[In the following essay, Winser claims that The Garland of Laurel is the “narrative account of a complex entertainment” intended for performance at a Christmas festival.]

Deep within the heart of the action in The Garlande of Laurell at a bright moment when the laurel tree itself is raised in view on a magnificent pageant, Skelton translates from The Aeneid:

And Jopas his instrument dyd auaunce
The poemes and stories auncient in brynges
Of Athlas astrology, and many noble thynges
Of wandryng of the mone the course of the son
Of men and of bestes, and whereof they begone.(1)

When Virgil's Jopas played the lyre at Carthage, “the noise of banquet [had] ceased” in the royal palace, “the board [had been] cleared,” and “great bowls [of] wine” had been set before the guests. “Blazing cressets [hung] from netted gold, and torches rout[ed] the night with flame”² as the minstrel sweetly instructed Dido's court in the mysteries of creation. So, too, I think, in a similar moment of amplitude and delight achieved in The Garlande of Laurell, Jopas entertains the English court at a Tudor feast. Skelton's Jopas is only one of many classical characters whose roles could have been filled by singers, musicians, actors, dancers, and the guests disguised in The Garlande of Laurell, a published poem about a feast. I propose, tentatively, that Skelton's poem is the narrative account of a complex entertainment, an early Tudor Disguising, designed by Skelton for performance at a splendid Christmas fête. No less an authority than Ben Jonson reminds us that “At such a time / As Christmas, when disguising is afoot … Methinks you should inquire … after Skelton.”³

Of all calendar feasts, the twelve days of Christmas, a time of peace on earth, were singularly important for the development of the English Disguising. The time of year indicated first and last in The Garlande of Laurell is that of the mid-winter feast of peace. Skelton informs us that Mars has “put up his sworde” and can “make no warre” (l. 5) while Janus, prince of the months and custodian of the universe, is “makynge his almanak for the newe yere” (l. 1516)—two sure signs of the most popular season for disguising. Although a spectacular Midsummer Sight is dramatically revealed at the feast of The Garlande, the immediate season is winter, at least one long night when Skelton and his friends entertain one another with “singular pleasures to dryue away the tyme” (l. 524).

As the season indicated in Skelton's poem is a traditional one for feasting and disguise, so, too, is the place suggested as locus for the action—namely, the banquet hall, showcase for Tudor art and drama. When The Garlande opens, Skelton catches above him a glimpse of the “zodiake … a farre” (ll. 1-2), all twelve signs, painted, most likely, upon a “voluell” (1.1517) or on the inner roof of hall or tent.⁴ When The Garlande concludes, that roof vibrates to the sound of applause for Skelton's entertainment. Indeed, he tells us, “the sterry heven me thought shoke with the shout” (l. 1508). Though a powerful sound, the shout does not raise the roof from the hall like the wind in 1520 that blew away the celestial roof from the French banquet house at Ardres cancelling performance of all Disguisings.

Sharing Skelton's perspective, we are invited to “beholde and se” (l. 808) the exceptional opulence of the setting. There appears a pavilion “passynge goodly … to be holde” (l. 42); a rich “clothe of estate” hangs “glorious[ly]” above a throne (l. 484); expensive “clothes of Arace” (l. 475) are on view. It seems that the hall has been especially decorated for the occasion of Skelton's entertainment, and beneath its “sterry” ceiling (l. 403) a multi-level action unfolds.

In general, the level of action, or, at least, our perspective on it, shifts to different vertical planes in The Garlande as Skelton, the dreamer-presenter, proceeds from a wooded “place” (l. 8) at ground level, up to the battlement of Fame's palace wall (l. 570), and then either up or down by “wynding stayre” (l. 767)⁵ to a “chambre” (l. 768) in the palace. Sometime later he finds himself once again in the “place” (l. 1103) where his climb had originated, Fame's high court “aboue the sterry skye” (l. 403). As its title page indicates, The Garlande is a “process,”⁶ that is, an “onward movement in space; [or] a progression” (OED). All of the action—and there is considerable movement on horizontal planes as well—seems to occur before, upon, or within four spectacular pageant structures, some mobile, others fixed, in the banquet hall.

A favorite royal pageant, sometimes decorated with representations of animal life,⁷ was the forest, a simulated piece of woodland that could transform the indoor hall into an outdoor setting. The Garlande opens in such a “frytthy forest” (l. 22) as Skelton, wearing the mummer's traditional green “mose” (l. 23), leans sleepily upon the “stumpe / Of a [leafless] oke” singled out amidst the “huge myghty okes” and other “tre[s]” (l. 277). Decorated, perhaps, with the images of “hynde calfe” (l. 26) and “hartes” (l. 24), Skelton's forest, like other Tudor pageants, is movable. We are told that its trees can both “auance” (l. 279) and “sterte … backe” (l. 282). Near enough to the forest for Skelton to overhear a debate between Pallas and Fame appears a sparkling golden “pauylion” (l. 38), or “tent” (l. 283).

The pavilion of gold, like the forest pageant, seems to have been suggested to the revels by the tournament; with dramatic swiftness it could make its appearance at a feast. On Twelfth Night in 1515 the “tent of clothe of golde … sodainlye entered”⁸ the hall at Greenwich where it served as a scene for the evening's entertainment. So, too, the golden tent makes a quick entry at the feast of The Garlande: “Sodaynly at ones” (l. 36), says Skelton, “I sawe [the] pauylion” (l. 38), its “grounde engrosed and bet [inlaid] with bourne [burnished] golde” (l. 41). Inside the glowing tent, just as she had been seated in her golden pavilion in the lists at Henry the Eighth's coronation tournament,⁹ Dame Pallas appears “syttyng” (l. 448), the player who “represent[s]” (l. 47) her, framed in gold for a stirring debate with the Queen of Fame. “Wonderfly disguised” (l. 38), Pallas's tent remains the visual focal point for a good portion of Skelton's Disguising. It surely seems to be one of those “decorative surprises”¹⁰ designed by court artists for the Tudor feast.

