Chapter Two: Character Interaction with the Audience
In the previous chapter, effort was made to present some of the most common and shared features of the so-called Vice in some late morality plays and early modern English interludes, although it is generally agreed that it is very difficult to offer a definition of such a complex and diverse character. We come to wonder whether the term “Vice” is in fact a convenient flag invented by modern criticism rather than a term used consistently or precisely by the playwrights themselves. Spivack rightfully argues that “in the moralities proper he [the Vice] invariably functions in homiletic association with several subsidiary vices, who follow him through the breach he makes in the moral defences of humanity.” (141) However, Spivack continues to make an association between the Vice of the moralities with later mischief-makers of less moral, or secular, interludes, believing that this character is transferred to other plays which do not fall into the “category of allegorical convention”. He later seals the argument in his paper, ‘The Vice as a Stage Metaphor’, stating that he is going to discuss only “the Vice of the moralities” (141)
This approach to the character may not necessarily be the most productive or revealing. Indeed, in the few cases in which the term ‘Vice’ was used by early Tudor writers, it is still not clear what the term really meant. The traditional approach to the Vice (or the main comic figure of a play) views this figure as the central mischief-maker and manipulator of the plot, who very often emerges from among the audience and frequently addresses them for various purposes, among which, and perhaps most important of all, is to co-opt spectators, severally or collectively, into sharing his viewpoint, sense of mischief, and tricks. This chapter will endeavour to discuss the nature, methods, purposes and effects of such interactions between character/actor and the audience. However, the term ‘interaction’ should not be taken lightly, as it may refer to several layers of audience involvement in the plot. The characters’ interaction with the audience may be limited to simple asides or speeches [soliloquys is a later term that carries distinct implications for who is being spoken to and why. It’s not clear that those understandings apply to the early sixteenth century drama – or even the later…] addressed to the present crowd without expecting the spectators to show any specific reaction. This function of the audience mainly complies with the original definition of ‘audience’ taken from the Latin audire ‘to hear’ which assigns them the role of mere listeners. However, the audience’s involvement may be much more substantial than just being addressed to or being predominantly passive. In a 1960 production of Faust, for example, “the audience were placed as guests at Faust’s table”. (Freshwater, 67) [it is better to use Tudor examples. Modern directors can set productions anywhere – it doesn’t necessarily tell us anything about Tudor practice.] Sullivan also believes that "going to the theatre demands that not only actors but also playgoers behave (or "perform") in certain ways." (xi) This highlights the importance of the audience and the role they play in the whole message conveyed by the stage [do plays have simple ‘messages’ – and is it ‘the stage’ that conveys them? Avoid terms like this, I think.]. Therefore, when discussing interaction with the audience, it is essential to remain scpetical and to ask ourselves several questions, including the following:
Who is interacting with the audience? Is the audience expected to make any responses to the address? And if so, what level of response is expected? What effect will the address and the probable response have on the play? As Styan puts it, “Did the signals of the script or the actor turn the mood in the auditorium towards a position romantic or realistic, comfortable or
1Even the term ‘theatre’ does not help us very much in this regard as it translates to ‘a place for seeing’. [source?] Both terms indicate a passive engagement of the spectators in the main action of the performance.
disturbing? … Was the final impact emotive and persuasive, or intellectual and reflective?"
Accurate speculation about the nature and purposes of this interaction between actors and audience is very difficult as “audience susceptibilities … change from age to age” and that “the nature of drama is such that it is recreated for the age that produces and witnesses it” (Scott, xii), but effort will be made to visualise the conditions of performance and the possible effects character-audience interaction may have produced in the plays discussed.
At the same time, an important point must not be forgotten. While we may be able to use the term 'the audience' to refer collectively to the people who watch a play, it is essential to keep in mind that the audience may be comprised of diverse individuals who gather together in order to watch a play, or to whom the play is presented on a specific occasion. It is also important to remember that each individual within this group may choose to adopt a range of viewing positions and therefore a general term such as 'audience response' may not be definitive (McGavin and Walker). We may even need to distinguish the probable responses to direct addresses coming from various groups within the audience based on their gender, age, social class and education. However, for the purpose of this chapter, a generic term 'audience response' will be used to refer to the most common and probable reaction expected of the audience of a particular play.
In many Tudor interludes, we witness this central comic figure trying to establish an informal pact with the audience, at times sharing intended mischiefs with them and enticing them to share his perspective and sense of delight in mischief-making. This notion of an explicit, informal pact between the comic actor/character and audience, which promises the latter a share in mischievous entertainment at someone else’s expense, if they will, for a while, suspend their normal moral values and judgements, seemingly reflects a long-standing dramatic practice.
The Interlude of Youth (1513) seeks to capture the attention of the audience on moral effect, highlighting the fact that human subjects are very susceptible to temptation. Youth, an aristrocrat, becomes socially less responsible and takes advantage of the liberty which has been bestowed on him. The Interlude of Youth highlights the moral consequences of leading an aristocratic life (Bernard, 1939). The in-depth character analysis of Youth shows a stereotypical character, who is careless but strong. Throughout the interlude, Youth chooses vice over virtue. Youth’s association with Riot, Pride and Lechery, also leads him into a life of vice. Charity tries to steer Youth towards a more moral and virtuous path. It is only in the end that Youth sees the value of virtue.
Another imperative theme for the attention of the audience was masculinity where it has been delineated that sinfulness is present inside the male body of Youth who has been a protagonist. The moral literature of Medieval times appears to be focussed on the theme of young men’s inclination to vice, such as, drunkenness, anger and lust. These are not the only vices that morality plays highlight, as also noted by Alexandra Shepherd (2003): “The main vices for which young men were excoriated related to intemperance and pride.”
The character of Riot encouraged Youth to indulge in women and wine (Bernard, 1939). The acts of Riot also threatened Charity while he makes a great quantity of references for the devil when he was attempting to put aside Youth. Nevertheless, Fiona Dunlop (2007) remarks, “Youth manages to transcend his natural sinful nature in an unusual and admirable way.” This suggests that Youth was able to master his nature and become a more responsible person. In The Interlude of the Youth, which complies with almost every principle of the early morality plays, Courage interacts with the audience and keeps them involved in the action of the play: “But husht sirs, I say, no mo words, but mum.” (L275) and he later tells them what he intends to do:
Now may you see how Courage can work,And how he can encourage both to good and bad. (L 632-33)
This is an attempt by Courage to interact with the audience, which is one of the techniques of early Morality plays. This interaction also shows that Youth’s character is malleable; which means that he can be encouraged to be good as well as incited to be sinful. This also suggests that Vice characters were stronger in their ability to manipulate Mankind characters.
A later Morality play, Ralph Roister Doister (c. 1553) is a light comedy, which has Vice-like characters of comical nature which employ the technique of interaction with the audience. There are three main characters in the play; among them are Ralph Roister Doister, who has been portrayed as an egotist (Dudok, 1916), and Mathew Merygreek, who is presented as the witty fair weather friend. In Ralph Roister Doister (1553), which is a secular interlude, it is Merygreek who keeps the audience engaged in the action by informing them of the plans he has. Early on in the first Act, when Ralph enters the scene for the first time, Merygreek, who is an anglicised version of the parasite of Roman comedy, reminds the audience of what he had previously said about him “I tolde you I, we should wowe another wife.” (L 96) followed by “He is in by the weke [explain?], we shall haue sport anon” (L 98). This is based on this mutual understanding of Roister’s weak points that Merygreek lays the foundation of the later comic scenes in which Roister is ridiculed.
Jack Juggler (1562) is a later secular comedy in which Jack Juggler acts as the mischief-maker. He opens his action via a lengthy speech where he makes an announcement about his impulsion to attempt a trick on Jenkin Careway who is the reprobate servant of the character Master Boungrace. He will create a sort of existential confusion for Jenkin in terms of his own identity by presuming him to be someone else. Jack Juggler, who is the manipulator and the plotter in the play promises the audience that “You shall see as mad a pastime this night/As you saw this seven yers – and as propre a toye” (L 103-105), and he tells them how he has thought of everything and how he intends to implement his scheme,
I have it devised and compacced hou
And what ways I woll tell and shew to you. (L 110-12)
Jack Juggler also occasionally addresses some members in the audience and tells them what his next step will be. Therefore, after he has confused Careaway by pretending to be him, he leaves him on the stage wondering what has happened, and tells the public,
Whyle he museth and judgeth hymselfe apon,
I woll stele awaye for a whyle and let hym aloon. (L 600-01)
While he does not ask the audience directly to be his accomplices in his scheme, the fact that he first promises them to have some ‘sport’ and then explains his plan in detail means that he expects the viewers to collaborate in the main action of the play and by keeping Jack Juggler’s real identity a secret, help to move the play forward.
Hence, Jack Juggler reminds the crowd of the merriment they had by following his advice and states that they would have lost all that enjoyment had they not cooperated with him:
Hou saye you maisters, I pray you tell,
Have not I recquitted my marchent well?
Have not I handelyd hym after a good sort?
Had it not byne pytie to have lost this sporte?
Anone his maister on his behalphe
You shall see how he woll handle the calphe;
Yf he throughlye angered bee,
He wol make hym smart, so mot I thee!
I wold not for the price of a new payre of shone
That any parte of this had byne undune; (L 758-767)
In Gammer Gurton’s Needle (1575), it is Diccon who acts as the main manipulator and is the Vice character. Diccon manipulates the events and the characters and stage manages the play in the tradition of the morality play Vice who is a schemer and a planner. A claim has been made by Diccon that he is informed by the devil that all of his answers of queries would be determined between Chat, cat and rat. Here, Chat is introduced as the old neighbour from across the road. Now, it has been claimed by Diccon that he has witnessed the stealing of the needle by Chat. On the contrary, he ignites Dame Chat against Gammer in terms of the theft of the cock (Plumstead 1963). This has infuriated Dame Chat as all of the accusations are grounded on false and baseless claims. These claims and accusations lead the ladies to fight and argue with each other.
