The History of Morris Dancing, 1458-1750. (Reviews).

John Forrest, The History of Morris Dancing, 1458-1750

Studies in Early English Drama, 5. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999. xviii + 439 pp. $65. ISBN: 0-8020-0921-2.

Upon finishing this thorough and valuable history, readers will be amply persuaded of Forrest's conclusions: "morris has no single origin point; morris is not and never has been a single or simple phenomenon; morris has evolved continuously through its documented history; morris is not especially 'folk' or rural; styles of morris from different contexts have had a constant evolutionary influence on one another" (27). Forrest's book, as this list probably makes evident, is a developmental history of morris dancing, concerned with evolution, not origins. In his first chapter, "Theories of Origins," he convincingly challenges the usual theories that scholars and students have accepted, mostly without questioning: that morris had pagan origins (a theory derived from the attacks on morris dancing by Elizabethan Puritans); that morris had classical origins and was a later form of the Pyrrhic war dance (a seventeenth-century theory); that it was a moorish dance that came to England via Spain (a mid-seventeenth-centu ry theory). While culturally important as contemporary understandings of the morris, these origin theories are, Forrest contends, unsubstantiated. Forrest clearly outlines the problems inherent in approaches that focus on origins, arguing that "there was never a time when one could speak of the morris dance" (xvii). He also discusses problems with earlier evolutionist models, which have tended to focus on surface resemblance -- primarily visual likeness -- to construct typologies. Such models are unable to cope with early (pre-1800) materials because the paucity of documents does not allow a firm typology to be established; as a result, the patterns drawn by scholars lack time depth and are biased towards a reflection of affairs in the nineteenth century. Furthermore, a method that focuses on visual likeness without considering context, ignores how "what looks like the same object can be structured into two different cultures in such a completely different way that the surface likeness is insignificant in com parison with the deeper symbolic differences" (25).

Forrest's goal is "the taxonomic description of types of dance-in-context wholes" (26). His method is to examine what he calls "dance events," the dance form within the dance context: "the dance event as a single unit is a complex matrix of dance forms (such as gestures, figures, costumes, and accoutrements) and contextual factors (such as the venue, rewards, patrons, audience, performers)" (26). His methodology allows connections between dance forms and other parts of culture to be seen, and also allows "glimpse [s]" of the evolutionary process at work. Thus, at the end of Forrest's study, in a final chapter entitled "Endings," he posits a mechanism whereby evolutionary development occurs in art and aesthetic forms, a complex dialectical but non-Hegelian model, which, above all, stresses the process of development over the replacement of one form by another.

The History of Morris Dancing is structured around dance contexts: there are chapters on the "Royal Court," "Urban Streets," "Church Property," "The Public Stage," "Rural Locations," 'Assemblies and the Country Dance Hall," and "Private Premises." In each chapter, Forrest details the variety of factors that influenced which context was most dominant during a particular period and how the contexts influenced the form. When a particular context waned, he argues, the dance could attach itself to other contexts, and in the process it might change in some particulars of its form to adapt to the needs of the different context. The use of the dance in one context might also influence its use in or even adoption by another. For instance, by the sixteenth century, morrises were performed in royal courts as part of spectacularly embellished tournament processions, a dominant theme of which was martial combat or contest. The urban watching march of the sixteenth century, which shared with the court tournament procession the purpose of displaying military might and readiness, began increasingly throughout the sixteenth century to add pageants and morris dancers to their displays. Forrest argues that, in the case of the tournaments, the spectacular elements like the morris contributed to, rather than distracted from, the combat; similarly, as the watch was primarily martial, "a fortiori... the morris dance in the procession was somehow martial" (97). Thus, when the watches were terminated around the mid-sixteenth century, and a great deal of the spectacle attached to them was transferred to the Lord Mayor's Show, "the morris dance did not make the transition, perhaps adding circumstantial support to the hypothesis that it was a martial dance suited to a watch, but not to a nonmilitary parade" (108). Significantly, around this time, the morris did make a shift to the urban May games: the first association of morris dancing with specifically urban, rather than rural, May games is from 1552 (129). The May games, like the Midsumm er watches, marked the advent of the summer season, and they provided a linkage point for the morris' martial elements in "Robin Hood and associated characters who were renowned as archers, and who had been represented at May games since at least the beginning of the sixteenth century" (131). The morris' transition from urban watch to urban May game may have led to transformations in its form, as well. The watch was procession and nothing else, but urban May games contained both processional and static elements: the procession of the May games led to a destination where feasting and dancing took place around a stationary maypole. While acknowledging that the evidence is ambiguous, Forrest speculates that the morris of the urban watch may have "evolved to be performable as a nonprocessional dance" (132) in its newly acquired dance context.

Forrest emphasizes that there is never a single teleology to be followed in the history of morris dancing, and that a dominating context was never the only context in which the morris was being performed. He also emphasizes the significance of cross-fertilization between the dance contexts that organize his study. Consequently, for maximum benefit, the book is best read in its entirety, rather than for individual chapters. Its careful, complex, detailed analysis is not for the impatient reader, but its rewards for the student of Renaissance spectacle are many.