An even more fantastic display piece than the regal tent was the pageant castle or palace sometimes fixed in a stationary position at one end of the hall where it served multiple purposes: it could be used as a royal box for the ladies of court, raising them above the feast to see and be seen; or, functioning as a pas, its embattled walls and gates could be assaulted in military play.¹¹ Covered with vanes, pinnacles, turrets, and towers, the mock palace often “bristle[d]”¹² with decoration.

Its many “turrettes and towres … so curiosly, so craftly, so counnyngly wrought” (l. 459-61), a “riche palace” (l. 450) of Dame Fame serves as the set for most of the action in Skelton's entertainment. In front of its bejewelled facade the Queen of Fame holds court (ll. 484-560; 1103-1511); in one of its compartments (l. 768), the Countess of Surrey and her ladies are raised above the feast to create Skelton's personal hat; and, from its battlement, a pas, Skelton observes a foolish assault upon the English gate (l. 602 ff). When Skelton first progresses “in to” (l. 450) the palace of Fame, it seems that he has merely moved from the site of Pallas's tent into a nearby area of the same banquet hall. At least six times (ll. 8, 59, 476, 481, 561, 1103) in the text of The Garlande occurs the well-known stage term, the “place,” a word easily, perhaps purposely, confused with Fame's “palace” (l. 459) and even with Dame “palais” (ll. 121, 219). These similar, recurring words may indicate Skelton's deliberate attempt to transform in imagination the immediate “place” of the hall into the celestial Palace of Fame. As André Chastel indicates, “le lieu de la fête” cannot be finally defined as an interior or an exterior, for, “entièrement imaginaire,” it possesses an “ambiguité spécifique.”¹³ Like the maskers who performed within it, the Tudor hall itself would be disguised.

During the long night of a mid-winter fête when “Boriall wyndes” (l. 261) could chill the hall each time a door opened to admit maskers or entremets, it was particularly desirable to recall the summer's warmth and greenery. A simulated arbor or garden created from artificial foliage and house plants was often introduced in Tudor revels to create a delightful confusion of the seasons. Exactly such an “herber” (l. 652)—also called a “Paradyse” (l. 717)—is “brought” (l. 652) into view at Skelton's feast of The Garlande, its green leaves “immoystred with mislyng [misting] and ay droppng dry” (l. 698). Taking pre-eminence amidst the vegetation on this fourth, apparently mobile, pageant, the “goodly laurell … continually grene” (ll. 665-66) stands in eternal disregard of the seasons.

Not unlike a spectacular “Goldyn Arber”¹⁴ that carried at least thirty entertainers, including William Cornish, into the revels at Whitehall in February, 1511, Skelton's “herber” is the scene of considerable activity. “Upon [its] goodly soile” (l. 679) the nine Muses dance with Phillis (from φύλλον: leaf) and Flora, “quene / Of somer” (ll. 685-6). And “carols” (l. 705) are being performed, the songs that were a “gesture of welcome … at … Christmas, a great secular feast.”¹⁵ Along with Apollo, whose “harpestringes” are “twinklyng” (l. 687), Virgil's Jopas entertains. Since Skelton is standing upon the embattled wall of Fame when he describes the “herber,” like him, the central scene of the pageant is probably raised high above the floor of the hall, a version, perhaps, of the fertile mountain so often rolled into the Tudor fête. In Faukes's edition of The Garlande the pageant is called “an herber” signifying, not impossibly, an arbor for le jour de l'an. If it reached up toward the starry roof, then Jopas's learned songs about the Pliades and Atlas (supporter of the sky) would gain meaning, truly a high point in Skelton's entertainment.

From the mobile forest and golden tent to the embattled castle and paradisal arbor, each set required for the “proces” of The Garlande of Laurell resembles a major type of pageant structure known to have been utilized for entertainments at Tudor feasts. Further, each type is on record as having appeared at a fête during the Christmas season; sometimes they are even found in the same combination as in The Garlande. If, as I have suggested, Skelton's poem is the account of an entertainment designed for performance, then it required no more unusual entremets than those which regularly delighted guests at the mid-winter feast.

Keeping the “sets” in mind, let us turn to the action of The Garlande and ask, first, if Skelton's text indicates “the appearance of a group of masquers—the sine qua non of an orthodox masque”¹⁶ or Disguising. Whatever multiple activities might be planned for entertainment at a Tudor feast it was especially important that some of the participants be given a chance to make impressive entries into the party, their way lit by torches, their appearance ceremoniously prepared for by music or speech, and their identity obscured by disguise. A sophisticated mumming, this “arrival of certain persons visored and disguised,” Enid Welsford reminds us, is the “essence of … Court masquerade.”¹⁷

