[SCA-AS] [Fwd: TMR 07.10.30 Streitman and Happe, Urban Theatre (Symes)]

Mon Nov 5 16:05:17 CST 2007

---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: TMR 07.10.30 Streitman and Happe, Urban Theatre (Symes)
From:    "The Medieval Review" <tmrl at indiana.edu>
Date:    Mon, October 29, 2007 8:08 am
To:      tmr-l at indiana.edu
         bmr-l at brynmawr.edu
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Streitman, Elsa and Peter Happe, eds. Urban Theatre in the Low
Countries, 1400-1625. Medieval Texts and Cultures of Northern
Europe, 12. Turnhout: Brepols, 2006. Pp. xii, 320. &#8364;70.00. ISBN:
9782503517005.

    Reviewed by Carol Symes
         Department of History, University of Illinois at Urbana-
         Champaign
         symes at uiuc.edu

The essays gathered in this volume make an important contribution to
the related studies of theater and urban life. Many open windows onto
a world in which scripted drama was only one manifestation of a
culture that was inherently performative and representational, and the
cumulative effect of this scholarship (some of which has never been
accessible in English before) is to demonstrate that the understanding
of plays and pageantry is inextricably bound up with the history of
communities and their modes of communication. Indeed, the very
richness of the Low Countries' historical record stands as a challenge
to conventional narratives of theater's history, which tend to reify
modern generic categories, national boundaries, and temporal
divisions. The mere fact that one cannot describe this region and
period using familiar geographic and historiographic terminology is
instructive. Readers whose knowledge of the Netherlands and its
theater has hitherto begun and ended with the Middle English
translation of Elckerlijc (Everyman ) will be
enlightened.

Although its editors assert that the book's "chronological scope is
extensive" (24), most essays deal with the role of Chambers of
Rhetoric (rederijkerskameren) in the production and publication
of plays over a century and a half, from the early sixteenth to the
mid-seventeenth centuries. This period certainly deserves close
attention, but the editors' suggestion that it can be taken as
normative is problematic, for it conveys the misleading impression
that there was little theatrical activity in the region earlier on,
and that only four surviving antecedents of early modern drama deserve
consideration (Lille's annual procession on Trinity Sunday, first
attested in 1270; the so-called Maastricht or Ripuarian Passion
Play from the fourteenth century; and two surviving Marian
pageants from fifteenth-century Brusssels). On the one hand, this
narrow focus fails to account for the urban theater of cosmopolitan
Arras, which was producing and preserving a wide spectrum of
vernacular entertainments as early as the twelfth century and which
had a demonstrable impact on other towns in the region, notably
Bruges, Gent, Saint-Omer, Cambrai, Tournai, Valenciennes, Mons, and--
farther afield-&#8211;London and Paris. (Arras is firmly situated on the
book's excellent map but is mentioned only fleetingly in the text).[1]
On the other, it obscures the age-old connection between dramatic
formulae and the traditions of forensic and didactic rhetoric so ably
dissected by Jody Enders, whose Rhetoric and the Origins of
Medieval Drama (Ithaca, 1992) receives a lonely mention in a
single essay. The volume's implicit argument would have been more
forcefully advanced by a forthright acknowledgment that the Low
Countries' theatrical vocabulary had long been rooted in political,
social, and economic realities. As Galbert of Bruges observed in 1127,
the peaceful governance of Flanders not only fostered trade but led
its urbane inhabitants to devise "all manner of ingenious and studied
arguments," so that "it came about, in fact, that everyone became
proficient in rhetorical skills, some by diligent study and some by
nature." [2]

