SOURCE: “A Comparative Calendar of Folk Customs and Festivities in Elizabethan England,” in Cahiers Elisabéthains, No. 8, October, 1975, pp. 5-13.

In the following essay, Laroque investigates the origins and representation of folk festivals in the Elizabethan calendar.

As E. K. Chambers says in The Medieval Stage,¹ the student of English popular ludi and fêtes cannot but be put off by the complexity and confusion of the recorded material. We are very much in need of a clear and systematic calendar establishing the precise place and function of all these traditional ceremonies, in order to complete the study of their local and temporal variations. Already at the time of the Elizabethans there were many hesitations and inconsistencies as to the precise date on which such or such festival was kept; Shakespeare, for instance, situates the May-games in Midsummer² and also very probably at Whitsuntide,³ whereas they were ritually...