Malone Society Collections XI: Records of Plays and Players in Norfolk and Suffolk, 1330–1642 ed. by David Galloway, John Wasson (review)

82 Comparative Drama Malone Society Collections X I: Records of Plays and Players in Norfolk and Suffolk, 1330-1642 [ed. David Galloway and John Wasson], The Malone Society, 1980/1. Pp. xxii + 224. This volume, a handsome and useful addition to the Malone Society Collections series, is the distillation of an immense effort on the part of the editors David Galloway and John Wasson. (Galloway is responsible for the records of Great Yarmouth and Wymondham, Wasson for the rest.) Although much of the material has been printed before, much new material is added, and we may be fairly confident that, with the excep­ tions noted below, the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk have been searched with all the thoroughness which could reasonably be expected given the current state of archives. Professor Wasson, who is responsible for the Introduction, notes that generally speaking Norfolk and Suffolk do not possess archives which have been carefully maintained and jealously guarded over the years (cf. Kent), but rather broken series, fragments, and occasional documents which have survived more by luck than by design. The surviving Nor­ folk and Suffolk records are therefore of an extremely miscellaneous nature, and can give only a hint of the rich traditions of minstrelsy, folk plays, civic entertainment, and professional drama which characterized East Anglia prior to 1642. Nor are the records orderly enough for us to extrapolate in a systematic fashion normative patterns of civic production or standard itineraries of travelling players. Furthermore, the volume is incomplete for its geographical area by design. First, it does not reproduce material from Aldeburgh, Ipswich, and Stoke by Nylands which, in the editors’ judgment, has been published satisfactorily elsewhere; nor does it include the extensive records of Norwich, which are scheduled to be published by Records of Early English Drama in several volumes, one of which (1540-1642) has already been announced. (Note Wasson’s article, “Records from the Abbey of St. Benet of Hulme, Norfolk,” REED Newsletter, 2 [1980], 19-21, in which he publishes material discovered too late to be included in Collections XI.) Second, the editors have excluded repetitive entries concerning civic waits, material which would probably have been included if the volume had been published by REED. In spite of these limitations, the volume is a rich one and will be found of interest to every scholar of medieval and Renaissance drama. Of special significance are records from private households (Felbrigg, Hunstanton, and Hengrave); prolific records from King’s Lynn, Snettisham , Swaffham, Thetford, Wymondham, Bungay, and Ipswich, all testi­ fying to remarkable community interest in music and drama; and such individual items as extensive pageant lists from Ipswich, numerous references to the “Game place” from Great Yarmouth (beginning in 1492/3), and detailed provisions concerning musical instruments for the waits of King’s Lynn. Also of great value is Professor Wasson’s Introduction, which is packed with useful observation and caveats. The volume does have a distinct flaw in its nearly total absence of bibliographical apparatus. Although many excerpts have been printed previously and although these publications must have been useful to the Reviews 83 editors in identifying documents and entries, no attempt is made to acknowledge in a systematic or even perfunctory way the contributions of earlier scholars. It is also quite unclear which entries have long been known and which are printed for the first time by the present editors. Other problems arise also. Since Aldeburgh is not given a separate listing, the reader is left to wonder, in the absence of a bibliography, where to look for the records of this town. (The information is buried on p. 206 in a note entitled, “List of Companies by Patrons and Places of Origin.”) No assistance is given to the reader who may want to know more about the Great Yarmouth “Game place,” even though a number of articles have appeared on the subject, including Richard Beadle’s “The East Anglian ‘game-place’: a possibility for further research,” REED Newsletter, 3 (1978), 2-4, which cites Professor Galloway’s own ‘The ‘Game Place’ and ‘House’ at Great Yarmouth, 1493-1595,” Theatre Notebook, 31 (1977), 6-9. I assume that the editors must have debated whether to...