Urban Drama, Part 7

A Ritual of Time and Space

…festivities, cosmic rituals, and rites of passage, however prescribed they are, are always linked to status claims and interests of the participants, and therefore are always open to contextual meanings.[i]

Thew City Welcome described by Jean Froissart is a ritual performance, not a professional work of theatricality, an entertainment, though to an extent all public rituals contain elements of theatricality and entertainment.  The three great genres of late medieval drama may form part of the large festival theatres, but in themselves are not ritual actions.  A ritual functions to transform the time, place, actions imitated and the themes embodied into something else : above all, it takes the people who act, the people who watch, as well as the people around whom the actions revolve from one status into another, from being one sort of beings into another.  Let us look at the geographical setting in which the festival processional transforms its participants, and how it changes itself as a process of celebration into a process of transformation.

We must imagine the symbolic geography of the city as a microcosmic concentration of the macrocosmic world into a living emblem:

Wasteland, desert and swamps

Between one city and another, between large and small towns, and sometimes villages, there exists the desert and easte polaces where nothing is farmed, cultivated ; this is territory not owned by families, great or small, but included in the general possession of great titled aristocrats.  In one sense, it is a territory without form or meaning, a place of ghosts, goblins and outlaws. In another sense, it is a part of the original world, before the Flood, immediately after the Fall when mythical and legendary ancestors trekked out across the earth, making their marks, providing their names to features of ther landscape, and establishing the first settlements, thus beginning to reduce the desert waste to these more or less small territories between historical centres of habitation. 

The countryside of  arable land , pastures or meadows and forests

This is the settled landscape from which civilized men and women draw their necessary raw materials, especially for food, clothing and shelter, then for transformation into the tools and weapons of organized social life.  Herds, flocks and other groups tame animals are cared for, sometimes in places of wandering and transhumence, sometimes in enclosed spaces, including forests for organized hunts.  Then there are the fields to be tilled, planted and harvested, great tracks owned by the lords of the area, small strips assigned for the peasants and serfs, who hold such small pieces of land in feof in return for service and a portion of the materials raised.  They are part of the soil, without the right to depart from their duties or subservience to the landlord.  The barons, earls and other noblemen domineer in their castles and strongholds, their names, offices and privileges derived from their ownership and control of the land ; though in a feudal system, they also owe these rights to the overlord, the king or prince who, until late in medieval history is without a fixed abode, and progresses through his territory with his imemdiate family and entourage of courtiers and knights.  As places that do not change within history, except by accidents, the inhabitants are almost legendary figures, each generation more or less replicating the previous. 

Suburbs

The territory « under the city », running around the outside of the walls of great towns, ambiguously owned by the citizens and burghers who dwell and work within the walls as a rule but surround the city for comfort, health and and cultural freedom.  Often, too, the peasants who till the soil and watch the herds and flocks live there, all allowed to seek shelter inside the walls in times of invasion and other danger. 

Walls of the City

Though primarily for physical protection against marauding invaders and other enemies beyond the cultivated spaces and wastelands, the walls also represent a symbolic boundary between inside and outside, politically, to be sure, but also magically, mythically and spieritually.  The inside is specifically civilized area, the civitas, the polis, the urbs, the world of humanity and of law, order and divine protection.  Those within are citizens, burghers, historical persons.  Yet the city also contains its own protective citadels, ecclasiastical bastons such as cathedrals and free headquarters of the various guilds that constitute the corporate community of the historical inhabitants.  Sometimes, too, aristocrats and royalty have rights to dwell alongside the burghers in their own palaces, hotels and mansions.

Gates

To enter the city, to breach the walls, there are gates, portals, closed at night and in times of danger, open in the morning to allow egress and exit, but always under control to guard against intrusion, to collect taxes, and to receive gifts. 

The labyrinthine streets

Another form of physical protection inside the city are the winding maze of narrow streets and alleys, forcing all who enter to walk or ride slowly, impeding the rush of invaders, gradually absorbing visitors, digesting the population.  Only in modern times are buildings bulldozed down and boulevards extended to create open passage ways for commercial transport, large mounted armies, and later centralized rule by the state. 

Squares, plazas, yards : open spaces

In erratic desig, the city opens into small spaces for merchants to sell their wares, ecclesiastical procsssions to move about, guild officials to display their presence, and ordinary citizens to gather and converse.  There are such spaces in front of cathedrals and guildhalls, sometimes these large stone structures set out around a large open area, also marked by symbolic and functional furniture, such as fountains, archways, and shrines.

Public Buildings and Ecclesiastical Structures : Externals walls, façades as scenery

These imposing buildings are built to enclose space and create indoors volume for the activities of the ruling classes, to be sure, but also designed to be seen without, their painted and carved exterior walls setting forth in emblematic and representational terms their power and relationship to the unseen universe above and beyond the boudnaries of history.  They are the visible signs to of the dramatic activities performed in religious, civic and royal festivals.

Fountains, arches, and other permanent or temporary props

Permanent and temporary structures act as settings for the plays that are performed, first as festive processionals through the winding streets and into the various plazas and courtyards , and then from those open spaces into large enclosed areas, the theatrical halls and chambers for the private aspects of the drama. 

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[i] S. J. Tambiah, “A Performative Approach to Ritual,” Proceedings of the British Academy, vol. LXV, 1979 (London: Oxford University Press, 1981) p. 115.