Mystery surrounding the first performance of Shakespeare in Ireland, Coleraine 1628

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Historical Background

A little history might be necessary here. Nearly all the great towns and cities of Europe in the Middle Ages, say the 1300s and 1400s at least, had guilds therein. These were kind of trade associations and unions of the various crafts and manufactures that were going on in the towns, like iron working, or glove making, etc etc. Also they often had ex officio seats on the corporation or body that ran the town, and hence frequently the mayor of the town would be from one of these guilds. The interesting thing is that as you get into modern times, they are all gone, with one interesting exception. This actually still happens in the City of London, an approximately square mile inside that metropolis which is still separately administered by a Corporation, with a Lord Mayor, run by the successors of these guilds, known now as livery companies.

Fast forward to 1609 and the idea that James 1st has of creating a plantation out of the confiscated lands of the Irish chiefs who fled Ulster in 1607. Of course he was looking for influential money men who might take up this challenge and so approached these companies in London to see would they like to get involved. They in turn commissioned a number of people to scout out the possibilities here, including Sir Thomas Phillips, a soldier who boasted that he had penetrated the fastnesses of O’Neill in Ulster during the Nine Years War with only 200 troops. At any rate the report was favourable, the plan went ahead and Phillips was named as the governor of the part of Ulster given to the companies, County Derry, or, because of this association obviously, sometimes known as Londonderry.

However these allies soon fell out. As time went on Phillips got very frustrated that these London Companies were not keeping their side of the bargain, were more interested in a fast buck than building the plantation of his dreams. As a former soldier he was also haunted by the precedent of the Munster Plantation, which was seemingly a success until violently overthrown by the Irish in the 1600/01 period, because the planters were no match for the native Irish in raw numbers at least. So the State Papers of the time are full of these complaints from Phillips, leading to investigations and sometimes the temporary confiscation of the Londoners assets in Ireland.


Provenance of this important Manuscript reference

Phillips died in 1636 and made a provision in his will that his papers were to be preserved and maybe copied out:

“My son Chichester to make a collection out of my papers and books of those things which do concern mine own actions, passages in France, Ireland and elsewhere, and concerning the Derry business. One, Mr Withers, a poet, to set these forth and to get £30.”(1)

Then in 1836 a volume comes into the possession of Thomas Larcom of the Ordnance Survey of Ireland, and is a collection of papers of Philips’s in connection with the Plantation in Derry, presumably that which was copied down into the one book in furtherance of the above instructions in the will. The Ordnance Survey always intended to write an historical ‘memoir’ of all the counties in Ireland, to go alongwith their new maps, but in the long run they found it too vast an undertaking. However their first experiment was Derry, and in the resulting book, published in only the next year of 1837, mention is made of this ‘Phillips Manuscript’ e.g.:

“1615, April 9. A conspiracy to seize and destroy Derry and the other principal towns of the plantation was discovered by Sir Thomas Phillips. It was confined to a few of the principal Irish gentlemen of the North, who were apprehended and sent to the lords deputy, and after their examination sent back to receive their trial at the Derry assizes, when six of them ”who were near kinsmen of Tyrone, were found guilty, and executed.” (PHILLIP’S MS.)”(2)

Since the O.S. must have planned the Derry book from at least the previous year, its easy to see why Larcom was anxious to obtain it.

Then this Manuscript volume, after Independence and because it relates to a Northern County, was given to the Department of Agriculture of Northern Ireland who gave it to the newly formed Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, where it is now T510, and who then published it in 1928.

 

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What is in the Manuscript

The Manuscript includes whatever was among the papers of Phillips at the time he died relating to the Derry Plantation, including his various petitions to the King complaining about the London Companies, the reports of the Commissions that the King convened to examine these complaints, a few maps and diagrams, examples of which, including a town plan of Coleraine, you can see here, and various other paperwork that went over and back on the subject between Phillips and the Dublin and London administration.

