The Queen's Dumbshows: John Lydgate and the Making of Early Theater

Chapter 4. Performance and Gloss: The Procession of Corpus Christi

c h a p t e r 4 Performance and Gloss: The Procession of Corpus Christi When John Shirley copied the verses now known as the Procession of Corpus Christi, he included a headnote describing them as “an ordenaunce of a precessyoun of the feste of corpus cristi made in london by daun John Lydegate.” Welcome though they are as an anchor for what would otherwise be a free-floating set of verses, Shirley’s words are not without ambiguity. What he means by “ordenaunce” and “precessyoun” is not entirely certain, and his phrasing does not make clear whether it was the “precessyoun” that took place in London or the writing of the poem. Despite that cloudiness, what Shirley has preserved appears to be the only known example of a poetic account of a Corpus Christi procession in London. Shirley’s description of the Procession of Corpus Christi as an “ordenaunce” positions the verses at the intersection of visual spectacle and written exegesis, of ephemeral performance (open to multiple meanings) and durable text (presenting a specific interpretation ). Lydgate’s verses, as this chapter argues, turn a fleeting procession of figures on Corpus Christi day, a procession that could be understood in a variety of ways by onlookers, into a poetic form that has not only the permanence of written record but also the apparent fixity of exegetical exposition. His stanzas capture not primarily the material details of the live performance they probably are based on but, more pointedly, its symbolic significance, both of which were caught up in questions about the understanding of the sacrament at a time when eucharistic belief was one of the most controversial of English theological issues. The meanings of publicly performed dramas may have been as varied as their spectators, but poetic description offered the promise of one determinate interpretation, even if that promise could 98 chapter 4 not always be fulfilled once the text came into the hands of readers. What Lydgate provides in the Procession of Corpus Christi can be understood as a kind of gloss or reader’s guide, which uses figural interpretation and the appeal of meditative devotion to instruct viewers (now readers) about how to interpret—and use—what they have seen. Religious Performances in London The feast of Corpus Christi, established by the Church in the early fourteenth century, commemorates the institution of the Holy Eucharist and falls on the first Thursday following Trinity Sunday (anywhere from late May to late June). Corpus Christi was widely celebrated throughout Europe with urban performances and processions, in keeping with the importance of the eucharist, especially for teaching the laity. Despite the feast’s popularity, London apparently never developed a citywide celebration for Corpus Christi or an elaborate set of plays associated with it, such as those mounted in York and other provincial towns in England. That might in part be because guilds and fraternities in London organized themselves around parish churches, not the cathedral of St. Paul’s, and thus lacked a central point of control or consolidation that could have mounted a large-scale performance. Fragmented into smaller communities centered around parishes, Londoners may have lacked the resources for or interest in banding together to produce vernacular cycle plays that, as records from York and elsewhere attest, required substantial outlays of time and money. Another reason for the lack of city-sponsored Corpus Christi plays in London may have to do with the not entirely firm control exercised by the city’s merchant oligarchy. As Sheila Lindenbaum observes, late medieval London is best seen as a cultural field or site of social practices “where discourses not only converge but are strategically deployed by interested parties competing for power, status and resources.” While the years from 1400 to 1500 can be described as a period of “normative discourse” during which the city relied on clerks (such as John Carpenter, the city’s common clerk from 1417–38, compiler of the Liber Albus, and apparent friend of Lydgate, as his commissioning of the Daunce of Poulys shows) and poets to craft a common history by using a totalizing and uniform discourse, such efforts were driven by anxiety on the part of the merchant corporations about their hegemony and should be seen as the product of conflict as much as consensus. Much Performance and Gloss 99 like the Lancastrians at court, Lindenbaum argues, London’s...