GUILD PLAYS AND PARISH PLAYS
[_Bibliographical Note._—The English miracle play has been
often, fully, and admirably studied from the point of view
of dramatic literature; perhaps less so from that of stage
history. The best accounts are those of B. Ten Brink,
_History of English Literature_, bk. v, chs. 2-6 (trans. W.
C. Robinson, vol. ii, 1893); A. W. Ward, _History of English
Dramatic Literature_ (2nd ed., 1899), vol. i, ch. 1; W.
Creizenach, _Geschichte des neueren Dramas_, vol. i (1893);
and the introduction to A. W. Pollard, _English Miracle Plays,
Moralities and Interludes_ (3rd ed., 1898). These supersede
J. P. Collier, _History of English Dramatic Poetry_ (2nd ed.,
1879), vol. ii, and J. L. Klein, _Geschichte des englischen
Dramas_ (1876), vol. i. Other useful books are J. A. Symonds,
_Shakspere’s Predecessors in the English Drama_ (1884), ch.
3; K. L. Bates, _The English Religious Drama_ (1893), and J.
J. Jusserand, _Le Théâtre en Angleterre_ (1881), ch. 2. The
substance of this last is incorporated in the same writer’s
_Literary History of the English People_, vol. i (1895), bk.
iii, ch. 6. W. J. Courthope, _History of English Poetry_,
vol. i (1895), ch. 10, should also be consulted, as well as
the valuable detailed investigations of A. Hohlfeld, _Die
altenglischen Kollektivmisterien_, in _Anglia_, vol. xi (1889),
and C. Davidson, _Studies in the English Mystery Plays_
(1892). I do not think that S. W. Clarke, _The Miracle Play
in England_ (n.d.), and C. Hastings, _Le Théâtre français
et anglais_ (1900, trans. 1901), add very much. A. Ebert,
_Die englischen Mysterien_, in _Jahrbuch für romanische und
englische Literatur_, vol. i (1859), is an early manifestation
of German interest in the subject, and the still earlier native
learning may be found in T. Warton, _History of English Poetry_
(ed. W. C. Hazlitt, 1871), §§ 6, 33; E. Malone, _Historical
Account of the English Stage_, in _Variorum Shakespeare_
(1821), vol. iii; W. Hone, _Ancient Mysteries Described_
(1823). The antiquarianism of T. Sharp, _Dissertation on the
Pageants or Dramatic Mysteries Anciently Performed at Coventry_
(1825), is still a mine of material on the _Realien_ of the
stage.—The four great cycles have been edited as follows, in
most cases with important introductions: the _Chester Plays_ by
T. Wright (_Shakespeare Society_, 1843-7) and by H. Deimling
(_E. E. T. S._, part only issued in 1893); the _York Plays_
by L. T. Smith (1885); the _Towneley_ or _Wakefield Plays_
by an uncertain editor (_Surtees Society_, 1836), and by G.
England and A. W. Pollard (_E. E. T. S._ 1897); the _Ludus
Coventriae_, by J. O. Halliwell [-Phillipps] (_Shakespeare
Society_, 1841). A miscellaneous collection of late plays
from one of the _Bodleian Digby MSS._ has been printed by T.
Sharp (_Abbotsford Club_, 1835), and F. J. Furnivall (_New
Shakespeare Society_, 1882, _E. E. T. S._ 1896). The Cornish
cycle is in E. Norris, _The Ancient Cornish Drama_ (1859).
Good selections of typical plays are in A. W. Pollard’s book,
and J. M. Manly, _Specimens of the Pre-Shakespearean Drama_
(1897), vol. i. Older books of the same kind are J. P. Collier,
_Five Miracle Plays, or Scriptural Dramas_ (1836), and W.
Marriott, _A Collection of English Miracle Plays or Mysteries_
(Basle, 1838). The bibliographies given by Miss Bates and by
F. H. Stoddard, _References for Students of Miracle Plays and
Mysteries_ (1887), may be supplemented from my _Appendices of
Representations_ and _Texts_, which I have tried to make as
complete as possible.]
