Influences on the Mystery Plays liturgical plays + tradition of processions, dances, mummings, and folk plays content of the mystery plays performances in English (= vernacular), secular costumes created especially for the event, staged in the town streets, squares and great halls by amateur players. In England these were included in festivities at Plough Monday (the first Monday after Twelfth Night). May-Day, Midsummer Day (June 24), Harvest Home, and Christmas.
John Wycliff "Reformer and translator of the first Bible into English". Born in the city of Yorkshire, England, in 1329. Attended Oxford University. Up to 1378, Wycliff wanted to reform the Roman Catholic Church by eliminating the immoral clerics by deposing them from their properties which, according to him, was a source of corruption. In a Work of 1376 titled "Of Civil Dominion", Wycliff demanded a moral base for church leadership. At the time of the "One Hundred Years War", between England and France, Wycliff began his Reform by attacking the papacy's authority in 1378. Wycliff founded a group of untrained preachers called Lollards. He died in 1384.
Earliest surviving texts of English plays York Mystery Cycle (first records, 1376; texts from 1463-77) (over 13,000 lines) Chester Cycle (over 11,000) Towneley Cycle (over 12,000) N.town Cycle (nearly 11,000) Common features: Entire narrative of mankind from Creation to Last Judgement divided into a number of pageants, performed by different craft guilds or companies, performed on wagons or carriages at a series of 'stations' or stopping-places around the city Differences: York: divided into 48 pageants, played on a single day (Corpus Christi = the first Thursday after Trinity Sunday); Chester into 24 (three days, Monday through Wednesday of Whitsun week Plot: Chester: pageants of Abraham and Melchisadek, Balaam and his ass, about the Antichrist; York has none of these but one on Moses and Pharaoh and more on the Passion, four pageants on the later life of Mary
Towneley cycle and N.town group The Towneley cycle plays of the so-called Wakefield Master, a playwright who is regarded to be closest to modern readers (Shepherds' pageants and ranting tyrants). The N.town group of plays (late 15th-century MS); a number of pageants The N.town group of plays (late 15th-century MS); a number of pageants + two plays: a play on the early life of Mary (c. 1,600 lines) and a twopart Passion play (c. 3,000 lines). The stage directions suggest place and scaffold staging, Proclamation for the pageants leaves space for the insertion of the place of performance, which makes it probable that performances were given in several smaller towns and villages (i.e., not a civic play); indications that the play was performed on Sundays (i.e. not a feast day). Story: the early life of Mary (unique), Trial of Mary and Joseph, the death of Lamech, and a Jesse tree of prophecies of Christ's birth.
The Order of Presentation of The Wakefield (Towneley) cycle Play 1 The Creation Play 2 The Killing of Abel Play 3 Noah and the Ark Play 4 Abraham Play 5 Isaac Play 6 Jacob Play 7 The Prophets Play 8 Pharaoh Play 9 Caesar Augustus Play 10 The Annunciation Play 11 The Salutation of Elizabeth Play 12 The First Shepherds' Play Play 13 The Second Shepherds' Play 14 The Offering of the Magi Play 15 The Flight Into Egypt Play 16 Herod the Great Play 17 The Purification of Mary Play 18 The Play of the Doctors Play 19 John the Baptist Play 20 The Conspiracy Play 21 The Buffeting Play 22 The Scourging Play 23 The Crucifixion Play 24 The Talents Play 25 The Deliverance of Souls Play 26 The Resurrection of the Lord Play 27 The Pilgrims Play 28 Thomas of India Play 29 The Lord's Ascension Play 30 The Judgment Play 31 Lazarus Play 32 The Hanging of Judas
http://www.luminarium.org/medlit/playtexts.htm The Wakefield (Towneley) Cycle UVA The Wakefield (Towneley) Cycle - UMichigan Introduction to the Wakefield plays - BYU The Play of Noah - Harvard Herod the Great - Harvard Second Shepherds' Play - UVA Second Shepherds' Play - UCalgary Second Shepherds' Play - Bibliotheca Augustana The York Cycle - UMichigan Brief Synopses of the York Plays - UToronto York Play of the Crucifixion - UVA The Coronation of the Virgin - Austin College
Second Shepherds' Play Manuscript Huntingdon Library MS HM1, fol. 38r From Bibliotheca Augustana
Rivalry between churches and guilds I wish to argue that the development of local governance and the presence of power groups other than craft guilds affected not only the elaboration of established ceremonials but also the kinds of drama and ceremonial that were created. Many of the larger cities, for example, had monasteries or cathedral churches that had been granted privileges before the secular part of the city sought incorporation (Clopper 2001, p. 140).
