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

Carew's Ordinary 50
Peter Meredith, and John E. Tailby, editors, The Staging of Religious Drama in Europe in the
Later Middle Ages: Texts and Documents in English Translation., translated by Raffaella Ferrari,
Peter Meredith, Lynette R. Muir, Margaret Sleeman, and John E. Tailby (Kalamazoo, Michigan:
Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University, 1983).
68 For Ruf’s biography, see Hildegard Elisabeth Keller, editor, Jakob Ruf. Leben, Werk und
Studien., 1, Mit der Arbeit Seiner Hände: Leben und Werk Des Zürcher Stadtchirurgen und
Theatermarchers Jakob Ruf (1501-1558), 5 vols. (Zurich: Verlag Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 2008),
pp. 35-198. Ruf was a proud man, and he liked to flaunt his titles, particularly “Stadtchiurgen” of
Zurich. Stefan Schöbi, who contributes an excellent chapter to this fine collection, thinks that
Ruf bore the honorific title, “Ludius” (pp. 155-171). There is no record of Ruf using this title, or
of any other person describing Ruf as such. That term, which is a Latin word meaning
“performer,” occurs in a cast list for Ruf’s play, Von des herren wingartten (1539). Because it is
the first name in the cast list (followed by Heroldt, Vatter, Sun, Moses . . . ) the term has been
thought to refer to Ruf himself, who appears in an illustration sending the Herald on stage to
declaim a prologue to the play. It most likely refers, however, to the “Junger Knab” (young
fellow) who is the first person to take the stage and deliver a speech preceding the Herald. The
Junger Knab, moreover, is given an illustration before the one featuring Ruf and the Herald, and
he is nowhere else mentioned in the cast list, and as he bears no personal name, “ludius”
describes him accurately as an anonymous performer.
69 Records of Early English Drama: Coventry, edited by R. W. Ingram (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 1981), p. 27. Butterworth observes that none of the responsibilities enumerated in
this record “refer to his influence over what the players did or the way they did it. Colclow’s
duties were concerned with promotion, protection, and preservation of the physical
accouterments belonging to the pageant and the Guild. He was both producer and custodian,” he
thinks, but he was not a director. Butterworth, ‘Carew's “Ordinary”’, p. 340. Perhaps this is so,
but the record only describes those duties relevant to the purpose of financial accounting for his
stewardship over the materials belonging to the pageant to the Smiths. The account also
mentions that he is to “find þe pleyers,” which suggests that his duties may also have extended to
direction. It is unwise to draw too exclusive a distinction between directors and producers in this
period. Often, the same person was responsible for both of those activities. The distinction
between these two roles is perhaps more modern than medieval.
70 Meredith, and Tailby, Staging, pp. 43-45; for the original contract in full, see Louis Petit de
Julleville, Histoire Du Théâtre en France: Les Mystères, 2 vols (Paris: Hachette et Cie, 1880), II,
149-52.
71 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodl. 219, fols. 5r, 5v and Neuss, Creacion, pp. 28, 32, ll. 343
sd., 392 sd. Butterworth, ‘Book-Carriers: Medieval and Tudor Staging Conventions’, p. 31, n.
31, correctly points out that Neuss mistranscribes thei as then in the first of these stage
directions.