May Day in Early Modern England
May Day
Para1In early modern England, the celebration of May Day brought people together and served
as a source of great entertainment. The day had roots in Roman and Celtic fertility
practices such as the Roman festival of the goddess Flora and the Celtic holiday of
Beltane, but May Day occurred without religious context in England by the Middle Ages,
according to scholar John Chu. As the name suggests, May Day was generally celebrated
on the first of May. The lively celebrations were especially popular among rural and
country folk. John Stow’s 1598 Survey of London notes that
Mayingsand
Maygamesexcited the different parishes of the growing capitol city as well. We see reference to May Day celebrations, including both the maypole and Morris dancing, in some of Shakespeare’s work. A Midsummer Night’s Dream contains both, with Titania’s reference to Morris in her speech found in Act 2, Scene 1, as well as a brief mention of the maypole from Hermia in Act 3 Scene 2.
Para2May Day consisted of games, feasting, and dancing. There were activities for children,
young women, young men, village groups, and even entertainment by hired professionals.
A few key activities iconic to May Day include:
The Rite of May
Maypole decorating and dancing
Morris dancing
May Court selection (May Queen and King)
Para3May Day celebrations have persisted to the present day in the British Isles, although
they were frowned upon by Puritans during the Elizabethan period and even banned by
the Puritans under Oliver Cromwell during the English Civil Wars and Interregnum (1642–1660).
They were later restored under King Charles II, who saw to it that a large maypole
was installed in London.
May Day Criticisms
Para4In his 1583 attack on all sorts of behaviors, Puritan religious reformer Philip Stubbes
complains of the lewd activities practiced on May Day and extended through other summer
celebrations such as Midsummer Day:
On Mayday, Whitsunday or other time, all the young men and maids, old men and wives, run gadding over night to the woods, groves, hills, and mountains, where they spend all night in pleasant pastimes […] And no marvel, for there is a great lord present amongst them, as superintendent over their pastimes and sports, namely Satan, Prince of Hell.
Para5Dr. Will Tosh explains that this kind of ritualised suspension of normal rules of
propriety that allowed couples to stay out all night in the woods and fields was common
in pre-modern England, as it is in other world cultures.
Maypole
Para6The Maypole’s origins were that of a decorated tree; the tallest tree in the forest
would be cut down and brought into the public square to serve as the maypole. This
was an annual tradition, the maypole being set up in the morning, with the people
decorating it with garlands of greenery and flowers. The May Pole, a type of phallic
symbol, arises from the celebration’s origins as a fertility rite in Celtic pagan
cultures. The decorated maypole might be left up for the year. Ribbons twined around
the pole became a part of the ritual in Victorian times.
Morris Dancing
Para7Morris dancing is a type of folk dance that includes movements of jogging, skipping,
and oftentimes a mock battle where props like wooden swords, sticks, and hobby horses
are incorporated. Dancers often wear bells on their legs. A lively country dance,
the Morris was familiar to theatrical audiences during the early modern period. Various
regions and towns had their own takes on the dance, which often enacted the death
of the May King as part of the Morris Sword Dance, according to J.M. Mackley. It arose
in the English Middle Ages but is still practiced in the 21st century, and the Morris
Dance remains a significant part of British culture.
Para8Morris Dancing has evolved over hundreds of years, including one practice that has
been especially adapted: the use of face paint. Black face paint was traditionally
used in early modern Morris dancing, but today, most Morris groups have changed the
color to green or blue or removed face paint entirely due to the racist practices
associated with blackface.
May Traditions in Literature
Para9Morris Dance is mentioned in Shakespeare’s plays such as A Midsummer Night’s Dream, when Titania comments that
the nine men’s morris is fill’d up with mud(2.1.101) In this scene, she uses the way that bad weather hinders a Morris Dance as a metaphor for the disruption in communities that occurs when she and Oberon are in a disagreement.
