, ―where they are trained in the School of Vice, the play-house […]‖ Ibid., 291. 285 Stubbes in Pollard, Shakespeare‟s Theatre, 121-2. 286 Barish, The Antitheatrical Prejudice, 93. 287 Shakespeare, Hamlet, 3.2.38-45. 288 Matuska, ―Masking players‖, 5. 289 Prynne, Histriomastix : The Player‟s Scrouge (1633) in Pollard, Shakespeare‟s Theatre, 291. 290 Philip Sydney, An Apology for Poetry in Pollard, Shakespeare‟s Theatre, 149.

84 the antitheatrical tracts the ―creation‖ of playwrights appears in a negative interpretation; they place themselves ―in blasphemous rivalry with their own maker.‖291 Munday also writes about the corruptness of extemporizing: ―[s]uch doubtless is mine opinion of common plays, usual jesting, and rhyming ex tempore, that in a Christian weal they are not sufferable. My reason is because they are public enemies to virtue and relegion, allurements unto sin, corrupters of good manners, the cause of security and carelessness, mere brothel houses of bawdry; and bring both the gospel into slander, the sabbath into contempt, men‘s souls into danger, and finally the whole commonwealth into disorder.‖292 The fool has an outstanding role because he involves the audience in the plays, he also introduces the play with the prologue and frequently he gives a summary of the moral teaching of the play.293 Fools, Vice, comedians such as Kemp had a special relationship with their audience: they addressed them directly and spontaneously, their performance could not be controlled. 294 As a conclusion, it can be said, that Kemp and generally the fools and the theatre were criticized and considered extremely menacing not simply because they were considered evil, but also because Kemp and other comic actors were such figures who epitomized a mode of representation that was not possible to restrain or grasp.295

Defenders

Elizabeth I, James I and Charles I extended their patronage to the theatre and resisted the intention of the City to supress it.296 Although in 1603 James I first argued for the harmlessness of ―public spectacles of all honest games‖ in his Basilicon Doron297 he issued a proclamation forbidding all ―Bearbiting, Bullbaiting, Enterludes, Common plays, or other like disordered or unlawful Exercises or pastimes‖ on the Sabbath.298 But later on the extremeties in the suppression of ―lawful recreations and honest exercises‖ on Sunday irritated James. He stated that these exercises were beneficial to the people and the

291 Barish, The Antitheatrical Prejudice, 93. 292 Munday, Second and Third Blast of Retreat from Plays and Theaters in Pollard, Shakespeare‟s Theatre, 68. 293 Happé, The Vice, 28. 294 Matuska, ―Masking players‖, 8, 11. 295 Matuska, ―Masking players‖, 12. 296 Jean E. Howard, The Stage and Social Struggle in Early Modern England (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), 41. 297 C. H. McIlwain, ed., The Political Works of James I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965). 298 John Payne Collier, The history of English dramatic poetry to the time of Shakespeare (London, G. Bell edition, 1879), I., 341.

85 prohibition of them hinders the conversion of papists, whose opinion would be that ―our religion allowed no honest mirth or recreation.‖299 In 1618 James I therefore issued the order known as the ―Book of Sports‖ (Charles I issued it again in 1633). The Book of Sports was originally published for King James under the title The King‟s Maiesties Declaration to His Subjects, concerning lawfull Sports to be vsed, he ordered to be published in all parish churches. This allowed, after evening prayers on Sundays and holy days, dancing, archery, leaping, vaulting, May-Games, Whitsun Ales, and Morris Dances. But plays, bear and bull baitings and bowling were still prohibited.300 James argued that popular festivity should be encouraged because it increased ―good neighbourhood,‖ and also because the traditional pastimes strengthened the loyalty of the people to the English monarchy and Church.301 Those who did not belong to the court and defended the theatre were usually involved in drama and the poetic arts. Thomas Lodge and Thomas Heywood wrote plays as well as poetry, Philip Sidney wrote poetry, prose, and one masque, and was well known as a patron of the arts. The defenses of the stage were generally weaker than the attacks.302 For the defenders, especially for the playwrights, the capacity of plays to reconstitute people in their own image—which was strongly opposed by the antitheatricalists—was the theater‘s great strength. Thomas Lodge, one of the defenders of the stage, was also a university wit.303 His reply to Gosson written in 1579 was the first response to the increasing criticism of the Elizabethan theatre. According to Lodge the level of entertainment in general was rather low and he was critical with the fools who, according to him were omnipresent in popular entertainment.304 At the same time, he insists in his Reply to Stephen Gosson‟s School of Abuse, in Defence of Poetry, Music, and Stage Plays that the theatre as an institution could not be seen as a form of idleness and those who found immorality in plays misinterprited them and it is the consequence of their biased way of thinking. Lodge used

299 James I, Book of Sports: The Kings Maiesties Declaration to His Subjects Concerning lawful Sports to be used (London: Bonham Norton and John Bill, 1618). 300 Gildersleeve, Government Regulation, 20. 301 Leah S. Marcus,‖ Shakespeare and Popular Festivity‖ in Shakespeare and Elizabethan Popular Culture ed. Stuart Gillespie and Neil Rhodes (London: Arden Shakespeare, 2006), 49. 302 Barish, The Antitheatrical Prejudice, 117. 303 University wits were a group of clever, well-educated young people who wrote plays, poetry and prose during the Elizabethan period. 304 Thomas Lodge, A Reply to Stephen Gosson‟s School of Abuse, in Defence of Poetry, Music, and Stage Plays (1579) in Pollard, Shakespeare‟s Theatre, 37-62. In the treatise, Lodge uses his broad classical knowledge. He draws especially on the ancient past to claim that theater has historically provided a forum for prayer, praise, and social criticism.

86 his broad classical knowledge to argue with Gosson. He explained that the theater used allegory and metaphor to educate the audience; he cites ancient examples to prove the beneficial influence of the theater which was a place for prayer, praise, and social criticism in the past.305 Sir Philip Sidney‘s famous work The Defence of Poesy which was also printed separately as An Apology for Poetry was published in 1595. In it he emphasizes the social and moral value of literature in a difficult period when it was under sharp attack.306 Sidney‘s opinion was that the freedom of literary invention gave the essence of the poet‘s creative profession and his imagination can describe ideas, moral truths more clearly and vividly than the natural world can. According to Sidney in comedies delight in teaching and learning should have been in the focus and not only laughter. ―We have nothing but scurrility unworthy of any chaste ears, or some extreme show of doltishness, indeed fit to lift up a loud laughter and nothing else: where the whole tract of a comedy should be full of delight, as the tragedy should be still maintained in a well raised admiration. But our comedians think there is no delight without laughter, which is very wrong: for though laughter may come with delight, yet commeth it not of delight, as though delight should be the cause of laughter. Delight hath a joy in it, either permanent or present; laughter hath only a scornful tickling.‖307 Sidney thought that using fools in comedies was understandable, although they could not produce the proper feeling of admiration in an educated audience. In his view, however, the fool sould be omitted from tragedies which should be about serious and grave matters: ―[b]ut besides these gross absurdities, howe all their Playes bee neither right Tragedies, nor right Comedies, mingling Kinges and Clownes, not because the matter so carrieth it, but thrust in the Clowne by head and shoulders to play a part in maiesticall matters, with neither decencie nor discretion: so as neither the admiration and commiseration, nor the right sportfulnesse is by their mongrell Tragicomedie obtained.‖308 Thomas Heywood, the prolific playwright and actor was the only author who defended actors. He published his Apology for Actors in 1612 long after the first attacks in

305 Pollard, Shakespeare‟s Theatre, 38. 306 Petrőczi, Puritans and Puritanicals, 21-30. Petrőczi in the chapter ―Gnosis and Praxis‖ also deals with Sir Philip Sidney, offering some new ideas. 307 Sidney, An Apology for Poetry, in Pollard, Shakespeare‟s Theatre, 161. It was published in 1595, but in the light of its direct response to Gosson, scholars have suggested that it dates from the early 1580s or even 1579. 308 Ibid., 161.

87 the late 1570s and early 1580s.309 In his book he writes about the importance and historical background of acting and the true characteristic features of this profession. Gosson and other critics condemned the theater because of its negative moral influence and they highlighted the problem of imitation. Heywood, however, cited examples of the beneficial effect of imitation from antiquity and contemporary history and he also argues that the Vice figure had the power to reform sinners. He defends the actors: ―[m]any amongst us I know to be of substance, of government, of sober lives, and temperate carriages, house- keepers, and contributary to all duties enjoied them.‖310 He also argues for playing and the theatre in general, arguing that ―[p]laying is an ornament to the city; which strangers of all nations, repairing hither, report of in their countries, beholding them here with some admiration: for what variety of entertainment can there be in any city of Christendom, more than in London?‖311 He praises the comic actors Tarlton and Kemp as well:

[h]ere I must needs remember Tarlton, in his time gracious with Queen his sovereign, and in the people‘s general applause, whom succeded Will Kemp, as well in the favor of her Majesty, a sin the opinion and good thoughts of the general audience.Yet tough they be dead, their deserts yet live in the remembrance of many.……If a comedy, it is pleasantly contrived with merry accidents, and intermixed with apt and witty jests, to present before the prince at certain times of solemnity, or else merrily fitted to the stage. And what is then the subject of this harmless mirth? Either in the shape of a clown, to show others their slovenly and unhandsome behavior, that they may reform that simplicity in themselves, which others make their sport, lest they happen to become the like subject of general scorn to an auditory; else it entreats of love, deriding foolish inamorates who spend their ages, their spirits, nay themselves, in the servile and ridiculous employments of their mistresses: and these are mingled with sportful accidents, to recreate such as of themselves are wholly devoted to melancholy, which corrupts the blood: or to refresh such weary spirits as are tired with labor, or study, to moderate the cares and heaviness of the mind, that they may return to their trades and faculties with more zeal and earnestness, after some small soft and pleasant retirement.312

As a conclusion it can be noted that the important questions of culture—illusion and reality, cruelty, judgement and tolerance, the reason of existence of acting and art— appeared on the scene together with the still current differences between the Catholic and Protestant way of thinking considering art, festivities and work. In this section I have attempted to illuminate the great complexity of the symbols concerning the fool figure and the wide range of opinions concerning him. In spite of the attacks and derision directed

309 Thomas Heywood, An Apology for Actors (1612) in Pollard, Shakespeare‟s Theatre, 213-255. 310 Heywood, An Apology for Actors in Pollard, Shakespeare‟s Theatre, 234. 311 Ibid., 240. 312 Ibid., 233.

88 against the actors and particularly fools and comedians, we may conclude that they fought back valiantly, survived and even enjoyed great popularity in the period.

89 III. KEMP AND ELIZABETHAN POPULAR

CULTURE

FALSTAFF Give one life, which if I can save, so; if not, honour Comes unlook‟s for, and there‟s an end. (Henry IV, 1, V. 3. 61-62)1

1. THEORIES OF POPULAR CULTURE

In this chapter I will examine Kemp‘s place in Elizabethan popular culture and identify the elements of the tradition of early modern popular culture upon which he drew. Popular culture preserved by custom and oral tradition contains its own aesthetic rules much the same way as does high culture2. Popular culture still retained considerable power in Elizabethan times; it included the festive rituals associated with holidays, seasonal rituals, songs, clowning, old romances proverbs, and ballads3 and they existed both as speech or song and as printed texts.4 It is impossible to imagine a clear divide between oral and written cultures in the early modern period. The oral dimension of Elizabethan popular culture was essential5 as the sixteenth century was a time when the majority of people were unable to read and levels of literacy varied even among the literate.6 These forms of popular culture were very much part of the social fabric in which Kemp and his contemporaries grew up. The media in which Kemp worked—the foreign courts, the playhouse, and the tavern—were commercial ventures and the entertainment Kemp and his fellow comedians provided is a good example of this phenomenon.7 Symbolic clothing, the

1 David Scott Kastan, ed., The Arden Shakespeare: King IV, 1 (London: Thompson Learning, 2002). 2 Stuart Gillespie and Neil Rhodes, ed., Shakespeare and Elizabethan Popular Culture, (London: Arden Shakespeare, 2006), 9. Further references are related to this edition. 3 Gillespie and Rhodes, Shakespeare and Elizabethan Popular Culture, 1. For further discussion of Elizabethan popular culture, see Leonard R. N. Ashley, Elizabethan Popular Culture (Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1988); Ronald Hutton, The Rise and Fall of Merry England: The Ritual Year, 1400-1700 (New York, Oxford University Press, 1994). 4 For an overview of Elizabethan jigs see Charles Read Baskervill, The Elizabethan Jig and Related Song Drama (New York, N.Y.: Dover, 1965). 5 Adam Fox, Oral and Literate Culture in England 1500-1700 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). Fox‘s work is concerned with orality and literacy and with the relations between speech, sound and text. 6 For further discussion of early-modern literacy see Margaret Spufford, Cheap books and Pleasant Histories: popular fiction and its readership in 17th century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); Robert Darnton, ―History of Reading‖ in New perspectives on historical writing ed. Peter Burke (London: Polity Press, 2001.) 7 Ibid., 2.

90 concept of the grotesque body and satirical dance dominated Kemp‘s art; all of them reflect the Elizabethan popular culture which shaped his own sense of identity. The examination of the three most important theories of the last twenty-five years concerning medieval and early modern popular culture offers further scope for elaborating on Kemp‘s role and roots in Elizabethan popular culture. Besides C. L. Barber‘s theory of the Saturnalian pattern of Shakespeare‘s comedies and Michael Bakhtin‘s study on Rabelais, Peter Burke‘s study of early modern popular culture has proven to be the most influential.8 Modern scholarship on Shakespeare and Elizabethan popular culture might be said to begin with Barber‘s highly outstanding work.9 The study of popular culture and Shakespeare continued with high intensity in the 1970s with Robert Weimann‘s account of Shakespeare and popular theatrical traditions in 1978 and later in 1991 with François Laroque‘s work on Elizabethan seasonal entertainment and the professional stage.10 Barber draws our attention to the detailed connections between the social forms of Elizabethan holidays and the dramatic form of Shakespearean festive comedies. Shakespeare‘s merry comedies written up to the period of Hamlet result from his participation in the native Saturnalian traditions of popular theatre and folk holidays. Barber uses ―festive‖ not only as a term for an atmosphere but also as a term for structure, ―the Saturnalian pattern.‖ Barber writes, ―[i]t appears in many variations, all of which involve inversion, statement and counterstatement, and a basic movement which can be summarized in the formula, through release to clarification.‖ 11 Humour is overwhelmingly a part of holidays and plays, it is a sense of solidarity about pleasure. Barber emphasizes the importance of clowns, the theatrical institution of clowning, the cult of fools and folly and other unsophisticated forms like the morality and the jig in Shakespeare‘s comedies; they served as sources among other social and artistic sources to the Saturnalian pattern. He argues that Shakespeare used clowning for ‗release to clarification.‘

8 Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans. Hélène Iswolsky [Cambridge, MA; M.I.T. Press, 1968, 1st ed.]; (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984); C. L. Barber, Shakespeare‟s Festive Comedy (Ohio: Cleveland: Princeton University Press, 1959); Peter Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe. (London: Temple Smith, 1977; 2nd ed. Aldershot, 1994, 3rd ed. 2009, Ashgate). All subsequent citations refer to the 3rd edition. 9 Stuart Gillespie and Neil Rhodes, Shakespeare and Elizabethan Popular Culture, 3 10 Robert Weimann, Shakespeare and the Popular Tradition in the Theater, (Baltimore and London : The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978); François Laroque, Shakespeare‟s Festive World, Elizabethan seasonal entertainment and the professional stage, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). 11 Barber, Shakespeare‟s Festive Comedy, 4.

91 Barber, as Northrop Frye before him, has noticed the similarity in Shakespeare‘s plays to the Aristophanic festival tradition and the importance of the recognition of the seasons,‘ of nature‘s influence on man.12 According to Barber ―the clarification achieved by the festive comedies is concomitant to the release they dramatize: a heightened awareness of the relation between man and ―nature,‖ nature celebrated on holiday.‖13 Holiday, according to Elizabethan sensibilities, implied a contrast with ―everyday.‖ The relation and the antithesis of holiday and everyday are accentuated14 especially in Falstaff, in whom Shakespeare combined the Saturnalian implications of both the tradition of the clown‘s part and the Lord of Misrule in a more drastic and more complex way than anywhere else.15 The contrast of carnivalesque holiday and everyday has also appeared as a crucial idea in Bakhtin‘s work. It has excited interest and proved to be very influential in the field of early modern popular culture.16 Bakhtin presented the public with a number of new discoveries; the most important one was revealing the guiding principle—the ‗culture of popular laughter‘—behind Rabelais‘ artistic vision. Three other main theses can be distinguished in Bakhtin‘s book: first, the sociological thesis about the importance of the ‗culture of folk humour‘ or ‗marketplace culture;‘ the second is the chronological thesis, the rise of folk humour‘ in the Middle Ages and its decline or ‗disintegration‘ in the seventeenth century; the third is the political thesis about the importance of laughter or ‗carnivalization‘ as an expression of the unofficial, the subversive.17 Basing a ‗philosophy of the body‘ (‗the bodily lower stratum‘), the ‗grotesque body,‘ ‗the language and morphology of carnival‘ on Renaissance material (the work of Rabelais) Bakhtin opened a new perspective in the study of culture.18 Bakhtin emphasized that he was not studying medieval culture as a whole, but only popular culture, and he speaks of a ‗sharp break‘ between carnivalesque and official culture, although he contradicts himself several times and writes about the interaction between the two cultures and its result as ―reaffirmation through negation.‖

12 Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism, Four Essays (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957). 13 Barber, Shakespeare‟s Festive Comedy, 8. 14 Ibid., 192, 193. 15 Ibid., 13. 16 Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 173. 17 Peter Burke ―Civilization, Disorder, Discipline: Three Case-Studies in History and Social Theory‖, Theoria 87 (1996) 21-35; and in Strath and Witoszek ed. The Postmodern Challenge (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1999), 101. 18 Bakhtin‘s ideas were influential in Russia as well, Russian historians were inspired by him. For example: Aron Y. Gurevich, ‘Bachtin und der Carneval,‘ Euphorion (85, 1991), 423-30.

92 Different phases of criticism followed the initial enthusiasm for Bakhtin‘s influential ideas. The adjective ‗popular‘ when applied to the medieval and Renaissance culture of laughter seems a rhetorical exaggeration; the heroes of the book, ‗the people‘ or ‗the folk‘ who participated in festivals included three elite groups: the junior clergy, lawyer‘s clerks and university students. Bakhtin is blamed for portraying ‗the people‘ with unvarying uniformity.19 Aron Gurevich, the outstanding Russian researcher on the Middle Ages who could be regarded to a certain extent as Bakhtin‘s follower has also disputed this point and the one-sidedness of other aspects of Bakhtin‘s theories. According to him Bakhtin‘s understanding of medieval official culture is extremely one-sided (unbalanced): ‗monolithically serious,‘ ‗gloomy,‘ ‗full of fear,‘ dogmatized, filled with piety and veneration.20 At the same time popular culture was for Bakhtin fearlessly merry, inverting all stable attitudes and notions through laughter.21 When he underscores the ‗frozen, petrified seriousness‘ of clerical culture, he is not dealing with the Middle Ages proper, as medieval culture was much more complicated.22 His other objection is Bakhtin‘s strong shift of emphasis on the opposition of popular to ecclesiastical culture. According to Gurevich popular culture should not be understood simplistically, because it was not just an opposition. The inversions of ‗serious‘ religion and its rituals by no means ignored or denied the dominant religious culture; they rather proceeded from it and ultimately affirmed it. The paradigm of conflicts between popular and learned culture also attracted Gurevich‘s attention who followed debates on ‗popular culture‘ with critical alertness, and prepared his own synthetic overviews on the topic.23 He has looked at medieval culture as a system of signs and this connects his approach to anthropology. He has worked with literary texts as sources, by a process of close reading. His awareness of literary forms and genres is one of his major strengths.24

19 Gábor Klaniczay, ―The Carnival Spirit : Bakhtin‘s Theory on the Culture of Popular Laughter‖ in The Uses of Supernatural Power, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990), 21. For further discussion of this problem see Mary Ellen Lamb, The Popular Culture of Shakespeare, Spenser and Jonson (London: Routledge, 2006). Lamb describes popular culture as ―simulacrum‖ or ―production‖ rather than representation of a homogenous culture. 20 Aron Gurevich, Medieval popular culture: Problems of belief and perception, trans. János M. Bak and Paul A. Hollingsworth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 178. 21 Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 82. 22 Gurevich, Medieval popular culture, 179. 23 Gurevich, Medieval popular culture, xx. 24 Peter Burke, Editorial Preface to Aron Gurevich, Medieval popular culture, 2.

93 According to Gurevich ―popular culture should not be regarded as a single entity distinct from official or ‗learned‘ culture: popular culture itself was composed of widely divergent components and tendencies.‖25 He has discovered the ‗junction‘ of these two traditions; they can be seen in a complex and contradictory synthesis which he has called a ―dialogue-conflict‖ of the two forms of consciousness. ―Both traditions must be understood in their dialectic and in their historical mutual influence, for they existed as the inseparably linked poles of a single cultural universe.‖26 In his opinion although Bakhtin opened up the notions of grotesque and ‗grotesque realism,‘27 he erred in interpreting it solely as comic, merry and light.28 Gurevich insists that ―[m]edieval grotesque is always ambivalent and represents the attempt to apprehend the world in two hypostases—sacred and secular, sublime and base, serious and playful.‖ Gurevich thinks that ―grotesque was a style of medieval man‘s thinking in general, embracing the entire culture, beginning from the lower, folkloristic level and continuing up to the level of official church culture.‖29 The critical remarks of Gurevich here are a bit exaggerated because, when it came to grotesque features of the carnival tradition, Bakhtin also contradicted himself as he often emphasized the ambivalent nature of carnival. In 1968 Bakhtin‘s work was translated and thanks to this, a group of western historians discovered Bakhtin, started to work with his ideas. Thus, the study of popular culture in the Middle Ages and early modern times became an independent branch of research.30 Peter Burke‘s book, first published in 1978, is the methodologically most refined overview of the field of popular culture. He classifies the social range of the two cultures in a more precise, but essentially similar manner. He thinks that it is a false premise to assume that at the end of the Middle Ages and at the beginning of the early modern period there was an elite culture for the clergy and the aristocracy and a ‗popular‘ one for the peasants and common people in the towns. Everybody was a participant in popular culture, although it is true that it was the only one for the majority of the people, while the minority of the people, those with privileges had a second, elite culture based on literacy, traditions and institutions as well. He also writes about the ‗amphibious‘ nature of these people—the humanist-educated males—who, in spite of their elite culture, grew up listening to old wives‘ tales.

25 Ibid. xviii. 26 Ibid.,xx. 27 I will allude to Bakhtin‘s ideas a lot in the next section about the comic and grotesque body and Falstaff. 28 Bakhtin, Rabelais, 55. 29 Gurevich, Medieval popular culture, 208. 30 Burke, ―Civilization, Disorder, Discipline‖, 102.

94 Burke defines culture as ―a system of shared attitudes and values and the symbolic forms (performances, artifacts) in which they are expressed or embodied. Culture in this sense is part of a total way of life but not identical with it.‖ As for popular culture, he writes: ―it is perhaps best defined initially at least—in a negative way as unofficial culture, the culture of the non-elite.‖ 31 There have been other accessible definitions of ―popular culture‖ by historians of this topic; a good example can be found in Gábor Klaniczay‘s book about the Uses of Supernatural Power: ―If we define ‗popular culture‘ (whether shared or rejected by civilized elites) as an orally transmitted, ritually regulated, community-bound culture, opposed to the written, institutionalized, ceremonious, ‗elite‘ cultural traditions, it can prove useful as a concept for historical interpretation.‖32 Natalie Zemon Davis formulated the following definition: ―In the 15th to 17th centuries popular culture acquired a definition: it was the culture of the lower social strata in the process of secularization that also found its expression in written or printed form.‖33 E. P. Thompson 34 has analyzed the interactions between ‗above‘ and ‗below‘: the lower and higher status groups, and he introduced the notion of ‗cultural hegemony.‘ 35 Robert Mandrou and Carlo Ginzburg also analyzed the ‗history of below.‘36 In spite of the fact that Bakhtin made a major contribution to the study of popular culture, Peter Burke insists that there are problematic elements in his ideas. In his opinion Bakhtin‘s history is thin in the sense that it is based on a limited range of sources.37 Bakhtin is also vague about periods and social groups; he slips backwards and forwards between the terms ‗Middle Ages‘ and ‗Renaissance‘ in a confusing way.38 In certain parts of the book he underlines the view of the Carnival as a safety valve, supporting the social order, while at other times he stresses the subversive power of humour, the aim of which is

31 Burke, Popular Culture, 302. 32 Klaniczay, The Uses of Supernatural Power, 3. 33 Natalie Zemon Davis, Society and Culture in Early Modern France, (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1975), 190. 34 The most influential of the studies made in the 1960s in England was E.P. Thompson's Making of the English Working Class (1963). He published an article, ‗History from Below‘in The Times Literary Supplement (April 7, 1966, 269-80). 35 Cf. also: Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe, 1994. xvii. 36 Cf. Robert Mandrou, De la culture populaire en France aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles. La bibliothèque bleue de Troyes (Paris: Armand Colin, 1964). Geneviève Bolle me, La bibliothèque bleue.Littèrature populaire en France du XVIIe au XIXe siècle, (Paris: Julliard, 1971); Carlo Ginzburg, The cheese and the worms the cosmos of a sixteenth century miller (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980). 37 Burke, ―Civilization, Disorder, Discipline‖, 109. 38 Burke, ―Civilization, Disorder, Discipline‖, 107.

95 ―to overcome by laughter.‖39 Burke says that Bakhtin‘s shift of empasis ―comes close to redefining the popular as the rebel in all of us.‖40 Burke in contrast with Bakhtin has not stressed the opposition between the folk and the elite; he emphasized that popular culture was shared both by the upper classes and the folk until around the sixteenth century. The elite classes supposedly retreated from popular culture during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Burke‘s above-mentioned thesis on the modern ‗reform of popular culture‘ became very influential.41 According to him the initiative for reform came originally from the elites, especially the upper clergy, before it spread more widely through society.42 Robert Muchembled in his book on popular and elite culture in early modern France wrote about the active role of government in changing popular culture43 and emphasized the means of suppressing and disciplining popular culture, resulting in a devastating ‗acculturation.‘44 Muchembled‘s thesis has been accepted rather critically, the new academic consensus rather opted for what Peter Burke described as the ‗resilience‘ of popular culture. In his words ―churchmen seem to have been condemning popular culture in much the same terms from the early days of Christianity onwards. This tradition of condemnation suggests that popular culture is remarkably resilient.‖45 Popular culture is flexible and adaptable; it cannot be absolutely controlled or reformed by the elite. In his ‗synthesis‘ Burke calls attention to the emerging problems of the reseach of the history of popular culture and the notions of ‗culture‘ and ‗popular‘; he also writes about the new fields of research in the revised reprint in 1994 and in the third edition in 2009. Much of the popular culture of the period was oral culture, so the popular culture of early modern Europe is elusive; the documents are lacking and untrustworthy.46 Burke concludes that a direct approach to popular culture is impossible, and puts emphasis on the role of intermediaries: ―an oblique approach to popular culture via mediators like

39 Bakhtin, Rabelais, 394. 40 Burke, Popular Culture, 8. This romantic appeal to revolt is probably the consequence of Bakhtin‘s life and work full of hardships in the Soviet Union. 41 Two anthologies, in particular, elaborate and complicate Burke‘s paradigm: Barry Reay, Popular Culture in Seventeenth-century England (London: Croom Helm, 1985); Tim Harris, Popular Culture in England, c. 1500-1850 (London: Macmillan, 1995). 42 Cf. Lamb, The Popular Culture, 3. She emphasizes that there were different, sometimes overlapping subgroups of the dominant culture: the humanist-educated male elite learned in Latin, the midling sort and the aristocracy. 43 Robert Muchembled, Popular Culture and Elite Culture in France 1400 -1750 (Baton and London: Luisina State University Press, 1985). 44 Gábor Klaniczay, ―A Cultural History of Witchcraft‖ in Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft 5 (2010), 188-212. 45 Burke, Popular Culture, 302. 46 Ibid., 103.

96 singers and storytellers, actors, carvers and painters who transmitted popular culture is the least likely to put us on the wrong track.‖47 Concerning the problem of the ‗popular,‘ he stresses the importance of the varieties of cultures and points out that instead of the division between the cultures of the elite and the different cultures of people, cultural historians should concentrate on the interactions rather than the division between the two.48 This history of ordinary people and their powers to adapt, trespass, and subvert whatever is directed at them makes much of sharing, compromise and interchange. The historians of popular culture have recognized the importance of compromise, fluidity and interchange as well.49 Avoiding the word ‗popular‘ the expression ‗history from below‘ can be used, but this notion is also ambiguous.50 Burke gives different examples for it: a history of politics ‗from below‘ might involve a study of the ‗subordinate classes‘ but it might be concerned with the provinces; the history of the Church from below might deal with the laity, whatever their level of culture.51 There have been radical objections to the idea of popular culture, two of which have been also highlighted by Peter Burke. The first has been made by the American anthropologist William Christian who suggested that the elite and the people should be replaced by the notion of centre and periphery. He used these terms in his study of vows, relics and shrines in sixteenth-century Spain.52 This new approach has proved to be also problematic and ambiguous.53 The notion of ‗centre‘ for example is difficult to define since the spatial centres and power centres do not always coincide.54 The second objection has been corcerned with ‗culture‘ and has been formulated by the French historian Roger Chartier. The concept of culture has proved to be also problematic, because it is a system with vague boundaries. The great value of Chartier‘s many essays on ‗the cultural uses of print‘ is that he keeps this vagueness in mind.55 Chartier argues that it is pointless to try to identify sets of texts or other objects as

47 Ibid., 119. 48 Burke, Popular Culture, 7. 49 Steven L. Kaplan ed., Understanding Popular Culture (Berlin, New York; Amsterdam: Mouton, 1984), 15. 50 Burke, Popular Culture, 2009. 9. 51 Ibid. 52 William A. Christian, Local Religion in 16th Century Spain (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981). 53 Burke, Popular Culture, 12. 54 Ibid., 13. 55 Robert Chartier, The Cultural Uses of Print in Early Modern France (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987).

97 ‗popular‘ from the start but study the specific ways in which these objects have been appropriated in particular places and times and by particular groups.56 Burke argues that the term ‗culture‘ can be defined in a narrower and in a wider sense. Art, literature and music can belong to the narrower, the wider sense of culture focuses rather on the values and symbols in the everyday life of ordinary people and the special performances for elites and it is sometimes called ‗socio-cultural‘ history.‘ But it is often difficult to draw precise boundary between the wider and narrower sense of culture.57 In spite of the above-mentioned problems, interest in the history of popular culture has not flagged; after different phases of criticism, integration followed. My study also bears testimony to ongoing interest in this topic. In the phase of assimilation and transformation, it was useful and pleasurable to work with the thought-provoking theories of popular culture and related topics like the changing function of laughter and of the grotesque body, the rise of civilization, and the rise of a disciplinary society. I have narrowed the previous topics down to a shorter period (1580-1616) and a geographical area (England) and section of the past enriched by new evidence. Challenging the learned culture, medieval and early modern popular culture also boasts of a host of cultural forms and traditions. Its symbolism reflects not only ancient beliefs and fears but also the basic truths of man‘s existence.58 Kemp‘s personality and career, the oral and gestural nature of his art include strongly popular elements; we can find them in his various vivid and symbolic appearances, in his jigs and morris dancing, among his roles, in the sensual Falstaff and his fellows, the rogues and conycatchers of the literature of the Elizabethan underworld and in the ancient fool figure of the jestbooks.59 The players and vagrants, petty criminals had an important role in vagrant, oral literature and in Elizabethan popular culture as a whole. Players and vagabonds were all considered to be irregular, disordered and potentially subversive because of their ‗uncontrollable‘

56 Roger Chartier, ―Culture as Appropriation: Popular Cultural Uses in Early Modern France‖ in Kaplan ed. Understanding Popular Culture, 229-255. The same idea is expressed by Burke in Popular Culture, 2009. 14. 57 Ibid., 17-18. 58 Natalie Zemon Davis Decentering History: Local Storytelling and Cultural Crossing in a Global World in Natalie Zemon Davis Annual Lectures Series: Divine Presence in Spain and Western Europe 1450-1980. 16th November 2010, Budapest: CEU. In her talk Natalie Zemon Davis highlighted the complexity of the relationship of analyzing local and global history; described the relevance of the expansion of the role of history which includes the study of working people and other non-elite, researching the cultural crossings across boundaries. Kemp‘s life and career also represented the cultural crossings of the boundaries of Elizabethan society. 59 I will take a closer look at the ‗green man‘ or ‗wild man in the forest‘ tradition and also at the figure of Robin Hood in Chapter 3.

98 nature.60 Kemp followed this tradition throughout his life; he travelled a lot, he was free and spontaneous in his relationship with the audience in the theatre and in his long morris dancing when he wandered through the countryside. He also took advantage of the commercialization of morris dancing and popular culture. His most important, longest and most complex role as Falstaff also emphasizes that he was at home within the popular tradition. The above-mentioned concepts of early modern popular culture helped me in many ways in my research concerning the role and importance of William Kemp in Elizabethan England. They justified my choice of Kemp, the most exciting figure of the Shakespearean fool actors, who left behind the fewest documents and sources and whose life story is obscured by questions and incomplete information. The oral and gestural nature of his art: his dancing, theatrical roles and jigs—all of which were full of satire—would have also become problematic if I wanted to work only on the grounds of ‗traditional history.‘61 The special concern of scholars of popular culture with the whole range of human activity and their interdisciplinary approach encouraged me to collaborate with cultural historians, historical anthropologists, literary critics and scholars of stage history of early modern Europe especially England and to work with their scholarship.62 With the above- mentioned methods I try to reconstruct the mosaic of Kemp‘s biography from various contexts of English Renaissance cultural life.

60 Paola Pugliatti, Beggary and theatre in early modern England (London, Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2003), 2. 61 Ginzburg, The cheese and the worms; Natalie Zemon Davis, The Return of Martin Guerre (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983); Marcell Sebők, Humanista a határon: a késmárki Sebastian Ambrosius története, 1554-1600 (Budapest: L'Harmattan, 2007.); Marcell Sebők, ed., Történeti antropológia. Módszertani írások és esettanulmányok. [Historical Anthropology. Methodological and Case Studies] (Budapest: Replika Könyvek, 2000). Marcell Sebők‘s biography of Sebastian Ambrosius, does not rely on ‗traditional history‘ either but it is rather a reconstruction of the mosaics of the various contexts of the cosmos of sixteenth-century Hungarian intellectuals. Carlo Ginzburg‘s highly infuential and also irregular biography of a sixteenth century miller, Natalie Zemon Davis‘s exciting and outstanding life story of Martin Guerre and the methodological and case studies on historical anthropology also encouraged me to cope with the methodological problems in my research. 62 Peter Burke, ed., New perspectives on historical writing (London: Polity Press, 2001), 6.

99 2. CLOTHING-BODY-DANCE

In order to reveal the functions of the symbols and the various aspects of the appearance of different kinds of fools in Kemp‘s art and personality, I have made an inventory of the clothing of dancers, court jesters, actors and natural fools. We do not know much about Kemp‘s clothes, except for the illustration of Nine Daies Wonder where he is noticeably wearing the morris dancers‘s typical costume. He wanted to emphasize that he belonged to the morris dancers and the popular tradition together with Robin Hood and Maid Marian. Another invaluable resource is the so-called Betley window featuring contemporary morris dancers on its panes.63 Although this inventory doesn‘t follow a line of narrative, it is rather a patchwork of images, the illustrations of medieval psalters, the subsisting pictures and paintings of Kemp‘s contemporary comic fellows, the different medieval and early modern festive occasions in which he played various roles also teach one about the traditional appearance of fools. The examination of the above mentioned illustrations, the usage of colours, the green Kendal material and the accessories in the medieval and early modern times contributes to putting together the jigsaw puzzle where every piece is another feature of how the fools presented themselves in the contemporary spheres. Fools who were the well-known representatives of early modern popular culture appeared in different colours and in various costumes. Their appearance carried a definite message; it had symbolic significance in this culture.64 According to Bakhtin, Kemp and his fellows—the natural fools and the comedians—can be grasped metaphorically. They used different ways of communication within popular culture.65 They communicated with their bodies, faces, hairstyle, clothes, the colours, the patterns and accessories they wore.66 Certain kinds of clothes denoted certain kinds of people, indicative not only of their place

63 Betley or Tollet window and the characters can be seen in the V&A Museum. (http://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/index.html). Last consulted: 2011-09-01. 64 Gábor Klaniczay, ―Fashionable Beards and Heretic Rags‖ in The Uses of Supernatural Power, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990), 51-77. Klaniczay highlights the symbolic significance of garments and appearance, he concentrates especially on hair and beard. For further discussion of Renaissance symbols consult György Endre Szőnyi, Tibor Fabiny and József Pál, eds. A reneszánsz szimbolizmus: ikonográfia, emblematika, Shakespeare (Ikonológia és Műértelmezés 2) (Szeged: JATE, 1987); György Endre Szőnyi,. and Rowland Wymer, ed., The Iconography of Power: Ideas and Images of Rulership on the English Renaissance Stage Papers in English & American Studies 8. (Szeged: JATEPress, 2000); György Endre Szőnyi Ladislaus Löb and István Petrovics; ed., Forms of Identity. Definitions and Changes (Szeged: JATEPress, 1994). 65 For further discussion of the playful elements of the fools‘s communication see Johann Huizinga, Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Elements in Culture (New York: Harper and Row, 1970.) 66 Bakhtin, Rabelais, 105.

