The previous chapter discussed elements of festive culture which would bring people together. Although it was argued that, often, forms of celebration, entertainment and recreation were important parts of people’s everyday lives, this does not necessarily preclude the fact that they were also the ‘stand out’ moments, giving most a relief from their usual round of daily work. They would bring a community together no matter how wide the social spectrum. However, certain types of behaviour and appearance at such times seem to suggest a different outcome. Some festivals were a time when the masses took on an otherwise inaccessible voice,1 and these behaviours and appearances can often be seen as dividing a community. This chapter will discuss the evidence for particular types of behaviour during moments of festivity in rural Suffolk, and will consider the impact that this behaviour might have had on local communities.
The chapter begins with an overview of European carnival, before going on to identify an allegorical carnivalesque language present in East Anglian art, drama and literature of the time, discussing how this was manifest in rural Suffolk parishes. At some festivities, such as the ceremony of the Boy Bishop, it was used in a controlled way and, indeed, as a societal “safety-valve”. It will then be demonstrated that parishioners of rural Suffolk were also able to se this language to articulate concerns for their everyday livelihoods, be it unfair taxation or threats to their very way of life.
The chapter will then explore the ways in which a relationship between the
1 Twycross, ‘Some Approaches to Dramatic Festivity’, in Festive Drama, Twycross, p.18.
carnivalesque and the everyday was incorporated into East Anglian drama. It will finish with a discussion about the relationship between sport and the carnivalesque and how, once again, rural Suffolk parishioners used this relationship to express their opinions and fears for their everyday lives.
European Carnival
One expression of festive culture which has long associations with issues of power and social upheaval is carnival. The word “carnival” derives from the Latin carnem levare or Italian “carne levare” meaning the “putting away or removal of flesh”.2 It was interpreted as abstention from both meat and sexual intercourse which was required for the forty days of Lent. The term “carnival”, therefore, became applied to a final fling before a period of self-denial. Its first use in the English language was not until the mid-sixteenth century when it was used to describe continental festivities. In 1549, William Thomas wrote in The Historie of Italie of “Carnouale time (which we call shroftide)”, whilst, in 1567, Bishop John Jewel wrote, “The Italians contrary to the Portuiese [Portugese], call the first week in Lent the Carneuale.”3 In mainland Europe, carnival was the occasion for public gatherings, the display of elaborate images and excessive behaviour. This display and behaviour provided a ritual vocabulary for the festival which could be used to demonstrate belief and opinions. Edward Muir, amongst many others, has argued that carnival vocabulary derived from the lower body and its processes.4 Because of this, much carnival
2 OED, s.v. carnival.
3 J. Jewel, Replie Harding Answeare, (1567), quoted in OED, s.v. carnival.
4 Muir, Ritual in Early Modern Europe, Chapter 2: Carnival and the Lower Body.
imagery also used symbolism from the underworld and lower body turning, literally, the world upside down.
Imagery involving both sexual intercourse and meat was very common in European carnival. The prominent long nose common on many masks worn during carnival was understood to represent the phallus. In Germany, unmarried girls and spinsters had to pull a plough through the streets while men cracked whips about their heads and, in many Italian cities, men cross dressed as women and held mock weddings.5 In 1583, the butchers of Koenigsberg, Germany, carried a 440lb sausage in procession, and the butchers’ guild played a central role in organizing festivities.6 In Venice, the seasonal chore of butchering pigs to make sausages became an elaborate allegory of justice and domination. The centrepiece of carnival ritual was the slaughter of twelve pigs and a bull in a square next to the Palace of the Doges.
The animals received a formal judicial sentencing procedure as they were herded into a courtroom and sentenced to death. They were then taken into a pen in the usual place of execution where the executioners, who were actually blacksmiths, had to chase and capture them before they were beheaded.7
Such imagery was also widespread in medieval art, literature and drama. The battle between carnival and Lent, represented so well in Pieter Breughel’s 1559 painting, portrayed the idea of a world in which the normal rules of social order and Christian pieties were mocked and disputed. Related imagery and behaviour included
5 Muir, Ritual in Early Modern Europe, p.97.
6 Muir, Ritual in Early Modern Europe, p. 97.
7 Muir, Ritual in Early Modern Europe, p.95.
peasants imitating kings, servants ordering masters, boys beating fathers, and women beating men. German carnival behaviour gave the opportunity for satirical attacks on Catholics when, early in the Protestant Reformation, a group of citizens and students held a mock hunt of monks and nuns, driving them through the streets and into nets.8 Carnival, therefore, was attractive as it gave a voice to subordinate groups. Bakhtin observed that carnival was able to open up an underworld of festive laughter and market-place language. This underworld had three characteristics:
ambivalence, a tendency to combine praise and abuse; duality of the body, a distinction between the material body and the ascetic stratum of reason and piety;
and incompleteness, the idea that nature is never finished and requires, perpetually, the old to die in order to make way for the participation of youth in festivities.9 The first characteristic can be represented by a fat glutton created King of Carnival, such as in Breughel’s painting, whilst the third characteristic explains the negative depictions of the old and authoritarian in carnival behaviour.
