All Things Medieval

Many towns and cities in Europe also put on plays for Corpus Christi Day, but they didn’t evolve in the peripatetic-wagon direction that northern England did. Instead, they created temporary, then increasingly permanent, theaters in large public squares. As the theaters became more permanent, they staged many more performances at other parts of the year, leaning especially on saints’ stories. And the stages grew ever more elaborate.

The basic design began as one stage area with multiple “places” (lieux) represented around the back: Heaven, Hell, Jerusalem, Bethlehem. Typically, characters who were going to be in stories in each location stood in their “place,” waiting for the action to involve them. They could then speak their lines from the place, or they could walk forward to the central stage. The whole stage was higher level than the ground, with more expensive viewing boxes at the same level.

When there was one stage with a non-moving structure, the plays could use many more technical tricks to create “realism.” Most productions dealt with Biblical or saints’ stories, and most of these had supernatural elements. What would it look like if they could manage to make someone disappear, change color, or walk on water? How astonished would audiences be if they could lift a building, create lightning, or make a demon emerge from a person’s body? Producers of spectacles have always wanted the same things that they still want, they just had more limited resources for tromping l’oeil.

In medieval France, the “conducteur des secrets” was what we now call “the special effects guy.” The more permanent his stage, the fancier he could get. For example, stages had underground tunnels, sometimes literally under the ground, not just under the stage. Actors could use them to leave the stage without being seen, for general purposes such as their part being finished or to escape from a “burning building,” or they could enter the stage, rising from the dead.

Above the ground, cranes and tall iron structures allowed the conducteurs des secrets to set up systems of pulleys, winches, and counterweights. Just as they do today, they might have an actor wearing a harness so that they could attach a rope and fly him to the heavens. In one dramatic case, Jesus and the Devil both suddenly shot to the pinnacle of the Temple because the Devil wore a harness, attached to a rope and pulley, with a counterweight ready to be dropped. Cranes also let things down, such as clouds. A cloud made of wood or fabric could block the audience’s view for a critical costume change or to obscure the trapdoor that let the vanishing actor down into a tunnel.

Stationary semi-permanent stages also allowed water tanks, much as Hollywood sound stages have used them in our time. The most extreme water tank was at Bourges, where the whole stage area was made ready to receive water pumped in via underground pipes. But even a large half-stage water tank allowed Peter to walk on water, or the prow of Noah’s ark to see rising water, or Jesus to sit in a real boat while he taught the people on the beach.

What about Noah’s dove? I suggested that our wagon-bound Noah probably sent a model dove out on a wire, but these larger stationary productions often used real doves. The return bird was probably on a wire, so Noah could look up and say “here she comes!” and then pluck the branch from its mouth. Bird training was a well-known art in this time of falconry, so they could use trained owls and ravens, too.

Another area of staging that just cried out for “secrets” to make them look real: all sorts of faked deaths. Fake blood was definitely in use: concealed on the tip of a spear or knife to gush out on contact when Abel or Jesus was struck, however lightly in reality. It wasn’t hard to find spare blood, since butchering animals was a way of life. The butcher could easily give you a bladder full of blood that you could conceal in a fake head, so when the executioner “cut off” a head, the real actor’s head was concealed while the mock head now dripped real blood. This worked for other forms of torture: the real actor didn’t need to bleed or be in pain, as long as copious red stuff flowed.

Saints’ plays were full of gore. While our modern audiences have gotten hard to impress with special effects, their audiences were hard to impress with blood, so they went the extra mile. I’m quoting here from John Wesley Harris’s Medieval Theatre in Context because I can’t improve on these two summaries: “St. Denis, in the long French play devoted to him, was progressively whipped, racked, tormented on a red-hot grill, savaged by wild animals, steeped in a furnace, crucified, beheaded, and disemboweled, with his bowels shown bursting out of his belly. St. Barbara, in another play, was stripped naked, bound to a stake, beaten and burnt, had her breasts cut off, was rolled in a nail-studded barrel and dragged over a mountain by her hair, before being executed.” (145) As Harris says, we’d like to think that a dummy saint was subjected to most of those torments.

