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Page 1 of 3

Early Performers and Performance in the Northeast of England
  • Edited by Diana Wyatt, John McKinnell
  • Published by:
    Amsterdam University Press
    Published online:
    09 June 2021
    Print publication:
    31 May 2021
  • This collection explores the evidence for a wide variety of performance traditions up to 1642 in the northeast region of England which was among those most remote from London. While noble and religious houses in the northeast often patronized visiting performers and might be aware of developments in the capital, the region also had lively performance traditions of its own, on every level of society, from the wedding revels, sporting activities, and household fools of major noble families, through civic plays and processions, to the customary annual performances of hunters and ploughmen. The book considers the political, economic, religious, and psychological impulses that affected these traditions, and its closing chapter addresses their possible relevance to the culture of the region today.

  • Introduction

  • Edited by Diana Wyatt, John McKinnell
  • Book:
    Early Performers and Performance in the Northeast of England
    Published by:
    Amsterdam University Press
    Published online:
    09 June 2021
    Print publication:
    31 May 2021, pp xi-xxvi

  • Summary

    UNTIL ABOUT THE middle of the twentieth century, early English drama was often labelled “pre-Shakespearean,” a designation which was unsatisfactory in a number of ways:

    First, it tended to define its material as secondary rather than worthy of study in its own right, and to assume a “prophetic” knowledge of what was to come which none of its performers or audiences could possibly have shared. As Peter Happé has memorably put it: “often they were so overpowered by Shakespeare, and indeed so ‘literary’, that they condemned the material before them even as they studied it.”

    Secondly, because purpose-built theatres evolved in Elizabethan London, the label “Pre-Shakespearean” imposed a highly centralized view of early performance, dominated by what was happening in the capital and at court, with little analysis of performance elsewhere. Admittedly, it became increasingly difficult to ignore the mystery cycles which were performed in provincial cities such as York and Chester, but recognition of these was often tinged with the patronising assumption that they were the naive work of uneducated tradesmen. Similarly, the gradual discovery of the effectiveness of some morality plays in performance, which began in the 1930s, was too often ignored by scholars who condemned all plays of this genre as irredeemably boring without ever having seen them performed.

    Even more seriously, it assumed a view of what drama is which required any performance to have a fictional or historical plot, appropriate scenery and props, impersonated characters wearing costumes suitable to their roles, and a firm separation between performers and audience. This encouraged an anachronistic view of drama as the product of a largely middle-class culture, and excluded many types of performance which were significant in the culture of the time, including liturgy, public ceremonies and processions, performances at weddings and on other celebratory occasions, dramatic and musical performances by resident fools and travelling ministralli, sporting contests, and activities that would nowadays be regarded as circus acts, such as performances by tightrope walkers and those who trained animals. Contemporary records often make no distinction between these different types of performer, and a narrow definition of what we would now regard as “the theatre” fails to understand the large extent to which they flowed into each other.

    These attitudes gradually came to seem quaintly outdated, and some critics began to protest against them, though not altogether consistently.

  • Chapter 9 - Rural and Urban Folk Ceremonies in County Durham

  • Edited by Diana Wyatt, John McKinnell
  • Book:
    Early Performers and Performance in the Northeast of England
    Published by:
    Amsterdam University Press
    Published online:
    09 June 2021
    Print publication:
    31 May 2021, pp 111-130

  • Summary

    THANKS TO THE steady bureaucracy and occasional litigiousness of the members and servants of Durham Cathedral Priory, County Durham is rich in records of annual folk ceremonies and performances, although we must bear in mind that these records are of various kinds and dates, and that they were written to serve the interests and advance the financial well-being of the priory, not to inform future generations.

    The Stag Ceremony

    A curious example of this is reflected in an episode in Robert Graystanes's chronicle history of Durham Cathedral Priory, the fourth of five chroniclers of the Community of St. Cuthbert, which covers the period from 1213–1334. When Bishop Louis de Beaumont of Durham died in October 1333, Graystanes, who had been sub-prior for many years, was elected by his fellow monks to succeed Beaumont, but was deprived of the election by the papal provision of Richard de Bury to the see; he remained a monk of Durham until his death in 1336.

