The central event of Jesus’ death on the cross was broken into two plays. The Guild of Pinners shared with the Painters the responsibility for producing the play in which Jesus is nailed to the cross, “Crucifixio Christi.” Separately, the Butchers produced “Mortificacio Christi,” in which Jesus cries out in pain and dies. Seven wagons had passed since the Last Supper, showing the arrest and trials, the remorse of Judas, and the walk to the execution hill.
Audiences must at this point have been very emotional. First, they didn’t see many productions and they certainly lacked our ability to watch staged actions with detachment. Second, in the late Middle Ages there was a general sense that people should strive to feel and sympathetically experience all of the difficulties and pains that Jesus went through. The anchoress now known as Julian of Norwich lived during the century in which the Feast of Corpus Christi was developing. Her mystical visions began with her earnestly praying that one wish would be granted: that she would feel in her own body all of the pains Jesus felt. So there would have been no shame for anyone in York’s audience to weep openly as the emotion reached its peak, it was pure piety.
How was the audience arranged, as it watched these plays? We know a few things and can speculate a few more (with thanks to John Wesley Harris, Medieval Theater in Context). Each “stop” was auctioned off to a promoter who would be responsible for viewer arrangements. The auction aspect suggests that there was real profit to be made, as well as that some stops were more lucrative than others. Each place had houses nearby, from whose windows the play could be seen, as well as an open area that might fit some bleachers to use the space more efficiently. Did the promoters charge nearby houses some fee, or did they make money only from the open space? I’m guessing there was some kind of fee arrangement, or perhaps their garden latrines could be used in exchange for their free window viewing.
Were the stops fenced off to keep gate-crashers out? Probably, they were. Fairs already used this type of system, turnstiles and all. The stops probably also had deals with various guilds so that their family and guests could see well. It’s possible that all of the bleacher space was reserved for the guilds this way, and only the street available for general admission. The larger venues must have had more prestigious seating, and we already know that at one of the stops, the Mayor and City Council were seated together, awaiting their “mayne bread” ceremonial presentation before the Bakers played The Last Supper.
We can be sure that each stop was packed with half-penny viewers, that a few climbed onto rooftops to cheat and see anyway, and that there would have been some neighbors who could sort of see some of the action. (Who hasn’t gone to see July fireworks at some house where we’re assured you can see it ‘as if you’re there’? You never can, of course.) These windows would have been outside the paying zone, but the promoter may have tried to dun them anyway. We can only speculate on other details: could some neighborhoods have charged for use of their communal latrine? Did people rent their chairs, placed on the street nearby so at least you could hear?
In the Crucifixion, Jesus has two speeches, in the middle and near the end. Otherwise, the play is entirely dialogue among four Roman soldiers who have been detailed to make sure he is dead by noon. Medieval audiences were not squeamish about torture; on the one side, they wanted to piously weep over the pains of Jesus, but on the other, they had the love of gore that Netflix can still count on today. There wasn’t real blood, and the actor playing Jesus was not nailed, but tied onto the cross. But the dialogue is lively and makes clear what they are supposed to be doing, and must have been acting out dramatically, though without harming the actor. For example, here they discover that the carpenters drilled the nail-hole in the wrong place:
III MILES In faith, it was overe skantely scored;
That makis it fouly for to faile.
I MILES Why carpe ye so? Faste on a corde
And tugge hym to, by toppe and taile.
III MILES Ya, thou comaundis lightly as a lorde.
Come helpe to haale, with ille haile.
I MILES Nowe certis, that schall I doo,
Full suerly as a snayle.
III MILES And I schall tacche [attach] hym too,
Full nemely with a nayle.
This werke will holde, that dar I heete,
For nowe are feste faste both his handis.
IV MILES Go we all foure thanne to his feete,
So schall oure space be spedely spende.
Apart from his two speeches, Jesus is the silent center of the action. Stage notes say that the placing of the cross must be raised up so that people can see it. It was certainly on the pageant-wagon’s stage, but it might have been raised a bit more. There must have been a stand with a hole for the cross to be placed in, and the four men appear to have really lifted the cross and set it upright.
Did the next play, about the sufferings and death of Jesus on the cross, use a different wagon, different cross, different Jesus? It seems extravagant to me, and perhaps the two plays worked together. But most likely, the Pinners and Painters closed the curtain on Jesus, took his cross back down, and let him rest while the wagon rumbled to the next station—and the Butchers’ pageant-wagon arrived with another Jesus actor already in place when the curtain drew back. The Butchers’ wagon would need three crosses, to accommodate the two thieves.
The first hundred lines of the Mortificacio play are spoken by Pilate and the two high priests, as they narrate their version of our story so far. Then the attention goes to Jesus on the cross, with Mary and his disciple John nearby. Mary describes how her son is suffering, and when John tries to comfort her, she says
My steven for to stede or to steere,
Howe schulde I such sorowe to see:
My Sone that is dereworthy and dere
Thus doulfull a dede for to dye.
You may remember the word “steven,” word or voice. She says, “My voice to steady or steer how should I, such sorrow to see? My Son who is worthy and dear thus doleful a death for to die.”
Jesus’ conversation with the two thieves follows: the one on the left (“sinister”) curses him, saying “To saffe nowe thyselffe late us see, And us now, that spedis for to spille.” That is: “To save now thyself let us see, and us, that now speed for to die.” The thief on the right rebukes him, and Jesus says he will be in paradise. And then, a charming detail: Jesus’ words recorded in the Gospel, the original Aramaic but spelled in Greek, are given to us in medieval Yorkshire approximation:
Heloy! heloy!
My God, my God, full free,
Lama zabatanye,
Wharto forsoke thou me,
It’s even a word-for-word translation (except for the addition of “full free”), in a way that modern English can’t do, since word order has become more rigid over time.
The play may be one of the most sophisticated in dramatic production. Jesus speaks his last words, “My Fadir, here [hear] my bone [boon],For nowe all thyng is done. My spirite to thee right sone Comende I in manus tuas.” Then the dialogue shifts among the group at the cross and the officials who are observing at a little distance. Mary, John and Mary Cleophe (a friend also present) speak with gentle grief, while Pilate and the two priests congratulate a job well done. Pilate even tells the attending soldiers to go visit a brothel!
Another soldier steps up and is given the task of thrusting a spear into Jesus’ side. Immediately on contact with Jesus’ blood, his soul can see that Jesus is God: “O, maker unmade, full of myght. O, Jesu so jentill and jente, That sodenly has lente me my sight.” He breaks into a lament of praise:
A, mercy my socoure,
Mercy, my treasoure,
Mercy my Savioure,
Thi mercy be markid in me.
The Centurion, too, now believes, and he points out that “This weedir is waxen full wan,” that is, the weather has turned all dark, a full eclipse as noted in the Gospel story. And then come Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus (a Pharisee who had secretly visited Jesus) to ask Pilate for the body. Their dialogue, spoken as they remove and shroud the body, is in quatrains of elegy:
To thy mercy nowe make I my moone [moan],
As Saviour be see and be sande,
Thou gyde [guide] me that my griffe [grief] be al gone;
With lele [loyal/righteous] liffe to lenge [dwell] in this lande
And esse [ease].
There could not have been a dry eye in the audience, every time.