Such themes and imagery unified carnival festivity, but the general division of society into groups to express this collective spirit implied, immediately, social conflict. This conflict was represented by the opposition between two folk, religious, chronological or seasonal entities including carnival against Lent, pork versus cod, and summer versus winter. Eventually, symbolic struggles came to represent social realities. Food was a common metaphor. The rich and their consumption of food were symbolized by game, poultry, fine wines, spices and sugar. The poor were represented by sour, salty, rotten and stinking food. This representation was
8 Muir, Ritual in Early Modern Europe, pp.97-98.
9 Bakhtin, Rabelais and his World, p.370.
brought about because opinions on social welfare were diverse. An indirect tax on meat or bread, for example, could be considered a social ill for a craftsman, whilst the authorities might consider the same tax as beneficial.10 Some scholars, however, have seen carnival as useful, socially, as it could “maintain local society in working order”.11 The Spanish folklorist, Julio Caro Baroja, stated that this was achieved in several ways, including the elimination of harmful biological, social and sinful elements; re-enacting the normal course of human life: copulation, birth, death and rebirth; and participation in noisy activities which helped in the elimination of harmful elements.12 Others have agreed with Baroja, viewing carnival as a safety valve for tensions that build up in any hierarchical society. Max Gluckman has described ‘rituals of rebellion’ which allow subjects to express resentment of authority but which do not actually change anything.13 Carnival behaviour is, essentially, liminal, and its apparently absurd, paradoxical, extravagant and illicit characteristics have been interpreted as providing much needed emotional release.14
Shrovetide and the carnivalesque
As William Thomas’ quote has shown, the period known as carnival in southern Europe was Shrovetide in Britain. Behaviour on Shrove Tuesday, immediately before the start of Lent, had little to do with the original, pious purpose of shriving or confession in preparation for the austerities of Lent. Like continental behaviour, it
10 Ladurie, Carnival in Romans: A People’s Uprising at Romans, 1579-1580, p.317.
11 Ladurie, Carnival, p.312.
12 Ladurie, Carnival, p.312.
13 Max Gluckman, Politics, Law and Ritual in Tribal Society, (Oxford: OUP, 1965) in Muir, Ritual in Early Modern Europe, p.98.
14 Victor W. Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure, (Chicago: Aldine, 1969), in Muir, Ritual in Early Modern Europe, p.98.
could be riotous and in defiance of authority. In twelfth-century London, boys staged cock-fights or threw cocks at each other, and the custom of ‘barring out’ the schoolmaster is thought to have taken place at least as early as the fifteenth century.15 London apprentices were notorious for their riotous behaviour at Shrovetide and they would often harass presumed prostitutes and attack brothels.16 The climate for carnival in southern Europe, however, was much warmer than that of Britain. Festivals in Britain at other times of the year, therefore, took on carnivalesque characteristics. These characteristics, like those found in the European festival, constituted a ritual language which served a variety of festive purposes, such as allowing access to forms of taboo-breaking, creating liminal moments when new or alternative ideas could be asserted, and providing a model for social creativity, satire, reform or even rebellion. The relationship between this type of behaviour and the festive culture of rural Suffolk will now be discussed.
One type of carnivalesque behaviour for which there is evidence within Suffolk is the
“Boy Bishop” ceremony. This grew out of a custom settled in the church in Germany by the early tenth century in which junior clergy and assistants of a cathedral were honoured and allowed to hold processions on successive holy days after Christmas.
By the twelfth century, the Boy Bishop ceremony had become linked with the cult of St Nicholas of Myra, the patron saint of children. It became the practice for a cathedral choirboy to be chosen, either on the feast of St Nicholas (6th December) or on the feast of the Holy Innocents (28th Dec), to impersonate the bishop and lead a
15 Richard Axton, ‘Festive Culture in Country and Town’ in The Cambridge Cultural History of Britain, vol. 2: Medieval Britain, ed. Boris Ford, (Cambridge: CUP, 1992), p.146.
16 Cressy, Bonfires and Bells, p.18.