A Christmas Messe bears the date, 1619, on the first page of the manuscript. While this is undoubtedly the date of the copying of the manuscript, there is nothing to suggest that it is not also the date of the compositon. The manuscript is written in a clear and consistent hand and is remarkable in the rather fastidious quality the scribe displays. Only once (in line 563) is there a word scratched out to correct an error. One other time (in line 255) an error is corrected by carefully penning in the new reading below the error. In this latter case, one almost suspects the scribe had an aversion to unsightly blotches on his manuscript. In comparison to the manuscripts of our two preceding plays, the copying is extraordinary in its flawlessness, possessing none of the haphazardness which occasionally characterizes those manuscripts. Regrettably, much of the pain taken by the scribe of A Christmas Messe was for naught, for the legibility of the manuscript is greatly hampered by the seepage of ink through the paper. In some cases, the seepage nearly blots out whole words on the reverse side of the leaf. Were it not for the great care and distinction with which the scribe wrote, many lines would be next to impossible to read because of the ink seepage.
One is tempted to claim that the hand which wrote the manuscript is not the author's. There are no substantive emendations, save for the replacement of "Axell tree" for "Appletree" in line 255 (mentioned above), and this seems to be the result of miscopying. Indeed, since this emendation is so radical--"Appletree" makes absolutely no sense in the context, therefore rendering it unlikely that it was the author's first choice--it appears that this is only a miscopy. Further, it does not seem to be the sort of miscopy that an author/scribe would likely fall err to, since "Axell tree" is such a peculiar and distinctive reference. Of course, if the scribe is not the author, we are left with a somewhat puzzling question: Why would a relatively insignificant college play receive the attention of a scribal transcription? There are no ready and satisfactory answers.
That the play is of university origin, however, cannot be disputed. There is a very typical attack on the freshmen in lines 79-98, and a further comment on scholars appears in lines 569-70. Line 8 refers to "this goodly hall," undoubtedly the college hall where the play was to be performed, and it is quite clear that it was intended to be a Christmas production, perhaps the most characteristic purpose of all college plays. Also characteristic of college plays, there is no indication of the precise location of the performance. The play, along with the other two in the present edition, has been, in the past, ascribed to Cambridge. The ascription is puzzling. Cambridge seems to have favored comedies over tragedies, and Cambridge did produce far more plays than Oxford during the early seventeenth century, but these are no reasons for assigning all miscellaneous comedies to Cambridge. Gerald Bentley sees a relationship between the play and Thomas Randolph's Salting, which is a Cambridge play.1The Salting, a monologue existing only in a 316-line fragment, is written in iambic pentameter couplets and seems to be based on a college initiation custom. Salting consisted of a feast during which freshmen initiates, supervised by designated upperclassmen, competitively performed for the rest of the students. The specific nature of the performance seems not to have been prescribed, though it often took the form of an amateur theatrical. The OED cites a 1644 source which reports that salting was "still used at Oxford," suggesting that Cambridge no longer practiced it (or at least that there is no record of such practice). But Randolph's play is certainly a Cambridge piece, and can be dated fairly closely to 1627. Consequently, if A Christmas Messe is part of a salting, that fact alone would not establish its university of origin. Nevertheless, Bentley, perhaps out of convenience, assigns the play, as he does both Heteroclitanomalonomia and Gigantomachia, to Cambridge.
But there are further, more substantial, reasons for doubting the Cambridge ascription. The fact is that A Christmas Messe is found in a unique text bound in a commonplace book now in the Folger Shakespeare Library. It is the same collection which includes (in addition to the two other plays in this edition) Periander, a 1607 Oxford play. In the entire commonplace book there are no certain Cambridge plays, despite Bentley's statement to the contrary.2The point is that if we are to judge A Christmas Messe by its neighbors, there is no reason to assign it to Cambridge. Furthermore, there is some internal evidence suggesting its origin. In line 106, we find the term "sconct"--a university term referring to a fine imposed by the undergraduates on one of their own number for some breach of dining hall customs. And in line 203, we find a reference to "fly," which in this case refers to a cooks' festival. Both terms are designated by the OED as exclusive to Oxford. So, when all is considered, there seems to be much better reason to assign the play to Oxford than to Cambridge. Although our date is still insufficient to eliminate all doubt, Oxford has the better claim.
Belly, in the opening lines, quiets the audience and announces that his purpose is not what they might think, that is as "prologue to some mockshow," but rather simply to "find good cheare." But despite Belly's protests, we find much in the play that suggests a "mockshow"or more precisely, a burlesque of heroic tragedy. The crux of the plot is the attempted usurpation by King Beefe of the right of King Brawne to be served up first at the traditional Christmas feast. The play is full of swaggering and bravado participated in by the two kings and their knights, Sir Pepper, Sir Vinigar, Lord Souce and Mustard. We are even treated to a token beauty, Queen Mincepy.
Brawne was the name given to the flesh of both pork and wild boar. It is probable that the latter is intended here, for in line 376 there is reference to the horn of King Brawne's father. Also, we may recall that the boar's head was a highly-prized dish at Renaissance Christmas feasts. Even twentieth-century Oxford has practiced the custom of ceremonially parading the boar's head into the dining hall to musical accompaniment prior to the holiday feasting. Efforts to uncover further contemporary references to a Christmas custom specifically requiring the roast pork or boar's flesh to precede the roast beef in Christmas dining etiquette have been unsuccessful. Although, it might be worth noting that pork was in general much favored over beef throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance--quite likely because the cooking methods produced extraordinarily tough and tasteless beef. There is, to be sure, nothing in the play to indicate that the boar's head ceremony is being referred to, but perhaps the audience would have naturally understood this. In the final analysis, we are left with only scanty clues on which to ponder the custom that this entire plot was built upon.
