Noise at Night - 1595

An early regulation against noisy parties ('revyling') was included as Rule 30 in London's The Lawes of the Market in 1595. Seemingly it was less of a problem if people beat their wives or servants, as long it was before nine o'clock!

'No man shall after the houre of nine at Night, keep any rule whereby any such suddaine out-cry be made in the still of the Night, as making any affray, or beating hys Wife, or servant, or singing, or revyling in his house, to the Disturbance of his neighbours' (Rule 30 of The Lawes of the Market, 1595)

Source: Emily Cockayne, Hubbub: filth, noise and stench in England 1600-1710 (Yale University Press)

The State and Clothes: from the Statues of Apparel to the Burqa Ban

The day before the national celebration of the storming of the Bastille in pursuit of liberty, the French government today passed a law banning the wearing of the full veil. It states that "no one can wear a garment in public which is aimed at hiding their face"; women wearing a niqab or burqa will faces fines.

Of course there is a well-founded feminist critique of women being pressured to cover their faces, but it is undeniable that some women do choose to wear such clothes for their own religious reasons. The law does not seem to distinguish between women who freely choose to wear the full veil and those who may be made to do so by others. In the latter case, it is patently absurd to prosecute somebody for something they did not choose, in the former case a fundamental principle is at stake - why should the state be able to dictate what people wear? The notion that the police will be able to arrest women on the basis of their clothing is absurd.

French interior minister Michèle Alliot-Mariez is clear that what is being imposed is not simply a dress code, but a definition of the self and its interaction with others. The simple piece of cloth is a threat to the very notion of citizenship: "We are an old country anchored in a certain idea of how to live together. A full veil which completely hides the face is an attack on those values, which for us are so fundamental. Citizenship has to be lived with an uncovered face. There can therefore be absolutely no solution other than a ban in all public places."

The notion that clothes define the social order, and therefore that the state should regulate clothing to uphold that order, is an old one. A classic example was the Statutes of Apparel issued by Queen Elizabeth I of England in 1574, which tightly defined exactly what fabrics could be worn at different levels of the feudal hierarchy. So for instance only members of the royal family could wear purple silk; 'Velvet in gowns, coats, or other uttermost garments' could only be worn by 'barons' sons, knights and gentlemen in ordinary office attendant upon her majesty's person, and such as have been employed in embassages to foreign princes' (or those above them). For women the rules decreed, among other things, that 'None shall wear any velvet, tufted taffeta, satin, or any gold or silver in their petticoats: except wives of barons, knights of the order, or councilors' ladies, and gentlewomen of the privy chamber and bed chamber, and the maids of honor'.

Today these rules look ridiculous; no doubt future historians will take a similar view of those politicians who spent time in the midst of a global economic crisis and impending environmental problems decreeing what part of a woman's face has to be visible for all to see.

Stamp, rave, and fret, that I may sing and dance: Shakespeare on raving

The search for the linguistic origins of 'rave' and 'raver' continues. Jon, who does the interesting Alsatia history site, has found the earliest use so far of 'raver' as a noun. As he observes in a comment to an earlier post, Aphra Behn's 'Love Letters Between a Nobleman and his Sister' (1684) features the line 'Oh tell me in the agony of my soul, why must those charms that bring tranquility and peace to all, make me a wild, unseemly raver?'.

Going back a hundred years further, Shakespeare's work is the obvious place to look for the usage of words. Shakespeare doesn't use the term 'raver' but raving appears once in his work: the direction 'Enter CASSANDRA, raving' in Troilus and Cressida, 1602. He uses words 'rave' or 'raved' at least five times in his plays and poems, usually in the context of a verbal expression of madness.

Twelfth Night (1601-2) features this exchange about Malovolio:

MARIA: He's coming, madam; but in very strange manner. He is, sure, possessed, Mdam.
OLIVIA: Why, what's the matter? does he rave?
MARIA: No. madam, he does nothing but smile:

In Henry VI, Part Three (written in 1591), Queen Margaret's speech has a similar usage of the word:

I prithee, grieve, to make me merry, York.
What, hath thy fiery heart so parch'd thine entrails
That not a tear can fall for Rutland's death?
Why art thou patient, man? thou shouldst be mad;
And I, to make thee mad, do mock thee thus.
Stamp, rave, and fret, that I may sing and dance.
(Act 1, Scene 4).

I got quite excited to find 'rave' and 'dance' in the same sentence, as so far I haven't found any connection between the two before the 1940s, but in fact they are being contrasted here. Margaret has had young Rutland killed in the Wars of the Roses and is taunting the enemy Yorkists - she wants them to show their suffering (to mourn, to cry, to rave) to give her satisfaction.

Shakespeare's poem The Rape of Lucrece (1594) includes the curse:

'Disturb his hours of rest with restless trances,
Afflict him in his bed with bedrid groans;
Let there bechance him pitiful mischances,
To make him moan; but pity not his moans:
Stone him with harden'd hearts harder than stones;
And let mild women to him lose their mildness,
Wilder to him than tigers in their wildness.

