Encyclopaedia Britannica > Volume 21, ROT-Siam

750
May-
day.
Whit-
suntide.
Inter¬
ludes
and
stage-
plays.
SHAKESPEARE
element,—some hero or exploit, some emblem or allegory,
being represented by means of costumed personations,
pantomime, and dumb show, while in many cases songs,
dances, and brief dialogues were interposed as part of a
performance. There were masques and morris-dancing
on May-day, as well as mummers and waits at Christmas.
In a number of towns and villages the exploits of Robin
Hood and his associates were also celebrated on May-day,
often amidst a picturesque confusion of floral emblems
and forestry devices. In Shakespeare’s time the May-day
rites and games thus included a variety of elements charged
with legendary, historical, and emblematical significance.
But, notwithstanding this mixture of festive elements, the
celebration as a whole retained its leading character and
purpose. It was still the spontaneous meeting of town and
country to welcome the fresh beauty of the spring, the
welcome being reflected in the open spaces of the sports
by tall painted masts decked with garlands, streamers,
and flowery crowns, and in the public thoroughfares by
the leafy screens and arches, the bright diffused blossoms
and fragrant spoils brought from the forest by rejoicing
youths and maidens at the dawn. May-day was thus
well fitted to be used, as it often is by Shakespeare, as
the comprehensive symbol of all that is delightful and
exhilarating in the renewed life and vernal freshness of
the opening year.
After May-day, Whitsuntide was at Stratford perhaps
the most important season of festive pageantry and scenic
display. In addition to the procession of the guild and
trades and the usual holiday ales and sports, it involved a
distinct and somewhat noteworthy element of dramatic
representation. And, as in the case of the regular stage-
plays, the high-bailiff and council appear to have patron¬
ized and supported the performances. We find in the
chamberlain’s accounts entries of sums paid “ for exhibit¬
ing a pasty me at Whitsuntide.” Shakespeare himself
refers to these dramatic features of the celebration, and in
a manner that almost suggests he may in his youth have
taken part in them. However this may be, the popular
celebrations of Shakespeare’s youth must have supplied a
kind of training in the simpler forms of poetry and
dramatic art, and have afforded some scope for the early
exercise of his own powers in both directions. This view
is indirectly confirmed by a passage in the early scenes of
The Return from Parnassus, where the academic speakers
sneer at the poets who come up from the country without
any university training. The sneer is evidently the more
bitter as it implies that some of these poets had been
successful,—more successful than the college-bred wits.
The academic critics suggest that the nurseries of these
poets were the country ale-house and the country green,
—the special stimulus to their powers being the May-day
celebrations, the morris-dances, the hobby-horse, and the
like.
But the moralities, interludes, and stage-plays proper
afforded the most direct and varied dramatic instruc¬
tion available in Shakespeare’s youth. The earliest
popular form of the drama was the mystery or miracle
play, dealing in the main with Biblical subjects; and,
Coventry being one of the chief centres for the production
and exhibition of the mysteries, Shakespeare had ample
opportunities of becoming well acquainted with them.
Some of the acting companies formed from the numerous
trade guilds of the “ shire-town ” were moreover in the
habit of visiting the neighbouring cities for the purpose
of exhibiting their plays and pageants. There is evidence
of their having performed at Leicester and Bristol in
Shakespeare’s youth, and on returning from the latter
city they would most probably have stopped at Stratford
and given some performances there. And in any case,
Coventry being so near to Stratford, the fame of the
multiplied pageants presented during the holiday weeks of
Easter and W hitsuntide, and especially of the brilliant
concourse that came to witness the grand series of Corpus
Christi plays, would have early attracted the young poet;
and he must have become familiar with the precincts of
the Grey Friars at Coventry during the celebration of
these great ecclesiastical festivals. The indirect evidence
of this is supplied by Shakespeare’s references to the well-
known characters of the mysteries, such as Herod and
Pilate, Cain and Judas, Termagaunt with his turbaned
Turks and infidels, black-burning souls, grim and gaping
hell, and the like. The moralities and interludes that
gradually took the place of the Biblical mysteries were
also acted by companies of strolling players over a wide
area in the towns and cities of the Midland and western
counties. Malone gives from an eye-witness a detailed
and graphic account of the public acting of one of these
companies at Gloucester in 1569, the year during which
the poet’s father as high-bailiff had brought the stage-
players into Stratford and inaugurated a series of per¬
formances in the guild hall. The play acted at Gloucester
was The Cradle of Security, one of the most striking and
popular of the early moralities or interludes. Willis, the
writer of the account, was just Shakespeare’s age, having
been born in 1564. As a boy of five years old he had
been taken by his father to see the play, and, standing
between his father’s knees, watched the whole performance
with such intense interest that, writing about it seventy
years afterwards, he says, “ the subject took such an im¬
pression upon me that when I came afterwards towards
man’s estate it was as fresh in my memory as if I had
seen it newly enacted.” In proof of this he gives a clear
and detailed outline of the play. Willis was evidently a
man of no special gifts, and, if the witnessing a play when
a child could produce on an ordinary mind so memorable
an impression, we may imagine what the effect would be
on the mind of the marvellous boy who, about the same
time and under like circumstances, was taken by his
father to see the performances at Stratford. The com¬
pany that first visited Stratford being a distinguished one,
their plays were probably of a higher type and better
acted than The Cradle of Security at Gloucester ; and their
effect on the young poet would be the more vivid and
stimulating from the keener sensibilities and latent
dramatic power to which in his case they appealed.
These early impressions would be renewed and deepened
with the boy’s advancing years. During the decade of
Shakespeare’s active youth from 1573 to 1584 the best
companies in the kingdom constantly visited Stratford,
and he would thus have the advantage of seeing the finest
dramas yet produced acted by the best players of the time.
This would be for him a rich and fruitful experience of the
flexible and impressive form of art which at a moment of
exuberant national vitality was attracting to itself the
scattered forces of poetic genius, and soon gained a position
of unrivalled supremacy. As he watched the performance
in turn of the various kinds of interlude, comedy, and
pastoral, of chronicle and biographical plays, of historical,
domestic, or realistic tragedy, he would gain in instructive
insight into the wide scope and vast resources of the rising
drama. And he would have opportunities of acquiring
some knowledge of stage business, management, and
effects, as well as of dramatic form. Amongst the com¬
panies that visited Stratford were those of the powerful
local earls of Leicester, Warwick, and Worcester, whose
members were largely recruited from the Midland counties.
The earl of Leicester’s company, the most eminent of all,
included several Warwickshire men, while some of the
leading members, like the elder Burbage, appear to have