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Monday, December 24, 2007

Shakespearean Christmas Comedy

Posted by John Holbo on 12/24/07 at 08:58 AM

From Love’s Labour Lost:

I see the trick on’t: here was a consent,
Knowing aforehand of our merriment,
To dash it like a Christmas comedy:
Some carry-tale, some please-man, some slight zany,
Some mumble-news, some trencher-knight, some Dick,
That smiles his cheek in years and knows the trick
To make my lady laugh when she’s disposed,
Told our intents before; which once disclosed,
The ladies did change favours: and then we,
Following the signs, woo’d but the sign of she.

I’ve never made a serious attempt to figure out what the hell all the lines in this play are on about. Lots of obscure references. The play was apparently first performed as a Christmas comedy in 1597. But that just pushes the question back: why was this the sort of thing you went to see at Christmas? What were Elizabethan conventions of Christmas comedy? Lots of mistaken identity hijinx? Anyone have any clever information on the subject?

Merry X-Mas, all!

Comments

John: Elizabethans, like us, went to see Shakespeare to increase their cultural literacy. He was the Bard, for Christ’s sake. At Christmas, a parent’s sole duty was to make sure that his or her children made progress on The Canon. Otherwise, the Ghost of E. D. Hirsch Future would rise up and smite you.

I asked for *The Simpsons* for Christmas, but Mark Bauerlein put Homer in my stocking.

By on 12/24/07 at 03:05 PM | Permanent link to this comment

Courtesy of Google Books, Arthur F. Kinney’s A Companion to Renaissance Drama:

Most court masques and plays took place during the Christmas season, traditionally a time of lavish hospitality in great households. Christmas festivities also frequently involved rituals of social inversion, like the antics of lords of misrule: as the second earl of Essex once remarked, Christmas was a season when “disorder is not only allowed but, in a manner, warranted.”

I’d bet their court (like ours) got more kick from masques, games, and general drunkeness than from witty comedy, but plays seem to have been part of the Tudor winter festival from early on. Although I haven’t found a nice long list of examples yet, here are some quick online references:

http://www.timetravel-britain.com/05/Dec/jacobean.shtml
http://www.timetravel-britain.com/06/March/globe.shtml

And, of course:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelfth_Night_(holiday)

Contemporary Hong Kong New Year’s films play a similar role, complete with wacky sex reversals.

By Ray Davis on 12/24/07 at 05:53 PM | Permanent link to this comment

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Monday, December 24, 2007

Shakespearean Christmas Comedy

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