Music, Dance, and Drama in Early Modern English Schools

Abstract

Performing Piety[E]very morning and evening at six of the clock, which are the days for learning of scholars, and keeping of school, the scholars by two and two and the schoolmaster shall go from the school-house into the Parish Church, and there devoutly upon their knees before they do enter the choir say some devout prayer, and after the same they shall repair together unto the chapel or choir . . . and there sing together one of these psalms hereafter instituted, such as the schoolmaster shall appoint. 1 This passage from the statutes at Kirkby Stephen Grammar School reveals the theatrical quality of student devotion. Twice daily students paused in their regular instruction to engage in a performative activity that combined patterned movement (going from the schoolhouse "two by two" into the parish church), oration (the saying of prayers), and music-making (the singing of psalms). In so doing, they envoiced and embodied their Protestantism, moving, in this case physically, from the schoolroom to the church. This chapter maps how students moved, sometimes literally and sometimes figuratively, between church and schoolroom, and the purposes religious music-making served in these contexts.

Pelopidarum secunda: a ‘site of memory’ in the history of Elizabethan revenge tragedy

“…Performed at Berwick Grammar School and attributed to Aristotle Knowsley, a play entitled Tragedie called Oedipus (1596-1603) equally features morally questionable characters performed by children. 103 As Eubanks Winkler claims, school performances such as Knowsley's Oedipus-and, as I argue, Pelopidarum too-'negotiated the boundary between licensed revelry and the enactment of vice, holding in tension a desire for moral education with the need to produce a lively, interesting play'. 104 Conceived as 'tensionreleasing rituals', 105 both plays testify to a clash between the pedagogical expectations of a school performance context and the transgression triggered by carnivalesque license.…”

“…75 By displaying the students' training and skills, school performances functioned as a marketing tool for increasing the institution's prestige. 76 Alongside showcasing the school's reputation, however, theatrical performances were didactic tools. Whether author of Pelopidarum or not, the headmaster Johnson organized and supported theatrical exercises.…”

“…Because the memories of 'past roles, past performers, and past performance contexts do not fade' but rather keep 'haunt[ing] the performative present', in Amanda Eubanks Winkler's words, school performances have an 'interstitial, liminal nature' and 'might be haunted by the church, the court, the bawdry of the public stage'. 86 Pelopidarum features examples of 'ghosting' from all these three contexts. 'The bawdry of the public stage' is coupled with classical models in a traditionally comic character: the braggart soldier Megasthenes, who dominates one of the additions to the sources.…”

“…There is however another trace of music: In the last chorus, two speeches contain a refrain ('earth unawares consenteth to the skies' and 'gods will have offenders blind'), whose sententious tone and regular repetition evoke the structure and the singing practice of some psalms. 107 Psalm singing was part of early modern school statutes 108 and was practiced at Winchester too, as confirmed by Christopher Johnson in the poem on the students' daily routine. 109 Alongside the performance context of the church, Pelopidarum is haunted by performances at court.…”

Performing Restoration Shakespeare

“…26 The earlier court masques, though, were not forgotten: the subject matter of Thomas Jordan's Cupid His Coronation (1654), for instance, clearly displays nostalgia for lost courtly traditions. 27 John Playford's English dancing master (1651), furthermore, ostensibly preserves old English 'country' dances, and yet that material was sourced from theatrical works, particularly the antimasque and revels sections of Ben Jonson's court masques. Under the pretence, then, of publishing an anthology which harked back to simpler pre-war times and folk customs, Playford (a known royalist) used those popular, rustic tunes to remind England of her lost courtly traditions and ensure the survival of those musical forms.…”