There is no reason to doubt that England had its full share in the
earlier development of the religious drama. Texts of the liturgical
period are, indeed, rare. The tenth-century version of the _Quem
quaeritis_ from Winchester and the fourteenth-century version from Dublin
stand, at least for the present, alone. But the wholesale destruction of
liturgical books at the Reformation is sufficient to account for such
a sparseness, and a few stray notices gathered from the wreckage of
time bear sufficient witness to the presence in this country of several
amongst the more widespread types of liturgical play. The Lichfield
statutes (1188-98) provide for _repraesentationes_ of the _Pastores_, the
_Resurrectio_, the _Peregrini_; those of York (†1255) for the _Pastores_
and the _Tres Reges_; a Salisbury inventory of 1222 includes ‘crowns’
or more probably ‘stars’ (_coronae_) _ad repraesentationes faciendas_;
while Lincoln account books of the early fifteenth century appear to
add the _Annuntiatio_ and the _Prophetae_, a _visus_ called _Rubum quem
viderat_ in 1420 perhaps forming a Moses scene in the latter. So late as
1518 the _Quem quaeritis_ was performed in Magdalen College chapel, and
plays of the Nativity and the Resurrection by the clerks of the chapel
are contemplated at about the same date in the household regulations of
the Earl of Northumberland at Leconfield. Nor were dramatic versions of
the legends of saints unknown. I do not trace a St. Nicholas cycle in
England, although Hilarius, in whose repertory a St. Nicholas play is
included, is thought to have been an Englishman by birth. But the memory
of a play of St. Catherine prepared by Geoffrey the Norman at Dunstable
early in the twelfth century was preserved, owing to the accident which
led to Geoffrey ultimately becoming abbot of St. Albans; and towards the
close of the same century William Fitzstephen records the representations
of the miracles of holy confessors and the passions of martyrs which took
the place of minstrelsy in London. For the most part such early plays
are found in close connexion with the cathedrals and great monasteries.
But a document of about 1220, the interpretation of which must, however,
be considered doubtful, would seem to suggest that plays (_actiones_)
were habitually given at no less than five chapelries within the single
parish of Shipton in Oxfordshire, and that the profits thereof formed
an appreciable part of the income derived from that living by the
prebendaries of Salisbury cathedral.
Examples of the transitional forms by which the liturgical drama grew
into the popular religious drama of the great cycles can also be found
in England. At Beverley a Resurrection play is described as taking
place in the graveyard of the minster about 1220. The intrusion of the
vernacular is represented by the curious bilingual text of a single
actor’s parts in the _Pastores_, _Quem quaeritis_ and _Peregrini_,
printed by Professor Skeat from a manuscript found at Shrewsbury. These
are probably still liturgical in character, and it is to be observed
that their subjects are precisely those of the three plays known to
have been used in the neighbouring cathedral of Lichfield. It must
remain a moot point whether the religious drama passed directly, in this
country, from Latin to English, or whether there was a period during
which performances were given in Norman-French. Scholars are inclined
to find an Anglo-Norman dialect in that very important monument of the
transition, the _Repraesentatio Adae_, as well as in an early example of
the expanded Easter play. But even if the authors of these were, like
Hilarius, of English birth, it hardly follows that their productions
were acted in England. Nor do the probable borrowings of the Chester and
other cycles from French texts much affect the question[364]. That the
disfavour with which the austerer section of the clergy looked upon the
vernacular religious plays had its spokesmen in England, was sufficiently
illustrated in the last chapter.
The English miracle-play reaches its full development with the
formation of the great processional cycles almost immediately after the
establishment of the Corpus Christi festival in 1311. The local tradition
of Chester, stripped of a certain confusion between the names of two
distinct mayors of that city which has clung about it, is found to fix
the foundation of the Chester plays in 1328. The date has the authority
of an official municipal document, forms part of a quite consistent
story, several points in which can be independently corroborated, and
is on _a priori_ grounds extremely plausible. Unfortunately, owing to
the comparative scarcity of archives during this period, the first
fifty years of the history of municipal drama are practically a blank.