Para10In Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the spirit of May Day is heavily integrated in the play through the setting, characters,
and plot. The connection between fertility and new birth correlates to the romance
and merriment in the play, demonstrating the transformation and renewal of love entanglements.
Duke Theseus’ wedding to Hippolyta launches the world of the play as a time of festivity
and joy, similar to May Day traditions. Throughout the play, the setting of the enchanted
forest is described, which is integral to the plot and character development. For
example, the fairies’ interactions with nature and their influence on human relations
highlights the bond between humans and nature that many May Day traditions enact.
Overall, the play reinforces the May Day spirit of celebrating nature’s ability to
renew and transform.
Key Print Sources
Heaney, Michael. The Ancient English Morris Dance. Archaeopress, 2023.
Hornback, Robert.
“Extravagant and Wheeling Strangers”: Early Blackface Dancing Fools, Racial Impersonation, and the Limits of Identification.Exemplaria vol. 20, no. 2, 2008, pp. 197–222.
Stow, John.
A Survey of London. Containing the Original Antiquity, Increase, Modern estate, and description of that City, written in the year 1598 by John Stow, Citizen of London. Since by the same author increased, with divers rare notes of antiquity, and published in the year 1603.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Texts and Contexts. Ed. Gail Kern Paster and Kiles Howard. Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1999, pp. 99–116.
Key Online Sources
Best, Michael.
Summer: Mowing a Meadow.Shakespeare’s Life and Times. Internet Shakespeare Editions. University of Victoria, 4 Jan. 2011. https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/society/husbandry/summer.html.
Chu, John.
The History of May Day.National Trust. https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/discover/history/the-history-of-may-day. Accessed 9 Jul. 2025.
Garry, Jane.
The Literary History of the English Morris Dance.Folklore vol. 94, no. 2, 1983, pp. 219–228. Taylor & Francis Online. https://doi.org/10.1080/0015587X.1983.9716280.
Johnson, Ben.
May Day Celebrations.Historic UK. 2023. https://www.historic-uk.com/CultureUK/May-Day-Celebrations/.
John Stow. A Survey of London. Reprinted From the Text of 1603. Ed. C. L. Kingsford. 1908. British History Online. https://www.british-history.ac.uk/no-series/survey-of-london-stow/1603.
Accessed 19 Feb. 2025.
Mackley, J. S.
“This Stinckyng Idoll”: the Origins of Some English Mayday Traditions.Loughborough University Conference on Country Life: The Rural Experience in Literature, Song, Film & Folklore. University of Northampton, 2013. https://nectar.northampton.ac.uk/id/eprint/5503/7/Mackley20135503.pdf.
Tosh, Will.
The Giddiness of Midsummer Day.Shakespeare’s Globe. https://www.shakespearesglobe.com/discover/blogs-and-features/2020/06/24/the-giddiness-of-midsummers-day/. Accessed 24 Jun. 2020.
Prosopography
Kate McPherson
Kate McPherson is Professor of English and Honors Program Director at Utah Valley
University (Orem, UT, USA). In 2015, she began working to redevelop Shakespeare’s Life and Times, created by Michael Best, into the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Her other publications include commentary on Pericles and The Comedy of Errors for the New Oxford Shakespeare (2016); the co-edited volumes Stages of Engagement: Drama and Religion in Post-Reformation England with James Mardock (Duquesne University Press, 2014) and Shakespeare Expressed: Page, Stage, and Classroom in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries, with Kathryn M. Moncrief and Sarah Enloe (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press,
2013). With Kathryn M. Moncrief, Kate has also two edited collections, Performing Pedagogy in Early Modern England: Gender, Instruction, and Performance (Ashgate, 2011) and Performing Maternity in Early Modern England (Ashgate 2008). She has also published numerous articles on early modern maternity
in scholarly journals. Kate participated in the 2008 National Endowment for the Humanities
Institute,
Shakespeare’s Blackfriars: The Study, the Stage, the Classroom,at the American Shakespeare Center. She also served as Play Seminar Director, a public humanities position, for the Utah Shakespeare Festival in 2017 and 2018.
