Medieval court theater could be called “London Meets Las Vegas.” We think of sparkle and feathers and over-the-top spectacle as being in poor taste, but it wasn’t that way at all, then. The court liked a good entertainment; one way to win favor with the king was to sponsor (pay for) and participate in a good rollicking fun of some sort. We have some records of such spectacles in royal wardrobe accounting, as well as in some contemporary diaries and archives.
By the late Middle Ages, jousting was no longer useful on the field of combat, so like any outdated skill, it became the playground of the rich. Real tournaments are somewhat their own topic, so just briefly, they were still held all through the medieval period and into Tudor times. In a real tournament, weapons were blunted and people won on points, but there were still serious injuries. So for indoor spectacles, jousting could be done with dancing. I couldn’t find more than a mention of this in my books, so we have to speculate. Maybe it was like pro-wrestling, with scripted jousts, or perhaps it was more like a dance that formed lines on either side of a barrier.
Dancing was the most popular form of court entertainment. Our modern idea of dancing as couples was only in a proto-form. Medieval dancing had been done in lines, with hands linked, moving about and crossing over like children playing “London Bridge is Falling Down.” Later medieval dances consisted of a prescribed pattern of hops and kicks, either singly or in pairs. The ideal of “courtly love” led to dances that paired men and ladies, who held hands or otherwise moved together around the room. Court dancing often used the center of the hall, which no longer had fire pits as it had in early medieval times. The pattern that we see still in use during Jane Austen’s Regency time was set by the medieval hall’s shape: couples moved to the head of the room, where they entered “the set” and moved through prescribed figures of linking arms, hopping, and circling, until they reached the end of the hall and either sat down or got back in line for the head of the room.
Early wardrobe accounts of King Edward III list costumes for grand royal dance spectacles. In 1347, he had fourteen peacocks’ heads and wings, with tunics that had peacock eyes painted on them. He also had a set of fourteen angel suits, with silver head masks and tunics painted with gold and silver stars. For Christmas, they had red and green tunics paired with animal-head masks. The same shenanigans showed up in royal wardrobes over the next two centuries, with wicker constructions making more elaborate animal masks and tails.
Records of a few major spectacles give us a taste of what they liked. In 1494, King Henry VII had a Twelfth Night spectacle in Westminster Hall. Westminster Palace is now used for the Houses of Parliament, but then it was an actual palace and its hall was the obvious place for court theater. They set up seating scaffolds for important guests, which included London’s City Council, and that’s how we got our account of it: they took notes and placed them in the Great Chronicle of London. The Lord Mayor was dubbed a knight during the feast, and he didn’t get home till dawn.
The royal troupe of actors were staging a more typical “Interlude,” a type of play we’ll get to shortly. But suddenly it was interrupted by St. George on horseback, who came in with a dragon led by a fair virgin! What was the dragon? It may have been like a Chinese New Year dragon, a long costume on men’s backs. It might have been something like a parade float. The fair virgin was ceremoniously taken into the queen’s retinue, and St. George, perhaps getting off his horse, sang anthems of St. George with the chapel choir. Twenty-four masked courtiers came into the hall to perform dances. They were dressed in gold spangles, among other things. The men’s dancing style was to leap high, while the women moved as if they were on wheels, with their skirts concealing foot movement.
In 1501, Henry VII’s son Prince Arthur married Princess Catherine of Aragon. At the wedding, three pageant wagons came into the hall, portraying a castle, a ship, and a mountain. Young nobles in costume came out to act an allegory: Knights from the Mountain of Love assaulted the Castle of Ladies. When they won (of course), the ladies came out to join them in dances. What’s really notable is that the participants were actual aristocrats, not actors. It was considered a great honor to put on masks or costumes and act in this pageant.
The aristocrats were, of course, also guests at the wedding. In a court spectacle, there was a fluid boundary between audience and actors.
In 1519, young King Henry VIII staged a disguising. Eight old men (that is, wearing “old man” masks) came out to dance very soberly, as if they had difficulty moving. Then twelve young masked men wearing yellow and green came in, dancing quickly and leaping high. The Queen (Catherine of Aragon again, of course) insisted on pulling off their masks when the old men refused to speak. The young men’s masks were also removed, and among them was (surprise!) the king himself.
These shows don’t appeal to our tastes. What’s so funny or amazing about masked dancers? We can imagine that the court audience roared with laughter when the old men refused to speak to the queen, but it wouldn’t impress our much more sophisticated taste. They were easily amused, for sure, and of course, powerful people being involved as participants guaranteed flattering applause.
thanks to “Researching Court Performance,” by Sarah Carpenter, in The Routledge Research Companion to Early Drama and Performance.