Ritual Elements in John Arden's Serjeant Musgrave's Dance

RITUAL ELEMENTS IN JOHN ARDEN'S SERJEANT' MUSGRAVE'S DANCE Serjeant MusgravfIs Dance WAS FIRST PERFORMED at the Royal Court Theatre on October 22, 1959. Critics were generally dumbfounded by the play, charging it had been written in riddles. Subsequent productions got notably mixed reviews, but John Arden's subtly powerful grip on his audiences counteracted his lack of clarity. Arden has admitted many times that he likes the work of Brecht and shares his "fascination for the Middle Ages"; he also admires Jonson and Shakespeare. These models account for not only Arden's rhetorical abundance but also his preoccupation with ritual in drama.1 Performances of ritual have been catalogued in every society of recorded history with fascinating similarities reappearing in India, Siam, Greece, and Western Europe. Climate transitions from winter to summer and vice versa have given human beings an urge to celebrate , an urge that results from pure joy or release from fear. As late as the nineteenth century, seasonal theatre rituals have been performed in England. John Gassner has cited the Christian medieval assimilation of Celtic rites of death and resurrection to the degree that they "have been reduced to the status of games, mummings, and other forms of play"2 of interest to folk-Iorists only. John Arden has written Serjeant Musgrave's Dance as a contemporary folk ritual; specifically the Mummers Play of Plough Monday serves as his model for characterization and plot development. While several scholarly volumes give the basic ritual format, E. K. Chambers, in The English Folk-Play, considers the Mummers Play more significant than either the Morris or Sword Dances, though similar to them. Chambers relates Mummers to "Disguisers"3 without giving any background, but a folk-lore scholar, J. S. UdaH, cites several meanings to trace the name. Mumm is said to be derived from the Danish word, mumme, or momme in Dutch, signifying a mask; ". . . momar is used by the Sicilians for a fool. . . ."4 The precise date of performance is debatable, but scholars recognize the 1 Henry Popkin (ed.), The New British Drama (New York: Grove Press, 1964). p.581. 2 John Gassner (ed.). Medieval and Tudor Drama (A Bantam Classic. New York: Bantam Books. Inc., 1963), p. 28 3 E. K. Chambers, The English Folk-Play (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1933). pp.4-5. 4 J. S. Udall. "Christmas Mummers in Dorsetshire" (The Folk-Lore Record, III: Part I, 1880). p. 87. 356 1971 RITUAL ELEMENTS IN Musgrave 357 date cited by Sir James Frazer, the first Monday of January after Twelfth Day, known as Plough Monday.5 On that date, four gaily dressed actors with "bows, coloured strips of paper, caps, sashes, buttons, swords, helmets, &: C."6 enacted a mime slaying of winter. The community joined these farmers or students in a dance of celebration to indicate man's willingness to work the fields that spring. In Serjeant Musgrave's Dance, four soldiers seem to be engaged in a secret game or ritual while bearing the body of a dead comrade to his home, a mining town in the north of England in 1879. The Bargee describes weather conditions that one could find on a Plough Monday in that area: There's ice coming on the water too. Give her another day and this canal'll be closed. They say the road over the moors is fast already with the drifts. You've chose a merry time 0' year beating up for recruits, haven't yoU?7 Scholars agree that four essential characters were always in the Plough Play: a Black-faced man, the Tommy or Fool, Hobby-horse, and one man disguised as a woman named Bessy. Their names varied and several real or imaginary characters were often added to these grotesques. Serjeant Jack Musgrave's name is open to speculation, for Jack was always a popular name in folk tale~; he could be Black Jack, the most grave, "born in a fiery hole," in the north Somerset version where one of his lines is: "I'll go north; I'm told it suits my nature."s A clue is found in Arden's version when Annie "identifies " Musgrave: The North Wind in a pair of...