100 within the social hierarchy, but also of their profession as we can see in Kemp‘s case. The fact that for many theatre companies the wardrobe formed the largest and most expensive part of their possessions shows that apparel was an essential part of social identity.67

Nine Daies Wonder

We can glean some information about Kemp‘s costume and the contemporary morris dancers from the woodcut on the title page of his Nine Daies Wonder and from the descriptions in his diary.68 He has got long full beard and long hair, which was typical of actors and Puritans often railed at it.69 He doesn‘t have short or shaven hair as the natural fools, instead, he appears to be the representative of the morris dancers and actors from the world of Elizabethan popular culture. Kemp has on his head a high brimmed hat, crowned, narrow and decorated on the right side with a bright and colourful feather.

The woodcut of the title page of Nine Daies Wonder (1600)

67 For further discussion of the fools‘ clothes see Korhonen, Fellows of Infinite Jest: The Fool in Renaissance England (Turku: University of Turku, 1999), 164-175; M. J. Preston and M. G. Smith, ed., Morrice dancers at Reversby: reproduced from the manuscript in the British Library, Centre for English Cultural Tradition and Language (Sheffield: University of Sheffield, 1976). 68Cf. Kemp, Nine Daies Wonder, title page. 69 William Prynne, Unloveliness of Love-locks and Health Sickness (1628). Prynne was a vociferous opponent of long hair.

101

Kemp with Slye from the title page of his Nine Daies Wonder in Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington DC.

Tom Slye, Kemp‘s taborer is wearing simple street clothes – a jerkin and knee breeches, with a wide-brimmed high crowned hat; he holds his pipe in his left hand. Kemp is wearing the typical morris coat, a vine-patterned waist-length jacket with long dagged points attached to the upper arms and freely flowing at the elbows. The sleeves were special: if the dancer‘s hands hung loosely at his sides, the sleeves would trail to the ground, but when he danced with arms raised and pointing upwards they would flow and swirl about him. They appear to be made of two parts: there is a normal jacket sleeve covering his arms down to the wrists, and then there is a separate length of material that flows down from the shoulders. This is called the ‗dagged‘ sleeve and was, in the sixteenth century, a morisco fashion used in masquerades and processions throughout Europe.70 The long, special sleeves emphasize the dynamism, vitality and spectacular feature of the dance. As they flow and swirl around in the fierce movements of the dancers, they symbolize a circle in which all kinds of people are invited to participate during the popular festivities. In situations such as these Kemp appears as a professional dancer, a real representative of Elizabethan popular culture. Rafe in Beaumont and Fletcher's Knight of the Burning Pestle also gives us some indication, outside of account books, of urban morris costume, describing the dancers ―[w]ith bels on legs, and napkins cleane unto your shoulders tide, / With Scarfes and Garters as you please.‖71 Generally the accounts of the guilds mention special coats and bells within their inventory of morris dancing equipment, these were the unique and expensive components of the guild‘s costumes.72

70 See John Forrest, The History of the Morris Dancing 1458-1750 (Cambridge: John Forrest – James Clarke&Co. Ltd., 1999). 136. 71 Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, Knight of the Burning Pestle, [1613], Michael Hattaway, ed. (New Mermaids, New York: W. W. Norton, 2002), 19. 72 Forrest, History of the Morris Dancing, 136.

102 Although these coats were specially made, the long sleeve material could be substituted by pinning material to sleeves or shoulders (i.e. Rafe describes the dancer with ‗napkins cleane unto your shoulders tide‘). Forrest assumes in his book about The History of the Morris Dancing that this can be the origin of the later practice of carrying handkerchiefs in certain regions.73 Dancers (perhaps poorer rural dancers) first substituted pinned material on their ordinary coats then they held the material in their hands.74 On Will Somers‘ portrait we can see Somers and the special handkerchief with bells tucked into his belt.

Francis Delaram, William Somer‟s portrait, c.1615-24. Engraving in British Museum.

Rafe also suggests that scarves and garters are additional decorative elements for the dancers. He himself wears a ‗crossed Skarfe‘, meaning one over each shoulder, tied at waist, and crossed over his breast. Kemp notes in his diary that the maid from Chelmsford ―would haue the olde fashion, with napkin on her armes‖ suggesting that napkins could be used as an alternative to the ‗morris‘ sleeve, which corroborates the description in Rafe‘s speech.75 Kemp‘s knee breeches baloon out from the waist to the knee, most of his calves are covered by bells. He had half boots called buskins‘ to cope with the dangerous state of roads, he mentioned it several times:

73 Forrest, History of the Morris Dancing, 137. 74 Ibid. 75 William Kemp, Nine Daies Wonder: performed in a Daunce from London to Norwich, [London, 1600]; ed. John Bowyer Nichols & Son, with an introduction and notes by the Rev. Alexander Dyce, (London: Printed for the Camden Society, Parliement Street, M.DCCC.XL.), 11.

103 With hey and ho, through thicke and thin, The hobby horse quite forgotten, I follow‘d, as I did begin, Altough the way were rotten. 76

Forrest thinks that the special coats (probably with dagged sleeves) are as old as the morris in England, and Wiles assumes that the appearance of morris coats goes back to the beginnings of the Robin Hood legend in the Middle Ages.77 It is probable that Robin Hood and his group - the morris dancers - wore the morris coat and bells, and that their coat was made of green Kendal. Kemp‘s vine-patterned coat may have contained green colour as well. The fools‘ and dancers‘ most typical colours were green, yellow, or light colours as Philip Stubbes describes:

[f]irst, all the wild-heads of the parish, conventing together, choose them a Grand- Captain of all Mischief whom they ennoble with the title ‗my Lord of Misrule‘, and him they crown with great solemnity, and adopt for their king. Once chosen, the Lord/king himself selects anything from twenty to a hundred men to attend upon him. All of these ‗he investeth with his liveries of green, yellow or some other light wanton colour‘. His young attendants also don ribbons, lace, jewels and dancing bells. The Lord and his company then march towards the church and churchyard, their pipers piping, their drummers thundring, their stumps dancing, their bells jingling, their handkerchieves swinging about their heads like madmen, their hobby-horses and other monsters skirmishing amongst the rout.78

Bells had become a fashion item in the twelfth century, first among the aristocracy, and then among lower social classes as well, but from the fourteenth century onward this fashion started to look and sound vulgar. Fools and morris dancers continued to wear them, however bells had been associated with folly since the middle of the fifteenth century.79 Bells on legs and arms, often used as indicative of morris dance, are common costume elements in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries for dancers who are definitely not performing morris as well. Fools wore the bells scattered all over their bodies and costumes; the most typical place was the hood with its long ears and pointed collar. Like morris dancers, fools could tie them on their legs, and many decorated their sleeves with bells. A parallel between fools and domestic animals can be seen here: dogs and monkeys were also often dressed up with bells. In accounts concerning costumes and props, the specific characters of the morris dance appeared: four knights - green, white, red and black - a fool, and a lady, or six

76 Kemp, Nine Daies Wonder, 12. 77 David Wiles, The Early Plays of Robin Hood (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1981), 11-12. 78 Philip Stubbes, The Anatomie of Abuses, ed. Margaret, Jane Kidnie (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies in conjunction with Renaissance English Text Society, 2002), 121. 79 Korhonen, Fellows of Infinite Jest, 181.

104 dancers, a fool, and two ladies identified as Beauty and Venus. Forrest asserts that ―the morris was pure theatre, the outcome of any contention was preset, all action was stylized and rehearsed, and the attention of the audience was on the affective qualities of the aesthetics and of the execution of planned motion. The transformation was so complete that many of the morris dancing forms were parodies or grotesqueries; they were yet one step further abstracted from genuine combat actions‖80. The costumes were often used only once because the spangles and the bells attached to flimsy silken fabrics were usually ruined by the end of the performance because of the continuous energetic movement.

The Tollet Window

The so called Betley or Tollet window is illustrated with morris dancers. The window was probably made betweeen 1550 and 1621.81 The small, diamond-shaped panels of stained glass are an invaluable source for my research: they show the articles of clothing which the morris dancers wore in Kemp‘s age in their authentic colours. Several scholars, including Francis Douce sometime Keeper of Manuscripts in the British Museum, have examined and analyzed the window. According to him the Tollet window probably exhibits the oldest representation of an English May game and morris dance. Douce supposed that the window might have been painted in the youthful days of Henry VIII, when he delighted in May games; but it must be observed that the dresses and costume of some of the figures are certainly of an older period and may belong to the reign of Edward the Fourth.82 So the window was probably made two centuries before the eighteenth- century mansion of Betley Hall in Staffordshire, home of the Tollet family was built.83 Douce pointed out that some of the figures in window panels are thought to be based on an engraving by the prolific German printmaker Israhel van Meckenem the Younger (1440/1445-1503).

80 Forrest, History of Morris Dancing, 215. 81 Tollet is in the possession of Lord Bridgeman, now in Minsterley, Shropshire. 82 Francis Douce, Illustrations of Shakspeare, and of ancient manner: with dissertations on the clowns and fools of Shakspeare; on the collection of popular tales entitled Gesta Romanorum; and on the English Morris Dance (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees and Orme, 1807), vol. 2, 217. 83 Godfrey N. Brown, This old house: a domestic biography; living conservation at Betley Court (Betley: Betley Court Gallery, 1987). According to Brown they were salvaged when the building was demolished in 1783, and leaded into a window in a new house built on the site.

105 . Israel Meckenem, book engraving, c. 1490.

Woodcut in the Strasburg Almanac, 1496.

106

The original Tollet window

Main Figures

There are twelve figures altogether surrounding the maypole on the window. The figures, all of them dancers, are arranged around a tall, decorated maypole. George Tollet, the eighteenth-century owner of the window, thought that various layers of society were meant to be represented on his window. The earliest source of information about the Window is Tollet‘s set of comments which he included in notes to Henry IV Part 1 in 1778.84 Viscount Charles Bridgeman, a local historian whose grandmother had been one of

84 George Tollet, ― Mr Tollet‘s Opinion Concerning The Morris Dancers Upon His Window‖ Notes at the end of William Shakespeare, Henry IV ed. Johnson and Steeven (London: 1778) 2nd edition. Edward J. Nicol

107 George Tollet IV's seven daughters, also commented on the characters in a Note on the Betley Morris Dance Window. 85

The first figure is a witty fool-jester judging from the smart expression on his face and his pretty brightly coloured costume often worn by the artificial fools. He has a bauble in his hand, topped perhaps with an animal head; the fool‘s bauble and the carved head with the ears are also yellow. There are several bells on his dark blue hood with ears, edged with yellow at its scalloped bottom, and on his red doublet striped with darker red and edged with yellow. At the elbow there is a long tail at the back of his jacket. His girdle is yellow, the left leg of his hose is yellow and the right leg is blue; his shoes are red. Like most of the other figures, he wears bright and strong colours: red, dark blue and lemon- yellow. There are also bells on his ankles and on his elbows. His costume shows strong animal symbolism: he is wearing a hood which symbolizes a coxcomb with ass's ears on his head. The top of the hood rises in the form of a cock's neck and head with a ball on the latter. Fools often wore a hood, or a cap. The fool's hood, cucullus in Latin, was a normal medieval garment which had been abandoned by ordinary people, but survived in the costumes of specific groups: monks and fools wore the hood. Many fools wore animal tails on their clothes as well.86 Foxtails were the most common; they could be carried on a stick or on the fool's bauble, or they could be sewn into his hood or coat. Enid Welsford and E. K. Chambers have interpreted the animal symbols in the fool's accoutrements as remnants of ancient pagan cults of nature in which the fool

"Some Notes on the History of the Betley Window" in Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, Vol. VII No. 2 (1953). 85 Charles Bridgeman ―Note on the Betley Morris Dance Window‖ in William Salt Archaeological Society New Series, (1923) Vol. 24, 3-19.

108 character would have played the role of a sacrificial victim.87 Korhonen does not agree with these suppositions concerning pagan cults. I share her opinion because other aspects of animal symbolism are more accentuated, most importantly the fool‘s close connection with the animal sphere. In spite of the fact that he belonged to human society, his behaviour and abnormal physique connected him with the realm of lower creatures and nature, e.g. the woods. Animals also acted as the fool‘s friends; they had an especially intimate relationship with each other. The fool‘s costume also symbolized the negative moral characteristic features of animals like shrewdness, lechery, agression.88

The second figure is a dancer in a yellow morris coat with the special long sleeves. According to Tollett he impersonates a nobleman while Bridgeman‘s opinion is that this dancer represented a ―Moorish Morris dancer.‖89 He, as the other dancers as well has long hair, has a silver coronet, purple cap with a red feather and a golden knop. The doublet is yellow, with yellow and red morris sleeves. He has a red hose striped with brown or deeper red. His cod-piece is yellow; the hose is red. He has bells under his knees; his shoes are dark blue or black.

87 See Enid Welsford, The Fool: His Social and Literary History (New York: Anchor Books, 1961), 380; Edmund Kerchever Chambers, The Medieval Stage vol.1. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967), 386-87. 88 Korhonen, Fellows of Infinite Jest, 134. 89 Bridgeman, ―Note on the Betley Morris Dance Window‖, 5.

109

The third figure has special sleeves as well. According to Tollett and Bridgeman he is a Spaniard or Fleming. He has long, straight fair hair and wears a red and dark blue bonnet. He has dark red special streamers which may be a version of morris sleeves, a red tight jacket, a white stomacher with red lace. His hand gestures indicate energetic dancing movements. He wears a yellow hose striped with blue. The lower part of the hose is dark blue. His shoes are light brown and there are bells under his knees.

According to Tollett the fourth figure is a franklin.90 He has long, curly brown hair and wears a red and yellow jacket, a shirt with puffy sleeves, and a hose with dotted endings. He has red stockings, yellow shoes, and bells at the ankle.

90 Tollet, ―Mr Tollet‘s Opinion‖, 4. A franklin was someone who owned land but was not a member of the nobility.

110

The next pane depicts a maypole which is painted yellow and black in spiral lines.91 St. George's red cross, or the banner of England, is displayed on the pole along with a white pennon or streamer emblazoned with a red cross. Tollet identified the latter with the flag of St. James of Compostella, the patron saint of Spain.92 Lawrence Finny has commented that the wording on the scroll corresponds to the words of the King of the May who is played by Rafe, the grocer's apprentice in Beaumont and Fletcher's play The Knight of the Burning Pestle ―London to Thee I do present the Mery Month of May.‖ 93 The erection of a maypole was always a prelude to morris dancing. An Elizabethan describes how a stranger, coming to the town, saw ―a quintessence (beside the fool and the Maid Marian) of all the picked youth, strained out of an whole Endship, footing the morris about a may-pole. And he, not hearing the minstrelsy for the fiddling, the tune for the sound, nor the pipe for the noise of the tabor, bluntly demanded if they were not all beside themselves that they so leaped and skipped without an occasion.‖94 David Wiles, in his examination of the roots of the Robin Hood legend and the early plays of Robin Hood, described and collected the sources about Robin Hood‘s clothes as well.95 Robin Hood‘s men were often morris dancers especially during the May games. Wiles assumes that the maypole had its part in the Robin Hood game. 96 Some of

91 The May-pole derived its name from the ‗maying‘ and, as Stubbes confirms, has no particular association with May the First. Stubbes, Anatomy of Abuses, 36. 92 Ibid. 93 W. E. St. Lawrence Finny ―Medieval Games and Gaderyngs at Kingston-upon-Thames‖, reprinted in Journal of the British Society of Master Glass Painters, Vol. VI. No. I (1935), 125. The May-pole derived its name from the 'maying' and, as Stubbes confirms, has no particular association with May the First. 93 Ibid. 93 Finny ―Medieval Games and Gaderyngs‖, 125. 94 Stubbes, Anatomy of Abuses, 36. 95 Wiles, Early Plays of Robin Hood. 96 Ibid, 13.

111 Wiles‘s most important sources are the accounts from Kingston.97 The accounts from 1520 confirm that the morris men were a separate group, marked out by their uniform. They wore coats of spangled fustian and bells on their garters.98 Stubbes‘ pole, though ‗sometime‘ painted, is ‗covered all over with flowers and herbs,‘ and green boughs are bound onto it after it has been erected. As an emblem of summer and the natural world, such a pole obviously lends itself to a game played by the Lord of the greenwood.

The sixth figure is Tom, the piper, the musician or minstrel. 99 He has long brown hair, a red and white cap with a long white and yellow feather. He wears a brownish vest and a dark blue doublet and brown-yellow checkered hose decorated with a yellow lace. His shoes are brown; he holds a pipe, tabor and drum and also a long sword and silver- tinctured shield in his hand.

97 The contemporary and medieval references and documents were gathered in Stephen Knight, Robin Hood: A Complete Study of the English Outlaw (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994).There were annual ritual activities, plays and games all over England: from Exeter, to Aberdeen, from Norfolk to Wiltshire, from Kingston to Melton and Reading. 98 Stubbes, Anatomy of Abuses, 37. 99 Tollett in his Notes calls him Tom, the piper.

112 The seventh dancer with a brown face and a red and yellow hat and long hair represents a clown, a peasant or yeoman. He is wearing a red jacket with yellow sleeves striped with red and his hose on his muscular thighs is similarly decorated with red stripes; its lower part is deep purple with bells. He has red shoes.

The eighth figure is the hobby horse with a knight rider, both of whom are depicted in festive attire. The man with a golden crown, purple cap and red feather is the King of May. He has long and fair hair; he holds a sword in his mouth, and he has a decorated dark purple mantle with a golden border. There are buttons on his cloak, yellow on the right side and red on the left. This resembles the parti-coloured jacket and hose which are often worn by the court jesters, so here the King of May also appears to be a jester. Kemp certainly played and danced this role, in this case while playing Falstaff, his most remarkable stage role. He embodies the Carnival King, the Lord of Misrule or Summer King, a court jester and a knight. The only difference between this morris dancer and Falstaff is that this dancer is thinner, stronger and more muscular than the butterball knight. The reddish white horse is holding a ladle, ornamented with a ribbon. It was probably used to collect money for the parish. There is also a purple bridle with a golden tassel in his mouth. On the horse a crimson and golden checkered foot-cloth can be seen. The hobby-horse was a distinctive figure in popular culture and a respected and well-loved performer at church ales during the reign of Henry VIII. It came to signify low taste or even illicit sexuality by the close of Elizabeth‘s reign.100 The sword also appears in the musician‘s hand; it is a very essential accessory used in the satire of the medieval chivalric ideals, during mock combat, which is a strong element of the satirical feature of the morris dance. The morris dance satirizes the ideals of

100 Lamb, Popular Culture, 15.

113 chivalry. As the jig does the same with its satire of the absurdity in society and romantic love, it is not accidental that Kemp was the master of both genres.

The next figure may embody Robin Hood, the wooer of Maid Marian who often played the role of the Summer King. Tollett calls him ―Parish clerk or Hocus-Pocus, juggler-attendant upon the master of the hobby-horse.‖101 Robin Hood during the May Games also collected money and was played as a skillful juggler and dancer. The dancer has long, wavy golden hair with a reddish pink flower on his forehead, which is identical with the flower in Maid Marian‘s hand. It may show their close relationship; their face and hair are also similar. He has a dark jacket, a red-and yellow-striped stomacher, a long tight white hose with tiny decorations or a scrip or pouch, in which he might, as treasurer of a company, keep the collected money. He is wearing bells under his knees and on his wrists.

The tenth figure is an innocent or a natural fool with a foolish expression on his face. Tollett calls him ‗The Bavian Fool.‘ He has long, straight, brown hair, he wears a brown hood with a white headdress, a dark blue jacket, a yellow stomacher and white hose

101 Tollet, ―Mr Tollet‘s Opinion‖, 2.

114 with dirty, dark spots on it which indicates his ignorant behaviour; he has bells on his ankles.

Maid Marian, the Queen of May

The eleventh figure who represents Maid Marian or May Queen is clearly a very feminine and central character.102 Several male dancers compete for her favour here as they did in the ring dance and in Elizabethan jigs and the gift for the man of her choice is the flower in her hand.103 She has long, dishevelled, wavy fair hair, a dark purple coif with a golden crown. She is wearing a long, dark blue surcoat; the cuffs are white; the skirts of her robe are yellow. She is holding pink flowers in her hand. Tollett comments that Maid Marian's coif and hairstyle are similar to that of Henry VII's eldest daughter, Margaret, at her wedding with James, King of Scotland.104

The twelfth figure is Friar Tuck, chaplain to Robin Hood, King of May. He appears in a long light brown and dirty white habit. He has a tonsured head and is holding a chaplet of white and red beads in his right hand. His downcast eyes express humility. His corded girdle, and his russet habit probably denote him to be of the Franciscan order. His

102 The evolution of Marian‘s complex character is delienated in Chapter 3. 103 The ring dance is discussed in details in the section about Kemp‘s jigs below. 104 Tollet, ―Mr Tollet‘s Opinion‖, 5.

115 stockings are red; his girdle is decorated with a golden twist and with a golden tassel. The friar‘s posture indicates that he is also dancing, as he often appeared in the Robin Hood plays during church ales and in morris dances. On this window Friar Tuck appears as a humble monk; he lowers his eyes and wears pastel colours. The natural fool and Friar Tuck are exceptions concerning bright colours of the dancers‘ garments. In their case bright colours are not dominant; only red and golden appear, russet and off-white colours are more prevalent in their apparel. The evolution of Friar Tuck‘s character seems similarly complex as that of Maid Marian‘s. By the end of the Elizabethan period, the convention was well established that Friar Tuck was a jolly friar: both a lecher and a dancer.105 The arrangement of the figures suggests that all the dancers are equally important in the performance. Each of them is represented separately; they are not paired or grouped together. Kemp could epitomize every character but in my opinion the most probable ones are the King of May, Robin Hood on the hobby horse, Maid Marian‘s wooer and the artificial Fool. The appearance of the figures on the Tollet window also proves that generally the most typical feature of the fool‘s and the morris dancers‘ clothing seems to have been its eccentricity and bright colors. The fool‘s clothes were often sewn into outrageous shapes or colour schemes,106 they were arranged on the fool‘s body with a jumble of colours axially and symmetrically and each trouser leg could be of a different colour. 107 Stripes were popular both for dancers and fools.108 Michel Pastoureau, (a leading French scholar on medieval iconography), in his book The Devil´s Cloth suggests that the stripes were devious patterns from medieval times onward and were fraught with dangerous meaning. According to Pastoureau stripes were thought to be offensive because the medieval eye was unable to process it. ―People in the Middle Ages seemed to feel an aversion for all surface structures which, because they did not clearly distinguish the figure from the background, troubled the spectator's view.‖109

105 Anthony Munday The Death of Robert, Earl of Huntington [1601] (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967). Munday's Friar refers to a tradition of ‗merry morrises of Friar Tuck‘ and himself performs a dance; but he courts Jinny the serving-wench rather than the idealised Marian. Anthony Munday The Death of Robert, Earl of Huntington [1601] (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967). 106 Korhonen, Fellows of Intimate Jests, 167. 107 Leslie Hotson, Shakespeare‟s Motley (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1952), 91. 108 Francis Douce, Illustrations of Shakespeare, vol. 2, 317-321; Hotson, Shakespeare‟s Motley 13-14. 109 Michel Pastoureau, The Devil‟s Cloth: A History of Stripes (New York: Columbia, 2001), 3.

116 The laws and chromatic directives applied to a long and varied list of individuals and professions, those who practiced dangerous, dishonest, or simply dubious activities.110 Minstrels, actors, dancers, artificial fools, beggars, musicians, vagabonds, prostitues, all sort of outcasts, those who had either physical or mental illness, social deviants, non- Christians (i.e. Jews and Muslims) were often made to wear bright colors.111 In general garments that were multi-colored, striped, checkered, or featured strong color contrasts were prohibited, being considered improper for the good Christian. Five colors were used for the discriminatory marks: white, black, red, green and yellow. To the medieval and early modern eye these were the harshest colors, and always a pejorative sign. These marks could be applied in many ways: a cross, a circle of cloth, a colored band, a scarf, a ribbon, a hood, gloves, or a hat. Most often two of the five shameful colors were placed together; in the case of fools, the colour combinations was most often yellow and green.

Comic Fellows

To learn more about Kemp‘s appearance and clothes, I will also scrutinize Kemp‘s famous and unknown comic fellows as well. It was customary to present the fools‘ appearance in minute detail and especially to concentrate on their grotesque features.112 This tradition goes back to the Middle Ages and appears for example in the jests of King Salomon and Marcolph the fool.113 Marcolph, the cunning peasant prototype of the grotesque fool, was said to be short and fat, with a disproportionately large head.

110 See N. B. Harte, ―State Control of Dress and Social Change in Pre-Industrial England‖ in Trade, Government and Economy in Pre-Industrial England. Essays eds. D. C. Coleman and A. H. John, (London: 1976), 132-65; F. E. Baldwin, Sumptuary Legislation and Personal Regulation in England. The Johns Baltimore: Hopkins University Press, 1926; Alan Hunt, Governance of the Consuming Passions. A History of Sumptuary Law (New York: St.Martin‘s Press, 1996), chapter 12; A. R. Jones and Peter Stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of Memory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). 111 Pastoureaux, The Devil‟s Cloth, 3. 112 Korhonen, Fellows of Intimate Jests, 244. 113 The Dialogue or Communing between the Wise King Salomon and Marcolphus (1493) Harvard Studies in Medieval Latin (Mass. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008). On the illustration of an English Benedictine psalter of early 15th century an innocent fool discusses God‘s existence with King David. It can be found in Corpus Christi College, Oxford: MS 17, f. 55.

117

English Benedictine psalter of early 15th century, in Corpus Christi College, Oxford: MS 17,f. 55.

This work was composed around 1200, and attained its greatest popularity in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. One of its two parts is a dialogue, in which the king and the jester and sage have a conversation. Whereas Solomon is solemn and pompous, Marcolf replies in low language and on earthy topics. The other part comprises twenty short chapters in which Marcolf tricks Solomon from time to time. The psalters on which the fool and the king are depicted give some hints about the appearance of the fools. The whole body and the face could signal the Fool‘s simple mind. He was depicted as very small or very tall, very thin or very fat, and having short arms, big or fleshy feet, big belly, lots of body hair. The forehead could be too small or too large, the eyes staring or restless, the lips uneven, swollen or protruding, the chin weak, and the neck long or thick. Fortunately the illustrations of sixteenth-century fools like Kemp‘s fellow comedians are at our disposal. Will Kemp and his master Richard Tarlton provoked laughter through their talented use of facial expressions and body language. Kemp and Tarlton had funny faces and Armin was small in stature, almost comparable to dwarfs. Falstaff, the most remarkable character played by Kemp, was incredibly fat. In the only picture we have of Richard Tarlton, his grotesque features are emphasized: he seems to be a rather short and sturdy man with short legs and a big head and a round, scurvy face. His large and flat nose with big nostrils was his most prominent feature.114 Bahkhtin‘s observations concerning the grotesque image of the body concerning the face prove relevant: ―the nose and mouth play the most important part, the head, ears, nose also acquire a grotesque

114 W. Carew Hazlitt, ed. Tarlton‟s Jests [1611] in Shakespeare‟s Jestbooks, vol. II. (New York, N.Y.: 1864). 69. In a story in Tarlton's Jests, a member of the fool's audience teases him about the dimensions of his nose.

118 character.‖ 115 In the ancient grotesque forms the image of the nose symbolizes the phallus; this interpretation of the image is linked with the popular-festive system.

Richard Tarlton in John Scottowe's Alphabet (British Library Harley 3885, fol. 19), after 1588.

Tarlton's humour had been always identified with the rustic ‗uplandish man‘ or clown. He appears as a rustic or a clown in russet jerkin and breeches, country boots, and buttoned cap.116 Armin wanted to belong to the intelligent city dwellers, and gentlemen, while preserving the idiots‘ traditions, symbols and appearance when he was on stage.117 Armin described natural fools very thoroughly, for example in his portrait of a fool called Jack Oates in his Foole upon Foole:

This foole was tall, his face small, His beard was big and blacke; His necke was short, inclind to sport, Was this our dapper Jack. 118

Contrary to the actors‘ long hair, innocents were often shorn altogether or given a tonsure. (It is likely that the meanings of the fool‘s hairstyle changed during the sixteenth century. After the dissolution of the monasteries, from1540 to the end of the century, negative connotations of the monastic orders like hypocrisy, lechery, vanity and greed appeared.) In medieval and antique imagery, shaving one‘s hair was used as a punishment. This tradition was familiar from the Bible: Samson‘s loss of power after being shorn by

115 Bakhtin, Rabelais, 316. Bakhtin gives an example for this symbolism the carnival ―Dance of the Noses‖ of Hans Sachs (Nasentanz). 116 See more about the fool‘s costume in Hotson, Shakespeare‟s Motley, 82. 117 His portrait can be also seen below, concerning the motley coat. 118 Robert Armin, A Nest of Ninnies, (London: J. P. Collier, Shakespeare Society, 1842), 7.

119 Delilah was a very popular theme in medieval lore and hair was a sign of one‘s vitality. Stealing it was a very grave symbolic act of violence.119 But probably mainly because of medical consideration it was thought that a shaven head would be hygienic for natural fools.

Nakedness

Fools were often depicted naked in many medieval illustrations in sources such as psalters. From the mid-thirteenth century onwards, they often appeared naked or half- naked and with bald or tonsured heads.120 In theology nakedness meant denial of God and society and its norms, and it was associated with lack of reason, and especially madness. I have chosen several different medieval and early modern illustrations of Psalm 53 where the fool appears in the initial D which introduces the psalms ―Dixit insipiens in corde suo non est Deus‖ (―The fool says in his heart, There is no God‖). The fool is often seen standing with a club or bauble in one hand and a wafer in the other, disputing with a king, usually with Solomon. A cloven-footed fool with a wafer-bread can be seen from an English psalter of about 1200. He has brown and dark blue clothes with red stockings or hose.121 In a second example, the fool from the Windmill Psalter of the late thirteenth century appears with wafer and club in his hands. He wears a russet tunic and has naked white legs and blond hair. The fool as in other illustrations of psalter 53, occupies the initial D of the opening words.122

119 Klaniczay also analyses the tradition of long hair and beard in chapter titled ‖Fashionable Beards and Heretic Rags‖ in The Uses of Supernatural Power, 164-194. 120 Korhonen, Fellows of Infinite Jests, 164. 121 Cambridge: MS B.11.5, F.73r in John Southworth, Fools and Jesters at the English Court (Phoenix Mill: Sutton Publishing Limited, 1998), 134. 122 Piermont Morgan Library, New York: MS M.f.53v in Southworth, Fools and Jesters, 134.

120

English psalter of about 1200 and Windmill Psalter of the late thirteenth century.

On the third illustration from the York Psalter of about 1260 a black hooded, half- naked fool in white hose can be seen with King David.

York Psalter of about 1260.

In the fourth and fifth examples, mad fools are depicted naked or semi-naked, in white hose, bald or tonsured head, holding a marotte or club and wafer.123

123 Thirteenth century English psalter (British Library: MS Add. 30045, f. 28, detail); Bible, 1250-70, (Bodleian Library, Oxford: MS Canon.bibl.lat.11, f.238v.) Bible Historiale of 1357 (British Library: MS Royal 17.E.VII, f.241, detail) in Southworth, Fools and Jesters, 134.

121

Thirteenth-century English psalter

Bible, 1250-70.

On the next illustration the fool is accompanied with a small dog, his old rival and friend.

Bible Historiale of 1357.

122 Kenneth Clark in his classic study on The Nude124 considers the visual representation of the body and affirms the feeling of shame concerning nakedness. He emphasizes the difference between the two words of ‗naked‘ and ‗nude‘ in the English language: ―To be naked is to be deprived of our clothes and the word implies some of the embarrassment most of us feel in that condition. The word ‗nude‘ on the other hand carries no uncomfortable overtone.‖ 125

Polish psalter of the fourteenth century

Although they are distant relatives, the illustrations of Polish fools in Malgorzata Wilska‘s book are also pertinent here. The fools that can be seen on the illustrations of Polish psalters especially on the initial D until the fourteenth century are also half-naked or wear a short cloak.126 They wear a special headdress, long ass-ears and often an additional peak on the top of the head.

124 Kenneth Clark, The Nude: Study in Ideal Form Bollingen Series 35.2 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1956). It is regarded as one of the major surveys of nudity as a basis of humanist form from the art of the Greeks to Renoir and Moore. 125 Ibid.2. 126 Malgorzata Wilska, Blazen na dworze Jagiellonów (Warsawa: Wydawnictwo Neriton, Instytut Historii PAN, 1998) 14, 18, 20.

123

Colours

The three colours we can most often see on earlier psalters are red, black and white. They have been the focal point of western color system since antiquity. Around these three colors as poles all other colors could be organized: red was isolated, yellow was assimilated to white, green, blue and violet were joined to black.127 However, in the early modern period a much more complex society was forming, so more colors, the six basic colors: white, red, black, blue, green, yellow were needed. In the illustrations of the psalters with letter D is either blue, brown, red or black. Fools in psalters abandoned their nudity by the mid-14th century, and started to cover some areas of their body with the changing ideals of Renaissance civility.128 The fool no longer appear naked or semi-naked in the psalm 53, ‗Dixit insipiens‘ either, but as a fully-dressed court jester, with animal head-dress, bells, bi-coloured or multi-coloured tunic and bauble. The colours worn are brighter and there are more of them as typical for the age: blue, green, red, brown, yellow, and white.

127Michel Pastoureau, Blue: The History of a Color (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2001). 83. 128 Korhonen, Fellows, 165.

124

A fourteenth-century fool. British Library.129

At the same time a widespread moralizing discourse dominated late medieval society and the views of the great Protestant reformers of the sixteenth century concerning the social, relegious and artistic use of color. A war was declared against colors, similar to the war on theatre.130 There was a horror of bright colors. They meant luxury, artifice and illusion; they were dangerous, confusing and uncontrollable.131 The Reformation viewed clothing as a sign of shame and sin. All Protestant moral codes had the deepest aversion to luxury in dress, makeup and finery, disguises, accessories, and to changing or eccentric fashions.132 In Antiquity and for most of the Middle Ages men could dress in light, bright colors: in red, green, yellow, however in the early modern times the most popular colors were on the black-gray-white axis and all men were obliged to wear dark-colored clothes. Only in festive and transgressive rituals could they wear bright colors.133

Green, Wild Man

Several associations can be found between the traditions, symbolism and appearance of the green, wild man and the fool.134 The fool often appears in green colour. During the Middle Ages the green man and the wild man representations amalgamated and a special and unique English type appeared.135 The medieval English wild man representations often dressed the wild man in green leaves, ivy or moss instead of their continental counterparts who generally wore skins and furs. (His costume was often made of green Kendal as well.) These ‗green men‘ rooted in the forest-dweller of the Celtic

129 A fourteenth-century fool in colourful costume with his marotte. The king prays to God. (British Library: MS Harley 2897, f. 42v in Southworth, Fools and Jesters, 134. 130 I have delineated this topic in Chapter 1. 131 Pastoureau, Blue: The History of a Color, 132. 132 Pastoureau, Black: The History of a Color (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2008), 130. 133 Ibid. 118- 124, 132. 134 I have mentioned the carnivalesque feature of the green wild man in Chapter 1. 135 For further discussion of the English green, wild man see Erzsébet Stróbl, The Cult of Elizabeth (Ph.D diss., ELTE, 2010).

