The Rehearsal - Buckingham

On Monday, I opened up the document containing my first chapter and, perhaps unsurprisingly, realised that I was stuck. I spent six weeks concentrating on the same ten thousand words that now that it's time to move on from them, I'm outside of my comfort zone. Fortunately, I had a copy of Buckingham's The Rehearsal in my bag, so I spent two days rereading that and taking notes to get back into the flow of things.

I don't think that it's saying too much to claim that The Rehearsal struck a massive blow to heroic drama and effectively changed English theatre. Its success suggested that the burlesque could have, as Simon Trussler writes, a "corrective function" and that furthermore, "the grosser absurdities of the heroic idiom could no longer be perpetrated with impunity". (Trussler, 2)

Even aside from its theatrical importance, The Rehearsal is an interesting play. It has a rather MST3K feel about it: two "men about town" sit down to watch a rehearsal of a bad play, and make sarcastic comments as it plays out in front of them. Throughout, they discuss the play's quality with its author, Bayes - played by the seventeenth-century comic giant John Lacy - who is adamant about its greatness. The bad play is an explicit parody of the heroic dramas that Dryden was putting out - and Bayes is a direct parody of Dryden - and is utterly ridiculous, the chief complaint being that there is no actual plot. The drama is rather a series of scenes depicting people reacting unconvincingly to strange and random events.

Perhaps Buckingham's greatest scene is one in which the Prince Volscius falls in love with a girl just as he is preparing to depart for war. As he is pulling on his boots, he gives a tragi-comic speech on the dilemma of love versus honour - but cannot come to a conclusion and thus "goes out hopping with one Boot on, and the other off". A point charmingly and humourously made regarding the agonies that Volscius' alter egos go through in serious plays.

Unfortunately for my purposes, The Rehearsal does not have a duel in it. However, I shall use what I can, given that it skillfully parodies heroic modes, and there is plenty of comic violence throughout. I am especially fond of a battle scene which has only two soldiers, both wearing ribbon and carrying lutes. This is possibly the first instance of the "two man army" gag, beloved of later burlesques - the joke is, quite simply, that there are only two men representing enormous armies - although I am not certain.

Of particular note is the final battle, won by Drawcansir - a violent young man described by the author as a "fierce Hero". He kills everyone else on the battlefield, after which he declares:

DRAWCANSIR: Others may boast a single man to kill;

But I, the blood of thousands daily spill.

Let petty Kings the names of Parties know:

Where e'er I come, I slay both friend and foe.

The swiftest Horsemen my swift rage controuls,

And from their Bodies drives their trembling souls.

If they had wings, and to the Gods could flie,

I would pursue and beat 'em through the skie:

And make proud Jove, with all his Thunder, see

This single Arm more dreadful is, than he. V:I, 275-284

More powerful than Jove! Buckingham here parodies the belligerence of modern heroes, and in particular the apparent insistence that the greatest, most powerful hero must necessarily be the bloodiest warrior. Remember: up until relatively recently, heroism in English literature didn't depend on killing numerous people on a battlefield. This was especially the case in English drama - medieval dramas were almost exclusively morality tales or retellings of Bible stories.

Drawcansir is a parody of Dryden's greatest heroic creation, Almanzor, from The Conquest of Granada, a character heavily drawn from Achilles. Buckingham was not afraid of misquoting lines from Granada for comic effect; for example, regarding his forbidden love for Almahide, Almazor says:

He who dares love, and for that love must die,
And, knowing this, dares yet love on, am I. IV:III

- while Drawcansir says, in anticipation of a drunken brawl:

He that dares drink, and for that drink dares die,
And knowing this, dares yet drink on, am I. IV:I, 190-191

Indeed, Drawcansir is permissible as a hero in spite of the fact that he "frights his Mistress, snubs up Kings, baffles Armies, and does what he will, without regard to numbers, good manners, or justice" (IV:I, 83-84) because his violent, often brutal behaviour is what had come to be regarded as acceptable heroic conduct. There is no inconsistency; in writing Drawcansir, Buckingham is simply taking the standard to its logical extreme.

A duel would have been nice, of course, as it would mean that I'd be able to write more about The Rehearsal than I'm now going to. Still, the play stands as an excellent parody of heroic behaviour, and perhaps it's one that I'll be able to return to at a later date. 

The British Library

Updates have been a little slow over the past few days. I submitted 5,000 words for my supervisor to read at the beginning of the week and we were meant to meet on Thursday at the British Library, but unfortunately, owing to an emergency on her end, she couldn't be there. However, I took advantage of the time and applied for a reader's pass, which means that now I can go in and actually look at and handle some of the manuscripts I'll be discussing in later chapters! I'm very excited.