A mention, about 1350, of a _ludus filiorum Israelis_, in connexion
with a guild of Corpus Christi at Cambridge, spans a wide gulf. There
is no actual record of plays at Chester itself until 1462. Those of
Beverley are first mentioned in 1377, those of York in 1378, and those
of Coventry in 1392. But it must be added that the Beverley plays were
an _antiqua consuetudo_ in 1390, and that those of York were to take
place at stations _antiquitus assignatis_ in 1394. It is in 1378 that
the earliest notice of plays in London, since the days of William
Fitzstephen, comes to light. The fuller records which are from this
time onward available reveal, during the next hundred and fifty years,
a vigorous and widespread dramatic activity throughout the length and
breadth of the land. It manifests itself at such extreme points as the
Cinque Ports in the east, Cornwall in the west, and Newcastle in the
north. It penetrates to Aberdeen and to Dublin. And though naturally
it finds its fullest scope in the annually repeated performances of
several amongst the greater cities, yet it is curious to observe in
what insignificant villages it was from time to time found possible to
organize plays. Performers from thirteen neighbouring places, many of
them quite small, made their way to New Romney between 1399 and 1508;
whilst the churchwardens of Chelmsford, in the twelve years after their
own play in 1562, reaped a profit by hiring out their stock of garments
to the men of some seventeen aspiring parishes. On the other hand,
there were several important towns in which, so far as we can judge
from documents, such as craft ordinances, which would almost certainly
have referred to the plays of the crafts, if these had existed, the
normal type of municipal drama failed to establish itself. London is
one, although here the want was supplied in another way; others are
Northampton, Nottingham, Bristol, Oxford, and Reading. And occasionally
plays, which had once been annual, were allowed to fall into desuetude
and decay. The corporation of Canterbury, for instance, called upon the
crafts about 1500 to revive a Corpus Christi play which for some time
had been ‘left and laid apart.’ Certainly, by the sixteenth century, if
there was still pride and interest taken in many of the municipal plays,
signs were not wanting that they were an institution which had almost
outlived its day. A reason for this need hardly be sought beyond the
_Zeitgeist_. No doubt the plays were a financial burden upon the poorer
crafts and the poorer members of crafts. There was much grumbling at
Beverley in 1411 because certain well-to-do persons (_generosi_), who did
not practise any trade or handicraft, had hitherto escaped the payment
of contributions to the civic function; and municipal authorities were
constantly called upon to adjust and readjust the responsibility for this
and that pageant with the fluctuations of prosperity amongst the various
occupations. But on the other hand, the plays, were the cause of much
and profitable resort to those fortunate towns which possessed them. The
mercers’ guild at Shrewsbury found it necessary to impose a special fine
upon those of its members whose business avocations required them ‘to
ride or goe to Coventrie Faire’ at Corpus Christi tide, and so to miss
the procession of guilds at home[365]. And although the mayor of Coventry
wrote to Thomas Cromwell, in 1539, that the poor commoners were put to
such expense with their plays and pageants that they fared the worse all
the year after, yet against this may be set the statement made to Dugdale
by ‘some old people who had in their younger days been eye-witnesses of
these pageants’ that ‘the confluence of people from farr and neare to
see that shew was extraordinary great, and yeilded noe small advantage
to this cittye.’ Moreover the levy upon individuals was a trifling one;
the whole of the company of smiths at Coventry only paid 3_s._ 4_d._
amongst them for ‘pagent pencys’ in 1552. A _leitourgia_ is always an
unpopular institution, and these complaints resemble nothing so much as
the groans of an opulent London tradesman in the twentieth century over
an extra penny on the education rate. In the smaller places it is clear
that plays, far from being a source of expense, were a recognized method
of raising funds for public purposes. Even in 1220 the _emolumentum
actionum_ from the chapelries of Shipton went to swell the purses of the
Salisbury prebendaries. In 1505 the churchwardens of Kingston-on-Thames
made £4 towards their new steeple by getting up a play for which they
secured the patronage of royalty. At Braintree, in Essex, funds were
similarly raised by Nicholas Udall and others, between 1523 and 1534,
for the repair of the church. I have little doubt that when the mayor
of Coventry said economy he meant Protestantism, just as when, under
Elizabeth, the corporation of London wished to make a Puritanic attack
upon the theatres, they were always smitten with a terrible dread of the
infection of the plague[366].
Certainly the spirit of Protestantism, although it came to be willing to
use the religious drama for its own purposes[367], was inclined to see
both profanity and superstition in the ordinary miracle-plays[368]. Here,
as elsewhere, it inherited the hostile tradition which such reforming
clerics as Gerhoh of Reichersberg in the twelfth century and Robert
Grosseteste in the thirteenth had handed down to Wyclif and his Lollards.
At Bungay in 1514 certain ill-disposed persons ‘brake and threw down five
pageants’ usually borne about the town on Corpus Christi day. One may
fairly suspect, even at this early date, a Lollardist intention in the
outrage, and perhaps also in the interposition of the authority of the
warden of the Cinque Ports to suppress the play of New Romney in 1518.
