English Drama
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:I'M! - 1982 :1 r P" A newsletter published by University of Toronto Press in association with Erindale College, University of Toronto and Manchester University Press . JoAnna Dutka, editor Records ofEarfv~ English Drama The biennial bibliography of books and articles on records of drama and minstrelsy contributed by Ian Lancashire (Erindale College, University of Toronto) begins this issue ; John Coldewey (University of Washington) discusses records of waits in Nottinghamshire and what the activities of the waits there suggest to historians of drama ; David Mills (University of Liverpool) presents new information on the iden- tity of Edward Gregory, believed to be the scribe of the Huntington manuscript of the Chester cycle. IAN LANCASHIRE Annotated bibliography of printed records of early British drama and minstrelsy for 1980-81 This list, covering publications up to 1982 that concern documentary or material records of performers and performance, is based on a wide search of recent books, periodicals, and record series publishing evidence of pre-18th-century British history, literature, and archaeology . Some remarkable achievements have appeared in these years. Let me mention seven, in the areas of material remains, civic and town records, household papers, and biography . Brian Hope-Taylor's long-awaited report on the excavations at Yeavering, Northumberland, establishes the existence of a 7th-century theatre modelled on Roman structures . R.W. Ingram has turned out an edition of the Coventry records for REED that discovers rich evidence from both original and antiquarian papers, more than we dared hope from a city so damaged by fire and war. The Malone Society edition of the Norfolk and Suffolk records by David Galloway and John Wasson is an achievement of a different sort : the collection of evidence from 41 towns has presented them unusual editorial problems, in the solv- ing of which both editors and General Editor Richard Proudfoot have earned our gratitude . Muriel St Clare Byrne's life work, an edition of the Lisle letters, gives a detailed, loving picture of one Tudor noble household and its music and plays . David C . Price has in an admirable way surveyed twelve other households of Tudor gentry for their own musical and dramatic records and so provides a broad backdrop against which to measure the Lisles' interests . Biographical research, finally, has produced two impressive reference works of special usefulness in this field : Peter Beal's index of literary manuscripts by author, and Stanley Sadie's revised edition of Grove's dictionary of music and musicians . There are many other striking developments in these four areas. A brief overview of a few will have to suffice here . Articles on a 14th-century (later a royal) English guitar (Mary Remnant and Richard Marks), the Christ Church cornetts (Julian Drake), pre-Norman Pan pipes at York, and two brasses at King's Lynn (H .K. Cameron) point out that our most neglected record source, material culture, can tell us much about early performance . Jane A . Bakere's survey of Cornish dramatic records and David Wiles' gazetteer of Robin Hood plays both effectively treat aspects of theatre history that have, up to now, been difficult to see whole . Civic records' work, however, is still dominated by two cities, London and York . There have been major reassessments of the history of three professional theatres in London : the late Irwin Smith's book on the Theatre ; Richard Hosley and John Orrell have recon- structed the Fortune, Susan P . Cerasano has done a biographical history of it, and Jerzy Limon has found a striking analogue in a theatre at Gdansk ; and John Orrell has worked out a key to the structural measurements of the first Globe, while Maija Jansson Cole reports a new letter describing its destruction and Herbert Berry ana- lyses a lawsuit about the leasing of the second Globe from still other new records. Similar work has changed our understanding of the history of London's professional theatre companies . Karl Wentersdorf and David George have reinterpreted, with strikingly different results, evidence for the composition and activities of Pembroke's Men and the Queen's Men ; and important new evidence for earlier companies, from 1426 to 1573, has been published by Anne Lancashire and R . Mark Benbow . The London audience has also been examined, with some unusual results : Bing D . Bills, Margot Heinemann, and Richard L . Greaves show that the attitudes of puritans to drama are more complex than had been supposed ; and Reavley Gair's study of the society about the second Paul's theatre shows that dramatic records are not all necessarily about players and performances . Research on York records has taken two directions : one, as in work by Philip Butterworth and Peter Meredith, refines REED York ; another, in studies by