Wales (review)

The volumes published in the Records of Early English Drama series have, without exception, proved rich in detail and interest. Although David N. Klausner, the editor of this volume devoted to Wales (and for obvious reasons the series is here renamed 'Records of Early Drama') writes that 'the history of drama and the performing arts in pre-Restoration Wales is little known, though not entirely lost', this book is still full of surprises. Welsh poets of the sixteenth century spoke of their profession as based on 'y tri cof', the three things that had to be kept in the memory. Of these, the deeds of kings and princes and the genealogies of the nobility must seem remote to a reader in the twenty-first century, but the third, the Welsh language, is still vibrant (and I write as a non-Welsh speaker though I have included with much pleasure the two surviving Welsh-language biblical plays in a course devoted to medieval drama taught through the medium of English to Welsh-speaking students). The rules and practices of Welsh poetry and song are amply shown, for example, in the intriguing tradition of 'kyff kerdd' (pp. 165 and 355) in which a senior bard can legitimately become a 'butt of bards' at, say, weddings of the gentry, in which he is 'roasted' in verse by his juniors and students and then allowed a response (and see p. 475 under 'kyff'). Despite the remoteness of these 'memorials', there is an attractive freshness about much reproduced in this volume and it has some surprising lessons for us today in sometimes unexpected places.

This is the eighteenth REED volume. In addition to Wales they have covered twenty-two counties and cities since 1979 — a considerable achievement. This volume has an excellent historical background (pp. xi–lxii), a section on drama, music, and popular customs (pp. lxiii–lxxvii), an account of the documents (pp. lxxviii–cxlii), details of editorial procedures (pp. cxliii–cxlix), and notes to each section (pp. cl–clxix). There are seven maps, one a reproduction of Speed's 1611 map of Wales, the others specially and very clearly drawn. Although its boundaries cannot be easily defined, it might have been helpful had Deheubarth (p. xiii) been conjecturally indicated. There are six illustrations; these include several showing the remains of performance places. The records themselves occupy pp. 3–268 and there are six appendices, one being of forged documents, another of saints' days and festivals (was St David's day too well-known to be included?), and an important section devoted to Welsh music, its preservation, classification, measures, and tune lists. Translations from Welsh and Latin are given on pp. 308–96, with endnotes on pp. 397–441. There are Latin, English, and Welsh glossaries (in that order), the last giving words not found in Y Geiriadur Mawr, and a detailed index.

It is no surprise, given the long Welsh bardic tradition coupled with the difficulty of access of many places, that poetry and music, rather than drama, were the commonest forms of entertainment. The editor has found evidence of a dramatic tradition at least from the start of the sixteenth century but there are few surviving dramas in Welsh. Apart from the two biblical plays mentioned above, which may date from the end of the fifteenth century, there are a morality-like play, Y Gwr Kadarn ('The Strong Man') and a Troilus and Cressida play of the early seventeenth century derivative of Chaucer. However, one suspects that there was more in quantity and sophistication than these few relics might suggest. For example, Beaumaris Free School, Anglesey, performed The Rebellion of Naples, or The Tragedy of Massanello in 1652 and, in 1655, Thomas Randolph's The Muse's Looking-Glass. The former had been written only three years before its production in Beaumaris, while Randolph's enormously popular play, licensed in 1630, was published in 1638 and reprinted in...