With the progress of the new ideas the big cycles began to be irregularly
performed or to undergo textual modification. The plays of York, for
example, were shorn in 1548 of the pageants representing the Death,
Assumption, and Coronation of the Virgin. On the other hand, religious
plays sometimes became a rallying-point for those who favoured the old
order of things. There is extant a letter from Henry VIII to the justices
of York, in which he refers to a riot promoted by certain papists at a
play of St. Thomas the Apostle, and warns them not to suffer upon such
occasions any language likely to tend to a breach of the peace. The brief
Marian reaction led to the resumption of the plays in more than one town
which had dropped them. The Lincoln corporation ordered ‘St. Anne’s Gild
with Corpus Cristi play’ to be brought forward again in 1554 and 1555.
In London Henry Machyn records during 1557 a Passion play at the Grey
Friars, and another in the church of St. Olave’s, Silver Street, on the
festival of the patron. The New Romney play was elaborately revived,
after forty-two years’ interval, in 1560. But the process of decay soon
set in again. Even where the plays survived, they were Protestantized,
and as Corpus Christi day was no longer observed, the performances had to
be transferred to some other date. At York the text of the Corpus Christi
play was ‘perused and otherwise amended’ in 1568. In 1569 it was acted
upon Whit-Tuesday. Then it lay by until 1579, when the book was referred
to the archbishop and dean for further revision, and apparently impounded
by them. The Creed play was suppressed, by advice of the dean, in 1568,
as unsuitable to ‘this happie time of the gospell.’ The _Paternoster_
play was revised and played in 1572. Then this text also fell into the
hands of the archbishop, and the corporation seem to have been unable
to recover it. So ended the religious drama in York. In Chester the
municipal authorities stood out gallantly for their plays. John Hankey
and Sir John Savage, mayors in 1572 and 1575 respectively, were called
before the privy council for sanctioning performances in spite of
inhibitions from the archbishop of York and other persons of authority.
They had revised the text, and had a new and Protestant version of the
preliminary ‘banns’ prepared. Copies of the text appear to have been
got ready for yet another performance in 1600, but the local annalists
record that Henry Hardware, then mayor, ‘would not suffer any Playes.’ In
one or two cities, new plays, dealing with apocryphal or other merely
semi-religious themes, were substituted for the old ones. Thus at Lincoln
a ‘standing play’ of the story of Tobit was given in 1564 and 1567; and
in Coventry, where the old cycle had been ‘laid down’ in 1580, an Oxford
scholar was hired in 1584 to write a semi-religious semi-historical drama
of the Destruction of Jerusalem. In 1591, the Conquest of the Danes and
the History of King Edward the Confessor were proposed as alternatives
for this. By the end of the sixteenth century all the cycles of which
most is known had come to an end. The smaller places—Chelmsford in
1574, Braintree in 1579, Bungay in 1591—had sold off their stock of
playing-garments. For such dramatic entertainment as the provinces were
still to get, they must look to travelling companies taking their summer
vacation from the metropolis. Miracle-plays during the seventeenth
century were a mere survival. They lingered in distant Cornwall and at
Kendal in the hill country of the north; and had been replaced by morals,
themselves almost equally obsolete, at Manningtree. The last religious
play recorded in England is a quite exceptional one, given at the end of
James I’s reign before Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador, and an audience
which numbered thousands at Ely Place in Holborn.
In giving some account of the distribution of the various types of
religious play throughout England during the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries, I am dispensed from any obligation to be exhaustive by the
fact that the greater municipal dramas at least have already been the
subject of more than one fairly adequate discussion. All I shall attempt
will be a brief general summary of the main points which emerge from the
more or less detailed local notices collected in a lengthy appendix.
The characteristic English type of play was the long cycle given
annually under the superintendence of the corporation or governing
body of an important city and divided into a number of distinct scenes
or ‘pageants,’ each of which was the special charge of one or more of
the local ‘crafts,’ ‘arts,’ or ‘occupations.’ Such cycles, organized
upon very similar lines, can be studied in the records available from
Chester, York, Beverley, Coventry, Newcastle, Lincoln, and Norwich;
and the same general model is known or conjectured—sometimes, it is
true, on the slightest indication—to have been followed in the plays
of Lancaster, Preston, Kendal, Wakefield, Leicester, Worcester, Louth,
Bungay, Canterbury, Dublin, and Aberdeen. As in all matters of municipal
custom, the relative functions of the corporations and the crafts were
nicely adjusted. The direction and control of the plays as a whole were
in the hands of the corporations. They decided annually whether the
performance should be given, or whether, for war, pestilence, or other
reason, it should be withheld. They sent round their officers to read the
proclamation or ‘banns’ of the play. They kept an official version of
the text, at Chester an ‘original,’ at York a ‘register’ copied from the
‘originals’ belonging to the crafts. Agreements and disputes as to the
liability of this or that craft to maintain or contribute to a particular
pageant were entered or determined before them. They maintained order
at the time of the play and inflicted fines on the turbulent, or upon
crafts neglectful or unskilful in carrying out their responsibilities.