    The relevant episode of Graystanes’ chronicle survives in four manuscripts:

    • 1. London BL MS Cotton Titus A.ii, fols. 103r–v and 120v–121v (C);

    • 2. Oxford, MS Bodley Laud Misc. 700, fols. 116v–117r and 129r–v (L);

    • 3. Oxford, MS Bodley Fairfax 6, fols. 268rb–va and 278rb–vb (F);

    • 4. York, Dean and Chapter MS XVI.I.12, fols. 200r–v and 218vb–220rb (Y).

    We (John McKinnell and Mark Chambers) have transcribed and checked the relevant episode in all four manuscripts. Dobson states that L is a copy of F, but in the two chapters we have studied the opposite is probably true. Essential words and phrases omitted by F and by C show that neither can be the sole source for any of the other manuscripts, but when individual words are omitted from L, the other three manuscripts usually copy the same omissions and then supply the missing words as interlinear additions. This, together with the rougher appearance and summarising marginalia of L, suggest that it is a working copy or draft, of which F, C, and Y are fair copies. Later correctors and annotators of L clearly had access to at least one of the other manuscripts. For these reasons, our text is based primarily on L.

  • Chapter 11 - Boy Bishops in Medieval Durham

  • Edited by Diana Wyatt, John McKinnell
  • Book:
    Early Performers and Performance in the Northeast of England
    Published by:
    Amsterdam University Press
    Published online:
    09 June 2021
    Print publication:
    31 May 2021, pp 147-160

  • Summary

    Nisi conversi fueritis, et efficiamini sicut parvuli,non intrabitis in regnum celorum (Matt. 18:3)

    Christ's admonition to his disciples from Matthew 18:3 appears as the opening of the Gloucester boy bishop's sermon in 1558. The sermon was apparently penned by the cathedral's almoner, Richard Ramsey, who as a long-serving member of the monastic community would have had first-hand experience of the annual ceremony, which in this case took place on Holy Innocents’ Day, December 28. Ramsey undoubtedly knew the custom well and was able to compose the speech from a boy's own point of view. A young chorister named John Stubs had been chosen episcopus puerilis for the occasion, a position usually bestowed by the boy's fellow choristers and ratified by the cathedral's canons. Stubs would have been both excited and honoured at being elected: becoming the “boy bishop” promised not only respect from his peers and the wider community but usually came with a pecuniary reward. Most English boy bishop ceremonies took place either on the Feast of St. Nicholas (December 6), on Holy Innocents’ day (December 28) or some combination of the two, and they marked a high point in that liturgical season of social inversion around Christmas, with “last becoming first” as the youth of the community were granted limited mastery over their adult brethren: “Except yow will be convertyd, and made lyke unto lytill childern”—i.e., “made more like us,” Stubs words would have reminded them—“yow shall not entre in to the kyngdom of heaven.”

    For centuries a traditional part of the Christmas season in cathedrals and colleges across England, the Gloucester boy bishop ceremony of 1558 came towards the end of that brief return of such customs under Catholic Queen Mary (reigned 1553–1558). Mary herself apparently hosted the St. Paul's boy bishop in St. James's Palace at Christ mastide 1555. However, the return of such colourful ceremonies was only temporary. They had been prohibited by royal edict in 1541 following Henry VIII's turn to Protestantism, and would be suppressed again under Elizabeth I (r. 1558–1603).