Indeed there are dramatic entries to be made at Skelton's feast, the first by certain “noble” (l. 1122) “men” (l. 200) disguised as famous orators and poets laureate. Just as the character Dame Pallas presents the poets to view in Jonson's The Golden Age Restored,¹⁸ so, too, the goddess decides to “take a vewe / What poets we have” (ll. 237-8) in The Garlande of Laurell, providing the essential “motive for the arrival of masquers.”¹⁹ The music of “minstrels” (l. 270) who first “come in” (l. 269) to the hall further prepares for Skelton's masque, a long procession of garlanded figures headed by Apollo. Many details of the procession suggest its nature as a Mumming-Disguising.²⁰ Every one of the “poetes laureate”²¹ who, it appears, had earlier been represented in Lydgate's Mumming for the London Mercers reappears in Skelton's procession (of his ancestral spirits). In line now is Lydgate himself, who, dressed in a dazzling “taberde” (l. 395),²² joins with Chaucer, Gower, and the rest to bring the total number of Skelton's maskers to thirty-eight poets named. “Eight and thirty persons as maskers,”²³ we are informed by Holinshed, rode to a banquet at the Field of Cloth of Gold in 1520. “Thirtie and six persons … in … suyte[s] of fyne Green satyn … and masking hoods,”²⁴ we are told by Hall, entered a feast given by Wolsey in 1519. Not only has Skelton provided an opportunity for disguising in traditional roles in The Garlande, but he has required for his first masque of Poets exactly the same number of persons counted as maskers at other regal fêtes on record.

“Men,” says Skelton, “make [a] mummyng” (l. 200) of the poets. At his own feast, however, the men, I think, are joined by a second set of maskers, most likely the “gentylwomen” (l. 782), whose entry in disguise is even more spectacular than that of the men. Brilliantly revealed atop Skelton's paradisal arbor, the second group of maskers dance about the laurel; they are disguised in the classical roles of Flora, Phillis, Thestylis, and the Muses. In Lydgate's Mumming at Bishopswood we cannot be sure who may have performed the same classical parts, but by the time of Samuel Daniel's The Vision of the Twelve Goddesses we know that a queen and her ladies would choose “to represent” the goddesses.²⁵ Perhaps the same sorts of “skarfes for the ix Muzes”²⁶ ordered by the Revels Office for an entertainment in 1572 were also available for use by maskers in Skelton's Garlande when the Muses joined and, no doubt, inspired the Poets.

Not impossibly, the Countess of Surrey herself and her ladies “aboue” (l. 771. i. e., her heavenly ladies)²⁷ went disguised as the Muses on Skelton's arbor, where, making “game … with chapplettes and garlandes grene” (ll. 683-84) they warm up to weave Skelton's own garland. Would they not fulfill Francis Bacon's requirement for a masque?

Let the masquers, or any other that are to come down from the scene have some motions upon the scene itself before their coming down, for it draws the eye strangely, and makes it with great pleasure to desire to see that it cannot perfectly discern.²⁸

Both their “game” with garlands and their beauty would be more “perfectly discern[ed]” in Skelton's entertainment when, no longer obscured by “mist” (l. 651) on the arbor nor netted in masking disguise, the Countess and her ladies might reappear in order to create Skelton's own garland and to receive his blazoning lyrics. The number of dancing goddesses first named on the paradisal arbor, twelve, corresponds almost exactly to the number of gentlewomen addressed in Skelton's poems.

When Ben Jonson complimented Skelton for his ability to devise Disguisings no doubt he meant Skelton's skill in creating appropriate masking roles that would place certain guests in view at the right dramatic juncture of the feast, allow them to march, sing, dance, bear gifts, perhaps even display their talent in weaving and embroidery. Had Jonson read The Garlande of Laurell I think he would have found in it one of his own favorite dramatic devices—the double masque, “one of men and the other of women.”²⁹

Having observed two opportunities for masking, the essential feature of court masquerade, we shall now examine each of four central events in Skelton's entertainment, discussing their motivation and their nature as drama. At a regal fête the first course of dramatic fare was often a debate, a rousing dispute between Youth and Riches, Wit and Witlessness, or Venus and Ceres, introducing a central theme and motivating, however slightly, each event in the ensuing entertainment. Seated beneath the spacious cosmic ceiling of the banquet house at Greenwich in 1527, the guests were first entertained by “two persones [who] plaied a dialog th'effect wherof was whether riches wer better than love.”³⁰ When the issue could not be settled in debate, six knights attempted to settle it by fighting at barriers. Their struggle ended in a draw; next, in a philosophical speech, a mysterious, bearded actor avowed the equal importance of both Riches and Love. The multi-sided entertainment was finally converted into a harmonious expression of agreement between Riches and Love when several rich gentlemen joined several lovely ladies in a dance. No matter how violently two debators might initially disagree, nor how many subsequent events might arise from their debate, the entertainment had to conclude in harmony. As early as the Christmas “disguysing” at Hertford, Lydgate had prescribed an open-ended “iugement” to resolve the “mortal debate”³¹ he devised.

An immortal debate between Pallas and Fame is the first major event in The Garlande of Laurell, its subject—Skelton's poetry and reputation. On the one hand, Dame Pallas, framed by her golden pavilion like the goddess in a Jonsonian epiphany, defends Skelton's silences and satires; she blames Fame (society's representative) for unending criticism of Skelton (the creative artist's representative) and for lack of discretion in distributing her rewards. In rebuttal, Fame contends that Skelton is lazy and his poetry only bitter. Alternately shielding and criticizing its own candid author, this opening debate motivates every one of the ensuing events in Skelton's entertainment. Indeed, Skelton, his guests (hosts?), the players, and other entertainers act in response to specific requirements of both Pallas and Fame, thereby resolving their “discorde” (l. 214) and effecting in the ideal world of the court masque a harmony between the debating dieties.

Generally more demanding than her sister Pallas, Fame requires that Skelton's books, “what he hath done … be brought to syght” (l. 230, italics mine), an act accomplished at the feast when Occupacion carries in a decorated manuscript catalogue of Skelton's works and reads from it, while some of his “bokes” (l. 1139) are placed in view. The reading of the catalogue and the book display are at once the most complete demonstration of the ground for Skelton's fame and the most apparent obstacle to our conceiving of The Garlande as drama. Upon examination, however, Occupacion's reading, formally announced by a rubric in Skelton's text (following l. 1169), proves to be an entertaining action.

