GUILD PLAYS AND PARISH PLAYS (_continued_)
The last chapter occupied itself mainly with the diffusion of the
vernacular religious plays in England, with their organization, and with
their part in municipal and village life. That study must be completed
by at least the outline of another, dealing with the content and nature
of the performances themselves. Here again it is variety rather than
uniformity which requires attention; for the records and texts of the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries bear witness to the effective survival
of all the diverse types of play, to which the evolution of the dramatic
instinct gave birth in its progress from liturgical office to cosmic
cycle.
The term of the evolution—the cosmic cycle itself—is represented by
five complete texts, and one fragment sufficiently substantial to be
ranked with these. There are the plays of the York and Chester crafts.
The manuscript of the former dates from the middle of the fifteenth
century; those of the latter from the end of the sixteenth and beginning
of the seventeenth: but in both cases it may be assumed that we possess
the plays, with certain modifications, additions, and omissions, as
they were given in the palmy days of their history. There are also, in
a fifteenth-century manuscript, the so-called ‘Towneley’ plays, as to
whose origin the most likely theory is that they are the craft-plays
of Wakefield. There is the _Ludus Coventriae_, also of the fifteenth
century, which has probably nothing to do with Coventry, but is either,
as scholars generally hold, the text of a strolling company, or, as
seems to me more probable, that of a stationary play at some town in the
East Midlands not yet identified. If I am right, the _Ludus Coventriae_
occupies a midway position between the three northern craft cycles,
which are all processional plays, split up into a number of distinct
pageants, and the fifth text, which is Cornish. This is probably of the
fourteenth century, although extant in a fifteenth-century manuscript,
and doubtless represents a stationary performance in one of the ‘rounds’
still to be seen about Cornwall. The fragment, also Cornish, is not a
wholly independent play, but a sixteenth-century expansion of part of the
earlier text.
A study of the table of incidents printed in an appendix will show the
general scope of the cyclical plays[373]. My comments thereon must be
few and brief. The four northerly cycles have a kernel of common matter,
which corresponds very closely with just that dramatic stuff which was
handled in the liturgical and the earliest vernacular dramas. It includes
the Fall of Lucifer, the Creation, Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel; then the
Annunciation and the group of scenes, from the _Pastores_ to the Massacre
of the Innocents, which went to make up the _Stella_; then the Passion
in the narrower sense, centring in the _planctus Mariae_ and extending
from the Conspiracy of the Jews to the Descent from the Cross; then the
Resurrection scenes, centring in the _Quem quaeritis_ and ending with the
_Peregrini_ and Incredulity of Thomas; then the Ascension, the Pentecost,
and finally the _Iudicium_ or Doomsday. Almost equally invariable is
something in the way of a _Prophetae_. But at York this is thrown into
narrative instead of dramatic form; and at Chester the typical defile
of prophets, each with his harangue, is deferred to almost the close of
the cycle (Play xxiii), and in its usual place stand two independent
episodes of Balaam and of Octavian and the Sibyl. Two other groups of
scenes exhibit a larger measure of diversity between the four cycles. One
is that drawn from the history of the Old Testament Fathers, out of which
the Deluge and the Sacrifice of Isaac are the only incidents adopted
by all four. The other is the series taken from the missionary life of
Christ, where the only common scenes are the Raising of Lazarus and the
Feast in the House of Simon the Leper, both of which can be traced back
to the liturgical drama[374].
The principal source of the plays belonging to this common kernel is,
of course, the biblical narrative, which is followed, so far as it
goes, with considerable fidelity, the most remarkable divergence being
that of the _Ludus Coventriae_, which merges the Last Supper with the
scene in the House of Simon. But certain embroideries upon scripture,
which found their way into the religious drama at an early stage of its
evolution, are preserved and further elaborated. Thus each of the four
cycles has its Harrowing of Hell, which links the later scenes with the
earlier by introducing, as well as the devils, such personages as Adam
and Eve, Enoch and Elijah, John the Baptist and others[375]. Similarly
the Suspicion of Joseph and the _obstetrices_ at the Virgin Birth finds
a place in all four[376], as does the Healing of Longinus, the blind
knight, by the blood-drops from the cross[377]. Other apocryphal or
legendary elements are confined to one or more of the cycles[378].
The Chester plays, for example, have a marked development of the
eschatological scenes. Not only is the _Iudicium_ itself extremely long
and elaborate, but it is preceded by two distinct plays, one a section
of the split-up _Prophetae_ ending with the Fifteen Signs, the other an
Antichrist, in which, as in the Tegernsee _Antichristus_[379], Enoch
and Elijah appear as disputants. The most legendary of the northerly
cycles is without doubt the _Ludus Coventriae_. It has the legend of
Veronica, which is only hinted at in the corresponding York play. And
it has so long a series of scenes drawn from the legends of the Virgin
as to make it probable that, like the Lincoln plays and another East
Midland cycle of which a fragment is extant, it was performed not on
Corpus Christi day but on that of St. Anne. Before the Annunciation it
inserts the episodes of Joachim and Anne, Mary in the Temple, and the
Betrothal of Mary. To the common episode of the Suspicion of Joseph
it adds the Purgation of Mary. In the Resurrection scene is a purely
legendary Apparition of Christ to the Virgin; while the Death, Burial,
Assumption, and Coronation of Mary intervene between the Pentecost and
the _Iudicium_. This matter from the after-history of the Virgin belongs
also to the York plays, which add the Apparition to St. Thomas of India.
