Inns of Court: Records of Early English Drama (review)

Inns of Court was prepared by two of REED's veteran editors. John R. Elliott, Jr., to whose memory the collection is dedicated, also edited REED's Oxford records, and Alan H. Nelson, who co-edited the collection after Elliott suffered a stroke, also edited REED's Cambridge records. Twenty-second in the REED series, this new collection provides access to a wealth of records and texts from one of London's most significant cultural institutions.

The Inns of Court are residential law societies located just West of London near the royal courts of justice in Westminster. Since the Middle Ages they have been the principal sites for legal education, having the right to admit individuals to practice at the bar. Sir George Buck (d. 1622) referred to them as the "third university of England," and there are similarities. Like Cambridge and Oxford, the sites of the Inns were walled enclosures that included chambers, chapels, yards, walks, gardens, and great halls, and like university students, the gentlemen who resided at the Inns were pursuing an education. But, as Alan Nelson points out (xiv), important differences stamped the Inns with a distinct character. They had no founders or royal charters, no endowments, and little land other than their individual sites. They operated on annual dues charged to members, admissions fees, rents, and fines. Since there were no scholarships, entry was ordinarily limited to the upper social ranks, and the average age of admission was older because many of the residents were university graduates before entering. It is a measure of the seriousness afforded legal education that barristers were supposed to return to the Inns to participate in reading exercises and disputations at regular intervals. But not all who resided at the Inns aspired to practice. Many came to learn about the law better to manage their own family estates or simply to enjoy the pleasures of London. At the turn of the seventeenth century it has been estimated that there were over a thousand members residing at the Inns, which made them the largest single group of literate, cultured men in London (xv), a group that would be of interest in almost any study of the culture, but one of particular interest to historians of drama and theater, because the Inns were noted for their extravagant festivals and entertainments. Lawyers were encouraged to incorporate theatrical activities into the rhythm of their annual training not simply because they developed facility and poise in public speaking, but also, as Henry VIII's royal commission on the Inns reported (62), because they made familiar traditional practices in the houses of the nobility and at court.

Elliott and Nelson's collection presents evidence of a rich array of entertainments at the Inns from music to dance to revelry, as well as to plays and masques, some of which had a significant impact on the development of those forms. In volume 1 Nelson surveys the historical background of the Inns and the music, drama, festivals, and entertainments produced there. The earliest records to survive date from 1407-8 and they continue to 1642, arranged throughout under the four Inns of Court in alphabetical order—Gray's, Inner Temple, Lincoln's, Middle Temple—followed by Furnival's Inn (1-362), the single Inn of Chancery included. The editors' object was to select from the archival sources "all references to dramatic, quasi-dramatic, and secular entertainment, including revels, interludes, disguisings, plays, comedies, tragedies, masques, orations, processions, secular music, dancing" as well as the shooting of cannon and other quasi-military activities such as "barriers" within the halls of the several Inns themselves. Also included are processions through London, attendances at royal jousts, and performances at court (lxxxiii). And like other REED collections, this one brings together in one convenient place extracts from the primary documents as well as the supporting works in a well-organized and attractive set of...