Singing simpkin and other bawdy jigs: musical comedy on the Shakespearean stage: scripts, music & context

A book review of Singing simpkin and other bawdy jigs: musical
comedy on the Shakespearean stage: scripts, music and context,
by Roger Clegg and Lucie Skeaping, with an appendix of dance
instructions by Anne Daye, Exeter, University of Exeter Press,
2014, 340 pp. ISBN: 9780859898782.

The collection is divided into three parts, which utilize the language of performance: 'Returns' , 'Paradoxes' and 'Interpreters' . Part I contains three articles which engage with ideas of transition and transience from three different cultural perspectives: Germany (Chapter 1), England (Chapter 2) and Greece (Chapter 3), and through different performance articulations: film, activism and the everyday. Part II includes four articles, which focus on theatre practice and its political interventions through an analysis of German political theatre (Chapter 4), the work of Manchester-based Quarantine (Chapter 5), the concept of national theatres (Chapter 6) and performances of in/migration in Greece (Chapter 7). These are all excellent contributions towards a rethinking of the political in performance firmly located in the geographical -and sometimes porous, other times impenetrable -boundaries of Europe.
Part III includes four equally thought-provoking chapters: on contemporary British theatre in the context of the 2011 riots and its capacity to challenge current socio-economic equality (Chapter 8); an approximation of the idea of Europe and its foundational concept of democracy through the work of German company Rimini Protokoll (Chapter 9); and reframing the figure of the migrant trough performance (Chapter 10). The concluding chapter makes a strong argument against pre-conceived identities and signals the instability of the nation as a concept, emphasising processes of transition, exchange and dislocation as a way of framing and continuously reframing Europe.
The book's focus on a variety of locations and cultural practices points to the necessary fluidity of the approach. Similarly, the contributors writing from different corners of the continent, some inhabiting nations other than those in which they were born and some writing in a language that is not their first, mirror the collection's key propositions about the incapability of settling on a fixed idea of Europe and the need to understand it as something that is constantly in transition. Clegg and Skeaping's monograph is the first dedicated study of the early modern jig in nearly a century, following from C. R. Baskervill (1929) and Johannes Bolte's German treatise on the English sung comedy on the Continent (1893). This is not only a thoroughly researched study with an informed edition of jigs created between the 1590s and the 1660s; Clegg and Skeaping are practitioners with a rich experience in staging jigs, and that perspective has positive bearing on the book. The volume comprises an authoritative introduction (' A history of the dramatic jig') with portraits of the prominent jig-makers (Tarlton, Kemp); meticulously annotated texts and possible tunes of nine jigs; an essay on 'Staging the jigs' with a view to the text, music and dance; and a practical appendix of 'Dance instruction' contributed by Anne Daye. The book is more than a sum of its parts: it is a key contribution to the understanding of the diversity of early modern English theatre practice not only in London but also elsewhere in Britain and on the Continent, complementing existing research on the topic. Clegg and Skeaping trace continental variants of the extant jigs and provide a much-needed update on Bolte's research. They also contextualise the English musical comedy in relation to French farces (soties) and the Italian commedia dell'arte. While comedic similarities between the jig and the Italian comedy are pointed out, a striking omission is the madrigal comedy -a particularly relevant genre given the rivalry of the English and Italian comedians in the regions of central and north-western Europe throughout the era. The international context could be a productive perspective even beyond the extant textual variants: Bolte posits that 'Dialogue songs, in particular conversations between lovers, had, of course, long been known in Germany' (51) as well as in other European countries. Combined with the popularity of the Boccaccian erotic tale, a transnational perspective of the genre could be elaborated even further. Another genre significantly bears on the jig: the popular tradition of dialogues of Solomon and his fool Marcolf -one of the forebears of the early modern clown. Clegg and Skeaping cite Marsh on fashionable European musical elements that 'reached the streets of London via instrumental music played at court'; I would argue that there were other transmission routes than English vertical social mobility. Similarly, early modern performance practice in music could be enriched by research on English players (Instrumentist) in Germany, e.g. by Arne Spohr ('How chances it they travel? ': Englische Musiker in Dänemark und Norddeutschland 1579-1630, Wiesbaden, 2009), a relevant point for the early modern labour division among the English actors and the musicians.