The book is divided into five sections. The first, "Precursors," opens
with Carla Dauven-van Knippenberg's "Borderline Texts: The Case of the
Maastricht (Ripuarian) Passion Play ." The text under
reconsideration (Den Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek 70 E 5, fols.
233v-247v) furnishes a wonderful illustration of the chauvinistic
contortions performed by modern academics at the expense of medieval
artifacts: probably not from Maastricht, possibly not a Passion play,
and only partially scripted in the Ripuarian dialect of the Lower
Rhine. Assigned by nineteenth-century Dutch philologists to Germany
(specifically Cologne) and by German philologists to the Limburger
town of Maastricht in the Netherlands, it has since been firmly
replaced in its manuscript context by J. Peter Gumbert, who
demonstrated that the play was deliberately copied alongside a
collection of Middle Dutch homilies known as the Limburgse
Sermoenen in the early decades of the fourteenth century, and that
it also shares space with vernacular sermons and mystical writings
testifying to the influence of Hadewijch of Brabant (fl. c. 1250) and
Beatrijs of Nazareth (c. 1200-1263). The codex itself thus invites
renewed consideration of the play's participation in a contemporary
culture of vernacular piety. In addition, the political circumstances
of its composition can be teased out of the macaronic mixture of
German and Dutch elements, most strikingly apparent in the Middle
Dutch ballad sung by Mary Magdalene, which strongly resembles lyrics
composed by Duke Jan I of Brabant (c. 1254-94), the victor in the War
of the Limburg Succession (1280-1288). Hence, Dauven-van Knippenberg
theorizes that it may have been inserted into the play by German-
speaking supporters on the losing side, as a comment on the decadence
of the Brabantine court. Puzzlingly, however, she concludes that this
new understanding of the play's codicological and historical contexts
unfits it for study as drama--that somehow the fact that it is "not
just" a play must mean that it was not intended for performance (49).
That "we have no corresponding records of performance" and that "the
manuscript shows no signs of having been used for performance" are
hardly damning proofs of antitheatricality, however; the same could be
said of nearly every extant play text prior to 1400. In this case, as
in so many others, one cannot expect medieval dramatic documents to
exhibit the characteristics "usual" in the scripts of later eras.

The other designated "precursor" of urban theater in the Dutch
vernacular is discussed by W.M.H. Hummelen in "Pausa and
Selete in the Bliscapen," with reference to the first
and last installments of what was originally a seven-year dramatic
cycle celebrating the Seven Joys (bliscapen) of Mary,
inaugurated in Brussels in 1448 and performed by the Archers' Guild in
the Grote Markt after a festive procession held annually in honor of
the Virgin. Hummelen mines the texts of these two plays (first
"discovered" in 1962 and 1882, respectively) for insights into the
meaning of two seminal terms which occur very frequently in later
scripts, and performs a clever analysis of the directorial
interventions added to the rubrics of one original manuscript. He
concludes that selete was used to designate occasions when
singing alone was called for, while pausa indicated a need for
instrumental music--as distinct from occasions when stage directions
call indiscriminately for either one or the other, or both. He also
stresses the fact that all of these musical interludes would have been
executed ad libitum, with only occasional descriptors guiding
musicians or metteurs-en-sc&#232;ne in the selection of appropriately
"beautiful" or "joyous" material. His careful use of textual sources
shows how conventions changed over time, and calls attention to the
important fact that much of what we would like to know about medieval
staging practices was never written down.

The first article in section two, "Politics and Religion," is Gary K.
Waite's "Rhetoricians and Religious Compromise during the Early
Reformation (c. 1520-1555)," a satisfying account of the methods used
by rederijkers factors (the playwrights of the Chambers of
Rhetoric) to help "their lay contemporaries understand the issues"
that were being hotly debated--and occasionally more hotly punished--
in the first decades of the Reformation. He argues, compellingly, that
these influential dramatists, who were often "lay experts on
religion," used the public sphere of their late-medieval towns to
present ideas and doctrines tailored "to fit the unique culture and
economy of the urban landscape of the Low Countries" (79-80). The
result was an array of subtle plays that facilitated debate within
communities where "political peace, economic growth, and religious
tolerance ranked at least as highly as the call for religious change"
(102). He suggests, indeed, that the influential reformer David Joris
was nurtured within the thriving Rhetoricians culture of Bruges, where
his father had been an actor, and that he brought that tradition of
composition and performance with him to Antwerp and to his theological
writings. Here is an essay that exemplifies how much a deep
contextualization of dramatic fictions can reveal about reality.