Incidentally, the British Library has a fantastic exhibition on at the moment called Evolving English, which is well worth a look. Also of interest is the Sir John Ritblat gallery, which, among other curiosities, has a display of Alice in Wonderland books from the past century and a half, Jane Austen's writing desk, and a separate Magna Carta room. Most thrillingly of all, however, were the collection of sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century play manuscripts, positioned right at the entrance. My favourite was a copy of Thomas Middleton's A Game at Chess, opened to the title page.


Anyway. Since my meeting has been rescheduled for next week, this has meant that for the first time since mid-January I have a stretch of time where I don't have a pressing deadline to produce words. Consequently I have been quite bad over the past few days and have thrown myself into non-research books, and so from now until Wednesday I'm going to concern myself with primary material. I began this morning by rereading The Dragon of Wantley (1737) by Henry Carey, a funny little burlesque play that I'm inordinately fond of. The story is fairly simple. It's based on a seventeenth-century comic ballad which reads like a ruder Lewis Carroll poem and tells of a dragon attacking the village of Wantley, to the villagers' dismay. They plea to the bibulous local nobleman, Moore of Moore Hall, to defend them and he eventually agrees - on the condition that the beautiful Margery agrees to dress him and kiss him the morning before he goes into battle. She agrees and they prepare him, dressing him in a suit of spiked armour. They engage in some mild flirting, although it's unclear how knowing or innocent it is:

MARGERY: Put your Hand here, and feel my Heart how't thumps.
MOORE: Good lack a day! how great a Palpitation! (II:I, 11-12)

(Consider what it is exactly that Moore is feeling.) Moore then sets off and arrives at the dragon's den. He hides in a well and when the dragon comes to drink from it, he leaps out and kicks it in the backside. The dragon then, in the words of the ballad, "groan'd, kick'd, sh-t, and died", while Moore emerges victorious to marry Margery. Incidentally, the ballad indicates, rather wryly, that this is an example of cunning defeating strength, while the play does no such thing.

 

Woodcutting of Moore kicking the dragon in the
backside. Note the spikes on Moore's armour.

The love story between Moore and Margery is of Carey's own invention (along with a second female character who creates a love triangle), although otherwise the play follows the ballad's story fairly exactly. Incidentally, the play did very well and the first run outperformed even that of John Gay's The Beggar's Opera. To me, the appeal comes from two places. First of all, I just like the story: it's a quaint, exaggerated version of typical English ballads. It reminds me of the sort of folk stories Katherine Briggs has discussed in her unsurpassable books on the subject.

That on its own wouldn't make it particularly special, however, which brings me to my second point. The play is one of those that becomes more interesting the more you find out about its production. Carey used the ballad as a source, but his focus was actually on parodying a failed Handel opera, Giustino, of a few months previously; consequently much of the play is performed as opera which music in an exaggeratedly Italian style to contrast with the rural English setting. I haven't seen a contemporary picture of either performance, although literature seems to indicate that the dragon costume in Wantley parodied the ridiculous monster costume of Giustino.

Satirising an opera requires able singers. Thomas Reinhold, a bass singer, was cast as the dragon while Thomas Salway played Moore dressed as and mimicking the voice of Farinelli, the famous castrato. In other words, the villain of the piece sounded strong and macho to emphasise the voice of the high and girlish voice of the hero - a decision that is absolutely inspired and designed to counter all presuppositions about heroic behaviour. To be blunt, which one has balls? Moore also goes into battle without a weapon, preferring to drink "six Quarts of Ale, and one of Aqua Vitae" (II:I, 81) to steady his nerve. Contrast this with the ridiculously long sword of Tom Thumb in the portrait of Miss Rose (shown on this post), a woman playing the part of a hero. I don't entirely agree with phallic interpretations of heroic weaponry in "straight" drama, largely because the primary purpose of weapon design has always been practicality in combat, but I think that they certainly have merit when discussing parody.

On the subject of heroes and weaponry, what has always interested me is the seemingly-inexplicable detail of Moore's spiked armour. It was only a few months ago when I read Aphra Behn's The Rover that I came across the following stage direction, and with it a possible explanation for the spiked armour:

Advances, from the father end of the scenes, two men dressed all over with horns [the sign of the cuckold] of several sorts, making grimaces at one another, with papers pinned on their backs. (I:II)

So (if we're taking Behn as a precedent), the spikes on Moore's armour could represent cuckoldry. This may not necessarily be correct, but within the context of the play I think that it's a valid explanation.

This post is long enough already so I will end it here, although the play certainly bears much further discussion. I hesitate to blindly recommend reading it because my love for it is based on several unrelated aspects that appeal to me - and honestly, it simply doesn't make for as pleasurable reading as many other eighteenth-century plays because so much is reliant on visual humour. Still, I think it's an interesting play, and one of the more important ones of its contemporaries. I'm very glad to know of it.