Lightning and fire are darlings of special effects and were then, too. Gunpowder came to Europe around 1350, and it was first used more for tricks than for practical weaponry. Elijah probably called down fire from heaven to consume his altar either with a hidden explosive charge that suddenly lit or with a rocket traveling quickly down a wire to hit the target. Ditto for the burning bush and various things that the Devil did. Sound effects for thunder went with the lightning: thin sheets of bronze, or casks filled with stones, could supply some loud noise.

Ordinary uses of fire were always good for a show, too, as is still true. (When I was a child, we saw a long-running outdoor production called “The Shepherd of the Hills,” in Missouri, and I don’t remember anything except that they really did have a big fire.) Medieval French theaters burned down city gates and houses, temples and idols. No wonder the actors sometimes needed a tunnel for safe retreat.

There are four York plays devoted to the end of Mary’s life: her death, her burial, her soul’s rising into heaven (the Assumption), and her coronation as Queen of Heaven. While these events were not strictly part of the story of salvation from Adam’s fall to Christ’s resurrection, they tied up the loose ends of the story by showing what happened to the most important figure next to Jesus: his mother. These plays were not without controversy, and sometimes they were not all produced.

One of the problems with these plays from our modern point of view is that in a few places, they single out Jews for negative comment. When Mary is dying, two Jews come to ask her help in obtaining forgiveness for them, “that we may be broght unto blisse.” And in “The Funeral of the Virgin,” the play (its text is missing) would have told us a legend about a Jew named, improbably, Fergus.

Fergus is angry because everyone is singing Psalms for the funeral; he reaches out to disrupt the bier, and his hand gets stuck. I had a hard time finding accurate information on what else happens, but we know that the Masons’ Guild petitioned to stop producing it and get a more dignified play. First, the story was not really in the Bible, so it felt lower in dignity than the other plays. Second, the crowd loved it for the reason that it’s about beating a Jew. So that’s one thing we know: the Jew, Fergus, would have been beaten by the Apostles and the crowd. The Masons may not have objected to the Jew’s treatment, but the crowd’s noise and laughter disrupted the sober, devotional mood of the festival. The Linenweavers took over the play; perhaps they had been on a wait list for a decade or two.

“The Assumption of the Virgin” and “The Coronation of the Virgin” may have competed for attention, since both were produced by well-funded guilds. The Weavers produced “the Assumption,” perhaps because the legend that’s played out is connected to Mary’s woven belt. The Twelve Apostles had been miraculously present for Mary’s death, except that Thomas, who was far away in India, was late. He arrived to grieve at Mary’s tomb just in time to see angels calling her out to go up to heaven. They speak briefly, and Mary leaves her girdle (belt) with him as a token. This relic was kept in the Cathedral of Prato, in Tuscany.

The angels’ costumes and musical instruments were a place for the wealthy Weavers’ Guild to drop some cash. The script called for twelve angels and three hymns, probably music from the liturgy of the Assumption of the Virgin Mass, celebrated in mid-August. Angels in medieval stained glass windows are often carrying trumpets and harps, so the actors playing these roles (with only one speaking line each) may have been local musicians. They were certainly a trained choir, at the least.

The last play was a light-filled scene of Heaven, with Jesus and angels welcoming Mary to her throne as Queen. By the time the Corpus Christi Festival was established, devotion to Mary as Queen of Heaven was a very large part of Christian faith. During the 14th century, this play seems to have been produced by the Mayor and City Council, therefore in a sense by all of the guilds together. It was probably one of the most popular plays in the cycle.

