4 - Courtly Rituals and Casual Entertainments

Summary

Abstract

This chapter first presents analytical readings of courtly functions for which hired shipboard musicians were paid to perform (dinners, psalm services, funerals, and other formal ceremonies), and I focus on the way captains like Drake instilled courtly regiment and customs to assert themselves as sole master of the voyage. This mastery not only included the ship but the social, moral, and religious lives of the crew. Given this dynamic, hired shipboard musicians had to attend to the captain as they would a court official. Conversely, there were also times of recreational play and diversion, which often gave performers an opportunity to escape their pedestrian or piratical reality.

Keywords: ship dinners, psalm services, shipboard musicians, General History of Pirates, circumnavigation

As explored in Chapters One and Two, naval and professional civilian performers brought courtly rituals and customs aboard ship. These rituals may have helped musicians like trumpeter John Brewer transition to a life at court after playing at sea. Genteel customs distinguished shipboard performers as a personnel category above seafaring labourers, though still below the voyages’ top officers. They followed their captain's orders and sent signals between parties on land and sea, communicated with Indigenous peoples and foreign contacts, and of course, entertained the captain and crew. As entertainers, maritime musicians and performers occupied the same spaces on the ship as the captain, high-ranking officers, and royal guests, usually during meals. However, they also entertained the mariners and lower-ranking sailors who made up most of the ship's crew, playing on deck during times of diversion. The performing middle class had to shift between these disparate groups and learn how to accommodate both.

For formal, courtly functions, musicians were tasked to give processional music for the appropriate occasion. Casual entertainments, on the other hand, included music, dance, and for pirates during the Golden Age, satirical shipboard theatre, which mocked courtly laws and practises.

Courtly Rituals

Queen Elizabeth was an enthusiastic patron of the arts, and she surrounded her court with various types of performers—singers, instrumental musicians, dramatic performers, and so on. She kept brass players, drummers, lutes, sackbuts, viols, flute and fife players, and musicians-in-ordinary, according to court livery documents.