Buskins
On Saturday 22 March 1600, two sodden, filthy, tattered boots were triumphantly ‘nailde on the wall’ of Norwich’s Guildhall (Kemp, 31). They had travelled 130 miles over four weeks, in a journey that their owner, William Kemp, had named a ‘wonder’ of festive entertainment. Kemp’s boots had not merely enabled a walking journey from London to Norwich; rather, they had been instrumental in ensuring that Kemp successfully accomplished his journey in the form of an extended Morris Dance.
William Kemp, Kemps nine daies wonder (London, 1840 [1600]). LUNA: Folger Digital Image Collection.
Numerous possible reasons for Kemp’s journey present themselves. Having resigned from the theatre world in 1599, where he had been famous as the jigging clown of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, Kemp perhaps ought to enhance his celebrity independent from that domain. His peculiar journey may also have been stimulated by the reputation he had established in his clowning days, in which Kemp had become an embodiment of folkloric celebration that was intrinsically linked to the festive calendar (the journey itself took place during Lent, in the lead-up to Easter, the rebirth of Christ). We should also consider the financial advantages associated with personal ‘wager journeys’ at this time, and the potential sponsorship from wealthy patrons that this kind of journey may have attracted (Parr, 59). But crucially, regardless of all and any of these reasons, Kemp would not have managed the expedition without his sturdy footwear. It was to those muddy buskins that the merry jingling Morris bells were attached, the wearing of which not only enabled Kemp to perform his entertaining craft, but to construct an identity as England’s rustic merrymaker.
These very buskins would have already signified a great deal to Kemp and his earlier spectators in 1599, while he jigged at the Globe playhouse. The calf-high boots, ‘made from cloth or leather’, would have been associated with personal mobility and travel. Shakespeare’s audiences often heard noble characters calling for their boots whilst slipping off their delicate, stylish silk or cloth shoes (“buskin”, 1.a., OED). Sir John Falstaff, in 2 Henry IV, calls for his boots to visit Prince Hal, while in Richard II the Duke of York, in distraught haste, cries out to a servant, ‘Bring me my boots’, ‘Give me my boots, I say’, eager to inform his king of a discovered treasonous plot. When King Lear asks that a companion ‘pull off [his] boots’ on the perilous heath, he signals his inability to journey on any further — and, perhaps, implies his resignation from noble status.
Unlike the glamorous silk and ribbon-covered ‘fashionable shoes and stockings’ that most Elizabethan actors wore on stage to attract ‘the attention’ of London theatregoers, Kemp’s jigging boots would have demanded notice through the ‘flamboyant feats’ of his feet (Korda, 92). Onstage, Kemp’s boots would have danced at the eye level of most groundling spectators: booted in his rustic, yet functional, bovine leather, Kemp’s physical movements, and the sounds and shapes that they produced on the Globe’s wooden floorboards, would likely have inspired admiring excitement and awe. Onstage, the boots were impressive in their sturdy functionality: they lent reliable support to Kemp’s famously energetic, boisterous jigging, and the expressive ‘foot-skills’ he needed to impress paying spectators (Korda, 89).
Whilst most costume and prop footwear onstage often required ‘doubly reinforced “welted” soles’ to ensure its survival across numerous wearers and performances, Kemp’s own boots would have needed even more resilience against the elements and his energetic actions (Korda, 101). Dancing actors such as Kemp could be gifted old riding boots by wealthy patrons; nevertheless, it is likely that he would have opted ‘to supply [his] own’ pair for performances (Korda, 101). Bovine leather’s rigidity meant that it would mould whilst worn, so Kemp likely purchased his own boots to guarantee his precious comfort while dancing onstage. Necessarily, then, Kemp would have developed a very personal relationship with his own pair of boots: they not only facilitated his livelihood and reputation at the Globe, but unlike the silk shoes worn by other actors, which would be returned after shows, they also strode straight out of the theatre to serve Kemp in his everyday life. Even beyond the theatre walls, Kemp’s boots served as a performative prop in metonymic relationship with the rustic clown entertainers that he personated onstage. They doubled up as day-to-day footwear that navigated London’s streets in daily life and journeyed along England’s roads with the Leicester’s Men troupe during the 1580s and 1590s. Quite conceivably, a single pair would have seen Kemp through several rural English tours and throughout Europe. They were a symbol of his famous clownage, his means of livelihood, and a comfortable vehicle for social and personal travel.