But the coming of the Reformation made all of the Marian plays problematic. In 1534, England was formally declared independent from Rome. Soon after, officials from London began dissolving the monasteries, turning out monks and nuns and selling the properties to the highest bidder. Abbeys became private homes and libraries were often burnt. Royal officials seized gold and silver items like cups and crosses, and they even seized bronze bells. By 1538, mobs egged on by the royal decrees were smashing relics and images, including burning statues of Mary at the famous shrines. Eventually, the bones of St. Thomas Becket were destroyed at Canterbury Cathedral.

Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and the rest of the north were adamantly opposed to these things. All across the northern region, there were armed uprisings. In October 1536, the “Lincolnshire Rising” began when the local abbey was closed and stripped. A monk and a shoemaker led over 20,000 people in marching to occupy Lincoln Cathedral, demanding freedom of religion for Roman Catholics. A royal army headed north, the people dispersed, and the leaders were executed in gory ways. But the executions were barely done when a new uprising began in the form of a mass pilgrimage to York Cathedral. Thomas Aske, a lawyer, led the uprising to occupy York and restore the monks and nuns to their homes. The Duke of Norfolk promised pardons and reforms, and the people dispersed. Naturally, the royal officials then showed up to arrest and execute the leaders in gory ways. Yet another uprising took off in February of 1537, and this time, it wasn’t over until a truly impressive parade of people had been executed in gory ways, with trials lasting most of the year.

When it was time to start checking the pageant-wagons and auditioning actors for June’s Corpus Christi Festival, the men of York must have felt a bit insecure. I don’t think we know if anything changed immediately, but if I were them, I’d have left out the Mary plays since arrests were ongoing. It’s possible that the way “The Funeral of the Virgin” is missing from the record is connected to this insecurity. If they didn’t remove them all by that year, certainly they had done so by 1538, when statues of Mary were burned and relics smashed. The rest of the cycle seems to have continued for a while, for we know that its final suppression wasn’t until 1569. For approximately 30 years, the people of York held onto their tradition, even for a few years after Corpus Christi Day itself was outlawed.

The Mercers had just outfitted a new wagon for Doomsday in 1501. It had a windlass on the iron frame, perhaps covered by a wooden roof, to raise and lower the Judgment Seat. Instead of banners with symbols for the Trinity, it had newly carved alabaster or wood symbols. By 1541, the wagon is mentioned as taking part in a procession when King Henry VIII visited York. I doubt his visit was unconnected to pacifying the city; he was probably there to finalize new appointments. I wonder if the Mercers and others had mixed feelings about their new wagon’s use, but if they did, surely they kept their mouths shut.

The main story of Corpus Christi day closed with the Ascension of Jesus into heaven, some plays about Mary that I’ll get to next, and last and at the very end of time: Judgment Day. The last stories had a good chance of being played out under darkening skies. The sun set at approximately 8:30 pm in Northern England in June; the play cycle had been running since just after dawn, making full use of the long day, but with 48 plays, the last ones probably didn’t start their turn to perform at the first stop until the afternoon. Each pageant wagon probably spent at least 8 hours on the road and “The Last Supper” must have retired before the final wagon had a slot to begin. It may be that these final plays took place essentially in the dark.

We know a lot about how “Doomsday” was produced because the Mercers’ Guild left us a contract from 1443 in which the Pageant-Master committed to having the Mercers’ wagon returned to its storage shed. It lists all of the removable, portable (stealable) props and costumes that needed to go to the Mercers Hall. (My source for this is an article by Alexandra Johnston and Margaret Dorrell, published by Leeds University.) Johnston and Dorrell make the point that the Mercers may have been more than usual dependent on hiring clerks and directors to handle their play, because many of their leading members were also on the City Council, therefore seated in a place of honor (Common Hall) to watch the cycle while nibbling on their special shield-shaped cookie. They were also one of the richest guilds, including all merchants both local and international. Their pageant-wagon may have been the best, and they certainly chose the last play to have the last impression on the crowd.