Complementing Waite's study is Wim Husken's "'Heresy' in the Plays of
the Dutch Rhetoricians," which also emphasizes the eclecticism of
Dutch reform movements. It reveals that Rhetoricians reacted
creatively and courageously to the increasingly strident but largely
ineffectual attempts to ban their activities, which culminated in the
official prohibition of 26 January 1560 and which may have spurred
even more subversive performances. Examining the scripts made
available in print prior to that date, Husken inventories some of the
techniques used by playwrights to express controversial opinions even
in this relatively regulated medium, concentrating on accusations of
'heresy' that can actually be read as referring to representatives of
the Church and not (as has been assumed) to Protestant reformers. He
thereby calls for closer and more sophisticated readings of the
surviving texts, which may reveal even more powerful strains of
religious dissent than have hitherto been uncovered &#8211; and which may
have befuddled contemporary censors as well as modern scholars.

In the lead essay of section three, "Literary Traditions of
Rhetoricians Plays," Bart Ramakers offers a radical re-assessment of
what allegorical drama was, how it functioned, and how it was received
by contemporaries. In "Dutch Allegorical Theater: Tradition and
Conceptual Approach," he questions some fundamental assumptions about
medieval dramatic genres, which (he rightly asserts) cannot be
understood as separate from the genres of public oratory and
argumentation, notably preaching and disputation (it is he who cites
Enders). As he points out, all are based on monologue and dialogue,
the building blocks of "everything that is said on stage"--and, for
that matter, in real life (128, 133). Furthermore, allegory's visual
impact must also be understood in terms of public display. In short,
Ramakers argues against the stubborn notion that allegory is
essentially a lesser form of dramatic representation, both less
immediate and less theatrical. He makes a passionate case for the
intellectual demands and payoffs of allegory--for playwrights, actors,
and audiences--and for its place in the "public oratory of the town."

The remaining two essays in this section are devoted to drama's
literary relationships. Peter Happe's "Pyramus and Thisbe:
Rhetoricians and Shakespeare" compares and contrasts the treatment of
Ovid's story as lampooned in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's
Dream (first printed in quarto in 1600) and as moralized in two
earlier Dutch plays: the spel van sinnen performed by the
Haarlem Rhetoricians around 1518 (extant in their manuscript
collection of plays) and the illustrated Pyramus ende Thisbe
first printed at Antwerp around 1520 (and reprinted at Gent in 1573
and at Rotterdam in 1612 and 1616). Happe shows how the Dutch
playwrights of the sixteenth century expanded on both classical and
Christian treatments in strikingly different ways and, in turn, shows
that Shakespeare's more famous version of the story is part of a long
tradition--as are his play's performers. Elsa Streitman's "God, Gods,
Humans and Sinnekens in Classical Rhetoricians Plays" further
demonstrates that many Dutch playwrights were experimenting with
Christian interpretations of classical material, using humanist-
inflected allegory in ways that bear direct comparison to contemporary
English dramas like John Heywood's The Play of the Weather<\> or
John Redford's Wit and Science. Clearly, further comparison of
the urban theaters that flourished in England and the Low Countries
during this period could reveal some surprising links and borrowings,
fostered by shared commerce and shared political objectives and
increasingly facilitated by shared printing presses.

The fourth section of the book, "Urban Dramatic Culture," features
articles by three prominent Anglophone scholars of Continental
medieval drama. Alan Knight's "Guild Pageants and Urban Stability in
Lille," the fruit of many years' research in the archives of that
border town, provides a much-needed perspective on the development of
urban theatrical traditions over a relatively longue duree.
"Rhetoricians and the Drama: The Francophone Tradition," by the late
Lynette R. Muir, is a fitting testament to its author's lifelong
engagement with the drama of French-speaking lands, and brings
together some of the scattered evidence for the composition,
organization, and production of late-medieval plays. In "Worthy Women
of the Old Testament: The Ambachtsvrouwen of the Leuven
Ommegang," Meg Twycross looks closely at the extraordinary
cavalcade performed annually at Leuven on the Feast of the Nativity of
the Virgin (8 September) and recorded for posterity in the local
history of Willem Boonen in 1593-94. Working from Boonen's description
and drawings of this remarkable event, which featured thirty-four Old
Testament heroines and their entourages on horseback, Twycross
explains how spectators were "enticed into a mode of interactive
reading" which invited them to "crack" the code of its riddling
iconography (238).