Mark Goldsworthy (woodcarver), Kemp’s Men, Chapelfield Gardens. Photo: Graham Hardy (2006). CC BY-SA 2.0.
When Kemp began his spectacular journey to Norwich in February 1600, his boots necessarily shifted in function once again. Moreover, they also altered the function of the roads upon which they trod: the roads became Kemp’s land of financial opportunity, his own stage for self-advertisement, his place of work and play. Travelling away from London in jigging dance, these boots metamorphosed muddy lanes into performative spaces. The famous woodcut of Kemp’s Wonder depicts the magical ‘leape[s]’ (Kemp, 21) Kemp made as the boots hovered almost supernaturally in mid-air above the English ground, trustily protecting and propelling Kemp along on his gravity-defying dance.
Yet they could not guarantee Kemp’s comfort on such a prolonged journey. Early modern English roads were reputably perilous, and Kemp’s pamphlet repeatedly mentions various challenges posed by terrain, disreputable travellers, and temptations to his resolve. Kemp’s boots paraded relentlessly over roads that ‘[stood] for continual challenge, a field of competition’ (Equestri, 134). Spectators would have physically felt puddles and mud splashing onto them as Kemp stamped, jumped, and leapt his way to Norwich. They would have heard his jingling Morris-bells attached to the boots and watched his measured exertions, sometimes erratic, sometimes wholly controlled with poise and grace. One young woman experienced a particularly deep ‘misschance’ outside Norwich, as Kemp (apparently accidentally) trod upon her long-waisted skirt, tearing it clean off (Kemp, 30). Such a mortifying moment encapsulates the very tangible impact that Kemp’s boots could exert upon eager by-standers. Just as the deep pools and muddy ditches posed an occupational hazard to Kemp’s buskins, so, in turn, the buskins posed a physical, and even shamefully personal, hazard to spectators.
Plaque on the wall of Maddermarket Theatre, where Kemp ended his dance. Image: Literary Norfolk. © Cameron Self.
When Kemp reached his destination, he boldly consolidated his notable celebrity by pinning his boots to the Guildhall, proclaiming a momentous achievement: he was actively making history. In a self-consciously parodic memorialisation of his own efforts, Kemp left his trusty buskins behind as a distinct mark of self-proclaimed triumph. They became a marvellous symbol of his famous expedition, evoking awe, respect and admiration in Elizabethan spectators. What became of these boots, however, is truly unknown. Unlike the slip-on left shoe ‘found at the Rose Theatre’, they were never recovered (Korda, 85). They may have remained nailed to the Guildhall wall rain-soaked, mud-laden, torn and battered, revered as treasured artefacts by the public. Perhaps they were taken down as littered waste, or even snatched by an individual who hoped that they might have some life left in them. But the story that they tell, the efforts that they embodied and the celebrity that they enabled is truly the ‘wonder’ of Kemp’s journey.
Hollyann Pye is a PhD Candidate in the Department of English at the University of Bristol.
Selected Bibliography.
“buskin, n.” OED Online, Oxford University Press. Last accessed 4 August 2022.
Equestri, Alice. ‘Wandering Fools and Foolish Vagrants: Folly on the Road in Early Modern English Culture’ in Lisa Hopkins and Bill Angus (Eds), Reading the Road, from Shakespeare’s Crossways to Bunyan’s Highways (Edinburgh: EUP, 2020), pp. 127-145.
Kemp, William. Kempes Nine Daies Wonder, Performed in a Journey from London to Norwich (Edinburgh: Kessinger Legacy Reprints, 1884).
Korda, Natasha. ‘How to Do Things with Shoes’ in Patricia Lennox and Mirabella Bella (Eds), Shakespeare and Costume (London: Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 2015), pp. 85–104.
Parr, Anthony. Renaissance Mad Voyages: Experiments in Early Modern English Travel, Cultures of Play, 1300-1700 (Surrey: Ashgate, 2015).
4 August 2022.