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Singing Simpkin and other Bawdy Jigs
Musical Comedy on the Shakespearean Stage: Scripts, Music and Context
By Roger Clegg, Lucie Skeaping Anne Daye University of Exeter Press
Copyright © 2014 Roger Clegg and Lucie Skeaping
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-85989-984-0
CHAPTER 1
A history of the dramatic jig
By the end of the sixteenth century anyone in England talking of a 'jig'could have been referring to a piece of music, a vigorous dance or singing a ballad. But in the context of London's playhouses the term had a broader meaning that incorporated all three — a musical sung-drama sometimes featuring dance. This dramatic 'jig' was a natural evolution of a definitive type of dramatic performance which, half a century before the playhouses were erected in London, included songs in court farces and morality plays set to dance tunes and sung by players while dancing. Popular music and balladry, the crude combats of mummers' plays, the semi-dramatised antics of a subversive fool, and the leaping and vigorous stepping of morris-men, fed into the robustly physical gestures and comic business that were part and parcel of the playhouses of Tudor and Stuart London.
When it first appeared in the public theatres during the late 1570s, the jig was probably no more than a satirical ballad sung and danced by a clown to a popular tune. But the form seems quickly to have evolved in the hands and through the skills of the various clowns and players who helped develop it — Richard Tarlton, William Kemp, John Singer, John Shanks, William Rowley, Thomas Greene, Augustine Phillips, George Attowell, Andrew Cane, Timothy Reade, Robert Reynolds and Robert Cox — so that by the end of the sixteenth century it was a short sung-drama that featured as an afterpiece to the main play in the open playhouses, and at times, it seems, as an interlude at bear-baitings, experiencing its heyday in the public theatres around the turn of the century. From the evidence available it seems that these jigs were frequently bawdy, sometimes libellous, often farcical, and were set to, and accompanied by, popular tunes of the day. Their duration in performance is not certain: the extant texts are not long, but episodes of dancing, stage fighting and unscripted improvisation must have extended what is on the page. Thomas Nashe, in Summer's Last Will and Testament (1592 [1600]), derisively compares an egregiously short play to a jig: 'Ile be sworne, the Iigge of Rowlands God-sonne, is a Gyant in comparison of it' (B2) (see Rowland's God Son in this volume) and on 12 December 1597, Philip Henslowe records in his diary that he paid six shillings and eight pence for two jigs, less than the cost of a play.
By the 1600s dramatic jigs had clearly gained strength as a commodity, eventually finding their way into print, and sold alongside broadside ballads and the wealth of other printed literature of the period peddled by street sellers. They were relatively simple in their construction and did not require much literary skill. They were populated by such stock characters as rustic clowns, fools, bawdy wenches, enterprisingly faithless wives, gullible and cuckolded husbands, blustering soldiers, slippery gentlemen, foolish constables easily outwitted, prurient Puritans, falsely coy maidens and drunken foreigners. These were the laughing stock of the times and there were jig-makers on hand to exploit or expose their failings, or to champion one group above another. Jig-writers, like comedians through the ages, exaggerated the familiar — every member of the audience had a near neighbour 'just like that', or knew someone (not themselves) 'just as gullible' or 'just as ignorant'. The jig took much of its material and tone from the folk humour of carnival, which licensed the clowning performer with a particular privilege of free speech. The clown, given control of the stage at the end of the main play, disrupted the comfort of closure and brought with him onto the stage vestiges of the popular traditions of subversion, anarchy and misrule.
Wooing of Nan is based around a dance contest in which a set of rival suitors of different estates vie for the hand of Nan, a maid. The contest between Rowland and Pearce, two farmers, is hijacked by a passing Gentleman who out ranks as well as out dances them until, in a final twist, a Fool enters; although of the lowest rank, he turns out to be the best dancer (and the best lover) and steals her away. In Rowland's God Son, Bess, a beautiful young wife, is engaged in an affair with her husband's servant John. In order to continue their illicit relationship they concoct a plan to allay the husband's suspicions and leave themselves free to solicit each other's affection behind the cuckold's back. In Singing Simpkin, a young gentlewoman married to an old miser is visited by two admirers in his absence — Simpkin, a clown, and Bluster, a soldier. Interrupted by the returning cuckold, the roaring soldier leaves (but promises to return to continue his soliciting the next day) and Simpkin, behind the husband's back, announces to the audience that they are welcome to return in nine months time for a christening. In The Black Man, Thumpkin, a rustic clown, pursues Susan, a barmaid. However, on their way to indulge in 'sweet sports of the night' they run into a pair of city bullies who steal Susan away; Thumpkin, disguised as an 'aged father' (and therefore no sexual threat to the rival wooers) steals her back. In punishment, he is made to stand on a stool dressed in a white sheet and cry 'mum' — a reference to the punishment consequent on excommunication and a familiar sight in most towns and villages across England. Then enters a pedlar of ink, who helps hatch a plan to rescue Susan and to frighten away the bullies by pretending to be the devil. In Francis' New Jig, Francis, a married gentleman, aims to seduce Bess, his neighbour's wife. In order to expose his behaviour and turn the tables on him, Bess persuades Mistress Francis to disguise herself in her (Bess's) apparel and, with a mask before her face, take her place at their rendezvous. Having been thoroughly shamed, Francis seeks forgiveness. The Jig of St Denys' Ghost features Nan, a maid, who has two rival suitors vying for her attention — a Cobbler and a Carter. It is the latter who wins her heart and, in revenge, the drunken Cobbler dresses as the ghost of the 'golden saint', St Denys, and attempts to scare the lovers. In response, the Carter turns his horsewhip on him.