In the Doomsday play, Jesus is the judge of souls, dressed in a tunic that bears the marks of his wounds on the cross. His speech in verse opens the play—but that’s not all. He entered on a seat that could be raised or lowered; he was lowered from the clouds at the top of the wagon. The seat was made of an iron frame, and it was hung from a larger iron frame. This larger frame stood in sockets on the wagon’s stage, holding all of the weight of curtains, angels, hanging seat, and wind-up mechanism.

Behind the seat of judgment, there was a large cloud hanging from the iron frame, with a rainbow made of “timber.” There were twenty angels. The seven large ones each held the “passion,” though I’m not sure what that meant. (Was it a crucifix?) The smallest ones were attached to the top rail and could be moved by pulling on a cord; maybe they circled around a pulley system? This made them “renne aboute in the heuen.” Johnston and Dorrell speculate that the angels were made of straw and covered with fabric, but that perhaps their heads and hands were made of wood or plaster to look more realistic. A straw body would certainly be lighter in weight than a whole wooden one. There were also banners with symbols of the Trinity.

In 1463, the Mercers paid to have some new equipment for the play. Johnston and Dorrell’s best interpretation of the financial records is that starting then, and over the next few years, the main pageant-wagon probably added two things that sat separately on the street. They may have been mounted as carts, that is, with two wheels, or they may have been carried from stop to stop on the main stage and then set down onto the street. One was a “Hell Mouth,” into which damned souls would have to descend. The other was some kind of structure for four dead souls to rise out of, when the trumpet called them. It may have been shaped like a tomb, or it may have just been a smaller stage that linked to the main one. Before they had this additional piece, the souls who came to be judged may have walked from around back of the wagon when the trumpet sounded. They would have been concealed even so, because the wagon had a curtain around all of the wheels, on all four sides.

In the play, Jesus/God as Judge opens with a long speech, then two angels announce that they will fetch souls. These angels wore wings, which were noted in some later records, because at least one of the Mercers’ sets of wings was lost or damaged. In 1462, they hired wings for the production, perhaps using some from a Creation wagon that had long since ended its run. The second angel may have been a hired trumpeter, since his “Therfore rise uppe!” must have been spoken just before or after the trumpet blast.

Then four souls step forward out of the tombs, which must have been a dramatic moment. If they were at street level, then they stood almost among the audience. This was good for dramatic effect, because the purpose of this play was to remind each man that someday he would stand before a judgment seat. The first two souls are good, and each makes a short speech of trust in God’s mercy. Then the bad souls speak at length, crying “Allas, allas, and welaway!” The first one says that they have abjured the Host, while the second goes a step beyond, saying they sacrificed to Satan while everyone else was asleep. They have no hope, and they’re right. The angel tells the souls to separate:

The goode on his right hande ye goe,
The way till hevene he will you wisse [guide].
Ye weryed [accursed] wightis, ye flee hym froo,
On his lefte hande as none of his.

Two Apostles join Deus in making the final judgment, while three devils stand by to receive the wicked. Probably the Apostles stood on either side of the hanging seat, while the devils were at street level. Their “Hell Mouth” may also have had room to conceal them until it was time for them to come out and speak their lines. What else did the Hell Mouth have? I’ve read elsewhere that Doomsday plays took advantage of the darkness to make the most of fire or even primitive fireworks. They probably had iron pots with fire, at the least.

In the final judgment, Jesus speaks to the souls as sketched out in the Gospel of John:

Whenne I was hungery ye me fedde,
To slake my thirste youre harte was free,
Whanne I was clothles ye me cledde;
Ye wolde no sorowe uppon me see.

The good souls respond that they didn’t see Jesus, but he says that whenever they did good to “any that nede,” he was there. The wicked souls, of course, hear that they left Jesus in prison, starving, naked, or in pain, and did nothing about it. They ask where he was? and of course he replies that when they were unkind to anyone,

To me was that unkyndines kyd;
Therefore ye bere this bittir blame.
To leste or moste whan ye it did,
To me ye did the selve and the same.

