Records of Early English Drama: Newcastle-upon-Tyne ed. by J. J. Anderson (review)

Reviews 87 life to others,” thereby falling prey to a sentimentality that he credits O’Neill with avoiding. O’Neill steered free of sentimentality, Manheim argues, because he always saw clearly before him the fact of life’s futility. If “his rational honesty . . . kept leading him to the coldly despairing conclusion that life was a stupid, meaningless joke,” O’Neill’s feeling impulse, neverthe­ less, persistently led him back to an almost instinctual understanding of the human kinship that alone could counter that despair. It is this eternal tension that Manheim charts and in which he finally centers the con­ tinuing force of O’Neill as a dramatist. THOMAS P. ADLER Purdue University J. J. Anderson, ed. Records of Early English Drama: Newcastle-uponTyne . Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1982. Pp. xlvi + 216. $45.00. This set of records from Newcastle-upon-Tyne is the fourth and thinnest to be published so far in the Records of Early English Drama series. Since only one dramatic text, the Shipwrights’ play of Noah’s Ark, survives from Newcastle, and that only in a poor eighteenth-century copy, it was to be hoped that this volume would yield a richer picture than we have hitherto had of the city’s Corpus Christi play. And, since all detail is precious, it does indeed add to what has been known, though disappointingly less of the kind of detail of organization and production that has made the previous volumes so fascinating. Newcastle’s extant records derive largely from the civic Chamberlains’ Account Books, and there is comparatively little surviving from the records of the guilds who actually produced the plays. There are no records at all from the Ship­ wrights, thus cancelling any possibility of play-record comparison. Nevertheless, significant findings emerge. There is evidence for pro­ cessional performance of the cycle, separate from the Corpus Christi procession, which seems to have immediately preceded it. The editor concludes, on the basis of several references to “bearing the car” and “bearers of the car,” and contrary to popular notions of processional performance, that the pageant vehicles were not wheeled but instead were carried along the route by porters. A similar state of affairs seems to have existed at Lincoln, where likewise some steep streets may have made this method of transportation preferable. In Newcastle, mention of “leddinge of sand to the hed of the syde [a steep street] for stainge the carres when the playes was played” and, though more obscure, “caryinge A keill of movke of the newe kye & for lyinge iij tydes [loads?] in the playes” may suggest the need to cope with sloping terrain. However, it is worth pointing out that these references as well as those to bearers came from just two years, 1561 and 1568: extrapolation from them can only be tentative. Newcastle also claims our attention for having had for at least two years (1510 and 1511) a St. George’s Day dragon, and also a giant 88 Comparative Drama named Hogmagog who starred in his own, probably midsummer, show, first mentioned in 1554 and last in 1596. The closest we come to a description of what he looked like, however, is “paide for keepinge hogmagoes koate and him self in licknes.” Except for his name, evidence about this giant is nothing like as interesting or circumstantial as that from Chester and Coventry about their midsummer giants. On the other hand, there is a very rich fund of material about the town’s support of official fools. At a rough estimate it takes up at least as much space in the book as records of the Corpus Christi drama. Although once again the heart of the matter—what these fools actually did—remains elusive, there is plenty of data about their clothing and shoes (which were renewed amazingly frequently), their stipends and the town’s care during their illnesses, and, in one case, death. One fool, Thomas Dodds, is specifically described as a “natural fool,” and in the editor’s opinion there is an element in some of these payments of civic charity to unfortunates. Fascinating but needing interpretation, all this material will surely come into its own in the...