In the second act, when Diccon sets out his scheme for diverting Gammer Gurton’s attention towards Dame Chat and Doctor Rat, he addresses the audience directly, asking them,
Softe let me alone I will take the charge
This matter further to enlarge
Within a tyme shorte,
If ye will marke my toyes and note
I will geue ye leaue to cut my throte
If I make not good sporte, (L 407-12)
After he talks to Dame Chat and kindles the fire of rage in her by telling her that Gammer Gurton thinks she has stolen her rooster, he once again faces the audience and speaks to them directly:
Ye see masters ye one end tapt of this my short devise
Now must we broche tother to[o] before the smoke arise
And by the time they have awhile run, I trust ye need not crave it,
But loke what lieth in both their harts ye ar like sure to have it .(L 472-75)
And later, he again addresses the audience and asks them to “Be still a while and say nothing, make here a litle romth.” (L 506). Later, Diccon sets the background for another piece of mischief and misleads Doctor Rat into Dame Chat’s house. At this point, he once again reminds the audience of the agreement they have had with each other to have some mirth, and asks them to sit back and watch how Doctor Rat will get into trouble as a result of his clever scheme:
Now sirs do you no more, but kepe my counsaile iuste,
And Doctor Rat shall thus catch some good, I trust;
But Mother Chat my gossop, talke first withall I must: (L 812-14)
“Diccon the Bedlam beggar … comments on the ruckus he causes before and after every scene, in and out of character” (Styan, 158) This provides him with an opportunity to instil a feeling of affinity in the viewers and perhaps a feeling of discomfort they may have towards the consequences of his schemes, including the row between Gammer Gurton and Dame Chat and Doctor Rat’s broken head. Therefore, while the viewers may enjoy the pleasant feeling of being an insider, the very same method may provoke discomfort in them through the compromises such complicity may entail. Diccon, however, seems to be trying to remove the moral burden off his shoulders and share it with spectators.
Among the the early Tudorinterludes, there are some which dramatize debates between various characters, whether that be the central theme of the play as in The Four P. P. or just a part of the plot as in Fulgens and Lucres. In some cases, like Fulgens and Lucres, these outside debates can also reflect the internal debates which individual audience members may entertain about moral values and vices. What remains the same is that in these debates the appeal to audience approval and agreement is still more obvious and fundamental to the nature of the drama. Heywood presents us with an excellent example, in The Play of Love
2He had already told the audience what he intended to do and by asking them to ‘say nothing’, he is in fact making a pact with the audience to contribute to the effectiveness of his plans.
(1533), where No Lover Nor Loved - who is actually called the Vice in the printed text - realises such urgency well, and once he has confided in the audience with his personal tale of being mocked by a woman, he then declares
And syns my parte nowe doth thus well appere
Be ye my parteners now all of good chere –
But silence, every man upon a payne,
For mayster woodcock is nowe come agayne. (L 687-90)
By calling the viewers his “parteners” he is clearly seeking to co-opt them as allies in his competition with the other characters, and he asks them to keep their silence since another character, Lover Loved (whom he mockingly and repeatedly calls “mayster woodcock”, for being a lover), is entering, and he is planning to implement his scheme to prove that Lover Loved is not as happy as him.
In addition to playing the role of an accomplice in the Vice’s plans, the audience are at times victims of his ridicule as this character turns to the audience to tease them. He sometimes cracks a joke at them, or comments on their gender, their status, clothes or anything he can find in them that can be manipulated for a witty or funny remark:
A, there commyth one--I here hym knoke.
He knokythe as he were wood.
One of you go loke who it is. (L 2.73-75)
‘A’ in Fulgens and Lucres seems to have lost a message he was supposed to deliver and asks
the audience if they have taken it:
Godis mercy, I had it ryght now!
Syrs, is there none there among you
That toke up suche a wrytyng?
I pray you, syrs, let me have it agayne! (2. L 325-28)
Using a similar joke, in Johan Johan, Johan (the husband) expresses his unwillingness to leave his coat down with the audience and shows his concern that it may be stolen:
Abyde a whyle, let me put of my gown!
But yet I am afrayde to lay it down,
For I fere it shal be sone stolen. (L 242-44)
The same audience whom he was confiding in a short while ago are now compared to thieves.
Sometimes the presence of the audience in the world of the play is so strongly established that the comic figure even gives some members of the audience orders, as in the example of Fulgens and Lucres where A asks for someone to open the door:
A, there commyth one--I here hym knoke.
He knokythe as he were wood.
One of you go loke who it is. (L 2.73-75)
This strategy enables the comic character to induce the audience that they are not merely passive viewers in the action of the play but that they are also involved in the plot in one way or another. Interaction with the audience may also enhance the message to be transferred to the audience, as they may be more receptive once the ice is broken. Audience response is an essential factor in the success and appreciation of any artistic work. As Styan states, “we go to a play to share in a partnership without which the players cannot work … in art both the artist and the spectator actively cooperate, and the value of the work is dependent on this reciprocity” (224) In dramatic works, this ‘reciprocity’ or ‘partnership’ is not limited to the passive appreciation of the work by the audience or forming various interpretations of it; A performed play is different from a printed version in that it is the audience response which mainly reveals the value of the dramatic work. Thus, it is a constant undertaking for actors/characters to maintain this interaction between stage and the audience, and the comic figure is the master of the technique.
The central comic figure sometimes targets a certain part or a group of audience. This occasionally occurs when the main comic figure of the play intends to play a joke on women or people of a specific social status present among the audience. In Fulgens and Lucres (1496), A does this in an interesting manner. Near the end of the first part, as A and B are discussing the subject of Lucres’ courtship, A makes reference to the seated spectators who will be dining later in the afternoon:
An other thing must be considred with all:
These folke that sitt here in the halle
May not attende theretoo
Whe may not with oure long play
Lett them fro theyre dyner all day – (L 1412-16)
In the early lines of the second part of the play, however, A talks to the audience again, and this time he chooses to refer to another group of people among them:
It is the mynde and intent
Of me and my company to content
The leste that stondyth here,
And so I trust ye wyll it alowe. (L 2.40-43)
In the first case the reference is to the higher status spectators who are seated and awaiting their meal; in the second it is to the lower status spectators and servants who are forced to watch standing up. In neither case, however, is the allusion particularly flattering. In the first, the suggestion is that their attention span is limited by their desire for food; in the latter the implication is that the ‘least’ or lowest in status of such spectators is the hardest to please (presumably because he or she could not follow complex arguments, or abstruse references). It is A again who singles out the women among the audience to ask them a very important question. On the surface, it is a simple question to entertain the audience, but while it may serve as a comment on B’s former comment – a function which will be discussed further in this chapter – it may also allude to the main question and the key problem of the play; is it really suitable for a woman of the time to choose her husband the way Lucres does?
How say ye, gode women? Is it your gyse
To chose all your husbondis that wyse?
By my trought, than I marvaile! (L 2.848-50)
By flattering women and calling them ‘gode women’, A is seeking confirmation from them, while he refers to Lucres’ controversial decision and her unconventional manner of choosing her husband.
Then, it is B’s turn to tease a group of viewers and he similarly addresses the married men among the audience and warns them that they have no escape from shrewish women:
I warne you weddyd men everichone
That other remede have ye none
So moche for your ease, (L 2.860-62)
Considering that the comic stereotype of the shrewish, nagging women was a commonly used one in a number of medieval and early modern plays, it is understandable that the reference will remind the men in audience that perhaps they share something with each other and most importantly with B. This may in turn create a bond between that group of spectators and the actor.
The Pardoner, the Pothecary and the Palmer are the mischief-making characters in the play of The Four P.P. The Pardoner and the Palmer are presented as the churchmen and the Pothecary is a medieval pharmacist. These characters are close to the audience and hence easily capture their attention and provoke responses. The remaining character is the Pedlar. They take part in a competition to prove themselves the best among all the others. They decide to tell an elaborative lie and the best liar will assume authority over the others The literary reputation of Pardoners was heavily unsavoury as the well-known example of Chaucer’s “Pardoner’s Tale” suggests. In The Four PP, a claim is made by the Pardoner that he has visited Hell in search of the soul of a female friend. Sure enough, the lady is there, hence the Pardoner inquires about herrelease. Lucifer seems to be highly delighted for letting her go:
Now, by our honour,” said Lucifer
“No devil in Hell shall withhold her!”
Similar to modern pharmacists, Apothecaries are responsible for dispensing medicine and for advising on illness. The lie told by the Apothecary concerns a miraculous cure which he claimed to have performed on a young and beautiful lady by means of a powerful purgative. However, it is boastful, colourful and apparently and differently scatological for a great bulk of audience.
On the other hand, the Palmers were the pilgrims who travelled from one sacred place or shrine to another in order to beg alms and, in return, to pray for the souls of those who have added them. The palm was originally a badge which showed the pilgrim had visited the Holy Land. In the story of The Four P.P., the Palmer gets amazed and inspired by the false tales about women. He said that he has travelled far but he has always observed women to be gentle and mild:
Yet in all the places where I have been
Of all the women that I have seen
I never saw, nor knew, in my conscience,
Any one woman out of patience
In The Four P. P., in response to the Pardoner’s arguments, the Pedler replies:
But hys boldness has faced a lye
That may be tried evyn in thys companye.