From all indications, Tudor audiences enjoyed being read to by “pleasant mad-headed knaves … properly learned … in diverse pleasant bookes.”³² Even the recitation of an itemized list could serve for entertainment. The fifty-five items in Occupacion's catalogue scarcely approach in total the more than ninety items listed by four different players in Heywood's Foure P's, an interlude that demonstrates a Tudor fondness for junk, as it forces its audience to endure the Pedlar's trifling display of revel stuff, the Pardoner's silly relics, the Potecary's enumeration of his funny, phony medicines, and the namedropping Palmer's list of almost forty shrines.³³ As three of Heywood's lists are accompained in action by a display of properties, so, too, when Occupacion's player reads their titles from the catalogue, some of Skelton's individual books were surely brought into view “for men to loke on” (l. 127). I am not certain what Ian Gordon means when he says that “the reading of [Skelton's] works … becomes a triumphal progress,”³⁴ but, indeed, Skelton, active in his own entertainment at that moment, indicates that the audience “shal se … parte … of [his] bokes” (l. 1139, italics mine). If each “boke” displayed was as handsomely decorated as Occupacion's catalogue, then the episode resembles less the unpacking of a pedlar's trunk and more the brilliant display of armor at a Tudor tournament.

In two ways Skelton breaks up Occupacion's reading of the catalogue to keep it from becoming dull: first, into her list he places a lively example of Skeltonics (ll. 1261-1375), his famous verse form that demands to be read aloud; second, he himself interrupts Occupacion to protest the inclusion of an item on the list (l. 1477). Are these not actions of a skilled dramatist who, knowing the potential doldrums of lectures, works to keep the reading of his list an actionfilled event? From the moment that she ceremoniously unclasps the catalogue cover to the time when she slams it shut, Occupacion gives a dramatic performance that would have delighted Skelton's audience. Surely they thought it no breech of etiquette to have his books read at their table.

We must wonder if Occupacion's “boke of remembrance” (l. 1149), Fame's required “memoriall” (l. 118), was presented to a royal guest at Skelton's feast. Like the decorated manuscript of The Tale of Hemetes once presented by Gascoigne to Elizabeth as a New Year's gift,³⁵ Occupacion's book would have made an impressive regal present. Indeed, in the setting of “Fame's courte” (l. 738) Skelton does extend to the Countess of Surrey and her ladies eleven complimentary lyrics written in “golde” (l. 939), apparently the same aurum musicum in which several calligraphic lines of Occupacion's catalogue are also composed (l. 1167).

Skelton's dramatic composition of the lyrics, like the dramatic reading and book display, is carefully motivated in the opening debate. It is Fame who requires her laureate—his poetry sometimes too bitter—to “purchace / The fauour of ladys with wordes electe” (ll. 75-76). Her challenge, similar to a tournament call for defense of the honor of dames,³⁶ becomes the excuse for an entertaining fray as Skelton, swearing a solemn oath and sharpening his pen, enters the lists of literature, his inspiration the ladies of Sheriff Hutton, his opponent and theirs—oblivion. Showing no less courage than a Gawain or a Galahad, Skelton wields his pen amidst the “prease” (l. 958), that is, the crowd at the feast, until he nearly “faynt[s]” in the seventh lyric (l. 954). Was this deed of literary arms accomplished at the usual “desk at the foot” of a “pageant”³⁷ in the hall? The Garlande of Laurell truly becomes a lyric feast when Skelton appears to create his poems before the very eyes of the guests.

Writing, like reading, becomes a dramatic, creative event in The Garlande, an entertainment by a poet who spent much of his life recommending to the Tudor court the value of both reading and writing. His sweet lyrics are not only required by Fame; their creation also appears to be Skelton's immediate response to the delightful gift of a garland with which the Countess of Surrey seems to have surprised him. Each event in an entertainment was supposed to appear as if it arose spontaneously no matter how carefully planned in advance the potlatch might have been. Skelton's lyrics for the Countess and her ladies, like the flattering lyrical fortunes spun from the air by Ben Jonson's gypsies for the Countess of Exeter and other ladies viewing The Gypsies Metamorphosed,³⁸ were, no doubt, prepared in advance for presentation at the feast. Whether they were recited for all the guests to enjoy or simply handed to the ladies, Skelton's poems in fine gold paint anticipate the “pozies [in] ffayer wryting … for the Mask”³⁹ mentioned in Elizabethan Revel Accounts.

When understood in the context of the Tudor fête, The Garlande of Laurell is much less the “odd poem” that Ian Gordon found it to be.⁴⁰ Each event is ordered by a Goddess, a required course, at it were, in a feast designed to drive away the winter night. There are many roles to be played.

As important for the success of Skelton's entertainment as his own active role in displaying books and composing poems are at least two parallel, complementary actions to be performed by his “noble audience” (l. 1122), actions that, once again, are motivated by the Pallas-Fame debate. First, is the creating of Skelton's personal garland by the ladies of Sheriff Hutton. As if for public view, the sort of living, moving entremet that appeared regularly in royal fêtes and progresses,⁴¹ the scene in which the garland takes shape is revealed in Fame's palace, the Countess, her ladies and their domestic gear set off and framed by a “goodly chambre of astate” (l. 768). Covered with leaves, flowers, birds in bowers and, like a tournament prize, awarded to Skelton only after he has successfully defended the honor of ladies, the green garland hat is extremely important. Not only does it enable Skelton to “were the laurell” (l. 68) at the feast, Fame's requirement of her poet, but also, a very expensive gift, its presentation to Skelton fulfills the initial requirement of Pallas that society “rewarde” (l. 779) her poets. Skelton's recreation as poet laureate is a happy act of reconciliation between Pallas and Fame.