125 myths of Brittany, Wales and Cornwall. He was called wudewasa, wedenwason, wodewose, or woodenhouse and was dressed in green. 136 The human and the plant elements of the green man‘s foliate head and the whole figure reflects the ambivalent relationship between man and nature. (see below) The Green Man carvings of the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries express various complex negative ideas: some represent demons, and the Devil, others presumably embody lost soules.

Albrecht Dürer, Two side panels from the portrait of Oswolt Krel, 1499. München, Alte Pinakothek

Green-man on a capital in the chapter-house of Southwell Cathedral, c. 1290.

136 Richard Bernheimer, The Wild Man in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1952), 21-48.

126 There was a strong connection between the sub-human features of the wild, green men, the fool and animals as I have already mentioned concerning the Tollet window. Some fools became hairy, as a sign of their rejection of the laws of Christian society which affect neither the green wild men with long hair and beard wearing foliage around the loins nor the fool. With this appearance both of them acquired the crucial characteristic features of a beast. The green, wild man and the fool are also related in their nakedness. A statue of a furry naked Hercules from 1578 survived in the courtyard of the country house of Hawstead. 137

Wild man statue at Hawsted Place, Suffolk. Drawing from 1812.138

The other vitally important common feature is their unverified instinctual behaviour which came from the medieval and early modern literary tradition. Both of them were menacing because they were uncontrollable. The wild man appeared as a lonely figure who lived outside the civilized society in the wilderness together with untamed beasts. 139 A wild man called Bremo appeared in popular play Mucedorus.140 Another work in which the wild man occurred was Edmund Spenser‘s The Faerie Queene. (In Book I, published in

137 Stróbl, The Cult of Elizabeth,illustrations. 138 John Nichols, ed. Progresses and Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth, 3 volumes, (London, 1823), II. 121. 139 Bernheimer, The Wild Man in the Middle Ages, 20. 140 A most pleasant comedie of Mucedorus the kings sonne of Valentia and Amadine the Kings daughter of Arragon (London: William Iones, 1598). The play had altogether seventeen quarto editions until the end of the seventeenth century.

127 1590, the beautiful maiden Una tames a wild knight, Satyrane who had been brought up among wild beasts.141 In Book VI, a wild man saves a lady and serves her.142) The stage fool and the green man often appear in similar setting: the clown came from the countryside, was close to nature, lived for example in the forest of Arden; the wild green man in literature or in entertainments also appeared in nature, in the woods or parks and gardens of houses lying in the countryside. Robin Hood as a ‗green man‘ embodied the spirit of life in the spring time and was a natural character to be included in

May Games and morris dancing in the Tudor period. It is also interesting that in Poland fools also formed an integral part of nature; they even appeared embedded in flowers, trees and bushes in fifteenth-century initials.143

141 Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966), I. 6. 142 Ibid. VI. 4-5. 143 Wilska, Blazen na dworze Jagiellonów, 35, 40, 54, 55. See the illustrations above.

128

Green wild men were also used in the Lord Mayor Shows from 1553 and by the end of the century they became a regular element of the London shows. 144The wild man also appeared in 1575 at Kenilworth during the royal festival.145 On the engraving about the festivities at Elvetham wild men painted yellow appeared in the water and ran into the woods at the end of the show. 146

The moon-shaped artificial lake at Elvetham, 1591.

144 Robert Withington, English Pageantry, An Historical Outline (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1920), II: 13-14. They are first mentioned in 1553. 145 The Honorable Entertainment to the Quene‟s Majestie, in Progresse, at Elvetham, in Nichols, Progresses, I: 437. 146 Nichols, Progresses, III.: 102-121. Nichols has described the festivities. It is the only visual document of the staging of an Elizabethan entertainment.

129 Will Somer

Will Somer, Henry VIII‘s court jester was well known in the sixteenth century. His apparel on contemporary paintings and illustrations has been another source of information for me about the contemporary court jester. On the painting of Will Somer with his master in the king‘s Psalter, the fool is dressed in a green coat, green being the most typical of the fools‘ colours. He was dressed in typical courtiers‘ costume and his suit was made of costly materials like silk and satin. 147

Henry VIII „s Psalter in Hampton Court Palace.

In King Henry‘s family portrait from c.1545, however, he is dressed in a dark costume with brightly coloured stripes, which is a special fool‘s costume.148 According to Chambers, domestic and court fools dressed in the same way as their masters and fellow men, except on festive occasions when they had a more colourful costume.149

147 Henry VIII„s Psalter can be found in Hampton Court Palace. 148 The portrait of The family of Henry VIII c. 1545 can also be found in Hampton Court Palace. 149 Edmund Kerchever Chambers, The Medieval Stage vol.1. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967), 386- 387.

130

The Family of Henry VIII c. 1545, painted by an unknown artist. Oil on canvas, 141 x 355 cm. Hampton Court Palace.

In another painting of the royal family below, Somer can be seen at the back in a humble russet jacket.

King Henry VIII with Will Somers, and children Prince Edward, Princess Mary and Lady Elizabeth. Boughton House, Northamptonshire, the private collection of the Duke of Buccleuch.

131 Green Kendal and Motley

Natural fools often wore a loose overcoat which was practical, durable, and usually of a dark or mixed colour. In the illustration on the title page of Robert Armin's Two Maids of More-Clacke a fool character called Blue John, which Armin apparently had played himself, also wears a long coat.150

The title page of Robert Armin's Two Maids of More-Clacke. 1609.

Leslie Hotson in his book Shakespeare‟s Motley makes a strong argument that the fool‘s motley was a garment made of coarse and colourful cloth, or more often of green Kendal cloth which was also called motley sewn into a long coatlike gown. It was a tweedlike, relatively cheap and very sturdy material which was also used in making saddle covers, military and archers‘ uniforms and the costume of Robin Hood and his group.151 The history of green Kendal has interesting elements concerning my topic. Following Edward III‘s importation of weavers from the Low Countries, this plain green cloth was for centuries made at Kendal in Westmorland and elsewhere. The coarser grades became the common dress of the poor. In Richard II‘s court green motley had been worn for hunting; in 1505 the King of Scots had a coat made of this material. In addition to their plain green, the weavers of Kendal also came to make a motley or ‗Kentish‘ green; for in 1509 Henry VIII was described as ―invading the queen's chamber at Westminster for a gladness to the queen's grace‖ in the guise of Robin Hood, with his men in green coats and hose of Kentish Kendal.152 This record of Henry VIII clearly shows the continued traditional association green motley or ‗Kentish‘ with hunters and foresters. A search

150 Robert Armin, The History of the Two Maids of Morelacke [1609] in The Collected Works of Robert Armin, Volume 1 (London: Johnson Reprint Corporation 1972). 151 Hotson, Shakespeare‟s Motley, 5. 152 Ibid.

132 of the original Accounts of the Royal Wardrobe shows that green motley survived at least to the days of Elizabeth and James I as the distinguishing livery of the royal huntsmen.153 Sir William Hollis‘s idiot-jester or ‗flat fool natural,‘ Jack Oates (so described by Armin) sometimes wore green motley, sometimes yellow and only seldom a multicoloured fool‘s garment.154 Armin described Will Somer‘s and Tarlton‘s appearance just as thoroughly.155 He mentions that Will Somers was delighted when he was treated very respectfully by the poor, and Hotson interprets this to be due to his wearing a long coat.156 It is true that a long coat was not only suitable as a protective garment but also commanded respect for those who wore it: lawyers and the clergy, women and fools. Hotson thinks that whereas the fool wore a hood, jerkin, and tight full-length hose all in parti-colour in the Middle Ages, the figure of folly in early modern England was robed in a long ‗motley‘ coat or petticoat, and topped with a cap and it was not coloured, or patched, but green or yellow. Hotson, like Francis Douce in the nineteenth century,157 believes that the fools of Shakespeare‘s time usually wore such motley garments of a dark greenish tinge or mixed colour and made of coarse wool even on stage.158 In his book Hotson focuses on Armin and he generalizes his theory, - which may be true of Armin - to all the comic fools. 159 Hotson‘s conclusions concerning the stage fool‘s garb are overly simplistic. The fool was probably dressed with endless variation born of his changing position or different spheres of activity, or of the surroundings in which the comedians performed.160 Richard Tarlton, for example, preferred coarse peasant clothes, 161 Kemp wore the morris dancers‘ morris coat, while Armin probably most often had the natural fool‘s long motley coat.

153 Ibid. 154 Robert Armin, Nest of Ninnies [1608] (London: Printed for the Shakespeare Society, 1842), 13. 155 Armin, Nest of Ninnies, 8. 156 Ibid 1- 56. 157 Douce, Illustrations, 62. 158 Ibid., 90. 159 Hotson, Shakespeare‟s Motley, 105. 160 David Wiles has already drawn the same conclusion in his Shakespeare‟s Clown, Actor and text in the Elizabethan playhouse (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 186-191. 161 Armin, Nest of Ninnies, 8. Armin in his book describes his fellows‘ apparel.

133 Accessories

Accessories like the bauble, the above mentioned headgear and jingling bells were noticeable symbols of folly. The most important piece of equipment was the bauble or the sceptre of folly. It was probably developed from a rather simple stick (as can be seen, for example, in illustrations of psalms) which could be used as a defensive weapon, but along the way the stick acquired a meaning antithetical to the royal scepter attached a fool‘s head on top of the bauble. It was sometimes carved as a portrait of its carrier with all his features, even physical abnormalities faithfully reproduced in order to offer the fool a partner similar to himself. The fool often had conversation, discussion and debate with his bauble.162 Robert Armin satirically stated that his Bastinado‘s alias Sir Timothy Trunchion‘s ―crueltie in cudgeling‖ shielded him from envious tongues. 163 In addition to the bauble, the fool could carry other laughable weapons like ladles and daggers, especially in court festivities. In France and Germany many intricately carved baubles made of wood, ivory or precious metals once belonging to court fools have survived. Although English fools did not use the bauble as often as did their continental counterparts, it is probable that Armin and his fellows, Tarlton and Kemp, regularly used the bauble or marotte on stage. Armin also mentioned in Foole upon Foole that one of the natural fools he described, Jack Oates, did not have one; this would certainly suggest that baubles were considered inseparable from other foolish paraphernalia. 164 There are several illustrations in English psalters which display fools either with primitive sticks or elegant baubles.165 Sixteenth-century fools still carried a bauble, at least in the popular imagination.166 When lords of misrule were crowned as rulers of calendrical festivities they were equipped with all the signs and symbols of kingship both at court and in folk culture. One of these signs was the sceptre, which was then used in a satirical manner. This is already very close to the way the theatrical, court or domestic fool used his bauble.

162 Henry Christopher Sutcliffe, ―Robert Armin ( Shakespeare‘s Clown)?1568-1615‖ (PhD diss., University of Leeds, 1990). 163 Armin, Foole upon Foole, 11. 164 Ibid., 7. 165 See for example the illustrations above. 166 Sandra Billington, A Social History of the Fool (Sussex: The Harvester Press, 1984), 41; John Southworth, Fools and Jesters , illustrations 134-135.

134 The fool‘s bauble was often clearly a phallic symbol which related both to the fool‘s own sexuality and to carnivalesque freedom.167 On the stage, the fool often used it for obscene gestures, placing it between his legs and poking it at the female characters. It could always lend a sexual double meaning to the fool‘s innocent comments. Sometimes the bauble was also decorated with an inflated pig‘s bladder, familiar from the traditions of morris dancing. Armin‘s use of the marotte or bauble in his solo performances has been recorded in such sources as the Foole upon Foole, in The Italian Taylor and His Boy and in The History of the Two Maids of Morelacke.168 Armin presumably adapted the tradition of the usage of the marotte in his solo performances; it is also likely that Tarlton and Kemp also used the marotte in their performances.

167 Sutcliffe assumes, that the usage of the marotte in Armin‘s case as solo performer as Snuffe and Tutch was not a phallic object for him, does not express overt obscenity as probably in the case of the other clowns like Kemp and Tarlton, but it was part of the confusion and make beleive that was involved in playing a role. Kemp and Tarlton didn‘t play a role – they were humorous themselves. 168 Sutcliffe has concentrated on the relationship between Robert Armin and his bauble in his Ph.D dissertation.

135 3. KEMP AS FALSTAFF: THE COMIC AND GROTESQUE BODY

FALSTAFF “I am not only witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in other men” ( 2 Henry IV I.2. 8-9.)169

In this section I intend to discuss that the role of Falstaff—a complex, ambiguous and paradoxical personality, intelligent and also vulgar—was originally written for William Kemp.170 I also illustrate the richness of Kemp‘s talent as an actor through Falstaff‘s character, who best embodies the characteristic features of Renaissance popular culture in Shakespeare‘s plays. Sir John Falstaff appears in three plays by Shakespeare: the two Henry IV plays and in The Merry Wives of Windsor. He is the fat, vain, boastful, and cowardly companion to the apparently wayward Prince Hal, who ultimately repudiates Falstaff when he becomes the King Henry V. This chapter argues against the long held and one-sided tradition according to which Kemp only played the role of the vulgar, crude and common buffoon. Like Falstaff, Kemp was a lively personality with verbal inventiveness and social intelligence. He had many various talents; he was extremely skillful, muscular, had great stamina and at the same time he was intelligent, witty and an improvisatory genius. In the role of Falstaff Kemp represented a wide range of fool figures and crucially important symbols of popular culture: Vice, the Lord of Misrule, the Carnival figure, the court jester, the outlaw, the mock fencer (in this case, not the skillful morris dancer). So the image of Kemp as the harsh, blockheaded, simple clown figure from the countryside is radically challenged as is the widely accepted opinion that Armin was the intelligent comedian. The complexity of Kemp‘s personality will be illustrated by the different aspects of Falstaff‘s character. One aspect is the image of the comic and grotesque body, which is an essential feature of early modern popular culture and is intensively interwoven with Falstaff‘s character as well. The other aspect is Falstaff‘s personality and social status, both of which are ambiguous. Although he is an aristocrat, a knight, he is also a cutpurse and a liar and, thus, a typical figure of the Elizabethan underworld. It is likely that Shakespeare used character traits from the tradition of the rogue pamphlets and the cony-catching pamphlets when forming Falstaff‘s character. Furthermore Falstaff‘s relation

169 A. R. Humphreys, 2 Henry IV (New York: Vintage, 1967). All subsequent citations are to this edition. 170 See a summary of Kemp‘s other theatrical roles in the Appendix.

136 to Prince Hal in 2 Henry IV is yet another aspect which can be characterized in terms of rule to misrule and can be interpreted as a sign of Kemp‘s problematic relationship to Shakespeare. The problem of the limited range of primary sources—I can only base my assumptions about Kemp on his Nine Daies Wonder and on some fools‘ stories—also appears in this section of my study. Given that a direct approach is impossible because of the oral nature of Kemp‘s art, I applied an indirect, interdisciplinary approach using mainly the dramatic texts of Shakespeare.171 The two parts of Henry IV written probably in 1598 were masterpieces of the popular theatre.172 Falstaff is Kemp‘s most complex and significant role: Falstaff speaks 542 lines in the play, while Hotspur, Hal and King Henry are allotted 538, 514 and 338 respectively.173 The literary critics in the past twenty years have agreed that Shakespeare certainly relied upon Kemp‘s performance skills when creating Falstaff;174 Kemp‘s ability to control a long comic monologue, his intimate relationship with the audience and his witty extemporizing made him especially suitable for the role.175 These skills were acquired during the years while he was a solo entertainer. Kemp peeps out of Falstaff‘s role when the Hostess says, ―He doth it as like one of these harlotry players as ever I see.‖176 Although Falstaff was a fictional character, Shakespeare did not invent his name, which can be found in historical sources.177 Falstaff originates from the witty parasite of Plautine comedy and the cunning and extemporizing Vice of morality tradition. The intensive involvement with the audience is very important in 1, 2 Henry IV. The funniest and most ironic improvisation among Falstaff‘s jests is Falstaff‘s mock combat. When it comes to recounting the heroic deeds at Gadshill, Falstaff‘s vitality is irrepressible; in this parody of a chivalric fight, he fights 12, 16, 50, 52-53 people first, then he encounters and stands up to 2, 4, 7, 9, 11 men in buckram plus two in Kendall

171 In Peter Burke‘s words: ―the different oblique approaches to popular culture are the least likely to put the historians on the wrong track‖. Burke, Popular Culture, 119. 172 They were entered in the Stationer‘s Register on 25 February. 173 David Scott Kastan ed., King Henry IV Part I (London: Arden Shakespeare, 2003), 4. All subsequent citations are to this edition. 174 Thomas Baldwin The Organization and Personnel of the Shakespearean Company (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1927), 233. Baldwin argues that Pope played Falstaff instead of Kemp. But David Wiles has the remarkable opinion that the role of Falstaff must have been written for Will Kemp: only the role of Falstaff is congruent with other roles written for the clown of the company in 1595-8. See more about Wiles‘s analyses on Falstaff‘s role in Shakespeare‟s Clown, 116-135; B. A.Videbaek, The Stage Clown in Shakespeare‟s Theatre (Westport, Connecticut, London: Greenwood Press, 2000). They have the same opinion. 175 Wiles, Shakespeare‟s Clown, 119. 176 1 Henry IV II. 4. 390-391. 177 Shakespeare ‘s conflict with the Oldcastle family is discussed in Chapter 3.

137 green.178 ―I am a rogue, if I were not at half-sword with a dozen of them two hours together. I have ‗scap‘d by miracle, I am eight times thrust through the doublet; four through the hose; my buckler cut through and through; my sword hacked like a handsaw: ecce signum! I never dealt better since I was a man: all would not do. A plague of all cowards!—Let them speak: if they speak more or less than truth, they are villains, and the sons of darkness.‖179 Falstaff also extemporizes when, for example, he elaborates his account of the rogues, plays the King in the tavern or manipulates the Hostess to whom he owes money. Falstaff is well-informed, familiar with contemporary popular culture—oral literature, romances, and popular theatre.180 Falstaff boasts about his wittiness: ―Men of all sorts take a pride to gird at me: the brain of this foolish-compounded clay, man is not able to invent, anything that tends to laughter, more than I invent, or is invented on me: I am not only witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in other men.‖181 But of course besides wit, which was a constitutive feature of the Vice figure, Falstaff‘s character is interwoven with other vital elements of popular culture like the image of the grotesque and comic body. The different parts of the grotesque and comic body represented various symbols and different kinds of ways of communication.182 A scurvy face, fatness, grotesque heads, legs and hands, midgets, strong sexuality all symbolized merry nature, fertility, or on the contrary: rotten morals, even a broken relationship with God. If there were significant defects in the body, the image of God was tainted, and the connection to God broken.183 Falstaff‘s grotesque size, his bodily distortion, his exaggerated belly which is the result of excessive drinking and eating have different symbolic meanings. Falstaff is sometimes menacing: he is a cause of fear embodied in the highwayman, outcast, rebel, pretence, anarchy and scepticism. The only antidote to fear is laughter. Falstaff‘s grotesque belly is not always frightening; it also recalls a carefree utopian life of drink and food and rest. There are a lot of names by which Falstaff is known and they are rich in allusions to eating and the abundance of meat at festive occasions. Falstaff‘s grotesque and comic body

178 Natália Pikli, The Prism of Laughter: Shakespeare's “very tragical mirth” (VDM Verlag Dr Müller, 2009, Publication of Ph.D dissertation), 87. 179 1 Henry IV II. 4.172-180. 180 Wiles, Shakespeare‟s Clown, 129. 181 Humphreys, 2 Henry IV, I.2. 7-10. 182 Roy Porter, ―History of the Body Reconsidered‖ in New perspectives on historical writing in Peter Burke ed. (London: Polity Press, 2001). 183 Korhonen, Fellows of Infinite Jest, 151.

138 is full of significant allusions to carnivalesque holiday and practices still alive in the Renaissance, and it also brings into focus much that has been investigated before in this study about ‗the culture of popular laughter‘184 and the grotesque body.185 As a fat man, Falstaff represents the Carnival King, a personification of Shrove-tide. Hal characterizes Falstaff most of the time with food imagery and meaty references and we can recognize in them the Carnival King: ―[w]hy dost thou converse with that trunk of humours, that bolting-hutch of beastliness, that swolln parcel of dropsies, that huge bombard of sack, that stuffed cloak-bag of guts, that roasted Manningtree ox with the pudding in his belly, that reverend Vice.... Wherein is he good, but to taste sack and drink it? Wherein neat and cleanly, but to carve a capon and eat it?...Wherein villainous, but in all things? Wherein worthy, but in nothing?‖186 He is called ―Sir John Sack-and- Sugar,‖ ―fat rogue,‖ ―clay- brained guts,‖ ―knotty-pated fool,‖ ―whoreson, obscene, greasy tallow-ketch,‖ ―wool sack,‖ ―huge hill of flesh,‖ ―fat guts,‖ ―Sir John Paunch,‖ ―whoreson round man,‖ ―fat- pounch,‖ ―chops.‖ Hal compares Falstaff to food using festive metaphors such as sweet beef, butterball knight, fat, fatted calf, tripe, fattened pig, roasted ox, holiday beef dish. These are meals for the masses—deer, brawn, ox, calf, plentiful meat, enough to feed a large group of people. The metaphors which describe Falstaff are full of animal symbolism as it often happens while describing fools in popular culture. Bakhtin‘s concept of ‗the popular culture of laughter‘ which is so closely interwoven with the largest and most riotous popular festivity of medieval and Renaissance times, the Carnival, can be entirely applied in the investigation and characterization of Falstaff. Bakhtin points out that the grotesque is the native language of the carnival. He suggests that the kitchen was at the heart of medieval and early modern carnival folklore and the fool can be imagined as a typical representative of the Bakhtinian carnival kitchen. In contemporary thinking, what made fools excessively fat was their continual striving towards all possible pleasures, especially food and drink. The method of getting plenty of food and trouble around it was a very popular theme in fool stories. In Brueghel‘s famous painting, The Battle of Carnival and Lent, Carnival carries a pig‘s head and sausages on a broche in order to do battle with an emaciated Lent. An Italian Carnival play of 1554 portrays a similar Carnival King with a necklace of sausages as his

184 Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 173. 185 Pikli, The Prism of Laughter: Shakespeare's “very tragical mirth”, 97. 186 1 Henry IV II. 4. 442-448; 1 Henry IV I. 2. 110; 1 Henry IV I. 2. 179; 1 Henry IV I.2.238; 1 Henry IV II. 4. 132; 1 Henry IV I. 2. 253; 1 Henry IV I. 2. 253; 1 Henry IV II. 2.31.; 1 Henry IV II.2.65; 1 Henry IV II. 4. 148; 1 Henry IV II. 4. 130; 1 Henry IV III. 3. 176.

139 chain of office. In the early modern period, famines were a matter of course so food was seen as the basic ingredient of a merry life. The cultural meanings of the festival table received cosmic properties and voracious appetite was understood as a symbol of general well-being and renewal of life. In addition to food, fools also yearned for drink, or were at least associated with heavy drinking, which was even more sinful. There are different stories about Tarlton in connection with drinking;187 Kemp in his Nine Daies Wonder pretends to refuse drinks during his journey,188 but the most important character he played on the stage, Falstaff, who is a heavy drinker also proves that Kemp was presumably only joking in his diary: ―How euer, many a thousand brought me to Bow, where I rested a while from dancing, but had small rest with those that would haue vrg‘d me to drinking. But I warrant you Will Kemp was wise enough: to their ful cups, kinde thanks was my returne, with Gentlemanlike protestations: as. Truly sir, I dare not: it stands not with the congruity of my health.‖189 Falstaff embodies fatty meat which sweats as it is cooked. The grotesque image of sweating plays a leading role, since Falstaff‘s ever-changing, elusive character can be symbolized by it; there is a constant danger that the fat and sweaty knight will disappear by melting. Doll wipes Falstaff‘s face, comparing him to a roasting pig and exclaiming ‗how thou sweat‘st‘. Hal compares Falstaff to melting butter: ―Didst thou never see Titan kiss a dish of butter that melted at the sweet tale of the sun? if thou didst, then behold that compound.‖190 During the battle, he compares the drops of his sweat to the tears of Colevile's mourners.191 He arrives at Prince Henry's coronation ―sweating with desire to see him.‖192 The epilogue anticipates that in the sequel Falstaff may sweat to death.193 The image of sweating also appears in fools‘ stories several times for example in Armin‘s Nest of Ninnies concerning the Scottish fat fool, Jemy Camber who ―looked like a Norfolk dumpling thicke and short.‖ 194 Jemy went with the king:

while the footeman had time to worke his will, and mingling a conceit with butter clapt it under the saddle; and as they rode to Edinborough, sayes the king, what say you to the weather now, Jemy? Mee thinks it is hotter than it was. Nay, it is colder,

187 J. O. Halliwell Philips ed., Tarlton‟s Jests [1611], (London: Shakespeare Society, 1844). 188 Kemp, Nine Daies Wonder, 6. 189 Kemp, Nine Daies Wonder, 6. 190 1 Henry, II. 4. 118-120. 191 1 Henry, IV. 3.12. 192 1 Henry, V. 5. 24. 193 1 Henry, II.2.108. Wiles, Shakespeare‟s Clown, 124. 194 Robert Armin, Nest of Ninnies [1600] in The Collected Works of Robert Armin, Volume 1. (London: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1972), 21.

140 sayes he, for I begin to sweat. The trotting of this mule made the mingled confection lather so, that it got into the breeches, and wrought up to the crowne of his head, and to the sole of his foote, and so he sweat profoundly. Still he whipt and he whipt, sweating more and more: they laught a good to see him in that taking.195

Falstaff‘s body is contradictory; it is a comic body which also represents the liberating, festive side of carnivalesque laughter, which infuses the great comedies of Shakespeare. Falstaff‘s wit and exuberant language make the world around him laugh with him; this is a deeply communal, inclusive laughter.196 Falstaff‘s character is full of vitality, he embodies the Saturnalian reversal of values, the conflict of holiday and everyday.197 His fat, witty and humourous company satisfied the community‘s hunger for festivity.198 At the same time the elements of Lent also appear: in Part Two Falstaff is compared to ‗tallow,‘ a ‗candle-mine.‘199 As an emblem of Carnival, Falstaff inevitably must be destroyed by Lent, and roasting is the best way for Carnival to be consumed. Falstaff‗s personality is also always changing; he is continually in motion, assuming different characters. It is a question throughout 1 Henry IV who or what Falstaff is. Falstaff pretends to be a holiday lord; he identifies himself as a cutpurse, a highwayman, a court jester, a knight but changes names and their meanings to suit the moment. There is also a contradiction between old and young. Falstaff permanently associates himself with the young: ―they hate us youth.‖ ―What, ye knaves! young men must live. Hal also calls him: ―the latter spring! Farewell, All-hallow summer!‖, ―my old lad of the castle.‖200 Nevertheless, for all his association with the festive side of carnival, Falstaff is an old man, as the Chief Justice affirms: ―Have you not a moist eye, a dry hand, a yellow cheek, a white beard, a decresing leg, an increasing belly? Is not your voice broken, your wind short, your chin double, your wit single, and every part about you blasted with antiquity, and will you call yourself young?‖201 He has white hair; he is weak and can neither walk nor fight. His weakness becomes evident when he takes a young prostitute on his knees and says ―I am old, I am old.‖202 Kemp was not considered young either, especially in Elizabethan times; he was well into his forties when he played the role.

195 Armin, The Collected Works of Robert Armin, Volume 1, 25. 196 Pikli, The Prism of Laughter: Shakespeare's ”very tragical mirth‖, 7. 197 C.L Barber, ―Rule and Misrule in Henry IV‖ in Shakespeare‟s Festive Comedy [1959] (Ohio: World Publishing, 1967), 192-222. 198 David Ruiter, Shakespeare‟ Festive History; Feasting, Festivity, Fasting and Lent in the Second Henriad (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), 80. 199 2 Henry IV 1.11.157. 200 1 Henry IV II. 2. 81-82; 1 Henry IV II. 2.86; 1 Henry IV I.2.155; 1 Henry IV I. 2.40. 201 2 Henry IV I. 2. 179-184. 202 2 Henry IV II. 4. 268.

141 As Bakhtin argues, the grotesque body also reveals the human body in all its changes. ―The grotesque body is a body in the act of becoming. It is never finished, never completed; it is continually built, created and builds and creates another body. Moreover, the body swallows the world and is itself swallowed by the world.‖203 He adds: ―In the events in the life of the grotesque body: eating, drinking, copulation, pregnancy, defecation, sweating, sneezing, blowing of the nose the beginning and end of life are closely linked and interwoven.204 The grotesque image in its extreme aspect never presents an individual body; it is a point of transition in a life eternally renewed, the inexhaustible vessel of death and conception.‖205 Bakhtin has also written that the grotesque imagery of the market place—the interstice in the structure of feudal society—was remarkably corporeal and physical in nature. The favourite images were often related to the mouth, the stomach, and the sexual and anal organs.206 Bakhtin‘s grotesque body was open to change and to the elements of nature as well. The organs which performed the body‘s tasks of consumption and ventilation were its thresholds to the open air and its sites of pleasure. The main characteristic of the comic body was its continuing change and activity: it was always in motion towards creating and destroying, eating and drinking, secreting and defecating, and towards its sexual fulfillment.207 The sexual body was perhaps more threatening both to social order and in people‘s individual lives than was any other form of corporeality. The fool was associated with sexuality partly because he was often found in brothel milieus, both in fiction and in real life. Falstaff was just as eager to engage in sexual banter; but he often charms with words more than with deeds. Fools gave voice to the animal qualities in human sexuality, the fool‘s sexual nature can be noticed from the frequent use of the punning proverb ―a fool‘s bolt is soon shot,‖ which cropped up in drama as well as in popular ballads.208 One meaning of this statement was to refer to the fool‘s habit of judging and commenting quickly as ‗bolt‘ could be taken to mean a blunt-headed arrow, but it can also denote premature ejaculation, fumbling sexual encounters and the sin of lechery.209

203 Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 317. 204 Ibid. 205 Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 318. 206 Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 320-322; see also Keith Thomas, ―The Place of Laughter in Tudor and Stuart England‖ in TLS., (21. January, 1977): 79. 207 Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 25-26. 208 Samuel Rowlands, A Fooles Bolt Is Soone Shott [1614]; W.G. Day and D.S. Brewer, The Pepys Ballads Facsimile volume I. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 178-9. 209 Korhonen, Fellows of Infinite Jest, 278.

142 In Bakhtin‘s theory of the culture of popular laughter the evaluation of carnality and sexuality also appears as a cardinal question. In case of obscene language, the images of the material, physical ‗baseness‘—a typical manifestation of the culture of popular laughter—Bakhtin‘s interpretation went beyond the mere fact of vulgarity and proved through many examples that it was not ‗obscenity‘ for its own sake. ―The leading themes of these images of bodily life are fertility, growth, and a brimming-over abundance.‖210 He calls this stylistic procedure grotesque realism, which degrades all things sublime by linking them mockingly with the functions of eating, digestion and sex.211 As the grotesque body always transforms, Falstaff‘s social status is not fixed either; it is similar to his ever-changing personality. Although he is an aristocrat and a knight, he is also a cutpurse and liar, a typical figure of the Elizabethan underworld. In first scene in 1 Henry IV, Falstaff is first called plain ‗Jack;‘ Poins addresses Falstaff as ‗Sir John Sack, and Sugar Jack‘ and Hal calls him ‗Sir John‘ in his next speech. Falstaff, however, never refers to himself as a knight, but only as ‗Old Jack,‘ ‗Falstaff,‘ ‗every man jack,‘ ‗Jack Falstaff with my familiars, John with my brothers and sisters, and Sir John with all Europe.‘212 It is likely that Shakespeare borrowed character traits from the tradition of the rogue pamphlets and the cony-catching pamphlets when forming Falstaff‘s and other rouges‘ and vagabonds‘ character. Kemp‘s experience with figures of the Elizabethan underworld that he also mentioned in his Nine Dais Wonder must have been very useful as well.213 He plays a cony-catcher in 1 and 2 Henry IV and he is surrounded by such figures in Merry Wives of Windsor as well. They were written in the 1590s which was also a fertile period of cony-cathing pamphlets. Falstaff speaks about this special type of people: ―For we, that take purses, go by the moon and the seven stars, and not by Phoebus.‖214 Prince Henry says, ―For the fortune of us, that are the moon‘s men, doth ebb and flow like the sea, being governed as the sea is, by the moon. As for proof now: a purse of gold most resolutely snatched on Monday night, and most dissolutely spent on Tuesday morning; got with swearinglay by; and spent with

210 Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 19. 211 Klaniczay, Uses of Supernatural Power, 17. 212 1 Henry IV 1.96; 1 Henry IV 1.110; 1 Henry IV 2.4.463-4; 2 Henry IV II.2.125-127. 213 Kemp, Nine Daies Wonder, 5. 214 1 Henry IV I.2.12-15.

143 crying- bring in; now, in as low an ebb as the foot of the ladder, and, by-and by, in as high a flow as the ridge of the gallows.‖ 215 There is a rich critical tradition of discussions of the Elizabethan underworld and its literature. The works of two historians, Paola Pugliatti in her Beggary and Theatre and L. Beier in his Masterless Men, The Vagrancy Problem in England 1560-1640216 have been especially invaluable for my study. Collections of Tudor and early Stuart tracts and ballads were also great help to study the theme of the jig.217 There are two kinds of pamphlets in the underworld literature which developed in England between the 1550s and the 1620s: the rogue pamphlets and the cony-catching pamphlets. These familiar characters appear around Falstaff and they also emerge in Nine Daies Wonder. Pugliatti thinks that there are profound differences between the rogue pamphlets and the cony-catching pamphlets; even the dates of publication show that the two narrative sub-genres dealing with the world of petty crime demonstrate a shift in the exigencies of the book market, and therefore that popular taste abandoned the first and started to be interested by the second.218 The shift is easy to understand, for the reading public was obviously concentrated in the capital, and the second wave of pamphlets narrated events that had the metropolis as their physical and social background.219 The way he played the role of Falstaff and the way he described his journey in his diary the Nine Daies Wonder reflect that Kemp must have been familiar with both kinds of pamphlets and the typical figures, places, clothes and behaviour which appear in them. The social setting of the pamphlets differed: in the case of rogue pamphlets, it was the countryside, the small village, the highway, the barn, the country alehouse, the market and the fair,220 while in the case of the cony-catching pamphlets it was the great crowded scene of the city and the busy venues where people gathered at certain times of the day. The scenes of the cony-catcher‘s tricks were mainly the alehouses, in London Fleet Street or on the Strand or near St Paul's, far from such ill-famed suburbs as Shoreditch. The

215 1 Henry IV I.2. 30-40. 216 Paola Pugliatti, Beggary and theatre in early modern England (London, Ashgate Publishing Limited), 2003; L. Beier, Masterless Men, The Vagrancy Problem in England 1560-1640 (London: Methuen, 1985), 69-85. 217 A. V. Judges, ed., The Elizabethan Underworld (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd., 1930.) Charles Hindley, ed., The Roxburghe Ballads. A collection of Ancient Songs and Ballads, written on various subjects, and printed between the year MDLX and MDCC vol I-III (London, 1873); Andrew Clark, ed., The Shirburn Ballads 1585-1616 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907). 218 Pugliatti, Beggary and theatre in early modern England, 129-159. 219 Ibid. 128-130. 220 According to Pugliatti, there are two English examples for rogue pamphlets: Awdeley‘s The Fraternitie of Vacabondes (1561) and Harman‘s A Caueat or Warening for Commen Cvrsetors Vvlgarely called Vagabones (1566) in Judges, The Elizabethan Underworld.