What passes now for a kind of ‘preface’ of these documents, is his 1629 petition to King Charles I, talking about how the latest Commissioners (there were a number of different Commissions at different times) were treated by the London Companies (badly) and enclosing the usual complaints. From which we get this passage:

“This scornful demeanour [of the Londoners in the Plantation] indeed unmannerly since it relates to your Majesty’s service appeared fully at the execution of your Majesty’s last Commission, by their singing songs and preparing a Play to deride it which they called Much Ado about Nothing. These Scorns (however they may call it) were aimed only at me, yet cannot but reflect upon your Majesty’s will and authority, to which I am and ever will be an humble and diligent servant, only aiming at your Majesty’s good, and no ways busy (as they term me) beyond your Majesty’s will and pleasure.”(3)

Among the other documents in this manuscript we find this ‘certificate’, a kind of statement or affidavit obviously, by one Edward Ellis:

“[Sidebar:] A play prepared and song made to deride his Majesty’s Commissioners and their proceedings.
1628, July 15. – Edward Harfleite of Coleraine told me that they had provided themselves to have entertained the Commissioners at their coming to Coleraine with a play, the title of it was “Much Ado About Nothing,” which play he purposed to have played, but that they heard the Commissioners took a song that was sung (they are come from seeing the buildings) so much to heart by them that they durst not play for fear of offending the Commissioners. These words were spoken by Mr Edward Harfleite upon Sunday the 25 of May, 1628, in Mr Walmessey’s house of Coleraine, I being then present. Witness my hand.”(4)

Harfleite was a burgess of the new plantation town of Coleraine in 1623, we know from other sources.(5)

Hopefully anyway the context is clear enough, Sir Thomas Phillips is complaining about these London Companies and one of his complaints is the disrespectful way they treated the Commissioners, again, these were appointed by the King to examine complaints against the London Companies. As an example of this offence, they were ‘entertained’ by an offensive song and a play, or were planned to be so entertained anyway. He follows up that complaint with some proof (which would be demanded by the London authorities, as he well knows), taking the form of a statement by Edward Ellis that he heard this account of the song and the play, from one Edward Harfleite as they were talking in Mr Walmessey’s house in Coleraine.


The Mystery, why does a Shakespeare play cause offence in Ireland in 1628?

But obviously this begs more questions than it answers. Firstly, that song, is that from the play or how do they relate to one another? I think the answer has to be: maybe, but not necessarily. It could indeed be from the play, meaning they could have started the night’s entertainment with a song from the play and then realising how badly that went down decided to cut their losses and cancel the actual play. Or the song might just have been another part of the night’s entertainment and not related to the play, we just don’t know.

But its obvious what we do know, no matter how you read these documents there is no question but that the Commissioners would have been offended by the Much Ado About Nothing play, not just the song. But why, is the obvious mystery here, why would King Charles’s Commissioners be offended by a Shakespeare play put on in Ireland in 1628? In pondering this I think you could come up with about three theories, which will be discussed in turn.


Bawdiness as a possibility in causing offence

If you read down through that account you would have to say that, on the surface of it, too ‘risque’ a song might have caused this offence. In otherwords if they had put on a bawdy song, with say too much sexual or scatological references, it could have caused offence (to the Commissioners, which after all included a bishop) and then they would have decided to cut their loses and not put on the play. This would also match with Phillips’ ongoing complaint about these uncouth arrogant businesspeople running rough shod out here on the Plantation.

However there are a couple of problems with this. First of all most of these people involved here, are or were soldiers, in a bloody conflict where so many Irish were unceremoniously hung out of trees or got their heads chopped off, and we don’t need to speculate about what might have happened to some of their women folk. You just cannot picture them being all that offended by a few ‘risque’ jokes, or if they were that it would become such a big issue that you have complaints going to the King about it.

Furthermore its clear from the context, that both the play and the song, did or would have caused offence. But what is so bawdy about Much Ado About Nothing? Well, nothing much really, so that solves that as a theory.