In particular they required the provision of properly qualified actors.
Thus Robert Greene and others were admonished before the leet of Coventry
in 1440, that they should play _bene et sufficienter_ so as not to cause
a hindrance in any _iocus_. Similarly, Henry Cowper, ‘webster,’ was
fined by the wardens of Beverley in 1452, _quod nesciebat ludum suum_.
An order at York, in 1476, directed the choice of a body of ‘connyng,
discrete, and able players’ to test the quality of all those selected
as actors. All ‘insufficiant personnes, either in connyng, voice or
personne’ they were to ‘discharge, ammove, and avoide’; and no one was to
perform more than twice in the course of the day. Sometimes the actual
oversight of the plays was delegated to specially appointed officers.
At Beverley the wardens themselves ‘governed’ the Corpus Christi plays,
but the Paternoster play was in the hands of ‘aldermen of the pageants.’
At Aberdeen the Haliblude play was undertaken in 1440 by the local lord
of misrule, known as the Abbot of Bon Accord; for the Candlemas play
‘bailyes’ represented the corporation. At Lincoln the ‘graceman’ of
the guild of St. Anne was responsible, and had the aid of the mayor. At
Leicester a number of ‘overseers’ with two ‘bedalls’ were chosen to have
the ‘gydyng and rule’ of the play.
The corporations do not appear to have themselves incurred much
expenditure over the performances. They provided sitting-room and
refreshments for their own members, and for distinguished guests.
Richard II was elaborately entertained with a special _pagina_ when he
visited York on Corpus Christi day, 1397. Sixty years later a collation,
including ‘ij cofyns of counfetys and a pot of grene gynger,’ was
made ready for Queen Margaret on her visit to Coventry. At York and
Beverley, but not at Coventry, the corporations paid the minstrels, and
occasionally made a special contribution to the funds of a particularly
poor pageant. At York the corporation could well afford to do this, for
they claimed the right to fix certain ‘stations’ at which, as well as at
two or three traditional ones, the plays should be given, and they made
a considerable annual profit out of payments by well-to-do citizens who
aspired to have one of these at their doors. The stations were marked by
banners broidered with the arms of the city. At Leicester the ‘playyng
germands’ seem to have belonged to the corporation. At Beverley in 1391
they owned all the ‘necessaries,’ pageant garments and properties, of
the play of Paradise, and lent the same upon security to the craft
charged therewith. The pageants may also have been originally corporation
property in York, for it was stipulated in 1422 that one of them, like
the banners at the stations, should bear the arms of the city, to the
exclusion of those of the craft.
As a rule, the cost of the plays fell almost wholly upon the crafts.
The ordinances of the craft-guilds provide for their maintenance as a
_leitourgia_ or fraternal duty, in the same way as they often provide
for a ‘serge’ or light to be burnt in some chapel or carried in the
Corpus Christi procession, or, at Beverley, for the _castellum_ in which
the craft sat to do honour to the procession of St. John of Beverley
in Rogation week. At Coventry, where the burden upon the crafts was
perhaps heaviest, they were responsible for the provision, repairing,
ornamenting, cleaning, and strewing with rushes of the pageant, for
the ‘ferme’ or rent of the pageant house, for the payment of actors,
minstrels, and prompter, for the revision of play-book and songs and the
copying of parts, for the ‘drawing’ or ‘horsing’ of the pageant on the
day of the performance, for costumes and properties, and above all for
copious refreshments before and after the play, at the stations, and
during the preliminary rehearsals. The total cost of the smiths’ pageant
in 1490 was £3 7_s._ 5½_d._ In 1453 they had contracted with one Thomas
Colclow to have ‘the rewle of the pajaunt’ for twelve years at an annual
payment of £2 6_s._ 8_d._, and other examples of ‘play lettine’ can be
traced at Newcastle and elsewhere. But it was more usual for the crafts
to retain the management of the pageants in their own hands; at York
each guild appointed its ‘pageant-masters’ for this purpose. The expense
to the craft primarily in charge of a pageant was sometimes lightened
by fixed contributions from one or more minor bodies affiliated to it
for the purpose. Part of it was probably met from the general funds of
the craft; the rest was raised by various expedients. A levy, known as
‘pagent pencys’ at Coventry and as ‘pajaunt silver’ at York, was made
upon every member. The amount varied with the numbers of the craft and
the status of the craftsman. At York it ranged from 1_d._ to 8_d._ At
Beverley the journeymen paid 8_d._ to light, play, and castle, and 6_d._
only in years when there was no play. At Coventry the ordinary members of
more than one craft paid 1_s._; others apparently less. To the proceeds
of the levy might be added fines for the breach of craft ordinances,
payments on the taking out of freedom by strangers and the setting up
of shop or indenturing of apprentices by freemen. At York, the mercers
are found granting free admission to a candidate for their fraternity on
condition of his entering into a favourable contract for the supply of a
new pageant. At Coventry, in 1517, one William Pisford left a scarlet and
a crimson gown to the tanners for their plays, together with 3_s._ 4_d._
to every craft charged with the maintenance of a pageant. Besides the
levy, certain personal services were binding upon the craftsmen. They had
to attend upon the play, to do it honour; the Coventry cappers expected
their journeymen to do the ‘horsing’ of the pageant.
