Shakespeare the Boy / With Sketches of the Home and School Life, Games and Sports, Manners, Customs and Folk-lore of the Time

by W. J. Rolfe

MAY-DAY AND THE MORRIS-DANCE.

The first of May was in the olden time one of the most delightful of holidays; but its harmless sports were an abomination in the eyes of the Puritans. Philip Stubbes, in his Anatomie of Abuses (1583) says: "Against May, every parish, town, and village assemble themselves together, both men, women, and children, old and young, even all indifferently: and either going all together, or dividing themselves into companies, they go, some to the woods and groves, some to the hills and mountains, some to one place, some to another, where they spend all the night in pastimes; and in the morning they return, bringing with them birch boughs and branches of trees to deck their assemblies withal.... But their chiefest jewel they bring from thence is their May pole, which they bring home with great veneration, as thus:—They have twenty or forty yoke of oxen, every ox having a sweet nosegay of flowers tied on the tip of his horns, and these oxen draw home this May pole, which is covered all over with flowers and herbs, bound round about with strings, from the top to the bottom, and sometime painted with variable colors, with two or three hundred men, women, and children following it, with great devotion. And thus being reared up, with handkerchiefs and flags streaming on the top, they strew the ground about, bind green boughs about it, set up summer halls, bowers, and arbors hard by it. And then fall they to banquet and feast, to leap and dance about it, as the heathen people did at the dedication of their idols, whereof this is a perfect pattern, or rather the thing itself."

Milton, though a Puritan, writes in a different vein in his Song on May Morning:—

"Now the bright morning-star, day's harbinger,

Comes dancing from the East, and leads with her

The flowery May, who from her green lap throws

The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose.

Hail, bounteous May, that dost inspire

Mirth and youth and warm desire!

Woods and groves are of thy dressing,

Hill and dale doth boast thy blessing.

Thus we salute thee with our early song,

And welcome thee, and wish thee long."

Kings and queens did not disdain to join in these rural sports. Henry VIII. and Queen Katherine enjoyed them; and he, in the early part of his reign, rose on May Day very early and went with his courtiers to the wood to "fetch May," or green boughs. In the Midsummer-Night's Dream (iv. 1.) Theseus, Hippolyta, and their train are in the wood in "the vaward of the day," and find the pairs of lovers sleeping under the influence of Puck's magic; and Theseus says:—

"No doubt they rose up early to observe

The rite of May, and, hearing our intent,

Came here in grace of our solemnity."

The boys and girls, as the sour Stubbes has told us, were not slack to observe this rite of May. In a manuscript in the British Museum, entitled The State of Eton School, and dated 1560, we read that "on the day of Saint Philip and Saint James [May 1st], if it be fair weather, and the master grants leave, those boys who choose it may rise at four o'clock, to gather May branches, if they can do it without wetting their feet: and that on that day they adorn the windows of the bedchamber with green leaves, and the houses are perfumed with fragrant herbs."

The May-pole was often kept standing from year to year on the village green or in some public place in town or city, and in such cases was usually painted with various colors. One described by Tollet was "painted yellow and black in spiral lines." In the Midsummer-Night's Dream (iii. 2. 296), Hermia sneers at the taller Helena as a "painted May-pole."

MORRIS-DANCE

In Henry VIII. (v. 4. 15) when the Porter is angry at the crowds that have made their way into the palace yard, and calls for "a dozen crab-tree staves" to drive them out, a man says to him:—

"Pray, sir, be patient: 't is as much impossible—

Unless we sweep 'em from the door with cannons—

To scatter 'em, as 't is to make 'em sleep

On May-day morning; which will never be."

Of course the day was a holiday in the Stratford school, and we may be sure that William made the most of it.

An important feature in the May-day games in Shakespeare's time was the Morris-Dance, in which a group of characters associated with the stories of Robin Hood were the chief actors. These were Robin himself; his faithful companion, Little John; Friar Tuck, to whom Drayton alludes as

"Tuck the merry friar which many a sermon made

In praise of Robin Hood, his outlaws and their trade;"

Maid Marian, the mistress of Robin; the Fool, who was like the domestic buffoon of the time, with motley dress, the cap and bells, and additional bells tied to his arms and ankles; the Piper, sometimes called Tom Piper, the musician of the troop; and the Hobby-horse, represented by a man equipped with a pasteboard frame forming the head and hinder parts of a horse, with a long mantle or footcloth reaching nearly to the ground, to hide the man's legs; and the Dragon, another pasteboard device, much like the one in the Riding of Saint George described above (page 169). In addition to these characters there were a number of common dancers, in fantastic costume, with bells about their feet.

The forms and number of the characters varied much with time and place. Sometimes only one or two of those just mentioned were introduced in the dance, and sometimes others were added.