The Cornish plays, although in many respects they are parallel to those
of the north, have yet some very marked features of their own. They have
episodes of the miraculous Release of Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea
from Prison, and of the Death of Pilate and the Interview of Veronica
with Tiberius[380]. But their most remarkable legendary addition is an
elaborate treatment of the history of the Holy Rood, which provides
the motives for the scenes dealing with Seth, Moses, David, Solomon,
Maximilla, and the Bridge upon Cedron[381]. On the other hand the
Cornish plays close with the Ascension and entirely omit the sub-cycle
of the Nativity, passing direct, but for the Holy Rood matter, from the
Sacrifice of Isaac to the Temptation.
It is not improbable that the majority of the Corpus Christi and other
greater English plays reached the dimensions of a cosmic cycle. But
in only a few cases is any definite evidence on the point available.
Complete lists are preserved from Beverley and Norwich. The Beverley
series seems to have been much on the scale of the four extant cycles.
It extended in thirty-six pageants from the Fall of Lucifer to Doomsday.
Like the Cornish cycle, it included the episode of Adam and Seth; and
it presented an exceptional feature in the insertion of a play of the
Children of Israel after the Flight into Egypt. The Norwich cycle, which
began with the Creation and ended with Pentecost, was a short one of
twelve pageants[382]. The small number is due, partly to the grouping of
several episodes in a single play, partly to the omission of the Passion
proper. The Resurrection followed immediately upon the Baptism. Of other
plays, the chroniclers record that in 1391 the London performance covered
both the Old and New Testament, that in 1409 it went from the Creation
to the Day of Judgement, and that in 1411 it was ‘from the begynnyng of
the worlde.’ The fragmentary indications of the records preserved show
that the Chelmsford play stretched at least from the Creation to the
Crucifixion, the Newcastle play at least from the Creation to the Burial
of the Virgin[383], the Lincoln play at least from the Deluge to the
Coronation of the Virgin. On the other hand the range of the Coventry
plays can only be shown to have been from the Annunciation to Doomsday,
although it may be by a mere accident that no Old Testament scenes are
here to be identified[384].
Examples, though unfortunately no full texts, can also be traced of the
separate Nativity and Easter cycles, the merging of which was the most
important step in the formation of the complete Corpus Christi play.
Both, if I read the evidence aright, existed at Aberdeen. There was a
‘Haliblude’ play on Corpus Christi day, which I conceive to have been
essentially a Passion and Resurrection, and a play at Candlemas, which
seems to have included, as well as the Purification, a _Stella_, a
Presentation in the Temple, and something in the way of a _Prophetae_.
There were performances of Passions in Reading in 1508, in Dublin in
1528, at Shrewsbury in 1567, and in London in 1557 and as late as between
1613 and 1622. I do not suppose that in any of these cases ‘Passion’
excludes ‘Resurrection.’ The New Romney town play, also, seems to have
been a Passion in the wider sense. The records of Easter plays at Bath
(1482), Leicester (1504-7), Morebath (1520-74), Reading (1507, 1533-5),
and Kingston (1513-65), are too slight to bear much comment. They may
relate to almost anything from a mere Latin _Quem quaeritis_ to a full
vernacular Passion and Resurrection.
One interesting text falls to be considered at this point. This is a
fifteenth-century Burial and Resurrection of northern _provenance_. It
is very lyrical in character, and apparently the author set out to write
a ‘treyte’ to be read, and shortly after the beginning changed his mind
and made a play of it. There are two scenes. The first is an elaborate
_planctus_, ‘to be playede on gud-friday after-none.’ The second,
intended for ‘Esterday after the resurrectione, In the morowe’ is a _Quem
quaeritis_. An Ascension play was performed by the Holy Trinity guild at
Sleaford in 1480. A ‘Christmasse play’ is recorded at Tintinhull in 1451.
How much it included can hardly be guessed. But the _Stella_ maintained
its independent position, and is found at Yarmouth (1462-1512), Reading
(1499, 1539), Leicester (1547), Canterbury (1503), Holbeach (1548), and
Hascombe (1579)[385].
The plays just enumerated may be regarded as of precyclical types.
But there are a few others which, although they occur independently,
would have their more natural position in cycles of less or greater
range. In some of these cases it is probable that the independence is
only apparent, a mere matter of incomplete evidence. There are two
fifteenth-century plays, both on the subject of Abraham and Isaac,
one of which is preserved in the ‘Book of Brome’ from Suffolk, the
other in a manuscript now at Dublin, but probably of South Midland
_provenance_. It is of course not impossible that these represent
isolated performances, but it is on the whole more likely that they are
fragments of lost cycles. A third play, of Midland origin, preserved in
the Digby manuscript, occupies an exceptional position. It deals with
the Massacre of the Innocents and the Purification, and allusions in a
prologue and epilogue make it clear that it belonged to a cycle in which
it was preceded by a _Pastores_ and a _Magi_, and followed by a Christ
in the Temple. This cycle, however, was not played all at once, but a
portion was given year by year on St. Anne’s day. One of the groups of
plays brought together in the _Ludus Coventriae_ was evidently intended
for performance under similar conditions. It is probable that the _ludus
Filiorum Israelis_ of the Cambridge Corpus Christi guild about 1350,
the Abraham and Isaac of the ‘schaft’ of St. Dunstan’s, Canterbury,
between 1491 and 1520, and the Adam and Eve (1507) and ‘Cayme’s pageaunt’
(1512-5) of St. Lawrence’s, Reading, formed parts of Corpus Christi
cycles given in those towns.
