Wales (review)

This volume, the eighteenth in the Records of Early English Drama series, and the first to deal with material from outside England, stands out among the other red volumes on my shelf. However, Wales has all the hallmarks of a reed volume: the multiple glossaries and indices are typically superb; the records to which they refer are highly interesting, and are given ample historical, social, cultural, and even physical context through David N. Klausner's excellent introductory materials and notes.

Given the size of the geographic area under consideration, this large volume might be considered slim. However, as Klausner convincingly argues, 'The scantiness of the Welsh records ... probably masks a tradition of amateur and professional drama in both Welsh and English, ranging across the principality.' There are very few records from Cardiganshire, where, despite the wealth of local mines, according to antiquarian George Owen in 1602, 'all townes in the Shire Are ruinous, poore & decayed,' and from Brecknockshire, including the prosperous borough of Brecon, which Owen deemed 'evill for intertaynmente.' Some rich troves of performance records had to be excluded: 'The bulk of the surviving material describing bardic performance lies in the poetry of the bards themselves and is thus outside the range of this collection.' Still, the collection offers some dramatic treasures, including the texts of the Chirk Castle masque of 1634, in which Orpheus poetically ushers in the various courses of a meal, and the Antimasque of Gypsies that Sir Thomas Salusbury wrote for a wedding there in 1641, as well as other works and records from the Salusbury estate itself. An inquiry into a death in Wrexham, likewise in Denbighshire, yields a fascinating account of a dance involving cross-dressing, a floral garland, and a sword, at a 'byddinge spinninge,' which turns out to be a sort of wedding celebration. The term is undefined in the introduction where first mentioned, and is absent from the glossary; however, the index leads one to Klausner's ample endnote, which gives not only an explanation of the term, but also a preview of a closely similar dance record from the forthcoming Cheshire volume, 'lacking only the unfortunate death of one of the spectators.'

I share Klausner's stated regret at the omission of 'frequent references to performers who were documented in a non-performing capacity' as well as of non-localized, datable poetic references to performance; such omissions diminish our potential sense of the lives and identities of individual performers, even as it keeps the volume to a manageable size. Still, Klausner does a fine job of indicating where the reader might find some of that additional information, and of introducing particularly important individuals with strong connections to performance. For example, Carew Castle in Pembrokeshire alone yields three, dealt with in some detail: Sir Rhys ap Thomas, whose Life supplies the collection's single longest record, a ten-page account of 'a solemne Iust and Turnement' in honour of St George in 1507; Sir John Perrot, a 'great court favourite' under Elizabeth; and his son Thomas, who in 1581 'played ... in a pageant known as the Castle of Beauty that was staged before the queen and the French ambassadors in the Tilt Yard, Whitehall.'

The introductory section on 'Drama, Music, and Popular Customs' begins and ends with negative comparison to the English dramatic traditions with which avid reeders might be familiar. Wales offers no records of civic biblical cycles such as those of York and Chester, no Robin Hood plays, and few if any lords of misrule. 'There are ... larger gaps in this collection than in those of the English counties due to the distinctive nature of Welsh society.' However, as Klausner asserts, that society also produced distinctive 'modes of performance and entertainment' that, while 'more often musical and poetic than dramatic,' clearly have much to offer the early drama scholar.