PP A4 Flyer Nov 08
21/11/08
08:52
Page 1
You Must See
Next Summer’s
Spectacular Production
of
“HAMLET”
Being a MUCH IMPROVED AND
MORE HUMOROUS, affair than Mr.
Shakespeare’s little effort
~
Christmas tour dates:
Saturday November 29th
Grassington Dickensian
12.30 & 2.15pm
Friday December 5th
Grassington Square 7.15pm
Saturday December 6th
Grassington Dickensian
PENNY PLAIN
THEATRE COMPANY
proudly present
12.30 & 2.15pm
Friday December 12th
Tennant’s Arms, Kilnsey, 8.00pm
Bluebell Inn, Kettlewell 9.00pm
Saturday December 13th
Grassington Dickensian
1.00 & 2.15pm
Tempest Arms, Elslack, 4.30 pm
Sunday December 14th
Forester’s Arms, Grassington 9.00 pm
Friday December 19th
Craven Arms, Appletreewick 7.30 pm
New Inn, Appletreewick 8.30 pm
Sunday December 21st
Forester’s Arms, Grassington 8.00pm
See our website for further details
www.pennyplaintheatre.co.uk
Old Hall, Threshfield, 9.00pm
Wednesday December 24th
Tel: 01756752695
Red Lion, Burnsall, 7.15pm
HARDCASTLE’S
CHRISTMAS
TURKEY
PP A4 Flyer Nov 08
21/11/08
08:52
Page 2
It’s Christmas, 1858, and for a third year,
Hardcastle’s Mighty Excelsior Theatre
Company have straggled back from the farthest
reaches of the country to their winter quarters
in Grassington. It’s been a hard year: pelted
and derided wherever they went, but the
troupe’s unshakeable belief in their own
greatness kept them going. Now they’re in
seasonable spirits again. While on the road
(towed by their sometimes trusty carthorse,
Hamlet) they passed the hours singing songs
from their native Yorkshire, and picking up a
good tune from here and there.
The Boar’s Head Carol dates back to
Elizabethan times and, while giving a nod to
religious values, is really a celebration of
feasting.
Shepherds Arise, on the other hand,
came from lowlier roots, and was sung in farms
and public houses from early Victorian times.
This Aye Neet is very old, and part of a
chirpy medieval ditty “The Lyke Wake Dirge”
sung over corpses awaiting burial, to remind
them that, if they thought this life had been a
bit grim, it was nothing compared to the
torments that awaited sinners.
The Wassail Song is a Yorkshire variant
on a widespread ritual song, originally sung to
your apple trees while pouring cider over them
(if you were that way inclined), it became
customary for children to take up the song,
and sing it at midwinter. Like children of all
times, they were more interested in making
money than making the trees bear fruit.
the family who kept the tradition alive for
some two hundred years until it died out in
1974, were called - Hardcastle! (spooky, eh?)
The dance is called “Buttered Peas” and hails
from Upper Wharfedale.
The Bacca Pipes jig is a rather unusual
morris dance, and probably not a true part of
the morris tradition, danced round a pair of
crossed tobacco pipes in Victorian ale-houses.
Mummers’ plays are strange, nonsensical
remnants of a lost tradition. They probably
Septimus, our defrocked cleric, is
merely echoing the writings of William
Prynne, a fervid puritan, whose railings
against all life’s little (and not-so-little)
pleasures makes stirring reading. Poor chap,
he eventually got executed for being such a
bore.
Who’s the Fool Now? is a Tudor drinking
song, always popular as a round sung in the
alehouses, and probably sung by “Sir Simon
the King” a famous inebriate in Elizabethan
times.
The Carnal and the Crane is a curious
debate between a carnal - a crow - and a crane
about the nativity. It was discovered by
Vaughan Williams in Herefordshire, but recent
researches have found the lyrics handwritten
in a London merchant’s chapbook dated 1521.
A Calling-on Song was traditionally sung
to drum up a crowd to watch a mummers’ play,
so we’ve grafted it onto ours. This year our
mummers’ play is a rather fragmented text
from Ripon, and although it’s called the Ripon
sword dance, there never seems to have been a
sword dance in it since it began in the 17th
century! Our researches have discovered that
started as a ritual of death and rebirth,
performed when the old year died and made
way for a new one.
The Christmas Tree is a song ahead of
its time, as far as Hardcastle’s men are
concerned, for it was written ten years later,
but what’s an anachronism or two, when it’s a
fine song and one of the favourite Sheffield
carols today.
We’ll finish with Please to see the King,
a song that dates back to early pagan
celebrations. The “king” is a wren, placed in a
cage or nailed to a pole and paraded round on
St Stephen’s day, the 26th of December. Why?
Who knows. Them were the days!