As yf ye lyste to take thys order
Amonge the women in thys border, (L 1066-69)
This speech not only comments on the Pardoner’s moral values, but it also singles out the women among the audience. He later makes a similar comment and, again, identifies a group of women for special attention:
Hym selfe for trouth all this doth knowe
And oft hath tried some of thys rowe, (L 1081-2)
In both instances above, the mischievous Pedlar is trying to break down the opponents’ moral values by using a specific group of spectators; in these cases women. Using the same strategy, and in response to the Potycary’s words that he uses “no vertue at all” (L 1188), it is the Pedler who refers to the audience and separates some of them for the purpose of attacking the Potycary’s ideals and principles:
In whiche wordes, I dare well reporte,
Ye are well beloved of all thys sorte,
By your raylynge here openly
At pardons and relyques so leudly. (L 1197-200)
As mentioned earlier, there are two comedies by John Heywood in which a character is specifically called ‘the Vice’ in the printed text. In The Play of Love (1533), it is No Lover Nor Loved who plays the role of the main manipulator and mocker and is introduced as the Vice in the list of characters. As his name clearly indicates, he is free from any affectionate attachmentand is proud to be so. Upon entry. and when he tries to introduce himself, he turns to the audience and says that he is
No lover, by which all such standing by
As favour my parte, … (L 412-13)
Thus, he singles out a group of spectators who appear to be out of love, and at the same time he endeavours to gain their trust and support. By saying so, he assumes that he is not alone in being a ‘no lover’, and that there are other members of the audience who will agree with him in this matter. On the other hand, as The Play of Love is a débat play, No Lover Nor Loved knows well that he will need support for his argument, and he has already started adding some spectators to his circle of supporters and accomplices. He continues keeping that group’s attention and approval by referring to them once again a few lines later,
Which tolde, all ye whose fansyes styck nere me
Shall knowe it causeless in this case to feare me. [lines?]
What he is trying to establish is that those members of the audience who have similar opinions and “fansyes” do not need to fear him as he has already established a companionship with them. An interesting point to notice about these comic agents is that regardless of the biting jokes they make on the audience, their cruelty at times in their teasing of other characters, in case of a number of them, and their vicious plans to lead mankind astray. This, in turn, may also justify the light punishment some of the seemingly vicious characters receive at the end of the play for their mischief.
Mery Report in The Play of the Weather (1533) functions as a typical Vice character, mocking of others and an entertaining fellow to watch. The important point is that he is a far cry from the morality Vices and even from seemingly similar mischief-makers in other contemporary comedies although he shares some of their features. Mery Report also does not fail to address a special section of the audience on certain occasions. When he intends to introduce the Gentleman, he makes a comment on his pastime (hunting) and refers to the women in the hall saying,
A hunter he is and comyth to make you sporte,
He wolde hunte a sow or twayne out of this sorte. (L 248-49)
Targeting a group of viewers is not limited to characters in secular plays. The same techniques can be found at work in a much later, different play, The Tide Tarrieth for No Man (published 1576). The Tide, which embodies the idea of “greediness” as its central theme, shares a fairly large number of elements with the earlier morality plays. The central comic figure in this play, or the Vice, is Courage, which is a concept that ranges from contemporary sense of bravery or valour via spirit or heart, passionate will, and encouragement to being unregenerate. The Vice is, on the theological level, also an agent of the devil or the diabolic. Courage, as the character at the centre of the comedic tone of the play, exhibits some features of the earlier characters who were generally called “The Vice”. His interaction with the audience also shows similarities in technique with that of earlier comic figures. When the subject of the play turns towards marriage in The Tide Tarrieth No Man, Courage first targets the women among the audience and after declaring that many are shrewish and give their husbands blows in return to loving kisses, he addresses them directly saying,
How say you, good wives, is it not so?
I warrant you, not one that can say nay,
Whereby all men here may right well know
That all this is true which I do say.
But yet Courage tells you not all that he knows, (L652-56)
It is very improbable that his ironic address of the women, dubbing them ‘good wives’ would have been taken literally by them. While apparently addressing the ladies among the audience, Courage tries to further generalise the idea of men suffering from shrewish women and also mocks men for being cuckolded by their women folk, thereby having a mocking attitude to both men and women in the audience.
Women are, in particular, targeted by Courage again elsewhere. Later in the play, he turns to young women among the audience looking for approval of his doctrine that young virgins must marry at a very young age, but making the point in a very controversial and provocative manner:
How say you, my virgins every one,
Is it not a sin to lie alone?
When 12 years of age is gone
I dare say you think so every one. (L 872-75)
The above lines seem more controversial when seen in the context of the point being made that it is sinful to be a virgin after the age of twelve and pointedly making that point to the younger members of the audience if any. Moreover, Courage is also making a wide sweeping generalisation that everyone in the audience must agree with him, thereby making a statement on the society at the time.
It is a conventional role of the Vice, as Courage is called so, in a morality play to mislead other characters and at times audience; however, Courage may at the same time be snapping at the female members of the audience criticising those who favour the practice of marrying at a young age. In contrast to many other plays of that time, for example Like Will to Like, Courage, is punished and apprehended in the ultimate scene. And in his final joke, before being taken away to be punished, Courage has the last chance to comment on married men and their presumed misery:
Is there no man here that has a curst wife?
If he will in my stead he shall lose his life. (L 1725-26)
[This is one of the places where a new section, with a sub-heading, would help to clarify your argument and give it sense of a clearer structure…]
Oftentimes, a certain individual among the audience is picked on by the Vice to be mocked, chided, or teased. A typical situation is when this character enters the stage, usually from among the audience, passing through the people who are watching the play. Mery Report, in The Play of the Weather, asks an attendant in the hall, “Brother holde up your torche a lytell hyer” (L 98). This may cause a sense of cosy familiarity in the spectator(s). However, this type of address does not always result in a similar sense. At times, the address may create an unsettling sense of estrangement among the audience. In The Tide Tarrieth No Man, Courage talks to the audience and asks if his cousin Cutpurse is among them:
Now so is the purpose, and this is the case,
Good cousin Cutpurse, if you be in place,
I beseech you now your business to ply. (L 970-72)
‘Cousin Cutpurse’ is obviously an imaginary figure who Courage suggests is among the viewers, and this implication that one of the members of the audience could be a pickpocket is designed to create a feeling of uneasiness and discomfort among them.
Addressing the audience could also be done by the comic figure for other purposes, among which making fun of another character or commenting on what another character has just said are frequent ones. The comic agent occasionally turns to the audience, or uses an aside, to comment on another character’s words.
Johan Johan (1520) is a play full of asides spoken by Tib and Johan Johan the husband commenting on each other’s words (several examples of which were presented in the previous chapter). One such instance is when Johan Johan is sitting near the fire and chafing the wax while Tib and Sir Johan are enjoying the pie and each other’s company. As Johan constantly complains about not having a share of the pie, Tib shouts at him,
Why! were ye not served there as ye are,
Standyng by the fyre chafyng the waxe? (L 620-21)
to which Johan Johan replies in an aside,
[aside] Lo, here be many tryfyls and knakks —
By kokkis soule, they wene I am other dronke or mad! (L 622-23)
Asides are, in fact, the main strategy employed by Heywood in Johan Johan to achieve the ultimate goal of the play: entertainment. Doubtless, Johan Johan is not seeking to teach any moral or religious doctrines; nor does he appear to satirise any political or social trend, apart from the presentation of the well-known joke of cuckolded, hen-pecked men and the corrupt clergy. His main aim in this play, therefore, is to amuse and entertain the audience, although he also may be making a case against shrewish wives. Asides are effective techniques in creating private channels between the actor/character and the individual members of the audience. They make the viewers feel they are in receipt of some knowledge not shared with the others, and, at the same time, the comments add to the liveliness of the play.
In The Play of Love, in which similarly there is a competition among the characters to win the audience’s approval, commenting on the other figures’ statement seems a common technique both to appeal to the audience’s tastes and to get the upper hand in the rhetorical conflict. No Lover nor Loved occasionally uses this technique to crush the opposing side’s argument, or as a tool to ridicule them. When Loved not Loving and Lover not Loved introduce themselves to him and ask him to act as a judge between them, No Lover nor Loved appears to be uncertain how it could be possible to be a lover but your mistress loves another man, or be loved by someone, but suffer from it and consider it a daily torture. In response to Loved not Loving’s introduction, he says, “Forsoth, ye be the more sot.” (L 764) and then in reaction
3The Potycary in Heywood’s The Four P. P. is the main Vice-like character and he employs the same strategy to comment on other characters on stage. After the debate between the Pardoner and the Palmer concerning who sends people’s souls to heaven, the Potycary enters and comments on their claims, saying, “If I toke an accyon then were they blanke, / For lyke theves the knaves rob away my thankes” (L 165-66) He clearly compares the two clerics to “theves” who rob him of his credit (as the greatest dispatcher of souls to heaven).
to Loved not Loving, he turns to the audience and states, “Ye thynke them both mad, and so do I, by jys,” (L 772)
Another example of such strategy can be found in The Tide Tarrieth No Man, when upon leaving the stage, Help states that he intends to leave with Profit and Furtherance, and that they will form a trinity, Courage immediately talks to the audience and comments on Help’s words, comparing those three characters to knaves,
Sir, here was a trinity in a witness.
A man might have shaped three knaves by their likeness. (L 252-53)
In some of the plays, there is a debate among the characters, as in The Four P. P. in which the debate is about who sends more souls to heaven, or in The Play of Love where each character claims they are the happiest or most miserable among them all. These situations raised moral questions such as the kind that were raised in Morality plays which were produced for a diverse audience, in the rural and urban centres and for aristocratic and the lower classes. In these moral questions, when the characters cannot reach an agreement, the central comic figure feels the need to turn to the audience to act as judges to ask their opinion about something. In Fulgens and Lucres (1497), for instance, when Cornelius sends B to deliver a message to Lucres, B turns to the audience and asks them what they think of the message and the unusual nature of the token:
Yes hardely, this erande shall be spoken.