As remarkable as Skelton's hat appeared, it was, I think, a valuable gift. At a party one is aware of the quality of the plate, the linen, the utensils and decorations. By the discerning eye a “counterfoot vessel,”⁴² that is, a plated or gilt substitute, can be distinguished from the vessel of real silver or gold. So, too, as Hall is our witness,⁴³ at the Tudor feast one could tell the difference between cheap and expensive masking hats or robes. As for the value of Skelton's garland hat, studded with precious “perle[s]” and “stones bryght” (l. 1108), we are told that “all other besyde [it] were countrefet” (l. 1106). No doubt it was a fat purse, a gift for Skelton on a night when the ladies got their poems, a royal guest may have gotten a book, and everybody surely got something to eat.

At the conclusion of his entertainment, like a freshly enthroned prince who hears a skald recite his heroic deeds, Skelton sits, crowned prince of the Christmas feast, listening to Occupacion read his catalogue of books. Much as the laurel tree had earlier been encircled by maskers on the paradisal arbor, Skelton himself is finally surrounded by the Poets and Muses, his friends. He has experienced a curious Ovidian metamorphosis into the laurel tree, having exchanged his “stumpe” (l. 17), dead at the top, for the fantastic, flourishing crown.⁴⁴ However much Skelton's critics may frown at his “vanity”⁴⁵ in The Garlande—an entertainment enlivened by self-parody and equal opportunity for vanity by others than the poet—the wearing of the laurel crown was proper for a banquet. As Percy Schramm reminds us in A History of the English Coronation, “banquets … are the occasion for once more making the rungs of the social ladder clearly distinct. One man may wear this costume or that chain, while another may not.”⁴⁶

Demonstrating good judgement by expressing approval for Skelton's laurel, the entire “noble audience” (l. 1122) plays a final role at the feast. Their concluding shout of “triumpha, triumpha” (l. 1506) fulfills Pallas's demand that society properly recognize her poets. That Skelton himself should have prescribed their judgment seems less brazen when we recall that both Lydgate and Heywood⁴⁷ composed “judgements” for the conclusion of their entertainments. Like applause at the end of a good play, the shout also signals approval for an entertainment that has passed, for its spectacular entremets, its musicians and maskers with costumes and gifts; perhaps it is a shout of approval for the entire system of Tudor endowment for the humanities. Skelton's own career becomes a symbol of Everyartist's struggle for inspiration, creation, courage, subsidy, and recognition. Indeed, the concluding shout is essential, not simply because Skelton had paid for it by flattering certain guests, nor even because he had earned it by writing a good number of books, but because the strife of debate in an entertainment designed for the banquet hall had, finally, to be resolved in expressions of harmony.

Did the Muses also dance with the Poets at Skelton's feast? If so, the event is not recorded. Too “longe [it] were to reherce” (l. 706), says Skelton, everything that occurred the night he put on his hat.

Translating the rituals of gift exchange into a “debate enacted before an audience,”⁴⁸ Skelton has given a literary frame to the celebration of the Christmas feast. The initial “discorde” (l. 214) of the Pallas-Fame debate is resolved, if only for an illusory moment, in the “ideal and celestial masque world,”⁴⁹ the result, perhaps, of a tremendous cooperative effort between Skelton, the maskers who arrived on cue, the artists who designed the entremets, the professional entertainers who delivered speeches, sang, played musical instruments or danced, and the waiters who would surely have served each dish on time. Many people may have worked hard to observe and enjoy the “wel ordered”⁵⁰ feast of The Garlande.

But disorder was not disallowed, nor could it always be prevented at a Tudor fête. During Christmas, especially on Twelfth Night, a calculated disorder formed part of the entertainment, setting off, as a foil, the essential good order and harmony of the celebration. Various dramatic means were devised for introducing disorder into a Tudor entertainment. For example, at just the right moment during an interlude, a fire-spitting dragon might be loosed in the hall,⁵¹ or wild horses might suddenly appear, only to be tamed by allegorical figures such as Prudence, Friendship, and Might.⁵² Like the professional fool, a frequent representative of disorder was the savage woodwose who might be set loose to leap in dangerous dance before he was driven by force from the hall. One of the wildest animals admitted to the hall, perhaps by a careless doorkeeper, was the huge crowd of spectators, feast-finders, who sometimes ran amok, dismantling pageants and stripping the noble guests; even the crowd, however, could contribute its chaos at the right moment.

Twice at Skelton's feast of The Garlande dramatic disorder erupts and, like a wild horse, is brought under control. At first it is the crowd of “claterars” (l. 241) who, as if a police rope had suddenly been lowered after the Pallas-Fame debate, “pres in fast” (l. 248), heaving and shoving, their “wonderful noyse” (l. 247) finally quelled by the “dredeful dinne” (l. 264) of Aeolus's trumpet. Perhaps an expression of pressure let off by the spectators who had just attended to the close reasoning of Pallas and Fame, the sudden sea of noise contrasts sharply not only with the debaters' careful argument but also with the minstrels' “heuenly armony” (l. 274) next triumphant.