144 costumes worn by rogues and cony-catchers were different: the rogues wore the ‗ragged rabblement of rakehells‘221 adopted disguises which made them look more miserable than they were, while the cony-catchers, to ensnare their victims more easily, wore costumes which made them appear as well-bred gentlemen and gentlewomen or wealthy bourgeois.222 Those identified by Beier are people who held a higher position and connections than the vagrants of the rogue pamphlets.223 The victims of the cony-catchers are the naive ‗cony‘ that has just arrived from the countryside to the great city, while the rogues‘ victims were wealthier people. The characters in the cony-catching pamphlets were fixed types: the cheaters have ancestors in the theatrical type of parasite, while the victims can be easily recognized in the dupe.224 In her book Pugliatti suggests that the theatres naturally influenced these pamphlets, especially the cony-catching pamphlets which consequently show similarities with contemporary theatrical plays—there are many connections concerning plots and characters. It was due to the fact that almost the whole corpus of cony-catching pamphlets was produced by playwrights, while the rogue pamphlet were usually composed by non-professional writers.225 Extemporizing was a crucial part of both the plays and the pamphlets; Falstaff‘s funniest improvisation is the mock combat at Gadshill. It is the parody of chivalric tournament which often appears in the stories of jestbooks. Mock combats and tournaments were the roots and parts of different folk dances like morris dancing and jigs.226 Richard Tarlton, who often performed at court, amused his queen by arranging a fight between himself and the queen‘s Lilliputian toy dog as if it were a dangerous beast. The battle ended with the dog as the winner. Tarlton, being a Master of Fencing and Kemp, as the head of morris dancers, maintained the combat tradition in their performances and caused it to flourish. There are various stories about Tarlton‘s triumphs or misfortunes in mock fights.227

221 Pugliatti, Beggary and theatre in early modern England, 127. 222 Ibid. 223 Bronislaw Geremek, The Margins of Society in Late Medieval Paris (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2006). Geremek remarks that while in the case of beggars the social rank of this group is sociologically homogenous and identifiable, in the case of the conny-catchers their social position is more difficult to define. 224 Beier, Masterless Men, 136. 225 Pugliatti, Beggary and theatre in early modern England, 126. 226 John Forrest, The History of the Morris Dancing 1458-1750 (Cambridge: John Forrest – James Clarke&Co. Ltd., 1999), 61. 227 Halliwell Philips, Tarlton‟s Jests, 195-8.

145 Tarlton‘s stories are similar to Armin‘s description and stories about contemporary fools (ex. for example the mock battles of Jack Oates and Lean Leonard) because they were quite bloody and brutal.228 A horrific story of Jack Oates took place at Christmas when Jack‘s master and mistress had invited a group of travelling minstrels to entertain their guests. Jack‘s master threatened to replace him with a new fool, and Jack attacked a bagpiper who was seriously hurt. Then a fiddler was introduced as a new fool as well, and Jack flew at him and beat him. The fiddler ―with a fall had his head broake to the scull against the ground, his face scracht, that which was worst of all his left eye jut out, and with all so sore broozed that he could neither stand, nor go.‖229 Lean Leonard‘s opponent was only imaginary. The fool hurt himself, ―his pate broken face scratcht, and legge out of ioynt.‖230 Falstaff is not part of the game of chivalric honour; on the contrary, irony and parody characterizes Falstaff‘s behaviour and speech. Falstaff‘s degradation starts with the military actions and is completed in 2 Henry IV.231 When Falstaff gives Hal a bottle of sack instead of a pistol, he is really angry because of Jack‘s inappropriate timing of a jest in the battle field, ―What, is it a time to jest and dally now?‖232 Approaching 2 Henry IV Falstaff gradually becomes cynical, opportunistic and pragmatic; his skeptical attitude suggests that he tends to accept that honour is indeed ‗but a word.‘ Nothing is sacred to him; his carnivalesque vitality is falling and the emotional distance between Hal and Falstaff is growing.233 ―Virtue is of so little regard in these costermongers‘ times that true valour is turn‘d bear-herd; pregnancy is made a tapster, and his quick wit wasted in giving reconings; all the other gifts appertinent to man, as the malice of this age shapes them, are not worth a gooseberry.‖234 He is very pragmatic concerning honesty: ―[to] die is to be a counterfeit, for he is but the counterfeit of a man who hath not the life of a man; but to counterfeit dying, when a men thereby liveth, is to be not counterfeit, but the true and perfect image of life indeed. The better part of valour is discretion, in which better part I have sav‘d my life.‖235 He also raises radical questions about fundamental moral and social principles such as chivalry, honesty and royalty, which are proving more and more of a threat to the established order especially in 2 Henry IV.

228 Armin, Collected Works Vol. 1, 20, 32. 229 Armin, Collected Works, Vol. 1, 35. 230 Armin, Collected Works, Vol.1, 45. 231 Pikli, The Prism of Laughter: Shakespeare's “very tragical mirth‖, 97. 232 1 Henry IV V. 3.55. 233 Pikli, The Prism of Laughter: Shakespeare's ”very tragical mirth‖, 100. 234 2 Henry IV I.2. 235 1 Henry IV V.4.

146 Perhaps it is not far-fetched to conclude that as Falstaff wanted to make his way in the world, Kemp also wanted to get on well and become successful in his own life. Just as the entertainment provided by Kemp and his fellow comedians in foreign courts, playhouses, and the taverns were commercial ventures, Kemp‘s journey from London to Norwich and his tour to Europe also had primarily a financial aim.236 The tension between Kemp and Shakespeare, which could already be felt in 1598 when these plays were written, very much echoes Falstaff‘s and Hal‘s problematic relationship. Their conflict can be characterized in terms of the relation of holiday to everyday, misrule to rule.237 There is an important difference in attitude towards time between Falstaff and Prince Hal; time means nothing to Falstaff; he has all the time in the world to enjoy life. He is the ‗fool-bacchant‘ who is placed firmly on the material level of folk culture and emphasized his principles of living in the present moment only. Prince Henry is on his way out of Falstaff‘s realm from very early on; his soliloquy of ―redeeming time‖ comes at the end of the first scene (I.2.). His latent threat to Falstaff‘s perpetual holiday is made clear for the audience from the start: ―If all the year were playing holidays, / To sport would be as tedious as to work.‖238 King Henry warns his son that ―[t]he skipping king, he ambled up and down / With shallow jesters, and rash bavin wits, / Soon kindled, and soon burn‘d; carded his state, / Mingled his royalty with carping fools, / Had his great name profaned with scorns.‖239 The interregnum of a Lord of Misrule might develop into the anarchic reign of a favourite dominating a king.240 Hal also has harsh lines about Falstaff‘s age and even death in a priggish tone in 2 Henry IV. In the play‘s final scene Henry V speaks coldly and officially to Falstaff, his former companion. In the years of 1598 and 1600 Shakespeare‘s attitude towards Kemp echoes Hal‘s harsh recognition that political order is better than anarchy, that there is a pragmatic virtue in loyalty to the power of the state. For Shakespeare Kemp represented uncontrollable anarchy and a danger in the eyes of the London authorities.241 The best way to achieve order and a safe situation for Shakespeare as for Hal is to get rid of the threat, and this meant the expulsion of Kemp/Falstaff. Kemp/Falstaff can be seen as a threat to order, in

236 Cf. Gillespie and Rhodes, Shakespeare and Elizabethan Popular Culture, 1; Lamb, Popular Culture, 3 237 Barber, "Rule and Misrule in Henry IV", 37-50. 238 1 Henry IV I.2. 198-200. 239 1 Henry IV III. 2.60-64. 240 As it happens in the case of Richard II. 241 For further discussion of Kemp‘s and Shakespeare‘s conflict see in Chapter 3.

147 Greenblatt‘s words he is an example of authority‘s ―constant production of its own radical subversion and the powerful containment of that subversion.‖242 Greenblatt sees Hal‘s ultimate, planned reformation, his conversion not as Shakespeare‘s idealizing effort to present royalty as Tillyard argues,243 but as Shakespeare‘s presentation of Hal‘s manipulations to achieve it through a self-conscious strategy.244 Drawing on the relationship between Shakespeare and Kemp, I differ from Greenblatt; I think Hal and Shakespeare self-consciously wanted to maintain their safe situation and a way to power and success, but they were also under the pressure of external circumstances. There is a constant movement between festivity and politics (especially in 2 Henry IV). Falstaff remains far more loyal to festivity than to politics; he views the movement towards ‗serious business‘ as an interruption rather than an end to festivity. He does not follow any rules, he searches a radical challenge to received ideas, a Saturnalian reversal of values. Freedom, fellowship, laughter, pleasure and individual appetite are the important things for him, not responsibility and commitment. There are also suggestions about Falstaff‘s reformation; but he uses his fatness, wit, mastery in joking, the witty and communal atmosphere around him to deny it. He is independent, autonomous, intelligent, he is a genius, an intellectual master of humor with a casual, off-hand wit. These are the skills that guarantee his popularity.245 Kemp and Falstaff are very similar. I can find important traits of Kemp‘s personality and art in Falstaff‘s character such as the complexity and richness of life, the tension between the changes and dynamism of early modern society, the intellectual and moral contradictions of their age and at the same time the survival of the old medieval rituals and traditions. Falstaff‘s and Kemp‘s complex, paradoxical and ambiguous characters reflect the chaotic and unstable society in which Kemp and Shakespeare lived. However, due to his various talents Kemp did not disappear from contemporary theatrical life but, after 1600, found sponsorship to ensure the continuance of his popularity and fame in the world of feast and holiday. The uniqueness and popularity of Falstaff is also justified by the fact, that he is the only Shakespearean comic character who has repeat

242 Stephen Greenblatt, Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England (California: Berkeley, 1988), 41. 243 E. M. W. Tillyard, Shakespeare‟s History Plays, 299. 244 Greenblatt, Shakespearean Negotiations, 65. 245 Ruiter, Shakespeare‟s Festive history, 124-5.

148 performances.246 Kemp was extremely popular and well-known in London and in its taverns and so was Falstaff (in the play). Hal has the following to say about him: ―This oily rascal is known as well as Paul‘s.‖247 Kemp‘s genres—irony, satire and jig—preserved by custom and oral tradition still remained popular in the seventeenth century mainly because of the vexed political situation. Shakespeare‘s promise that Falstaff would return made clear Kemp‘s popularity in the contemporary world of entertainment and promised a successful and prosperous future for him.

246 He appears in three of Shakespeare's plays: 1, 2 Henry IV, Merry Wives of Windsor. 247 1, Henry IV (4.V. 21). Saint Paul‘s Cathedral was an interesting venue in medieval and early modern London: it was an important religious centre; a place for prayers and a busy marketplace where the cony- catchers and rogues gathered as well.

149 4. KEMP, THE MASTER OF THE STAGE JIG

Kemp and other fool actors as performers were very good at playing music, singing and dancing.248 They were descendants of minstrels and were strongly associated with a very long tradition of popular music of the festivities when they sang and played their instruments,249 their songs, morris dances and the plays in which they appeared often carried carnivalesque meanings.250 The fool‘s songs were often current ‗hits,‘ popular songs which many people in the theatre audience knew.251 In the permanently built Renaissance theatres fool actors employed their simple musical instruments giving rhythm to their dancing and singing. Some fools probably played all the instruments typical of itinerant musicians: drums, pipes, bagpipe flutes and trumpets, viols, lutes and small harps, though their most typical instrument was the tabor and the pipe.252 In the woodcut in Kemp‘s Nine Daies Wonder; he is portrayed dancing to the accompaniment of Tom Slye‘s drumming and Kemp himself was known as a taborer as well; Tarlton in his picture also played the pipe and the tabor. Both the pipe and the tabor were associated with court and folk dancing especially morris dancing,253 however music played by fool actors often emphasized the difference with the refined music of the court.254 The two kinds of contradictory contemporary attitudes can be found for example in Thomas Lodge‘s Wits Miserie and in Kemp's Nine Daies Wonder; while Kemp prides himself on his popularity: the number of people who followed him; Lodge sharply urges people not to dance with fools.255 The dynamism of the fool‘s leaping and jumping steps,--―they dance, leap and skip‖256—his real or supposed lack of control differentiated his dancing from the civilised form of social dancing, in which a normative attitude

248 I have also mentioned the role of the fool in drama and festivity in Chapter 1, in the festival fool part. 249 See more about the Renaissance fool‘s music in: Korhonen, Fellows of Infinite Jest, 223-240. 250 L. Barber, Shakespeare‟s Festive Comedies: A Study of Dramatic Form and Its Relation to Social Custom (New York : Meridian Books, 1967), 115-117. 251 See more about popular entertainment in Leonard R. N. Ashley, Elizabethan Popular Culture (Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1988), especially consult 145-175. 252 Ibid., 228. 253 Ibid. 254 Korhonen, Fellows of Infinite Jest, 229. 255 Thomas Lodge Wits Miserie, and the Worlds Madnesse (London: 1596), 84. Lodge wrote one of the period‘s few defenses of the theatre. Kemp, Nine Daies Wonder, 5. 256 Stubbes, Anatomy of Abuses, 184.

150 towards the body and its movements was evident.257 Kemp was also very proficient at leaping as it turns out from his diary.258 The popularity of song and dance enhanced the rise of the stage jig which became an important element of the art of the sixteenth-century actor as it was much-loved by London playgoers from the era of Tarlton to the end of the reign of James I or even later. The plots and characters of the popular jigs were used in other performances and their melodies in other songs, the songs incorporated in the texts of the plays were very often written by dramatists.259 Although the jig lacks literary significance, its massive popularity makes it vital to an understanding of the popular and dramatic activities of Kemp‘s age.

The Jig

It is difficult to give the exact term and definition of the jig. However, on the basis of the examples, it can be said that jigs develop a certain complication of plot, often in dialogue form as it was characteristic in the contemporary popular songs. They can range from medieval lyrics of a few lines to contemporary songs of several stanzas. Jigs have different numbers of characters: on the stage three characters often played together; it must frequently have been a solo performance as well.260 In folk dancing, the jig meant a pair dance: often a man and a woman danced very close to each other. The audience was very active, singing and clapping along with the performers.261 The fool actors presented their typical abilities in the jigs: playing the funny, clumsy and cowardly lord of misrule of the carnivalesque tradition; they extemporized with their audience and dancing in an unexpectedly skilful manner.262 It is also difficult to define exact date of the jig as it is a sub-literary form: there are great gaps in the records because of lack of evidence and many jigs exist only in German or in very late editions.263 Jig the word was used with different meanings in Tarlton‘s time and also later on, for example with the meaning of entertainment. Chambers in his Elizabethan Stage264 quotes in translation a German‘s account of a bear-baiting in London in 1584, with the

257Korhonen, Fellows of Infinite Jest, 239. 258 Kemp, Nine Daies Wonder, 7. 259 See David Wiles, Shakespeare‟s Clown, 45-9. 260 Ibid. 261 Charles Read Baskervill, The Elizabethan Jig (New York, N. Y.: Dover, 1965), 7. 262 Ballads, songs, for example To a pleasant new tune called Trill lill may have been sung and danced by Kemp. As a drinking term ―trill-lill‖ is used in Old Wives Tale, l. 632; and in Nashe, Lenten Stuffe in Works, ed. R. B. McKerrow (London: 1904-10), III, 194, 265; in Baskervill, The Elizabethan Jig, 170. 263 Wiles, Shakespeare‟s Clown, 43-8. 264 Chambers, Elizabethan Stage, II, 455.

151 following comment: ―It is interesting to observe the baiting proper was supplemented with fireworks and an entertainment, which must have been of the nature of a jig. Next, a number of men and women came forward from a separate compartment, dancing, conversing and fighting with each other. ―Toy‖ was another synonym for jig among the educated (it designated any slight or unworthy composition). The word was also employed in a somewhat more specific way for frivolous dramatic devices, very much as Marlowe, Shakespeare, and Jonson use ‗jig;‘ it was also applicable to music, especially for dance.265 Armin also used the word toy in Nest of Ninnies.266 A lost work of Tarlton‘s was entered on the Register December 10, 1576, as ―a newe booke in Englishe verse intituled Tarltons Toyes.” Nashe wrote in the address to the ―Goodman Reader‖ of The Terrors of the Night: ―the first yere of the reigne of Tarltons toies.‖267 There were other terms for entertainment and the devices of comedians in the period. ―Merriment,‖ for example was applied to a shepherds‘ game at Christmas with song and dance.268 Nashe declares in Pierce Pennilesse that the enemies of plays when they are dead shall be brought upon the stage ―in a merriment of the Vsurer and the Diuel‖269 and the term is used for the comic action of both Tarlton and Kemp.270 There are several examples of this usage: in the story of a justice ―hauing a play presented before him and his Towneship by Tarlton and the rest of his fellowes, her Maiesties seruants, and they were now entring into their first merriment (as they call it), the people began exceedengly to laugh, when Tarlton first peept out his head‖; ―Will Kempe, I mistrust it will fall thy lot for a merriment, one of these days;‖ the title- page to A Knacke to knowe a Knave bearing the words ―With Kemps applauded Merrimentes of the men of Goteham.‖271 The expression ‗Kemp‘s Jig‘ was a byword in late sixteenth-century buffoonery.272 In 1600 Kemp prefaced his Nine Daies‟ Wonder with an address in which he describes himself as one ―that hath spent his life in mad jigs and merry jests.‖273 The title pages served as advertisements suggesting popularity, and the

265 See Clark, ed., Shirburn Ballads 269; Baskervill, The Elizabethan Jig. 266 Armin, Works, 18. 267 Thomas Nashe, Terrors of the Night [1594] R. B. McKerrow, ed., The Works of Thomas Nashe, 5 vols. 1904-10, repr. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1958), vol.1. 15. 268 For further discussion of this problem see Baskervill, The Elizabethan Jig, 8 269 Nashe, Works, I, 213 270 See Nashe, Works, I, 188 271 Ibid., I, 287. 272 Forrest, History of Morris Dancing, 120. 273 Kemp, Nine Daies Wonder, 4.

152 plays, pamphlets, performances, jigs and dances were all commercial enterprises and their main goal was profit.274 The jig had played a crucial role in popular entertainment and in theatrical performances especially in the comedies as it is delineated in David Wiles‘ theory,275 in which he has compared the English jig with an Italian theatrical form of the same period. Wiles explains that ―it can be perceived more clearly why the jig was an integral part of an English theatrical performance. In the public productions of the Italian commedia dell‘arte—in the collection of forty comedies published by Flaminio Scala in 1611, for instance—it is almost unbroken convention that the marriage of socially privileged innamorati is accompanied in the finale by a marriage between the servetta and one of the zanni.276 Yet in Elizabethan comedy, the marriage of the socially privileged marks the closure of the play, and there is rarely an accompanying point of arrival of the clown. It is no coincidence that the rise of the stage jig coincides historically with the rise of romantic comedy; Shakespeare and his contemporaries wrote in the knowledge that their comedies would be rounded off by a jig, and therefore leave their scripts open-ended- in a sense, incomplete. The jig in a very important sense completes the comedy.‖277 This theory gives a slightly simplified opinion as there are exceptions: for example at the end of Shakespeare‘s Much Ado About Nothing there is a communal ‗dance‘ which rounded off the play. Antithearicalists like Northbrook and Gosson left the best and most precious resources; the descriptions of pastimes and dancing to us. Northbrook represents his contemporaries as dancing ―with ordinate gestures, and with monstrous thumping of the feete, to pleasant soundes, to wanton songs, to dishonest verses.‖278 The earliest known bit of evidence for the jig on the stage is found in Gosson‘s Playes Confuted in fiue Actions, published in 1582. In it Gosson includes the dancing of jigs among the common devices of the stage.279 They criticised and condemned the vulgarity and pornography in the jigs as

274 Cf. Gillespie and Rhodes, Shakespeare and Elizabethan Popular Culture, 1, Lamb, The Popular Culture, 3 275 Wiles, Shakespeare‟s Clown, 53. 276 Il tetro delle favole rappresentative [Venice, 1611] translated as Scenarios of the Commedia dell‟Arte H.F. Salerno trans. and ed. (New York: New York University Press, 1967). Scala was a leading actor-director during the Shakespearen period, and his collection reflects the work of the leading professional companies. Quoted in Wiles, Shakespeare‟s Clown, 53. 277 Ibid. 278 John Northbrooke, A Treatise Against Dicing, Dancing, Plays, and Interludes, with Other Idle Pastimes (1577) in Tanya Pollard Shakespeare‟s Theatre: A Sourcebook (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004), 2-4. 279 Gosson, Plays Confuted in fiue Action (1582) in Pollard, Shakespeare‟s Theatre, 84-115.

153 well. The love motive, the wooing or marriage, sexual intrigue and satire were the leading topics in the jigs.280 Charles Read Baskervill offers an overview about the origins and the history of the sixteenth-century jig in his book, The Elizabethan Jig. Though written in 1929, his influential work is still indispensable and the only comprehensive one about this topic. It is a bit repetitive concerning the origins and main characteristic features of the jig, (he is sometimes lost in details at the expense of intelligibility.) According to Baskervill, the origins of the jig can be found in folk drama and in the minor dramatic forms in which comedians and strollers played. 281 Baskervill has mentioned several songs which were entered in the Register merely as ballads and elsewhere identified as jigs. During the 1560s a large number of entries of classical stories cast in ballad form appeared in the Register.282 So the pieces called jigs were commonly regarded simply as ballads and the ballad of the broadside type was the prevailing form of popular song. Thus the ballad singer‘s performance was very commonly a jig. They varied from the medieval type of lyric283 to long narrative ballads, in some of them the stress was put on the dialogue form; ballad-singing also often consisted of coarse political satire.284 The satiric song as jig was even more popular than the love song, perhaps because the different social and religious tensions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.285 The element of satire was strong in popular pastimes, especially in the feast of misrule.286 Baskervill also writes about the popularity of the English jigs abroad. The English travelling troupes introduced an entirely new genre in the jig, which made a tremendous impression and though the most famous dancing masters were usually from the Continent or were at least trained there, the famous English leaping and whirling dancers were wondered at even abroad.287 In his Nine Daies‟ Wonder Kemp calls himself ―Cavaliero Kemp, Head Master of Morrice dancers, High Headborough of heighs, and only ―tricker of

280 Baskervill, Elizabethan Jig, 17. 281 Ibid., 3-40. 282 Ashmol. 48 in Wright, ed. Songs and Ballads, (Roxburghe Club, 1860); Sloane 1896 in: Hyder Edward Rollins, ed. Old English Ballads (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1920), xxx-xxxi. 283 Baskervill, Elizabethan Jig, 176, 186-87, 195, 215. 284 Baskervill, Elizabethan Jig, 179. The Robin Hood plays, three of which survive from this period, furnish definite examples. 285 Ibid., 95. 286 See Chambers, Medieval Stage, I, 173, 403-19. 287 Korhonen, Fellows of Infinite Jest, 241. In Nuremberg in 1612 English actors were reported dancing, and their witnesses were astonished and delighted to see their impressive turns, leaps and jumps. Korhonen, Fellows of Infinite Jest, 241.

154 your Trill-lilles.‖288 English actors performed jigs on foreign tours,289 over thirty German, Dutch, and even Swedish ―Singspiele‖ have been preserved; they imitated the form and content of the English jig. A great many more English jigs have survived abroad than in England itself. A good example is Kemp‘s ―Rowland‖, which in spite of its influence has not survived in English, it is known in several German forms.290 (―Pückelherings Dill dill dill,‖ representing fairly definitely a lost English jig, is preserved in German, Dutch, and Swedish.)291

Tarlton’s and Kemp’s Jigs

Although Richard Tarlton is not at the focus of my study, highlighting his crucial role in making jigs popular and preparing the way for Kemp is inevitable.292 Tarlton, who was known as a many-sided pamphlet writer and ballad maker,293 was the first actor fool who raised the jig to a professional ‗number‘ and popularized the stage jig in the 1570s and 1580s. Performing jigs contributed much to Tarlton‘s popularity as a comic artist,294 he found the jig at the beginning of his career as a medium which especially suited his talents and he developed its variations. The heyday of the jig can be associated with Kemp in the 1590s and at the beginning of the seventeenth century. In the 1580s and 1590s the clown as a Lord of Misrule was generally given a sub-plot, the jig in the postlude; after the scripted play was over, the clown was allowed to improvise, rhyme and dance freely295 It was Tarlton who had established the custom of singing and extemporising with the audience at the end of the performance and Kemp continued this tradition.296 In 1592 Nashe refers to the custome at the end of Pierce Penilesse: ―The queint Comedians of our time/ That when their Play is doone do fal to ryme.‖297 Tarlton could take advantage of the tendency that

288 Kemp, Nine Daies Wonder, 5. 289 Kemp‘s role in Leicester‘s company in Holland in the 1580-s is discussed in the Introduction above. 290 Baskervill, Elizabethan Jig, 4. 291 M. J. Preston, M.G. Smith and P. S: Smith, Morrice dancers at Reversby: reproduced from the manuscript in the British Library (Centre for English Cultural Tradition and Language: University of Sheffield, 1976). There are references A number of symbolic names seem to have developed from the customs of the seasonal games, the conception of the fish clowns probably owed much to the mummery of the spring of Lenten games- in which the symbol of fish were frequently used. Fish names were given to two of the most important clownish figures developed by the English comedians abroad- Stockfish and Pickleherring- and Pickle Herring is one of the two chief clowns in the Reversby Sword Play, he appears in Kemp‘s jigs as well. 292 There are references to Tarlton‘s art and career mainly as an actor in Chapter 1 above. 293 It is quite probable that he wrote many of the ballads and jigs he performed himself, though his published works have not survived apart from a few satiric comments. In: Tarlton‟s Jests 192, Baskervill, Elizabethan Jig, 96. 294 Baskervill, Elizabethan Jig, 105. 295 Wiles, Shakespeare‟s Clown,43. 296 Ibid., 44. 297 Nashe, Pierce Penilesse, 159.

155 whatever came from the country was treated in burlesque fashion; his strengths were also comic and satiric song, mock fighting, and improvisation. He was famous for handling the close contact with the audience perfectly as well. Kemp‘s jigs were somehow different from other contemporary jigs as the surviving examples of the various forms of jigs suggest; he always adopted the old paradigm of misrule in his jigs.298 Several other comedians were attracted to the field in the same period: George Attowell, an actor in Strange‘s company whose name is attached to ―Attowell‟s Jig,‖ the Phillips of ―The Jig of the Slippers‖ was presumably Augustine Phillips, an important member of the Chamberlain‘s Company. It is presumable that at the end of the sixteenth century the leading English comedians at home as well as abroad were regularly dancers and singers of jigs and that the chief English companies kept a group of actors skilled in the performance of song and dance specialties.299 The four most famous texts of jigs survived attributed to Kemp are Rowland, Singing Simpkin, Attowell‟s Jig and Pickleherring Dill Dill Dill which can be found only in German and Dutch.300 Although there is no clear connection between the music and Kemp‘s pieces, there are several tunes entitled ‗Kemp‟s Jig‘ that were popular for dance melodies in the seventeenth century. (One, for example, appears in the first edition of John Playford‘s English Dancing Master.) 301 The licensing of certain pieces under the name jig began in 1591, and by the end of 1595 the following entries had been made on the Register with the name of Kemp:302

The Thirde and last parte of Kempes Jigge A pleasant new Jigge of the Broome-man (called in the margin ―Kempes‖) Master Kemps Newe Jigge of the kithcen stuffe woman Kemps newe Jygge betwixt, a souldiour and a Miser and Sym the clown (―Singing Simpkin‖).303

Kemp was very active, popular and famous in his own country and it is probable that he started a vogue for the English jig on the continent.304 In 1590 the dedication of Nashe‘s An Almond for a Parrat to ‗Caualeire Monsieur du Kempe, Iestmonger and Vice- gerent generall to the Ghost of Dicke Tarlton‘ gives evidence of his success on the English

298 Wiles, Shakespeare‟s Clown, 52. 299 Baskervill, Elizabethan Jig, 111. 300 See Baskervill, Elizabethan Jig, 107-111. 301 Wiles, Shakespeare‟s Clown, 110. 302 See Baskervill, Elizabethan Jig, 107. 303 Ibid., 108. 304 The fact that Kemp was in the Low Countries with Leicester in 1585 and in Denmark in 1586 and later in Germany has been mentioned in the Introduction. See also in R. A. Foakes, ed. Henslowe‟s Diary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

156 stage as Tarlton‘s successor. His fame in Continental Europe is also underlined in the statement that Harlicken inquired at Bergamo about Kemp, of whose ‗pleasance‘ he had heard report. By 1598 the popular enthusiasm for Kemp‘s performances was so great that it drew the fire of the satirists. ―The orbs celestiall, says Marston in The Scourge of Villaine, ―Will daunce Kempe jigge;‖305 and Guilpin in Skialetheia, protests that ―Whores, Bedles, bawdes, and Sergeants filthily Chaunt Kemps Iugge.‖306 Kemp‘s most celebrated number was Rowland, it was also popular abroad, and its printed versions have actually only survived outside of England.307 (Rowland consisted of at least three lengthy parts; Baskervill argues, that there was a series of Rowland jigs.)308 On December 16, 1591, Thomas Gosson entered in the Stationer‘s Register ‗the Seconde parte of the gigge betwene Rowland and Sexton‟, and twelve days later ‗the Thirde and last parte of Kempes Jigge.‘309 Baskervill presumes that the Rowland jigs existed even earlier than 1591 and the two ballads belonged to a series of Rowland jigs associated with Kemp‘s name.310 The content of Rowland can be summarized briefly. Rowland plays dead when his Peggy abandons him for the Sexton; Peggy grieves briefly, and then decides she might as well marry the Sexton, but she declares her love for Rowland when the latter springs indignantly to life. The central comic character is Rowland who keeps up a running commentary to the audience. The jig was played by four actors and is constructed so that the two dancers dance opposite each other while the second pair remains back or aside. In Rowland there is no verbal obscenity, but there is ample opportunity for lascivious dancing. In the case of Rowland‟s Godson a manuscript English jig, the title of which links it to Kemp‘s Rowland jigs.311 The plot concerns an act of adultery between Besse the master‘s wife and the fool-servant John or Jack. (He is known by both names.) The angry

305 J. O. Halliwell-Phillips, ed., The Works of Marston, Vol. III.(London: John Russell Smith, 1856), III, 301. 306 Alexander B. Grosart, ed. Skialetheia of Edward Guilpin 1598 [1878](Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974). 307 See Nashe, Works,I, 188; An Almond for a Parrat in Works, III.341; Strange News in Works I.287; The Pilgrimage to Parnassus (1597) V.674 ; The Travels of Three English Brothers (1607); Thomas Dekker, Gull‟s Horn Book (1609) 1; and Thomas Heywood, Apology (1612) 43. Listed in Edwin Nungezer, A Dictionary of Actors (New York, N.Y. Ithaca, 1929), 216-222. 308 Baskervill, Elizabethan Jig,131. 309 Baskervill, Elizabethan Jig,109. 310 Baskervill, Elizabethan Jig, 110. 311 Printed from Rawlinson Poet. MS 185, fols. 15 v-09r. The jig has been printed by Bolle in Heerig‘s Archiv CXIV (1905), 348-51, and Andrew Clark ed., Shirburn Ballads (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907), 354-60. In Baskervill, The Elizabethan Jig, 437.

157 and jealous master dresses his wife as a man: ―but in the Orcharde where I should meete him/ There in my apparell your selfe shall greete him.‖312 Cross dressing and sexual ambiguity in the morris dancing appear here as in several jigs and in Shakespeare‘s plays as well. The wife‘s trick and John‘s beating convinces the husband of the loyalty of both of them. Another manuscript jig in which Rowland appears is The Wooing of Nan. Rowland lost his love, because as he says ―yon farmers sonn hath stolne my love away‖ and the main reason of his attraction that he ―daunces wondrous well,‖ (line 15) bells are also mentioned as a crucial part of success, the importance of skillful dancing is emphasized throughout the text.

Wench: ― if he can daunce as well perce , he shall haue my hart in hold‖ (line 32-34) They daunce

Entr gent.: ― I was told you daunst to gain a wench.‖ (line 40)

Frend : ―he that daunces best must have her‖ (42-44 line)

Wench: ―I ham but a homly countrie maid‖ (line 50)

Rowland: ―Good dick bid them all com hether & tell perce from me beside, That if he think to haue the wench, Heer he stands shall lie with the bride.‖ (lines 20-24) 313

When the fool enters, the tune changes. He wants to win over the wench who calls him ―sweet hert, true love and tony or tomy‖ which was another usual name for the fool. The wench wants to marry the fool, because ―he capers so light.‖ The capability of speedy and energetic dancing and jesting is testified to here as well. Kemp‘s other important jig was the Singing Simpkin. It appeared in the Stationer‘s Register in 1595 as „a ballad called Kemp‟s new jig betwixt a soldier and a miser and Sim the clown.‘314 The wife‘s seduction of the servant Simpkin is interrupted by a soldier called Bluster while the husband is away. The wife hides Simpkin inside a chest. Simpkin as Rowland keeps up a running commentary to the audience, and he identifies himself as a witty fool without education:

―Good sir, I never went to Schole, Then why am I abused?

312 Baskervill, Elizabethan Jig, 438, 50-52 lines. 313 Baskervill, Elizabethan Jig, 434-5. 314 Baskervill, Elizabethan Jig, 433.

158 The truth is, I am but a foole, And like a fool am used.‖315

Adultary is expressed by animal symbolism as well; Simpkin refers to the husband as wearing a pair of horns.316 It seems that beating is a recurring element in these jigs; Simpkin is beaten by both the wife and the husband at the end. Songs entered as jigs were frequently also designated ballads: ―a ballad of master Kempes Newe Jigge of the kitchen stuffe woman, a ballad called Kemps newe Jygge betwixt, a souldiour and a Miser and Sym the clown.‖ (Even ―Attowell‘s Jig,‖ was printed simply as a broadside ballad with its elabotated plot, its four characters, four scenes, and four tunes.)317 Though jigs like Rowland, and Singing Simpkin flourished in the 1570s and 1580s and well into the seventeenth century especially in the Curtain and the Fortune and in the poorer north and east parts of London, and also abroad, the audience gradually changed. While in the sixteenth century the Elizabethan jig had been popular with everyone, by the early seventeenth century for the upper layers of the society and the dramatists writing for the new private theatres, ‗jig‘ became conspicuous as a term of contempt, a pejorative word referring to a ‗low‘ form of art.318 The Globe was the only playhouse on the Bankside to prosper in the seventeenth century, and this must be because it attracted an audience from the prosperous west side of London.319 Kemp‘s company, the Chamberlain‘s Men, evidently aimed to enhance their status,320 so the Globe never acquired a reputation for jigs as the jig did nothing to raise the status of company, and increased the risk of crowd trouble.321 This was another reason for the conflict between Kemp and Shakespeare.322 The common terms for the ballads of the cultured were ‗sonets‘ and ‗histories‘ which represented conventional love poetry and classic themes; early in the sixteenth century the term was being applied to all manner of lyrics and festival songs. The interest of the cultured in the type of poem to which they had contributed had waned by the 1580s and there was a shift in the meaning of the word ballad as well.323 Attacks by the antitheatricalists must have hastened the separation; one of the main complaints of the city

315 Baskervill, Elizabethan Jig, 449. 316 Baskervill, Elizabethan Jig, 444, line 9 . 317 Baskervill, Elizabethan Jig, 108. 318 Peter Burke, Popular Culture, 277. 319 The Mayor and the Common Council of London tried to make improvisations illegal in 1574 in inns, but it was only north of the river, nearer to the city centre that jigs were suppressed in 1612. See in Chambers, Elizabethan Stage, IV. 274 and in Wiles, Shakespeare‟s Clown, 47. 320 Chambers, Elizabethan Stage, II. 503. 321 This problem is discussed in Chapter 3. 322 For further discussion of the reasons of their conflict see in Chapter 3. 323 Joseph Ritson, Ancient Songs and Ballads from the Reign of King Henry the Second to the Revolution in Two Volumes [1790], W. C. Hazlitt, ed. and revised, (London: Reeves And Turner, 1877), 149.