And so the good souls are invited to come up with Jesus, and the bad souls are dragged into the Hell Mouth by gleeful devils. The play closes with music from the angels, perhaps a larger choir than could fit onto the stage. And so closed the York Corpus Christi Cycle, as the last wagon played out Doomsday at each stop.

The wagons collected on Toft Green, at the end of the route, and probably long before the last ones were in play, the first ones had been packed up and returned to storage, where their directors went over a check list of movable props and costumes. The Mercers’ Guild notes additional expense for a dinner for the players; Johnston and Dorrell speculate that this was a festive dinner served at the Mercers’ Hall late at night. It’s likely that every guild put on a dinner like this for their pageant’s personnel.

Five fairly short plays comprise the scenes that show us Jesus’ rising from the dead. Dramatically, they are all anti-climactic after the cross and the harrowing of Hell. The Resurrection is not shown by a sudden appearance; it is discussed among Pilate and the priests, with evidence from the guards. When Jesus appears to Mary by the tomb, it is the shortest play of all, fewer than 150 lines. (Average length seems to be 400 lines.) Jesus’ appearance to the disciples who are walking to Emmaus is only slightly longer, as is the play in which he appears to the disciples gathered together with “Doubting Thomas.”

I wonder if it caused production problems when some plays were two or even three times as long as the shortest ones. Each wagon could not move on until the previous show had completed and packed up. What happened if a segment of the line-up consisted of shorter, more efficient plays and producers, so that a gap developed in the middle while the next section had long plays?

The Pageant Master at York was in charge of all coordination problems for the entire event. It was a big job. Every year, he had to supervise the money that flowed into and out of the production, keeping scrupulous records. Below the level of Pageant Master, each production had a supervising director. As the plays grew larger and more sophisticated, we see them starting to hire specialists outside the guild.

For example, in 1483, the Ostlers in York contracted with a group of four men to produce “The Coronation of the Virgin” for the next eight years. In Coventry, where the production was similar to York’s but smaller, the Smiths hired a member of the Skinners’ Guild to be their play director for the next twelve years. He was only in charge of the acting; others would set up the staging and costumes. A few of these semi-pro directors are on record as working for several guilds at once, perhaps doing different tasks. Eventually, in the 1500s, we find men from London being hired to organize and direct local plays in other regions.

“The Harrowing of Hell” is a story based on only two short lines in the New Testament, but there was an apocryphal Gospel that fleshed the whole thing out in a dramatic way, perfect for a play. The two lines suggest (with no details or real confirmation) that Jesus descended below the ordinary level of earth, and that the dead had the Gospel preached to them. Putting it together, we assume this is what Jesus did during the 36+ hours he was dead. An apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus, which includes a record supposedly written by Pontius Pilate, gives an account of the underworld supposedly told by two men who rose from the dead. They were there; they saw and heard it all. It’s this fully-dramatized version that we see in the York play produced by the Saddlers’ Guild, pretty much straight out of Nicodemus but versified with alliteration and rhyme.

Jesus opens the play, probably standing on a raised platform at one end of the pageant wagon. I quote his opening lines partly to point out the now-lost word “thole,” which meant to endure:

Manne on molde [earth], be meke to me
And have thy Maker in thi mynde,
And thynke howe I have tholid for thee
With pereles paynes for to be pyned.

The stage must have had gates across the middle, perhaps leaving Jesus only a small clear space to step down, while the rest of the stage represented Hell, the land of the underworld. There’s a curious mixture of the pagan sense of “hell,” which was a neutral land of the dead, and the Christian idea of fiends who deliberately torture the dead. In the Gospel of Nicodemus, Hell is both place and person, representing death but not actually evil. The York play does not use “Hell” as a person, but the place is also called Limbo by one devil. It’s dark and cold; it’s a prison, but it isn’t inflicting evil.