Isolated performances of plays picked out of a cycle, or upon subjects
usually treated in a cycle, are, however, not unknown. One or more of
the Chester plays occasionally formed part of the civic entertainment of
a royal or noble personage. When Henry VII visited Winchester in 1486,
the schoolboys of the two great abbeys of Hyde and St. Swithin’s gave a
_Christi Descensus ad Inferos_ before him at dinner. At York the acting
of an ‘interlude of St. Thomas the Apostle’ on a St. Bartholomew’s eve
towards the end of the reign of Henry VIII became the occasion for a
papist demonstration. This might have been either the Incredulity of
Thomas (Play xlii) or the Apparition of the Virgin to St. Thomas in
India (Play xlvi) from the Corpus Christi cycle. At York, also, there
was, in the hands of a Corpus Christi guild, a distinct play, frequently
performed between 1446 and the Reformation, called the Creed play. This
was apparently an expansion of a motive found in the Pentecost scene at
Chester and probably at Coventry, but not at York itself, wherein, after
the coming of the Holy Ghost, each of the apostles in turn enunciates
one of the articles of the so-called Apostles’ creed. At Hull, where I
find no trace of a cycle, the Trinity guild of sea-faring men had their
play of Noah. At Lincoln, a play of Tobit, which does not actually, so
far as I know, form part of the Old Testament section of any English
cycle[386], was substituted for the regular Corpus Christi play after
the Reformation. Naturally such exceptional performances became more
common in the decadence of the religious drama[387]. Thus the very
scratch series of plays shown before the earl of Kildare at Dublin, in
the Christmas of 1528, included, besides other contributions both sacred
and secular, an Adam and Eve by the tailors and a Joseph and Mary by the
carpenters. The choice of these subjects was evidently motived by their
appropriateness to the craft representing them. Similarly, when John Bale
was bishop of Ossory in 1553, he had performed at the market-cross of
Kilkenny, on the day of the proclamation of Queen Mary, a short fragment
of a cycle consisting of a _Prophetae_, a Baptism, and a Temptation. One
fancies that this strange protagonist of the Reformation must have had
in his mind some quaint verbal analogy between ‘John Bale’ and ‘John
Baptist,’ for he states that he also wrote a dramatic _Vita D. Ioannis
Baptistae_ in fourteen books. Nor is this the only example of the
treatment of a subject, merely episodic in the Corpus Christi cycles, in
a distinct and elaborate play. The invaluable Digby manuscript contains
a similar expansion, from the East or West Midlands, of the story of
Mary Magdalen. It follows the narrative of the _Golden Legend_, and
introduces the familiar scenes of the Raising of Lazarus, the Feast in
the House of Simon the Leper, the _Quem quaeritis_, and the _Hortulanus_,
preceding these with episodes of the life of the Magdalen _in gaudio_,
and following them with the Conversion of the King and Queen of
Marseilles, and of Mary’s Life in the Wilderness and Death. As offshoots
from the Corpus Christi cycle may also be regarded the Deaths of the
Apostles played in the Dublin series of 1528, Thomas Ashton’s _Julian
the Apostate_ at Shrewsbury in 1565, and the _Destruction of Jerusalem_,
written by John Smith in 1584 to take the place of the traditional plays
at Coventry[388].
The Mary Magdalen and the rest of the group just described may be
considered as standing halfway between the plays of and akin to the
Corpus Christi cycle and those founded on the legends of saints. Of
regular saint-plays there are unfortunately only two texts available
from these islands. The Digby manuscript contains an East Midland
Conversion of St. Paul, which, however, is almost wholly biblical and
not legendary. It will be remembered that the subject was one known
even to the liturgical drama[389]. There is also a Cornish play of St.
Meriasek or Mereadocus, the patron saint of Camborne, written at the
beginning of the sixteenth century. Other such plays are, however, upon
record. It is perhaps curious that no mention should be found of any
English parallel to either the Saint Nicholas plays or the _Miracles de
Nostre Dame_ of France. It can hardly be doubted that the former at least
existed in connexion with the widespread revel of the Boy Bishop[390].
The most popular English saint for dramatic purposes appears to have
been St. George. A play of St. George was maintained by the town of
Lydd, and was probably copied by a neighbouring guild at New Romney.
Another, on an elaborate scale, was given by a group of villages at
Bassingbourne in 1511. These seem to have been genuine dramas, and not
mere ‘ridings’ or folk-plays such as occur elsewhere[391]. A St. George
play, described by Collier at Windsor in 1416, can be resolved into a
cake. St. Thomas of Canterbury was only honoured with a dumb show in his
own city, but there was a play upon him at King’s Lynn in 1385. Of quite
a number of other saint-plays the barest notices exist. London had hers
on St. Catherine; Windsor on St. Clotilda; Coventry on St. Catherine and
St. Crytyan; Lincoln on St. Laurence, St. Susanna, St. Clara, and St.
James; Shrewsbury on St. Feliciana and St. Sabina; Bethersden in Kent
on St. Christina; Braintree in Essex on St. Swithin, St. Andrew, and
St. Eustace. The Dublin shoemakers contributed a play on their patron
saints Crispin and Crispinian to the Dublin festival of 1528. In London,
the plays on the days of St. Lucy and St. Margaret at St. Margaret’s,
Southwark, may have been on the stories of those saints; and during the
Marian reaction a ‘goodly’ stage-play was given at St. Olave’s church on
St. Olave’s day.