But how say you, syrs, by this tokene?
Is it not a quaynt thinge?
I went he hade bene a sad man,
But I se well he is a made man
In this message doynge. (L 217-22)
Hence, the audience, which consists of both men and women, are invited to give their opinion about the case in question, although B uses the occasion to make a biting comment on Cornelius's foolishness. B, who is one of the two central comic characters in Fulgens and Lucres, does not show signs of wickedness or malicious intents as do some traditional vicious characters in morality plays. He is, by contrast, a mere mischief maker who finds mirth in frequent jokes on other people. Although an earlier play than the rest of the works discussed, in Fulgens and Lucres we do not witness the conventional elements of the morality proper. Unlike moralities, the characters are portrayed as human beings with their own flaws and foibles.
On the other hand, a character like Courage in The Tide Tarrieth No Man shows obvious signs of being evil. He also tries to gain the audience’s trust, and appeal to them in order to have more influence on them. As a Vice figure, his main task is to tempt other characters and lead them astray. As always with moralities, he is a personified vice who is striving to get an upper hand over personified virtues. He sometimes resorts to the audience and seeks their confirmation of what he says, although he may be mocking them at the same time. Therefore, once he delivers a speech on how he drives some women to chide their husbands and that under his influence “The goodwife giveth her husband a blow/and he for reward doth give her a kiss.” (L 646), he then turns to the women among the audience and asks for their opinion:
How say you, good wives, is it not so?
I warrant you, not one that can say nay,
Whereby all men here may right well know
That all this is true which I do say. (L 652-55)
There is a distinct ironic tone in his use of the words “good wives” as he has just described them mistreating their husbands. His words are clearly a joke on women and how they treat their men, but he speaks so confidently to the women present as if he expected a positive response from them, which speaks to the confidence of the character in his abilities to make the audience more sympathetic to his speech and actions. This excessive confidence is another feature of the so-called Vice who does not generally fear any authority or is not worried about any consequence of his actions.
To sum up, comic characters, of the sort conventionally termed ‘Vices’ by scholars, interact with audiences in a number of different ways. They do so to try to co-opt them into their mischief-making, inviting them to share in a degree of malicious fun, if they will for a moment abandon their usual moral and social values and acquiesce in a plot against other, normally virtuous characters. They can also appeal to spectators for aid, in practical matters, when they are in trouble, or to support them in arguments or duels with other characters. They can also speak to spectators to ‘do down’ other characters, thereby boosting their own schemes or arguments in the process. These interactions seem to leave different effects among the audience as they seem designedto provoke very different responses. At times, they seem to aim to create a sense of familiarity and at other times estrangement or alienation. In some cases, the audience are invited to set aside their moral principles for a while and share some of the mischief with the central comic figure. In other cases, they themselves become the target of the mischief-maker and are mocked or embarrassed.
Each of these forms of direct address has a different moral, theatrical and comic weight. All of this is also complicated by the nature of the play; whether it is a moral drama, in which the comic characters are actually quite vicious, and what is at stake in the audience’s co-option is actually a compromise with moral values they might actually be uncomfortable with in real life, or it is a debate play, where it is the rules of argument or a delight in seeing a combat of wit that are at stake. Each offers different pleasures and different ‘perils’, it would seem. In the morality plays, the moral effect of the interactions between the Vice and the viewers is more evident. The Vice tries to pass through the weakened defence of human morality with the help of his accomplices. While humorous, his comments may leave a variety of effects on the viewers, including perhaps an element of regret about their earlier sense of affinity with the Vice. In the more secular plays, especially Heywood’s, the central comic character does not intend to bring humanity to the verge of destruction until it is saved by a virtue. The interaction seems to be more realistic platform as the characters are portrayed as human beings and not abstractions, with room for moral development. The addresses made to the audience in the latter type of plays have rather theatrical and comic weight. In plays like Heywood’s The Play of the Weather (1533) or Johan Johan (1520), direct addresses to the audience mainly function as comedic tools and for the purpose of amusement. Mery Report or Johan Johan are not vicious or antihuman characters; they just possess the talent to create moments of amusement. In the case of Mery Report, he seems to offer an implicit flattery of Jupiter as well. The naughty characters in the débat plays seem to keep their verbal communication with the viewers to maintain the pact with them and to guarantee the support they expect to receive from them in their debate.
So, to summarise, direct address to the audience is a more complex matter than simply ‘co-option’, even when the so-called Vices are concerned. And co-option itself as a term conceals a range of different proposed relationships between actor and audience. The situation becomes still more complicated when we move to consider other, non-vice-like characters, when they too address the audience. Perhaps surprisingly, there are an larger number of cases where non-vicious characters interact with the audience.
In most cases, the reason a ‘non-comic’ character speaks to the present audience or refers to them, , is to acknowledge their presence or engage them directly in the plot. In Fulgens and Lucres (1496), Fulgens, who is not in the circle of comedic characters, asks the audience if they have seen Cornelius whom he is supposed to meet at the location of the play:
Was the chief cause of my hider cummyng
To have a communication in this same matere
With on Cornelius. Cam ther non suche here? (1. L289-291)
This address does not seem to serve any other purpose than keeping the spectators more engaged in the main action of the play. Unlike similar interactions initiated by the comic character, the main aim of the address is not to mock a member of the audience or another character, or to form a pact with the spectators. It appears essentially to acknowledge the presence of the audience in the world of the play as well as the hall. Later on, Cornelius asks the audience if there is anyone among them who would like to serve him as a messenger:
So many gode felowes as byn in this hall,
And is ther non, syrs, among you all
That wyll enterprise this gere?
Some of you can do it if ye lust.
But if ye wyl not, than I must
Go seche a man elliswhere. (354-359)
The significant point here is that these interactions with the audience are not meant for any vicious or, if we can say this, ‘naughty’ purposes. The main purpose of the questions is literally what the questions addressed to the audience mean and at times the questions are rhetorical. The audience may not be expected to verbally respond to any of those questions, but there are other non-verbal responses, such as surprise, or mirth that may be elicited from the questions. B, who responds to the call for a messenger and seems to appear from among the spectators, is in fact a member of the acting company. The question about B’s whereabouts therefore is more for the effect that will be produced when B emerges from the audience.
4For instance, when Fulgens asks the audience if anyone has seen Cornelius he really wonders if anyone knows about Cornelius' whereabouts.
In the second part of the play, however, the nature of the communication Gayus has with the audience differs significantly from the function of Cornelius’ early address. Gayus and Cornelius are now engaged in a debate over who is a real nobleman and over the nature of true nobility, and Gayus is trying to instil a feeling of affinity with him in the audience, which will be helpful in his combat of wit with the rich and noble Cornelius. Therefore, he delegates the function of a jury to them, which in turn makes Lucres the judge;
With ryght gode will I shall go to,
So that ye will here me with as grete pacience
As I have harde you -- reason wolde soo.
And what so ever I shall speke in this audience,
Eyther of myn owne meritis or of hys insolence,
Yet fyrst unto you all, syrs, I make this request:
That it wolde lyke you to construe it to the best. (2. L 585-591)
The nature of character-audience interaction in morality plays, in which conveying a moral message to the audience is a major purpose of the play, is to a great extent different from that of other mainly secular plays. In The Interlude of Youth (1513), for instance, an early morality, other than Riot as the main mischief maker, most of the interaction is done through Youth on the one hand and Charity and Humility on the other. The combat of moral beliefs and principles is at the centre of the plot. Youth uses this strategy to reveal his outrageous thoughts and extreme behaviour:
Abacke felowes and gyue me roume
Or I shall make you to auoyde sone. (L 40-41)
This has echoes of the typical ‘threatening’ entrance of a tyrant such as Herod, as “a rumbustious angry man” (Kinghorn, 106) and contrasts with Mery Report’s entrance and calling a bystander ‘brother’ and asking him to hold the torch higher. But Youth can be considered neither a vicious character nor a comic one. He is simply a victim of an immoral character (Riot) who encourages attributes immediately associated with the deadly sins, including pride, in him. In the similar manner, the audience may also relate to similar situations where they may have been led to make sinful choices. Potter believes that The Interlude of Youth “dwells heavily on the state of sin” and that “repentance is the mechanism of the play’s resolution” (134). While Youth is infected by pride, his address to the audience also suggests that Youth and the moral characters are at two opposite ends of the spectrum as he constantly mocks their comments. Therefore, in reply to Charity’s words to encourage Youth to abandon his pride and pursue a place in heaven, he sarcastically states,
What, syrs, abowe the sky?
I hath nede of a ladder to climbe so hie,
But what and the ladder slyppe
Than I am deceyued yet. (L 97-100)
It is through his comment that the audience can enter his mind and realise the shallowness of his moral understanding. At the other end, there are Charity and Humility as the characters representing virtues and they seem to address the audience mainly for the purpose of imparting or reinforcing some moral or religious awareness. Therefore, in order to take them into their confidence and establish a relationship in which the audience sympathise with them and follow their religious instructions, Charity and Humility employ a language which is very different from Youth’s. Thus, they speak with complete respect for the audience and a complete understanding of them, while at the same time lamenting over the current situation in which moral beliefs have lost their significance. Hence, when Charity is about to leave the stage for the first time, he speaks to the audience, saying:
Or I let you lose
Fare well my maysters euerychone
I wyll come agayne anone. (L 195-197)
Similarly, when Humility is leaving the stage, he also uses “masters” in his speech:
Fare well masters euerycheone
For your synne looke ye morne
and euyll creatures loke ye tourne
For your name who maketh inficion
Saye it is good contricion
That for sinne doth morne (L 757-762)
While this speech may also be directed to other characters, the key point remains the same: through this, he is apparently trying to win the audience’s or other characters’ trust. It is also interesting that the word masters is used to include every one on the audience that is otherwise diverse in that it includes both men and women as well as masters and servants. Following the same line of purpose, Charity addresses the audience earlier and calls them ‘maisters’ once more:
And soone let us goo
Lo maisters here you maye see beforne
That the weeds ouergroweth the corne
Nowe maie ye see all in this tide
Now vice is taken, and vertue set aside.