The large corral of Hell contains a number of dead souls. In the opening speeches, we see Adam and Eve, Isaiah, Moses, Simeon, and John the Baptist. They have seen a light! Was there a stage effect, a lantern whose light could be cast into a darkened area? Or was it understood to be metaphorical? After Jesus speaks, Adam hears and calls to the others to come listen. They compare notes about what they knew, in their lifetimes, regarding the light that would come to the people who walked in darkness.

Then we first hear from the characters who will enliven this play: the devils. We first meet Rebalde and Belsabub, who are guarding the gates. Rebalde reports an “uggely noyse” made by the “lurdans that in lymbo dwelle.” They’re acting happy and talking about leaving!  It’s time to tie them up (“bynde ther boyes”) and make sure the gates are secure. They need more help, calling out for at least six more devils to arrive:

Calle uppe Astrotte and Anaball
To giffe ther counsaille in this case,
Bele-Berit and Belial,
To marre [harm] thame that swilke [such] maistries  mase [make].
Say to Satan oure sire
And bidde thame bringe also
Lucifer, lovely of lyre.

Nothing “made” the play like a good team of devils. They were wicked, so they could be mocked. They were wicked, so they could be funny. They could jump or dance, shake fists or wring hands. They were probably dressed in all-black costumes with black masks, perhaps with horns. They may have had tails and forks, as in cartoons.

The central conflict of the play is a debate between Jesus and Satan, as Jesus demands that the gates be opened. Satan mocks Jesus for claiming that his father is God, when he has been living as “a symple knave” in the “myre.” Jesus replies that he did it for love of mankind. Then Satan claims that by demanding to release some of the dead, Jesus is breaking the heavenly law, for Solomon and Job both said that the dead cannot return from hell. Jesus replies that they weren’t talking about this place, but another, “Where synffull care schall evere encrees.” Satan gloats that in that place, he’ll gather even more dead when he walks all over the earth. No, says Jesus, Satan will not go far; he will be “faste,” that is, confined.

And here they come to blows, with Satan crying, “thou bus be smytte!” But Jesus cries out for Michael the Archangel to seize Satan and carry him away. Satan cries out, “Owte! Ay, herrowe — helpe, Mahounde! Nowe wex I woode oute of my witte.” (Now I go out of my mind with rage.) And off he goes: “I synke into helle pitte.” The rest of the play consists of happy speeches by the saints who now leave Hell and sing a hymn. Michael leads them behind Jesus, and they exit, singing.

This play seems like it would make or break on how amusing and alarming the devils could be. Satan’s speeches would require sarcasm and gloating, as well as rage, shock, and terror. Did he swing at Jesus himself or get his devils to try to hit him? When Michael clobbers him and he cries “Owte!” did he stagger and fall? Did he try to hit back? How did he sink into Hell’s pit? Perhaps the stage floor had a trap door for him to slide through, vanishing. Did he clutch at the floor as he fell?

The actors in these plays took their roles very seriously. It’s not clear from guild records that it was a requirement to be a member of the trade. The Saddlers were contractually bound to deliver the best “Harrowing of Hell” they could put on, that’s all. There is one hint in the regulations of York that actors might not be chosen from among their members: actors are forbidden to play in more than two of the pageants. Since a craftsman could be in only one guild, he would be an outsider in a second play. It throws open the possibility that the guild members played smaller parts, while the big parts went only to those who passed auditions. These could be guild craftsmen, or not.

Because the Feast of Corpus Christi was a genuine religious festival, the actors were also expected to have good characters. To give a role of Jesus to a known liar, just because he had a good stage voice, would be out of the question. This consideration told against any professional minstrels who wished to audition, since their characters were unknown and probably bad. Guild members were known to be pious, since that was part of a guild’s requirement. It was probably good advertising for a craftsman’s shop if he played Noah or Moses well.

