Fletcher has shown that the reference is very likely to Giltspur, in the northern part of County Wicklow, not far south of Dublin. Mirth will travel great distances in his king’s service.ģ01 Many suggestions have been made for the identity of “Gailispire on the Hill,” most of them in England. A town in the far northeast of England, just south of the Scottish border.
Mirth represents the king’s primary interests in life, pleasure and creature comforts.Ģ85 Berewik upon Twede. He is the king’s principal servant, while the two soldiers, Strength and Health, represent the king’s protection. Death is viewed here as a member of the court and thus stands in awe of the king’s purview.Ģ63 The king’s messenger is variously called “Mirth” (Pleasure) and “Solas” (Comfort). Rex evokes courtly conventions whereby all in the king’s presence bow to his authority. The line’s meaning then would be: “Don’t interfere with our playing area.”ġ26 This is the first break between sections of text in the manuscript in which text has been lost the faulty rhyme scheme shows that at least two lines of the stanza have disappeared between the blocks of text, as well as the following speech heading.Ģ13 undir myne eye. It is not clear in the banns whether this description is intended to describe such a debate on stage or simply to indicate that it is the body’s pride (line 95) by which the soul is damned (line 96).ĩ8, 100 Holthausen transposes these two lines Coldeway follows the transposition, the sense of lines 97–100 thus being: “Through the prayers of Our Lady mild / She would repay all goodness / She will pray to her son so mild, / the soul and body shall part ways.” Davis glosses “dispyte” as “dispute, contend,” but “part ways” gets better at the sense, since the next two stanzas present just such a severance as the body learns the pains of death (lines 101–04) while Mary would reclaim the soul from the fiends so that it might abide (lines 105–08).ġ10 “Place” here likely has the specific sense of the Latin “platea” (see also line 470 s.d.), the neutral space on the ground which must be constantly renegotiated between actors and audience. Davis and Coldeway: than.ĩ7 The banns do not make it clear if the Virgin Mary’s prayers and the king’s subsequent redemption actually formed a part of the play, but to make sense of the argument it would seem that they must have done so.ĩ8 There are many dialogue poems consisting of a debate between the body and the soul, both in Middle English and in other European vernaculars. I have followed Norman Davis’ gloss here (“could”), though Coldeway’s “knew” works well too, especially given the sense of chout in line 68.ħ3 tham.
OED cites Marlowe’s Faust V.133 as the earliest instance of the gendered saying.Ħ9 couthe. Coldeway’s gloss, “an old wive’s tale,” has merit, providing an early example of that idiom. 3, and note to line 503.Ħ0 a wommanis tal.
Banns were also shouted to spread official news, as in line 459 (“My banis for to crye”).
METS GAY PRIDE HAT MOVIE
The banns were often used as an advertisement, not unlike a modern movie trailer, to generate interest in the play and to announce the performance. 84).ġ0 The reference to the weather would seem to imply an outdoor performance.ġ5–112 It is common for medieval drama to present a summary of a play (or cycle), called the banns, before the action begins. Fletcher has shown that the priory was involved in other modes of public performance as well ( Drama, Performance, and Polity, p. 1 My speech shall pleasing you, sworn retainersĢ Then, having closed the curtain, the Queen speaks privately with the messengerĪbbreviations: CT: Chaucer, Canterbury Tales MED: Middle English Dictionary OED: Oxford English Dictionary s.d.: stage direction Whiting: Whiting, Proverbs, Sentences, and Proverbial Phrases.Ĥ Although the fragmentary manuscript of the play survived to modern times among the archives of the Augustinian priory of the Holy Trinity, the fact that the playwright invites both the “lered” and the “lewed” to enjoy the play would argue strongly in favor of a public performance, rather than a cloistered audience.