In some cities, the crafts received help from outside. At Coventry,
in 1501, the tilers’ pageant got a contribution of 5_s._ from the
neighbouring tilers of Stoke. At Chester, vestments were borrowed
from the clergy; at Lincoln from the priory and the local gentry. A
‘gathering’ was also made in the surrounding districts. The only trace
of any charge made to the spectators, other than the fees for ‘stations’
at York, is at Leicester, where, in 1477, the players paid over to the
‘pachents’ certain sums they had received for playing.
The majority of the crafts in a big city were, of course, already formed
into guilds for ordinary trade purposes, and in their case the necessary
organization for the plays was to hand. But no citizen could wholly
escape his responsibility in so important a civic matter. At Coventry it
was ordered in 1494 that every person exercising any craft must become
contributory to some pageant or other. At York the innholders, who do
not appear to have been a regular guild, were organized in 1483 for the
purposes of a pageant on the basis of a yearly contribution of 4_d._
from each man. The demand at Beverley in 1411 for the appropriation of
a play to the _generosi_ has already been alluded to. In a Beverley
list of 1520 the ‘Gentylmen’ are put down for the ‘Castle of Emaut.’
It may be suspected that some of the other crafts named in the same
list, such as the ‘Husbandmen’ and the ‘Labourers,’ were not regular
guilds; not to speak of the ‘Prestes,’ who played the ‘Coronacion of
Our Lady.’ This participation of religious bodies in the craft plays
can be paralleled from other towns. At York the hospital of St. Leonard
took the Purification in 1415; at Lincoln the cathedral clergy, like the
priests at Beverley, were responsible for the Coronation or Assumption
of the Virgin, a play which at Chester was given by the ‘worshipfull
wyves of this town,’ and at York by the innholders. Both at York
and Chester this scene was dropped at the Reformation. Possibly its
somewhat exceptional position may be accounted for by its having been
a comparatively late addition in all four cycles. Some endeavour after
dramatic appropriateness is visible in the apportioning of the other
plays amongst the crafts. Thus Noah is given to the shipwrights (York,
Newcastle), the watermen (Beverley, Chester), the fishers and mariners
(York); the _Magi_ to the goldsmiths (Beverley, Newcastle, York); the
Disputation in the Temple to the scriveners (Beverley); the Last Supper
to the bakers (Beverley, Chester, York); the Harrowing of Hell to the
cooks (Beverley, Chester).
A somewhat anomalous position is occupied amongst towns in which the
plays were in the hands of the crafts by Lincoln. Here the task of
supervision was shared with the corporation by a special guild, religious
and social rather than industrial in character[369], of St. Anne. Perhaps
this guild had at one time been solely responsible for the plays, and
there had been a crisis such as took place at Norwich in 1527. Before
that date the charge of the plays had been borne, fittingly enough, by
the guild of St. Luke, composed of painters and metalworkers. But in 1527
this guild was ‘almost fully decayed,’ and upon the representation of
its members the corporation agreed that in future the pageants should be
distributed amongst the various crafts as was customary elsewhere. The
Lincoln plays were on St. Anne’s day, but one does not find a position
comparable to that of the St. Anne’s guild held by Corpus Christi guilds
in other towns. As a rule such guilds concerned themselves with the
Corpus Christi procession, but not with the plays. At Ipswich, indeed,
the Corpus Christi guild had the whole conduct of the plays, and the
craft-guilds as such were not called upon; but this Ipswich guild arose
out of a reorganization of the old merchant-guild, included all the
burgesses, and was practically identical with the corporation. Other
towns, in which the corporation managed the plays itself, without the
intervention of the craft-guilds, are Shrewsbury, New Romney, and Lydd.