Quite unique, as dealing with a contemporary ‘miracle,’ is the play of
the Blessed Sacrament, performed at one of the many places bearing the
name of Croxton, in the latter half of the fifteenth century. According
to the manuscript, the event upon which it was based, the marvellous
conversion of a Jew who attempted an outrage upon a host, took place at
Heraclea in Spain, in 1461. There is, curiously enough, a late French
play, quite independent of the English one, upon an exactly parallel
miracle assigned to Paris and the thirteenth century[392].
The variation in the types of English miracle-plays naturally implies
some variation also in the manner of representation. The normal craft
cycles of the greater towns were processional in character. They were
not played throughout by a single body of actors and upon a single
stage; but the action was divided into a number of independent scenes,
to each of which was assigned its own group of performers and its own
small movable stage or ‘pageant.’ And each scene was repeated at several
‘stations’ in different parts of the city, pageant succeeding pageant
in regular order, with the general effect of a vast procession slowly
unrolling itself along the streets[393]. This method of playing was
convenient to the distribution of the _leitourgia_ among the guilds, and
was adopted in all those places, Chester, York, Beverley, and Coventry,
from which our records happen to be the fullest. But it was not the
primitive method and, as has been pointed out in a previous chapter, it
probably arose from an attempt about the beginning of the fourteenth
century to adapt the already existing miracle-plays to the distinctive
feature of the festival of Corpus Christi. To this point it will be
necessary to recur[394]. The processional play was rare outside England,
and even in England it at no period became universal. Two at least of the
great cycles that survive, the Cornish one and the _Ludus Coventriae_,
as well as several smaller plays, can be clearly shown from internal
evidence to have been intended for stationary performance. They do not
naturally cleave asunder into distinct scenes. The same personages
appear and reappear: the same properties and bits of scenery are left
and returned to, often at considerable intervals. Moreover stationary
performances are frequently implied by the records. At Lincoln, after
the suppression of the old _visus_ of St. Anne’s processional play,
the corporation ordered the performance of a ‘standing’ play ‘of some
story of the Bible.’ At Newcastle, although pageants of the plays went
in the procession, the actual performance seems to have been given in a
‘stead.’ This arrangement is exactly parallel to that of the Florentine
_rappresentazioni_ on St. John’s day in 1454[395]. Elsewhere there
was commonly enough no ‘pageant’ at all. The ‘standing’ plays may be
traced at various removes from their original scene, the floor of the
church[396]. Indeed, the examples of Braintree in 1523 and 1525, of
Halstead in 1529, of Heybridge in 1532, seem to show that, quite apart
from the survival of ritual plays proper, the miracle-play, even at
the very moment of its extinction, had not been always and everywhere
excluded from the church itself. The Beverley _repraesentatio dominicae
resurrectionis_ about 1220 had got as far as the churchyard. At Bungay in
1566 they played in the churchyard, and at Harling in 1452 ‘at the cherch
gate.’ The latest of all the village plays, that of Hascombe in 1579,
was at, but perhaps not in the church. The next step brought the plays
to the market-place, which itself in many towns lay just outside the
church door. At Louth the Corpus Christi play was in the ‘markit-stede,’
and so were some at least of the Reading plays. A neighbouring field
might be convenient; the Bassingbourne play was in a ‘croft,’ that of
Chelmsford in a ‘pightell.’ Certain places had a bit of waste ground
traditionally devoted to the entertainment of the citizens. Such were
the ‘Forbury’ at Reading and the ‘Quarry’ at Shrewsbury. The Aberdeen
Haliblude play took place _apud ly Wyndmylhill_. Edinburgh constructed
its ‘playfield’ in the Greenside at considerable cost in 1554, while in
Cornwall permanent amphitheatres were in use. A writer contemporary with
the later performances describes these as made of earth in open fields
with an enclosed ‘playne’ of some fifty feet in diameter. If they are
correctly identified with the ‘rounds’ of St. Just and Perranzabulo,
these examples at least were much larger. The St. Just round is of
stone, with seven tiers of seats, and measures 126 feet in diameter; the
earthen one at Perranzabulo is 130 feet, and has a curious pit in the
centre, joined to the edge by a trench. The disposition of these rounds
at the time of performance can be studied in the diagrams reproduced from
the fifteenth-century manuscript of the plays by Mr. Norris. Within a
circular area is arranged a ring of eight spots which probably represent
structures elevated above the general surface of the ‘playne.’ They
have labels assigning them to the principal actors. Thus for the _Origo
Mundi_ the labels are _Celum_, _Tortores_, _Infernum_, _Rex Pharao_, _Rex
Dauid_, _Rex Sal[omon]_, _Abraham_, _Ortus_. From the stage directions
it would appear that the raised portions were called _pulpita_ or
_tenti_, and by Jordan at a later date ‘rooms’; that the ‘playne’ was the
_platea_; and that the action went on partly on the _pulpita_, partly
on the _platea_ between them. Except that it is circular instead of
oblong, the scheme corresponds exactly to that of the continental plays
shown in an earlier chapter to have been determined by the conditions of
performance within a church[397]. Those plays also had their _platea_;
and their _domus_, _loca_, or _sedes_ answer to the _pulpita_ and _tenti_
of Cornwall. Judging by the somewhat scanty indications available, the
disposition of other English ‘standing’ plays must have been on very
similar lines. In some cases there is evidence that the level _platea_
was replaced by a raised ‘platform,’ ‘scaffold,’ or ‘stage.’ Thus
Chaucer’s ‘joly Absolon’ played Herod ‘on a scaffold hye[398].’ But the
‘stages’ or ‘scaffolds’ mentioned in accounts are sometimes merely for
the spectators and sometimes equivalent to the _loca_ of leading actors.