Yonder ye maye see youth is stable
But euermore chaungeable. (L 546-552)
Charity and Humility are in constant verbal conflict with Riot and Youth, acting as wise counsellors trying to help Youth escape the evil which has taken control of him, and when they do succeed, they talk to the audience, thanking them for attending “meekly”:
Humility:
Thus haue we brought our matter to an ende
Before the persons here present
Wolde euery man be contente
Leaste onother daye we be shente.
Charity:
We thanke all thys presente
Of theyr meeke audience (L 776-781)
Acting as an Epilogue, Humility continues:
Jesu that sytteth in heauen so hye
Save all this fair company:
Men and women that here be
Amen, amen, for charitie. (L 782-85)
If the main comic character of the play tries to form a pact with the audience to share his mischief and in some cases act as accomplices in his vicious scheme, so too Humility and Charity, as the characters representing virtue in The Interlude of Youth, manipulate the audience. The comic agent of the play tries to form a pact with spectators to share his mischief, and in some cases, act as accomplices in his vicious scheme. Humility and Charity manipulate the audience into sympathising with them and following their moral and religious examples. However, what is interesting is that once they think have achieved their aim in manipulating the Mankind character, the audience seems to lose its position as important people or ‘masters’. Early on in the play, when Humility and Charity need the audience to warm to them, they address them as “maysters” or “masters”; once they have achieved their goal in convincing Youth to put aside his pride and no longer be a slave to Riot, the same audience are referred to as “persons here present” (L 787) and later reduced to “men and Women that here be.” (L 784) This seems to indicate their manipulative approach, which makes them similar in strategies to the main vicious character of the morality play, who manipulates the audience to accomplish his evil plans.
Near the end of the play, as with some other morality plays, the combat between virtues and vices turns to a general and not a single one, and the virtues gather together to recover from the early defeat by the vices and save humanity. Humanity and Charity, by the end of the play are no longer simply characters in the play, but also universal symbols of Christianity, and their victory becomes a symbol of saving a Christian soul through repentance.
In more secular interludes, especially in Heywood’s plays, this interaction of non-vicious characters with the audience is generally for other purposes than moral teaching or symbolic representation of religious doctrines. In Johan Johan (1520), perhaps Heywood’s earliest play, the characters’ functions are too complicated to allow any simple division of the roles to vicious and non-vicious characters. Each character possesses a share of the required mischief to drive the plot forward. However, no single one of them can be selected as the main comic figure. Johan, the husband, does show some features generally attributed to the manipulator or the central comic character, but he himself tends to fall victim to Tyb's and Sir Johan’s mischiefs. His interaction with the audience, therefore, does not necessarily take place for the same purpose as that of the Vice in the morality plays. He mainly attempts to acknowledge the audience’s presence and keep them more engaged in the plot. Therefore, as he is leaving his home to invite Sir Johan to dine with them, he asks a member of the audience, “Therefore I pray you take ye the payne / To kepe my gowne tyll I come agayne.” Here, he is establishing direct contact with the audience member and perhaps being a little patronising with the member asking him to hold his gown. There was also use of asides to establish such contact.
The Four P. P. (1530) opens with the Palmer talking to the audience acting as a prologue and introducing himself:
Now God be here; who keepeth this place?
Now by my faith I cry you mercy;
Of reason I muse [must?] sue for grace,
My rudeness showeth me so homely.
Whereof your pardon axed and won,
I sue you as courtesy both me bind,
To tell this, which shall be begun,
In order as many come best in mind.
I am a Palmer, as ye see (L 1-9)
Although it is hard to say that there is a single character in The Four P. P. who mocks and manipulates other characters, since the Potycary and the Pedlar both act mischievously at times, the Palmer cannot really be categorised with them and his relationship with the audience is mostly on a different level and for other purposes. The reason behind this kind of address lies, therefore, in the fact that the play is in fact a battle of wits among the four characters who claim they are best at sending souls to heaven. In order to win the battle, they would require the audience’s support and an effective technique is to create a sense of affinity with them.
5On another occasion, for instance, Johan uses an aside to comment on his wife’s affair with the priest:
If that the parisshe preest, Sir Johan, Did not se her nowe and than And give her absolution upon a bed, For wo and paine she wolde sone be deed. (139-42)
The Pardoner, who has been somewhat portrayed negatively in Chaucer’s work, also interacts with the audience and comments on the other characters’ words with his aside to the audience. One such instance is his aside in reply to the Potycary’s comment that he commanded both the Pardoner and the Palmer to wait on him:
What chaunce is this that suche an elfe
Commaund two knaves be, beside hym selfe? (L 418-19)
Heywood's Johan Johan and The Four P. P. are two examples of interludes which do not conform to the view that there is a certain character called 'the Vice' in these plays. In fact, one cannot tell who the 'Vice' or the central mischief-maker is in these plays. Sometimes, a play does not have an obvious main comic figure as everyone behaves in a vicious way. This happens in Johan Johan where all the three characters demonstrate vicious features mainly attributed to the so-called Vice. At the same time, we cannot pinpoint a certain character in the play as the one in control of the mischief making. Therefore, we cannot really differentiate between vicious and non-vicious characters. In a play like Johan Johan, as everyone behaves in a vicious way, the idea of having a 'Vice', or rather 'the Vice', is not helpful. This becomes more interesting, as even in some plays where there are no obvious 'Vices' or vicious characters, the characters still talk to the audience. Especially, in Heywood's debate plays, the audience's presence is assumed, because all the characters are trying to win the point, saying "I am the most religious", "I am the happiest", etc. This may be aimed at making the audience evaluate the actions of the characters and compare this to their own moral understanding of the same issues.
The Play of Love, another of Heywood’s debate plays, evolves round an argument over who is in more joy or pain in relation to love. In this play, the audience’s presence is strongly assumed as every character tries to win the argument, and the audience are generally asked to play the role of a judge who decides on the issue. The interaction with the audience, therefore, starts with Lover not Loved, who enters the stage and addresses the audience at length to introduce himself and to show them that he confides in them:
Lo syr, who so that loketh here for curtesy
And seth me same as one pretending none,
But as unthought upon thus soddenly
Approacheth the myddys amonge you evrychone
And of you all seyth nought to any one,
May thynke me rewde, percyvyng of what sorte,
Ye seme to be and of what stately porte.
Wherein I suppose this well supposed
Unto you all … (L 1-44)
However, contrary to the general expectation that this character will turn to the audience to judge for him when it comes to his debate with Loved not Loving, he suddenly declares that he does not see anyone suitable among the people present to judge between them, “But here is no judge mete, we must seke ells where.” (L 243) This implies that the audience is no longer thought to fit to judge on the moral issues involved. This may also be a patronising way to tell the audience that they are wanting in moral understanding.
Later on in the play, it is Lover not Loved who makes a similar comment, “No man, No woman, no chylde in this place / But I durst for judgement trust in this case:” (L 1288-89) As discussed earlier, No Lover nor Loved manages to create an interaction with the audience which may be to the aim of gaining audience support in any future power struggle with the other characters, specially Lover Loved. Nevertheless, on this occasion, he seems to be doing the opposite and estranging some at least of the audience from himself. However, it is also possible that his estranging actions are an overconfident attempt to test whether the audience with whom he has already established a rapport will respond to his offending speech and actions.
The Play of the Weather, as we have seen, is one of those rare instances of a play in which a character is named the Vice by the playwright, and it was earlier discussed how Mery Report tries to use his schemes and his addresses to the audience to his advantage. However, it is not just Mery Report who talks to the audience or refers to them and other characters also do talk to the audience as well. The first of these is Jupiter who directs his initial speech to the audience acknowledging their presence while apparently separating some of them from the others:
To all our people by some one of thys sorte
Whom we lyste to choyse here amongst all ye
Wherefore eche man avaunce and we shall se
Whyche of you is moste mete to be our crier. (L 94-97)
Jupiter is not a mischievous comic character in the play, but by such a reference, which be targeting the women in the audience, he also shows degrees of naughtiness and the capacity to add fun to the play. This attitude is, in fact, widely utilised by Mery Report who displays deeper levels of moral indecency in his encounters with the Gentlewoman and Laundress.
Later, the Gentleman addresses the audience upon his entry, “Stande ye mery, my frendes everychone!” (L 220-21) which Mery Report replied immediately with his sharp remark, “Say that to me and let the reste alone.” (L 222) Mery Report seems to be positioning himself as being closer to the audience and seems to want to have that association to himself so as to strengthen his position with the audience as a judge and deny Gentleman the same opportunity. Gentleman cannot be classified as a vicious character and his interaction with the audience at this point would serve as a preparation to resort to them later as a judge in his controversy with Mery Report over being the “head”:
Whyche thynge ones had for our seyd recreacyon
Shall greatly prevayle you in preferrynge our helth
For what thynge more nedefull then our preservacyon
Beynge the weale and heddes of all comen welth. (L 293-96)
There are other non-Vicelike characters who also interact with the audience in The Play of the Weather, among which it is the Water Miller who interacts most with the audience. In his case, the addresses seem to serve as appealing for sympathy and the audience's judgement. After he is called a knave by Mery Report, he turns to the audience and asks them to bear witness to how he was treated by him, “All you bere wrecorde what favour I have. / Herke how famylyerly he calleth me knave.” (L 476-77) The audience are drawn in again as a jury to judge between him and the Wind Miller when they quarrel over who deserves to have his favoured weather, “Wherefore I thynke good before this audyens / Eche for our selfe to say or we go hens.” (L 562-63) and later when the Wind Miller digresses from the main point of their discussion and talks about the usefulness of wind in wind instruments, the Water Miller protests and urges the audience (acting as the judge/jury) to note this diversion: “So farre from our mater he is now fled.” (L 607)
The Gentlewoman, who is not a mischief-maker, also makes a reference to the audience’s presence when she enters the hall: “Now good god, what a foly is this! / What should I do where so mych people is?” (L 766-67) Her confusion at the presence of other people has other significant implications which will be discussed in detail in a later section of the chapter.
