Enter the King: Theatre, Liturgy and Ritual in the Medieval Civic Triumph.(Review)

Gordon Kipling. Enter the King: Theatre, Liturgy and Ritual in the Medieval Civic Triumph. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1998. Pp. xv + 393. $85.00.

The medieval civic triumph has usually been studied from the vantage of the Renaissance and as a result it has continued to be regarded as the primitive, derivative, and inept show that Withington and Chambers described in the early part of the twentieth century, lacking the coherent imagery and sophisticated political purpose of its neoclassical successor. In his Enter the King, Gordon Kipling seeks to correct this misunderstanding by taking the medieval triumph in northern Europe as a subject worthy of full-length study in its own right and by explaining its artistry and purpose. Kipling begins with the mid-fourteenth century when pageants first appear in civic triumphs, transforming them into theatrical rituals by converting cities into stages and sovereigns and their subjects into actors in dramas of inauguration, and concludes with the sixteenth century when the triumph begins to exhibit neoclassical form.

In the early twentieth century Johan Huizinga distinguished between the medieval religious drama and the civic triumph based on their inherent ideas: the former was characterized by "sublime thought" which lent "grace and dignity"while the latter drew on"vain convention and mere literature" (7). Kipling suggests that the underlying artistic conception of the medieval civic entry was Christian rather than classical, feudal rather than imperial, triumphal without being Roman, and that, in fact, it was informed by a "sublime" idea, linking it more closely than has been suspected to the religious drama. He illustrates that idea with a fascinating interpretation of Richard II's 1392 entry into London. Abandoning the old trade-symbol hypothesis, Kipling explains that the entry stages Richard's epiphany to his subjects as a type of Christ. This idea, derived from the complex Advent liturgy of the medieval church, was used to dramatize sovereigns' entries into cities throughout northern Europe in terms of the various levels of meaning associated with Christ's entry into Jerusalem, and so locates the civic triumph on the frontier between ritual and drama (12-19). The four Advents offered a number of possible variations for pageant designers: Advent liturgy celebrated Christ's first coming in humility and mercy to the world and to each believing soul and prepared the faithful for His second coming in majesty and judgment at the end of time (2). The dimensions of this idea for medieval citizens and the variety of techniques used to represent it occupy the bulk of Kipling's study. He argues that the idea of Advent gave the medieval triumph its meaning and purpose by defining the religious, political, and social ideals of the community, and in doing so created a new form of drama (47).

In chapters 2 through 5 of Enter the King, Kipling explains how this idea informs and structures northern European triumphs. The liturgy of the first two Advents celebrates the salvation Christ brought into the world at His birth and the salvation He brings on a daily basis into the hearts of believers. Civic entries based on these ideas either stage a sovereign's epiphany or celebrate his spiritual advent into the ...