 

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Irishness possibly causing offence

Arguably the main complaint of Phillips all along in his criticism of the London Companies is that they weren’t playing ball in excluding the native Irish, as was always envisaged by the planners of this Plantation. As with all these things, it was of course about race, once and for all the English (and Scots) were going to get rid of the Irish out of here and all this rebelliousness, and unlawfulness in general, will be banished out of these parts for good. But the London Companies were businesspeople first and foremost, and they found the native Irish to be good and skilful workers, and willing to pay them high rents, so were not inclined to exclude them as much as Phillips, and the Commissioners, would like them to. So Phillips is driven to lament, in the same petition you have just read from:

“So as the covetousness of the Londoners meeting with the rebellious hopes of the Irish hath bred the Danger [of the overthrow of the Plantation because there are not enough British] which his prudent Majesty sought to avoid...”(6)

So a credible theory might be, that these Colonists got somebody to sing an Irish song (maybe from the play or maybe not) because they might have thought it was good musically and thought it would do no harm, and the Commissioners might have been offended by simply its Irishness. Thats certainly possible, no doubt then, as always, there were good Irish musicians in that part of Derry or nearby Tyrone, but how does that fit into the play? Again they are offended, or might be, by the play as well?

Well this is not the hurdle you might think it is, among the great historians of Irish Music was certainly W. H. Grattan Flood and he noted about 20 Irish songs, the names of which were secretly hidden in the works of Shakespeare. For example the lute book of the Dublin actor William Ballet of 1590,(7) TCD Ms 408, which Sarsfields readers have come across earlier as containing a song by the Baron of Delvin and which probably never left Ireland,(8) contains about six songs secretly hidden in the works of Shakespeare: Peg a Ramsay (p.26), Witches Dance (p.65), Calleno (p.85), Fortune my Foe, Weladay, and Lighttie Loue Ladyes (p.103).
So in Much Ado About Nothing Act III Scene IV:

“HERO Why, how now? Do you speak in the sick tune?
BEATRICE I am out of all other tune, methinks.
MARGARET Clap ’s into “Light o’ love.” That goes without a burden. Do you sing it, and I’ll dance it.
BEATRICE You light o’ love with your heels! Then, if your husband have stables enough, you’ll see he shall lack no barns.
MARGARET O, illegitimate construction! I scorn that with my heels.
BEATRICE ’Tis almost five o’clock, cousin. ’Tis time you were ready. By my troth, I am exceeding ill. Heigh-ho!
MARGARET For a hawk, a horse, or a husband?
BEATRICE For the letter that begins them all, H.
MARGARET Well, an you be not turned Turk, there’s no more sailing by the star.
BEATRICE What means the fool, trow?
MARGARET Nothing, I; but God send everyone their heart’s desire.
HERO These gloves the Count sent me, they are an excellent perfume.
BEATRICE I am stuffed, cousin. I cannot smell.
MARGARET A maid, and stuffed! There’s goodly catching of cold.
BEATRICE O, God help me, God help me! How long have you professed apprehension?
MARGARET Ever since you left it. Doth not my wit become me rarely?
BEATRICE It is not seen enough; you should wear it in your cap. By my troth, I am sick.
MARGARET Get you some of this distilled carduus benedictus and lay it to your heart. It is the only thing for a qualm.
HERO There thou prick’st her with a thistle.
BEATRICE Benedictus! Why benedictus? You have some moral in this benedictus?
MARGARET Moral? No, by my troth, I have no moral meaning;...”

And that Light o’ Love is considered an Irish song, so there could be a tie up with the play here.(9) The Londoners in Coleraine, having put on an Irish song and seeing how badly that went down might have decided to cut their losses and not put on the play because it has so many Irish references, and even perceived, somehow, to be an Irish play?