E.K. Chambers (1903): medieval drama = 'mimetic impulse of the folk' Is this all? performers cannot perform in a vacuum. If we want to get as accurate a picture as feasible of a festive Show, we need to look closely at the practicalities of putting it on. Who planned it? Who organised it? Who paid for it? Who gave permission for it to go forward? How much control had any of these over the finished product? If there were formal controls, what were they, and how effective do they seem to have been? It helps here to hold it up against modern equivalents, both in order to compare and contrast, and to revive our sense of just how complex an event like this can be. Meg Twycross, Some Approaches to Dramatic Festivity, in: Meg Twycross, ed. Festive Drama. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1996, p. 22.
City wealth, Guilds and Pageants Certainly, as towns rose and fell in prosperity, the structure of the cycle changed. The York cycle was modified on a number of occasions because the economic decline in the town had so impoverished some guilds that they could not afford to present their play. For example, in 1419 the Ironmongers complained of the expense of staging Mary Magdalene and some time in the 1430s they gave it up. In 1431 the Goldsmiths were unable to produce two plays, so their play of Herod was transferred to the Masons who wished to give up their play of Fergus. In 1422 four pageants were combined to give a single play of the Condemnation, and two to give the Crucifixion play. The result of these changes, a result produced by economic and not artistic considerations, is to distort the structure of the cycle and the possible internal unity of the individual episode. The principle of these revisions is evidently to retain the doctrinal framework of the cycle even at the expense of dramatic unity. Chester and York both have plays of the Creation; but the fact that Chester combines Creation and Fall with the story of Cain and Abel, while York devotes six plays to Creation and keeps Cain and Abel separate, is bound to affect the dramatic impact of the Creation. David Mills, Approaches to Medieval Drama (1969), in: Peter Happé. Medieval English Drama. London: MacMillan, 1984, p. 51
How were the cycles performed? Die Wagenbühnen (pageants ) der Zünfte fuhren nach einem bestimmten Fahrplan nacheinander von Station zu Station, wo ein Teilstück des Zyklus nach dem anderen aufgeführt wurde. Das Publikum war auf die Stationen verteilt und sah sich die Stücke in der Reihenfolge an, wie sie daher kamen. Es ist also anzunehmen, daß unter bestimmten Umständen und an verschiedenen Orten Fronleichnamszyklen in zweierlei Form gespielt wurden: zunächst als eine Sequenz von kurzen Stücken, in denen das dramatische Element dem Schauelement untergeordnet war, im Rahmen einer Prozession; später (und neben dieser Form) als Dramenzyklus, wie ihn die überlieferten, ungleich erweiterten Texte bilden, vor einem ausgewählten Publikum in einem festlich geschmückten Saal. Heinz Kindermann. Das Theaterpublikum des Mittelalters. Salzburg: Otto Müller Verlag, 1980, p. 148f., quotes from Nelson, A.H.: The Medieval English Stage: Corpus Christi Pageants and Plays, London 1974 and Nelson, A. H.: Some Configurations of Staging in Medieval English Drama, (in: Medieval English Drama, ed. J. Taylor and A. H. Nelson), Chicago 1972.
