The Lords of Misrule

So, when I'm not reading hundreds of pages every week on skaldic poetry and similarly obscure topics, I'm usually devoting myself to the major extracurricular activity at the CMS (apart from going to the pub). Named after the ancient tradition of appointing an officer for wild holiday revelry, the Lords of Misrule is our period drama company, founded in the 1960s by a group of postgraduates who thought it would be great fun to put on medieval plays in their original Middle English. Somehow this idea proved to work in performance, and now, some 40 years on, the troupe have expanded their range to include productions in Old English (an adaptation of Beowulf some years ago) and Old Norse (two or three of them, including an adaptation of part of the Poetic Edda last year). The OE and ON plays, of course, did include major sections in modern English and other devices to help people keep track of what was taking place, but the original-language aspect has always been key with the Lords; it is the major characteristic which distinguishes us from other groups putting on medieval theatre, and we are quite proud of our ability to make this sort of thing accessible to general audiences.

The thing about the Lords is, we're not actors. We're not even close to being real actors. Most of the current cast are MA students, with two PhD students directing this term's production, and the rest are either PhDs or former postgrads who happen to still be in the area. Everyone who wants a part gets a part, just like in elementary school. We only have time to rehearse once a week, so the production tends to get thrown together at the last minute; and we receive no funding from anybody -- we can only afford to put on the first terms' plays because the summer show is now usually Shakespeare, and we can get a good turnout for that. Otherwise we can (we hope) count on making enough money in ticket sales to pay for the venue, and that's it.

As they did last year, this term we're putting on a double-bill (with a theme of "Clerks Gone Wild") of adaptations from the Canterbury Tales: the Franklin's Tale and the Miller's Tale. Yes, the language is Middle English, and our pronunciation is still pretty uneven but doing a lot better than it was when we started. I play one of the leads in the Franklin's Tale: Aurelius, a lovesick squire who makes a deal with a magician to make some rocks disappear so he can get his lady, but has a change of heart in the end (obviously that's not a full synopsis -- I do recommend that people read it). The Miller's Tale, meanwhile, is 25 minutes of bawdy mayhem that can't fail to please audiences, since with so much slapstick it's not even really necessary to understand the dialogue.

Venues for the productions differ. Last year they put on the Norse double-bill in a replica Viking longhouse at Merton Park, which was very difficult logistically because the house could only fit about 35 audience members if you stacked them up virtually on the stage, and the only way to get the audience there was to hire a coach to take them, which cost the Lords a small fortune. The Shakespeare shows take place in a variety of locations, but usually they're done outside, in places like the Museum Gardens or the Minster Yard, which means that they can (and do) get rained on, although Yorkshirefolk are not easily scared off by rain. This term we're returning to an old standby, All Saints' Church on North Street.

We're doing four shows -- three evening performances on the 9-11 December, plus a matinee on the 9th which will apparently be attended by 50 to 60 first-year undergraduates from Hull, who are being dragged to see us for reasons nobody has explained to us yet. This is not especially great timing, since our course essays are due on the 15th and we will be in a fairly frantic state about it, but it can't be helped.

I'm not sure whether anyone will be videotaping the performances, but surely there will be photographs from our dress rehearsals, which I'll add to Mieraus.com once I have them in my possession.

A little bit about the University of York (again with help from Wikipedia)

As I promised, some details about the University:

The University of York was founded in 1963, and shows it in its architecture. Seriously, the nursery (i.e., daycare) looks like the Beatles' Yellow Submarine fell out of the sky and landed in the middle of our campus. And it is actually a campus, being a good 25 minutes' walk or so from the city walls. Fortunately, the campus has most of the basic amenities one requires, and there is no shortage of cheap takeout in the surrounding area. There are approximately 9,500 students, of whom about 1,800 are postgraduates. The university has an excellent reputation in the UK and internationally, and its postgraduate teaching is especially highly regarded. Being a small university, however, there are subjects it just doesn't do; classics, alas, is one of them.

Like UC Santa Cruz, the university population is divided into residential colleges, most of which are centrally located. Meanwhile, my college, Halifax, is in the middle of nowhere on the far side of campus. To its credit, it is conveniently close to the village of Heslington, southeast of the city, which boasts a downtown area consisting of four banks, two pubs, a sandwich shop, and a hairdresser. This is not exactly urban living. Halifax is the largest college, consisting of some 2,000 students, both undergraduate and postgraduate, although all of the residents of my house are postgraduates. Halifax, like Kresge College (as the Slugs here will know), is comprised of flats rather than dorms. There is really no fundamental difference -- the layout is essentially the same -- but there are fewer rooms to a flat (8) than a traditional dormitory floor would have. Our rooms can be charitably described as “cells,” in a correctional rather than a monastic sense; they're extremely small and one does feel rather trapped, but they are en-suite, which makes all the difference in the world. We have no common room, but we do have a kitchen.

At the centre of the campus lies Europe’s largest man-made lake. No – that’s not true. I don’t recall where I heard that, but it’s not true. The lake was, however, the largest plastic-lined lake in Europe at the time it was created, which is not at all the same thing. The water is entirely unsuitable for contact with any part of your body, and lore has it that even gazing at it directly could prove infectious. The paths around the lake might be a good venue for an invigorating stroll, were it not for the marauding flocks of vicious geese which roam its banks, waiting for an unsuspecting student to meander by, clutching a jacket potato or other such delicacy. Spring is evidently the worst time for avian banditry; the geese are in the habit of laying eggs wherever they feel like it and will not hesitate to pursue intruders, which I discovered first-hand last week when an entirely innocent turn down the wrong path earned me a painful nip on the rear from a goose I never even saw coming.

The Centre for Medieval Studies is the home of interdisciplinary work in conjunction with the Departments of History, English, Art History, and Archaeology. In addition to my course, which currently has 20 students, there are also MA courses in Medieval Literatures (11 students), Medieval History (5?), and Medieval Archaeology (I've met a couple but don't know how many there are). Because we share many course modules, we do have a good deal of contact with the students on those other programs (indeed, cannot always remember who is on which course), and those lucky folks who got accommodation in the two houses located within the city walls share living space with them as well.

The CMS and several other departments/research units are housed within the King's Manor, a Grade I listed building on the opposite side of York from where I live (behind the Minster, in fact). The structure began life as a house for the abbots of St Mary's Abbey, and the earliest remains date from the fifteenth century. After the dissolution of the abbey, it became the seat of the Council of the North; it then passed into the control of private tenants until the nineteenth century when it housed the Yorkshire School for the Blind until the late 1950s. Now it is ours, and it provides a congenial place to have class, except that it takes me about 45 minutes to get there every day (and sometimes I have to go back and forth repeatedly over the course of the day, since the main library is on campus). Aside from classroom and office space, the King's Manor has a computer lab, a small library, and a refectory, which serves surprisingly good food for a decent price, although that may have something to do with the fact that the general public are also permitted to eat there, as the building is open to visitors. The KM is also entirely devoid of geese, which is an important fringe benefit.