Mysteries, Minstrels, and Music

Mysteries, Minstrels, and Music JoAnna Dutka The English and Latin religious dramas of the Middle Ages, though doctrinally similar and eventually coexistent, differ radi­ cally in form and mode of presentation. One of the fundamental disparities lies in their use of music: the Latin plays are sung; those in the vernacular, however, use speech and music. More­ over, the Latin plays have only a vocal line, as Dr. William Smoldon has shown,1 whereas the English plays, not restricted by liturgical propriety and church law, include both songs and instrumental music.2 The use of the latter in the Mysteries has, therefore, no formal dramatic precedent; nonetheless, as I pro­ pose to show, the writers and revisers of the cycle plays utilized instrumental music with marked skill for dramatic effect, in­ ternal consistency, and realism, as well as exhibiting in certain plays a lively awareness of the religious symbolism of musical instruments. The second Chester play, dealing with the creation and fall of man, has five indications of minstrelsy included in all the play’s manuscripts but one; yet another direction is added in one of the manuscripts.3 Minstrels are directed to play again in the Chester Magi Play (166. after 144), but neither in this direction nor those in the Creation Play are the instruments which are to be played described. In the Banns of 1575, how­ ever, the author has enjoined the Smiths to “get mynstrilles to that shewe, pipe, tabarte and flute.”4 That wind instruments were the frequent choice of the minstrels is suggested by the three directions in the N-town cycle: Herod commands his musicians to “blowe up a good blast,” and the same phrase is used by the Seneschal, “blowe up mynstrall,” and by Herod again, “blowe up a mery fytt.”5 The description of the resulting action uses the verb “buccinant,” indicating a number of min­ strels playing trumpets of some type. These are probably, from the dramatic context, busines rather than clarions.6 112 Mysteries, Minstrels, and Music 113 Of all the instruments mentioned in the plays, winds of vari­ ous sorts predominate. The Chester First Shepherd blows a cornu (134. after 48); the angels in the Chester, Towneley and York Judgments play “beams,” which the Chester scribes call tubas.7 A Towneley demon, after hearing the instrument, com­ ments, “It was like to a trumpe/ it had siche a sownde . . .” (370.107). The music of trumpets is mentioned in the Coventry Shearmen and Taylors’ Play when Herod calls for “Trompettis, viallis, and othur armone. . . .”8 The simplest of the wind in­ struments is the gift of one of the Chester Shepherd boys to the Christ Child; he gives his pipe, the music of which could make the “wood . . . ring/ and quiver . . .” (157. after 606). One of the Coventry Shepherds also has a pipe (11.310). Bells are required in the Towneley and Coventry plays deal­ ing with the purification of Mary; since the action requires a representation of the Temple bells ringing in jubilant welcome, they would be more elaborate than handbells. Chime bells, of course, being moveable and of varied pitches would serve ade­ quately; indeed, they would well suit the action planned by the Coventry Simeon and his two clerks: “Syng then with me thatt conyng hasse/ And the othur the meyne space/ For joie rynge ye the bellis” (45.364-66). Precisely at what point the music of the bells is heard is not clear. Simeon says, as he goes to meet the Child, “Then, surs, cum forthe apase/ And myrrele the bellis ryng” (52.623-34); eight lines later, one of the clerks announces, “Mastur, now ar the bellis rong . . .” (53.633), and they then set out in procession. Surely the bells would not cover Simeon and Anne’s speeches; they may, rather, accompany some stage movement not apparent from the text.9 Only two plucked instruments are named, and one of them may not have been played. David in the Towneley Prophets Play sings “a fytt,/ With [his] minstrelsy,” and describes it as “myrth I make till all men,/ with my harp and fyngers ten . . .” (59-60.104-05, 109-10), but he may...