Meaghan Franey
100051862
Drama to 1600
Dr. Richard Cunningham
November 10, 2003.
Theatre and Popular Culture by Michael D. Bristol
In Michael Bristol’s essay “Theatre and Popular Culture” he talks about the
effects that popular culture at the time that a play was written had on the play itself and
the way that the performance was produced, and also the level of the theatrical and
dramatic that was present in everyday life in early modern England.
This essay is divided into four different sections. I have chosen to focus on the
first and second sections of the essay which talk about liminal occasions and the idea of
misrule within the early modern English society, simply because I found them to be the
most interesting. The first section talks a lot about classes and the social hierarchy that
was present in early modern England. The social system in England at this time was quite
set, but there was still room for movement either up or down the social ladder. The rift
between the lives that the rich (gentlefolk) and poor (base and common) people was a
large one, but there was also a middle class (middling sort) which consisted mainly of
successful farmers, merchants, and masters of the guilds. Bristol talks about misrule and
‘Lords of Misrule’ towards the end of the first part of this essay. When seasonal feasts
were held by the popular culture during liminal times of the year (equinox, season
changes, etc.) they would interpret the world in their own way through a festive ‘misrule’
and foolishness. The more common folk could use these opportunities to turn the social
hierarchy on its head. I took it that the ‘Lord of Misrule’ is the same idea as the ‘King of
Fools’ in Victor Hugo’s novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame. In this tradition the person
who is socially the farthest thing from a king gets to be king for the day. The person
chosen for this would be someone who was very stupid, a criminal, or in the case of the
Hunchback, just the ugliest outcast of the bunch. Through this the people could vent their
frustrations about the social hierarchy and do things that they couldn’t usually get away
with doing, in the same way that things such as petty vandalism that might be taken more
seriously under normal circumstances are called ‘tricks’ during Halloween . They also
usually dressed up in costumes during these times, and the masks provided secrecy about
who was performing these perhaps inappropriate acts, and made the whole occasion even
more freeing for the individuals taking part in it. During this time festivities such as
Carnival and ‘misrule’ were associated with staged performances, and both of these were
looked down upon as dysfunctional and deviant behaviour. The time when this type of
misrule was most prevalent was during Carnival which took place on Shrove Tuesday
(we might recognize Mardi Gras in New Orleans as its modern North American
equivalent) During times such as Carnival it was acceptable for the common people to
challenge their social reality and act out in a way that would definitely not be tolerated
under normal circumstances. Excessive consumption of food and alcohol were also an
important part of the festivities of Carnival. The idea of ‘misrule’ could also include
riotous events such as public executions and fairs; really any time when the normal
boundaries set by a society were set aside for a prescribed period of time.