The second episode of cultivated chaos in The Garlande takes the form of a “saute” (l. 1398), i. e., assault, upon the castle of Fame. As Skelton and Occupacion “passe” (l. 565) along the battlement, they witness below a mass attack by “dicers, carders,” and “tumblars” (l. 608) against the English gate, whose construction, Skelton informs us, is “passing commendable” (l. 589, italics mine) and whose heraldic leopard is “passing formidable” (l. 591, italics mine). That is to say, the embattled wall and gate of Fame's castle serve as the pas for a “passing” in a pas d'armes. Many a mock castle, such as the “Dangerous Fortress,” “Chasteau Blanche,” and the “Castle of Loyaltie” served in Tudor halls and lists as the pas to be defended and attacked in martial play.⁵³ In the fourteenth century the pas d'armes had been a deadly warlike contest, but by Skelton's era the element of real combat was “sacrificed to the elements of … disguising.”⁵⁴ Indeed, a mock battle become a regular feature of court Disguisings.⁵⁵

In addition to the woodwose and tumbler, the professional fool sometimes took part in mock combat. As early as 1468 at Bruges “a court fool”⁵⁶ rode into the lists seated between a pair of panniers (baskets). Much later, in the Revels Accounts for Edward VI we find reference to “a devise … for a combat to be foughte with William “Somer” [the famous fool] and” … for mask heddes.”⁵⁷ We can only guess what Somer's cry of attack would have been when, mounted in a saddle on the back of another fool or on a hobby horse, he charged at the pas in the hall.

A startling figure is spotted among the assailants of Fame's castle, the pas in The Garlande of Laurell:

And one ther was there, I wondered of his hap
For a gunstone I say had all to lagged his cap.
Ragged and dagged and cunnyngly cut
The blast of the brymston blew away his braine
Mased as a marche hare, he ran lyke a scut.

(ll. 628-32)

Is this not the fool, England's most popular entertainer? He seems to wear the well-known “cap,” a coxcomb “ragged and dagged”; and it is wet, or “to lagged” (OED lag; lage; lagge: water or urine). When the “gunnes” (l. 623) are fired from Fame's castle, perhaps the fool has water poured over him from above, a regular treatment of fools at their feast.⁵⁸ In 1522, “to a great peale of gunnes” fired at a super party given by Wolsely, “rose water” was showered down from the battlement of a mock castle upon its assailants who, in turn, hurled back oranges and dates at the pas.⁵⁹

Once struck on the head—his ragged hat a vivid contrast to Skelton's lovely garland—the fool runs like a “scut”⁶⁰ from the hall. And “diuers” of his companions⁶¹ are “caried away” from Fame's castle in “cribbes” (l. 640), i. e., in baskets. Such “panniers” had accompanied the fool into the lists in 1468, and a similar basket would someday convey Falstaff, another doused fool, from Mrs. Ford's into the Thames.

The assorted characters who threatened the Tudor feast were not always driven from the hall; though defeated, they might remain in view after the mock battle. In Gesta Greyorum, for instance, once the allegorical figures Envy, Male-Content, and Folly-enemies of Prince Purpoole—have been overpowered, they are led in chains about the dining hall—proof of Purpoole's triumph. So, too, shortly after the pas d'armes in The Garlande we learn that Envious Rancour, enemy of Skelton and the “holle realme” (l. 758), is still audible, if not visible in the hall. The “diddil diddil” (l. 740) of his “fiddill,” however, is no match for the bright, “twinklyng” sounds of Citheus and Jopas.⁶²

Immediately after the mimic battle, the second threat to Skelton's feast (and, I think, a fully developed antimasque), darkness suddenly engulfs the hall:

Somtyme as it semeth whan the mone lyght
By meanes of a grosely endarked clowde,
Sodainly is eclipsed in the wynter nyght
In like maner of wyse …
In darkness thus dwelt we.

(ll. 644-50)

It is the only moment of blackness in the whole entertainment, and, like the dramatic blackouts in Ben Jonson's masques, it is preparatory to the entry of a spectacular pageant.⁶³ Just as the noisy tumult of the crowd had first been triumphed over by the orderly procession of ministrels and Poets, so, too, the confusion and smell of battle climaxed in absolute darkness are dramatically replaced by the sweet and brilliant Paradise of Muses. The double assault of Disorder upon Skelton's feast has been doubly defeated by the maskers.

When the magnificent Paradise sheds its simulated, but strong, summer light upon the feast, Skelton insists upon the intensity of the radiance: the “son beams” are so bright that one can even see the “ensilured” scales of fish swimming in the waters of a fountain on the pageant. Atop the laurel tree “fyre” (l. 669) from a phoenix provides a source of light. The emblematic bird appears to serve the same purpose as a “goodly beacon giving light” on top of a mountain pageant displayed at Greenwich in 1513.⁶⁴ When Skelton's Paradise of light is revealed, it seems that the only thing needed to complement his text is a stage direction such as the one entered by Jonson at a similar dramatic juncture in The Golden Age Restored when “doubtful darkness yield[s]” to Elysium: “The scene of light discovered.”⁶⁵

Whether or not The Garlande of Laurell is ever accepted as an account or, possibly, an example of an early Tudor Disguising and finds its way into a revision of W. W. Greg's List of Masques [and] Pageants (London, 1902), Skelton's poem must remain of interest to students of the drama. All the essential features of a Disguising seem to be present-introductory speeches, pageants, a double set of maskers, a mimic battle. For the ceremony and celebration attending gift exchange at a Christmas fête Skelton may have designed his spectacular masque to be performed by himself, his hosts, and an array of entertainers, including the professional fool. The case for our conceiving of such role playing is strengthened, I think, by the fact that every character in The Garlande, including Skelton, appears as a dramatic role in other plays and entertainments of the renaissance.⁶⁶

Notes

1. In Pithy, pleasaunt and profitable workes. Printed by Thomas Marshe, 1568. ll. 688-92. Line numbering is my own. Unless otherwise noted, all citations of The Garlande are taken from this edition.