Each year, there was a general pageant-master, and these often served for several years to ensure continuity. They coordinated the whole event, including quality control measures, like actors knowing their parts. They appointed four professional actors to hold auditions for the major roles, which in this play would include at least Jesus and Satan. The pageant-master could fine the guilds for low standards: actors who didn’t know their lines, sloppy costumes, actors who were expected to play more than 2 roles in the same production, and just plain bad acting. He also fined guilds for performing somewhere other than the official stops, which certainly would have cut into the regular promoters’ profits, and for showing up late in the morning.

Actors were paid for the performance. Records show an actor playing God at the town of Hull receiving tenpence, another getting a shilling for Noah. Wages rose with inflation but also with the grandeur of the entire production increasing by the decade. Roles with many lines, or with singing parts, paid the most. Bit parts were paid little, and as on every stage, there were also stage hands and props guys. In Coventry, records show eightpence going to a man whose job was hanging Judas and making the cock crow for Peter’s denial. In 1572, a guy carried the spare costumes at Chester for an actor who played Herod at the start of the cycle and Pilate at the end. He only got a sixpence.

with thanks to John Wesley Harris, Medieval Theatre in Context. Most technical details are from Harris, pages 135-140.

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,” while the Butchers produced “Mortificacio Christi,” in which Jesus cries out in pain and dies. Seven plays 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 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.

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. There was probably some kind of arrangement made for the people who actually lived in these houses, but since they invited guests to watch with them, they can’t have been exempt from a ticket charge.

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” 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 only 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 drink in the pains of Jesus, and on the other, they had the same love of gore that our audiences demonstrate in watching so many war and crime shows. 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 without harming the man. 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 the Pinners and Painters probably 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 actor in place when the curtain drew back. This wagon, in fact, needed three crosses.

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 should now be familiar with the word “steven,” word or voice. “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: one curses him, saying “To saffe nowe thyselffe late us see, And us now, that spedis for to spille.” To save now thyself let us see, and us now, that speed for to die.” The thief on the right (dexter, not sinister!) rebukes him, and Jesus says he will be in paradise. And then, a charming detail: Jesus’ words recorded in the Gospel, Aramaic 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 “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.

“The Entry into Jerusalem” depicts Jesus’ entry on a donkey’s colt while crowds cry “Hosanna!” The guild responsible in the registry was the Skinners, and I can’t help thinking it was because they might skin a mule, so they were used to handling donkeys. Was a real donkey used in the play? It might have been. There are several indications that one special feature of this play was its use of the street as part of the stage.

The play is about a crowd forming a procession and singing, and that’s what the play asked the players and watchers to do. It may have begun with the previous wagon moving on as a procession came from two blocks away, singing. They may have included some of the audience who wanted to join in, but who would presumably return to their places. The cast also included a children’s choir to carry on the determined singing (and hopefully in tune).

This is one of the longest plays in the cycle, and it has one of the largest casts. They used the procession through Jerusalem to catch up quickly on several more events from Jesus’ life, even if they were out of time order. So both a lame man and a blind man call out for Jesus to stop and heal them, and he does. Along the road, Zaccheus is found in a tree, and Jesus tells him to come down. Additionally, there’s the basic story of finding the donkey, so that involved at least one man to agree to give the donkey. They did what they could to limit the cast by reusing the donkey keeper, marked “Janitor,” as a herald to run ahead and tell the city that Jesus was coming. But the cast swelled again to represent the people of Jerusalem in the person of 8 solid citizens and a children’s choir.

Medieval people wanted a rational explanation for why Jesus could send his disciples into the village to borrow a donkey without offering a rental fee or knowing anyone. The play script gives a reason: the donkey, and its colt, were basically jointly held by the village in general. It was ordinary to borrow it for a few hours. The Bible story does not answer this question, and if anything it provides more mystery, but that was extraneous to the point of this play. There was already a lot going on, with two healings and Zaccheus!

