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COPYRIGHT 1993 Johns Hopkins University Press
In 1613, Thomas Middleton prefaced the published record of his Lord Mayor's Show, The Triumphs of Truth, with an attack upon a rival city poet, Anthony Munday. Middleton declared his pageant to have been "directed, written and redeem'd into forme, from the ignorance of some former times, and their common writer."(1) Not satisfied with distinguishing his own efforts from those of this yet unnamed "common writer," Middleton insisted that the art and knowledge displayed in these annual pageants should be worthy of the magnificence with which the Lord Mayor is received into office. He resumed his attack by noting
the miserable want of both which in the impudent common writer hath often forced from me much pity and sorrow: and it would heartily grieve any understanding spirit to behold, many times, so glorious a fire in bounty and goodnesse offering to match itselfe with freezing art, sitting in darkeness with the candle out, looking like the picture of Blacke Monday. (TM, 5:219)
Middleton's allusion to his rival contains an implicit warning to his patrons, the twelve dominant trade guilds that elected the Lord Mayor and financed the pageants in his honor. The uninspired pageants of this "common writer," Middleton suggests, reflect poorly upon the majesty of the new Lord Mayor ("so glorious a fire . . . offering to match itself with freezing art"); the guilds risked compromising this spectacular celebration of their civic authority by employing a poet who was the object of universal derision among his literary contemporaries.(2)
In disparaging Munday's formulaic "Triumphs," Middleton was advocating the stylistic reform of civic pageantry. Middleton's 1613 show adopted formal innovations imposed upon the mayoralty pageants by Thomas Dekker in 1612. Both shows dramatized the moral themes that were the traditional subject of the mayoralty pageants; unlike the static tableaux of earlier pageants, the 1612 and 1613 shows brought the dramatic structure and thematic unity of the private theaters into the London streets. In the terms of Middleton's critique, these shows brought to the pageants a standard of theatrical "art and knowledge" appropriate to the glorification of mayoralty and guild.
While modern critics have praised the stylistic innovations of the 1612 and 1613 shows, the guilds did not share Middleton's distaste for the "freezing art" of Munday's pageants. Munday's fellow Drapers chose him to conceive the pageants the following two years, and their choice was ratified by the Fishmongers in 1616. Indeed, when Dekker and Middleton were chosen to create the shows in subsequent years, both poets abandoned the morality structures of their first shows in favor of the emblematic tableaux perfected by Munday, reducing the shows of 1612 and 1613 to aberrations in the stylistic history of the mayoralty shows.(3)
Like all civic pageantry, the Jacobean Lord Mayor's Show was an artistic medium shaped by an explicitly political context. The guilds' rejection of the reforms urged in Middleton's aesthetic manifesto reflects an unease with the introduction of theatrical mimesis into their annual affirmations of civic power. The dramatic form proposed by Dekker and Middleton makes the Lord Mayor an actor, implicating the magistrate in the "duplicitous" structure of theatrical artifice. Rather than enhancing the guilds' authority by their stylistic innovations, the 1612 and 1613 pageants offered an implicit critique of the commercial ideology they purported to celebrate, drawing the spectator's eye to the potential for abuse of office in this metaphoric transformation of merchant into civic magistrate.
I
The structure of the Lord Mayor's Show evolved from its origins in the Midsummer Show, the pageantry accompanying the setting of the watch on the night of Saint John and Saint Peter. The mayoral "ridings," dating to 1236, became the occasion for pageantry after 1535, when the Mercers' Company adapted the tableaux from the Midsummer Show to honor their newly elected Mayor. The Lord Mayor's Show, in its mature form, began early on the morning of October 29th, when the new Lord Mayor, the Aldermen of the city, and the liveried members of the mayor's company boarded barges for a procession down the Thames to Westminster. Upon taking the oath, the mayor and his entourage returned by barge to Baynard's Castle landing, passing a tableaux erected upon barges on the river. The mayor was greeted upon landing by a larger assemblage of guildsmen, and mounted a "triumphal chariot" for a procession through the city streets to Guildhall. The procession encountered pageants at regular intervals along the route, traditionally Paul's Churchyard, the Little Conduit in Cheapside, and the Cross in Cheap.(4) The pageants consisted of emblematic tableaux, accompanied by speeches honoring the mayor and his guild. Once the Lord Mayor had witnessed a pageant, the pageant wagons joined the procession immediately ahead of the mayor's chariot. The procession concluded at Guildhall, where the mayor hosted a banquet for the aldermen, sheriffs, and guild officers. After the banquet, the procession resumed, returning the mayor to his house after nightfall.(5)
As in the royal entrances of the period, the Lord Mayor functioned as both the show's subject and its ideal audience. At each point along the route, the tableaux and speeches were directed at the mayor. The processional form dictated that only those accompanying the mayor's chariot witnessed the pageants in their entirety. Yet, to the crowds who turned out for the spectacle, the Lord Mayor was himself an "actor," whose responses to the pageantry in his honor represented a critical element of the show. The moral and historical themes of the shows reflected this structure; the procession and pageants inscribed the new magistrate before the crowds with the ceremonial dignity appropriate to the duties of the mayoralty. In Munday's 1611 show, Chruso-Thriambos: The Triumphes of Golde, the Mayor is guided through the show by the figure of Time, who recites a history of the mayoralty. Time calls forth the spirits of two kings and several Lord Mayors to place the magistrate into historical context, elevating the new Lord Mayor from merchant to statesman.
Faringdon: Good Time, resolve him, what is he Grac'd with this day of Dignitie?
Time: A Brother of the Gold-Smiths Company, Whose vertues, worth and special love of all, Hath raisd unto this high authority.(6)
The implicit subject of tableaux and speeches is the pact into which the new Lord Mayor enters to aid in the preservation of the state.(7) The pageants promote service to the monarch and the city, admonishing the new magistrate to virtuous government. The concerns expressed are not limited to the resolution of local disputes and effective civic administration; the speeches attempt to instruct the mayor in the history of the office, and of his role in protecting the realm from corruption. In the preface to his 1611 show, Munday identifies the Lord Mayor as a "proetor" and the aldermen as "senators." The allusion to the Roman origins of such civic pageantry is central to its dramatic structure, in which the "triumphator" becomes the protagonist of a truly public theater; London becomes a stage during the procession, and the making of theater reflects the making of history.(8)
Traditionally, the shows temper praise with moral didacticism, reminding the new mayor of the virtues necessary for good government. Munday's 1611 show concludes with a typical admonition to virtue and duty:
Faringdon: You are a Gold-Smith, Golden be Your daily deedes of Chairitie. Golden your hearing poore mens cases, Free from partiall bribes embraces. And let no rich or mighty man Iniure the poore, if helpe you can. The World well wots, your former care Forbids ye now to pinch or spare, But to be liberall, francke, and free, And keepe good Hospitality, Such as beseemes a Maioralitie.
(C, 39)(9)
In the context of his earlier praise, Munday's admonition is gestural; the show's main intent is to glorify the mayor and his company, not to impose moral instruction. Munday's exhortation to "let no rich or mighty man /...
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