  • Decreased Hospitalizations and Costs From Infection in Sixteen Nursing Homes in the SHIELD OC Regional Decolonization Initiative

  • Gabrielle M. Gussin, James A. McKinnell, Raveena D. Singh, Ken Kleinman, Amherst Loren Miller, Raheeb Saavedra, Lauren Heim, Marlene Estevez, Tabitha D. Catuna, Eunjung Lee, Thomas Tjoa, Rachel Slayton, Nimalie Stone, John Jernigan, Matthew Zahn, Lynn Janssen, Shruti K Gohil, Philip Alan Robinson, Steven Park, Robert Weinstein, Mary Hayden, Cassiana E. Bittencourt, Ellena M. Peterson, Susan Huang
  • Journal:
    Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology / Volume 41 / Issue S1 / October 2020
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    02 November 2020, pp. s7-s8
    Print publication:
    October 2020
    • Article
      • You have access
    • PDF
    • Export citation

  • Distinguished Oral

    Background: Shared Healthcare Intervention to Eliminate Life-threatening Dissemination of MDROs in Orange County, California (SHIELD OC) was a CDC-funded regional decolonization intervention from April 2017 through July 2019 involving 38 hospitals, nursing homes (NHs), and long-term acute-care hospitals (LTACHs) to reduce MDROs. Decolonization in NH and LTACHs consisted of universal antiseptic bathing with chlorhexidine (CHG) for routine bathing and showering plus nasal iodophor decolonization (Monday through Friday, twice daily every other week). Hospitals used universal CHG in ICUs and provided daily CHG and nasal iodophor to patients in contact precautions. We sought to evaluate whether decolonization reduced hospitalization and associated healthcare costs due to infections among residents of NHs participating in SHIELD compared to nonparticipating NHs. Methods: Medicaid insurer data covering NH residents in Orange County were used to calculate hospitalization rates due to a primary diagnosis of infection (counts per member quarter), hospital bed days/member-quarter, and expenditures/member quarter from the fourth quarter of 2015 to the second quarter of 2019. We used a time-series design and a segmented regression analysis to evaluate changes attributable to the SHIELD OC intervention among participating and nonparticipating NHs. Results: Across the SHIELD OC intervention period, intervention NHs experienced a 44% decrease in hospitalization rates, a 43% decrease in hospital bed days, and a 53% decrease in Medicaid expenditures when comparing the last quarter of the intervention to the baseline period (Fig. 1). These data translated to a significant downward slope, with a reduction of 4% per quarter in hospital admissions due to infection (P < .001), a reduction of 7% per quarter in hospitalization days due to infection (P < .001), and a reduction of 9% per quarter in Medicaid expenditures (P = .019) per NH resident. Conclusions: The universal CHG bathing and nasal decolonization intervention adopted by NHs in the SHIELD OC collaborative resulted in large, meaningful reductions in hospitalization events, hospitalization days, and healthcare expenditures among Medicaid-insured NH residents. The findings led CalOptima, the Medicaid provider in Orange County, California, to launch an NH incentive program that provides dedicated training and covers the cost of CHG and nasal iodophor for OC NHs that enroll.

    Funding: None

    Disclosures: Gabrielle M. Gussin, University of California, Irvine, Stryker (Sage Products): Conducting studies in which contributed antiseptic product is provided to participating hospitals and nursing homes. Clorox: Conducting studies in which contributed antiseptic product is provided to participating hospitals and nursing homes. Medline: Conducting studies in which contributed antiseptic product is provided to participating hospitals and nursing homes. Xttrium: Conducting studies in which contributed antiseptic product is provided to participating hospitals and nursing homes.

Meeting the Other in Norse Myth and Legend
  • John McKinnell
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 October 2017
    Print publication:
    15 May 2005
  • A particular, recurring feature of Old Norse myths and legends is an encounter between creatures of This World [gods and human beings] and those of the Other [giants, giantesses, dwarves, prophetesses, monsters and the dead]. Concentrating on cross-gendered encounters, this book analyses these meetings, and the different motifs and situations they encompass, from the consultation of a prophetess by a king or god, to sexual liaisons and return from the dead. It considers the evidence for their pre-Christian origins, discusses how far individual poets and prose writers were free to modify them, and suggests that they survived in medieval Christian society because [like folk-tale] they provide a non-dogmatic way of resolving social and psychological problems connected with growing up, succession from one generation to the next, sexual relationships and bereavement.