159 against the theatre and the jig stress that theatre drew apprentices and handicraftsmen from their work as they were ―mixed and interlaced with bawdry, wanton shows, and uncomely gestures, as is used (every man knoweth) in these plays and interludes.‖324 Defenders of poetic art declared that the only legitimate ground for objection lay in the abuse of poetry, and singled out the popular rhymes of untrained men, especially the ballad makers, as the cause of the poor esteem in which poetry was held. From this time on, ‗ballad‘ was regarded as a term of contempt.325 We can find a good example on it when Falstaff says: ―If I be ta‘en, I‘ll peach for this. And I have not ballads made on you all, and sung to filthy tunes, let a cup of sack be my poison: when a jest is so forward, and afoot too, I hate it. (1 Henry IV II.2.65-67.) Nashe also writes scornfully about satiric jigs in Pierce Penniless (1592): ―Looke to it, Booksellers and Stationers, and let not your shops be infected with any such goose gyblets or stinking garbage, as the Iygs of newsmongers.‖326 News songs which were constantly used as jigs—often full of satire—were commonly sung both among the people and on the stage.327 Some of them were of a personal type—whether of abuse or of flattery—on the well-known characters of London and its underworld.328 At the beginning and at the end of his Nine Daies Wonder Kemp complains about the ―impudent generation of Ballad-makers‖ whom he accuses of having filled the country with ―Lies of his never-done acts‖ in connection with his morris dance from London to Norwich. ―I have made a privy search,‖ he says, ―[w]hat private Jig- monger of your jolly number hath been the Author of these abominable Ballets written of me.‖329 Chettle also speaks of their ‗jigging vanities‘ in his complaint against the fraternity of ballad singers.330 Because of the rebellious content of the jigs—especially the recurring satiric comments about the mighty and politics, mocking legal and clerical practices, burlesque versions of wills and other official documents in jigs—they were considered not only

324 Stubbes, Anatomy of Abuses,(1583) in Pollard, Shakespeare‟s Theater, 118. For further discussion of this topic see Janette Dillon, Theatre, court and city 1595-1610 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 25-30. 325 For further discussion of the history of ballads see William Chappell, ed., The Ballad Literature and Popular Music of Olden Time (London: Chappell & Co., 1859); G. H. Gerould, The Ballad of Tradition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932). 326 Nashe, Works, I, 239. Quoted in Baskervill, Elizabethan Jig, 59. 327 Cf. Novák, Veronika. Hírek, hatalom, társadalom. Információáramlás Párizsban a középkor végén. (Információtörténelem 4.) [Information, power, society. Information flow in Paris at the end of the Middle Ages] Budapest: Gondolat – Infonia, 2007. 328 Baskervill, Elizabethan Jig, 66. 329 Kemp, Nine Daies Wonder, 2; 32. 330 Henry Chettle, Kindheart Dream ed. E. F. Rimbault, (London: Percy Society, 1841), 13-20. Baskervill, Elizabethan Jig, 179.

160 blasphemous but also dangerous, as they produced breaches of order. Tarlton and Kemp in their jigs probably attacked the strict censors of their time, in the role of political satirist carried the propaganda against the antitheatricalists into the theater. Shortly after Tarlton‘s death the Marprelate controversy of 1588-89 came into focus. As I have mentioned in the previous chapter, Martin attacked the bishops in pamphlets with hostility toward the stage and folk pastime and the jig was a common form of satire on Martin and it was used on the stage.331 Tarlton‘s company, the Queen‘s Men were particularly active in the campaign of the players against Martin.332 Within a year of Tarlton‘s death John Laneham, who was the author as well as the actor of jigs, a prominent member of the company, and apparently a leader in the movement and his fellows of the Queen‘s company were performing jigs at the Theatre in ridicule of the Martinists.333 Kemp, who was Tarlton‘s follower and fellow comedian continued the satiric tone in his famous jigs and made it more popular, which can be proved by the fact that jigs remained fashionable well into the seventeenth century.

331 For further discussion of this matter see Patrick Collinson, ―Ecclesiastical vitriol: religious satire in the 1590s and the invention of puritanism‖ The Reign of Elizabeth I, Court and Culture in the Last Decade ed. John Guy (Washington: Folger Institute, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 32-58. Jenny Wormland, ―Ecclesiastical vitriol: the kirk, the puritans and the future king of England‖ in The Reign of Elizabeth I, Court and Culture in the Last Decade ed. John Guy (Washington: Folger Institute, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Jacquline Eales, ―A Road to Revolution: The Continuity of Puritanism, 1559-1642.‖ In The Culture of English Puritanism, 1560-1700 ed. C. Durston and Jacquline Eales (London: Macmillan, 1996), 184-210. 332 Baskervill, Elizabethan Jig, 52-54. 333 See J. T. Murray, English Dramatic Companies (London, 1910), I, 7, 32, 33.

161 IV. NINE DAIES WONDER – THE GREAT

CHALLENGE

1. KEMP IN THE SHAKESPEAREAN COMPANY

To understand Kemp‘s most important sphere of activities, the theatre, and the most influential company in his life, the Shakespearean company, one must understand the life and problems of this community. I have explored the lives of Kemp‘s fellows and apprentices in the company as well. Stage historians such as Thomas Baldwin, David Grote and Andrew Gurr have provided the groundwork for my own study with their impressive documentation and analysis of the life of the actors of the Shakespearean company. Baldwin, in his monumental 1927 work, The Organization and Personnel of the Shakespearean Company made a serious attempt to assess the organization and personnel of the company.1 There are some difficulties associated with many of Baldwin‘s conjectures but David Grote, in The Best Actors in the World, Shakespeare and His Acting Company, and Andrew Gurr, in The Shakespearean Playing Companies, provided a more modern and detailed history of the acting company by lining up a significant amount of reliable factual data.2

Structure

Baldwin argues that in the 1570s and 1580s the social structure of Elizabethan England was still essentially medieval, so businesses and theatrical companies were generally organized according to the guild system.3 His opinion is simplistic and only partly relevant, because this was a transitional period, when from a medieval group of equals the company underwent a metamorphosis into a modern organization dominated by stars.4 The Lord Chamberlain Company itself went through changes in

1 Thomas W. Baldwin, The Organization and Personnel of the Shakespearean Company (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1927). Grote used sources like various court and legal documents of the day and allusions from literary works. He determined at what point specific actors had company shares, their casting and the general workings of the Elizabethan acting partnerships. 2 David Grote, The Best Actors in the World, Shakespeare and His Acting Company, (Westport: Greenwood Press, 2002); Andrew Gurr, The Shakespearean Playing Companies (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996). It has been also a valuable source of information. 3 Andrea Velich, ―Decline of Guilds? The main London livery companies in the 15-16th centuries‖ Századok, 1998/1. 183-207. 4 Grote, Best Actors in the World, 96.

162 its history but according to Baldwin it is quite sure that the members were bound together by long years of association, and the Company was presumably founded as a society of friends.5 By the late 1580s the Lord Chamberlain‘s Men as other companies in London began to employ new members known as hired men, actors, who were not sharers but were paid a small, fixed fee to play the minor roles, and extras to complement the work of the six or eight permanent actors.6 Besides hired men, a theatrical company also needed apprentices.7 Baldwin presumes that an apprentice was trained by his master and he adds: ―[t]his does not mean, however, that the line of the apprentice at graduation would be identical with the master's. It would be of the same general type, but would of course reflect the younger actor's own personality. It is probable that the Shakespearean company maintained a regular school for actors, whose principal graduates would recruit the company.‖8 Because there were eight full Sharers in the company, there were presumably eight apprentices.9 Kemp had apprentices as well; Daniel Johns performed in Denmark with Kemp during 1585-86. Kemp had a ‗servant‘ named William Bee who accompanied him on his dance to Norwich in 1600. (A William Bee is found later performing with the Lady Elizabeth‘s Men, so it is possible that William Bee was a performer.10) In the 1590s a new clown called William Rowley played in the Company in the Kempean manner, so he was most likely Kemp‘s other apprentice.11 (Rowley later became famous both as a very fat clown and as a playwright.)12 When Kemp played in the Chamberlain‘s Company, the Sharers of the company were joint tenants; they shared equally all the assets of the company and they made

5 Baldwin, Organization and Personnel of the Shakespearean Company, 88, 161. For further discussion of Elizabethan playhouses see Joseph Quincy Adams, Shakespearean playhouse: a history of English theatres from the beginnings to the restoration (N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1917. Reprinted N.Y.: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1960). J. T. Murray, English Dramatic Companies 1558-1642, 2 vols. (London, 1910). 6 Baldwin, Organization and Personnel of the Shakespearean Company, 3-4. 7 Baldwin, Organization and Personnel of the Shakespearean Company, 4. R.A. Foakes, ed. Henslowe‟s Diary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), xxiii.We can glean information on these matters from Act of 1562 and from Henslowe, who was an employer of theatrical people. From the Diary we learn that in the Henslowe organization, 1597-1600, it was the custom to hire a man for a two-year period. 8 Baldwin, Organization and Personnel of the Shakespearean Company, 3, 281. 9 Grote, Best Actors in the World, 4. 10 Baldwin, Organization and Personnel of the Shakespearean Company, 89. 11 Baldwin, Organization and Personnel of the Shakespearean Company, 90. 12 Rowley is best known for The Changeling and The Witch of Edmonton. The first plays on which he collaborated were performed in 1607 by Queen Anne‘s company, the royal version of Worcester‘s Men, where Kemp took himself and his apprentice when he left the Chamberlain‘s Men. In 1609, Rowley joined the Duke of York‘s.

163 decisions together. As their shares reverted to the other company sharers at their death, they would require the consent and cooperation of all the other sharers when making decisions concerning the company.13 The names of Kemp‘s fellow actors, the sharers, many of the hired men, and most of the significant boys from the time the company passed under the patronage of Lord Strange in 1588 to 1623 can be known from the folio of 1623, which lists ―[t]he Names of the Principall Actors in all these Playes: William Shakespeare, Richard Burbage, John Hemmings, Augustine Phillips, William Kempt, Thomas Pope, George Bryan, Henry Condell, William Slye, Richard Cowly, John Lowine, Samuell Crosse, Alexander Cooke, Samuel Gilburne, Robert Armin, William Ostler, Nathan Field, John Vnderwood, Nicholas Tooley, William Ecclestone, Joseph Taylor, Robert Benfield, Robert Goughe, Richard Robinson, Iohn Shancke, Iohn Rice.‖14 Only Kemp, Pope, Bryane, Crosse, and Gilburne do not appear on the list of members after 1603.15 In Baldwin‘s opinion, the members of the Shakespearean company of 1588 presumably came from the different branches of the old Leicester‘s men.16 The licence of May 1593 shows that the original membership was William Kemp, Thomas Pope, John Heminges, Augustine Phillips, and George Bryane.17 When the Chamberlain‘s Men began to perform in the summer of 1594, it consisted of eight Sharers: Bryan, Burbage, Heminges, Kemp, Phillips, Pope, Condell, and Shakespeare; and about eight boys.18 In 1595 eight to ten hired men: Cowley, Sinklo, Pallant, and Duke, and perhaps Spenser, Jeffes, Holland, and Lee were added to the company.19 Kemp‘s apprentice, Richard Cowley, listed on the company patent of 1603 and among the principal actors in the Folio.20 Grote assumes that the sharers performed in every play and they probably played the main roles. 21

13 Baldwin, Organization and Personnel of the Shakespearean Company, 87. 14 Baldwin, Organization and Personnel of the Shakespearean Company, 82. 15 Baldwin, Organization and Personnel of the Shakespearean Company, 68. 16 Baldwin, Organization and Personnel of the Shakespearean Company, 80. 17 Baldwin, Organization and Personnel of the Shakespearean Company, 81-84. 18 Grote, Best Actors in the World, 5. 19 Grote, Best Actors in the World, 14. 20 No surviving cast lists for this company identify both players and roles until long after Shakespeare's retirement, so this must to some extent be a matter of conjecture. Baldwin, Organization and Personnel of the Shakespearean Company, 79. 21 Grote, Best Actors in the World, 15.

164 Place of Residence

Kemp and other actors of the company lived close to their theatre and to each other; it helped them in working and made this group of people to become a community. The members of the Shakespearean company from 1588 to 1642 lived in groups in London.22 Kemp lived on the Bank at St. Saviour‘s, certainly from 1595 until his death.23 All other original members lived on the Bankside where the company is known to have acted at the Rose in 1592-94 except for Heminges and probably Bryane who lived in the Aldermanbury neighbourhood. Kemp‘s fellow comedian, Thomas Pope also lived at St. Saviour‘s from 1593 till his death. Richard Cowley, Kemp‘s apprentice, spent his early days on the Bank, but after graduation, he married, and settled down in Shoreditch while the company was playing in that neighbourhood.24 The members of the early company had formed a group around their work in Southwark,25 but when the company left the Rose in Southwark for the Cross Keys in Gracious Street and the Theatre and Curtain in Shoreditch, the younger members settled around the Burbadges, though the older members remained where they had already settled. The Burbadges, owners of the Theatre, resided in Halliwell or Holywell Street, Shoreditch,26 in the parish of St. Leonard‘s. The registers give considerable information concerning the marriages, births, deaths, and places of residence of several of the actors. The other place where most of the records concerning actors in the company can be found in Southwark at the church of St. Mary Overies, now St. Saviour‘s, in the Liberty of the Clink, close to London Bridge. After the Shakespearean company built the Globe and returned to the Bankside in 1599, the actors who did not have some special connection with either the Heminges or the Burbadge groups regularly settled on the Bank.27 Later Heminges moved from Aldermanbury to the Globe property, since Heminges was business manager, whose function was to keep all accounts and documents. He seems to have lived in this house on the Globe property and in this parish till his death in 1630. Thus the centres for the Shakespearean company were in Shoreditch and in Southwark.

22 Baldwin, Organization and Personnel of the Shakespearean Company, 148. 23 Baldwin, Organization and Personnel of the Shakespearean Company, 154. 24 Baldwin, Organization and Personnel of the Shakespearean Company, 153. 25 J. Payne Collier, Memoirs of the Principal Actors in the Plays of Shakespeare (London: 1846), 115. 26 Baldwin, Organization and Personnel of the Shakespearean Company, 156. 27 Baldwin, Organization and Personnel of the Shakespearean Company, 153.

165 Income

The most thorough attempt to work out the finances of the company and the income of the actors is Baldwin‘s, and one of his major sources of evidence was Henslowe‟s Diary.28 His rather complicated argument is based on the interpretation of the figures on folios 26-27v of Henslowe‘s diary.29 The company and an inner group of actors to which Kemp belonged had four types of income: from playing, the reward at court, housekeeping and profit or returns from the galleries. According to Baldwin the status of Sharer (senior partner) in the Chamberlain‘s Men had made Kemp, Shakespeare and his fellow partners substantial sums by 1599.30 That income had enabled them to invest in real estate, use the legal title of ―gentleman,‖ and buy coats of arms. Their incomes ranked in the top five percent of Elizabethan society. Kemp‘s one-tenth share in the Globe would bring him about 79 or 80 pence a day. His share would amount to a yearly sum of £76 or £77.31 Kemp could earn in a year what an artisan would earn in four years. Shakespeare, after all, was able to invest over £500 in real estate in the same period.32 By 1599 the Chamberlain‘s Men had become settled and was a remarkably stable company. It could expect, on average, an income at least 755 pence per performance. As Shakespeare‘s plays were popular and could expect to be cycled through the annual repertory about thirty times, earning was at least £94-95 a year.33 Though the members of the Chamberlain‘s Company shared the assets equally, the Globe was not a partnership of equals—Cuthbert and Richard Burbage retained half as their share, so they were in actual control.34 The other half was split among five actors: Shakespeare, Pope, Phillips, Heminges, and Kemp.35 Although it looked like a company project because it included most of the full Sharers in the company, in practice it was separated from the acting company.36 It included only those members of the company who had enough capital to invest (about a hundred pounds in cash for each). According to Grote the Globe was not an acting company project, because if it had

28 Baldwin, Organization and Personnel of the Shakespearean Company, 163-174. 29 Neil Carson, A Companion to Henslowe‟s Diary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 40-43. 30 James H. Forse, Art Imitates Business - Commercial and Political Influences in Elizabethan Theatre (Bowling Green: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 2001), 132. 31 Forse, Art Imitates Business, 132. 32 Forse, Art Imitates Business, 130. 33 Forse, Art Imitates Business, 134. 34 Cuthbert Burbage (1566–1636) was an English theatrical figure, son of impresario James Burbage and elder brother of famous actor Richard Burbage. 35 Chambers, Elizabethan Stage, II. 417. 36 Grote, Best Actors in the World, 78.

166 been, the shares in the building would have been passed along to new actors as part of their company membership.37 The shares could be sold outside the Chamberlain‘s Men or passed on to heirs, and most were passed to people outside the acting profession.

Reasons for Leaving the Company

Kemp left the successful Lord Chamberlain‘s Company in 1600. His departure was a decisive event in both his life and the life of the company. He had various reasons for leaving: the tense political atmosphere in which his character became a menacing danger for the future of the company, changes in the genre of comedy at the turn of the century38 which also generated an artistic and personal conflict with Shakespeare, and his grave economic situation. Several negative events happened in both political and theatrical life. In the so- called ‗second reign of Queen Elizabeth I‘ after 1585, the British forces were sent to the Netherlands. 39 The country was under acute physical and emotional strains.40 Leicester, the queen‘s favourite and patron of Kemp, along with many writers, died in 1588. His death created a vacuum. Support for the Protestant cause decreased, patrons ceased to be as generous as they had been largely because the finances of the country were exhausted. Leicester had no legitimate heir and many gravitated towards the so-called favourites: Burghley (Sir William Cecil), Sir Robert Cecil, Sir Christopher Hatton and Essex. There was a decline of literary patronage after the deaths of Leicester and the two Sidneys (Sir Henry and his son Philip).41 Poetry and the arts were pushed to the sidelines, and a social contract that had worked well from the beginning of the sixteenth century to

37 Grote, Best Actors in the World, 78. Baldwin, Organization and Personnel of the Shakespearean Company, 88, 161. Baldwin argued the opposite: that the Company was a closely-knit community in every respect. 38 Lawrence Danson, Shakespeare‟s Dramatic Genres (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2000), 54-56; David Daniell, ―Shakespeare and the traditions of comedy‖ in Stanley Wells, ed. Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 101. 39 John Guy, ―The 1590s: The Second Reign of Elizabeth I?‖ in The Reign of Elizabeth I, Court and Culture in the Last Decade (Washington: Folger Institute, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 1-20. 40 For further discussion of the problems also see G. R. Elton, England under the Tudors (London: The Folio Society, 1997); H. Berry, The Noble Science (Newark, University of Delaware Press, 1989). S.T. Bindoff, ed. Elizabethan Government and Society: Essays presented to Sir John Neale (London: The Athlone Press, 1961), Asa Briggs, A Social History of England (London: Penguin, 1999); John Guy, Tudor England (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), idem, The Tudor Monarchy (London: Arnold, 1997). 41 Simon Adams, ―The patronage of the crown in Elizabethan politics: the 1590s in perspective‖ in The Reign of Elizabeth I, Court and Culture in the Last Decade ed. John Guy (Washington: Folger Institute, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); 20-40. Alistair Fox, ―The complaint of poetry for the death of liberality: the decline of literary patronage in the 1590s‖ in The Reign of Elizabeth I, Court and Culture in the Last Decade ed. John Guy (Washington: Folger Institute, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 229- 258. Fritz Levy, ―The theatre and the Court in the 1590s‖ in The Reign of Elizabeth I, Court and Culture in the Last Decade. ed. John Guy (Washington: Folger Institute, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 274-301.

167 the 1590s was in the process of breaking down. Elizabeth‘s reign in the last decade suffered a major crisis of confidence.42 Shakespeare‘s patron, the earl of Southampton, was Essex‘s close friend; his political and emotional conflicts with the queen caused serious problems for the company as well.43 The most acute problems of the period included monopolies, corruption, crime, vagrancy, economic misfortunes, catastrophic harvest failures in 1596-97, and the population growth was static. Agricultural prices increased considerably in 1594-98; real wages decreased dramatically in 1597. In politics flattery and ambition had come to supersede the traditional values of wisdom and service. Corruption and Tacitean overtones at the same time became dominant in political life,44 and the atmosphere was thoroughly claustrophobic. By 1594, Shakespeare was not only the most experienced professional playwright but the only professional playwright in England.45 His great rivals—Marlowe, Kyd and Greene—had disappeared from the scene of the theatrical world of the day. None of them exited peacefully or without some kind of political conflict. Marlowe, the giant of this early era,46 was murdered in 1593 in what was long thought to have been a tavern brawl, but which more modern research suggests was an assassination connected with his other life as a spy.47 Thomas Kyd probably wrote very popular works but he was arrested for atheism in 1593, and the experience broke him. Although he was later released, he quickly declined and died. In 1592 Greene‘s career was cut short by his sudden death, apparently because he drank too much. Jonson also had political conflict and was imprisoned for his role in The Isle of Dogs.48 Their fate was an admonition to Shakespeare and the Company that the Elizabethan theatre had no secure future, and they avoided every kind of political conflict because the punishment for overstepping the bounds of the acceptable was severe. These cases warned

42 Guy, ―The 1590s: The Second Reign of Elizabeth I?‖, 1-18. 43 The most serious and dangerous situation for the Company was the Essex rebellion and performing Richard II in 1601 for the queen before Essex‘s execution. 44 Guy, ―The 1590s: The Second Reign of Elizabeth I?‖, 16. In Ben Jonson‘s Sejanus the Tacitan model for comprehending the rule of a ‗tyrant‘ appear. For the Essex circle Tacitus gave the solution for political survival under a tyrannical rule: it seems that on certain occassions Elizabeth was considered a tyrant. For those outside the Essex cycle, Taciteanism was a model that symbolized the fears of corruption, deceit and bad morals and linked them to a certain political group. 45 Cf. W. Harrison, Description of England in Shakespeare‟s youth Vol. I. ed. F.J. Furnivall (London: New Shakespeare Society, 1877). 46 Marlowe‘s Tamburlaine in 1587 introduced Marlowe's line of iambic pentameter, that became the voice of the age, his other plays were great success as well. 47 Grote, Best Actors in the World, 12. 48 James Shapiro, 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare (London: Faber and Faber, 2005), 142-3.

168 Shakespeare to be careful with political satire and improvisation.49 It seems to be that Shakespeare‘s opinion was that a wise man knows his place and time and doesn‘t look for trouble in a dangerous political world.50 He tried to satisfy the courtiers and the monarch at court and he introduced some new constraints. Although it was probably a dilemma how to satisfy simultaneously both the popular and the courtly audience. Kemp‘s personality and all those things he represented: freedom in playing without a script, improvisation, political satire in his jigs became more and more threatening for the safe future of the company. The years of 1597-98 were the so called ―crisis years‖51 in theatrical life: two serious political conflicts happened which made its future life very risky. In 1597 the company faced its first serious political crisis at court. This grew out of Shakespeare‘s 1 Henry IV. The play introduced the character of Falstaff 52 and this script allowed Kemp to do something he had never done. In the original version, the character was named John Oldcastle, historically a friend of Prince Henry. The real Oldcastle, however, was the antithesis of Falstaff, a brave soldier with fair morals who was ultimately martyred as an early Protestant. He was also the first Baton Cobham, and his descendants, the Brooke family, were powerful and influential. William Brooke, tenth Lord Cobham, had been Henry Carey's replacement as Lord Chamberlain in 1596. The Brookes did not take kindly to this travesty of the family founder's name. So Shakespeare was forced to change the name to Falstaff. During the same spring, the Chamberlain‘s Men who didn‘t have a proper permanent place to play also faced new competition—the new Pembroke‘s Company that had leased the Swan, the best theatre building in the city in February 1597, so they seemed to be more attractive to a part of the audience. So sequels seemed beneficial and Falstaff proved to be a successful character.53 The second political crisis happened in 1597 as well. Ben Jonson had a serious conflict with the Queen. He wrote a satirical comedy about life in London called The Isle of

49 For an overview of Shakespeare‘s life see Kathrine Duncan Jones, Ungentle Shakespeare: Scenes from his Life (London: Arden Shakespeare, 2001); John Southworth, Shakespeare The Player: A Life in the Theatre (Phoenix Mill, Sutton, Publishing, 2000); Stephen Greenblatt, Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare (New York and London: W. W. Norton, 2004). 50 Shapiro, 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare, 142-3. This opinion is also echoed in the play he was writing in these months, Julius Ceasar. 51 See more about it in Grote, Best Actors in the World, 55-75. 52 Wiles, Shakespeare‟s Clown: Actor and Text in the Elizabethan Playhouse (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1987), 116-35. Wiles devoted a whole chapter in his book on the reasons why Kemp played Falstaff. 53 Grote, Best Actors in the World, 58.

169 Dogs.54 The play was a spectacular hit, but it was also treasonous according to Elizabeth,55 which resulted in the play being immediately banned and all copies confiscated and destroyed. Jonson soon found himself in jail. According to Grote, the crisis had far outgrown a simple suppression of the Pembroke‘s Men who had performed the play by July 28; the Privy Council ordered all theatres not only closed but torn down.56 This edict must have caused a serious crisis in the lives of the actors because it was so unexpected and definite. The theatres in London were closed by the Privy Council, which ordered the banning of plays and the destruction of playhouses throughout London.57 The Chamberlain‘s Men left London on tour as soon as the Privy Council‘s orders were published, and they tried to avoid every political complication.58 The theatres were allowed to reopen just three months later, but this could not have been seen in advance. In 1598, the company consisted of nine Sharers: Burbage, Condell, Heminges, Kemp, Phillips, Pope, and Shakespeare with full shares, Crosse and Sly with half shares.59 An important reason for the conflict was the disagreement between the comic actor and the poet, Kemp and Shakespeare, as I have already written in the Introduction. The other reason for argument in the company was that it had developed two stars, Kemp and Burbage, a comic and a serious. Burbage was presumably in a better position in 1599; his person must have been an important part of the conflict. When the troop of the Chamberlain‘s Men was formed in 1594, Kemp was the company‘s biggest star, as is underscored by Shakespeare‘s earlier plays. But Shakespeare began to write better and better parts for Richard Burbage, and Kemp‘s roles began to shrink except for Bottom and Falstaff. No longer were the scripts evenly balanced between Kemp and Burbage as they had been in the earlier years of the Company.60 It is uncertain what it meant financially, but Kemp probably resented Burbage‘s achievement.61 He was an acclaimed and popular comic celebrity whose roles were diminishing. As it seems plausible that he played Polonius in Hamlet, Hamlet‘s mockery about Polonius—―he‘s for a jig or a tale of bawdry, or he sleeps‖ —is a cruel on-stage joke at Kemp‘s expense. Generally it is accepted among scholars that after Kemp was written out of Henry V, he never returned and that he never played at the Globe. According to Grote, this seems

54 See more about it in Forse, Art Imitates Business, 167-191. 55 Grote, Best Actors in the World, 64-66. 56 Grote, Best Actors in the World, 64. 57 Forse, Art Imitates Business, 167-8. 58 Ibid. 59 Forse, Art Imitates Business, 167-8. 60 Wiles, Shakespeare‟s Clown, 67-8. 61 Andrew Gurr, Shakespearean Stage (1574-1642) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 56.

170 unlikely, because if he left irrevocably in the summer of 1599, his partners would have been forced to buy out both his acting share and his Globe share.62 However, the building costs of the Globe had been so great that few of the other Sharers would have had enough money until the company had been playing for some time. Kemp‘s return is in fact supported by the evidence of the plays actually performed by the Chamberlain‘s Men during the autumn of 1599.63 The new plays and most of the past material, including all the romantic comedies and the Falstaff plays, required a comic actor of the physical size and performing style of Kemp. To replace a comedian, especially a star comic, was very difficult because the comedian needs very special skills; he has to be good at extemporizing, singing, playing musical instruments and dancing.64 Armin was the most capable candidate for this role. (He published his joke collections, Foole Upon Foole and Quips Upon Questions a year later during 1600. He identified himself as the Clown of the Curtain in both books, and Platter the Swiss tourist attests having seen him at the Curtain as well, so it is obvious that he was still there after the Globe opened in the summer of 1599.) 65 But Armin, who was a very different character, would have been no real solution to the problem at the critical moment when the Globe was ready to open66 Kemp was large, athletic and a famous dancer; Armin was very short, ugly, with weak physical abilities, and a talented singer. On 21 September Thomas Platter also seems to have seen Kemp in the Globe: ―On September 21, after dinner, at about two o'clock, I went over the water with my companions and saw in the strewn roof-house the tragedy of the first emperor Julius Caesar, with about fifteen characters very well acted; at the end of the comedy, they danced as was their custom, very elegantly; two people in men's clothes and two in women's combining wonderfully with each other, gave this performance.‖67 After the performance of Julius Caesar, he saw ―two in men‘s clothes and two in women‘s‖ dance something which was probably the jig, and one of those Globe dancers was most likely Kemp.68 The Return from Parnassus, staged at Cambridge sometime

62 Grote, Best Actors in the World, 83-91. 63 Grote, Best Actors in the World, 84-90. Grote gives a list of plays in which Kemp probably played in the 1599-1600 period, to prove that he returned for a while to the Company. 64 Baldwin, Organization and Personnel of the Shakespearean Company, 282. Grote, Best Actors in the World, 92. 65 Ibid. 66 When the Globe was ready is still a matter of much debate. 67 Thomas Platter and Horatio Busino, The Journals of Two Travellers in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England (London, Caliban Books, 1995), 8. 68 Gamini Salgado, Eyewitnesses of Shakespeare: First Hand Accounts of Performances 1590-1890 (London: Sussex University Press, 1975).

171 during the year 1600-01, also portrayed Burbage and Kemp as partners, friends and members of Shakespeare‘s company. So it is very probable that Kemp returned temporarily to the Company, and Grote‘s theory is strengthened by the fact that Kemp played Falstaff in the Merry Wives of Windsor as well, which was performed in the first season of the Globe.69 Grote thinks that the first six months in the Globe were a rousing success mainly due to Kemp.70 The company played three times at court that winter, which proved their popularity, artistic standing and financial success. Thus Shakespeare, Heminges, and Phillips could buy out Kemp‘s Globe share.71 Kemp might have been persuaded to return and help the company through a short and difficult period, but by then it must have been clear that the conflict had grown into a crisis. The Chamberlain‘s Company was a stable and prestigious organization, so Kemp must have had strong reasons for leaving for good. In Grote‘s opinion after Kemp had left, the sharers also got rid of all players who might have felt allegiance to Kemp, but the consequences were presumably enormous for the Company. They lost almost all their comedic repertory; tiny Armin could never play Bottom, Cob, Buffone or Falstaff. These productions were still valuable properties with potential for further revivals. Many long-serving hired men and former apprentices were without jobs and were short of money, so they probably provided printers with versions of plays made successful by the Chamberlain‘s Men. The remaining sharers tried to act quickly to prevent such potential thefts.72 According to James H. Forse, Kemp was among those who pirated the plays in which he played major roles for the Chamberlain‘s Men.73 In his theory Forse argues that seven of the plays played until 1600 were printed in pirate editions, in every one of which Kemp played important comedic character parts. Forse asserts that Kemp possessed a precious asset, namely his insider‘s knowledge of the popular plays. Kemp experienced financial problems in this period. After The Isle of Dog crisis in 1597, acting revenues were threatened, famine prices probably reduced attendance. From 1588-95, however,

69 Forse, Art Imitates Business, 135. Forse asserts that Kemp departed the Company in mid rehearsal of Merry Wives of Windsor and he argues that Kemp was actually the pirate of the play. 70 Forse, Art Imitates Business, 90. 71 Forse, Art Imitates Business, 91. Shapiro, 1599 A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare, 48. 72 Grote, Best Actors in the World, 93. According to Grote they arranged on August 4 to register Henry V, Every Man in His Humour, Much Ado About Nothing and a play called As You Like It "to be staled" i.e., to prevent someone else from publishing them. On August 23, Much Ado About Nothing were re-registered and 2 Henry IV, on October 8, A Midsummer Night's Dream and Merchant of Venice was registered as well. An ordinance of 1583 gave the Stationer‘s Company the right to punish printers who brought out works already registered with the Company, but there was no copyright protection. 73 Forse, Art Imitates Business, 121-139.

172 Kemp was working for three different companies: the Leicester‘s Men, the Strange‘s Men and the Chamberlain‘s Men, though for much of the time between 1592-94 London theatres were closed because of plague. Despite bad times for acting, however there was a demand for printed copies of popular plays. 74 Between 1594 and 1595 three pirated editions of Shakespeare‘s plays appeared. Early in 1600, Kemp made his famous Morris dance from London to Norwich and Kemp probably received the ‗buy-out‘ sum of ₤ 70 to ₤ 90 (four to five years‘ labour to the partisan) when he left the company.75 Nevertheless it turns out from his Nine Daies‟ Wonder that he was short on money less than a year after receiving these sums. When he returned to London he borrowed money from Henslowe; he needed loans for clothing when he returned from the Continent in 1602 as well.76 He did not invest in real estate and had no family unlike his former associates (Burbage, Heminges, Shakespeare and others). It seems that he did not accumulate money but earned and spent it immediately. Forse asserts that the main reason Kemp suddenly left the company was that the other members of the company learned that he had leaked versions of plays to the Queen‗s Chapel Children, a company of child-actors. Forse backs up his claim with the fact that Kemp had connections with the professional theatre people, for example Henry Evans and Nathaniel Giles, the masters of the boys‘ company.77 Kemp knew Edward Alleyn of the Admiral‘s Men also, as well as actors of the Pembroke‘s Men.78 Leaking plays was especially harmful in 1599 when Chamberlain‘s Men were trying to make for additions to the repertory, because the political situation concerning Essex had made history plays controversial. 79 I cannot agree completely with Forse‘s theory, although his reasoning is logical and believable and fits into the atmosphere and circumstances of those days. I think that the more serious reasons for Kemp‘s conflict with Shakespeare and the Company were rather the political strains, the changes in Kemp‘s profession and the genre of comedy, and his autonomous personality. The departure of Kemp and his fellows was a significant event in the life of the Company. They became a new company with a new repertoire that no longer included

74 Foakes, The Diary of Philip Henslowe; Carson, A Companion to Henslowe‟s Diary, 44. Henslowe‟s Diary reveals it. 75 Baldwin, The Organization and Personnel of the Shakespearean Company, 165. 76 Foakes, The Diary of Philip Henslowe, 45. 77 Edwin Nungezer, A Dictionary of Actors (New York, N.Y. Ithaca, 1929), 35. 78 See Wiles, Shakespeare‟s Clown, 117. 79 Forse, Art Imitates Business, 125.

173 the romantic comedies. The original company consisted mainly of comedians. (Kemp and Pope were almost entirely comic, and Heminges and Phillips mostly were as well). From 1590 on Richard Burbadge counterbalanced this situation.80 From 1594 until the Globe opened, Shakespeare wrote the following new plays: Love's Labour's Lost, Love's Labour's Won, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Merchant of Venice, Much Ado About Nothing and Merry Wives of Windsor, Comedy of Errors, Taming of the Shrew, and Two Gentlemen of Verona.81 Two others were histories in which a comic character had the largest role: 1, 2 Henry IV. Only Richard II, Romeo and Juliet, and King John were not comedies, and Romeo and Juliet has many comic scenes.82 Until Kemp left the company, the company‘s strength was comedy, and Shakespeare came very close to being a writer of comedy. Kemp‘s roles and the personalities of the comic characters are mostly lively, positive and open.83 A change in tone followed Kemp‘s exit. This may also be due to the general change in the genre of comedy; instead of comedies of the green world and romantic comedies, the satirical comedy came into vogue. As Lawrence Danson writes: ―[e]nglish history as a romantic comedy was losing some of its charm as the mortal moon, chaste Elizabeth herself, grew closer to death. Some of Shakespeare‘s contemporaries relocated the comic scene from lush pastoral to urban decay.‖84 While, for example, Jonson in his satires was exposing the underside of contemporary urban life, Shakespeare, despite traces of satire in his problem plays or dark comedies, turned his attention not to satire but to a different arrangement of generic conventions to his romances. These romances are fantastical, supernatural and show resemblances to the masque which was very popular at that time.85 With the construction of the Globe and Kemp‘s departure the most stable and productive era had ended for both the acting company and for Kemp and Shakespeare.86 Grote says: ―The opening of the Globe initiated a period of chaos, instability, the loss of more than half its most popular repertory, and the conversion of

80 Forse, Art Imitates Business, 96. 81 Grote, Best Actors in the World, 95. 82 Shapiro, 1599 A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare, 8. 83 Ibid; Also see István Géher, Shakespeare olvasókönyv [Shakespeare reading-book] (Budapest: Cserépfalvi Kiadó, 1993); István Géher, Shakespeare (Budapest: Corvina, 1998). 84 Lawrence Danson, Shakespeare's Dramatic Genres (Oxford Shakespeare Topics, Oxford University Press, 2000), 54. 85 David Daniell, ―Shakespeare and the traditions of comedy‖ in Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare Studies ed. Stanley Wells (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 10-141. 86 Danson, Shakespeare's Dramatic Genres, 56.

174 the company from a quasi-medieval group of equals into a quasi-modern star- dominated organization.‖87 This is closing of an era, and at the same time it is a beginning of another stage of both Kemp‘s and Shakespeare‘s career.