Jigs were not confined to the professional stage but were also performed in communal public spaces and private houses, wherever a crowd could be gathered. They might be written by anyone with some skill at penning rhyming verse and sometimes told of the infamies of the maker's neighbours. Such libellous jigs, two of which survive in the Court of Star Chamber records, were performed by servants in households and touring professional players alike in houses in Yorkshire and the west Midlands. Contemporary observers were aware of the relationship between gossip among servants and the maintenance of honour: William Gouge, a clergyman and author of a popular text Of Domesticall Duties (1622), a manual on family life, warns the reader of the disadvantages of gossip 'for when seruants of divers houses men or maids meet together, all their talke for the most part is of their masters and mistresses, whereby it cometh to passe that all the secrets of an house are soone knowne about the whole towne or city' (p. 268). The Libel of Michael Steel (1602) was written by one Yorkshireman's neighbours to expose his affair with his maidservant, while Fools Fortune (1621) was written to defame a local girl for refusing to marry her social inferior and whose motive was to lay claim to her father's estate.
The extant texts play out scenes of social failings, conflict, immoral behaviour and civil disobedience, employing themes of disloyalty in marriage, sexual misconduct outside of wedlock, issues of personal shame and public honour, and both celebrating and ridiculing bad behaviour, rivalry and conflict of social rank. Jigs played out in public those private misdemeanours which deviated from the moral and social conduct considered necessary to bind early-modern society safely together. They brought into focus the concerns of those authorities charged with the policing of moral and social conduct, and echoed the very cases of perceived disobedience, disorder and immorality that filled the records of the Church's Bawdy Courts.
Jigs were both a vehicle for, and an object of, ridicule and controversy and they drew attacks from purists, poets and the civic authorities alike. It was the jigs' potential for negative social impact that drew the concern of the ecclesiastical and civic Courts. Such comic acts were sites of conflict that brought into sharp focus opposition between literary ambition and sub-literary popular culture, civic order and public disorder, controlled and uncontrolled behaviour, lawfulness and lawlessness, morality and immorality, and that encouraged spectators to laugh at as well as, more controversially, with the performers.
Not everybody was in favour of these ribald and often satirical popular dramas. There were strong protests from the radical Protestants, the Church and the City authorities, who became increasingly concerned at their popularity. Jigs drew enormous crowds that included those on the periphery of society or on the wrong side of the law; this was enough of a worry by 1612 to persuade the Westminster Magistrates to issue an Order to the playhouses within the City and Liberties to 'utterlye abolishe all Jigges Rymes and Daunces after their playes'. Within ten years, however, jigs had re-established their popularity through to the Interregnum.
The Cheaters Cheated, the final 'jig' in this edition, is slightly different in that it was written in the early years of the Restoration for a civic occasion, seemingly in imitation of the jigs that had been so popular with audiences earlier in the century. This relatively elaborate drama follows the exploits of Wat, a West-Country clown, who, having run away from Somersetshire to the big city, finds himself at the mercy of two London pickpockets who steal his bread and cheese. Having escaped, he encounters a prostitute who manages to trick the unsuspecting bumpkin into taking her unwanted baby. On discovering the ruse, Wat sets about turning the tables on his tormentors.
The 'dramatic jig', then, offered its creators an opportunity to combine entertainment with social comment, which in turn offered its spectators an opportunity to be part of a theatrical experience rooted in the long history of popular entertainment that is determinedly with, by and for the people. Although the weight of evidence is mainly Jacobean and Caroline, sporadic references to the jig, between 1580 to 1700, and the surviving texts themselves, enable us to build a picture of the jig in performance from the late sixteenth century through to the Restoration.
Tracing the term 'jig'
As a noun, the term jig can be used variously to refer to a type of dance (first attested c. 1560); a song or ballad (first attested 1570); a type of music (in particular to accompany such a dance or song, first attested 1593); and, by extension, a sung-drama popular in the open playhouses of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (first attested 1592, but of earlier provenance). The term was also used to refer to a sportive joke, jest or trick ('the jig is up'). As a verb, it has been used to mean to play, sing or dance a jig, or in the style of a jig; and, by association with 'lively, rapid, jerky movement', it has, as slang and euphemism, been employed to refer to sexual intercourse. The etymology of the term is obscure, and it is not possible to determine whether it originated in England or on the Continent.