On the other hand, where neither the corporation nor the crafts undertook
plays, it was no uncommon thing for a guild of the religious or social
type to step into the breach. A series of London plays recorded in 1384,
1391, 1409, and 1411 may all be not unreasonably ascribed to a guild
of St. Nicholas, composed of the ‘parish clerks’ attached to the many
churches of the city. At a later date the performances of this guild
seem to have become annual and they are traceable, with no very great
certainty, to the beginning of the sixteenth century. They were cyclical
in character, but not processional, and took place hard by the well known
indifferently as Skinners’ well or Clerkenwell, amongst the orchards
to the north of London. Chaucer says of his ‘parish clerk,’ the ‘joly
Absolon,’ that
‘Somtyme, to shewe his lightnesse and maistrye,
He pleyeth Heródës, on a scaffold hye[370].’
These London plays may have had some original connexion with the great
fair of the neighbouring priory of St. Bartholomew upon August 24; but
they are recorded at various dates during the summer, and extended over
four, five, or even seven days. Whether the guild of St. Nicholas bore
any relation to the clerks of St. Paul’s, who petitioned Richard II in
1378 against the rivalry of certain ‘unexpert people’ in the production
of an Old Testament play, must be matter for conjecture. The performance
contemplated at St. Paul’s was to be at Christmas. The Cambridge guild
of Corpus Christi was responsible for a _ludus Filiorum Israelis_ about
1350, and this is more likely to have formed part of a cycle than to
have stood alone. An unverified extract of Warton’s from a Michael-House
_computus_ suggests that some of the Cambridge colleges may have assisted
in dramatic undertakings. At Abingdon the hospital of Christ held their
feast on Holy Cross day (May 3), 1445, ‘with pageantes and playes, and
May games.’ At Sleaford, in 1480, a play of the Ascension was performed
by the guild of the Holy Trinity. At Wymondham a guild seems to have
existed in the sixteenth century for the express purpose of holding a
‘watch and play’ at Midsummer. The proceedings were directed by officers
designated ‘husbands.’ The one example of an isolated play under the
management of a craft-guild is at Hull. Here an annual play of Noah,
with a ship or ark which went in procession, was in the hands of the
Trinity House, a guild of master mariners and pilots. The records extend
from 1421 to 1529. There is no sign of a dramatic cycle at Hull. The
Noah play was given on Plough Monday, and it is possible that one may
trace here a dramatized version of just such a ship procession as may be
found elsewhere upon the coasts in spring[371]. After the performance
the ‘ship’ was hung up in the church. The text of the play was perhaps
borrowed from that of the watermen of the neighbouring city of Beverley.
Where there were craft-plays, social and religious guilds sometimes
gave supplementary performances. The ‘schaft’ or parochial guild of St.
Dunstan’s, Canterbury, owned a play of Abraham and Isaac in 1491. This
may have been merely a contribution towards the craft-cycle on Corpus
Christi day. On the other hand, the play of St. George, contemplated
by the guild of that saint at New Romney in 1490, was probably an
independent undertaking. The town play here was a Passion play. At
York there were two rivals to the Corpus Christi plays. One was the
_Paternoster_ play, for the production of which a guild of the Lord’s
Prayer was in existence at least as early as 1378. By 1488 this guild
was absorbed into the Holy Trinity guild of the mercers, and in the year
named the play was given, apparently at the charges of the mercers,
instead of the ordinary cycle. All the crafts contributed to similar
performances in 1558 and 1572. But by this time the supervision, under
the corporation, of the play had passed to one of the few religious
guilds in York which had escaped suppression, that of St. Anthony. The
other extraordinary York play was a Creed play, bequeathed to the guild
of Corpus Christi in 1446. This was stationary, and was acted decennially
about Lammas-tide (August 1) at the common hall. In 1483, it was ‘apon
the cost of the most onest men of every parish,’ who were, it may be
supposed, members of the guild. In 1535 the crafts paid for it instead
of their usual cycle. Upon the suppression of the guild, the play-book
passed into the custody of the hospital of St. Thomas.
In the same way there are instances in which the clergy, who elsewhere
lent help to the craft-plays, gave independent exhibitions of their own.