2. The Aeneid, trans. J. W. Mackail (London: Macmillan, 1920), p. 22.

3. The Fortunate Isles, ll. 170-74. In The Complete Masques, ed. Stephen Orgel (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1969). All further citations of Jonson's masques are taken from this edition.

4. In Spectacle, Pageantry, and Early Tudor Policy (Oxford: Clarendon, 1969) Sydney Anglo indicates that a “cosmological design” (p. 163) consistently is a leading architectural feature of the banquet house. Skelton's “voluell” (l. 1517), a circulating wheel, is a most appropriate pageant mechanism to appear at Yule (AS hwéol), the feast of the wheel.

5. The “wyndying stayre” sometimes was built into a pageant. Cf. the “two winding pairs of stairs” for masquers built into the artificial rock in Chapman's Masque, 1613, cited by Millar Maclure, George Chapman: A Critical Study (Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 1966), p. 232.

6. A Garlande of Laurell, printed by R. Faukes in 1523, t. p.

7. Cf. the “pageaunt like to a forest” with “semblauntes of buckes & dooes” that appeared in Henry VIII's coronation festivities. John Hardying, Chronicle, ed. Henry Ellis (London: F. C. and J. Rivington, et. al., 1812), p. 593.

8. Edward Hall, Chronicle (London: J. Johnson et. al., 1809), p. 580.

9. Ibid., p. 511.

10. Erna Auerbach, Tudor Artists (London: The Athlone Press, 1954), p. 9.

11. Examples of the mock palace as a pas are numerous. See, for one instance, “the castle of Loyaltie” in Hall's Chronicle, p. 688.

12. Anglo, Spectacle, p. 65.

13. “Le Lieu de la Fête” in Les fêtes de la Renaissance, ed. Jean Jacquot (Paris: Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1956), I, 420.

14. Richard Gibson, “Revels,” in Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, ed. John S. Brewer (London: Longman, 1864), Vol. II, Part II, p. 1490.

15. E. F. Jacob, The Fifteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon, 1961), p. 661.

16. Enid Welsford, The Court Masque (New York: Russell & Russell, 1962), p. 213.

17. Welsford, p. 3.

18. The Complete Masques, p. 228. Like Skelton, Jonson gives speaking parts to the players of Chaucer, Gower, and Lydgate.

19. Welsford, p. 152. Ultimately, Pallas wants to see if Skelton will join the other poets.

20. An important poem that Skelton had no doubt read was Petrarch's Trionfi in which there appears a procession of poets from the classical era up to Petrarch's own generation. Tudor pageantry was deeply influenced by the Trionfi. See the introduction to Lord Morley's Tryumphes of Fraunces Petrarcke, ed. D. D. Carnicelli (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1971).

21. The Minor Poems of John Lydgate, ed., Henry N. MacCracken (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1961), II, 696, l. 35. All further citations of Lydgate's poems are taken from this edition.

22. A canvas for heraldic art, the tabard was often painted by the same artists-in-residence at court who designed masking properties. See “Notices of the Contemporaries and Successors of Holbein,” Archaeologia, 29 (1836), 36. Cf. Pallas's “riche abilyment” (l. 44) Occupacion's “araye” (l. 528).

23. Raphael Holinshed, Chronicle (1807-8; rpt. New York: AMS, 1965), III, 654.

24. Chronicle, p. 595.

25. In A Book of Masques (London: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1967), p. 27.

26. Peter Cunningham, Extracts From the Accounts of the Revels at Court in the Reigns of Queen Elizabeth and King James I (1842; rpt. New York: AMS, 1971), p. 18.

27. In Faukes's edition line 771 reads “aboue” though Marshe changes the word to “Bevy.” The earlier reading suggests that the ladies are raised above the feast.

28. “Of Masques and Triumphs,” in Francis Bacon: A Selection of His Works, ed. Sidney Warhaft (Toronto: MacMillan, 1965), p. 145.

29. “Hymenaei,” in The Complete Masques, p. 76, ll. 32-33.

30. Hall, Chronicle, p. 723.

31. Minor Poems, II, 681, l. 216.

32. The English Courtier and the Cuntrey-gentleman, 1586, quoted in Captain Cox, his Ballads and Books, ed. F. J. Furnivall (London: Taylor and Co., 1871), p. xiv.

33. John Heywood, “The Playe Called the Foure PP,” in Chief Pre-Shakespearean Dramas, ed. J. Q. Adams (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1924), pp. 367-8; 370; 374-6.

34. John Skelton, Poet Laureate (1943; rpt. New York: Octagon, 1970), p. 38.

35. C. T. Prouty, George Gascoigne: Elizabethan Courtier, Soldier, and Poet (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1942), p. 90. The tale had been read aloud in an entertainment for Elizabeth at Woodstock.

36. To win “the love of ladies”—those ladies who would watch the tournament, judge it, and award the prizes—was a common motive (or excuse) for Tudor diversion. See Hall, Chronicle, p. 512.

37. Gibson, “Revels,” in Letters and Papers, ed. Brewer, Vol. II, Part II, p. 1496.

38. The Complete Masques, p. 333 ff.

39. Cunningham, ed., Extracts of the Revels, p. 88.

40. John Skelton, Poet Laureate, p. 35.

41. Cf. the pageant display of “spinning,” “knitting,” and “weaving” on view for Elizabeth during a progress to Norwich. In Holinshed, Chronicle, IV, 381.

42. Richard Warner, Antiquitates Culinariae (London: R. Blamire, 1971), p. 99.

43. In his detailed descriptions of court Disguisings, Hall often distinguishes counterfeit cloth of gold from “cappes and whoddes all gold, riche and not counterfeted” (Chronicle, p. 689). A payment of expensive cloth could be the penalty for losing at martial games played in the hall.