Both kings have their supporters who stand to gain from their respective Leader's victory. King Beefe has by his side Sir Pepper and Sir Vinigar, as well as Queene Mincepy; King Brawne is supported by his son, Lord Souce, and Mustard. These are the more appropriate when we consider the great importance medieval and Renaissance cooking placed upon spices and sauces. Spices were used so heavily that they invariably camouflaged the principal ingredient of any dish, and there was no virtue in simple dishes. It is undoubtedly superfluous to point out that the two kings are accompanied by condiments suited to them. It is also appropriate that Queene Mincepy be at King Beefe's side--beef being one essential ingredient to true mince pie. Her presence in the play does little more than provide for some high-blown rhetoric in praise of her beauty--certainly a spoof on the legendary, if innocuous, royal beauties such as we might expect to find in Tamburlaine or the spectacles of Kyd.
Aside from the obvious influences of these earlier Elizabethan tragedies, we can find, not surprisingly, reminiscences of classical Roman comedy. The two kings often seem thinly-disguised miles gloriosi, and their followers seem to waver between the roles of faithful servant and parasite (although they too have their chances to play the braggarts). It is also not completely far-fetched to see hints of the courtesan in Queene Mincepy. But much more than in the characterization, the Roman influence is reflected in the farcical elements.
Perhaps the most curious characters are those caught between Bread, Salt, Trencher, Tablecloth, and Cushion. Much like helpless peasants in a dynastic quarrel, they are merely inconvenienced by the whole thing, and the outcome matters little to them. Like the Chorus of a classical tragedy, they appear on stage at the outset, emerge for occasional commentaries, then return to their appointed places. They do not converse with the principal characters, who seem quite unaware of their presence. In the vein of Kydian tragedy, however, they do supply something of an underplot paralleling the quarrel of the kingsTablecloth and Trencher vie for superiority, as do Salt and Bread. Cushion, much like the Cooke, acts as a mediator. We see here a variation on the Renaissance concept of order in the universe and the Great Chain of Being. Disruption at the top of society (the war between the two kings) results in disorder throughout the entire society (right down to Salt and Bread, Tablecloth and Trencher). Of course, nothing comes of this paralleling sub-plot, but even that parallels the main plot.
The characters most concerned about the fight between the two kings are, not unexpectedly, Belly and the Cooke. Belly is the typical Renaissance glutton; he cares not for custom or tradition, but only for his gratification. He is unhappy at the delay in dinner and is indignant when the audience refuses to take his plight seriously: "why doe yee looke after mee / I did not come for you to laugh at mee" (11. 24-25). These lines may supply the only clue to costuming in the play. They anticipate laughter from the audience and suggest the character of Belly was to be costumed grotesquely. He was probably made to appear quite immense, assuming that the play was ever staged. He complains that his once proud enormity has shriveled from hunger: "I that was a tonne / In compasse, now am lesse then any ferkin? / See but how much there watnes to fill this jerkin / Oh how my gutts within my bulke doe rumble" (11. 476-79).
It is the Cooke who takes the only real action in the play. He is "this greasy gull," reminding us of how dirty and wearisome the business of the Renaissance cook was. It is instructive to understand the prevailing attitude toward cooks during the period to fully appreciate the element of mock-heroic in A Christmas Messe. While some cooks attained, through their special talents, a degree of respectability in their masters' households, for the most part the office of the cook was low on the social scale. The job was messy and required hours of what often amounted to heavy labor. If at times the cook's creations were extraordinary works of art, more often they were the results of endless hours of mashing, grinding, chopping, beating, and overcooking. It indeed seems unlikely that we would today mistake a seventeenth-century kitchen for the scene of food preparation. The ill-tempered cook was proverbial, but considering his unpleasant task, we may easily understand how he got that way. The cook rarely made an appearance in the dining hall--doubtless because the sight of a sweaty, greasy and otherwise filthy cook could hardly have encouraged any appetite in the diners. But his prospects as a comic character in drama are obvious. It is interesing to note that a minor stock character in Roman comedy was the cook (cocus), who was used primarily to create laughter.4 The cook's image in literature had not significantly changed in 2,000 years. So when this traditionally low comic character plays the arbitrator, furiously wielding his butcher knife as a staff of office, and returns order to the chaotic holiday feast, it is clear that we are dealing with a fanciful mock-heroic farce. He is the final ironic twist in the play--a sort of deus ex machina, not descending from the heavens to dispense justice, but emerging from the fiery hell of his kitchen to rid this play of its nonsense.
1See Fredson Bowers, "Thomas Randolph's 'Salting.'" Modern Philology, 39 (1942), 275-80.
2See specifically Bentley, V, 1342. Here Bentley is describing Gigantomachia as "perhaps a Cambridge product, as other items in the commonplace book are." Indeed, except for Jonson's "Christmas His Masque," which can claim no academic origins, and Sansbury's Periander, which can, from other sources, be ascribed to St. John's, Oxford, no other plays in the commonplace book have previously been examined thoroughly enough to establish their specific university origins.
3William E. Mead, The English Medieval Feast (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1931), p. 86.
4George E. Duckworth, The Nature of Roman Comedy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), p. 262.