  • Association between Vancomycin-Resistant Enterococci Bacteremia and Ceftriaxone Usage

  • James A. McKinnell, Danielle F. Kunz, Eric Chamot, Mukesh Patel, Rhett M. Shirley, Stephen A. Moser, John W. Baddley, Peter G. Pappas, Loren G. Miller
  • Journal:
    Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology / Volume 33 / Issue 7 / July 2012
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    02 January 2015, pp. 718-724
    Print publication:
    July 2012
  • Objective.

    Vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE) have become a public health concern with implications for patient mortality and costs. Hospital antibiotic usage may impact VRE incidence, but the relationship is poorly understood. Animal investigations suggest that ceftriaxone may be associated with VRE proliferation. We measured antimicrobial usage and VRE bloodstream infection (VRE-BSI) incidence to test our hypothesis that increased ceftriaxone usage would be associated with a higher incidence of VRE-BSI.

    Design.

    Retrospective cohort study.

    Setting.

    University of Alabama at Birmingham Medical Center, a 900-bed urban tertiary care hospital.

    Participants.

    All patients admitted during the study period contributed data.

    Methods.

    We conducted a retrospective analysis of antimicrobial usage and VRE-BSI from 2005 to 2008 (43 months). Antimicrobial usage was quantified as days of therapy (DOTs) per 1,000 patient-days. VRE-BSI incidence was calculated as cases per 1,000 patient-days. Negative binomial regression with adjustment for correlation between consecutive observations was used to measure the association between antimicrobial usage and VRE-BSI incidence at the hospital- and care-unit levels.

    Results.

    VRE-BSI incidence increased from 0.06 to 0.17 infections per 1,000 patient-days. Hospital VRE-BSI incidence was associated with prior-month ceftriaxone DOTs (incidence rate ratio, 1.38 per 10 DOTs; P = .005). After controlling for ceftriaxone, prior-month cephalosporin usage (class) was not predictive of VRE-BSI (P = .70). Similarly, prior-month usage of piperacillin-tazobactam, ceftazidime, cefepime, cefazolin, or vancomycin was not predictive of VRE-BSI when considered individually (P ≥ .4 for all comparisons). The final model suggests that type of intensive care unit was related to VRE-BSI incidence.

    Conclusions.

    Ceftriaxone usage in the prior month, but not cephalosporin (class) or vancomycin usage, was related to VRE-BSI incidence. These findings suggest that an antimicrobial stewardship program that limits ceftriaxone may reduce nosocomial VRE-BSI incidence.

  • 11 - Modern productions of medieval English drama

  • Edited by Richard Beadle, University of Cambridge, Alan J. Fletcher, University College Dublin
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre
    Published online:
    28 November 2011
    Print publication:
    10 July 2008, pp 287-325

  • Summary

    Medieval theatre is unlike the English drama of any later period in that it lacks a continuous or nearly continuous tradition of performance. All modern productions of medieval plays are (or should be) experimental, therefore, either in attempting to rediscover the original staging and production methods of the play one is producing, or in trying to find modern ‘equivalents’ to those methods.

    Beginnings

    After performance of plays on traditional religious subjects was forbidden by Queen Elizabeth I's Privy Council, attempts at revival gradually became impossible, even in remote areas. Increasing censorship, combined in some areas with puritan prejudice against drama of any sort, tended towards confining the theatre to the few professional companies who enjoyed royal protection, so that large-scale amateur productions of non-cycle plays also ceased to be possible, although some morality plays performed by professionals survived until Shakespeare's time. Thus began a long eclipse which did not end until about 1900, when antiquarian interest and scholarly curiosity about ‘pre-Shakespearean’ drama led to a few revivals. Even so, most early scholars studying medieval drama had probably never seen a performance of any medieval English play.