Leah Hamby
Leah Hamby is the primary encoder for the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Aside from encoding, she also works as an editor for the project and contributed
several articles of her own. She has been working on the EMEE since February 2023. As of February 2026, she is soon to graduate with honours from
Utah Valley University with a major in history and a minor in creative writing. Her
other work with the LEMDO program includes remediating William Kemp’s Kemp’s Nine Day’s Wonder for the Digital Renaissance Editions.
Melissa Walter
Melissa Walter is Associate Professor of English at the University of the Fraser Valley.
Her research focuses on early modern English drama and English and European prose
fiction. She is the author of The Italian Novella and Shakespeare’s Comic Heroines (U of Toronto, 2019), and co-editor, with Dennis Britton, of Rethinking Shakespeare Source Study: Authors, Audiences, Digital Technologies (Routledge, 2018). Her work on English theatre and the European novella has appeared
in several edited collections, including Transnational Exchange in Early Modern Theater (Ashgate, 2008), and Transnational Mobility in Early Modern Theater (Ashgate, 2012). She has also written about
Translation and Identity in the Dialogues in English and Malaiane Languages(Indographies, ed. Jonathan Gil Harris. Palgrave 2012). At the University of the Fraser Valley, she is a lead coordinator of UFV’s Shakespeare and Reconciliation Garden.
Michael Best
Michael Best is Professor Emeritus at the University of Victoria, BC. He founded the
Internet Shakespeare Editions in 1996, and was Coordinating Editor until 2017, contributing two editions to the
ISE: King John and King Lear (the latter also available in print from Broadview Press). In print, he has published editions of works of Elizabethan magic and huswifery,
a collection of letters from the Australian goldfields, and Shakespeare on the Art of Love (2008). He contributed regular columns for the Shakespeare Newsletter on
Electronic Shakespeares,and has written many articles and chapters for both print and online books and journals, principally on questions raised by the new medium in the editing and publication of texts. He has delivered papers and plenary lectures on electronic media and the Internet Shakespeare Editions at conferences in Canada, the USA, the UK, Spain, Australia, and Japan.
Navarra Houldin
Training and Documentation Lead 2025–present. LEMDO project manager 2022–2025. Textual
remediator 2021–present. Navarra Houldin (they/them) completed their BA with a major
in history and minor in Spanish at the University of Victoria in 2022. Their primary
research was on gender and sexuality in early modern Europe and Latin America. They
are continuing their education through an MA program in Gender and Social Justice
Studies at the University of Alberta where they will specialize in Digital Humanities.
Olivia McAuley
Olivia McAuley was a student at the University of Fraser Valley.
Shauna Hoogstra
Shauna Hoogstra was a student at the University of Fraser Valley.
Orgography
LEMDO Team (LEMD1)
The LEMDO Team is based at the University of Victoria and normally comprises the project
director, the lead developer, project manager, junior developers(s), remediators,
encoders, and remediating editors.
University of Victoria (UVIC1)
https://www.uvic.ca/Metadata
| Authority title | May Day in Early Modern England |
| Type of text | Critical |
| Publisher | University of Victoria on the Linked Early Modern Drama Online Platform |
| Series | Early Modern England Encyclopedia |
| Source |
By Shauna Hoogstra and Olivia McAuley, inspired by Michael Best’s Shakespeare’s Life and Times, Internet Shakespeare Editions
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| Editorial declaration | This document uses Canadian English spelling |
| Edition | Released with Early Modern England Encyclopedia 1.0a |
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Early Modern England EncyclopediaAnthology Leads: Kate McPherson and Kate Moncrief.
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| Encoding description | Encoded in TEI P5 according to the LEMDO Customization and Encoding Guidelines |
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Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
Mitacs Globalink Research Internship Utah Valley University |
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