Honour, Harmony and the <i>King of Outspokenness</i> : The Use of Stage Plays and Festive Culture in Fifteenth-Century Flemish Coastal Communities

The history of fifteenth-century theatre in the Low Countries has long been studied primarily as the history of culture, literature and theatre. It has now attracted the attention of social historians and anthropologists and is being studied as an urban history of corporations, fraternities and chambers of rhetoric. That creative and art-loving activities in the Low Countries also frequently occurred in the fifteenth-century coastal communities, which largely comprised fishermen, sailors, salt-makers and peat-cutters, usually escapes the attention of historians. Underexposed is the striking interest of maritime communities in drama, theatre and carnivalesque play. I argue these communities integrated this drama into a survival strategy motivated by the spatial, economic and sociocultural context in which they were living.