44. “Transformation of players into trees was a common action in Tudor court entertainment. In Gascoigne's “The Princely Pleasures at Kenelworth Castle,” for instance, the player of Deep Desire is “metamorphosed” into a “holly bush” and addresses Queen Elizabeth from within the tree. In The Complete Works, ed. J. W. Cunliffe (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1910), II, 126-27. Skelton, of course, becomes the tree that blooms miraculously at Christmas.

45. Eleanor Prescott Hammond, English Verse Between Chaucer and Surrey (1927; rpt. New York: Octagon, 1969), p. 514.

46. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1937), p. 91.

47. See “The Play of the Wether,” in Chief Pre-Shakespearean Dramas, p. 418.

48. Glynne Wickham, Early English Stages (1959; rpt. London: Routledge, 1966), I, 207.

49. John C. Meagher, Methods and Meaning in Jonson's Masques (Notre Dame: Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 1966), p. 68.

50. Hall, Chronicle, p. 595. The best parties ran smoothly.

51. The dragon appeared on Twelfth Night in 1494. See Sydney Anglo. “William Cornish in a Play, Pageants, Prison, and Politics,” Review of English Studies, 10 (1959), 349.

52. Ibid., 359.

53. Hall, Chronicle, passim. During the military segment of the entertainment in the banquet hall at Greenwich in 1527 when three knights “woulde have entred the gate” but were resisted, it was a “gate of the Arche in the middel of the chambre” that served as pas (p. 723).

54. Anglo, Spectacle, p. 98.

55. Examples of the “mimic fight” are numerous. On Twelfth Night in 1515 eight savage men were driven from the hall at Greenwich by eight knights. See Hall, Chronicle, p. 580. At the Kenilworth entertainment for Elizabeth in 1575, the famous Hock Tuesday play was twice performed—a mock battle in which the English defeated the Danes. A curious variation of the mimic fight occurs in another entertainment when the forces of Sylvanus clash with the sea gods, “the one side throwing their darts, and the other using their squirtes” in the “Great Pond in Elvetham,” 1591. See J. Nichols, The Progresses and Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth (London: John Nichols and Son, 1823), III, 115.

56. Robert C. Clephan, The Tournament (1919; rpt. New York: Ungar, 1967), p. 79. The fool made his appearance at the marriage celebrations of Charles Burgundy and Margaret of York.

57. Documents Relating to the Revels at Court in the Time of King Edward VI and Queen Mary, ed. A. Feuillerat (1914; rpt. Vaduz: Kraus, 1963), p. 73.

58. For the custom of drenching the fool see Enid Welsford, The Fool (London: Faber and Faber, 1968), p. 201.

59. Hall, Chronicle, p. 631. Curiously, the guns of the host's real castle, not of the mock castle constructed in the hall, were fired on this occasion.

60. It seems likely that Skelton's entertainment was intended to celebrate one of Surrey's military triumphs over the “scut,” or Scot, as well as Skelton's personal victory over foolishness in the world of letters.

61. In addition to the singular figure of the fool, Skelton sees a “dyssour” and “tumblars” (l. 608) among the assailants of Fame's pas. Exactly such characters sometimes appeared in company with the fool at the court Christmas fête. “Tomblars” and a “disard” made up part of George Ferrers' retinue, Lord of Misrule for Edward VI. See Welsford, The Fool, p. 212. Just such a mixed crowd could have performed in Skelton's antimasque, the attack on Fame's castle.

    On the other hand, speaking roles in The Garlande could have been filled by professional players, the handful of actors who would be available for performing in a royal household at Christmas. The six roles of Pallas, Fame, and Occupacion, Chaucer, Gower, and Lydgate might easily have been distributed to the small number of players in a typical troupe. Three would suffice, the three players of Pallas, Fame, and Occupacion doubling, perhaps, as Chaucer, Gower, and Lydgate.

62. Perhaps Envious Rancour, like the Cat with a fiddle in Jonson's Time Vindicated, brings in the antimasque with confused music at Skelton's fête, only to be driven back into a “pile” (l. 739). Indeed, it seems that another, small pageant is required for The Garlande.

    A common figure in English pageantry, Envy inhabits a “cave of monsters … fixed to the Conduit” in Cheapside for her role in Thomas Dekker's Troia-Nova Triumphans, a celebration for Mayor John Swinerton in 1612. Twice Envy attacks the mayoral procession. In the first attack Envy, whose forces include Ignorance with “Asses eares,” fails to prevent the mayor from reaching the “house of Fame.” In the second attack Envy is defeated by Virtue, who defends the mayor and his house or “temple” of Fame. See The Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker, ed. Fredson Bowers (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1958), III, 238-45. Clearly, Skelton's combination of Fame's “house” (l. 489) and Envy's nearby dwelling is a traditional combination of English dramatic pageants.

63. Manipulation of the lights is important at such a dramatic juncture in a masque. As John C. Meagher indicates, there is often “an opposition between light and darkness … where the masques are threatened.” In Method and Meaning, p. 114.

64. Holinshed, Chronicle, III, 574.

65. The Complete Masques, p. 229.

66. As mentioned earlier, the central masking roles of Poets and Muses were traditional. Fame and Pallas are characters with speaking roles in many a Tudor and Jacobean masque. Occupacion is a central character in the recently re-discovered Occupation and Idleness, a play contemporary with The Garlande. Chaucer, Gower, and Lydgate appear together in Jonson's The Golden Age Restored, while “Skelton poeta” himself is a character in Anthony Munday's The Downfall of Robert, Earl of Huntingdon and also in Jonson's The Fortunate Isles.