The final section, "Performance and Material Culture," consist of two
essays: "Accommodation and Possessions of Chambers of Rhetoric in the
Province of Holland" by Th. C. J. van der Heijden and F.C. van
Boheemen, and Femke Kramer's "Producing Late Medieval Dutch Plays
Today." The former surveys what can be known about the actual chambers
in which Rhetoricians met, the furnishings of those rooms, and the
other properties they contained. (In addition to printed and
manuscript collections of plays, many groups owned Bibles and works of
history, both vernacular and Latin. Somewhat surprisingly, the Latin
translation of Josephus's Jewish Wars appears to have been a
staple reference.) The latter surveys recent productions of medieval
Dutch plays.

Overall, this valuable collection of essays is not well served by its
introduction, as I have already indicated. Given its intended
audience, it should have attempted to define Dutch terms with
accuracy; for example, factor would be more faithfully rendered
"wright" or "playwright" than "official poet" (15); and spelen van
sinne are not the same as English "moralities" (16), as Waite
(101) and Ramakers (133-134) show. The introduction should also have
explained what the Chambers of Rhetoric were, how they came into
being, and how they governed themselves (the few sentences on page 12
are too brief and too sketchy to be helpful). Instead, it consists
largely of an "Historical Prologue," featuring an inadequate and
confused summary of high politics and religious debates in a place and
time where, admittedly, politics and religion were notoriously
complicated. And it makes several troubling assertions about the
relationship of plays in performance to plays in manuscript, and about
the relationship of dramatists to the printed publication of their
works, repeating canards (e.g. "The Reformation was predicated upon
the spread of print," 13) that have been challenged by many scholars,
including some of the volume's own contributors. It would have been
better to have used this space to deal thoughtfully with the larger
questions raised by a book for which the editors otherwise deserve
praise. These questions are important: the very "nature of the drama
produced by this urban society" (9), the relationship between what was
written down and what was performed, the reception of plays in
production and in print, the interaction between theater and lived
reality, the effects of entertainment on public policy (and vice
versa), the shared techniques and ambitions of both dramatic and
political actors. Happily, English-speaking scholars interested in
such questions now have access to an urban milieu that is both similar
to that of neighboring territories and strikingly distinctive: in its
social porousness, its political indeterminacy, its spiritual
diversity, its susceptibility to public opinion, and its resistance to
categorization.

NOTES

[1] Carol Symes, A Common Stage: Theater and Public Life in
Medieval Arras. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2007.

[2] Galbert of Bruges, De multro, traditione, et occisione gloriosi
Karoli comitis Flandriarum, ed. Jeff Rider, Corpus Christianorum
continuatio medievalis, 131 (Turnhout, 1994), c. 1 (7). "Qua pacis
gratia legibus et justitiis sese regebant homines, omnia ingeniorum et
studiorum argumenta ad placita componentes ut in virtute et eloquentia
rhetoricae unusquisque se defensaret cum impetitus fuisset, vel cum
hostem impeteret qua colorum varietate oratorie fucatum deciperet.
Tunc vero habuit rhetorica sua exercitia et per industriam et per
naturam." A similar observation is made still earlier, in the
Disputatio de rhetorica attributed to Alcuin and dedicated to
Charlemagne (c. 794): see The Rhetoric of Alcuin and
Charlemagne, ed. Wilbur Samuel Howell (New York, 1965), 68-70 (cc.
2-3).

-- 
-- Jenne Heise / Jadwiga Zajaczkowa
jenne at fiedlerfamily.net