In the Digby play of St. Mary Magdalen, a practicable ship moves about
the _platea_. Possibly a similar bit of realism was used elsewhere for
the ever popular ‘Noy schippe,’ and, if so, this may explain the pit and
trench of the Perranzabulo ‘round[399].’
As to the ‘pageant’ or movable stage of the processional plays, a good
deal of information is preserved. Dugdale describes it at Coventry as a
‘Theater ... very large and high, placed upon wheels’; Rogers at Chester
as ‘a highe place made like a howse with ij rowmes, beinge open on yᵉ
tope: the lower rowme they apparelled and dressed them selues; and in
the higher rowme they played; and they stood vpon 6 (_v.l._ 4) wheeles.’
According to an inventory of 1565 the grocers’ pageant at Norwich was
‘a Howse of Waynskott paynted and buylded on a Carte wᵗ fowre whelys.’
It had a square top or canopy; on it were placed a gilt griffin and two
large and eighty-three small vanes; and about it were hung three painted
cloths. Similar adornments of the pageant were in use at Coventry. At
York it bore the arms of the city or of the guild. M. Jusserand has
unearthed from a Bodleian manuscript two fourteenth-century miniatures
which apparently represent pageants. These have draperies covering the
whole of the lower ‘room’ down to the ground and resemble nothing so
much as the ambulant theatre of a Punch and Judy show[400]. The pageants
were probably arranged so that the action might be visible from every
side. The scenery would therefore be simple—a throne, a house. Certain
plays, however, necessitate a divided scene, such as the inside and
outside of a temple[401]. For the ‘hell,’ the traditional monstrous head
on a lower level, with practicable chains and fire, was required[402].
The pageant used for the Flood scene was doubtless shaped like an ark.
The ‘shipp’ belonging to the Trinity guild of Hull cost £5 8_s._ 4_d._
The ordinary pageant may have been less expensive. That of the Doom at
York was made ‘of newe substanciale’ for seven marks, the old pageant
and a free admission into the guild. At Lincoln three times as much was
charged for housing the ship as for any other pageant.
The origin of the pageant is capable of a very easy explanation[403].
Like the _edifizio_ of the Italian _rappresentazioni_, it is simply
the raised _locus_, _sedes_, or _domus_ of the stationary play put upon
wheels. Just as the action of the stationary play took place partly on
the various _sedes_, partly in the _platea_, so Coventry actors come and
go to and from the pageant in the street. ‘Here Erode ragis in the pagond
& in the strete also,’ says a stage direction. It should be observed that
the plays at Coventry were exceptionally long, and that scaffolds seem to
have been attached to the pageant proper in order to get sufficient space.
The number of ‘stations’ at which the plays were given varied in the
different towns. At York there were from twelve to sixteen; at Beverley
six; at Coventry not more than three or four can be identified. The many
scenes and frequent repetitions naturally made the processional plays
very lengthy affairs. At Chester they were spread over three days; at
York they were got through in one, but playing began at half-past four
in the morning. At Newcastle, on the other hand, the plays were in the
afternoon. The banns of the _Ludus Coventriae_ promise a performance ‘at
vj of the belle,’ but whether in the morning or evening is not stated.
The normal occasion for the greater plays was the feast of Corpus
Christi on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday. A few exceptions are,
however, to be noted. At Chester, Norwich, New Romney, and apparently
Leicester, the date chosen was Whitsuntide. Yet at Chester the play is
called the ‘Corpus Christi play’ in craft documents of the fifteenth
century, and even in the municipal ‘White Book’ of the sixteenth; from
which it must be inferred either that the term was used of all cyclical
plays without regard to their date, or, more probably, that at Chester
a performance originally given on Corpus Christi day had been for some
reason transferred to Whitsuntide. The motive may have been a desire to
avoid clashing between the plays and the great Corpus Christi procession
in which the crafts everywhere took a prominent part. A difficulty arose
on this score at York in 1426, and a Franciscan preacher, one William
Melton, tried to induce the citizens to have the plays on the day before
Corpus Christi. Ultimately the alternative was adopted of having the
procession on the day after. At Lincoln the plays were on St. Anne’s
day (July 26) and the last pageant was acted by the clergy in the nave
of the cathedral. At Aberdeen there appear to have been two cycles, a
processional Nativity at Candlemas and a Haliblude play on Windmill Hill
at Corpus Christi.