Lourdes Orozco
The jig -in any of its forms, be it song, dance or sung dramatic dialogue -was not only an afterpiece of the main title of the day. Its social and artistic interactions were more complex, as Clegg and Skeaping evidence in detail. I would personally be sceptical about the significance of the distinction and emulation between high culture of the 'serious plays' and the popular culture of the jig; that smacks of nineteenth-century sociology and ethnography. Roger Chartier (in A History of Reading in the West, 1999) argues for a qualified understanding of popular culture as non-elite, as does Scott C. Shershow in Puppets and ' Popular' Culture (1995). In other words, the bawdy jig doesn't need apologising for. Although the Lord Chamberlain's/ King's Men are believed to have been prejudicial against the jig, their playwrights clearly took no objections at the subject matter: one of the most revealing connections that Clegg and Skeaping facilitate is the shared ground between the jig and Shakespeare's plays. Will Kemp's jig Singing Simpkin (c1595) treats the same material as Falstaff 's basket episode in The Merry Wives of Windsor (1597) -and Kemp played both Falstaff and the tricked would-be adulterer clown Simpkin. The bed trick of Francis' New Jig (earliest MS dated 1600-1603) is identical to that in All's Well that Ends Well (c1604-1607), including the token of the ring (an earlier version of the jig of 1595 provides an interesting context for Portia's ring token of The Merchant of Venice); there is also similarity between the clownish constable in Fools Fortune (1621) and Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing (1598). Of course, this is not to argue that one served as a source for the other; that would be a very limited understanding of the creative process. Fools Fortune and The Libel of Michael Steel were shaming, libellous jigs made to mock members of the community -perhaps early versions of what M. A. Katritzky discusses as the Skimmington or charivari (in Matthews-Greco's Cuckoldry, Impotence and Adultery in Europe, Ashgate, 2014, 59-82). While these two jigs' provenance was in particular events, I believe it is erroneous to see them as their sources; the plots of these two jigs are universal comedic fare. While these shaming jigs apparently have no identified foreign variants, other types of dramatic creation need to be taken into account. So The Jig of St Denys' Ghost, though it lacks a direct foreign equivalent, explores the same theatergrams (to use G. L. Clubbs' notion) or structural patterns as Japanese farce kyogen, in particular the farce called Shimizu (Spring Water), which also features a makeshift ghost, a clown eventually discovered and beaten out by his master.
Such comparative drama perspectives are perhaps the next step to undertake in the research on the early modern jig. Clegg and Skeaping's brilliant book provides inspiration and incentive for such work. Underpinned by the argument that the entirety of Grotowski's oeuvre is 'unified by a single underlying propulsion -the work on the self with and through the other' (1), Dominika Laster's volume examines four key aspects of Grotowski's work: embodied memory (Chapter 1); vigilance and witnessing (Chapter 2); verticality (Chapter 3); and processes of transmission (Chapter 4). As the content of each chapter suggests, the material is not organised chronologically but thematically and spans the key phases of Grotowski's work, including the Theatre of Productions, Paratheatre, Objective Drama and Art as Vehicle.

Pavel Drábek
The book benefits by Laster's close encounter with the work itself: her direct access to Polish texts and her sensitive translation thereof in English, as well as her access to Grotowski's key collaborators. Laster gives ample space to these voices through extended use of quotations taken from conversations, interviews and talks. As a result and despite being single-authored, the book is characterised by a refreshing polyphony that makes the reader aware of the many people and relationships that make up 'Grotowski' and his work. Similarly, the rare photos that accompany the text offer snapshots of personal moments of Grotowski and his collaborators and further exemplify the importance of somatic practice in Grotowski's endeavour.
The first chapter explores the notion of embodied memory and the practical processes that Grotowski developed in order to enable first the performers of the Laboratory Theatre and then the participants of workshops to connect with real or imagined memories as a way towards accessing a form of 'somatically encoded knowledge' (34). This is understood as an entry point into one's 'ethnic and cultural inheritance' and as a way to 'unearth deep potentialities and expand the receptivity of the doer' (42). In this manner, a mode of practice focusing on body memory is viewed as an 'instrument of rediscovery of essence' (49).
The second chapter deals with the notion of vigilance and witnessing and makes extensive references to key paratheatrical events. Laster draws connections between the modes of witnessing and paying attention practised in these events and Eastern European traditions of vigil that mark key moments in the life cycle of an individual or a community. Laser then traces this notion backwards and into the Theatre of Productions phase. Here, the notion of bearing witness is understood in two ways. One is the process of the spectator who becomes a witness to the performer's 'true' or 'total act' , i.e. 'a stripping away of the layers of social masks' (79). The other is the process of the performer, who during the performance is 'bearing witness […] to that which has been realised […] in the rehearsal process' (81).
The third chapter deals with the potential of 'performative practices' to serve 'as instruments of verticality' (94). Laser draws attention to Grotowski's employment of an image of a 'horizontal plane' that is characterised by the 'predominance of the vital element' (95) and is used to describe