In my experience (which is extensive here!) modern Irish people, and academia in general, find it very difficult to get their heads around a Shakespeare play being an especially Irish thing, but maybe that wasn’t so for people in 1628, nearer the time when he lived. These hidden Irish songs (to take only one issue, there a lot of other reasons to tie Shakespeare to Ireland) might not have been so hidden to a 17th century audience, for example the aforementioned Grattan Flood goes on to point out:

“Within twenty-five years of Shakespeare’s death we find Joe Harris: an Irish actor, in London, singing Irish songs. In 1666, when Henry V was presented, one of the principal attractions was Harris’s singing of a song in the Irish language. From Pepys we learn that the beauty of the Irish air, wedded to its original Irish words, completely captivated the audience. He thus writes: “Among other things, Harris, a man of fine conversation, sang his Irish song, the strangest in itself, and the prettiest song sung by him that ever I heard.””(10)

 

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Catholicism possibly causing offence

Another controversy at issue between Phillips (allied to the Commissioners) and the Londoners in Coleraine, and related to the above, would be religion. These Londoners were said to be weak in stamping out Catholicism like Phillips and the Commissioners would like them to do, for example one of the questions that the Commission had to look into and report back to the King about, was this:

“24. To know if the country had been planted with British whether, by all probability, it had not been freed of Popish priests long ere this, which spoils the country.
[The Answer] To the 24, there is no question to be made but that if the country had been planted with British, according to our late Sovereign’s intendment, the true religion had flourished in these parts otherwise than it doth or is likely to do whilst the natives, who generally are Papists, inhabit the country, among whom Popery hath so far prevailed that in every diocese there is either a bishop or vicar general, in every deanery an official, all of them exercising ecclesiastical jurisdiction by authority derived from the See of Rome; in every parish one popish priest at the least, besides abbots, monks and friars, whereof some new convents had been lately (though not in this country) erected. And all these have large allowances, to the great impoverishment and almost undoing of the poor seduced people. And our opinion is that whilst these priests and friars are permitted to remain in these parts there is no hope of reformation among the Irish, who, if these locusts were removed, would easily be brought to conformity.”(11)

One of the Commissioners who signed the above document was George Downham (or Downame), Church of Ireland Bishop of Derry, and you can see the kind of trouble he had with Catholics from his visitation of his diocese a few years earlier in 1622:

“The Merchant Taylors having performed both their offers concerning the Tithes and the church, and having built a fair large Church, I consecrated the said Church [at Macosquin] as the Parish Church of Camus and Macoscquin. Since which time Oliver Nugent (an obstinate recusant), having obtained of my Lord Primate the recusants’ fines in the parish of Camus and Aghadoey, and (as he saith) also of Camus, hath set upon the repairing the Church of Camus, to no purpose unless it be to make a division in the parish, for it standeth not so commodiously for the parish as the other, and neglecteth the Church of Aghadoey, which is a Mother Church...”(12)

Camus, where this Oliver was from and where he was succeeded by presumably his son Richard at that address, is only about two and a half miles South of Coleraine.

Anyway the point is that the Catholics were getting a bit uppity in these parts and certainly the Commissioners would be very offended by anything that smacked of Popery. Possibly the song had something like that in it and then the Londoners took cold feet if the play had too?

There is not much evidence to support this, except that, moreso than the Irish aspect of the play which in truth is very well hidden, the religious aspect of this play can really hit you if you are acquainted with the religious controversies of those years. You will notice, for example, the reference to Benedictus above, that phrase would leap out at you as a trad Catholic because its a well known sung refrain from the High Latin mass, but which Protestantism, then using the vernacular, had dropped. Here are a few phrases from the very first scene of Much Ado About Nothing, its clear that a lot of this is a disguised debate between Protestantism, in the person of Benedick, and Catholicism, in Claudio and Beatrice:

 