Dancing a jig
The origin of the dance form has been the subject of debate among twentieth-century scholars. Jeffrey Pulver, in his work in tracing its origins, argues that the dance moved from England, first to Scotland and then to Ireland, but what seems to be the earliest reference to the dance comes from Scotland. Alexander Scott's 'Ane ballat maid to the derisioun and scorn of wontoun wemen' (c. 1560) gives, 'Sum luvis, new cum to toun,/With jeigis to mak theme joly' (lines 57 — 59). And, in Much Ado About Nothing (1599), Beatrice warns against wooing 'hot and hasty, like a Scotch jig' (2.1.67 — 68).
Pulver argues that the jig did not take popular hold in Ireland until the mid-seventeenth century, and it is generally with reference to Ireland that jigs retain their currency in the twenty-first century. On the other hand, G.S. Emerson stresses the influence of Irish music on the British repertoire and Irish enjoyment of jig rhythms as far back as the twelfth century.Today, we may associate the jig as a dance with Ireland, but jig tunes are also commonplace in the English and Scottish folk dance repertoire, as well as in nineteenth-century country dances and quadrilles.
Unfortunately, no complete choreographies have survived for the sixteenth-century jig as a dance. It may be that the word became a generic term, applied to many non-aristocratic or vernacular forms. Nicholas Breton, in An olde mans lesson, and a young mans love (1605), says 'acountrey daunce is but a Iigge to a stately Pauen' (C4); Henry Killigrew, in The Conspiracy (1638), refers to 'country Jiggs'; Henry Glapthorne, in The Lady Mother (c. 1635; 2.1), has a country jig called for to 'stir your shanks nimbly'; and Sir William Davenant, in his prologue to his revival of The Wits (1661), talks of 'country jigs'. These writers are probably using the term 'country' for activities of the nation as a whole, in contrast to those of the cities and the court, where dances of the fashionable European culture would circulate. The vernacular dances of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Britain included jigs, hornpipes, morris dances and the country dance, and were generally unknown outside these shores, whereas galliards, almains, lavoltas and courantes were enjoyed by the nobility, gentry and the upwardly mobile across Europe. As dances of the people, there is no consistent account of their manner of performance, unlike the court dances, for which instructions are available in contemporary sources. Fragments of information have to be garnered to develop some insights into the nature of dances such as jigs.
Jig/gig came to be used to refer to anything 'round or revolving', as in 'whirligig', 'gig-machine' and the wheels of the light horse-drawn carriage called a 'gig'. John Marston, in Satyre X of The Scourge of Villanie(1598), has 'The Orbes celestiall Will daunce Kemps Iigge. They'le reuel with neate iumps' (H3), linking the comic dramas and dances of one of London's famous jigging clowns, William Kemp, to cosmic rotations and leaping while, as William West observes, 'self-consciously pitting the wild and top-like whirling of Kemp's jigs against a courtly model of ordered and hierarchical motion'. Shakespeare, in Love's Labour's Lost (1594?), when Biron reproaches Ferdinand for being hypocritically in love, links 'whipping a Gigge' with 'tuning a Jygge' (4.3.168), and, at the start of Edward Sharpham's Cupid's Whirligig (1616), Cupid threatens to 'make some daunce a Iigge,/More rounder yet, then ere did Gigge' (A3). This is not to say that jigs were restricted to revolutions. They also incorporated rebounding steps and leaps, leading to combination terms such as jig-ajig and jig-a-jog to express the reiteration or alternation of light, short, stepping movements — jigging or jogging motions — typical of the dance. In his Italian — English dictionary, Queen Anna's New World of Words(1611), John Florio defines Chiarantana (in Holt and Horton's reprinting, 1688) as, 'a kinde of Caroll or song full of leapings like a Scotish gigge, some take it for the Almaine-leape' (p. 97). John Farmer, in Why do you trifle? (c. 1615), links a 'gig', 'a whirlie-top and child's toy', with the dancing of 'a merry jig/Faine would I try how I could [frig]/Up and downe, up and downe, up and downe' (5.8). This sense of the word remained in currency after the Restoration. George Etherege, in She Wou'd If She Cou'd (1668), has the musicians strike up a dance tune for Gatty, 'a clean Limb'd wench', and so 'tune her a Jig, and play't/Roundly, you shall see her bounce it away like a/Nimble Frigot before a fresh gale' (p. 28). In Mock Songs and Joking Poems (1675), Song 29, 'On a late Ball at Inn-holders Hall', explains that the dancer:
... when she came to dance a Jig,
I ne're saw such a nimble Grig,
So lively, free, brisk, and ayry,
I thought she was Vbiquitary:
She tript so briskly up and down,
You'd think she had not danc'd, but flown. (p. 84)
In Mythologia Ethica, his compendious translation of Aesopian fables, Philip Ayres has a startlingly graphic description of a caught fish out of water as 'dancing a jig'. Following this, jig is used in 'To dance the Tyburn Jig'— i.e. to be hanged — which presents a gruesome image of the jerking body in its last moments of life.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Singing Simpkin and other Bawdy Jigs by Roger Clegg, Lucie Skeaping Anne Daye. Copyright © 2014 Roger Clegg and Lucie Skeaping. Excerpted by permission of University of Exeter Press.
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