During the reign of Elizabeth the Puritans, by their sermons and invectives, did much to interfere with this feature of the May-day games. Friar Tuck was deemed a remnant of Popery, and the Hobby-horse an impious superstition. The opposition to them became so bitter that they were generally omitted from the sport. Allusions to the omission of the Hobby-horse are frequent in the plays of the time; as in Love's Labour's Lost (iii. 1. 30): "The hobby-horse is forgot;" and Hamlet (iii. 2. 142): "or else he shall suffer not thinking on, with the hobby-horse, whose epitaph is, 'For, O, for, O, the hobby-horse is forgot.'" This "epitaph" (which is also referred to in Love's Labour's Lost) appears to be a quotation from some popular song of the time. So in Beaumont and Fletcher's Women Pleased (iv. 1.) we find: "Shall the hobby-horse be forgot then?" and in Ben Jonson's Entertainment at Althorp: "But see, the hobby-horse is forgot."

Friar Tuck is alluded to by Shakespeare in The Two Gentlemen of Verona (iv. 1. 36), where one of the Outlaws who have seized Valentine exclaims:—

"By the bare scalp of Robin Hood's fat friar,

This fellow were a king for our wild faction!"

That he kept his place in the morris-dance in the reign of Elizabeth is evident from Warner's Albion's England, published in 1586: "Tho' Robin Hood, little John, friar Tuck, and Marian deftly play"; but he is not heard of afterwards. In Ben Jonson's Masque of the Gipsies, written about 1620, the Clown notes his absence from the dance: "There is no Maid Marian nor Friar amongst them."

Maid Marian also officiated as the Queen or Lady of the May, who had figured in the May-day festivities long before Robin Hood was introduced into them. She was probably at first the representative of the goddess Flora in the ancient Roman festival celebrated at the same season of the year.

Maid Marian was sometimes personated by a young woman, but oftener by a boy or young man in feminine dress. Later, when the morris-dance had degenerated into coarse foolery, the part was taken by a clown. In 1 Henry IV. (iii. 3. 129), Falstaff refers contemptuously to "Maid Marian" as a low character, which she had doubtless become by the time (1596 or 1597) when that play was written.

The connection of the morris-dance with May-day is alluded to in All's Well that Ends Well (ii. 2. 25): "as fit ... as a morris for May-day"; but it came to be a feature of many other holidays and festivals, and was often one of the sports introduced to amuse the crowd at fairs and similar gatherings.

Mr. Knight gives us this fancy picture of the May-day games as they probably were in Shakespeare's boyhood:—

"An impatient group is gathered under the shade of the old elms, for the morning sun casts his slanting beams dazzlingly across the green. There is the distant sound of tabor and bagpipe:—

" 'Hark, hark! I hear the dancing,

And a nimble morris prancing;

The bagpipe and the morris bells

That they are not far hence us tells.'

From out of the leafy Arden are they bringing in the May-pole. The oxen move slowly with the ponderous wain; they are garlanded, but not for the sacrifice. Around the spoil of the forest are the pipers and the dancers—maidens in blue kirtles, and foresters in green tunics. Amidst the shouts of young and old, childhood leaping and clapping its hands, is the May-pole raised. But there are great personages forthcoming—not so great, however, as in more ancient times. There are Robin Hood and Little John, in their grass-green tunics; but their bows and their sheaves of arrows are more for show than use. Maid Marian is there; but she is a mockery—a smooth-faced youth in a watchet-colored tunic, with flowers and coronets, and a mincing gait, but not the shepherdess who

" 'with garlands gay

Was made the Lady of the May.'

There is farce amidst the pastoral. The age of unrealities has already in part arrived. Even among country-folk there is burlesque. There is personation, with a laugh at the things that are represented. The Hobby-horse and the Dragon, however, produce their shouts of merriment. But the hearty morris-dancers soon spread a spirit of genial mirth among all the spectators. The clownish Maid Marian will now 'caper upright like a wild Morisco.' Friar Tuck sneaks away from his ancient companions to join hands with some undisguised maiden; the Hobby-horse gets rid of pasteboard and his foot-cloth; and the Dragon quietly deposits his neck and tail for another season. Something like the genial chorus of Summer's Last Will and Testament is rung out:—

" 'Trip and go, heave and ho,

Up and down, to and fro,

From the town to the grove,

Two and two, let us rove,

A-Maying, a-playing;

Love hath no gainsaying,

So merrily trip and go.'

"The early-rising moon still sees the villagers on that green of Shottery. The Piper leans against the May-pole; the featliest of dancers still swim to the music:—

" 'So have I seen

Tom Piper stand upon our village-green,

Backed with the May-pole, whilst a jocund crew

In gentle motion circularly threw

Themselves around him.'

The same beautiful writer—one of the last of our golden age of poetry—has described the parting gifts bestowed upon the 'merry youngsters' by

" 'the Lady of the May

Set in an arbor (on a holiday)

Built by the May-pole, where the jocund swains

Dance with the maidens to the bagpipe's strains,

When envious night commands them to be gone.' "

These latter quotations are from William Browne's Britannia's Pastorals (book ii. published in 1616), and the poet goes on to tell how the Lady

"Calls for the merry youngsters one by one,

And, for their well performance, soon disposes

To this a garland interwove with roses;

To that a carved hook or well-wrought scrip;

Gracing another with her cherry lip;

To one her garter; to another then

A handkerchief cast o'er and o'er again:

And none returneth empty that hath spent

His pains to fill their rural merriment."