The oversight of the actors was, as pointed out in the last chapter, an
important element in the civic control of the craft-plays. The mention
at York of a commission of ‘connyng, discrete and able players’ must not
be taken to imply that these were in any sense professionals. All the
actors received fees, on a scale proportionate to the dignity of their
parts. Thus at Coventry one Fawston got 4_d._ ‘for hangyng Judas,’ and
4_d._ more ‘for coc croyng.’ The payment to the performer of God was
3_s._ 4_d._ A ‘sowle,’ whether ‘savyd’ or ‘dampnyd,’ got 20_d._, and a
‘worme of conscyence’ only 8_d._ At Hull, Noah was generally paid 1_s._,
God and Noah’s wife a trifle less. But there is nothing to show that the
performers were drawn from the minstrel class: they were probably, like
‘joly Absolon,’ members of the guilds undertaking the plays. The Chester
men describe themselves in their banns as not ‘playeres of price’ but
‘Craftes men and meane men.’ The epilogue to the Conversion of St. Paul
in the Digby manuscript similarly deprecates unkindly criticism of folk
‘lackyng lytturall scyens ... that of Retoryk haue non intellygens.’ A
characteristic of the acting which greatly impressed the imagination
of the audience seems to have been the rant and bombast put from very
early times in the mouths of such royal or pseudo-royal personages as
Herod and Pilate.[404] In the Chester plays fragments of French, as
in a liturgical play fragments of gibberish[405], are used to enhance
this effect. In the Cornish plays, as in the modern music hall, each
performer at his first appearance displays himself in a preliminary strut
about the stage. _Hic pompabit Abraham_, or _Moses_, or _David_, say the
stage directions. As is usually the case with amateurs, the function of
the prompter became an exceedingly important one. If the Cornish writer
Richard Carew may be trusted, the local players did not learn their
parts at all, but simply repeated them aloud after the whispers of the
‘ordinary[406].’ Probably this was exceptional; it certainly was not the
practice at Beverley, where there is a record of an actor being fined
_quod nesciebat ludum suum_. But it may be taken for granted that the
‘beryng of the boke,’ which is so frequently paid for in the accounts,
was never a sinecure. Another functionary who occasionally appears is the
stage-manager. In the later Cornish plays he is called the ‘conveyour.’
The great Chelmsford performance of 1562 was superintended by one Burles
who was paid, with others, for ‘suing’ it, and who probably came from a
distance, as he and his boy were boarded for three weeks.
The professional assistance of the minstrels, although not called in
for the acting, was welcome for the music. This was a usual and a
considerable item in the expenses. At the Chelmsford performance just
mentioned the waits of Bristol and no less than forty other minstrels
were employed. There is no sign of a musical accompaniment to the
dialogue of the existing plays, which was spoken, and not, like that of
their liturgical forerunners, chanted. But the York and Coventry texts
contain some noted songs, and several plays have invitations to the
minstrels to strike up at the conclusion or between the scenes. Minstrels
are also found accompanying the proclaimers of the banns or preliminary
announcements of plays. These banns seem to have been versified, like
the plays themselves. They are often mentioned, and several copies exist.
Those of Chester were proclaimed by the city crier on St. George’s day;
those of the Croxton play and the _Ludus Coventriae_ were carried round
the country-side by _vexillatores_ or banner-bearers. Minstrelsy was not
the only form of lighter solace provided for the spectators of the plays.
Two of those in the Digby manuscript were accompanied with dances. At
Bungay a ‘vyce’ was paid ‘for his pastyme before the plaie, and after
the plaie.’ There were ‘vices’ too at Chelmsford, and ‘fools,’ by which
is meant the same thing[407], at Heybridge and New Romney. But these
examples are taken from the decadence of the miracle-play, rather than
from its heyday.
The accounts of the Bassingbourne play in 1511 include a payment to ‘the
garnement man for garnements and propyrts and playbooks.’ This was an
occasional and not an annual play, and apparently at the beginning of the
sixteenth century such plays were sufficiently frequent to render the
occupation of theatrical outfitter a possible one. Certainly those lucky
parishes, such as Chelmsford or St. Peter’s, Oxford, which possessed a
stock of ‘game gear,’ found a profit in letting it out to less favoured
places. The guilds responsible for the greater plays naturally preserved
their own costumes and properties from year to year, supplementing
these where necessary by loans from the neighbouring gentry and clergy.
The Middle Ages were not purists about anachronism, and what was good
enough for an English bishop was good enough for Annas and Caiaphas. The
hands of the craftsmen who acted were discreetly cased in the gloves,
without which no ceremonial occasion was complete, and sometimes, at
least, vizors or masks were worn. But, as a rule, the stage setting
left a good deal to the imagination. The necessaries for the play of
Paradise at Beverley in 1391 consisted of the ‘karre’ or pageant, eight
hasps, eighteen staples, two vizors, a pair of wings for the angel, a
fir-spar (the tree of knowledge), a worm (the serpent), two pairs of
linen breeches, two pairs of shifts, and one sword. For a similar play
the Norwich grocers possessed in 1565, besides the pageant and its
fittings, sufficient ‘cotes and hosen’ for all the characters, that
of the serpent being fitted with a tail, a ‘face’ and hair for the
Father, hair for Adam and Eve, and—‘a Rybbe colleryd Red.’ A few other
interesting details can be gathered from various records. At Canterbury
the steeds of the _Magi_ were made of hoops and laths and painted canvas.
In the Doomsday scene at Coventry the ‘savyd’ and ‘dampnyd’ souls were
distinguished by their white or black colour[408]. The hell mouth was
provided with fire, a windlass, and a barrel for the earthquake. There
were also three worlds to be set afire, one, it may be supposed, at
each station. The stage directions to Jordan’s Cornish Creation of the
World are full of curious information. The Father appears in a cloud and
when he speaks out of heaven, ‘let ye levys open.’ Lucifer goes down to
hell ‘apareled fowle wᵗʰ fyre about hem’ and the plain is filled with
‘every degre of devylls of lether and spirytis on cordis.’ In Paradise a
fountain and ‘fyne flowers’ suddenly spring up, and a little later ‘let
fyshe of dyuers sortis apeare & serten beastis.’ Lucifer becomes ‘a fyne
serpent made wᵗʰ a virgyn face & yolowe heare upon her head.’ Adam and
Eve departing from Paradise ‘shewe a spyndell and a dystaff.’ For the
murder of Abel, according to old tradition, a ‘chawbone’ is needed[409],
and for the ark, timber and tools, including ‘a mallet, a calkyn yren,
ropes, masstes, pyche and tarr.’ I have not space to dwell further on
these archaeological _minutiae_. One point, however, seems to deserve
another word. Many writers have followed Warton in asserting that Adam
and Eve were represented on the stage in actual nakedness[410]. The
statement is chiefly based upon a too literal interpretation of the
stage directions of the Chester plays[411]. There is a fine _a priori_
improbability about it, and as a matter of fact there can be very little
doubt that the parts were played, as they would have been on any other
stage in any other period of the world’s history, except possibly at the
Roman _Floralia_[412], in fleshings. Jordan is quite explicit. Adam and
Eve are to be ‘aparlet in whytt lether,’ and although Jordan’s play is
a late one, I think it may be taken for granted that white leather was
sufficient to meet the exigencies even of mediaeval realism.