87 Grote, Best Actors in the World, 96.

175 2. KEMP, A LIFELONG WANDERER

“With hey and ho, through thicke and thin”88

Kemp‘s famous morris dance from London to Norwich, as recorded in his only published work Kemp‟s Nine Daies Wonder Performed in a daunce from London to Norwich, took place in 1600. Kemp‘s morris to Norwich was an exceptional enterprise in his day and shows both that morris dancing was celebrated and that it had strong links to the stage. The sketches in the diary are a fusion of song and mime or dance, and there are signs in his writing which affirm that Kemp was also a professional performer and improviser outside the theatre. Kemp‘s pamphlet is a special resource because it is a document of contemporary popular culture. Morris dancing, though popular in Elizabethan times in different venues, belonged primarily to the folk. In his diary Kemp translated the popular elements of oral culture into prose, thereby enabling us to gain insight into early modern popular culture: the world of festivals, theatre and dance in Shakespeare‘s age. This fertile and blossoming world was also rife with conflict. Kemp‘s venture aptly reflects his personality. We can see him on the road again, as he was a lifelong wanderer; he was brave enough to take the considerable risk to start a venture totally independently without the help of a routine of performance, an established company or a mighty patron. Relying on Kemp‘s exuberant prose, contemporary sources and the relevant literature, in this chapter I scrutinize morris dancing in its most typical venues. I also treat of Kemp‘s relationship with the figure of Robin Hood and his fellows and their most important festival the May Games as I follow Kemp closely through his famous morris from London to Norwich. My main concern is the examination of the elements of early modern popular culture as mediated through the text.

Morris Dancing

For Elizabethans, dance meant a mix of costume, song, dialogue and movement, and these factors characterized morris dancing as well. It became widespread and fashionable in three different venues in England in the sixteenth and the seventeenth

88 Kemp, Nine Daies Wonder, 12.

176 centuries: on the stage, in the streets and at court.89 It is not entirely clear whether the ‗morisk‘ and ‗morris‘ dances performed at the Tudor court are the same kind of dance with a slightly different name, but there are some indications that the two words could be used interchangeably, and are synonymous, so I use ‗morris‘ in my study. The dance got its name from the Moors, though the actual use of Moors as characters in the dance is rare, even as the main representatives of the non-Christian world (i.e. pagans, barbarians, Jews, Turks) sometimes appear.90 Grotesque imagery also often appears in depictions of the morris,91 so it is, or can be a caricature form, possibly cross- breeding with other genres such as commedia dell‘arte.92 A tinge of the erotic linked to the alien nature of the characters is found in morris dancing, just as it frequently appears in jigs and comedies whose basic plots turn on sexual motives in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. An aura of subversion lingered about the morris dancer.93 Stephen Gosson reflects on the contemporary suspicion in his Playes Confuted in Five Actions in 1592: ―For the eye beeside the beautie of the houses, and the Stages, hee (the Devil) sendeth in Gearish apparel maskes, vaulting, tumbling, daunsing of gigges, galiardes, morrisces, hobbyhorses; showing of iudgeling castes, nothing forgot, that might serue to set out the matter, with pompe, or rauish the beholders with varietie of pleasure.‖94 The morris, spectacular and seductive, could ravish the audience; it appealed to human weakness and stirred up trouble.95 Irony and parody are typical characteristic features of the so-called ‗ring morris‘ in which courtly love is parodied. The lady stands at the centre of the dance holding a ring, apple, or other symbol of her favour, while the men are dancing in a circle and compete for her affections.96 The ‗ring morris‘ ends with an ironic twist when the lady chooses the fool as the winner, implying that mens‘ amorous gestures in an elaborate courtly manner are foolish and artificial, and that she prefers the fool‘s blatant sexuality. The same story appears in jigs, for example in The Wooing of

89 John Forrest, The History of Morris Dancing 1458-1750 (Cambridge: John Forrest – James Clarke & Co. Ltd., 1999), 71. 90 Forrest, History of Morris Dancing, 89. 91 Daniel Hopfer‘s engraving of a ring morisk is a good example, it can be seen in Forrest History of Morris Dancing, 83. 92 Cf. Forrest, History of Morris Dancing, 83. 93 Daryl W. Palmer, ―William Kemp‘s Nine Daies Wonder and the Transmission of Performance Culture‖ in Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism (Volume 5, Number 2, Spring, 1991), 33-47. 94 Charles Read Baskervill, The Elizabethan Jig (New York, N. Y.: Dover, 1965), 92. 95 Palmer, ―William Kemp‘s Nine Daies Wonder‖, 35. 96 Forrest, History of Morris Dancing, 81. In Forrest‘ work it can bee seen on the Van Meckenem engravings and on Barbara Lowe‘s sketch as well. Forrest, History of Morris Dancing, 81.

177 Nan97 in which Rowland is the main character. Nan, the homely country maid, chooses the fool Tony to be her husband, because he dances the best and she ―plays with his bable,‖ which is an erotic hint. It is difficult to know whether the ring dance or dances ever played an important role in British courtly morrises, but it is certain that the European ‗ring‘ dances and English courtly morrises shared certain characters and costume elements.98 As Forrest asserts: ―a few prototypical characteristics, or ‗family resemblances‘ of European morisks may be identified tentatively: high leaping, fighting, mimed action, individual rather than concerted or figured action, dancing in a circle or around the room, rhythmic stepping, beating time with implements, and the use of dancing bells.‖99 The martial elements are dominant; a fighting dance called ‗moresca‘ similar to the ‗matachin,‘ a sword-fighting dance was also well-known.100 Kemp also described in his pamphlet the rigorous steps of morris dancing: it usually included a jerk, a jump and a caper, the dancer combined these figures.101 Many of the morrises have a well-defined narrative structure, they are quite distinct from other courtly dances of the time because they were undignified and other dances were primarily partner dances, while morrises can be partnered and unpartnered as well.102 The morrises involve violent, often competitive effort in which the body ached and sweated as Kemp also complained during his journey.103 Both the function and form of the court morris thus separate it from other dances performed in the same milieu.104

Morris at the Royal Court

According to extracts from the royal account books, both Henry VII and Henry VIII (and in Scotland James IV) supported morris dancing and it took two distinct directions during the Tudor era.105 During seasonal revels at court and in large banquet halls, some

97 Baskervill, Elizabethan Jig, 432. 98 Forrest, History of Morris Dancing, 82. 99 Forrest, History of Morris Dancing, 74. 100 Forrest, History of Morris Dancing, 75. 101 Palmer, ―William Kemp‘s Nine Daies Wonder‖, 35. Palmer described these dancing elements: ―The jerk took the athletic dancer eighteen inches off the ground, the jump required a double-footed hop high in the air and the caper meant a leap tied to a free leg shake‖. 102 Baldassare Castiglione, Book of the Courtier trans. Sir Thomas Hoby introd. WHD Rouse (London: Dent/ New York: Dutton, 1959). Castiglione in his Book of the Courtier warns the would-be courtier not to dance undignified morescas in public unless in mask and costume. 103 Kemp, Nine Daies Wonder, 8. 104 Forrest, History of Morris Dancing, 90. 105 For details see E. K. Chambers, Notes on the History of the Revels Office Under the Tudors (London: A. H. Bullen, 1906); Albert Feuillerat, ed., Documents Relating to the Office of the Revels in the Time of Queen Elizabeth (Louvain, 1908); Albert Feuillerat, ed., Documents of the Master of the Revels; Documents Relating to the Revels at Court in the time of King Edward VI and Queen Mary (Louvain, 1914); David Cook

178 morrises were parts of disguisings and masques; others were components of urban pageantry and processions.106 Chambers and Welsford asserted that the courtly dance presumably goes back to a traditional folk model and courtly morris were often performed as integral component of disguisings and must have developed from folk mumming or mummers‘ plays. 107 But recent research has cast serious doubt on this hypothesis and a more complex developmental history has been suggested by several scholars for example Glynne Wichkam in Early English Stages.108 Wickham considers the various theories of folk- and other origins of the courtly disguising in some detail. He argues that the disguisings of the late Middle Ages and later the masque evolved from the knightly tournament and the courtly mumming, both of which are significant contexts of the morris.109

Morris on the Stage

Although Kemp‘s morris dance from London to Norwich was not a theatrical performance, it was closely connected with the theatrical world and was the most celebrated morris event of the time.110 Morris dances were very popular in plays performed on the public stage from the late sixteenth century to the end of the seventeenth century.111 Morris dancing on the stage seems to have its origins in urban May Games and courtly masques and entertainments. 112

and Frank Percy ed., Dramatic Records in the Declared Accounts of the Treasurer of the Chamber, 1558- 1642 VI, Malone Society Collections, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962); M. J. Preston and M.G. Smith, ed. Morrice dancers at Reversby: reproduced from the manuscript in the British Library (Centre for English Cultural Tradition and Language. Sheffield: University of Sheffield, 1976). 106 For further discussion of this matter see Forrest, History of Morris dancing, 57-9; Sydney Anglo, Spectacle, Pageantry and Early Tudor Policy Oxford-Warburg Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997); John Astington, English court theatre, 1558-1642 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); D. M. Bergeron, English Civic Pageantry: 1558-1642 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1971); idem, Practicing Renaissance Scholarship: Plays and pageants Patrons and Politics (Pittsburgh: Pennsylvania Duquesne University Press, 2000); Enid Welsford, The Court Masque: a study in the relationship between poetry & the revels (New York : Russell & Russell, 1962). 107 Forrest, History of Morris dancing, 60; Chambers, Elizabethan Stage II, 125-7; Enid Welsford, Fool: His Social and Literary History (New York : Anchor Books, 1961), 26, 248. In his book Forrest refers to the above mentioned scholars‘ opinion. Mummers‘play is a traditional dramatic entertainment between the thirteenth and sixteenth century, mummers were originally bands of masked people who during winter festivals in Europe paraded the streets and entered houses to dance or play dice in silence. 108 Wichkam, Early English Stages, 1: 13-50 and 191-228. 109 The wedding of Prince Arthur to Catherine of Aragon in 1501 was an occassion significant in morris history because it was the first time that disguisings and morris appear together. Cf. Forrest, History of Morris dancing, 65-9. 110 Cf. Forrest, History of Morris Dancing, 236. 111 For further discussion of this matter see Forrest, History of Morris Dancing, 215-35; David Wiles, Early plays of Robin Hood (D.S. Brewer: Cambridge, 1981), 22-23. 112 Forrest, History of Morris Dancing, 215-7.

179 As morris dancing belonged to the rural sports which were in vogue in London by the late Elizabethan era and maintained its popularity even during the Restoration, commercial theatres introduced it into plays with rural settings so citizens could enjoy it, too. Some plays included morris dances, others simply mention morris dancing or had morris dancers as characters. The dances in the plays are various and their choreography seems to come from courtly, urban and rural sources.113 Robin and his group were very popular in May Games, so Robin appeared in the plays as well. The stage morris was typically performed by the comedians of a rural company in the interlude in the main drama as part of a May Game or other spring festival. The performers danced in couples and each pair had a distinct social identity. In most descriptions of morris the fool exists as a unique individual.114 The underlying themes were usually love and courtship. Anthony Munday was the first playwright to use rural morris in his John a Kent and John a Cumber.115 He presumably introduced the fashion of morris dancing and his works in which Robin appeared also served as a model for other playwrights, so the interest in morris on stage blossomed around 1599/1600.116 This was the year in which Kemp performed his celebrated jig which made morris dance even more popular.117 After the famous entertainment at Kenilworth in 1575, Ben Jonson produced his Entertainment at Althorpe for Queen Elizabeth in 1603.118 According to Forrest it is highly probable that, as at the entertainment at Kenilworth, the morris in the Entertainment at Althorpe was a form of the wooing ring dance though there is only indirect evidence from No-body‘s speech concerning the form of this dance.119 The dancers might have been young courtiers who acted the country clown, and their dance was a parody of the rural morris. 120 (It was originally itself a parody of the refinements of a courtly dance.) In Forrest‘s opinion in the period under survey morris appeared in Munday‘s John a Kent and John a Cumber in 1589, in Nashe‘s Summers Last Will and Testament in 1592

113 Forrest, History of Morris Dancing, 217. 114 See the dancers on the Tollet window in Chapter 2. Originally a clown was simply a farm labourer- stereotypically cloddish (clown=clod etimologically). 115 Anthony Munday, John a Kent and John a Cumber ed. John Payne Collier (London: The Shakespeare Society, 1851). The play John a Kent and John a Cumber which represented a basic form of the country wooing morris, involved a pipe and taborer, four dancers, Maid Marian and a fool. 116 For an overview of the situation of theatrical life in 1599-1600 see Forse, Art Imitates Business, 125-6; Andrew Gurr, The Shakespearean stage 1574-1642 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 102- 103; 146. 117 For further discussion of the history of morris dancing see Forrest, History of Morris Dancing, 218. 118 Ben Jonson, Entertainment at Althorpe, 1603. 119 Jonson, Entertainment at Althorpe, 128-130 in Forrest, History of Morris Dancing, 220. 120 Forrest, History of Morris Dancing, 220.

180 and in Marston‘s Histrio-Mastix in 1599 as well.121 The morris dance in Marston‘s other play, Iacke Drums Entertainment (1599), is not merely an interlude, even though the dance is not really integrated into the plot; it is a component of the beginning of the play. Thomas Dekker‘s The Shoemakers‟ Holiday122 attempts to integrate the morris dance into the plot structure and the dancers are not only extras but the main characters of the play.123 It was performed first at court by the Admiral‘s Company in 1599. In Beaumont‘s play Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray‟s Inn written in 1613 not the dancers, but the actors performed the morris.124 Because morris was so popular at court, the dance appeared in the same year in John Fletcher‘s and Shakespeare‘s The Two Noble Kinsmen as well.

Morris in the Streets

In a way Kemp‘s morris was similar to the urban processions in which morris was popular. Morris dancing was associated with different kinds of events. The urban processions in which morris appeared may be grouped into three categories: midsummer guild processions, May Games and the Lord of Misrule processions, the third being a smaller category.125 Although I briefly examine the processions, my concern in this section is primarily the May Game. The references to morris at the Midsummer processions in London mainly come from records of guild expenditures which are brief and minimally informative. John Stow also recorded processions in his Survey of London in 1563.126 Henry Machyn‘s Diary,127 which covers the period of 1550 to 1563, records several processions as well.128 Morris dance that is part of a procession had a martial quality and simple choreography with repeatable motions.129 Six to eight trained dancers and one or two minstrels were generally hired through a leader. They usually got a generous sum of

121 There is a concise summary about plays containing directions for a morris dance in Forrest, History of Morris Dancing, 216. 122 Thomas Dekker, The Shoemakers‟ Holiday ed. Peter J. Smith (Kent: Nick Hern Books, 2004). 123 For further discussion of this matter see Forrest, History of Morris Dancing, 216; John Southworth, Fools and Jesters at the English Court, (Phoenix Mill: Sutton Publishing Limited, 1998); 134-9. 124 Francis Beaumont, Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray‟s Inn (1613), 133-4. 125 Forrest, History of Morris Dancing, 92. 126 John Stow, A Survey of London [1603] (Oxford, 1908) with introduction and notes by Charles Lethbridge Kingsford; idem, Annales, or, A Generall Chronicle of England ( London: Richard Meighen, 1631). 127 Machyn, The Diary of Henry Machyn, Citizen and Merchant-taylor of London from A. D. 1563 ed. John Gough Nichols (London: The Camden Society, London, 1848), 253-255. 128 Machyn had special interest in street processions, because he was a furnisher of funerals, and of the funeral procession. 129 For further discussion of this matter see Glynne Wickham, Early English Stages 3 vols. (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963); Thomas Hahn, ed. Robin Hood in Popular Culture: Violence, Transgression, and Justice (Woodbridge: D. S. Brewer, 2000).

181 money for an evening‘s performance: usually 9 d (the old form of pound) per night per man.130 This wage puts morris dancers in the professional class. They had considerable social standing at the level of the better craftsmen and the highly trained guild artisans.131 The first subsistent reference to morris dancing in urban May Games comes from Machyn‘s diary from 1552. The main elements of the urban May Game are a procession from town to the woods, the gathering of greenery, and dancing in the streets: ―[t]he xxvj day of May came in to Fa[nchurch] parryche a goodly May-polle as youe h[ave seen, It was] pentyd whyt and gren, and ther the men and [women did] wher a-bowt ther neke baldrykes [of white and] gren, the gyant, the mores-danse, and the [...] had a castylle tnvd with penscls, and (...) plasys of sylkc and gylded; and the sam (day the) lord by consclie causyd yt to be [taken] done and broken, for I have not sene (...)‖132 Stow writes about the people who went out from towns to the countryside and how they encountered the beauty of the forest: ―[i]n the month of May, namely, on May-day in the morning, every man, except impediment would walk into the sweet meadows and green woods, there to rejoice their spirits with the beauty and savour of sweet flowers, and with the harmony of birds, praising God in their kind…‖133 In his writing from 1557 Machyn‘s describes pageants, drums, guns, pikemen, armed Moors. They regularly appear in the guild accounts and they are usually elements of the Midsummer watches as well: ―[t]he xxX day of May was a goly May-gam in Fanch-chyrche-strett with drumes and gunes And pykes, and ix wordes dyd ryd; and thay had speches evere man, and the morris dansse And the sauden, and a elevant with the castyll, and the sanden and yonge morens with targattes and darttes, and the lord and the lade of the Maye.‖134 Stow‘s description of May Games also supports the view that urban May Games had a strong processional quality and were similar to Midsummer watches: ―I find also that in the moneth of May, the Citizens of London of all estates, lightly in euery Parish, or sometimes two or three parishes ioyning togither, had their seuerall rnayings, and did fetch in Maypoles, with diurse warlike shewes, with good Archers, Morice dauncers, and other deuices for pastime all the day long, and towards the Euening they had stage playes, and Bonefiers in the streetes ...‖135

130 For further discussion of this matter see L. Spinelli, ―Copia di una lettera di Lodovico Spinelli secretario di Lorator veneto in Anglia, data in Londra‖ in I diarii di Marino Sanuto (1521). 131 Cf. Feuillerat, Revels Documents, 3-6. 132 Machyn, Diary, 20. In: Forrest, The History of Morris Dancing, 129. 133 Stow, A Survey of London, 90. 134 Machyn, Diary, 137. 135 Stow, A Survey of London, 90.

182 The purpose of the procession was to set up a maypole around which people were feasting and dancing. Festive, comic speeches, usually written by hired poets and playwrights, were delivered at key locations like market crosses. It is not clear who the sponsors of urban May Games were, but it is sure that the guilds were involved.136 By the 1540s the London Midsummer Watches more or less disappeared and much of their pageantry was transferred to the Lord Mayor‘s Show in October.137 The other towns continued Midsummer Watches in this period and sometimes included morris dancers, but because mostly of the growing Puritan and church opposition to various forms of dancing and entertainment, the morris dance does not appear in the accounts from the end of the sixteenth century until the time of the Restoration.138

The Transformation of the Figure of Robin Hood

May Games or Robin Hood Games139 were the most important festivals from the point of view of Kemp‘s character and career.140 During his journey Kemp as morris dancer represented the traditional roles in the contemporary popular culture, Robin Hood, the Lord of Misrule in the Tudor May Games, the Tudor Lord of the May or Summer Lord and the traditional Fool figure as well. Analyzing Kemp‘s diary, I have found that Kemp‘s association with Robin Hood has come to the fore. This relationship has become one of the most important underlying themes of this chapter. The Robin Hood legend has been studied by historians and by literary critics. Historians before the 1960s were preoccupied with the search for an original Robin Hood. In the 1970s, however, the legend was seen as a historical phenomenon in its own right. Two historians, R. B. Dobson and J. Taylor, with their impressive documentation and analysis of the legend published in 1976 under the title The Rymes of Robyn Hood: An Introduction to the English Outlaw, have provided the groundwork for a whole line of researchers. David Wiles‘ work, recorded in his Early Plays of Robin Hood in 1981, was also based on their research, as was Stephen Knight‘s anthology on the scholarship and

136 Forrest, The History of Morris Dancing, 125. 137 Forrest, The History of Morris Dancing, 126. 138 Before the rise of Puritanism, the church was one of the most significant sponsors of morris dancing, and a prime mover in the rapid diffusion of the dance throughout England. Visitation articles opposing morris were published in the diocese in 1581. James M. Gibson, ed., Visitation Articles Banning Morris Renaissance Early English Drama editions (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2002; London: The British Library, 2002) A series of manuscripts in the Harleian collection record some of the sentiments of the times. 139 The relationship between these festivals is discussed later in this Chapter. 140 John Matthews, ―The Games of Robin Hood‖ in: Stephen Knight, ed., Robin Hood: an anthology of scholarship and criticism (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1999), 393-411.

183 criticism of Robin Hood published in 1999.141 I have also drawn primarily on this scholarship.142 The existing references before 1600 are gathered by Stephen Knight in his book: Robin Hood: A Complete Study of the English Outlaw.143 According to his research, a remarkable number of plays and games of Robin Hood were performed in Britain: in

Exeter (1426-27), Aberdeen (1438), Norfolk (1441), Wiltshire (1432), Kingston (1520) and in Melton (1556).

Ballads

Robin Hood presumably appeared in games and plays because he was already well known from the ballads.144 The earliest reference to the ‗rhymes of Robin Hood‘ is Langland‘s in 1377, and the earliest manuscript of a ballad is dated c. 1450. The origins of the Robin Hood game are intangible.145 Chambers cites instances of the King game and the bringing in the Maypole from the 1240s.146 The role of the Summer King, the priest of the fertility spirit was played by a version of Robin Hood.147 From the early sixteenth century on, one-sheet printed broadsides were sold in the market-places, and Robin Hood remained popular primarily because of these broadside ballads and anecdotes about him, they were a significant part of the oral culture of the time.148 Many inns were named after Robin Hood as he was the ‗patron saint‘ of English archery.149 The medieval predecessor of Robin Hood was a mature, heroic and tragical figure.150 In spite of this, it is the particular characteristic feature of the broadside ballads

141 R. B. Dobson and J. Taylor, The Rymes of Robyn Hood: An Introduction to the English Outlaw, (London: Heinemann, 1976); David Wiles, Early plays of Robin Hood (D. S. Brewer: Cambridge, 1981); Stephen Knight, ed., Robin Hood: An anthology of scholarship and criticism (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1999). 142 The Robin Hood project at the University of Rochester also provided useful resources and bibliography. For further discussions of this matter see www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/.../rhaumenu.htm. Last consulted 2011.07.01. 143 Stephen Knight, Robin Hood: A Complete Study of the English Outlaw (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994). 144 H. E. Rollins ―Analytical Index to the Ballad Entries in the Registers of the Company of Stationers‖ In Studies in Philology, XXI (1924). 145 Wiles, Early plays, 43. 146 Chambers, The Mediaeval Stage,176. 147 Wiles, ―Robin Hood as Summer Lord‖ in Robin Hood: an anthology of scholarship and criticism (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1999), 80. 148 Adam Fox, Oral and Literate Culture in England 1500-1700 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 372. See more about this topic in: Margaret Spufford, (Small Books and Pleasant Histories popular fiction and its readership in seventeenth century England, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 51-72; and Stephen Knight and Thomas Ohlgren, eds. Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Tales, TEAMS Middle English Text Series (Michigan: Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1997), 1-3. 149 Peter Clark, The English Alehouse (London and New York: Longman, 1983), 151. 150 F. J. Child, ed. English and Scottish Popular Ballads 5 vols. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin and Company, 1882–98; rept. New York: Dover, 1965). Courtly elements play distinctive part in The Gest of Robin Hood, an important ballad which was first printed in about 1510. It was a unique exception in popular oral tradition

184 that Robin Hood does not appear in them as a hero; the courtly and romantic elements are either completely suppressed or subjected to crude burlesque.151 None of the earliest surviving Robin Hood broadside ballads is exactly dated, but a very large number of those preserved in the great collections of Wood, Pepys and Roxburghe were printed by Francis Coles and his London rivals during the middle years of the seventeenth century.152 (The first major edition of the ballads of Robin Hood was essentially the work of Joseph Ritson in 1795.153)

Plays

Robin Hood appeared in the mummers‘ plays, in the medieval tale or ballad and then entered the world of the play.154 In the sixteenth century Robin Hood‘s legend can be found in the plays of Anthony Munday, Ben Jonson and Thomas Deloney.155 Shakespeare‘s many allusions to the ballads prove that he was familiar with the legend and the symbol of the English greenwood (for example As You Like It). Robin Hood is an important character of the anonymous Pleasant Commedie called Looke About You (1600) and he also appears in Jonson‘s play, The Forrest (1616). Anthony Munday was the most influential of the playwrights to write about Robin Hood; in his plays he treated the outlaw hero‘s career at length. Munday was the first to make Robin Hood socially respectable; he laid the foundations of an aristocratic strain in the myth of Robin Hood. He completed the process to make Robin Hood adequate for the

as it was designed for the literate reader rather than the common listener so the tone is more elevated and the poet celebrates a chivalric value system: although Robin remains a yeoman, his chivalry is Arthurian. Cf. Knight, Robin Hood: A Complete Study of the English Outlaw, 81. 151Charles Read Baskervill, The Elizabethan Jig (New York, N. Y.: Dover, 1965), 164-70; Spufford, Small Books and Pleasant Histories, 158. 152 From the 1550 on compulsory registration of printed ballads with the London Stationers‘Company has enabled H. E. Rollins and others to trace the progress of this flourishing industry in great detail. Thanks to the later enthusiasm for the genre of a famous series of collectors from John Selden to the third Duke of Roxburghe, broadside texts themselves survive in very large numbers. The Robin Hood ballads were later collected by Firth, C. H. Child ―Ballads and Broadsides‖ in Shakespeare‟s England ed. S. Lee (London, 1917). H. E. Rollins ―Analytical Index to the Ballad Entries in the Registers of the Company of Stationers‖ in Studies in Philology, XXI (1924); F. J. Furnivall ed., Captain Cox, His Ballads and Books; or, Robert Laneham‟s Letter, (Ballad Society, London, 1871); G. H. Gerould, The Ballad of Tradition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932); William Chappell, ed., The Ballad Literature and Popular Music of Olden Time (London: Chappell & Co 1859); F J. Child, ed., The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, 5 vol. (New York: Dover, 1965). 153 Joseph Ritson, Robin Hood: a collection of all the ancient poems, songs, and ballads, now extant relative to that celebrated English outlaw, to which are prefixed historical anecdotes of his life 2 vols. (London: William Pickering, 1832); Joseph Ritson, et al. Robin Hood: ballads and songs relating to that celebrated outlaw, with anecdotes of his life (Stockport: R. Broomhead, 1994). 154 Knight and Ohlgren, Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Tales, 5. 155 Robin Hood was also immortalized in Deloney‘s works about Jack of Newbury and Thomas Reading.

185 court, and identified Robin Hood as the dispossessed Earl of Huntingdon in 1598.156 In 1615 he also introduced Robin Hood in his Metropolis Coronata, the Triumphs of Ancient Drapery, a pageant prepared for the London Lord Mayor‘s Day.157 Thanks to Munday, the English greenwood became fashionable not only in the sixteenth-, but in the first forty years of the seventeenth century. However the popular tradition often describes Robin as a yeoman, and ignores his new social status created by Munday‘s version of the legend even in the seventeenth century.158 The little information which is known about the origins of royal interest in Robin Hood can be found in the chronicler Edward Hall‘s well-known account of the court festivities of the young King Henry VIII.159 Robin Hood mainly appeared in spectacles and pageantry and only very rarely in surviving Tudor literary texts.160

May Games – Robin Hood Games

According to Chambers‘ theory, the Robin Hood figure who appeared in the ballads became identified with a similar character in the May Games.161 Although the May Games followed the ballads, the relationship between the two forms—according to Wiles—is a more complex one than that perceived by Chambers.162 From the beginning of the sixteenth century until the end of the seventeenth century Robin Hood became the central figure in the May Day Games to the extent that the celebrations became known as ‗Robin Hood‘s Games.‘ Wiles also examined the medieval and early modern records all over England and Scotland (Kingston, Reading, Henley-on-Thames, Northill in Bedfordshire, Melton Mowbray in Leicestershire, Guildford). The May Day celebrations helped to keep the secret power of the Robin Hood cult alive.163 It is remarkable how often Robin Hood appears in the records in close association with a Lord of the May or Summer King, and in

156 Anthony Munday, The Death of Robert, Earl of Huntington [1601] (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967). Anthony Munday, The Downfall of Robert Earl of Huntingdon [1601] (Oxford: Malone Society Reprints, 1965). 157 Anthony Munday, Metropolis Coronata, the Triumphs of Ancient Drapery, 1601. 158 R. B Dobson, and J. Taylor, ―The Legend Since the Middle Ages‖ in Robin Hood: an anthology of scholarship and criticism (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1999), 160-5. 159 Edward Hall, Hall's Chronicle: The Union of the Two Noble and Illustre Famelies of Lancastre and Yorke, 1548 (London: J. Johnson, 1809). Edward Hall describes the Mayings of Henry VIII and claims that Henry was entertained by Robin Hood with shooting matches. 160 Louis Potter, ed. Playing Robin Hood: The Legend as Performance in Five Centuries (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1998). 161 Cf. Edmund K. Chambers, The Mediaeval Stage, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1903). 176; idem, The English Folk Play (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933). 162 Wiles, Early plays, 43. The reference to the play in Exeter shows the above mentioned assumption. 163 R. B. Dobson and J. Taylor, ―The Legend Since the Middle Ages Ages‖ , 155-60.

186 Wiles‘ view Robin Hood is probably a variant of the May King or Summer Lord.164 In the May Games Robin Hood participated in the already well-established morris dances, which was a world very different from that of the late medieval ballads.165 By the end of the sixteenth century the martial elements from the processions and watches—the guns, drums, and other military paraphernalia—had begun to appear in May Games, especially in the countryside.166 The presence of Robin Hood and his archers, the display of archery and also other feats of arms commonly associated with the tales of Robin Hood possibly provided the ‗warlike‘ elements of the May Games.167 In the second half of the sixteenth century it was vitally important for a comedian to be physically fit and skilful and to be good at fighting when participating in May Games, processions and theatrical plays which all implied morris dance as well. Kemp was ‗head-Master of Morrice dauncers‘ and ventured a long distance morris.168 His master, Tarlton was Master of the Fence at court. In spite of its name, May Games were not exclusively associated with May Day or even with the month of May. From parish accounts it can be known that Pentecost—which continually linked the ‗revels‘ of Robin Hood with Whitsuntide, a holiday that frequently falls in June—marked the moment when May Games began.169 Between May Day and Midsummer various games and sports, dances, pageants and plays were held.170 According to Wiles‘ research there are different terms for the ‗revels‘ or ‗sport‘ of Robin Hood: a game, an ale, pageants, the dance, and ‗gaderyngs‘ or gatherings. The most general and most often used word is ‗game.‘171 (Church ales were also associated with the May Games; they were organized at the local parish of municipal level).172 Robin Hood serves as an emblem of spring; dressed in

164 David Wiles, ―Robin Hood as Summer Lord ‖ in Robin Hood: an anthology of scholarship and criticism ed. Stephen Knight, (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1999), 78-99. 165 John Matthews, ―The Games of Robin Hood‖ in Robin Hood: an anthology of scholarship and criticism ed. Stephen Knight (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1999), 395-7. May Games with morris dancing appear in references from account books from for example Gloucester and Plymouth. Cf. Forrest, History of Morris Dancing, 345. 166 Thomas Hahn, ed. Robin Hood in Popular Culture: Violence, Transgression, and Justice (Woodbridge: D. S. Brewer, 2000). 167 Peter Stallybrass, ―Drunk with the cup of liberty: Robin Hood, the Carnivalesque, and the Rhetoric of Violence in Early modern England‖ in: Robin Hood: an anthology of scholarship and criticism ed. Stephen Knight (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1999), 300. 168 Kemp, Nine Dais Wonder, 5. 169 Wiles, Early Plays of Robin Hood, 3. 170 Cf. Philip Stubbes, Anatomy of Abuses (London, 1583, 1615). 170 Wiles, Early Plays of Robin Hood, 56. 171 Wiles, Early Plays of Robin Hood, 3. 172 Whitfield, White Paul. ―Holy Robin Hood: Carnival, Parish Guilds and the Outlaw Tradition‖ In Tudor Drama before Shakespeare, 1485-1590: New Directions for Research, Criticism, and Pedagogy. Edited by

187 green, Robin and his company personify spring vegetation.173 Because of its particular association with new life, the game became the particular property of youth. There were several conflicts in the relationship between the young men and the parish authorities because the Robin Hood Game often became the festival of the young men of the parish; it gave unmarried men the chance to assert their group identity.174 In the context of parish life, the household was perceived as the dominant economic unit, so those who lacked power were the young males because they could only marry when they had finished their apprenticeship or service and had acquired the means to set up an independent household.175 Falstaff also embodied youth as the King of Carnival and he indignantly says in 1 Henry IV ―they hate us youth.‖176 ―What, ye knaves! young men must live.‖177 Elements of love and sexuality can be found in the May Games as well. Excursions into the greenwood ‗to bring in May‘ were an old custom in England. Stubbes describes that people went out into the woods before dawn and stole flowers and branches which were to deck both pole and bower.178 This tradition was rebuked by Puritans as an excuse for promiscuity. Stubbes in his account of bringing home the maypole also throws suspicion on the maids: ―I haue heard it credibly reported (and that, viua voce) by men of great grauitie and reputation, that of fortie, threescore, or a hundred maides going to the wood ouer night, there haue scaresly the third part of them returned home againe undefiled.‖179 There is no documentary evidence to support their suspicions. The election of a May Lady to serve alongside the Lord acted as a control, and enforced the enactment of courteous, chaste behaviour. Robin continued to inhabit the springtime of life, he was described as insatiably belligerent, but never lecherous.180

Lloyd Edward Kermode, Jason Scott-Warren, and Martine van Elk. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004, 67-89. 173 Only in the popular ballad of ―Robin and the Potter‖ is there a hint of sexuality, through Robin's liaison with the Sheriff's wife. Elsewhere in the early ballads, emphasis is placed on Robin's devotion to the Virgin Mary. 174 Wiles, Early Plays of Robin Hood, 56-58. 175 Davis, ―The Reasons of Misrule‖ in Society and Culture in Early Modern France (98-123). Davis writes about the youth-abbeys and youths kingdoms in French cities and unmarried youths in rural communities which developed from the thirteenth century to the sixteenth century and were important elements of festive organizations. 176 1 Henry IV II. 2. 81-82. 177 1 Henry IV II. 2. 86. 178 Cf. Stubbes, Anatomie of Abuses, (1583), M3v-4r. 179 Stubbes, Anatomie of Abuses, (1583), M4r, in Forrest, History of Morris Dancing, 129. 180 It was Fiar Tuck, not Robin Hood, who represented the lewd, fertile male. For an overview of this matter see Wiles, Early Plays of Robin Hood, 24-25.

188 Summer King

The Summer King and Robin Hood, who represented the fertility of nature, provide the clearest link between Kemp and the medieval past and popular entertainment.181 By Tudor times the main object of the May Games became the collection of money for the parish. In most of the instances the church provided costumes and paid for the hire of musicians; the profits from the game were then paid back into church funds.182 During the May Games, the Summer Lord who was also the lord of the morris dance distributed paper livery badges in return for a levy which was paid into church funds.183 In his entrepreneurial version of the game, Kemp, at the beginning of his journey, distributed his own identifying keepsakes to those who supported him and accepted challenges from common people.184 The aim of handing out badges was to gain profit. He also chose to do his dance during Lent when the theatres were closed. He left on ―The first Munday in cleane Lent,‖ because he could earn some money even in this financially difficult period; but in traditional England the morris never started before Lent was out.185 In Wiles‘ opinion, the Summer Lord and Robin Hood can be perceived as direct equivalents.186 As Philip Stubbes describes it: ―First, all the wild-heads of the parish, conventing together, choose them a Grand-Captain (of all Mischief) whom they ennoble with the title ‗my Lord of Misrule‘, and him they crown with great solemnity, and adopt for their king.‖187 The Summer Lord was followed by about twenty to a hundred men.188 Robin Hood and his troop rode from village to village; their play was accompanied by music performed by a minstrel and two drummers. Stubbes also describes their costumes, which were of green, yellow or some other light colour. They also wore ribbons, lace, jewels and dancing bells. The Summer Lord and his company then ―march[ed] towards the church and churchyard, their pipers piping, their drummers thundring, their stumps dancing, their bells jingling, their handkerchieves swinging about their heads like madmen,

181 Peter Stallybrass, ―Drunk with the cup of liberty‖ in Robin Hood: an anthology of scholarship and criticism ed. Stephen Knight (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1999), 280-4. 182John Matthews, ―The Games of Robin Hood‖ in Robin Hood: an anthology of scholarship and criticism ed. Stephen Knight (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1999), 285-8. 183 Wiles, Early Plays,26 184 Kemp, Nine Daies Wonder, 4. 185 Chambers, Elizabethan Stage, II, 160. 186 David Wiles, ―Robin Hood as Summer Lord‖ in Robin Hood: an anthology of scholarship and criticism ed. Stephen Knight (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1999). 78. 187 Stubbes, Anatomie of Abuses, 122. 188 Wiles, Early Plays, 11.