How to organize a pageant
Corpus Christi Plays were civic plays The wagon-staged or processional cycles tend to dominate the picture of English vernacular theatre, but it is important to remember that besides the extant N.town Passion there are quite full records of a Passion play on fixed stages at New Romney in Kent in the 16th century, and of what sounds like place and scaffold staging of a full-scale civic play at Clerkenwell in London; quite apart from all the recorded performances about whose staging we know nothing.
In four county towns, however, Whitsun became the occasion for some of the most splendid of all. At Leicester in the early sixteenth century the parishioners of St Mary le Castro and of St Martin made their way to the town's third church, of St Mary Magdalen. The former carried the image of the Virgin, richly robed and crowned, beneath a canopy supported by four of them. She was preceded by minstrels and followed by statues of the twelve Apostles, or perhaps by people dressed to represent them, their names fixed to their bonnets. Then came the unmarried young women, and fourteen men carrying banners. The parishioners of St Martin naturally carried their own patron, and another set of Apostles. Both processions made offerings at the altar of St Mary Magdalen, and then were paid or feasted by their respective churchwardens. At Exeter in the fifteenth century a 'May' and a model elephant were carried through the streets; how far these festivities continued into the early Tudor period is concealed by the failure of the sequence of accounts. The Chester Corpus Christi play was moved to Whit Monday at some time after 1474, and by 1519 had grown into a cycle of biblical pageants provided by the craft guilds. Between 1521 and 1532 these evolved further, into a sequence of twenty-four different subjects requiring the two following days in addition. Norwich in the same period had a Whitsun cycle of eleven subjects, spread over the Monday and Tuesday. They ranged from 'The Creation' to 'The Holy Ghost', and included an 'Ark' and a view of hell. That of the Grocers was mounted upon a cart hung with cloths and drawn by four horses. At both Norwich and Chester the pageants made a wide circuit of the city and seem to have included some spoken drama. At Norwich it is recorded that crowds poured in from the countryside to enjoy the spectacle, and upon the Tuesday the corporation appointed a Lord of Misrule to devise further festivities. (Ronald Hutton. The Stations of the Sun. A History of the Ritual Year in Britain. Oxford und New York: Oxford University Press, 1996, pp. 278-9)
Drama between the Middle Ages and Reformation However we regard the cycles, we should be aware of the difficulties in applying to them modern ideas of'play' or 'drama'. While critics since Chambers may have oversimplified the historical evolution of medieval drama, their studies have suggested that the cycles were the meeting-point of a number of influences, not all of which would be acceptable in a modern concept of drama. The cycles were tied to a particular background of Biblical exegesis, to a certain poetic tradition, to a unique set of social conditions. A reading of any cycle does not support the view that they propounded doctrines totally unacceptable to the post-reformation Church, particularly in the uncertain years of the sixteenth century, or that they could not have been 'Protestantised' with very little effort; but in people's minds they were very much tied to the ethos of the old Church. David Mills, Approaches to Medieval Drama (1969), in: Peter Happé. Medieval English Drama. London: MacMillan, 1984, p. 51.
Drama in the Henrician period What it is important to note, however, is that, where it existed, drama was not simply a recreational diversion. The Henrician period, unlike our own, was one in which drama 'mattered'. It mattered not only to the commonalty and those who made their livings by entertaining them, but also to the sophisticated, the rich and the powerful. It mattered to the civic authorities who saw in the Corpus Christi cycles both an expression of urban honour, pride and magnificence and a potent ritual of communal and spiritual reaffirmation. 3 It mattered to those clerics who crafted religious and moral drama as a vehicle for spiritual instruction. And, most significantly for our present concerns, it mattered to influential lay men and women who saw in the writing, the patronage or the commissioning of plays the opportunity, not only for diversion, but also for self-expression, advancement and the persuasion of others. Greg Walker, Plays of Persuasion. Drama and Politics at the Court of Henry VIII. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1991, p. 7.