The accounts of miracle-plays frequently contain entries of payments for
providing copies of the text used. When the stock of the Chelmsford play
was dispersed in 1574, the copies were valued at £4. Such copies were
naturally of more than one kind. There was the authoritative text kept
for reference by the guild or other body of presenters. This is sometimes
called the ‘play-book’ or ‘game-book.’ The Cornish term is _ordinale_,
a derivative from the _ordo_ of the liturgical drama[413]. That in use
elsewhere is more commonly ‘original,’ which appears in a variety of
quaint spellings[414]. In the great towns where plays were given by the
crafts under the general supervision of the corporation, each craft held
the ‘original’ of its own play, but approved transcripts of these were
also in the hands of the corporation officers. At Chester this transcript
was itself called the ‘original’; at York it was the _registrum_.
Most of the extant manuscripts of plays appear to be of the nature of
‘originals.’ From York and probably from Wakefield we have _registra_.
The Chester texts are, however, late transcripts due to the zeal of
local antiquaries, perhaps in view of some frustrated revival. Specimens
exist also of two other kinds of copy. There are single plays from both
Chester and York which have all the appearance of having been folded up
for the pocket of a prompter. And the nature of the ‘parts’ prepared
for individual actors may be seen from the transition example edited by
Professor Skeat from a manuscript found at Shrewsbury. They contained the
actors’ own speeches, with the ‘cues’ or closing words of the preceding
speeches which signalled to him that his turn was at hand[415].
Indications of the authorship of plays are very scanty. John Bale has
preserved a list of his own plays, some at least of which were acted
in mediaeval fashion. It may perhaps be assumed that Nicholas Udall,
afterwards author of _Ralph Roister Doister_, wrote the play performed
at Braintree in 1534, while he was vicar there. At Bassingbourne in 1511
one John Hobarde, ‘brotherhood priest,’ was paid ‘for the play-book.’ In
this and in several of the following cases it is impossible to determine
whether an author or merely a copying scribe is in question. The
corporation of Beverley employed Master Thomas Bynham, a friar preacher,
to write ‘banis’ for their plays in 1423. At Reading we find Mr. Laborne
‘reforming’ the Resurrection play about 1533. The later Cornish play of
the Creation of the World was ‘wryten’ by William Jordan in 1611, and
that of St. Meriasek by ‘dominus Hadton’ in 1504. At Bungay William Ellys
was paid in 1558 ‘for the interlude and game-book[416],’ and Stephen
Prewett, a priest at Norwich, for some labour about the matter of a
game-book in 1526. This same Stephen Prewett had a fee from the Norwich
grocers ‘for makyng of a new ballet’ in 1534. One of the extant Coventry
plays was ‘nevly correcte’ and the other ‘nevly translate’ by Robert Croo
in 1535. The name ‘Thomas Mawdycke’ and the date 1591 are written at the
head of some songs belonging to the former. In 1566 Thomas Nycles set a
song for the drapers. Robert Croo or Crowe seems to have made himself
generally useful in connexion with the Coventry plays. In 1563 the smiths
paid him for ‘ij leves of our pley boke.’ In 1557 he wrote the ‘boke’
for the drapers, and between 1556 and 1562 further assisted them by
playing God, mending the ‘devell’s cottes,’ and supplying ‘iij worldys’
for burning and a hat for the Pharisee. A later Coventry playwright was
John Smith of St. John’s College, Oxford, who wrote the ‘new play’ of
the Destruction of Jerusalem in 1584 for a sum of £13 6_s._ 8_d._ The
fifteenth-century Croxton play has the initials ‘R. C.’ One of the plays
in the Digby manuscript ‘Ihon Parfre ded wryte.’ The three others have
the initials ‘M. B.,’ and against the _Poeta_ of the prologue to one of
them a later hand has written in the margin ‘Myles Blomfylde.’ I repeat
the caution that some at least of these names may be those of mere
copyists. Miles Blomfield has been identified with a monk of Bury of that
name. As he was born in 1525 he obviously was not the original author
of the Digby plays, which are probably of the fifteenth century. A much
greater monk of Bury, John Lydgate, has been claimed as the author of the
_Ludus Coventriae_, but there does not seem to be any real evidence for
this[417]. On the other hand I see no reason to doubt the old Chester
tradition which connects the plays of that city with the name of Randulph
Higden, author of the _Polychronicon_. The story is very fairly coherent,
and the date (1328) which it assigns for the plays falls within the
period of Higden’s monastic life at St. Werburgh’s abbey.
It must, of course, be borne in mind that the notion of authorship
is only imperfectly applicable to the miracle-plays. The task of the
playwrights was one less of original composition than of adaptation, of
rewriting and rearranging existing texts so as to meet the needs of the
particular performances in which they were interested. Obviously this was
a process that could be carried out with more or with less individuality.