At Chester, before the Reformation, they eked out the Whitsun cycle by a
supplementary performance on Corpus Christi day. The priors of St. John
of Jerusalem, Holy Trinity, and All Saints contributed their share to
the somewhat incongruous blend of religious and secular entertainments
provided by the traders of Dublin for the earl of Kildare in 1528. The
so-called _Ludus Coventriae_ has often been supposed to be the play-book
of a cycle acted by the Grey Friars or Franciscans of Coventry. This
theory hardly survives critical examination. But in 1557, during the
Marian reaction, a Passion play was given at the Grey Friars in London,
and the actors were possibly restored brethren. Miracle-plays must often
have been performed in choir schools, especially upon their traditional
feast-days of St. Nicholas, St. Catherine, and the Holy Innocents.
But there are only two examples, besides that of St. Paul’s in 1378,
actually upon record. In 1430 the _pueri eleemosynae_ of Maxstoke acted
on Candlemas day in the hall of Lord Clinton’s castle; and in 1486 those
of St. Swithin’s and Hyde abbeys combined to entertain Henry VII with the
Harrowing of Hell as he sat at dinner in Winchester.
Many minor plays, both in towns and in country villages, were organized
by the clergy and other officials of parish churches, and are mentioned
in the account books of churchwardens. At London, Kingston, Oxford,
Reading, Salisbury, Bath, Tewkesbury, Leicester, Bungay, and Yarmouth,
such parochial plays can be traced, sometimes side by side with those
provided by craft or other guilds. The parochial organization was the
natural one for the smaller places, where the parish church had remained
the centre of the popular life[372]. The _actiones_ in the chapelries
of Shipton in Oxfordshire during the thirteenth century may have been
plays of this type. The municipal records of Lydd and New Romney mention
visits of players to the towns between 1399 and 1508 from no less than
fourteen neighbouring places in Kent and Sussex, many of which must
have been then, as they are now, quite insignificant. They are Hythe,
Wittersham, Herne, Ruckinge, Folkestone, Appledore, Chart, Rye, Wye,
Brookland, Halden, Bethersden, Ham, and Stone. A few other village plays
are to be traced in the fifteenth century. In the sixteenth century they
are fairly numerous, especially in the eastern counties. In Essex they
are found at Chelmsford, Braintree, Halstead, Heybridge, Malden, Saffron
Walden, Billericay, Starford, Baddow (by ‘children’), Little Baddow,
Sabsford, Boreham, Lanchire, Witham, Brentwood, Nayland, Burnham, High
Easter, Writtle, Woodham Walter, and Hanningfield; in Cambridgeshire
at Bassingbourne; in Lincolnshire at Holbeach; in Norfolk at Harling,
Lopham, Garboldisham, Shelfhanger, and Kenninghall; in Suffolk at
Boxford, Lavenham, and Mildenhall; in Leicestershire at Foston; in
Somersetshire at Morebath; and in Kent once more at Bethersden. The
latest instance is a ‘Kynge play’ at Hascombe in Surrey in 1579.
Parochial plays, whether in town or country, appear to have been in
most cases occasional, rather than annual. Sometimes, as at Kingston
and Braintree, they became a means of raising money for the church, and
even where this object is not apparent, the expenses were lightened in
various ways at the cost of neighbouring villages. ‘Banns’ were sent
round to announce the play; or the play itself was carried round on tour.
Twenty-seven villages contributed to a play at Bassingbourne in 1511.
The Chelmsford play of 1562 and 1563 cost about £50, of which a good
proportion was received from the spectators. The play was given at Malden
and Braintree as well as at Chelmsford, and for years afterwards the
letting out of the stock of garments proved a source of revenue to the
parish. This same practice of hiring garments can be traced at Oxford,
Leicester, and elsewhere. The parochial plays were always, so far as can
be seen, stationary. At Leicester, Braintree, Halstead, and Heybridge
they were in the church. That of Harling was ‘at the church gate,’ that
of Bassingbourne in a ‘croft’; that of Chelmsford in a ‘pightell.’ At
Reading performances in the market-place and in an open piece of ground
called (then and now) the ‘Forbury’ are mentioned.
There remain a certain number of plays as to the organization of which
nothing definite can be said. Such are the minor plays, on the legends
of saints, recorded by the annalists of London, Coventry, and Lincoln;
those referred to in the corporation accounts of King’s Lynn, as given by
unspecified players between 1385 and 1462; and those which took place,
as late as the seventeenth century, in ‘rounds’ or amphitheatres at St.
Just, Perranzabulo, and elsewhere in Cornwall.