When York began to stage the Corpus Christi plays again in 2006, they faced the original problems of the medieval designers: how do you put the universe on a wagon? Specifically, how do you make the wagon’s base stable and heavy enough not to blow over in the wind, while keeping it narrow enough to maneuver medieval streets and gates? While portraying Heaven, Earth, and Hell?
The York cycle divided Creation into three plays: the creation of the angels and the fall of Lucifer; the creation of the earth and its plants and animals; the creation of Adam and Eve. God’s prohibiting the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was in a fourth play, and their fall into sin by eating the fruit was in a fifth. I wonder whether each play had its own wagon, or whether some wagons may have been shared: there seems no good reason why the two plays with the Tree could not be on the same stage. But the reason might have been civic pride, so they may have had five separate wagons for these parts of the stories.
“The Fall of Lucifer” was the dramatic opening of the cycle. It opened with God in heaven speaking as he created angels and named Lucifer their chief. The actor playing God wore a mask that covered his whole head, like a helmet. In the modern productions at York, they often show that someone is an angel or God by placing them on stilts or, perhaps, a ladder, with a robe that flows ten feet down to the ground, so the person looks very tall. “God” may have been perched on a half-story above the second stage.
The second story was Heaven, of course. A number of the stages required two levels or even three, so the wagons were built heavily on the bottom. There is one drawing of a pageant-wagon in 1615 that appears to show a wagon slung very low, so that the body hangs down below the axle. The space below could always be used for something: a place to catch falling water, or a place for concealed smoking pots to release steam and smoke of Hell. I don’t know how they kept the fires safe, but it seems certain that they did.
On the 2006 York wagon, they built two heavenly staircases going up to Heaven from the main stage platform. Everything on the stairs and in the upper story is painted white, silver, or gold. Underneath the stairs and the central high platform, everything is dark. That’s the lower region where the smoke of Hell can drift up from the space underneath.
Lucifer’s Fall is straightforward: he stands on the top platform, after God has created him and named him the chief angel, with another angel or two at his side. On the stairs, the other angels sing a Te Deum hymn, and they praise God in spoken verses too, but Lucifer preens and praises only himself. Here is the key passage, Lucifer speaking:
Ther sall I set myselfe, full semely to seyghte,
To ressayve my reverence thorowe righte o renowne.
I sall be lyke unto hym that es hyeste on heghte —
Owe, what I am derworth and defte.
Owe, Dewes, all goes downe!
My mighte and my mayne es all marrande.
Helpe, felawes, in faythe I am fallande.
“I shall be like unto Him that is highest in height—Oh, how I am worthy and noble!” And then suddenly, “Oh God, all goes down!” He literally tumbles off his platform to the darker lower stage, and at least one other angel goes with him, also lamenting. The medieval wagon might have had a hole in the upper stage floor, possibly with a pole to slide down, possibly just for a stunt fall. Falling, as we know, is always good for slapstick comic effect, and the Devil was worth laughing at. Lucifer probably had a mask with two faces, light and dark. He and his angel/devil companion may have had a cloak that could be suddenly flipped white to black. The stage directions mark his last lines in “Inferno.”
The closing lines show God separating darkness from light, which is the opening line of Genesis. The dark night morally belongs to Hell, where “shall mirkness never be missing.” So that, says the play, is why God said Let there be Light. In this play, he doesn’t say it in quite those words, because he speaks in rhymed, alliterative verse. “This day’s work is entirely done, and it pleases me well, and I give it my blessing.”
This day warke es done ilke a dele,
And all this warke lykes me ryght wele,
And baynely I gyf it my blyssyng.