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Conventional Material in Munday's John a Kent and John a Cumber
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
The central situation in Anthony Munday's play of John a Kent and John a Cumber (ca. 1594) is, as its title suggests, a contest between two magicians, John a Kent, a Welshman, and John a Cumber, a Scotchman. Their meeting is occasioned by a wooing contest which forms the romantic theme of the play and in which a pair of Welsh lovers (Powesse and Merridock) strive to win from the English Pembroke and the Scotch Morton the ladies Sidanen and Marian in spite of the opposition of the ladies' relatives. In his magic arts Kent, like Prospero, is assisted by an elvish sprite, who supplements and assists in Kent's display of power. Finally, for the low comedy the dramatist has included a group of rustics, who serve partly as foils for the magicians, partly as unwitting furtherers of the action. All these, as we shall see, are elements already conventional in Elizabethan drama by Munday's time, and his originality consists in his adaptation and association of these elements.
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1934
References
1 Simple but typical is the ballad of the “Two Magicians” (Child, 44).—It is a common theme in eastern folk tales.
2 No attempt can be made here to trace in any detail the widespread appearance of the magic contest as a folk theme, a subject for a special study in itself.
3 Jacobus de Varagine, Golden Legend, v, 166 ff.
4 J. M. Manly, Specimens of Pre-Shakespsarian Drama (Boston, 1897), i, 170 ff.—The speech of Elijah to the priests of Baal was not without this element. There is also the later, curious case of the Stonyhurst Pageants in which are dramatized the contests of Moses with the magicians of the Pharaoh and of Elijah with the priests of Baal. The latter is simply reported by a Nuntius, and in neither is there any recrimination.
5 Hazlitt's Dodsley's Old Plays, viii, 403–407.
6 Thoms, Early English Prose Romances (London, 1828), ii, 14–15.—Comparetti, Vergil in the Middle Ages (New York, 1895), contains other legends about contests in which Vergil participated. Like the extensive collection of C. G. Leland, The Unpublished Legend of Vergil (New York, 1900), however, these are more in the nature of folk tales than romances.
7 The same story is told of Ambrosius in Nennius, in J. A. Giles, Old English Chronicles (London, 1912), pp. 401–404 and of Merlin in Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia Regum Brittanniae, Lib. vi, Cap. xvii–xix. The theme of the structure which falls to pieces at night as it is built in the day is found associated with Kent in current folk lore in Herefordshire. E. M. Leather, Folk-Lore of Herefordshire (Hereford, 1912), p. 164.
8 T. B. Life and Death of the Merry Devil of Edmonton with the Pleasant Pranks of Smug the Smith, Sir John, and Mine Host of the George about the Stealing of Venison (London, 1819), p. 3. Though the earliest extant text of this work is the edition of 1631, it was doubtless written much earlier.
9 Less closely associated with Kent is the last appearance of Bungay, where he meets Vandermast on one last great contest, from which the Englishman emerges a victor, though to no purpose, for the devil appears and carries off both contestants (Chapter xiv).
10 Dodsley, x, 243.
11 For a full account of his development see M. W. Latham, The Elizabethan Fairies (New York, 1930), pp. 219–262.
12 Farmer, Five Anonymous Plays, (London, 1908), Fourth Series, p. 154.
13 Ibid., p. 171.
14 Ibid.
15 John a Kent, 1098–99, 1174–82, 1393–97.—This third characteristic is suggested in the Merry Devil of Edmonton when Fabell declares:
Ile make my spirits to dance such nightly jigs
Along the way twixt this and Tot'nam cross,
The Carrier's Jades shall cast their heavie packs
And the strong hedges scarce shall keep them in:
The Milke-maides Cuts shall turne the wenches off
And lay the Dossers tumbling in the dust;
The franke and merry London Prentises,
That come for creame and lusty country cheere
Shall lose their way, and, scrambling in the ditches
All night shall whoop and hallo, cry and call,
Yet none to other find their way at all.
16 W. C. Hazlitt, Remains of Early English Popular Poetry (London, 1864), iii, 42 ff.—In one form or another the theme is very ancient and very common. In the life of St. Julian (Golden Legend, iii, 10) there is the story of the plowshare which cleaved to the hand of a villager and was detached from it only after two years at the prayer of St. Julian; the theme appears again in the legend of St. Anastasia (Ibid. ii, 150). It has a less dignified setting in the tales of the three wishes where sausages, like Miles' pudding in the Famous History of Frier Bacon, become fastened to the face of a woodman. (E. S. Hartland, English Folk and Fairy Tales, 251–252.) There is striking dramatic use of the idea in the Play of the Sacrament, lines 418–425 in text of J. Q. Adams, Chief Pre-Shakespearian Dramas (New York, 1924), where Sir Jonathas loses his hand in an attempt to wrench it free from the Host which he has tried to steal. See also Bolte and Polivka, Anmerkungen zu den Kinder- und Hausmärchen der Brüder Grimm (Leipzig, 1913–32), ii, 39–44.
17 The characteristics of the type are discussed fully by C. R. Baskervill, “Mummers' Wooing Plays in England,” Mod. Phil. xxi (1924), 225 and “Dramatic Aspects of Medieval Folk Festivals in England,” SPh. xvii (1920), 19–87; also his “Conventional Features of Medwall's Fulgens and Lucres,” Mod. Phil., xxiv (1927), 419–442.
18 In this play the more serious contest, the wooing of the lady Eleanor, the ward of old Playnsey, by Gloucester and by Cardinal Bewford, has become the secondary action of the play. The action is fragmentary, however, and of little importance as it now stands.
19 Bullen, Old Plays, i, 168.
20 For a discussion of the relationship of this scene to that in Kent see my “Date of John a Kent and John a Cumber” Ph. Q. viii (1929), 225–232.—With the interruption compare Turnop's “correction” of the “last two rhymes,” ll. 384 ff.
21 The Two Noble Kinsmen, iii, v. in C. F. Tucker Brooke's Shakespeare Apocrypha (Oxford, 1918).
22 Considerations of space have necessitated passing over some of the less important conventions of the play, the romantic background and setting. Much of the action takes place before the walls of a castle, and an almost masque-like structure is given by the disguisings and the alternations of dances by gentle folk and rustics. For full discussions of background see C. R. Baskervill, “Early Romantic Plays in England,” MPh. xiv (1916), 229–251 and L. M. Ellison, Romantic Drama at the English Court. (University of Chicago Dissertation, 1917).