There were slavish adapters and there were liberal adapters. But on the
whole the literary problem of the plays lies in tracing the evolution of
a form rather than in appreciating individual work. Even when written,
the plays, if periodically performed, were subject to frequent revision,
motived partly by the literary instinct for furbishing up, partly by
changing conditions, such as the existence of a varying number of
craft-guilds ready to undertake the responsibility for a scene[418].
Further alterations, on theological rather than literary grounds, were
naturally called for at the Reformation. Thus Jordan’s Cornish _Creation
of the World_ is clearly based upon the older play printed by Mr.
Norris. The book of the Norwich grocers contains two versions of their
play of Paradise, the later of which, ‘newely renvid accordynge unto
yᵉ Skrypture,’ was substituted for the earlier in 1565. The Towneley
manuscript has two alternative versions of the _Pastores_. That of
York has a fragmentary second version of the Coronation of the Virgin,
and when read with the records affords much evidence of the dropping,
insertion, and rearrangement of scenes, and of doctrinal revision during
the sixteenth century. At Coventry the local annals mention ‘new playes’
in 1520, fifteen years before the existing texts were ‘nevly correcte’
and ‘translate’ by Robert Crowe.
The determination of the relations in which the plays stand towards one
another is a field in which literary scholars, delayed by the want of
trustworthy critical texts, are only just beginning to set foot. The
question lies outside the scope of these pages. But I may call attention
to Mr. Pollard’s analysis of the various _strata_ in the Towneley
plays[419], and to the studies by Professor Hohlfeld[420] and Professor
Davidson[421] upon the greater cycles in general and especially upon
the influence exercised by York over the Towneley and other plays, as
excellent examples of what may be looked for. The _Ludus Coventriae_
will afford a good subject for investigation, when the manuscript has
been properly re-edited. It is evidently a patchwork cycle, roughly put
together and in parts easy to break up into its constituent elements.
The problem is not confined to English literature. The Chester tradition
represents Higden’s work as an affair rather of translation than of
anything else. It is not quite clear whether translation from the Latin
or from the Norman-French is intended. In any case it is probable that
the earlier English playwrights made use of French models, and certain
parallels have already been traced between English plays and others to
be found in the French collection known as the _Viel Testament_. Here, as
elsewhere, the international solidarity of mediaeval literature is to be
taken into account.
Two chapters back I defined the change which took place in the character
of the _religious drama_ of western Europe during the thirteenth century
as _being_, to a large extent, _a process of secularization_. ‘Out of
the hands of the clergy,’ I said, ‘in their naves and choirs, the drama
passed to those of the laity in their market-places and guild-halls.’
And I pointed to the natural result of these altered conditions in ‘the
reaction of the temper of the folk upon the handling of the plays, the
broadening of their human as distinct from their religious aspect[422].’
A study of the texts and records of the fully developed miracle-play as
it existed in these islands from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century
can only confirm this view. I have indeed shown, I hope, in the course
of this imperfect summary, that the variety of mediaeval theatrical
organization was somewhat greater than a too exclusive attention to
the craft-cycles of the great towns has always allowed scholars to
recognize. But, with all qualifications and exceptions, it is none the
less true that what began as a mere spectacle, devised by ecclesiastics
for the edification of the laity, came in time to appeal to a deep-rooted
native instinct of drama in the folk and to continue as an essentially
popular thing, a _ludus_ maintained by the people itself for its own
inexhaustible wonder and delight[423]. Literary critics have laid
stress upon the emergence of the rude humour of the folk, with its love
of farce and realism, in somewhat quaint juxtaposition to the general
subject-matter of the plays. I only desire to add here that the instinct
which made the miracle-plays a joy to the mediaeval burgher is the same
instinct which the more primitive peasant satisfied in a score of modes
of rudimentary folk-drama[424]. The popularity and elaboration of the
devil scenes in the plays is the most striking manifestation of this
identity[425]. For your horned and blackened devil is the same personage,
with the same vague tradition of the ancient heathen festival about him,
whether he riots it through the cathedral aisles in the Feast of Fools,
or hales the Fathers to limbo and harries the forward spectators in the
market-place of Beverley or Wakefield.
One must not look for absolute breaches of continuity, even in a
literary evolution. That the liturgical types of religious drama
continued to exist side by side with their popular offshoots, that
here the clergy continued to present plays, and in spite of a certain
adverse current of ascetic feeling, to assist the lay guilds in divers
ways, has already been there shown. It is to be added that the texts
of the plays bear traces to the end of their liturgical origin. The
music used is reminiscent of church melodies[426]. The dialogue at
critical moments follows the traditional lines and occasionally even
reverts to the actual Latin of the _repraesentationes_. More than one
play—the Towneley _Iuditium_, the Croxton _Sacrament_, the Digby _St.
Mary Magdalen_—closes with the _Te Deum_ which habitually ended Matins
when the dramatic interpolation of the office was over. And what are
the _Expositor_ of the _Ludus Coventriae_, the _Doctor_ of the Brome
play, or even _Balaeus Prolocutor_ himself, but the lineal descendants,
through the dramatized St. Augustine, of certain German plays and the
_appellatores_ or _vocatores_ of the _Prophetae_, of the priest who read
the pseudo-Augustinian Christmas _lectio_ from which the _Prophetae_
sprang? Survivals such as these impress upon the student the unity of the
whole religious drama of the Middle Ages, from trope to Corpus Christi
cycle.