Joann Moran, Eileen White, and R .B. Dobson, finds new records in biographical sources . Research on household records has been directed at particular households : John Orrell extracts payments from the accounts of 2 • t_ the duke of Buckingham under James, and my edition of the earl of Northumberland's ceremonial for Twelfth Day and Night draws attention to one useful household record that is not financial in nature . Biographical studies, finally, continue to flourish with S. Schoenbaum's two beautiful books on Shakespeare, lifes of Henry Medwall by Alan H . Nelson and M .E. Moeslein, and three articles on lesser figures (Wayne H . Phelps on Robert Daborne, Mark Eccles on William Wager, and Eleanor Selfridge-Field on the Bassano family) . It is gratifying to see that, in the second century of serious theatre-and-music- history research, scholars continue to discover primary sources of information, not only in recognized bodies of material such as Chancery and Court of Requests papers in the PRO, and printed literature (for example, Antimo Galli's description of a Jonson masque), but in a wide variety of lesser-known resources, from archaeological finds to kinds of record that I have not seen used before : quitclaims, brass rubbings, parliamentary diaries, and Old English glossaries . I will no doubt have overlooked works that should have appeared below, for not all current materials were available for me to look through . (Such items as I could not examine are described as `Not seen' .) I am particularly grateful to colleagues who sent me offprints or notices of their work, and to Dr Theodore De Welles (who helped me locate some items), and would welcome learning of shortcomings in this list. Unfortunately it has not been possible to include in it literary studies of play or music texts, or general research tools of considerable use to records' researchers . My annotations are not intended to be evaluative : they abstract essential records infor- mation or argument, rather more fully for items with new evidence than for those analyzing already-published records, and because I may at times appear to have missed a point, or (worse) to have misstated one, I ask the indulgence of both author and user . 1 Adams, Victor J . `When the Players Came to Poole' . The Dorset Year Book (1978), pp . 129-36 . [Town accounts record the visits of the players of the marquis of Dorset to perform in the church in 1551, and those of Lord Mountjoy and of Leicester in 1570 (p. 129).] 2 Airs, Malcolm R ., and John G . Rhodes . 'Wall-Paintings from a House in Upper High Street, Thame' . Oxoniensia, 45 (1980), 235-59 . [The upper chamber of a house built c . 1550-75 has contemporary paintings showing a bass viol, a woman tuning a lute, and two boys singing from an open score (pp . 239, 245-7, 254-6, and pl. ii) .] 3 Alexander, Robert J . `George Jolly [Joris Joliphus], der wandernde Player and Manager : Neues zu seiner Tatigkeit in Deutschland (1648-1660)'. Kle ine Schriften der Gesellschaft fur Theatergeschichte, 29-30 (1978), 31-48 . [The Continental travels of a Caroline player.] 4 Alford, Violet . The Hobby Horse and OtherAnimal Masks . Prepared for publication by Margaret Dean-Smith . London : Merlin Press, 1978. [See Chapter 2, `The Hobby 3 ft %- Horses of Great Britain and Ireland', pp . 35-68, for the Salisbury Hob-Nob, the morris at Abingdon, William Kempe's morris, and the hobby horse at Perth ; cf. pp. xxix, 2, 22, 27, and the many literary allusions to this pastime .] 5 Alsop, James . `Nicholas Brigham (d . 1558), Scholar, Antiquary, and Crown Servant' . The Sixteenth Century Journal, 12 (1981), 49-67 . [His widow married William Hunnis of the Chapel Royal before 2 June 1559 (pp . 58, 61).] 6 Alsop, J . D. 'A Moorish Playing Company in Elizabethan England' . Notes and Queries, 225 (1980), 135. [The `Turk' who tumbled and rope-walked c . 1589-90 at Ipswich, Norwich, New Hall, Coventry, Bridgnorth, and Leicester was a Moor, Bullocke Bazia, licenced with his company by the Viceroy and Council of Algiers in a letter to Elizabeth to show her 'playe and pastime' .] 7 - `Players at Stoke Mansion, 1528' . Theatre Notebook, 35 (1981), 87 . [Two messes of players were fed, 3 and 5 January 1528, at this Suffolk seat of Thomas Howard, duke of Norfolk.] 8 - `A Sunday Play performance at the Jacobean Court' . Notes and Queries, 224 (1979), 427 . [Two payments in the accounts of Queen Anne's receiver-general : to Sillis Worth, one of her players, 17 Dec . 1615 ; and to the King's players on 21 Dec ., both at Queen's Court .] 9 A Middle English Treatise on the Playing of Miracles . Ed . Clifford Davidson . Washington : University Press of America, 1981 . [A new edition of the Wycliffite treatise against miracle plays, with introduction, notes, and commentary that discuss religious attitudes - Lollard and other - to scriptural drama .] 10 Anderson, J.J. 'The Durham Corpus Christi Play'.