Monologues bring Middle Ages to life

GOOD MASTERS! SWEET LADIES! VOICES FROM A MEDIEVAL VILLAGE, by Laura Amy Schlitz, illustrated by Robert Byrd, Candlewick, 2007, 85 pages, $19.95. Newbery Award Winner, 2008.

When a group of children at the Park School in Baltimore were studying the Middle Ages, Laura Amy Schlitz, a librarian, surprised the children with an original dramatic piece.

"I wanted them to have something to perform, but no one wanted a small part. So I decided to write monologues instead of one long play, so that for three minutes at least, every child could be a star."

"Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!" is that dramatic piece told through the voices of 22 children between the ages of 10 and 15. These are personal stories that bring to life the problems of social classes from paupers to nobility reflective of a medieval manor, 1255 A.D.

These are the stories as seen through the eyes of Otho, the miller's son, who cheats the people — as did his father and grandfather — by adding chalk to the flour or misreading the weight. And the doctor's son, Thomas, who is learning the trade by watching his father: "Shake your head, look serious and wise — this sort of talk protects you if he dies. If he recovers, it was all your skill that brought him back to life. And that's better still."

We read of Mogg, daughter of a villein (peasant) and Jack, her half-wit brother, who save the family cow from the clutches of the lord.

When Jacob Ben Salomon, a Jewish boy, sees a Christian girl, Petronella, we realize the conflict between the two cultures as well as the taboos surrounding their meeting.

As sisters Mariot and Maud meet Piers, their father's glassblowing apprentice, they silently, but in unison, appraise him as a possible suitor.

Interspersed between these narratives and others of a plowboy, a shepherdess, a blacksmith's daughter and a runaway are short essays explaining different cultural events; the crusades, falconry, freedom versus bondage and pilgrimages.

The language is crisp and authentic (attested to by the lengthy bibliography used by the author), sometimes in rhyme, other times in prose reminiscent of old English. The author has added marginal notes throughout that serve as description and definitions of archaic terminology. The stories are mostly monologues but the pieces written for two voices to be spoken simultaneously are particularly effective.