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'A Survey of Dutch Drama before the Renaissance' (1984)

'A Survey of Dutch Drama before the Renaissance'

(1984)–Hans van Dijk, W.M.H. Hummelen, W.N.M. Hüsken, Elsa Strietman–rechtenstatus Auteursrechtelijk beschermd

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New discoveries

In the last fifteen years since the publication of W.M.H. Hummelen's Repertorium van het rederijkersdrama, 1500-ca.1620 new plays have been discovered, manuscripts and old printings have been edited, and as a result of philological research some plays have turned out to belong to different times. However, from time to time plays or editions that should have belonged to the Repertorium have popped up too. Without broaching the problem of identifying authors of plays anonymously handed down to us, I would now like to provide you with a few addenda to the Repertorium. Most of these facts were collected and noted down by Prof. Hummelen in his own desk-copy of the Repertorium, which I was kindly permitted to make use of.

 

The most important addition to the Repertorium consists of thirteen newly discovered hitherto unknown plays. Also there are three plays of which the text was already known, but which are now available in earlier versions. Finally eight plays have been discovered earlier versions of which already existed.

All of the plays in the second and third categories were discovered by coincidence by the chapbook-specialist Herman Pleij and his colleague Rob Resoort from Amsterdam. In the Paris Bibliothèque Nationale and the Wolffenbüttel Herzog August Bibliothek they dug up one sixteenth and two early seventeenth century

collections of rhetoricians' products, containing (for the greater part) refrains and dinner-plays.

As for the three plays which are now available in earlier versions; in regard to Cornelis Crul's dramatic monologue Een dronckaert die wonder siet (A drunkard who thinks he sees miracles) we now have at our disposal an edition from the Paris copy of the Cruyt-hofken (Botanical Garden; 6H), dated 1600, whereas the oldest known version dated from 16111. Similarly the only known edition of the anonymous Een lansknecht die teghen zijn schaduwe vecht (A lansquenet fighting his own shadow) and Een sot met een marot (Fool and bauble) were dated 1596, but in Wolffenbüttel Pleij and Resoort found six year older versions in Een Nieu Refereyn Boeck (A new refrain-book; 6F)2. On top of that the two collections just mentioned contain six different plays in later versions. In the Repertorium these plays are numbered 3C57, 3E1-3, 3V1, and 3W1. The popularity of some of these plays should be sufficiently apparent from the fact that two of them are present in two of these booklets! (3U2 and 3W1)

 

In Een Nieu Refereyn boeck (6F) there is only one play hitherto unknown: Een kwakzalver int Bonte Huys (A quack in the Gaudy House). The Cruyt-hofken (6H) brings two new texts to light: a Bruyloft-spel van Soet en Suer (A wedding-play of Sweet and Sour), signed ‘Hout dat goet is’, the device or motto of Cornelis Meesz. van Hout (the father of one of our better known rhetoricians Jan van Hout), and Blijden Will en Sotte Cout (Happy Will and Foolish Talk). The third collection that has been discovered by Pleij and Resoort (6G), also contains two new texts: Kees Knol en Neel Jans, signed: ‘Liefd baerdt konst’, and Een Kramer die Vrysters verkoopt (A pedlar selling sweethearts).

 

Beside these three collections we now have at our disposal seven other newly discovered plays and a fragment of a play only available in a rather difficult to attain 19th-century edition. Four of these plays have come to us in manuscriptform.

In 1870 the Flemish historian and bibliographer Frans de Potter published a fragment from De Menighe, Elc en Deen en Redene (Many, Each and The One, and Reason; 2 31)3. Unfortunately enough, neither his transcription of the entire play nor the original manuscript

itself can be found. Three other handwritten plays represent more recent rediscoveries. In the Ghent University Library W.L. Braekman found a sixteenth century farce (written approximately in 1567) entitled Twyf, de Neckere en de Gendarme (Wife, Devil, and Gendarme; 2 32) in a manuscript otherwise containing rhetoricians' poetry4. In the same library Mrs P. Lammens-Pikhaus came across a dinner-play of Wauter Dicksteert (2 33) in a collection of pious and ascetic poems, as indicated in the title of her edition of the play5. Finally F.C. van Boheemen and Th.C.J. van der Heijden were the lucky finders of Een spel van sinnen van de wortel van Rethoorijka (A morality-play of the root of Rhetoric; 2 34) in the ‘Criminal Papers’ of the Hague Algemeen Rijksarchief6. The play dates back to the year 1604.

 

Four printed plays remain to be mentioned in order to complete our survey of newly discovered rhetoricians' dramatexts. Shortly after publication of the Repertorium Herman Pleij drew Hummelen's attention to one of the Amsterdam University Libraries new acquisitions, a play by François Guldepoort: Een cort Sinspeelken hoe men aen warachtighe Eere gheraken mach (A short morality-play of how to obtain true honour). It was intended to be performed as a prologue to the spel van sinne of the Malines' rhetoricians' chamber De Peoene on the occasion of the Antwerp landjuweel in 15617. Prof. Hummelen found a copy of Dirick Schabalie's ‘comedy’ Eyghen Bate (Own Benefit; 4 40) in, again, the Paris Bibliothèque Nationale8. Like the Spel des oproers tot Ephesien (Play on the Ephesian revolt; 4 42) from the same author, it was printed in Haarlem in 1614, although the original edition was mistakenly dated

16419. Similarly the Spel van de V vroede ende van de V dwaeze maegden (Play of five wize and five foolish virgins; 2 35) cannot be dated back any further than the early sixteenth century, as has been proved by B.H. Erné in his new edition of the Spelen van Gent10.

To finish our enumeration of texts that should be included in a revised edition of the Repertorium, as undoubtedly wished for by many scholars, we should return to Mrs Lammens-Pikhaus from the Ghent University once more. To her we owe a reference to a dinner-play, hitherto unnoticed, called Clerc, Huys-man, Soldaet en Stierman (Clerk, Farmer, Soldier, and Skipper), performed by four school-children on the occasion of prince William's visit to Monster on June 11th 158911.

 

Sometimes, even after decades, one or more plays the location of which was known in 177412 but which vanished afterwards, have been completely by chance retrieved from a lumber-room. In this way Prof. Keersmaekers was able to lay his hands on a collection of four dinner-plays from the early seventeenth century (6A1-6A4), originally bound together with a mid-sixteenth century printing of an Antigone-version (7 08)13. Unfortunately such a find only occurs very seldom14. Thus the biggest loss is still that of the drama-collections K and L from the Haarlem Chamber of Rhetoric

Trou moet blycken (Loyalty must/should be proved). Now and again we even see our chances of regaining missing plays clearly diminishing: for example, two years ago the librarian of the Ieper Municipal Library informed me that their copy of Een batement van IIII personagien, den pastoor, den medecyn, den advocaet ende den sot genoempt onnosel (A joyous play of four characters, the vicar, the doctor, the lawyer, and a fool named Innocent; 4 44) was destroyed in World War I.

 

There are only fourteen unpublished plays that have been edited for the first time between 1968 and 1983. As in former years there appears to be no apparent policy for the decision to publish one play in preference to another. By and by the Jaarboek De Fonteine, an irregularly forthcoming periodical of one of the former Ghent Chambers of Rhetoric, is occupying a more and more important place in the rhetoricians' study of drama and theatre. A register of editions of rhetoricians' drama published after 1968, supplemented with a few earlier publications that are not yet included in the Repertorium, is listed under ‘Geraadpleegde werken’.

 

Addenda to W.M.H. Hummelen, Repertorium van het rederijkersdrama, 1500-ca.1620, Assen 1968.


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