  • Foreword

  • John McKinnell, John McKinnell is Reader in Medieval Literature at the University of Durham, UK.
  • Book:
    Meeting the Other in Norse Myth and Legend
    Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 October 2017
    Print publication:
    15 May 2005, pp ix-x

  • Summary

    The idea for this book came to me during an afternoon's fishing. A fisherman confronts the alien realm of the sea rather as gods and men in Old Norse myth and legend confront creatures of the Other World. Often, such encounters also involve the Otherness of opposite gender. But although there is a great variety of cross-gender encounters with the Other World, each god has his own typical experience. Usually, only the Vanir marry giantesses, only Þórr fights them, only Óðinn seduces them. I decided to look into the nature of these stereotypes and consider what needs might have produced them in the heathen period, why they continued to be used after the conversion to Christianity, and to what extent individual poets were at liberty to adapt or contradict them.

    I would like to thank the Arts and Humanities Research Board and the University of Durham for supporting the periods of research leave when much of the book was drafted, and the trustees of the Dorothea Coke Memorial Fund and the English Studies Research Committee, University of Durham, who provided grants for its publication. I have been much helped by Caroline Palmer of Boydell and Brewer, and have had many fruitful discussions with my Socrates exchange partners, Ásdís Egilsdóttir, Maria Elena Ruggerini and Rudolph Simek. Other scholars who have helped me include Sean Burke, Margaret Clunies Ross, Margaret Cormack, Roberta Frank, Terry Gunnell, Joseph Harris, Elizabeth Jackson, Bob Layton, Else Mundal, Richard North, Teresa Paroli, Christopher Sanders, Stefán Karlsson, Gro Steinsland, Clive Tolley, Margrethe Watt and Jocelyn Wogan-Browne. Eva Koch and Liz McKinnell provided the line-drawings, and Professor Watt gave me permission to use those by Eva Koch. I would like to express my warm thanks to all of them, and especially to Judy McKinnell and the rest of my family, who have been patient and supportive throughout the book's long gestation period.

    The failings of this book are mine. There has proved to be too little space to pursue my last question fully – but it may be no bad thing to leave some unanswered questions at the end of a book.

  • Afterword

  • John McKinnell, John McKinnell is Reader in Medieval Literature at the University of Durham, UK.
  • Book:
    Meeting the Other in Norse Myth and Legend
    Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 October 2017
    Print publication:
    15 May 2005, pp 232-234

  • Summary

    There is no doubt that we had all heard the story in different ways, that it brought us different insights depending on our own life-experiences and central concerns.

    My first aim in this book has been to establish what is typical in the various patterns of cross-gender encounter between gods or men on one side and giantesses or prophetesses on the other. It is clear that different types of encounter were consistently associated with particular gods, and that gods and men usually represent the human, civilised and rational world, while giantesses are associated with chaos, wild nature or the irrational. Beyond that, ‘meaning’ is a shifting target, changing from one period to another and capable of being adapted or contradicted to fit the particular concerns of individual poets and saga writers.

    Most of the patterns I have considered may have either a god or a man as the male representative of This World, but the relationship between the god and the human being varies from one pattern to another. In those connected with the Vanir, the human protagonist is typically a ruler descended from the Vanir or the lover of a goddess who is one of the Vanir. The fullest versions of these patterns concern human rulers. The names Njõrðr ?‘Strength’, ‘Power’ and Freyr ‘Lord’ may be connected with political authority, and the Stentoften stone probably shows an ancestor being venerated as guarantor of crop fertility (see Chapter 4). These things may suggest that these gods originated as mythical ancestral kings, though probably at a very ancient period.

    Myths and legends associated with Þórr produce human protagonists of two different types. The older is undoubtedly the ‘Bear's Son’ hero. He shares Þórr's features of unique physical strength and ultimate selfsacrifice against overwhelming odds, and his parallel fights against a male and a female ogre. But he differs from Þórr in that he has animal (notably bear) characteristics himself, sometimes resembles the ogre against whom he fights, and is to some extent an outsider in the society he defends.

