Women and Mimesis in Medieval and Renaissance Somerset (and Beyond)

Abstract

Women and Mimesis in Medieval and Renaissance Somerset (and Beyond) James Stokes An increasing number of scholars now acknowledge that women participated in English drama and related entertainments long before their traditionally ascribed first appearance as professional actresses in the London of 1660. As Glynne Wickham has observed, "women could and did perform both as amateurs and professionals" during the Middle Ages.1 E. K. Chambers long ago described the centrality of women in the May games and other parish mimetic entertainments2 as well as in court masques.3 A growing number of recent studies, many cited below , explore important contributions by women as writers, patrons , and actresses during the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Yet because of women's apparent absence from the great sixteenth -century companies and London stage, and because the amount of documentable evidence about their theatrical activities has been proportionally fragmentary, the nature, extent, and significance of that involvement remains problematic. There persists a general inclination to think of women as having had at best a peripheral place in the development of the English dramatic tradition . The present article describes several newly studied records of theatrical and other mimetic activities by women in one English county—Somerset—and suggests that in light of the growing body of such material, women's contributions to early dramatic history in England need to be seen as much more significant than has hitherto been acknowledged or understood.4 The evidence uncovered in the Somerset records is of five kinds. (1) Somerset women participated in guild drama. In 1607, when the six Wells craft guild companies staged a series of midsummer shows, the Tanners', Chandlers', and Butchers' production of 18 June included three elements: street shows and pag176 James Stokes111 eants, a procession, and a play in the churchhouse. The five identified players in the churchhouse play were "John Pinner sett forthe for a [hobbe] hatter, [Gratius] Gratiouse wattes for a Grocer , lohn Baynton for a pewter, m/i/ris wadham for a worsted maker, Richard Tanner for a Clerk."5 Of these five named players two were women in a play meant to satirize local opponents of the summer shows and May games. The Mistress Wadham here appears to be Alice Wadham, wife of Edward, resident of Mere and kinsman of Sir Nicholas Wadham of Merrifield;6 she and Edward, defiant in the face of Puritan opposition, both supported the continuation of traditional guild drama in Wells. Edward had injected himself into the street shows earlier that same day, shouting dialogue with those in the pageant.7 Here, then, we have a woman member of the local gentry playing a merchant (or a merchant's wife) and acting in a little company that included guild members and other parishioners. Not social class or gender but a common interest in attacking the Puritan reformers and in supporting traditional churchhouse drama on ale and show days seems to have been the criterion for taking part. Several years later, in 1613, when the town's six companies staged their shows for Queen Anne during her visit to Wells, the Cordwainers ' Account Book records that players in the Cordwainers' show included two shoemakers' adolescent daughters, who had been given major roles in that guild's traditional play, The whole historie ofKrispie and Krispianie, a dramatization of the legend of the patron saints of shoemakers.8 In the town's descriptive list of the six shows presented in 1613, four others (the Hammermen , Tanners, Tailors, and Mercers) all describe female characters in the same phrasing used to describe those in the Cordwainers ' show and thus strongly suggest that those shows likewise were using female players—a reasonable (but not provable) assumption since the shows were being staged for the queen and her entourage of ladies.9 In Somerset, then, the only two surviving records of civic guild drama both offer clear evidence that women were central participants. (2) At the village level, Somerset women also were fully enfranchised parishioners who often served as churchwardens and participated fully in traditional parish entertainments connected with fund-gathering activities.10 Generally speaking, the records indicate that men entertained door-to-door between Christmas and Epiphany, while the women...

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