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“[CLAUDIO described as]...doing in the figure of a lamb the feats of a lion...
BEATRICE:..He [Benedick] set up his bills here in Messina and challenged Cupid at the flight, and my uncle’s Fool, reading the challenge, subscribed for Cupid and challenged him at the bird-bolt. I pray you,...
BEATRICE:...He wears his faith but as the fashion of his hat; it ever changes with the next block.
MESSENGER: I see, lady, the gentleman is not in your books.
BEATRICE No. An he were, I would burn my study. But I pray you, who is his companion? Is there no young squarer now that will make a voyage with him to the devil?
...
PRINCE You have it full, Benedick. We may guess by this what you are, being a man. Truly the lady fathers herself. [A reference to the conception of Our Lord of course] —Be happy, lady, for you are like an honorable father.
...
BENEDICK God keep your Ladyship still in that mind, so some gentleman or other shall ’scape a predestinate scratched face. [Predestination is obviously a big battleground in this debate.]
BEATRICE Scratching could not make it worse an ’twere such a face as yours were.
BENEDICK Well, you are a rare parrot-teacher. [Protestants accused Catholics of just memorising prayers by rote, instead of a Protestant style talking to God.]
BEATRICE A bird of my tongue is better than a beast of yours.
BENEDICK I would my horse had the speed of your tongue and so good a continuer, but keep your way, i’ God’s name, I have done.
BEATRICE You always end with a jade’s trick. I know you of old.
...
PRINCE:...I dare swear he is no hypocrite, but prays from his heart.
...
[Benedick and Claudio I think in this part are debating Our Lady, in the person of Hero, the daughter referred to above in regard to a miraculous conception:]
BENEDICK Why, i’ faith, methinks she’s too low for a high praise, too brown for a fair praise, and too little for a great praise. Only this commendation I can afford her, that were she other than she is, she were unhandsome, and being no other but as she is, I do not like her. [Protestants in general do not like the high status of Our Lady in the Catholic Church, and of course this comes into the question of the High and Low Anglican Churches.]
CLAUDIO Thou thinkest I am in sport. I pray thee tell me truly how thou lik’st her.
BENEDICK Would you buy her that you enquire after her?
CLAUDIO Can the world buy such a jewel?
BENEDICK Yea, and a case to put it into. But speak you this with a sad brow? Or do you play the flouting jack, to tell us Cupid is a good hare-finder and Vulcan a rare carpenter? Come, in what key shall a man take you to go in the song?
CLAUDIO In mine eye she is the sweetest lady that ever I looked on.
BENEDICK I can see yet without spectacles, and I see no such matter. There’s her cousin, an she were not possessed with a fury, exceeds her as much in beauty as the first of May doth the last of December. But I hope you have no intent to turn husband, have you? [The first of May is Mayday, the month dedicated to Our Lady, but also could be related I guess to ‘Lady Day’, at that time the beginning of the year in England and Ireland but not in Catholic Europe, of course there the end of the year was the last day of December.]
CLAUDIO I would scarce trust myself, though I had sworn the contrary, if Hero would be my wife.
BENEDICK Is ’t come to this? In faith, hath not the world one man but he will wear his cap with suspicion? Shall I never see a bachelor of threescore again? Go to, i’ faith, an thou wilt needs thrust thy neck into a yoke, wear the print of it, and sigh away Sundays. [A bachelor of threescore is likely to be a priest of course, and they were liable to punishment, for example even google’s AI points out: “The phrase “yoke and wear a sign” describes the punishment known as defrocking or laicization, a public degradation ritual where a priest is symbolically stripped of his priestly status.”]

 

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Anyway I am possibly reading too much into some of this but if so I am not the only one, many people are now saying that Shakespeare has included a lot of secret Catholic innuendos or clues in his text, including in this play. For example this is from the Guardian referring to the well known book on this by Clare Asquith:

“By looking closely at scenes which include particularly baffling banter to the modern ear, Asquith claims to be able to prove her case. In the first scene of Much Ado About Nothing, for example, bemusing references to 6 July are used to tease the hero, Benedick. ‘Mock not, mock not,’ he replies, ‘ere you flout old ends any further, examine your consciences’.

To Elizabethan Catholics, Asquith argues, this was a highly significant date. It was on 6 July that Henry VIII executed Sir Thomas More, his Chancellor, for refusing to acknowledge the monarch as the supreme head of the Church in England. More had become a role model for ‘recusants’ or dissident English Catholics.

