Claudia McNeilly
Professor M. Sergi
March 24, 2014
ENG331H1S
The Spectacle of Breakfast in Chester to 1572
The production of sixteenth century Chester plays are documented to have been preformed on the town’s streets. This fact is made true by the chronicling of players who engaged in the ritual of taking refreshments such as bread and beer as they pushed carriages through the streets or lanes. Indeed the detailing of food and drink consumed by the players in today’s records is vast and meticulous, allowing for a greater understanding of the whole fabric responsible for the composition of Chester plays. Of particular importance in this documentation, however, is the ritual of breakfast, which was served to players during production days. The documentation of breakfast is lavish and detailed not only during days of performance, but during other events such as holidays as well. Upon consultation of records pertaining to the serving of breakfast in Chester, its appearance as a community party becomes a recurring event. It is through the chronicling of breakfast, therefore, that understanding of the player’s lives takes fruition. In this report, I will use the player’s breakfasts to display how these meals serve to prompt understanding of the operations undergone during the production of Chester plays. Through this I will display how the notation of breakfast has yielded the knowledge that Chester plays were dramatic performance as much as they were a display of celebration in which food acted as the leading player.
The marriage of alcohol and play production is made clear through REED records as the chronicling of beer and wine specifically yields flourishing search results. While the hours in which this populous quantity of alcohol was consumed by players is often undocumented in the records, the appearance of ‘drinke for ther breakfast before they play & after they had done’ (REED 107) does make an appearance. This clarification serves to dispel notions of quaintness associated with the meal and, in this way, the image of breakfast as jubilee begins to come to fruition.
The tradition of breakfast as cause for celebration presents itself throughout sixteenth century Chesterian society. This trend is evident in the town’s seasonal breakfast before divine service on Christmas Day. The tradition, which became infamous for causing a day-long disorder, prompted authorities to instruct hosts to hold such breakfasts on a different day as “dysorderied persons haue vsed them selues Rayther all the daye after idellie in vyse & wantonnes then yeuen them Selues holy to contemplacion & prayre” (REED 99). In this way, a portrait of breakfast largely different from the cold cereal affair one might think of today emerges out of sixteenth century Chesterian culture, bringing with it an image of raucous celebratory nature.
As much as the chronicling of breakfast service allows for understanding of the festivity of plays, however, it also lends equal weight to further factual evidence as well. Knowledge about the technicalities of various plays is simultaneously extracted from these documents. For example, we know that plays were performed on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday as the information presents itself through the referencing of several Banns, which serve to inform about a play in anticipation of its production (Sergi 1). Yet this fact is only confirmed by an “item in the Smiths’ account for their performance on the second day of the ‘Purification’ in 1568: ‘for bacon on tewsday morning for the players brekfast x d.’” (REED xli) The link between breakfast extravagance and its appearance in the history of Chester, therefore, acts as a point of reference which testifies to the feasibility of other claims. In this way, the meal’s tendency to lead to an array of expenses which have been documented in today’s records, the player’s breakfasts act as authentication to recovered facts.
The inscription of food and drink not only leads to an acute awareness of when the performance of plays occurred in Chester, but also acts as evidence of where they took place as well. This knowledge is obtained by players whose task it was to pushed carriages to and from the performance venues as they were in the habit of taking refreshments as they went along. Although this habit is not explicitly specified as occurring during the morning breakfast hour, the practice allows the conclusion that plays were performed on Abbey Gate, Northgate, and Bridge streets as “the dean and chapter provided beer for the players at Abbey Gate, and the Smiths had bread in Northgate Street and drink in Watergate Street in 1554, and beer in Bridge Street in 1572.” (REED xli) This information, when paired with the knowledge that alcohol was not discriminated against in the morning, allows for the creation of an image which serves to further propel Chesterian play production into one of jovial conviviality as players were required to transport equipment throughout all hours of the day. This portrait then serves as further testimonial to the ostentatious nature of play production, including in its envelope the hour of breakfast itself.
The presence of food in Chesterian play production was so prominent, in fact, that it became embedded in the on-stage portions of the performance as well as its backstage counterparts. This is evident in the Play of the Shepherds as the play’s shepherds engage in an extensively luxurious feast which does not make effort to engage or relate to the ongoing plot. Reasoning for this seemingly unrelated presence of food, it appears, is in part due to the ongoing party which unraveled from the serving of morning breakfast. It appears the players wanted to feast and therefore, included lavish food in performances in order to confirm its importance. The notion of inviting unrelated food to become a part of the play’s plot so as to encourage indulgence further reveals the blithesome nature of the plays.
It is evident that the breakfast meal served as both a celebration and as an event worthy of documentation. It is further apparent that this attestation acts to fill the blanks of remaining previously unknown elements included in the production of Chester plays. Furthermore, each play acts as an opportunity for a fete as much as an instance in which a story is presented to the public in a theatrical setting. It is with this knowledge that the players can be seen to engage in the production of plays for the amusement and fun the productions provided. It is with this that one begins to comprehend the largely different nature of drama in sixteenth century Chester. Therefore, until the last legal production of Chester plays in 1572, the plays acted as moveable feasts, where each morning’s feast now serves as an itinerary to the detailing of the festivities and schedules of each production day.
Works Cited
Clopper, Lawrence M. Records of Early English Drama. Chester ed. Toronto: University of Toronto, 1979. Print.
"Play of the Shepherds." The Broadview Anthology of Medieval Drama. Fitzgerald, Christina Marie., and John T. Sebastian e.d. Peterborough: Broadview, 2013. 231-44. Print.
Sergi, Matthew. "English Drama to 1603: Banns and Advertisements." University of Toronto, 2014. Print.
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