Heywood carefully wrought his characters’ speeches and their exchanges with one another and their address of the audience. Craig believes that Heywood's A Play of Love, The Play of the Weather, and Witty and Witless are "scarcely more than dialogues in form." (72). Mery Report is perhaps a unique Heywoodian character who goes beyond the boundaries of conventional Vices and develops into a character at the margin of a Shakespearean fool, with his variety of jokes and interactions with the audience and other characters. For instance:
“Syns your entent is but for the wethers
What skyls our apparels to be fryse or fethers?”
Other characters in The Play of the Weather interact with the audience mostly for the purpose of seeking sympathy or judgement; which is something that Mery Report indulges in as well, but his mischief and comic speech also distinguishes him from the others.
These elements, however, are not all evident in Ralph Roister Doister, which may appear to share some of the basic features with The Play of the Weather but it can be claimed that Heywood’s plays, and more specifically Weather, are unique in a number of elements. Merygreek can be compared with Mery Report in the sense that both manipulate the audience and bear the main burden of the comedic sense of the plays on their shoulders. However, Mery Report is a unique character, emerging from among the audience and interacting very effectively with them throughout the play. Apart from the personal gains that he seeks like position and wealth, he also is 'merry' with the joy he derives from his manipulation of other characters and, at times, the audience. Merygreek, on the other hand, is a typical Roman parasite who enjoys making fun of Ralph on many occasions and Ralph’s physical and mental state are of no concern to him. He even attempts to hit Ralph to enjoy his simple-mindedness even more.
It is not only the comic figures which divide Udall’s play from Heywood’s. Other less mischievous characters also appear to have differences in their method of communication with the audience. Most of the interaction with the audience in Ralph Roister Doister is through Merygreek, who is at the centre of the play and engineers the plot and steers it to suit his liking. Among non-vicious characters, it is Ralph who talks more to the audience and it seems that the playwright employs this technique to reveal even more to the audience the level of his simple-mindedness and to justify the credibility of the events in the play. The first instance when Ralph talks to the audience is when he meets Tibet Talkapace and Annot Alyface, and in an aside he reveals his intentions for Custance by saying, “See what a sort she kepeth that must be my wife. / Shall not I when I haue hir, leade a merrie life?” (L 313-14) This early comment aptly prepares the audience to see a simpleton who has quixotic views of the world and the people around him.
Ralph keeps revealing more of his foolishness, and he frequently does so by addressing the audience or acknowledging their presence. In his war with Custance and her household, Ralph tries to show off his greatness by shouting these words:
I will speake out aloude, I care not who heare it:
Sirs, see that my harnesse, my tergat, and my shield,
Be made as bright now, as when I was last in fielde,
As white as I shoulde to warre againe to morrowe:
For sicke shall I be, but I worke some folke sorow. (L 1402-1406)
While these words appear to be directed to the opposing party, they may also serve as a dramatic irony to ridicule him and reveal his simplicity, or rather stupidity, to the audience. It was previously suggested that Jack Juggler is the manipulator and mischief-maker in Jack Jugglar. However, when it comes to addressing the audience, it is Jenkin Careaway who interacts much more with the audience and for various purposes.
In Gammer Gurton’s Needle (1575), it is Diccon, the comic agent of the play, who talks to the audience most of the time. On an occasion when a non-vicious character, Doctor Rat, addresses the audience, he makes a comment and appeals for sympathy:
A Man were better twenty times be a bandog and barke,
Then here among such a sort, be parish priest
6 For instance, when Careaway is attacked and hit by Jack Jugglar, he turns to the audience and asks for help: " Helpe! Save my life, maisters, for the passion of Christ!" (L 457)
Where he shal neuer be at rest, one pissing while a day
But he must trudge about the towne, this way, and that way, (L 721-24)
He is commenting on the townspeople and showing his dissatisfaction with them, asking the audience to show sympathy with him. Given that the audience were probably university students and scholars, and assuming the rather contemptuous attitude they could have had towards the provincial characters in the village, while some of the audience may also have contempt for him as a provincial character. Therefore, it should not be forgotten that at the same time Doctor Rat is being ridiculed by the very same ill-learned villagers and mostly by the Bedlam beggar, Diccon. This establishes another comic level to the play with the educated audience laughing at Doctor Rat’s stupidity along with the wicked Diccon. Unlike The Play of the Weather, in which the audience are basically 'inside' the play, they are less engaged in the plot in Gammer Gurton’s Needle. This means that the interaction with the viewers is made on a different level. In The Weather, several characters emerge from the audience and at times it will be difficult to distinguish between the real members of the audience and the actors who may be sitting among the viewers waiting for their cues. The audience of Gammer Gurton’s Needle, on the other hand, are clearly distinguished from townspeople/villagers in the play. Although Diccon keeps the spectators engaged in the story by revealing his mischievous plans to them, there is still a marginal line which separates the audience from the characters representing the villagers.
As we go further forward in time, we notice that the late morality plays do not necessarily follow the same pattern of communication with viewers. Although there is a relatively short difference in time between Ralph Roister Doister (1553) and The Tide Tarrieth No Man (1576), the nature of interaction between non-Vice characters and the audience in The Tide is dramatically different from that of the former play. Faithful Few is the only character, apart from the disobedient Courage (who also encourages others to break free from any codes and principle that may regulate their behaviour) who speaks directly to the audience or makes a references to them in his speech. Most of his speech appears near the end of the play where he sets the background for the moral and religious teaching, first by saying, “But I must needs confess, some among us there be, / For whose sakes the whole number bareth great blame.” (L 1377-78) He later continues the homily combined with a taste of ancient Greek and Roman philosophy:
Whereby it appeareth from love we are free;
The words of the wise we nothing regard,
For without love no virtue can perfect be,
As Plato the wise hath plainly declared.
No good thing without love it is possible to do;
Seneca of that opinion hath been;
Then how many good things do they now, think you,
In whom no love at all there is seen?
They watch their times, the simple to snare;
No time they forbear their pleasures to work.
God grant we therefore of them may beware,
For privily to snare us they daily do lurk (L 1550 – 61)
A point to notice in these two instances is that he attempts to identify himself with the audience and show that he is no different from them, and that they are all sinners. This is a common strategy employed by both good and vicious characters in these interludes. Both sides try to instil the notion in the audience that there is an affinity between them. The outrageous comic figure keeps reminding the audience that they all share tendencies to be evil. On the other hand, moral characters, like Faithful Few, state that they have all done wrong, or in the case of this play “from love we are free”. (L 1550) Likewise, near the end of the play and just before Courage is arrested, Faithful Few addresses his last words to the audience, “See how the time-takers their fact doth repent, / Who no time will spare in pleasing their will?” (L 1725 -26) as if to give an admonition immediately before Courage the Vice faces trouble and is going to be punished, and will probably ‘repent’.
This section endeavoured to show the various ways in which the comic figures of the interludes interact with the audience. Their purpose might be to co-opt the audience into their schemes, to win their sympathy for alleged misfortunes, to make comments about other characters' speech or even to victimise the audience themselves. The important point to notice is that, contrary to the general belief, there is no linear or chronological development of the central comic figure traditionally but perhaps mistakenly known as the 'Vice' in their interaction with the audience. While there are certain similarities in their method and purposes, these characters address the audience for different reasons and at times with rather distinct methods. We may be able to observe some parallels in the main comic characters in an early work of the period in question, such as Fulgens and Lucres (1496), and a later comedy such as The Play of the Weather (1533) or even in a late morality play like The Tide Tarrieth No Man (1576). However, their functions are very different and the levels of participation expected of the audience are generally different. The effect these interactions leave on the spectators also vary hugely based on the type of play and the purpose and method of interaction. In short, it seems an over-generalisation to attribute the same qualities to these different comedic characters and simply call them all the 'Vice'. Even those characters who have been called so by their creators do not show such affinity with each other. Mery Report is named the 'Vice' by Heywood in The Play of the Weather (1533) but his relationship with the viewers is very different tothat of Courage in The Tide Tarrieth No Man (1576). While both characters try hard to identify themselves with the audience, Mery Report does so in order to seek concord, to enable him to make fun of the other characters, but Courage has more serious and potentially harmful intentions. The Tide seeks to offer moral lessons to the society on social issues which need attention.
On the other hand, there are other characters who also interact with the audience in some of the ways discussed earlier, and also in other ways. They too appeal for sympathy, ask for support, comment on other characters' behaviour, among other things. So, the plays are not designed in such a way that only certain characters work in the platea and the others are entirely confined to the locus.
Moreover, there are also some plays which, by their very nature, encourage audience interaction, especially those in which the audience is always assumed to be there and also to have a role in the onstage action. An excellent example of this type of play is Heywood's The Weather, where the audience is in the hall, ‘representing’ the courtiers whom Jupiter is visiting. Here, the audience's presence is constantly acknowledged and various characters turn to them to seek their judgement, support, or sympathy. Additionally, there are those plays that are little more than debates, where the audience are the informal or tacit judges of the arguments, to be appealed to by the characters as if they were fellow students, members of the jury, or members of a legal moot.
[New section?]
