[Sally-Beth MacLean has asked for the following notice to be circulated to the Parish Network:]
The Records of Early English Drama is delighted to announce the open access publication of a new edition in the REED series. The first North-east collection of medieval and renaissance dramatic records, for Yorkshire North Riding, edited by David N. Klausner, is now available on REED Online (https://ereed.library.utoronto.ca) and https://ereed.library.utoronto.ca/collections/yksnr/
The records of Yorkshire North Riding begin as early as ca. 680, with Bede’s account of Caedmon, the gifted singer of Whitby Abbey, and conclude with notices of the Scarborough waits in 1641-2. The edition includes extensive evidence of recusant and anti-Protestant drama in an area which remained strongly Catholic after the Reformation. With only two boroughs, the North Riding was largely rural and records of performances in the houses of the Yorkshire gentry are found especially in legal records associated with attempts to control and suppress small companies of players. The North Riding may be linked to the metropolitan area of London by legal issues and touring entertainment traditions but it was also a contrast in its resistance to central control through recusancy and in fewer mimetic folk customs, perhaps because of widely dispersed populations.
In 1855, when Lady Holland, daughter of the Yorkshire clergyman, the Rev. Sydney Smith, wrote a memoir of her father, she noted that his initial reaction to the north country was less than enthusiastic: ‘My living in Yorkshire was so far out of the way, that it was actually twelve miles to a lemon.’ Smith may not have been entirely serious, but his reaction certainly would have applied with some accuracy to the North Riding, where large distances between gentry houses was the norm and travel was complicated by difficult, often impassable, moorland terrain.
Such difficulties provided a challenge to travelling players, and many of the London playing companies simply avoided the county, limiting their appearances to the city of York. To fill this gap, the North Riding became the home of a least two local companies of travelling players, though in their appearances before the assize court on those occasions when they were apprehended, they claimed to be shoemakers (in Egton, just west of Whitby) and weavers (in Hutton Buscel, southwest of Scarborough), respectively. Since they played without gentry patronage, these companies were constantly trying to stay one step ahead of the assize courts. The Egton company, led by members of the Simpson family, regularly played anti-Protestant material, as well as having plays of Shakespeare (King Lere, Perocles) in their repertoire. The records which derive from the occasions when they were brought before the courts give extensive information on the business of playing in such a challenging atmosphere. The Hutton Buscel company, led by members of the Hudson family, was perhaps even more organized, for in 1615-16 they undertook a tour of the North Riding which took them to thirty-two houses over the course of eight weeks.
The songs in the life litigious of gentry families and frequent appearance of musical instruments in wills and household inventories will be of special interest for musicologists.
David Klausner is Professor Emeritus of English and Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto. He is the editor of the REED collections for Herefordshire, Worcestershire, and Wales, and has published widely on late medieval and early modern drama and music.