  • 9 - Þórr and the Bear's Son

  • from Part Three - The Æsir
  • John McKinnell, John McKinnell is Reader in Medieval Literature at the University of Durham, UK.
  • Book:
    Meeting the Other in Norse Myth and Legend
    Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 October 2017
    Print publication:
    15 May 2005, pp 126-146

  • Summary

    Se wæs moncynnes mægenes strengest

    on þæm dæge þysses lifes,

    æþele ond eacen.

    ‘He was the mightiest in strength of living men at that time,

    noble and huge.’

    Beowulf 196–8a

    In Chapter 8 I outlined a pattern in which Þórr encounters one or more giantesses who represent a threat to human life, in particular that of the protagonist's close kinsman. These are examples of a story pattern whose common features are:

  • A supremely strong hero makes an expedition to fight a giant.

  • He has one or more companions, but they usually make no important contribution.

  • He and his companion(s) are badly received at their destination.

  • He is attacked by at least one giantess and at least one giant, who are related to each other, and destroys both; both fights include some wrestling.

    • Two other common features which do not emerge in the Geirrøðr myth are:

  • The ogress often tries to pierce the hero's flesh with her claws.

  • Later, the hero will perish, heroically facing overwhelming odds.

    • Turning to stories of this kind in which the hero is a human being rather than a god, one can distinguish two sub-types, which I shall call the ‘Þórr pattern’ and the ‘Bear's Son pattern’. The main features of the Þórr pattern are:

  • Þ1. The hero or his associate is tricked into making the visit.

  • Þ2. The hero is usually helped by a friendly giantess (occasionally a giant).

  • Þ3. The associate (or occasionally the hero) often has a sexual partner.

  • Þ4. They must cross a dangerous river which is a boundary between worlds.

  • Þ5. The fights against both ogres usually take place in their cave; the order of fights varies.

  • Þ6. The hero fights with his bare hands, or with very primitive weapons; he destroys the ogres by breaking their backs or skulls, or by fire.

  • 4 - The Vanir Patterns: Ritual Origins

  • from Part Two - The Vanir
  • John McKinnell, John McKinnell is Reader in Medieval Literature at the University of Durham, UK.
  • Book:
    Meeting the Other in Norse Myth and Legend
    Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 October 2017
    Print publication:
    15 May 2005, pp 50-61

  • Summary

    Four of the patterns outlined in Chapter 1 are associated with the Vanir. They are those in which:

  • A god or hero has a troubled marriage with a giantess.

  • A goddess helps her lover to gain vital information from a giantess.

  • A prophetess makes hostile predictions or works magic against a god or a human aristocrat.

  • A prophetess predicts the glorious career and eventual death of a young man who is unwilling to listen to her.

    • In this Chapter I shall consider the evidence for the pre-Christian origins of these patterns.

    The earliest literary source for the worship of the Vanir is ch. 40 of Tacitus's Germania (AD 98), where he is describing seven northern Germanic tribes (including the Anglii – the first literary reference to the Angles, who were to give their name to the English). These peoples, he says, share a common worship of Nerthum, id est Terram matrem ‘Nerthus, that is, Mother Earth’, whose shrine is in a grove on an island. At a particular season, the goddess and her one male priest go on procession in a sacred waggon drawn by heifers. The period of the processions is a time of peace, when all iron objects are locked away. When she returns to her shrine, the idol of Nerthus and everything else associated with the processions is washed by slaves in a secluded lake, in which the slaves are then drowned.

    The name Nerthus corresponds to Njõrðr, the oldest of the Vanir, but some critics have questioned the value of this account, partly because Nerthus looks grammatically masculine and partly because the manuscripts (which all date from the fifteenth century or later) have many different readings of the name: Nerthum, Nertum, Neithum, Nehertum, Necthum, Herthum, Verthum. The usually accepted stemma has three families, and readings shared by the best manuscripts of any two of them are thought likely to be correct.

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