Female characters have played important roles in the interludes of the period under study. Plays and interludes such as Fulgens and Lucres, Johan Johan, Weather, and Like Will to Like were written considerably later than the late medieval Biblical after drama. Because of its sacred subject matter, the medieval Biblical drama was more constrained than the interludes under study. And although the interludes were also limited by certain factors, a wide variety of female characters were included (Forest-Hill, 2007). Not only were there varieties of female characters, there was a stronger link between the female characters and the audiences in the interludes (Forest-Hill, 2007). The interludes were also diverse in their content and form and appealed to a variety of audiences. At the same time, the auspices of the performance varied and influenced the way the female characters in the play were depicted. Therefore, the female characters in the interludes and other plays of this period, played both virtuous as well as Vice-like roles. Consequently, the nature of the female characters’ interaction with the audience also varied depending upon the role being played. It is also important to remember that the interaction was a two-way affair in that the characters would interact with the audience verbally while the audience too would interact with the charactersboth verbally and physically. But these responses were elicited by the characters both from the male as well as the female audience. There are many references to female specatators in Fulgens and Lucres, and their responses were elicited by the direct interactions with characters. However, what interactions there were between female characters and the audience was significant, in content if not in form. In other words, while many plays and interludes did not show a direct interaction between the female characters and the audience, the other characters in the play did interact with the audience and sometimes the interactions brought the spotlight onto the female characters.
Fulgens and Lucres has been considered by some to be a comedy of the kind that was unique for a Morality play in the medieval period (Lowers, 1941). Medwell wrote the play for an aristocratic and clerical audience in the household or Cardinal Morton. It has been argued by Alan Nelson that Part I of Fulgens and Lucres was presented during a mid-day meal, and Part II during an evening meal, and that the audience invariably consisted of noblemen, ecclesiasts, and married women (Gerring, 2016). The play is interesting from the point of view of the female characters, specifically Lucres, who is the central female character. However, some importance is also given to her maid, for whose hand A and B are vying.
That Lucres has several good qualities is testified to by her own father. The comic element here is the fact that the father thinks and is told by many that she is his own likeness, implying that either he looks like a woman or his daughter looks like a man. The interactions in Fulgens and Lucres are mostly between the male characters and the audience. Many of these interactions take place between the characters A and B and the audience. However, it is important to remember that Lucres is the central character and the definitive character traits that she displays in the play are meant to strike a chord with the audience, especially the female members. The play's principal message is given by Lucres and it is for the female members of the audience (Cartwright, 2013).
In the play, Fulgens wants Lucres to be married, as she is of age and indeed she has two suitors. She is wooed by two characters, Publius and Gaius, the former being a descendent of the Scipios and the latter a commoner. However, here Lucres is shown to be both independent and determined. When Fulgens refuses to interfere in the choosing of the husband, wanting Lucres to exercise her freedom of choice, Lucres herself takes that task as her moral duty. Irrespective of who may be proposed to Lucres, it is her moral duty to exercise her freedom of choice and exercise it well and choose the most honourable of the suitors (Jankowski, 1990). The message of the play is that nobility is not only defined by birth, but also by deeds, and in that Medwall had to be very careful in delivery of dialogues so as to not annoy the audience members who were mostly the members of nobility and aristocracy. Lucres becomes the conduit for delivering this message when she does not automatically choose the noble suitor over the common one. Ultimately, Lucres chooses the common born Gaius over the aristocrat, saying:
That a man of excellent virtuous condicions,
Allthough he be of a pore stoke bore,
Yet I wyll honour and commende hym more
Than one that is descendide of right noble kyn
Whose lyffe is all dissolute and rotyde in syn.
Lucres makes an obvious attempt at turning the mirror on the audience by referring to the qualities that she does not want in the man she marries, saying that she will not dispise / The blode of Cornelius ...
But unto the blode [she] wyll have lytyl respect
Where tho condicyons be synfull and abiect. [lines?]
The audience here is made to face their own shortcomings, with the open disdain that Lucres shows for the lazy nobles and acceptance of the more hard-working Gaius (Gerring, 2016). So, when Lucres’ servant A addresses the female audience directly on Lucres refusing the suitor Cornelius, the motivation of the interaction is to elicit the responses of the female audience on whether they think that Lucres has taken the right decision. A asks:
How say ye, gode woman, is it your gyse?
To chose all your husbands that wyse?
When the elite women in the audience respond to these questions by A and B, they become participants in the performance (Forest-Hill, 2007).
One of the common areas for interaction between female characters and the audience in these plays, concerned the female character’s anxiety about entering the playing space (Forest-Hill, 2007). An example of such an address is in the Play of the Weather, where, as we have seen, the Gentlewoman expresses her anxiety about coming in front of the audience by saying:
What sholde I do, where so mych people is?
I know not how to passe into God now.
Such remarks by a female character made directly to the audience mark a diffidence on the part of the female characters and also express something about the moral condition of the characters (Forest-Hill, 2007). At the same time, the remarks signify the hesitation for the respectable female character to openly and directly talk to the audience. The Gentlewoman responds to the large audience by remarking that she is somewhat fearful to pass through such a crowd. However, the laundress does not show a similar diffidence. Therefore, the close proximity between characters and the audience may also be affected by the gender and class of the characters.
The close proximity of the play characters to the audience may also be a feature of the interludes as many interludes were played in Great Halls, which meant that there was not much physical distance between the characters and the audience. For instance, Interlude of Youth itself may have been intended to be a Great Hall play, played during a break in evening proceedings, as is evident by the use of the term ‘interlude’ and to a seated as well as a standing audience. There are several references in the play that show that the actors were in close proximity to the audience and at times some of the actors pushed their way through the audience. The greater space of the Hall was also needed in the play because some of the scenes in the play are structured in such a way that space is needed. For instance, in one scene Pride and Youth are immersed in their talk, oblivious to the quarrel between Riot and Lechery. Riot and Lechery break out into a quarrel when Riot tries to flirt with Lechery (Lancashire, 1980).
In the Interlude of Youth there is only one prominent female character, that is Pride’s sister, Lady Lechery, who is offered by Pride to Youth as a mistress. Lechery’s character itself is that of a temptress and therefore a vice. In her interactions with Riot and Youth, she comes across as flirtatious. The following excerpt from the play shows Riot, Pride, and Youth speaking about Youth’s weakness for women, ending with Pride introducing his sister, Lechery, to Youth. The dialogue is suggestive of women being objectified by both Riot as well as Pride. Riot says that Youth does not need a wife but a mistress and nudges on Pride to bring his sister to Youth, whom Pride knows to be the kind of woman who would make Youth happy, whereas a wife would just make him dissatisfied with life. In other words, Youth’s liaison with Lechery is representative of the immorality of choosing fornication and courtly love over the sacred state of married life (Lancashire, 1980). This is also seen in the following words by Riot:
RIOT. A wife! nay, nay, for God avow,
He shall have flesh enow […]
Thou hast a sister fair and free.
I know well his leman she will be;
Therefore, I would she were here,
That we might go and make good cheer
At the wine somewhere.
Here, Riot is making allusions to the character of both Youth as well as Lechery and implying that Youth would prefer a mistress to a wife and that Lechery would be that mistress. To this, Youth says to Pride:
I pray you, hither thou do her bring,
For she is to my liking.
Pride is not offended by the obvious inferences of Riot that his sister is a free woman who would become Youth’s mistress and instead assures Youth that he would bring Lechery to him, saying:
Sir, I shall do my diligence
To bring her to your presence.
The forthcoming dialogue then shows the luring of Youth by all the Vices, including Lechery, into a liaison with her. Riot’s description of Lechery is one of objectification, when he says that Lechery is ‘very proper of body’, while Pride uses the term ‘present’ for his sister to signify her being offered to Youth as a gift. Lechery herself has no misplaced notions about her virtues.
YOUTH. Thou art a ready messenger.
Come hither to me, my heart so dear.
Ye be welcome to me
As the heart in my body.
LADY LECHERY. Sir, I thank you, and at your pleasure I am.
Ye be the same unto me.
Lady Lechery is aware that she comes to Youth on terms of equality and that if she is at Youth’s pleasure, he too is at hers. This is also clear from the dialogue between the two:
LADY LECHERY. Verily, sir, I thank thee
That ye will bestow it on me,
And when it please you on me to call
My heart is yours, body and all.
YOUTH. Fair lady, I thank thee.
On the same wise ye shall have me
Whensoever ye please.
The above dialogue is also reflective of the status of women, who, even when free (in the sense of being able to choose their lovers), were not in an equal position with the lovers. Another interesting point here is that the tavern is seen to be the proper place for consorting with Lechery. A tavern is not a fit place for a respectable woman, which Lechery is not making her more akin to Vice than gentlewomen. In that sense, the connection between the lady Vice and the other Vices is also strongly drawn. Riot is perhaps the most interactive of all the Vices and from his entry to exit, there is some connection that is drawn between Riot and the audience. Even Riot’s entry lines are in the nature of introduction of himself to the audience, where responding to Youth’s appeal that he should have some companion, he appears saying:
Huffa, huffa! Who calleth after me
I am ryot, full of iolite
My herte is lyght as the wynde.
In John Heywood’s Johan Johan, Johan has been portrayed by Heywood as the henpecked, cuckolded and idiotic husband. His wife Tyb is a shrewish and ill-tampered lady. She persuades her husband to invite the priest to a dinner which only the cleric and Tyb would share.
This carnivalesque domestic sphere of John Heywood is not just a play about Johan, the husband, but it also discloses the bitter realities of wife, Tyb, and her acquaintance, the priest Sir Johan. This makes it attractive for the audience which may be able to perceive adultery involved in the play and link it to sin and vice at a time when the family and household were central units of economic activity. This was also the time when husband was the head of the household and the dominant member of the family. However, despite this societal reality, the dominant control in the play is centred in Tyb, which is unlike the traditional practice of the time where major control is exercised by male householder in household and business matters (Craik, 1964). In the words of Stark (1981), “The wife – with a few reservations – was the property of her husband, while the children were the nearly absolute property of their parents.”
