Richard Carew. The Ordinary, The Ordinalia, and the Ordinary Actor ...

Carew's Ordinary 16
Early Modern comic topos.
The more we examine the anecdote, the more we see Carew struggling to imagine how a
prompter–a figure he knows only as a backstage functionary–might also operate as an onstage
figure. He can only do this by imagining him operating in both ways during the same
performance; if you inquire too deeply into the practicalities of this decision, however, this
compromise doesn’t work very well. The Ordinary would presumably have to cue entrances, and
for this he needs to be backstage, because that is where he performs this function on sixteenthcentury
English stages. But he also needs to be onstage in order to whisper lines into the ears of
actors who have not learned their parts beforeheand. The scene, as we have seen above, is in
progress before the gentleman is called upon to play his part. The Ordinary and the “pleasant
conceyted gentleman” are clearly backstage, because the Ordinary whispers in his ear a
command to “Goe forth man and shew thy selfe.” But because the play is already in progress,
presumably the Ordinary must have been whispering lines and directions into the ears of actors
already on stage. How has this been managed? Has he left the actors on stage to dash backstage
to prompt the gentleman to “go forth and shew thyself”? At every new entrance, he presumably
would have to run backstage and escort the new actor out. This does not seem very likely.
This analysis, of course, imposes a very literal reading on Carew’s anecdote, which may
not be meant to be taken very literally. The point of the anecdote is after all to tell an amusing
tale about the performance of a “Guary,” thereby providing the reader with “more sport and
laughter, then 20. such Guaries could haue affoorded.” Carew simply cannot provide us with the
kind of careful description of a guary-mirkle in performance because he has not himself seen
one. The information comes to him at second or third hand, and to us at third or fourth. But even
this concession creates an important problem for the theatre historian. To what extent can we
trust such a description to provide us with useful information? What we have to keep in mind is
that Carew may well have heard correct information about the Cornish Ordinary’s method of
prompting actors, but that Carew himself simply couldn’t imagine how it might practically work.
5. The Ordinary
Whether or not one accepts the Ordinary’s function as described by Carew, his title
strikes one as convincing. If Carew were merely describing him, surely he would have chosen a
less puzzling title. He might simply have called him the prompter, the superintendent, the leader,
or the master, for instance.55 That Carew introduces him as “one called the Ordinary,” suggests
that he must actually have heard someone call him by that name and that it was a recognized title
for the prompter-director of a Cornish guary-mirkle. The title also gains credibility, moreover,
for its rarity; nowhere else in Europe is such a theatrical figure called the Ordinary. Perhaps the
unusual title thus reflects the unusual nature of the Ordinary’s duties in leading the performance
of a Cornish Guary. Finally, it seems genuine because it is a Latin rather than an English or
Cornish word. For once, however, Carew does not attempt to supply an etymology for this
unfamiliar title. As an Oxford scholar, perhaps he thought that the meaning of a Latin term
would be clear to his readers.
If Carew though that his readers would recognize the term, modern scholars have largely
avoided engaging with it. One might think that Chambers and Wickham would enjoy teasing out
the meanings of this unusual theatrical term, but after quoting Carew, they pass it over without