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Staging Vice » LUDUS « Medieval and Early Renaissance Theatre and Drama 13 Edited by Peter Happé and Wim Hüsken Volume 1: English Parish Drama Volume 2: Civic Ritual and Drama Volume 3: Between Folk and Liturgy Volume 4: Carnival and the Carnivalesque Volume 5: Moving Subjects Volume 6: Farce and Farcical Elements Volume 7: Cyclic Form and the English Mystery Plays Volume 8: Acts and Texts Volume 9: Interludes and Early Modern Society Volume 10: The St Gall Passion Play Volume 11: Spectacle, Rhetoric and Power Volume 12: Les Mystères Volume 13: Staging Vice Staging Vice A Study of Dramatic Traditions in Medieval and Sixteenth-Century England and the Low Countries Charlotte Steenbrugge Amsterdam – New York, NY 2014 Cover design: Studio Pollmann Cover image: Pyramus ende Thisbe, Antwerpen: Heynric Peeterssen, c. 1540, folio 12r. (Rosenwald Collection, Library of Congress, Washington [DC], USA) The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO 9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents - Requirements for permanence”. Le papier sur lequel le présent ouvrage est imprimé remplit les prescriptions de "ISO 9706:1994, Information et documentation - Papier pour documents - Prescriptions pour la permanence". ISBN: 978-90-420-3845-5 E-Book ISBN: 978-94-012-1088-1 ©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam – New York, NY 2014 Printed in The Netherlands Contents Acknowledgements 7 Abbreviations 8 Introduction 9 I. A Plethora of Evils: Introducing the Negative Characters 27 II. Functions 39 III. Theatricality 89 IV. Meta-theatricality 157 V. Historicising Vice 187 Epilogue: Negative Characters as Gauges of Dramatic Traditions 219 Appendix A: Plays 227 Appendix B: Tables 235 Bibliography 239 Index 253 Acknowledgements T his book is based on my doctoral research which was sup- ported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. My parents, Pierre Steenbrugge and Anne-Marie Vandenberghe, have assisted me throughout my studies for which I am extremely grateful; and I also want to thank my mother for fetching me books from the various libraries at Ghent University ever since the beginning of my undergraduate degree. Mira and Arim Steenbrugge have had a very happy distracting effect and I apologise for not visiting more of- ten. Ranjan Sen is due an inexpressible amount of Belgian beer and chocolate for many conversations about sin and vice, for general en- couragement, patience, and tender loving care. I could not have done it without him. Meg Twycross first fostered my interest in medieval drama and her enthusiasm is ever stimulating. My doctoral supervi- sors, Elsa Strietman and Peter Happé, were truly generous with their time, knowledge, and encouragement, and I cannot thank them enough. I am also very grateful to the readers and editors, and espe- cially John McGavin, for the insightful advice on how best to adapt the thesis into a book. Abbreviations All the plays of the corpus are listed, with the short titles where ap- propriate, in Appendix A. Chadwyck-Healey: Chadwyck-Healey Database in Literature Online <http://lion.chadwyck.co.uk> EETS: Early English Text Society JdF: Jaarboek van de Koninklijke Soevereine Hoofdkamer van Retori- ca ‘De Fonteine’ te Gent MED: Middle English Dictionary MNW: Middelnederlandsch Woordenboek OED: Oxford English Dictionary REED: Records of Early English Drama sd: stage direction s.s.: supplementary series Introduction It will be seen ... that for all the devil’s inventiveness, the scheme remained daily the same. First he would tempt me – and then thwart me, leaving me with a dull pain in the very root of my be- ing. ... The passion I had developed for that nymphet – for the first nymphet in my life that could be reached at last by my awkward, aching, timid claws – would have certainly landed me again in a sanatorium, had not the devil realized that I was to be granted some relief if he wanted to have me as a plaything for some time longer.1 E vil characters and behaviour have always exerted a fascina- tion on both authors and scholars, as this quotation from Nabokov, an author and scholar, indicates. It is therefore not surprising that there are many negative characters in medieval and six- teenth-century drama from England and the Low Countries, and that they have been at the centre of scholarly attention for over a century.2 As such, the English Vice and Dutch sinnekens have been topics of very valuable research, most notably by Spivack and Hummelen re- spectively.3 Although the present book takes another detailed look at negative characters, and especially at the Vice and sinnekens, it does so from a different angle because it investigates both diachronic de- velopments and synchronic comparisons between these characters. It is remarkable that, though both dramatic cultures gave rise to such similar negative characters who were the theatrical stars of their re- 1 Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita, London, 1997 [rpt. ed. 1955], p. 55. 2 See, for example, L. W. Cushman, The Devil and the Vice in the English Dramatic Literature Before Shakespeare, Halle, 1900, and Edward Johannes Haslinghuis, De duivel in het drama der middeleeuwen, Leyden, 1912. 3 Bernard Spivack, Shakespeare and the Allegory of Evil, New York, 1958, and W. M. H. Hummelen, De sinnekens in het rederijkersdrama, Groningen, 1958. See also Peter Happé, ‘The Vice, 1350-1605: An Examination of the Nature and Develop- ment of a Stage Convention’, unpublished doctoral thesis, London University, 1966. Staging Vice spective traditions, very little research has focused on the similarities and differences between the two dramatic types and what they can tell us about the relationship between the dramatic traditions overall. There have been some claims concerning the possible Dutch influence on English drama, but the Vice and sinnekens are not mentioned in connection with this potential influence.4 There is a passing compari- son of the sinnekens with the English vices in an article by Hum- melen, but it merely claims that the latter are less stereotypical than the former.5 Happé and Hüsken were the first to ‘set out the basis of a comparative study of the Sinnekens ... in late medieval and early Ren- aissance Dutch drama, and the Vice of the English interludes’ but this has not led to more research.6 This book therefore focuses mainly on the comparative angle which has hitherto not been paid due attention. However, I have situated the Vice and sinnekens within their own tra- dition better to gauge the similarities and differences between the two dramatic types and between their dramatic traditions.7 Finally, as these 4 See, for example, Alexandra F. Johnston, ‘Traders and Playmakers: English Guildsmen and the Low Countries’, in Caroline Barron & Nigel Saul (eds.), Eng- land and the Low Countries in the Late Middle Ages, Stroud, 1995, p. 99-114. Pam- ela M. King, ‘Morality Plays’, in Richard Beadle (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre, Cambridge, 1994, p. 240-64 (esp. 243-44), seems to link the flowering of morality drama in late medieval East Anglia to relations with the continent. Meg Twycross, ‘Some Aliens in York and their Overseas Connec- tions: up to c. 1470’, Leeds Studies in English 29 (1998), p. 359-80, presents a de- tailed and intriguing account of immigrants from the Low Countries in medieval York but is careful to point out that there is no hard evidence to indicate that they influenced plays in York or that the drama in the Low Countries was affected by these links between the two countries. 5 W. M. H. Hummelen, ‘The Dramatic Structure of the Dutch Morality’, Dutch Crossing (1984), nr. 22, p. 17-26 (esp. 17). It is not clear whether vices in his termi- nology refers to the minor vices or to the Vice. 6 Peter Happé & Wim Hüsken, ‘“Sinnekens” and the Vice: Prolegomena’, Compara- tive Drama 29 (1995), p. 248-69 (esp. 248). 7 As the readers will presumably not be acquainted with both dramatic traditions and as several of the differences between the two are not absolute but rather differences of degree, I have included many examples to support my arguments; I have silently added punctuation and adapted capitals. Unless otherwise indicated, the translations are mine. 10
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