From the beginning of Johan Johan, it is clear that the household of Tyb and Johan cannot be seen as the traditional one. The threats of beating or whipping by Tyb are used in the play more than twenty times. The appearance of Johan as the husband who is performing the chores of a typical wife shows the reversal of the gender roles (Bruster, 2005). The series of the actions reinforces the fact about Johan being anything but head of the family and his wife, Tyb, is the master of the household contrary to the expectations of the society where Tyb possess the control over plot of interlude and the domestic sphere.
Tyb, as a female Vice character, is presented as the witty and smart woman who tempted her husband with a pie and compelled him to invite to dinner her lover, Johan the priest and. Paradoxically, the rendezvous of Tyb with the priest is supposed to be taking place at her own premises with the permission and assent of her own husband. She intentionally makes a hole in the pail to make it impossible for her husband to fetch water in order to send him off. The sexual allusions were tactfully handled by Heywood and were portrayed in the context to the character of Tyb where overall inability of Johan to act and react is depicted; for instance, the scene where both lovers eat pie whereas Johan, the husband, is viewed as being deprived of his promised share of pie and is removed from the table (Craik, 1964). Johan also complains about smoke blinding him so that he cannot see what Tyb and the priest are up to, which provide a mean and a source to Tyb for initiating comedy along with Johan, the priest.
Loke how the kokold chafyth the wax that is hard
And for his lyfe/daryth not loke hitherward (524-525)
In the prelude of the play, the Johan’s doubts about illicit connection between Tyb and the priest are revealed. The use of the phrase “a clyfte large and wyde” (462), signifying the hole in the bucket, generates the crude reference to the excessive sexual demands of Tyb, whereas the difficulties of Johan with obstructing that particular hole are suggestive to express the inability of Johan to satisfy those demands.
Johan Johan is a play about a husband, a wife and a priest, with the wife and priest also as adulterers. In this play, the role of the wife, Tyb, is the central character in the play, where the wife is responsible for disrupting the entire household with her adulterous relationship with the priest. Tyb’s role in the play is central in many ways because with her actions and craftiness, she also guides and influences the actions of the two other principal characters, that is Johan the husband and Johan, the priest. Contrary to the established notions of social and family structure, which was at the time, patriarchal, with gender assigned roles within the household, Tyb is able to design her own household in such a way that the audience is left in little doubt as to who is the master of the house. Tyb is domineering and coerces Johan the husband into household chores, which the latter does, although he is not pleased about it. Thus, in one scene where Tyb wants to be alone with her lover, she makes Johan the husband bring water in a pail. Furthermore,
Go and fetche water I say at a worde,
For it is tyme the pye was at the boarde;
And go with vengeance, and say thou art prayde.
The play also has sexual innuendos, that are mostly shared between Tyb, Johan the priest and the audience. An example of that is in the scene where Tyb and Johan the priest share the pie, while Johan the husband is excluded. The audience is let in on the joke between Tyb and Johan the priest:
Loke how the kokold chafyth the wax that is hard
And for his lyfe / daryth not loke hitherward.
In fact, throughout the play, the female character, Tyb is the centre of the play and she plays the part of a harlot, shrew and a gossip who is able to domineer her hen-pecked husband to the point of goading him to throw her and her lover out. But before that happens, there are many instances in the play that bring out the shrewishness of Tyb. For instance, when after the dinner at which Johan the priest had come as a guest, Johan the husband grumbles about going to bed hungry and Tyb says:
Why, were ye not served there as ye are
Chafyng the waxe / standing by the fyre
The play seems to make a strong point, in farcical manner, about how giving too much freedom to wives can be wrong and can also lead to severe disruption in the family structure, although this family is not typical for that period as there seem to be no children or servants. Such other characters may have been omitted to allow the farce between Tyb and the priest to continue. Therefore, the play appears to make a vice out of female freedom and independence, portraying a woman who is a dominant member of the family to also be a shrew and a harlot.
The audience is also made to participate in the play where both Johan the husband and Tyb address the audience directly a number of times within the play, especially with respect to the issue of where they can put their respective gowns, with ultimately a member of the audience left holding it (Sultan, 1953).
Women characters do not always find a prominent position in all plays or interludes of this period, although such plays may still have references to women. For instance, The Four P.P. is a play in which four men, justify their occupations, with each man’s occupation beginning with the letter P: Pardoner, Potycary (apothecary), Palmer and Pedlar. Women characters do not find prominent position in the play, although the Palmer wins the contest in lying by using a statement revolving around the nature of women which is too unrealistic to be true. In order to win the contest, the Pardoner boasts about the relics he does not have; the Pothecary lies about the cures he has not made. But it is the Palmer who wins the contest by saying that in all his travels he never saw a woman who lost her temper.
Yet in all the places I have ben,
Of all the women I have sene,
I never saw not knewe to my consynes
Any one woman out of paciens. (lines…)
This is so different from the perceived nature of women, that all the others catch the lie immediately as it is inconceivable that such women exist who would not lose their temper. Undoubtedly, without using any female characters, Heywood manages to bring female character into a contest between the four men (Happe, 2009).
In A Play of Love, the central woman character in the play is Loved Not Loving. She plays a crucial role in the debates in the play and consequently she has substantial dialogue in the play and may be used as an example to understand female character’s interaction with the audience. Even though Not Loving Nor Loved accuses her of ‘womanly speaking’ when she tries to articulate the meaning of love, she remains unfazed and is even supported in her views by her fellow judge, Lover Not Loved (Happe, 2009). In this way, the female character is shown in a very different light from the other plays like Johan Johan or Interlude of Youth, where the physical or sensual attributes of womanhood are stressed. In A Play of Love, the intellectual attributes of woman are stressed, and Loved Not is shown to be as intelligent and articulate, or even more so, than the men. For instance, when Loving nor Loved boasts about exploiting a woman who loved him by deserting her, he only makes a fool of himself because far from feeling exploited, the woman is already in bed with another.
The Play of the Weather. There are two female characters of some importance in the play. The first is the Gentlewoman and the second is the Laundress. The Gentlewoman uses the ground of her beauty in making an appeal for no weather so that she is not exposed to the elements of the weather and her beauty remains intact. On the other hand, the laundress appeals for heat as that would help her dry her washed clothes. Merry Report, the Vice, to whom the Gentlewoman later speaks, speaks in innuendo and at one time directly talks to the audience, where he speaks his mind about the opinion he has of women, saying:
I count women lost, if we love them not well,
For ye see god loveth them never a deal.
Mistress, ye can not speak with the god.
The vanity of the Gentlewoman is exposed when she speaks about her reason for coming and her appeal for the weather:
Forsooth the cause of my coming is this:
I am a woman right fair, as ye see,
And, since I am fair, fair would I keep me.
The speech is vain and focused on the beauty and the desire to keep such beauty intact, which also seems to be a criticism of the women belonging to noble families, who have nothing to do but to think of their appearance and eating and drinking, as the Gentlewoman says in her next speech. This is a contrast to the speeches made by the Laundress, who enters while Merry Report is flirting with Gentlewoman. And this worries her that her own appeal for sunny weather will not be heard because of Merry Report's attraction towards the other female. The Laundress addresses the audience more times that the Gentlewoman, who has expressed her reluctance to address the audience as soon as she enters the play. The Laundress on the other hand addresses both the Vice and the audience in many of her speeches:
Then lean not too much to yonder giglet,
For her desire contrary to mine is set.
I heard by her tale she would banish the sun,
And then were we poor launders all undone.
Except the sun shine that our clothes may dry,
We can do no right nought in our laundry;
Another manner loss if we should miss
Then of such nicebyceters as she is.
The ensuing argument between Gentlewoman and Laundress is seen in context of vanity and idleness of the Gentlewoman versus the hard work of the Laundress, the latter feeling that the worst kind of vice is sloth, as she says:
Lest vice might enter on every side,
Which hath free entry where idleness doth reign.
It is not thy beauty that I disdain,
But thine idle life that thou hast rehearsed.
The Laundress is not only making a jibe at the Gentlewoman, but also holding up a mirror to the female members in the audience, especially those that belong to the aristocratic and noble families. In doing so, she is trying to elicit a response from the female audience, by getting them to relate to the speech being made by the Laundress from their own perspective as per their social class.
Gammer Gurton’s Needle is a play which centres on the female character, Gammer Gurton, who has lost her needle and she is trying to enlist the help of the other characters in the play to help look for it. The interaction with the audience in this play happens primarily by Diccon, who is the Vice-like character, promising a lot of sport to the audience (Whitworth, 2014). The interaction between the female characters in the play and the audience is minimal. Diccon uses the interaction with the audience to make several points about the female characters. For instance, with reference to Dame Chat, Diccon says to the audience:
Now, sirs, do you no more but keep my counsel just,
And Doctor Rat shall thus catch some good I trust
But Mother Chat, my gossip, talk first withal I must
For she must be the Chief Captain to lay the rat in the dust.
Here, the interaction is about the female character but it does not involve a female character in an active interaction with the audience. So the audience is being engaged with but without the direct interaction between the female character and the audience.
The play Ralph Roister Doister was published in 1566 and its central female character is Dame Custance. There are also three other female characters in the play, Margerie Mumblecrust, Tibet Talkapace, and Annot Alyface. Margerie is a nurse and Tibet and Annot are the maidens to Dame Custance. The principal interactions with the audience are between the male characters and the audience (Lanier, 1945). Once again female characters’ interaction with the members of the audience is not a highlight in the play.
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