189 their hobby-horses and other monsters skirmishing amongst the rout.‖189 According to Stubbes the dancers entered the churchyard and the church itself. Archbishop Grindal, in his Visitation Articles, also testified to this: ―[w]hether the ministers and church- wardens have suffered any Lords of Misrule, or Summer Lords or Ladies, or any disguised persons, or others, in Christmas or at May-games, or any morris dancers, or at any other times, to come unreverently into the church or churchyard, there to dance or play any unseemly parts with scoffs, jests, wanton gestures or ribald talk, namely in the time of Common Prayer.‖190 Although Robin Hood was never explicitly a representative of the poor, he did—by distributing liveries to the different members of his parish—provide a symbolic uniform for them, and there was no hierarchy within his band.191 The egalitarian ideal was familiar in Elizabethan times; it appears in Shakespeare‘s portrait of the comic rebel Jack Cade, who also invokes a golden world: ―when I am king there shall be no money; all shall eat and drink on my score, and I will apparel them all in one livery, that they may agree like brothers and worship me; their lord.‖192 Gonzalo in Shakespeare‘s The Tempest also speaks of a commonwealth he would set up if he had power over the island. When we examine Stubbes‘ description of the characteristic features and functions of the Lord of Misrule in the Tudor May Games, we can find that they also belong to impersonators of the greenwood outlaw.193 The May Game celebrated man‘s proximity to the natural world; the Summer Lord was an embodiment of the idea that human folly was common to both the greatest and the humblest of mortals. In this event in the figure of Robin Hood the same elements are combined: the outlaw who ignores the requirements of society and the green man, the incarnation of spring.194 Eric Hobsbawm, in his classic study Bandits,195 takes him as the archetype of the social bandit who becomes a focus of resistance to an oppressive authority.196 May Games and morris dancing were regarded as dangerous and of pagan origin by the religious sphere which launched the

189 Stubbes, Anatomie of Abuses, (M4r). 190 Edmund Grindal, Visitation Articles (London, 1555); James M Gibson, ed. Visitation Articles Banning Morris Renaissance Early English Drama editions (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2002; London: The British Library, 2002). 191 Cf. Knight, Robin Hood: A Complete Study of the English Outlaw 192 Shakespeare, Henry VI (4. II. 50). 193 Christopher Hill, ―Robin Hood‖ in Stephen Knight, ed., Robin Hood: an anthology of scholarship and criticism (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1999). 285-8. 194 Wiles, Early plays, 19. 195 Eric Hobsbawm, Bandits (London: Pelican, 1985). 196 Barbara Hanawalt, ―Ballads and Bandits: Fourteenth-Century Outlaw and the Robin Hood Poems‖ in Chaucer's England: Literature in Historical Context ed. Barbara Hanawalt (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992), 154–75.

190 most significant campaign against the festivities.197 The most famous attack was Bishop Latimer‘s assault in 1549.198 Morris dancing became the symbol of rebellion in the ideological struggles between Puritans and Royalists in the period that finally led to the Civil War. When it lost its symbolic and oppositional position, its power and popularity declined. Anthony Wood notes in 1660: ―[t]his Holy Thursday [31-05-1660] the people of Oxon were soe violent for Maypoles opposition to the Puritans that there was numbredil 12 Maypoles besides 3 or 4 morrises, etc. But no opposition appearing afterwards, the rabble flaged in their zeal; and seldom after above 1 or 2 in a year.‖199

197 Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, I, 9. In 1244 Robert Grosseteste, bishop of Lincoln, writing to his archdeacons, ordered that games have to be suppressed that included ―Inductio Maii sive Autumni‖. 198 For further discussion of this problem see J. Ritson, Collection of all the Ancient Poems. 199 Andrew Clark, ed., Life and Times of Anthony Wood, (Oxford: Oxford Hist. SOC. XIX, 1891),1:37.

191 3. NINE DAIES WONDER – KEMP’S JOURNEY

As Peter Burke emphasizes in his Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe, popular culture is always subject to transmission. Kemp‘s pamphlet also reflects the most significant moments in this process of transmission: a live event, a performance is represented in a text. Kemp‘s morris dance from London to Norwich made him even more famous. The full title demonstrates the notoriety Kemp achieved: ―Kemps nine daies wonder. Performed in a daunce from London to Norwich. Containing the pleasure, paines and kinde entertainment of William Kemp between London and that City in his late Morrice. Wherein is somewhat set downe worth note; reprooe the slaunders spred of him: many things merry, nothing hurtfull. Written by himself to satisfie his friends the truth, against all lying Ballad-makers, What he did, how hee was welcome, and by whome entertained.‖200 He is proud of his popularity, but during his journey he often feels the unpleasant sides of being a celebrity: ―[t]he multitudes were so great at my comming to Burntwood, that I had much a doe (though I made many intreaties and saies) to get passage to my Inne.‖201 He describes another experience as well: ―[s]o much a doe I had to passe by the people at Chelmsford, that it was more than an houre ere I could recouer my Inne gate, where I was faine to locke my selfe in my Chamber, and pacifie them with wordes out of my window insteed of deeds: to deale plainly I was so weary, that I could dance no more.‖202 Kemp‘s pamphlet became an authorized version of popular culture. He expressed his ownership over the text, similarly to Jonson‘s establishment of the authorized performance: ―the playwright as the individual centre of production.‖203 As in the case of commercial theatre, the aim of his pamphlet was to both raise money and gain him publicity.204 Kemp‘s journey was long and had strong processional elements in it. In the diary Kemp does not prove that he danced from London to Norwich in nine days, as it took almost four weeks, but the point according to Kemp was how many days he was actually dancing, which he claims to have been nine. (Over the course of two days he danced only three miles).

200 Kemp, Nine Daies Wonder, 5. 201 Kemp, Nine Daies Wonder, 9. 202 Ibid. 203 Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven F. Rendall (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 99. 204 Cf. R. A. Foakes, ed., Henslowe‟s Diary, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

192 According to Forrest Kemp‘s tour was the following:

DAY 1 11-02-1600 London to Romford DAY 2 14-02-1600 Romford to Ingatestone DAY 3 15-02-1600 Ingatestone to Chelmsford (DAY 3.5 16-02-1600 3 miles out of Chelmsford) DAY 4 18-02-1600 Chelmsford to Braintree (DAY 4.5 19-02-1600 3 miles out of Braintree) DAY 5 20-02-1600 Braintree to Melford DAY 6 23-02-1600 Melford to Bury to Thetford DAY 7 29-02-1600 Bury to Thetford DAY 8 03-03-1600 Thetford to Hingham DAY 9 04-03-1600 Hingham to Norwich 08-03-1600 Norwich entry ( Repeat of Norwich entry) 205

At the beginning of his trip Kemp was honoured with an official reception by the Mayor of London, was made a free man of the Merchant Venturers and also received a generous reward. The participants in the journey were ―Thomas Slye his Taberer, William Bee, his servant, George Sprat his appointed overseer and Caualiero Kemp, head Master of Morrice dauncers.‖ Kemp emphasizes his identity as a plain man: ―my selfe, thats, otherwise called Caualiero Kemp, head-Master of Morrice-dauncers, high Head borough of heighs, and onely tricker of your Trill-lilles and best bel-shangles betweene Sion and mount Surrey.‖ He had connections with playwrights, ballad-writers, dancers, actors, musicians; he was the master of the jigs, he describes himself as ―Will Kemp, that he spent his life in mad Iigges and merry iestes.‖206 He also emphasizes his popularity, the presents and blessings he gets and his skill in dancing: ―my Taberer stroke up merrily and as fast as kinde peoples thronging together would giue mee leaue, thorow London I leapt: By the way many good olde people and diuers others of yonger yeers, of meere kindnes, gaue me bowd sixpences and grotes, blessing me with the harty prayers and God-speedes.‖207 The mayors of London, Norwich and the other smaller towns welcomed him and gave him money and presents. From Sir Thomas Mildmay he got a pair of garters ―being my ordinary marchandize.‖208 For his performance, the mayor of Norwich gave him ―five

205 Forrest, History of Morris Dancing, 238. Chris Harris, Will Kemp, Shakespeare‟s Forgotten Clown (Oxford: The Kylin Press, 1983), 35. According to Harris, the first day was 10 February. 206 Kemp, Nine Daies Wonder, 5. 207 Kemp, Nine Daies Wonder, 6. 208 Kemp, Nine Daies Wonder, 9.

193 pound in Elizabeth angels.‖209 In addition to a reward of five pounds, the Mayor of Norwich ―gave me 40s. yeerely during my life, making me a free man of the marchant venterers.‖210 Kemp invited the common people to watch and follow him over the course of his enterprise. He enjoyed the hospitality of inns and households. His morris reflected the London street culture which attracted the people in the countryside for a month.211 One of the main aims of Kemp‘s journey was to make a profit to alleviate his financial difficulties. People placed bets that Kemp would not be able to dance from London to Norwich in nine days; he expressly invited spectators to gamble on his failure. As he travelled through the countryside, he distributed pledges for a given sum in order that if successful he could recoup his stake. There was probably some cavilling after his journey, and Kemp did not raise the money he had hoped.212 He complains in his pamphlet that the majority of people who made bets failed to pay up. He notes at the end of Nine Daies Wonder: ―[i]t resteth now that in a word I shew what profit I haue made by my Morrice. True it is I put out some money to haue threefold gaine at my return: some that loue me, regard my paines, and respect their promise, haue sent home the treble worth; some other at first sight haue paide me, if I came to seek them; others cannot see, nor wil they willingly be found, and these are the greater number.‖213 He partly wrote Nine Daies Wonder to prove that he did indeed accomplish the task contrary to rumours in London and to warn his debtors. He even threatens to publish a list of their names unless they pay up.

Improvisation, Fool Tradition

His pamphlet, as he himself calls his work, gives information not only about his life and attitudes, but also about his art as a performer. His performance throughout his journey is spontaneous; there is constant interaction between Kemp and the audience. The crowd regularly offers him food, drink and blessings: ―Forward I went with my hey de gaies to Ilford, where I againe rested, and was by the people of the towne and countrey there-about, very very wel welcomd: being offred carowses in the great spoon, one whole draught being able at that time to haue drawne my little wit drye.‖214

209 Kemp, Nine Daies Wonder, 22. Records of Early English Drama - Norwich 1540-1642, (Norwich Mayors' Court Books XIII.), 114-115; 418. (1984) - Record of payment to Kemp for his jig. 210 Kemp, Nine Daies Wonder, 30. 211 Palmer, ―William Kemp‘s Nine Daies Wonder‖, 35. 212 Wiles, Early Plays of Robin Hood, 46. 213 Kemp, Nine Daies Wonder, 19. 214 Kemp, Nine Daies Wonder, 7.

194 Michael Bristol asserts that Kemp‘s morris fits into the context of Bakhtin‘s Carnival theory: ―His performance does not have sharp, well-defined boundaries between actors and an audience but rather a form of participatory scenario that combines dance, comic improvisation and athletic endurance with an atmosphere of festive spontaneity and informal hospitality.‖215 Kemp‘s performances included song with mime or dance. Behind Kemp‘s prose the professional improviser appears:

I rested a while from dancing, but had small rest with those that would have begged me to drinking. But I warrant you Will Kemp was wise enough; to their full cups, kind thanks was my return, with Gentlemanlike protestations: as, truly sir, I dare not: it stands not with the congruity of my health. Congruity, said I? how came that strange language into my mouth? I think scarcely that it is any Christen word, and yet it may be a good word for aught I know, though I never made it nor do very well understand it; yet I am sure I have bought it at the word-mongers, at as dear a rate, as I could have had a whole 100 of Bavins at the wood-mongers. Farewell Congruity, for I mean now to be more concise, and stand upon evener bases: but I must neither stand nor sit, the Tab‘rer strikes alarum. Tickle it good Tom, I‘ll follow thee.216

Kemp‘s banter on how little he drank implies that drunkenness was a major point among the ―ballad-makers lies‖ about him. Drunkenness and poverty were part of Tarlton‘s public image and belonged to other clowns‘ image of the time, probably also to Kemp, who was Tarlton‘s follower and substitute. Kemp‘s indignant denials must be read as part of a humorous battle with rival jig-makers.217 He relies heavily on the fool tradition and plays with the idea of being a ‗fool‘ in other places as well. On the sixth day, which was Saturday of the second week, he was welcomed by master Colts: they danced together and then ―two fooles parted in a foule way.‖218 When on the way from Clare to Bury on the sixth day of the journey he was invited ―to a house of a very bountiful widow, there he met thirty gentlemen‖ and saw ―so plentifull variety of good fare.‖ His hostess ―was a woman of good presence: and if a foole may iudge, of no smal discretion.‖219 Again, he calls himself a fool; this also tenuously links him to the Vice/fool tradition. He offers bells and parti-coloured bonnets to the people who have danced with him as he played the fool, and when dancing opposite a retained household fool, he describes himself as a second ‗fool.‘220

215 Michael Bristol, Carnival and Theater (New York and London: Routledge, 1985), 142. In: Palmer, ―William Kemp‘s Nine Daies Wonder‖, 36. 216 Kemp, Nine Daies Wonder,16. 217 Wiles, Early Plays, 39. 218 Kemp, Nine Daies Wonder,16. 219 Kemp, Nine Daies Wonder, 16. 220 Kemp, Nine Daies Wonder, 12.

195 Just as different figures from English society appear on the Tollet window, Kemp in his diary also provides a lively portrait of contemporary society. He describes meticulously his followers, new acquaintances and the places (towns and especially taverns) he visits. ―On The first dayes Morrice‖ Londoners visited him in great numbers. On the second day in Burntwood two cutpurses with other two of their companions from London followed him. This is a reference to links between the stage and the contemporary underworld. Kemp knew many cutpurses from the theatre, he admits that these disreputable people often participated in such entertainments, and he seems to know them very well. Kemp surely had experience of the cony-catchers and must have read the cony- catchers‘ pamphlets as well.221 While travelling to Ingerstone, about fifty in the company followed him, some from London, some from the country, hearing his servant‘s Taber.222 At Witfordbridge country people and many gentlemen and gentlewomen gathered to see him. On the fifth day, on Wednesday, in Sudbury, a very kind gentleman, Master Foskew followed him and gave him advice about a temperate diet. If Kemp wished to maintain his condition, and remain fit and healthy as a professional dancer, he had to be careful about the type of food he was eating. He writes about his personal problems such as fatigue, falling down, and pains. He describes his physical condition, his everyday life and the hardships of his profession. His strained hip shows that entertaining others was hard work. He was of a mature age when he ventured his famous dance, about forty-five years old, so he had to manage his energy and strength carefully. Then he writes about an energetic tall fellow, a butcher who in a morris kept him company to Bury: ―[i]n this towne of Sudbury there came a lusty, tall fellow, a butcher by his profession, that would in a Morrice keepe mee company to Bury: I being glad of his friendly offer, gaue him thankes, and forward wee did set; but ere euer wee had measur‘d halfe a mile of our way, he gaue me ouer in the plain field, protesting that if he might get 100 pound, he would not hold out with me; for indeed my pace in dancing is not ordinary.‖223 The text itself says little concerning the form of the dance; instead, Kemp concentrates on the events surrounding the journey: the people he met, their kindness and unusual happenings. It turns out from the diary that Kemp‘s and his followers often danced

221 The connections between the underworld literature and theatrical life has been discussed in Chapter 2. 222 The tabor is a small drum, it hangs on the performer's left arm or around the neck, leaving the player‘s hands free to beat the drum with a stick in the right hand and play the pipe with thumb and first two fingers of the left hand. 223 Kemp, Nine Daies Wonder,14.

196 their morris as a solo performance; he also writes about his ‗leaps‘ or ‗jumps‘ and his punishing, extraordinary pace.224 As Forrest describes the morris: ―The essence of the dance lay not in figured choreography, although these may have occurred in dances for greater numbers, but in the actions of individuals, recalling once again the ring morris whose performers vied for the love of the central lady by each leaping and capering.‖225

Maid Marian

Others, even women accompanied his dance:

As he and I were parting, a lusty Country lasse being among the people, cal‘d him faint hearted lout, saying, ‗If I had begun to daunce, I would haue held out one myle though it had cost me my life.‘ At which wordes many laughed. ‗Nay,‘ saith she, ‗if the Dauncer will lend me a leash of his belles, Ile venter to treade one mile with him my selfe.‘ I lookt vpon her, saw mirth in her eies, heard boldnes in her words, and beheld her ready to tucke vp her russet petticoate; I fitted her with bels, which (s)he merrily taking, garnisht her thicke short legs, and with a smooth brow bad the Tabrer begin. The Drum strucke; forward marcht I with my merry Maydemarian, who shooke her fat sides, and footed it merrily to Melfoord, being a long myle. Ther parting with her, I gaue her (besides her skinfull of drinke) an English crowne to buy more drinke; for good wench, she was in a pittious heate: my kindnes she requited with dropping some dozen of short courtsies, and bidding God blesse the Dauncer. I had her adieu; and to giue her her due, she had a good eare, daunst truely, and wee parted friendly.226

This account proves that women could and did dance at this time, and morris was certainly popular and well-known among people in the countryside along his route:

At Chelsford, a Mayde not passing fourteene yeares of age, dwelling one Sudley, my kinde friend, made request to her Master and Dame that she might dance the Morrice with me in a great large roome. They being intreated, I was soone wonne to fit her with bels; besides she would haue the old fashion, with napking on her arms; and to our jumps we fell. A whole houre she held out; but then being ready to lye downe I left her off; but thus much in her praise, I would haue challenged the strongest man in Chelmsford, and amongst many I thinke few would haue done so much.227

A poem about the skilful country lass and her dance was written and Kemp included it in his diary:

A Country Lasse, browne as a berry, Blith of blee, in heart as merry, Cheekes well fed, and sides well larded, Euery bone with fat flesh guarded, Meeting merry Kemp by chaunce, Was Marrian in his Morrice daunce. Her slump legs with bels were garnisht, Her browne browes with sweating varnish(t);

224 Ibid. 225 Forrest, History of Morris Dancing, 74. 226 Kemp, Nine Daies Wonder, 14. 227 Kemp, Nine Daies Wonder, 11.

197 Her brone hips, when she was lag To win her groun, went swig a swag; Which to see all that came after Were repleate with mirthfull laughter. Yet she' thumpt it on her way With a sportly hey de gay: At a mile her daunce she ended. Kindly paide and well commended.228

According to Forrest the reader gets further insights into the nature of the dance itself from these accounts in Kemp‘s diary. One learns that the dance ―could be performed as a stationary exercise or as a processional, yet in both cases it was enormously vigorous. He continues: ―[t]he woman at Chelmsford danced intensively for an hour at which point Kemp quit; but the implication is that in principle, either could have danced longer, or left off sooner, so the dance had neither a beginning nor an end. It is also implied that the dances Kemp and his companions were performing were roughly equivalent, although they might have varied somewhat in style. If Kemp and the country people were performing approximately the same dance, it proves that the stage morris of Kemp‘s time was drawn from rural models.‖229 Kemp does not seem to find the idea of women dancing the morris unusual. He uses the term ‗Maid Marian‘ for women, placing them in a standard morris role. However this could be a boy‘s part as well as there were two different concepts of Maid Marian in the Elizabethan period. On the one hand there is Peele‘s idealised May Queen, and on the other Nashe‘s man-woman, the clownish character. The literary ancestry of the courtly Marian remains extremely controversial, but it seems that her name derives from the shepherdess Marion of the medieval French pastourelles who is mistress to Robin Hood.230 The Marian who is painted on the Tollet window is in elegant dress with flowing long hair and golden crown, these elements of her appearance show that she is a woman, and not a man in disguise.231 The above mentioned examples signal that women may have taken an increasingly active role especially in rural version of the morris.232 A vogue for nostalgic pastoral literature also caused the memory of the original female Marian to be preserved and idealised. References to a male Marian are exclusively Elizabethan. It might have been socially unacceptable for a girl to dance alone with a group of men and this could be the

228 Kemp, Nine Daies Wonder, 15. 229 Forrest, History of Morris Dancing, 239. 230 Alexander Barclay, Ship of Fooles (London, 1509). Alexander Barclay mentions Maid Marion in his fourth eclogue of his Ship of Fooles. 231 See illustration in Chapter 2. 232 For further discussion of this matter see Forrest, The History of Morris Dancing, 238.

198 underlying reason that men might have taken over the role of Marian. In 1592 in his anti- Marprelate tracts Nashe describes the character vividly: ―Martin himself is the Maid Marian, trimly dressed up in a cast gown and a kercher of Dame Lawson‘s, his face handsomely muffled with a diaper-napkin to cover his beard, and a great nosegay in his hands.‖233 Marian was absent from the earlier ballads so she presumably entered the legend via the May Games. Maid Marian appears from the sixteenth century as Robin Hood‘s partner, but she appears in ballads only at the beginning of the seventeenth century. 234 The complexity of the origin of Maid Marian has intrigued several Robin Hood scholars. Dobson and Taylor follow the belief that Maid Marian was absorbed into the May game from the morris.235 But her origin is probably more complicated because according to Wiles, the Robin Hood game is older than the morris dance, and it is not clear whether she or Robin first appeared as dancers.236 Apart from the Tollet/Betley window and the ballads, the Kingston account book (inventory) of 1538 also links Maid Marian to the morris dance, it depicts the morris troupe and Maid Marian‘s costume in Kingston.237 Like Robin, Marian often wears garments made of a green cloth known as Kendal.238 In 1575, Laneham also described the dancers: ―moris dauns, according to the auncient manner: six dauncerz, mawd- marion and the fool.‖239 The romantically sexual element in the relationship between Robin Hood and Maid Marion which was gradually introduced into the legend was missing from the medieval tradition but it was crucial for the later elaboration and survival of the myth and its transformation into a subject suitable for literary treatment for Tudor poets and playwrights.240 Marian‘s relationship with Robin Hood also helped the evolution of the legend of Robin Hood to take the decisive step of finding his way from the rural festival to the royal court.

233 Ronald B. McKerrow, ed., The Works of Thomas Nashe, 5 vols. [1904-10], (repr. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1958). III. 320. 234 Wiles, Early Plays, 21. 235 R. B. Dobson and J. Taylor, ―The Legend Since the Middle Ages‖, 156. 236 Wiles, Early Plays, 21. 237 Wiles, Early Plays, 22. 238 Cf. Wiles, Early Plays of Robin Hood, 47. 239 Nichols, Progresses of Queen Elizabeth, Vol. I. in: Baskervill, Elizabethan Jig, 352. 240 Dobson & Taylor, ―The Legend Since the Middle Ages‖, 155.

199 People and Places

A special characteristic of Kemp‘s pamphlet is its attention to place: there is a thorough record of his route and Kemp provides his readers with a mental map. The journey is described as a definite movement between the house of the Lord Mayor of London and the welcome of the Lord Mayor of Norwich. Although this was an age of developing cartographic skills and discovery, there were only few maps available in Kemp‘s day, and he certainly aroused his readers‘ interest with this novelty. The places Kemp visited were mainly inns, taverns, houses, market places and town gates. He spent most of his time on the road in the countryside and he stayed in inns, taverns and households for days; his stories gave people a sense of adventure. He writes about his favourite hobbies as well: ―On the first day at Stratford Langton many good fellows being there met, and knowing how well I loued the sporte, had prepared a Beare-bayting.‖241 Kemp must have seen this kind of entertainment before. Bearbaiting had strong links with the theatre, because the plays and bearbaiting were often held at the same building. The former was a very fashionable form of popular entertainment, as were jigs and morris dancing. Setting off for Braintree, on the fourth day of his journey, Kemp‘s musician began to play the taber:

With hey and ho, through thicke and thin, The hobbey horse quite forgotten, I follow‘d, as I did begin, Although the way was rotten.242

The roads in Kemp‘s days must have been in very bad condition. There were deep holes in the roads and he fell into a particularly large one and ended up waist-deep in water when making a sideways leap in the dance, he also records that two young people who followed him also fell into the potholes. ―I could not chuse but lough to see howe like two frogges they laboured.‖243 Kemp describes in documentary fashion the everyday life of ordinary rural Englishmen. Tradition was strengthened by morris dancing; many people followed Kemp and new bonds were formed between Kemp and locals and among the various members of the communities through which he passed. Kemp writes about the valued tradition of hospitality, the lodging of guests, and care for the poor. He regularly arrives at doors like

241 Kemp, Nine Daies Wonder, 7. 242 Kemp, Nine Daies Wonder, 12. 243 Kemp, Nine Daies Wonder, 12.

200 that of the above mentioned Master Foskew and the widow Everett in Bury. Leaving the widow‘s house, Kemp danced to Bury St. Edmunds, arriving at the same time as the Lord Chief Justice. This was Sir John Popham appointed Chief of the Kings Bench in 1592.244 Sir John must have been amazed at the empty streets that greeted him and his procession as the ‗wondring and regardles multitude‘ rushed to gape at ‗that poore Will Kemp.‘ However, the weather deteriorated and so much snow fell that Kemp was forced to stay in Bury-St-Edmunds for five days. On the seventh day of the third week, a Friday, a great number of people in Thetford came to see Kemp, who writes: ―the noble Gentleman Sir Edwin Rich, Gaue me entertainment in such bountifull and liberal sort.‖245 (As I have mentioned above Kemp received a generous gift of ₤5, a very large sum in those days.)246 On Monday, the eighth day on the way to Rockland, he found a very hospitable host who even changed from his work clothes into his best outfit to welcome Kemp:

He had shifted himselfe from his working dayes sute. Being armed at all poyntes, from the cap to the codpeece, his black shooes shining, and made straght with copper buckles of the best, his garters in the fashion, and euery garment fitting Corremsquandam (to use his owne word): hee enters the Hall with his bonnet in his hand began to crye out:

O Kemp deere Master Kemp: You are euen as welcome as as as, and so stammering, he began to study for a fit comparison, and I thanke him at last he fitted me? for saith he, thou art euen as welcome as the Queenes best grey-hound.247

The innkeeper was an ‗honest man‘ who tried to follow him in dancing but the ―good true fat-belly‖ soon lay down and cried after him. Kemp was probably not offended at this ―well meaning salutation‖ as court jesters and fools were equal with the Kings‘ and Queens‘ pets.248 As in the case of the widow in Bury he gives a positive description of the Mayor of Norwich: he leads a ―chast life, temperance in posessing wordly benefits.‖ It turns out that Kemp is happy to see the ambitious, successful and wealthy representatives of the middle class to which he, as a famous comedian, also belonged. He often plays the role of the usual simple morris dancer and foolish clown: ―What hath Morrice tripping Will to do with that? It keeps no time with his dance to deal with moral thing.‖249

244 For details consult Harris, Will Kemp, Shakespeare‟s Forgotten Clown, 40. 245 Kemp, Nine Daies Wonder, 18. 246 Harris Will Kemp, Shakespeare‟s Forgotten Clown, 41. Sir Edwin was the third son of Robert Lord Rich who was knighted at Cadiz in June 1596. A monument erected to his memory stands in Mulbarton Church. 247 Kemp, Nine Dais Wonder 18. 248 For an overview of court jesters see Chapter 1. 249 Kemp, Nine Daies Wonder, 24.

201 Kemp and the Royal Court

Kemp does not seem to have succeeded Tarlton as the Queen‘s unofficial personal fool, even if he practiced this role when he was Leicester‘s court jester at the beginning of his career. It is certain that he was well-known and popular at court as the Chamberlain‘s Company often performed there and the Queen enjoyed Kemp‘s stage roles. An innkeeper on the road identifies him as one of ―the Queen‘s Majesty‘s well-wishers or friends.‖250 Kemp claims that his ―mirths mean though they be, have been and ever shall be employed to the delight of my royal Mistris.‖251 This corresponds to Heywood‘s statement that Kemp succeeded Tarlton as well in the favour of the Queen as in the opinion and ―good thoughts of the general audience.‖252 As morris dancing was under active patronage in the Tudor royal court, Kemp appeared at court not only as a star comic but as a famous morris dancer as well. It is certain that Kemp chose the path rooted in the rich popular culture of his day when he left the safe and ambitious Chamberlain‘s Company and launched his morris dance. We do not know how his disappearance into the underworld of unlicensed companies and playhouses and abandonment of the Queen‘s favourite company affected his popularity at court. He may well have been out of favour for a while. According to Wiles some uncertainty surrounds Kemp‘s relationship with the Queen.253 Kemp inscribed his diary to Anne Fitton, the Queen‘s Maid of Honour.254 But the Queen‘s Maid of Honour was called Anne Russel and not Anne Fitton. Anne Russel, whose approaching wedding with Worcester‘s heir was to be the social event of the year, should have been the obvious dedicatee.255 Anne Fitton however had married a country gentleman (not a nobleman) some years before and went to live in Warwickshire. It is quite improbable that Kemp mistook the name of the dedicatee, and the Queen cared deeply about her Maids of Honour. Nothing can be known about Kemp‘s error. Wiles thinks that it is possible that ―posturing as a man bidding for court patronage, Kemp ironically certificates his true identity as a plain man, a man with no courtly aspirations, so he dedicated his pamphlet to a lady who eschewed courtly success.‖256 It seems to be an

250 Kemp, Nine Daies Wonder, 27. 251 Ibid. 252 Heywood, An Apology for Actors (1612); Chambers, Elizabetan Stage, IV, 252. 253 Wiles, Shakespeare‟s Clown, 28-9. 254 Ibid. 255 Roy Strong, The Cult of Elizabeth: Elizabethan Portraiture and Pageantry (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1987), 23. 256 Wiles, Shakespeare‟s Clown, 29.

202 oversimplified theory. Kemp, like everybody belonging to the theatrical circle also needed all the aristocratic patronage he could handle. It is sure that his most important personal motives dedicating his pamphlet to a ―True Ennobled Lady‖ was the maintenance of his own reputation and monetary gain. His last years as Lady Hundson‘s servant also confirm this way of thinking.

Kemp in Norwich

On Saturday, 5 March he left in the morning for Norwich and was warmly welcomed as a celebrated dancer and comic star. The throng grew thicker as he was approaching Norwich. Kemp asked to be allowed at least one day‘s rest to prepare for the entry of this busy town. The Mayor of Norwich suggested three days, for he also needed to gather the knights and gentry in the city to welcome Kemp. 257 So Kemp stopped his dance near Saint Giles Gate and rode into Norwich where he was entertained until Saturday by the Mayor and Aldermen. Although the pamphlet identifies the Mayor as Master Roger Wiles, the list of Mayors of Norwich during Elizabeth‘s reign has the name as Roger Weld.258 A meeting of the Mayors court was held on Saturday, 8 March, 1600, the day on which he danced into the city. This is recorded in the court book: ―It ys this day ordered ba Mr Mayor and Courte that x15 be given to Kempe, the Lord Chamberleyne his Servant.‖259 On Saturday, 8 March Kemp returned to St. Giles Gate to begin his athletic dance into the city and then proceeded to St. Stephen‘s Gate, where Thomas Gilbert welcomed him with his poem:

Master Kemp his welcome to Norwich

W With hart, and hand, among the rest, E Especially you welcome are: L Long looked for as welcome guest, C Come now at last you be from jane. O Of most within the Citty, sure, M Many good wishes you haue had; E Each one did pray you might endure, W With courage good the match you made. I Intend they did with gladsome hearts, L Like your well willers, you to meete: K Know you also they I doe their parts, E Eyther in field or house to greete

257 Kemp, Nine Daies Wonder, 26. 258 Harris, Will Kemp, Shakespeare‟s Forgotten Clown, 45. 259 Ibid.

203 M More you then any with you came P Procur'd thereto with trump and fame.260

Kemp danced towards the Mayor‘s House and because probably he was too tired of the crowd, he leaped over the church wall of St. John Maddermarket and reached the Manor house by a shorter route. The jump was recorded and although the wall no longer exists, the place at which it is supposed to have happened is marked by a plaque on the wall of the church directly opposite.261 Roger Weld, the mayor, greeted Kemp, invited him to a reception in the Guild Hall and probably arranged a festive procession for Kemp. As I have mentioned before he presented him with £5 and granted him a pension of forty shillings a year for life.262 The warm welcome and greetings by the officials of Norwich were certainly due to his reputation as Shakespeare‘s comic star, but according to Harris it is also likely that he was known as a member of the local family of Kempes.263 In return for these honours Kemp gave the city his dancing shoes which were nailed up on a wall in the Guildhall.264 The nine days wonder was over and a few weeks later Kemp returned to London on horseback, finding it extremely difficult to collect his money on the way. At the end of the pamphlet he speaks about the profit of his journey openly but at the same time he complains about ballad-makers whose lies could be heard and seen on posts. ―Kemps humble request to the impudent generation of Ballad-makers and their coherents; that it would please their rascalities to pitty his paines in the great iorney he pretends, and not to fill the country with lyes of his neuer done actes as they did in his late Morrice to Norwich.‖265 The precise nature of these lies concerning Kemp is not clear, but they must have had something to do with the above-mentioned conflict with his former company, the Lord Chamberlain‘s.266 When Kemp addresses his enemies as ‗Shakerags,‘ we can be sure that they were his former fellows, and we may draw a conclusion that Shakespeare‘s stage was the scene of the ballad-maker‘s attacks. Kemp scrutinizes the poets and writers who spread lies about him; one of them might have been Thomas Deloney, ‗the great ballat-maker‘

260 Kemp, Nine Daies Wonder, 23. 261 Harris, Will Kemp, Shakespeare‟s Forgotten Clown, 46. 262 Harris, Will Kemp, Shakespeare‟s Forgotten Clown, 47. 263 For further discussion of this problem see Harris, Will Kemp, Shakespeare‟s Forgotten Clown, 46. The mayor who welcomed Kemp, Roger Weld, was perhaps related to a Mrs. Weld, mentioned in the will of Caleb Kempe of Totteridge. 264 Harris, Will Kemp, Shakespeare‟s Forgotten Clown, 47. 265 Kemp, Nine Daies Wonder, 29. 266 This matter is discussed thoroughly in Chapter 3.

204 whom otherwise Kemp respected very much as his main topic was about the common people of London. But ―Tho. dyed poorly, and was honestly buried. The quest of inquiry finding him by death acquited of the Inditement.‖ Kemp‘s other possible slanderer is said to be a ‗jig-maker‘ who is an actor or writer, so Kemp‘s search for him takes him to a playhouse on Bankside.267 Kemp, in his pamphlet, complains of ―slanders‖ made against him by a tall youth who was ―a little stooping in the shoulders‖ and ―a penny Poet whose first making was the miserable stolne story of Macdoel, or Macdobeth, or Macsomewhat: for I am sure a Mac it was, though I neuer had the maw to see it.‖268 (This could be Shakespeare, his former friend and then great rival in the theatrical world, although Shakespeare wrote Macbeth in 1606). Kemp continues: ―hee told me there was a fat filthy ballet-maker, that sould haue once been his Iourneyman to the trade : who liu‘d about town; and ten to one, but he had terribly abused me & my Taberer: for that he was able to do such a thing in print.‖269 But after Kemp found him ―about the bankside and laid this terrible accusation to his charge, all his anger turned to laughter,‖ so Kemp ―could not finde out the true ballat- maker.‖ Yet there was another suspect who wrote ―a booke in Latine called Mundus Furiosus printed at Cullen‖ and the writer‘s name was Jansonius. He might have been Ben Jonson who had a close and probably tense relationship with Kemp by 1600. Another possibility is Richard Johnson, Kemp‘s fellow actor, but nothing is definite; Kemp finishes his work by threatening the ballad makers and—ironically—calling them fools. Kemp, like Robin Hood, was a significant hero of the oral culture of the time; both of them often appear in broadside ballads, songs, plays, sayings, jokes, anecdotes which were told in inns and taverns, on the road and market places. There are several common elements in the figure of Robin Hood and in the comic figure Kemp represented in the second half of the sixteenth century. Their roles in the contemporary popular culture share the same characteristic features. Robin Hood, the ‗patron saint‘ of English archery, was the hero of a legend and was famous for his outstanding physical abilities. Kemp was known for his mastery of fighting and his dancing skills. He was very earthy; there was a sexual element in the Robin Hood games and plays as well, and the comic figures played by Kemp had always comments on the sexual side of love. The Fool of the morris dance attracted the Lady of the dance with his strong and blatant sexuality and skilful dancing.