'Let him have time to tear his curled hair,
Let him have time against himself to rave,
Let him have time of Time's help to despair,
Let him have time to live a loathed slave,
Let him have time a beggar's orts to crave,
And time to see one that by alms doth live
Disdain to him disdained scraps to give.

In Cymbeline, it is madness itself that raves: 'not frenzy, not Absolute madness could so far have raved, To bring him here alone;'

Finally, in Titus Andronicus (written in the early 1590s), Lucius passes sentence on Aaron that he should be starved to death:

'Set him breast-deep in earth, and famish him;
There let him stand, and rave, and cry for food;
If any one relieves or pities him,
For the offence he dies'.

Two of these examples link raving with craving for food. The same scene of Titus Andronicus also includes the line 'Good uncle, take you in this barbarous Moor, This ravenous tiger, this accursed devil'. Another possible line of enquiry - rave and ravenous?

Banning Christmas

Still a few days to go of the Twelve Days of Christmas festivities. In the 16th century though, protestant churches in Scotland sometimes tried to ban mid-winter celebrations - even Christmas carols - as pagan and papist:

'at St Andrews, in 1573... the kirk session, the local unit of church govern­ment, punished a number of people for 'observing of superstitious days and specially of Yuil-day.' The following year it made a particular example of a baker, for filling his house with lights and guests on New Year's Day and shouting 'Yuil! Yuil! Yuil!' In that year, too, the kirk session at Aberdeen tried fourteen women for 'playing, dancing and singing of filthy carols on Yule Day at even'...

From 1583 the Glasgow kirk sessions ordered that those who kept Yule were to be excommunicated and also punished by the secular magistrates. A few years later bakers at Perth were questioned for making 'Yule Bread', and in 1588 the Haddington presbytery forbade the singing of carols at this time. In 1593 the minister of Errol equated this pastime with fornication and in 1599 the local elite of Elgin prepared for the season by forbidding 'profane pastime ... viz. footballing through the town, snowballing, singing of carols or other profane songs, guising, piping, violing and dancing.' In that decade also a piper from Dunblane was forced to promise not to play upon Christmas Day or any other old festival, having been hired to do so by Yuletide revellers in villages along the Allan Water.


The same sorts of record (which are all that we have) also make clear the large amount of opposition which these measures encountered. The ruling at Glasgow had to be repeated four times up to 1604, a sure sign of resistance to it. At Aberdeen in 1606, thirty years after the campaign of repression began, the kirk session had to condemn anew 'the superstitious time of Yule or New Year's Day' and direct that henceforth the citizens should not 'presume to mask or disguise themselves in any sort, the men in women's clothes, nor the women in men's clothes, nor otherways, be dancing with bells, other on the streets of this burgh or in private house'. The Elgin session ruling of 1599 had been the third, and most detailed, of its kind within five years. Every one of those before had been defied by revellers disguised by blackened faces, masks, handkerchiefs, or fancy dress; traditional festival costume now assuming a practical advantage. So was this order, by at least two young women going abroad attired as men. At Yule in 1603 a man rode through the town with a cloth over his head, while another was accused of 'singing and hagmonayis' at New Year. Two years later a set of Aberdonians got into trouble by going through the streets 'masked and dancing with bells'.

Source: Ronald Hutton, Stations of the Sun: a History of the Ritual Year in England (1996)

Zarabanda

‘Some claim this dance received its name from a devil in woman's shape who appeared in Seville in the twelfth century, and who labeled it the zarabanda. In the sixteenth century, certainly, the dance and the song that accompanied it were considered by a Jesuit historian to be indecent in its words and disgusting in its movements. Even Cervantes described it as having "a diabolical sound." So seriously did the Spanish authorities take the threat of the zarabanda (which the rest of Europe, less concerned by its devilish origins, altered to saraband) that in 1583 anyone caught singing or reciting its words was to be punished with two hundred lashes, in addition to being exiled (if female) or sentenced to six years in the galleys.

For better or worse we know almost nothing of the actual dance in its original form. Apparently it was once a sexual pantomime, for in Barcelona couples twisted their bodies to the rhythm of castanets, and by the time it came to Italy the breasts of the dancers were allowed to collide and the lips to kiss. But from being erotic it became a gliding, processional dance, and it ended up as part of an instrumental suite. It was introduced to the French court around 1588, and was a favorite of Louis XIII, not to mention his minister Cardinal Richelieu. It remained popular well into the seventeenth century, since Charles II of England often called for it to be played. Perhaps it is an example of what happened to the dances of the people once they got to the court: their rude energy was canalized into something fit for the most delicate disposition—even if they became somewhat anemic on the way’.

Source; Peter Buckman, Let’s Dance: Social, Ballroon and Folk Dancing, p.88 (Paddington Press, London, 1978). The picture is of a Spanish actor dancing the zarabanda at the Paris Opera, published in 1636.