The significance of the date was deepened for Catholics when the young Edward VI, Henry VIII’s fervently Protestant son, also died on 6 July – a coincidence that was viewed as a judgment on his heretic father. ‘This is why Benedick puts a stop to the banter,’ says Asquith. ‘His friends have gone too far. Mock not old ends, he says – the deaths of Thomas More and Edward are not a laughing matter.’”(13)

To get to our issue here, yes its a little more of a stretch to say that it was the Catholicism of Much Ado that offended, or would offend, the Commissioners, but it still could be that at least in part. Some of these Catholic codes are not that hard to spot, and again would be very offensive to a Protestant Bishop.

Another interesting point is that when Sir Thomas Phillips is articulating his complaint here, he doesn’t tell us what actually caused offence and it seems a weak point without that? Is it actually enough for him to name the play, just stating that it was about Much Ado About Nothing will tell his readers what the argument was about, that it was seen as Catholic and/or Irish at that time and therefore his readers knew exactly what he was talking about?

Finally I have to include one rather deflating but obvious point. Maybe the simple title of ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ caused offence, if it was meant as talking about the Commission and its work. Its possible that Phillips didn’t know it was a Shakespeare play and was just making his complaint based on that title, but still I cannot see the Londoners putting on a whole long and complex play just because they liked the title.

Such is the debate anyway about this aborted performance of Much Ado About Nothing, the first reference to a Shakespeare play in Ireland.

by Brian Nugent, http://www.orwellianireland.com .


Footnotes
1. Sir Thomas Phillips, Londonderry and the London companies, 1609-1629: being a survey and other documents submitted to King Charles I (Belfast, 1928), p.vi.

2. Thomas Colby, Ordnance Survey of the County of Londonderry (Dublin, 1837), p.40.

3. Sir Thomas Phillips, Londonderry and the London companies, 1609-1629: being a survey and other documents submitted to King Charles I (Belfast, 1928), p.4.

4. Sir Thomas Phillips, Londonderry and the London companies, 1609-1629: being a survey and other documents submitted to King Charles I (Belfast, 1928), p.119-20.

5. Bríd McGrath, Acts of the Corporation of Coleraine (Dublin, 2017), p.3.

6. Sir Thomas Phillips, Londonderry and the London companies, 1609-1629: being a survey and other documents submitted to King Charles I (Belfast, 1928), p.5.

7. “...and which includes several Irish airs, was compiled by William Ballet, a Dublin actor, about the year 1594. It is known in musical bibliography as ‘William Ballet’s Lute Book’, and is preserved in the library of Trinity College, Dublin.”
(Captain Francis O’Neill, Irish Folk Music, A Fascinating Hobby (Chicago, 1910), p.233.

8. https://www.sarsfieldsvirtualpub.co...nown-irish-harp-lute-composer-of-c-1585.1354/ .

9. W. H. Grattan Flood in his History of Irish Music says:
““Light o’ Love” is another English annexation from the Emerald Isle. Shakespeare, in his Much Ado About Nothing (Act III Scene IV) says “Clap us into ‘Light o’ Love’, that goes without a burden; do you sing it and I’ll dance to it.” Burden is the same as a drone or drone-bass...”
( https://www.libraryireland.com/IrishMusic/XVII-2.php .)
The music of this song is given in many places and the words are available at: Patrick Joseph McCall, Irish Fireside Songs (Dublin, 1911), p.83-6, which as the title indicates makes it a presumed Irish song.
‘Light o’ love’ might be considered an Irish phrase as well, e.g.
““...for here I am, and here’s for the lady”—he placed a bunch of rushes, in all the downy beauty of their seed, upon the cushion, and selecting one, blew off the down, which floated away like a small flake of snow—“De girls below in de glin, call it ‘light o’ love,’” he said, laughing,” and more call it a rush!””
(Mr and Mrs Samuel Carter Hall, Ireland its scenery and character (London, 1841) vol i, p.186.)

10. William Henry Grattan Flood, A History of Irish Music (Dublin, 1927), p.172.

11. Sir Thomas Phillips, Londonderry and the London companies, 1609-1629: being a survey and other documents submitted to King Charles I (Belfast, 1928), p.106.

12. Ulster Journal of Archaeology, 2nd series vol 2 (Belfast, 1896), p.131.

13. https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/aug/28/arts.books .