267 Kemp, Nine Daies Wonder, 31. 268 Ibid. 269 Ibid.

205 Carnivalesque elements and grotesque figures appeared in the Lord of Misrule processions, in popular festivities and during the May Games, especially in the Robin Hood games. Robin Hood represented the greenwood and the outlaw at the same time, and the comedian also embodied these elements. The Summer Lord—often played by Robin Hood and Kemp—symbolized the greenwood with all its associations of fertility, the purity of country life, innocence and sometimes coarse sexuality. Kemp and Robin Hood both personified the outlaw, and rebellion, just as morris dance stood for a symbol of revolt before and during the Civil War. Robin Hood and his group wore garments made of green Kendal, and this was one of the traditional costumes of the fool. The motley was also sewn from this material. Kemp certainly often wore it when playing the fool on stage and when appearing as Robin Hood in morris dancing.270

270 For an overview of Kemp‘s appearance and his relationship to Robin Hood see Chapter 2 above.

206 V. CONCLUSION

1. CHANGES IN THE CULTURAL LIFE AND MENTALITY AT

THE TURN OF THE CENTURY

The turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is a very exciting period abundant in changes; this versatility was one of the primary reasons I have chosen this era as well as the person of Kemp who best represents the transitions and complexity of the three comedians of the time (i.e.,Tarlton, Kemp, Armin). Although these centuries saw the beginnings of various new cultural, social, religious and economic processes, as well as shifts in the approach to laughter, humour, grotesque, theatrical improvisation, bodily control, popular festivals, the theatre and the comedian and in the mental, legal and institutional treatment of folly, it must be emphasized that the old traditions and mentality flourished in parallel with the new movements.1 By the end of the seventeenth century the figure of the natural and artificial fool had gradually disappeared from the spheres in which he had played influential roles during the Renaissance: from the court and the stage, from games and processions.2 The process of change in the status of folly is closely connected to other changes in world-views and mentalities,3 including, for example, attitudes towards laughter.4 As Keith Thomas asserts, ―[l]aughter was one of the cultural practices which were targets of vigorous opposition when social interaction was being civilized, and many guides to proper manners advised their readers to laugh sparingly. Laughter was associated with lower classes and foolish people. This had a direct effect in the decreasing popularity of the fool.‖5 The practice of keeping household idiots declined in the later Stuart age.6 Armin‘s story in his Nest of Ninnies about a woman who aspired to more elegant behaviour than she could manage is a good illustration of this new attitude. ―One proper gentlewoman‘ [...] because she would not seem too modest with laughing [...], so she

1 The situation of the actors has been already discussed in Chapter 3. 2 Cf. Andrew Gurr, The Shakespearean stage 1574-1642 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). 3 Anu Korhonen, Fellows of Infinite Jest, The Fool in Renaissance England (Turku: University of Turku, 1999), 139. 4 Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1984); Peter Cockett, ―Incongruity, Humour and Early English Figures: Armin‘s Natural Fools, the Vice and Tarlton the Clown‖ (Ph.D dissertation, University of Toronto, 2001). 5 Keith Thomas, ―The place of laughter in Tudor and Stuart England‖ (TLS, 21. January, 1977), 76-83. 6 Thomas, ―The place of laughter‖, 79.

207 straining herself, though inwardly she laughed heartily, gave out such an earnest of her modesty, that all the table rang of it. ‗Who is that?‘ says one. ‗Not I,‘ says another, ‗but by her cheeks you might find her guilty Gilbert, where he had hid the brush.‘ This jest made them laugh more, and the rather that she stood upon her marriage, and disdained all the gallants there who so heartily laughed.‖7 New standards of bodily control and social decorum, self-control and social constraint appeared and developed.8 The connections between bodily control and social order have been discussed in the influential work of Norbert Elias The Civilizing Process: The History of Manners. He examined this process in the contemporary books of courtesy and advice which mushroomed during these years. Like Bakhtin and Foucault, Elias also offered a grand interpretation of the social, cultural and political history of early modern Europe. Although Elias has many inspiring ideas, he is also vulnarable to criticism. For example a crucial feature of the mentality and thinking of the Middle Ages, i.e., the importance and influence of Christianity, is almost missing from his discussion; furthermore, he concentrates only on western civilization and focuses on ‗the civilizing of appetite‘ at the expense of discussing self-control in other spheres.9 Every disability was a source of amusement in folk humour; there were a lot of cruel and intolerant jokes about physical weakness and necessity in jest-books. These jokes, which were often satirical, comprised a rich mine of comic material in the age. At the same time, there arose a new sensibility which viewed such behaviour increasingly barbarous. As Thomas notes that ―the cult of decorum led to a profound divergence between the streams of polite humour and folk humour. This separation can be seen in literary theory, where the practice of mixing kings and clowns in the same play, so popular with the groundlings, came to be seen by the elite as increasingly offensive.‖10 He continues, ―it begins with the Tudor conduct books which reiterated with growing force the humanist maxim that men should not be mocked for faults for which they were not responsible.‖11 In a more recent article about bodily control and social unease Thomas states that ―the courtesy literature of fifteenth and sixteenth-century England, directed

7 Robert Armin, Nest of Ninnies (1608), sigs E4r-v. In Keith Thomas, ―Bodily Control and Social Unease: The Fart in Seventeenth-Century England‖ in The extraordinary and the everyday in early modern England ed. Angela McShane and Garthine Walker, (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 20. (Gilbert was a name for a dog.) 8 Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process: The History of Manners (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978). 9 Peter Burke, ―Civilization, Disorder, Discipline: Three Case-Studies in History and Social Theory‖, Theoria 87 (1996) 21-35; repr Strath and Witoszek (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1999), 107. 10 Thomas, ―The place of laughter‖, 81. 11 Thomas, ―The place of laughter‖, 79.

208 mostly at children or young people, was notoriously preoccupied with the control of bodily functions.‖12 The upper classes thought that their bodily control was superior to that of their social inferiors: the labourers, the uneducated whose bodies were portrayed as dirty and stinky. The greatest force of the new sensitivity was Puritanism, whose representatives were mocked for their gloomy suspicion of laughter and frivolity.13 But it is important to note that not all Puritans were killjoy fanatics; a ‗Puritan‘ was originally someone who wanted to purify the church, especially from ‗Popery,‘ and this attitude does not always imply hostility to popular culture or humour.14 Compared to the medieval period, the sixteenth century offered a new way of rethinking Catholic practices in connection with humour and laughter and with different forms of popular entertainment such as dancing, games and mystery plays. (The Protestant attitude towards entertainment and humour was stricter from the very beginning.)15 While medieval Catholicism embraced both the sacred and the profane in sermons, in the liturgy and in the church, the sixteenth century gave rise to a new tendency.16 While the grotesque can be seen together with the sacred on medieval cathedrals, in the sixteenth century the grotesque silently disappeared from church decoration. Musicians and dancers of popular entertainment also gradually vanished from the churches; a new seriousness appeared in religious life and a stricter line was drawn between jest and earnest. 17 The Council of Trent (1545-1563) as the central event of the Counter Reformation was strongly supported by the Society of Jesus, that is, the Jesuits. Their strict military discipline and strong links with the aristocracy certainly influenced the approach of the Catholic Church to popular entertainment and humour. In the seventeenth century there was an economic crisis that affected the entire Western World. It involved the reduction of wages, unemployment and scarcity of coin which affected cultural life as well. People had less and less money to spend on entertainment, books and the theatre.18 All these processes were under way, yet older traditions and mentalities survived and coexisted with the new movement.

12 Thomas, ―Bodily Control and Social Unease‖, 14. 13 Thomas, ―The place of laughter‖, 79. 14 The problem of Puritanism has been discussed in Chapter 1. 15 This matter has been delineated in Chapter 1. 16 Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in XVIth and XVIIth century in England, (London: Penguin, 1991), 56-58. 17 Thomas, ―The place of laughter‖, 79. 18 Jim Sharpe, ―Social strain and social dislocation‖ in The Reign of Elizabeth I, Court and Culture in the Last Decade ed. John Guy (Washington: Folger Institute, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

209 Madness and fools were gradually also treated and looked at in a different way.19 According to Foucault, who was an important contributor to the history of psychiatry as well20 until the Renaissance, madness belonged to the earthly representation of the supernatural as either angelic or demonic.21 In Foucault‘s view, from the middle of the seventeenth century, madness was against the aims and rules of the bourgeoisie22 and became linked with poverty, inability to work, and with the world of the outlaw. Thus it ceased to represent the imaginative freedom that had flourished in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Mad people represented something shameful; they had to be confined from other people.23 In Foucault‘s opinion, as early as the beginning of the seventeenth century madmen were treated as deserving poor who were entitled to financial relief from the state. Madness and stupidity become defined as forms of illness and no longer represented an irrevocable trick of nature.24 While in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries natural fools were looked after at home or were taken care of by a community who enjoyed their jests, the second half of the seventeenth and the eighteenth century, which represented the new sensitivity and no longer cultivated the culture of folly, tended to send madmen and fools to ―houses of correction‖ and then to asylums.25 In his chapter, ―The Great Confinement,‖ Foucault studies the growing number of ―enormous houses of confinement‖ throughout Europe from the seventeenth century onward. These places were not hospitals; madmen and homeless people were confined inside them and forced to work.26 In Foucault‘s view the network of houses of confinement was a general phenomenon in Europe and it had become ―the abusive amalgam of

19 For further discussion of this matter see F. D. Hoeniger, Medicine and Shakespeare in English Renaissance (Newark : University of Delaware Press, London: Cranbury, New York: Associated University Press, 1992); Erik H.C. Midelfort, ―Sin, Melancholy, Obsession: Insanity and Culture in 16th Century Germany‖. In Steven L. Kaplan, ed. Understanding Popular Culture (Berlin, New York; Amsterdam: Mouton, 1984), 113-147; Angus Gowland, ―The problem of early modern melancholy.‖ Past and Present May, 2006. 20 In the 1960s Michel Foucault with Erving Goffmann and others was a forerunner of the anti- psychiatric movement, a movement against the restrictive role of the institutions over the individuals. Their ideas also reflected their criticism of the political and cultural context of the 1950s and 60s. 21 Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason (London: Routledge, 2001), 46; 57-60. The difference between the present and the past, the problem of the present and the philosophical strategy linked to it can be found in every significant work of Foucault. Madness is also a typically modern theme, it characterizes the modern age. Cf. Ádám Takács, ―Michel Foucault és a történelem tapasztalata‖ [Michel Foucault and the experience of history] (Századvég, 1998 winter), 143-166; republished: in Hét kérdés. Kortárs filozófiai írások [Seven questions. Contemporary philosophical writings] (Pozsony: Kaligram, 2008), 149-183. 22 Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the “Spirit of Capitalism”, trans. Peter Baehr and Gordon C. Wells [1920]; (London: Penguin Books, 2002), 13-39. 23 Foucault, Madness, 58-60. 24 See Foucault, ―The great confinement‖ Chap. 2. in Madness, 38-64. Chap. 2 25 Foucault, Madness, 38-64. 26 Foucault, Madness, 46.

210 heterogenous elements‖27 such as the unemployed, the beggars, the vagabonds and the insane. Foucault also concluded that the ―mode of perception‖ changed in the seventeenth century and a new social sensitivity to madness, poverty, idleness as well as and a new ethic of work appeared: ―madness was thus torn from that imaginary freedom which still allowed it to flourish on the Renaissance horizon.‖28 From a different perspective it became a social and ethical problem; ―madness was perceived on the social horizon of poverty, of incapacity for work, of inability to integrate with the group.‖29 Confinement played new social functions; it eliminated the visible social effects of unemployment and reinforced the idea of the ethical value of labor, which was intended to be the general solution, a ―remedy to all forms of poverty.‖30 The aim of work was not only to occupy people but to increase their productivity. Those who were confined had to contribute to the whole community‘s prosperity. The ―great law of work‖ had an ethical, even transcendent status; idleness and sloth became the absolute form of rebellion and according to this new way of thinking, all forms of usefulness like madness were segregated on an ethical and moral basis.31 In these ―‗institutions of morality‘ a synthesis of moral obligation and civil law is effected, they were imposed by force on all those suspected of belonging to the evil.‖32 In Foucault‘ interpretation confinement was a ―police‖ matter; it represented ―in the form of authoritarian model, the myth of social happiness: a police whose order will be entirely transparent to the principles of relegion, and a relegion whose requirements will be satisfied, without restrictions, by the regulations of the police and the constraints with which it can be armed.‖33 Foucault was criticised by several scholars for his insistence that the historical roots of European psychiatry lay within the segregation of madmen together with beggars, vagrants and other criminals by the absolutist states all over Europe, as well as for his reluctance to work in archives, and for his ignorance about empirical detail.34 Though his statements seem to be convincing, they are too general and too simplified, and they were

27 Foucault, Madness, 45. 28 Foucault, Madness, 64. 29 Ibid. 30 Foucault, Madness, 55. 31 Foucault, Madness, 58. 32 Foucault, Madness, 60, 61. 33 Foucault, Madness, 63. 34 Burke, ―Civilization, Disorder, Discipline‖, 108.; idem, History and Social Theory (London: Polity Press, 1992), 84-5.

211 streched to cover too many regions and too long periods.35 Foucault‘s theory is by now generally accepted to be relevant only to the French situation.36 The studies of the numerous scholars who have worked on the national psychiatric histories of different European countries from the 1980s proved that different nations and jurisdictions worked in various ways.37 Roy Porter also brought up the problems concerning the inspiring thesis provided by Foucault in his influential work, Mind-Forg'd Manacles.38 In Porter‘s view the confinement of the insane and the marginal elements of seventeenth- and eighteenth- century English society ―was hardly ‗great,‘‖ and the institutions of confinement which were founded by the European states in great numbers appeared much later, only in the nineteenth century.39 In England most of the mentally-ill people were lodged in private asylums as early as 1800.40 Porter also disagreed with the theory of the moral ―obligation to work‖ for the mad people, ―the very requirement of labor […] was the essential justification of confinement.‖41 Idleness was the most typical feature of life in the asylums and labour was usually employed as a therapy.42 It also seems to contradict Foucault‘s theory of confinement that the mentalities which had kept up the tradition of domestic fools in England still persisted in some aspects of treating idiots long after the seventeenth century.43 Lunatics were cared for by their families, long after the vogue for folly had passed, and they were not seen as a social problem because their proper place was still within the boundaries of the home.44

35 Burke, ―Civilization, Disorder, Discipline‖, 108. 36 Emese Lafferton, ―History of Hungarian Psychiatry 1850-1908‖, (Ph.D dissertation, CEU, 2003). In her Ph.D dissertation about the history of Hungarian psychiatry, Emese Lafferton summarizes the histories of European psychiatry, she surveys the most important tendencies and scholars who have written about this topic as well. See especially pp 16-32. 37 Lafferton, ―History of Hungarian Psychiatry‖ 19. As Emese Lafferton asserts the field of psychiatric history was growing from the 1980-s. 38 For criticism on Foucault, see Roy Porter, Mind-Forg'd Manacles. A History of Madness from the restoration to the Regency (London: Penguin Books, 1987), 1-33. Mind-Forg 'd Manacles is an influential history of madness in England in the period from the Restoration to the Regency. His other book on this topic is also useful: Roy Porter, Madness. A Brief History (Oxford University Press, 2002), 103. 39 Roy Porter, Madness, 105. 40 Porter, Mind-Forg 'd Manacles, 7-9. 41 Foucault, Madness, 60. 42 Lafferton, ―History of Hungarian Psychiatry‖, 20. 43 Confinement appeared in England in 1808 or rather in 1845 in the Parliamentary Act about the establishment and maintainance of public asylums in every county. Cf.: Porter, Madness, 106. See also: Korhonen, Fellows, 138-144. 44 E. Shorter, A History of Psychiatry, (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1997), 89-92.

212 As a conclusion it can be noted that although it is true that key ideas of the great theorists Foucault, Elias and Bakhtin illuminate changes and parts of history in a very interesting and impressive way distinct from the methods of other historians, but their simplifications and generalizations gradually have come to the fore, and those who work with their ideas have to be aware of the complexity of these problems and tackle them carefully. Since the process of active reception began, the reactions to the ideas of the three great theorist have passed through three phases: enthusiasm, criticism and domestication. The same process has presumably happened to the ideas of Peter Burke, the fourth great theorist, about popular culture who has also highlighted and summarized the importance and the criticism of the above mentioned theorist.45 (I went through the same set of reactions when reading the work of the above theorists.)

45 Peter Burke has summarized it e.g. in his article on the three great theorist: ―Civilization, Disorder, Discipline‖.

213 2. KEMP AND ARMIN

There are several false assumptions concerning Kemp, especially with regard to his position in Elizabethan theatrical life and to his relationship to the other famous Shakespearean comedian, Robert Armin. I wish to refute the incorrect prejudices, illuminate the differences from another angle and highlight the possible similarities of the two figures. Critics have distinguished between Shakespeare‘s clown, personified by the Peter scene in Romeo and Juliet, and the fool, personified by Lear‘s fool.46 It has become a commonplace to assume that Armin played all the fools who were intelligent, sophisticated, and satirical, whereas Kemp played only vulgar, crude, common buffoons.47 There are many problems with such an assumption. Shakespeare wrote the roles for different characters with different abilities, conditions and personalities, and the above simplification can be easily refuted with compelling evidence of Kemp‘s having played Falstaff who embodied the witty, clever and ironical comic figure. In spite of the exaggerated differences which are true considering their style and physique, Kemp and Armin had many common features as well, and I approached their relationship with an eye to their similarities. It is widely accepted that Armin belonged to a rising social group and represented upward mobility. He was an intellectual, a Londoner, and well attuned to Renaissance notions of folly.48 It is also a false belief in this respect that there is a striking contrast with Kemp for ―Kemp always made it his priority to be popular with the commoners rather than to woo the London gentry.‖49 This is David Wiles‘s accepted view about Kemp,50 but in light of Katherine Duncan-Jones‘s article entitled ―Did William Kemp live on as ‗Lady Hunsdon‘s Man‘?‖ Wiles‘s deduction should be modified. Duncan-Jones in her article provides printed contemporary allusions and substantial other evidence that Kemp was patronized by Lady Hunsdon, was still active in the first years of James I‘s reign and certainly did not die in 1603.51 The suggestion that after 1603 Kemp ―retired from the

46 B. A. Videbaek, The Stage Clown in Shakespeare‟s Theatre, (Westport, Connecticut, London: Greenwood Press, 2000), 4. 47 Joan Tucker, ―Actors Will Kemp and Robert Armin: Shakespeare‘s Fools: An Analysis and evaluation‖ (Ph.D dissertation, New Jersey: Madison, Drew University, 2002). 48 Enid Welsford, The Fool: His Social and Literary History (New York: Anchor Books, 1961), 162-169. C. S. Felver, Robert Armin: Shakespeare‟s Fool (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1961), 36. 49 David Wiles, Shakespeare‟s Clown, Actor and text in the Elizabethan playhouse (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 143. 50 Wiles, Shakespeare‟s Clown, 41. 51 Katherine Duncan-Jones, ―Shakespeare's dancing Fool: Did William Kemp live on as ‗Lady Hunsdon‘s Man‘?‖ in TLS 15 August, 2010. www.entertainment.timesonline.co.uk. Last consulted 2011-08-22.

214 scene‖ seems distinctly plausible.52 After 1600 Kemp tried to seize every opportunity to stabilize his financial situation. He was certainly fortunate to get hold of the forthcoming patronage of Lady Hunsdon and had a safe retirement. As Duncan-Jones says, ―[t]his opens up the theoretical possibility that he was still sometimes to be seen and heard in the exclusive environment of the court‖53 and in private households as most of his Jacobean performances may have taken place rather in private sphere than on public stages.54 The question of noble patronage concerning Kemp versus Armin should also be radically altered.55 The oversimplified opinion that Kemp was the representative of the common English people, did not aspire to noble patronage and had no court ambitions, as well as the double notion that he was an ―exception of an upwardly mobile profession‖56 and that only Armin belonged to this group in this respect are untenable. Both Kemp and Armin attempted to become financially successful and, as occasions arose, they accepted every possible source of support without ideological considerations. They were very practical men. A good example for this way of thinking is that two of Armin‘s works are dedicated to ‗The Reader‘ rather to a patron, whereas Kemp dedicated his diary to a Maid of Honour which probably implied an appeal to the Queen herself.57 It is equally true for both of them that their object in publishing was profit.58 It is also common opinion that Kempian comedy was regarded stale and jaded by the beginning of the new century and there was a tension between the traditional playgoers and those who wanted something different.59 Armin seemed able to satisfy the new requirements, but this was true only for the more select, educated social classes.60 Kemp‘s athleticism and dancing abilities ―of an overtly sexual‖ nature had made him famous. Kemp liked jigs and was good at them, but the Globe was not famous for this popular dance. Kemp remained popular at the Curtain where Armin also performed with

52 George Chalmers, An Apology for the Believers in the Shakespeare Papers which were exhibited in Norfolk Street (London, 1797). George Chalmers suggested that after 1603 Kemp ―retired from the scene‖. 53 Duncan-Jones, ―Shakespeare's dancing Fool‖, 6. 54 For an overview of Elizabethan court theatre see John Astington, English court theatre, 1558-1642 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1999). 55 For further discussion of theatrical patronage of the age see Suzanne Westfall, Patrons and Performance, Early Tudor Household Revels, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990); Paul Whitfield White and Suzanne R. Westfall, Shakespeare and theatrical patronage in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 56 Wiles, Shakespeare‟s Clown, 41. 57 The details of Kemp‘s dedication in Nine Daies Wonder is discussed in Chapter 3. 58 R. A. Foakes, Henslowe‟s Diary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 59 Henry Christopher Sutcliffe, ―Robert Armin ( Shakespeare‘s Clown)?1568-1615‖ (University of Leeds, 1990), 25; Robert Weimann, Shakespeare and the Popular Tradition in the Theater (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), 191. 60 C. S. Felver, Robert Armin, 15.

215 Lord Chandos‘s Men.61 Kemp‘s status as a despised comedian of the early seventeenth century is easily rebutted. Long after Kemp‘s era, the crude vulgar clown continued to appear regularly in the shape of Pompey Bum, the clowns in Othello and Antony and Cleopatra, Autolycus, or Mouse in the company‘s Mucedorus. The clown‘s vulgarity was obviously not forced on Shakespeare by Kemp.62 Neither was Kemp confined to brief roles of gross vulgarity, as it has been already noted in his résumé thus far. Kemp very often used satire, parodies and burlesques in his jigs; political satire especially had become popular again, and it reached unprecedented fame by the end of the seventeenth century as a result of the religious and political conflicts. In Baskervill‘s words, ―[t]he incursion of the ballad into the pastimes of the courtly took a number of forms. Certain types of popular ballads continued to be printed in broadsides for the folk alone, but courtly drolls and pastorals in ballad form also appeared as broadsides. While the cavaliers and their dramatists and ballad writers continued to satirize the citizens of London, the distinctions of class were becoming less sharp as the wealthy merchant rose into power; and this fact is nowhere more clearly indicated than in the evidence that before the middle of the century all classes were using in their pastimes the plebeian ballad and country dance.‖63 Baskervill has even proposed that comic opera flourished at the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth century, because it was conceived during the development of the farce jig.64 May Games and especially morris dancing remained popular particularly during festivals among common people, although May Games mostly petered out by the beginning of the seventeenth century as participants were fined or even excommunicated if caught.65 There were attempts to stop the games altogether.66 At the same time the rustic clown as a lord of misrule was a subject of nostalgic reminiscences typical to the late Tudor and early Stuart era.67 In the Elizabethan period, the conventional setting of stage

61 John Payne Collier, Memoirs of the Principall Actors in the Plays of Shakespeare (London: Printed for the Shakespearean Society, 1846). 62 For an overview of Kemp‘s roles see Videbaek, The Stage Clown in Shakespeare‟s Theatre; Grote, The Best Actors of the World (Westport, N.Y.: Greenwood Press, 2002); David Wiles, Shakespeare‟s Clown, 73- 83. A summary of Kemp‘s theatrical roles can be seen in the Appendix. 63 Baskervill, Elizabethan Jig, 157. 64 Baskervill, Elizabethan Jig, 163. 65 For further discussion of Elizabethan festivals see Francois Laroque, Shakespeare‟s Festive World, Elizabethan seasonal entertainment and the professional stage, (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991). 66 Cf. Forrest, History of Morris Dancing, 121. In Scotland they were banned in 1555, but when attempts were made to enforce the law, rioting broke out. 67 Humphrey King, An Halfe-penny-worth of Wit, in a Penny-worth of Paper (1613), 21-22. A good example for feelings in music is Thomas Weelkes‘s madrigal “Since Robin Hood, Maid Marian‖, included in his

216 comedy remained in the countryside, but in the Jacobean period the setting of comedy mostly had become the city, and Robin Hood was often relegated to pastoral literature. Kemp sustained popular genres and was a talented and professional comedian as well. It is also common opinion that only Armin was able to switch from one character to the other. The projection of multiple identities is considered the staple of Armin‘s clowning, while men like Tarlton and Kemp are supposed to have sustained their comic personae in every stage role and outside the playhouse walls.68 Contrary to the above stated misconception, Kemp also changed his comic personae, although he did not do so nearly as often as did Armin; neither did he play as many different characters, but he was not a lesser professional actor. Evidence for this is his successful performance of the role of Falstaff. It is certain that there are difference between his style and the requirements directed towards a stage comedian of the Globe of the 1590s and in the new era after 1600. It also must be noted that more can be known about Armin‘s biography than Kemp‘s; there are many uncertainties concerning Kemp‘s date of birth and death, the date and reasons for leaving the Lord Chamberlain‘s Men, and there is only sparse information about his life and career after 1600. As multi-faceted as Kemp, Armin was goldsmith, pamphleteer, poet, playwright, singer, solo performer, and, for twelve years, the leading comic player with the Lord Chamberlain‘s Men.69 He was probably born in 1568 in King‘s Lynn, as the son of the successful tailor John Armyn. His father must have been wealthy because he was able to give his son a good education and apprentice him to a goldsmith (note: one in three goldsmith‘s apprentices were the sons of gentlemen).70 Between 1582 and 1588 Armin was most likely an unofficial apprentice player with Tarlton. As we know, Kemp‘s master was also Tarlton, so they had the same roots and techniques and shared an influential teacher.

Ayres or Phantasticke Spirits for three voices (1608). In Duncan-Jones, ―Shakespeare's dancing Fool‖, 3. The first four lines are about Kemp‘s famous solo morris dance and it also proves his popularity. 67 Wiles, Shakespeare‟s Clown, 41. 68 Ibid. 69Wiles, Shakespeare‟s Clown; Edwin Nungezer, A Dictionary of Actors (New York, N.Y. Ithaca, 1929); 15- 20. Martin Butler, ed., Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.) He has written the entries of Kemp and Armin. 70 Henry Christopher Sutcliffe, Robert Armin (Shakespeare‟s Clown)?1568-1615 (PhD dissertation, University of Leeds, 1990). Henry Christopher Sutcliffe has written his PhD dissertation about Robert Armin, he focuses on Armin‘s literary career. For details about the situation of Goldsmiths‘ Company see Andrea Velich, ―The London Goldsmiths' Company in the Early 16th Century― in Rubicon, 1996/2; Andrea Andrea Velich, ―A londoni aranyművesek a középkor végén‖ [The London Goldsmiths' Company at the end of the Middle Ages] kinek teszel milyen hitet: Ünnepi kötet Géher István 70. születésnapjára [ who to believe expecting what: writings for István Géher on his 70th birthday] ELTE papers in English Studies (ELTE BTK. 2010), 151-159.

217 They performed at the same typically English venues: stages, taverns, courts and private houses. In 1590 Armin embarked on his literary career as a pamphleteer and writer. He wrote the preface to a Brief Resolutions of the Right Religion and Tarlton‘s News Out of Purgatory. In 1592 after finishing his apprenticeship as a goldsmith, he became a player of the Lord Chandos‘s Men who widely toured the countryside. In the great country houses he had the opportunity to observe the natural fools who amused their gentlemen patrons with their grotesque appearance and unpredictable antics.71 In 1592 Armin played the Cutter of Cootsholde in the Sudeley Masque lavishly organized by Lord Chandos for the Queen. He also travelled as a solo performer during this period as well. Armin and the Lord Chandos‘s Men played at the Curtain, which was the very venue where Kemp had performed with the Worcester‘s Men after 1600. Similar atmosphere and the style, the very same demand for humorous, satirical and bawdy performance determined the performances at the Curtain. 72 In 1598 Armin joined the Lord Chamberlain‘s Men as a singer, but he still maintained his solo career and freelance capacity, as it was crucially important for Kemp as well.73 Armin clowned at the Curtain at the same time as he played in stage plays at the Globe. Kemp played at the same company and danced as a professional morris dancer and surely played his jigs.74 Armin had solo performances as Snuffe in September 1599, and played in the Curtain as Sniffe – an Arminian nickname.75 He also played the witty Tutch and the natural Blue John in The History of the Two Maids of More-Clacke.76 Armin‘s name appears on the title page of Every Man In Humour (1598) but not in Every Man Out of His Humour (1599). He may have worked together with Kemp, or they could have substituted each other.77

71 Felver, Robert Armin, , 79. 72 Sutcliffe, Robert Armin, 30. 73 For further discussion of the history of the solo performance of fool-actors see John Southworth, Fools and Jesters at the English Court (Phoenix Mill: Sutton Publishing Limited, 1998), 128. 74 Baskervill, Elizabethan Jig, 115. 75 Wiles, Shakespeare‟s Clown, 139. 76 Robert Armin, The Collected Works of Robert Armin, (London: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1972), Vol.2. 77 T. W. Baldwin, The Organization & Personnel of the Shakespearean Company (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984), 236. David Grote, The Best Actors of the World, 85.

218 Armin shared with Kemp the talent of improvisation and through it a close rapport with the audience.78 Fools written and played by Armin were also rooted in low comedy. Quips upon Questions was written in the crucial year of 1600, so it is probable that they shared the same experience concerning improvisation and also played together with Tarlton and later at the Curtain.79 Quips upon Questions is a study of six natural household fools who are highly individual characters. Armin knew some of them personally. It is a volume of poems based upon Armin‘s improvisations at the Curtain. It contains forty-five questions and answers and may be described as a collection of seemingly extemporaneous dialogues with his marotte, which he named Signor Truncheon. The first editions of these two books were credited to ―Clonnico de Curtanio Snuffe‖—that is, to ―the Clown of the Curtain.‖ The 1605 edition changes ―Curtain‖ to ―Mundo‖ (that is, Globe). Only in 1608 was he credited by name, though the earlier title pages would have sufficed to identify him for Londoners. These records serve as the only surviving collection of a clown‘s extemporized rhyming on questions thrown at him by the audience.80 In 1599-1600 Armin replaced Kemp as a leading comic player, got married and became a sharer of the Globe. He had a growing ambition to be known as a writer and wrote The Italian Taylor and His Boy, The History of the Two Maids of More-Clacke, A True Discourse on the Practices of Elizabeth Coldwell. In 1610 he retired from the King‘s Men, and wrote his last work, The Valiant Welshman, in 1615, just one year before he died at the age of forty-seven. His will does not mention that he was a player, or a writer, only that he worked as a goldsmith. He resided in the parish of St. Bishops Aldgate; three of his children named in the parish register appear to have died before adulthood.81 Armin himself died in 1616. He achieved a coat of arms but retired into the ranks of the citizenry from which he had emerged. Armin rose high, but similarly to Kemp, never quite reached the very top.82 Finally it has to be pointed out that there are strong characteristic features that differentiate Armin from Kemp. Armin‘s physique was very different from that of Kemp. He had diminutive nicknames, (e.g. ‗Snuff‘ and ‗Pink‘) because of his looks; he was dark,

78 Richard Brome‘s implicated that Kemp followed Tarlton‘s improvisatory techniques in The Antipodes published in 1636. For an overview of this matter see A. R. Braunmuller, and Michael Hattaway, eds. The Cambridge Companion to English Renaissance Drama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). 79 E. K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1945), II, 226, 230, IV, 335. 80 For further discussion of this matter see Michael Hattaway, Elizabethan Popular Theatre (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982); Wiles, Shakespeare‟s Clown, 12. 81 Felver, Robert Armin, Shakespeare‟s Fool, 77. 82 Wiles, Shakespeare‟s Clown, 143; Felver, Robert Armin, Shakespeare‟s Fool, 201.

219 small, fat and physically grotesque. As an actor, Armin‘s skills lay in mime and mimicry; he was a singer, but not a dancer. Because he set himself up as a writer, Armin, unlike Kemp, presumably did not perceive that there was any necessary tension between the purposes of the dramatist (Shakespeare) and the purposes of the actor/comedian.83

83 Wiles, Shakespeare‟s Clown, 42; David Grote, The Best Actors of the World, 79.

220 3. AVENUES FOR FURTHER RESEARCH

The main and most exciting points I have opted to focus on and their abundant cultural historical background have proved to be rich research fields open to further investigations for other researchers as well. The question of the Robin Hood figure is full of possibilities including his relationship with the comedians and literary underworld characters, his links to Falstaff and, through him, to Shakespeare. The appearance of the outlaw, the green man from the countryside in the morris dance and the jig may serve as additional avenues for exploration. The examination of the pamphlets of Thomas Nashe and Thomas Deloney and their role in Elizabethan popular culture, especially concerning their relationship to jigs, is another exciting area that could benefit from further research. Theatrical patronage, court theatre, Kemp‘s, Armin‘s and Shakespeare‘s relationship to Jonson, the links between Kemp and commedia dell‘arte, and university stages are all topics which offer further scope for elaboration. I wish to close my dissertation by highlighting Kemp‘s uniqueness. He was both an open-minded and adventurous traveller and an exceptionally vigorous performer of every form of national entertainment. Kemp embodied the ―resilient‖ nature of popular culture.84 Although as a dancer and jig-maker he was faithful to his roots and always returned to the community to which he belonged, he was also an autonomous personality, an expert in his profession and a true representative of the Elizabethan commercial theatre.

84 Burke wrote about the ‗resilience‘ of popular culture in: Popular Culture, 2009, 7.

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249

Appendix

Kemp’s theatrical roles

The Chamberlain’s Men 1594-99

1594 Dromio Syr Shakespeare Comedy of Errors 1594 Launce Shakespeare Two Gentlemen of Verona 1594 Christopher Sly Shakespeare The Taming of the Shrew 1594-5 Strumbo Corrected by Shakespeare Locrine 1595 Jack Cade Shakespeare 2 Henry VI 1595 Trotter Anonymous Fair Em 1595 Gardener Shakespeare Richard II 1596 Clown Shakespeare Titus Andronicus 1597 Peter Shakespeare Romeo & Juliet 1597 Falstaff Shakespeare 1 Henry IV 1597 Falstaff Shakespeare The Merry Wives of Windsor 1597 Bottom Shakespeare A Midsummer Night‟s Dream 1597 Launcelet Gobbo Shakespeare The Merchant of Venice 1598 Falstaff Shakespeare 2 Henry IV 1598 Costard Shakespeare Love‟s Labour Lost 1598 Cob Jonson Every Man In His Humour 1598 Dogberry Shakespeare Much Ado About Nothing 1599 RevisedFalstaff Shakespeare The Merry Wives of Windsor 1599 First Gravedigger Shakespeare Hamlet 1599 Polonius Shakespeare Hamlet 1599 Cob Johnson Every Man Out of His Humour85 1599 Carpenter Anon. Warning for Fair Women86 1599 Hodge Anon. Thomas Lord Cromwell87

85 J. H. Forse, Art Imitates Business - Commercial and Political Influences in Elizabethan Theatre (Bowling Green: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 2001), 123. 86 David Grote, The Best Actors of the World (Westport, N. Y.: Greenwood Press, 2002), Appendix B. 230. Grote summarized Kemp‘s roles in a chart. 87 Ibid.

250 Worcester’s Company 1601-3

Jenkin Heywood A Woman Killed with Kindness88 Pipkin Heywood How a Man May Choose a Good Wife from a Bad89

88 David Wiles, Shakespeare‟s Clown, Actor and text in the Elizabethan playhouse (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 77-82. Wiles analyzed the extant texts of plays in order to find out which parts were written for Kemp, 89 Ibid.

251