The play covers a lot of ground, similarly to how some earlier plays, like Noah’s Flood, covered a year in a few minutes. But when they’re actually supposed to be walking, how much ground did they actually cover? The action begins outside Jerusalem, when for the first 100 lines, Jesus and his disciples discuss and then borrow the donkey. For the next 150 lines, the keeper of the donkey tells the city fathers that Jesus is coming, and they compare notes on what they know about him. Just after Jesus sets out on the donkey’s back, there are 50 lines in which a blind man and a pauper discuss how to get Jesus’ attention, and then the blind man is healed. For 100 lines immediately after, we get the healing of the crippled man who throws away his crutch at Jesus’ command, and the event of Zaccheus climbing a tree to see the procession and being invited down by Jesus. The last 100 lines show Jesus going into the city and the eight city fathers welcoming him with lines like this (#6’s speech):

Hayll, conquerour, hayll, most of myght,
Hayll, rawnsoner of synfull all,
Hayll, pytefull, hayll, lovely light,
Hayll to us welcome be schall.
Hayll, kyng of Jues,
Hayll, comely corse that we thee call
With mirthe that newes.

If you were directing this play with mostly a wagon’s platform for stage, how would you do it? Could Jesus and his disciples have been standing on the street, with the donkey produced from behind the wagon? Then I’d have the donkey’s keeper climb onto the wagon’s stage to talk to the city fathers, who could make their speeches in full sight and hearing of the crowd, then exit behind the wagon’s back curtain. Jesus and the disciples could go behind the wagon while the speeches are being made, then emerge as though they had been traveling on back streets and only now arrived at city center—at street level, of course, since it’s more fun to use a real donkey.

I think I would have put the blind and crippled men, and Zaccheus, on the wagon stage. Jesus on the donkey would come to the first two immediately at stage right, and invited the blind man and his friend the pauper down to the street to join them. Mid-wagon, the crippled man could also throw off his crutch and leap down to the street. Zaccheus’ tree might have been at stage left, so that he jumps down from it, then down onto the street level. The city fathers would then re-emerge on the stage and make their speeches of praise. I’d have each one exit the stage by stairs, onto the street, as he finishes his speech.

There is a lot of singing in this play. “Tunc cantant,” says the note as Jesus starts into the city. They probably sang a traditional Palm Sunday hymn; everyone may have stood still in place and joined in, with the action of the blind and crippled men taking place only after the hymn had concluded. As director, I might have paused the hymn to have a scene of healing take place, then the next stanza of the hymn be sung to show time and distance passing. “Tunc cantant” also closes the play. It may have been at this point that a boys’ choir from the cathedral came from behind the wagon or from among the crowd, joining the full cast.

Once your play has assembled such a large cast on the street, the only exeunt would be to start moving toward the next stop, singing. They may have gone only one block, then moved quietly into place in next stop as the wagon caught up. Or they may have sung and marched the whole way to the next stop, arriving with song to give the next audience a taste of the ending.

In Northern England, they used willow branches to wave instead of palm branches. The city fathers were each also supposed to lay a coat or cloak on the street in front of the donkey as Jesus rode.  This 25th play must have generated a good bit of clean-up as its production team moved on to the next station: picking up coats, leaves, and donkey dung. Things needed to be clean and quiet for the 26th play, a very somber dialogue of conspirators meeting on the stage to discuss the coming arrest and trial.

We’re missing several of York’s plays for key events in the life of Jesus; all of the guilds were required to keep a script on file at the city registry and update them as needed, but over time, some scripts were lost. There’s a gap between the Temptation in the Wilderness and the Entry into Jerusalem in which four stories were told but we have scripts for only two relatively short ones.

The Vintners chose “The Wedding at Cana,” in which water is turned into wine, and that’s no surprise. The Ironmongers put on the next one, “The Feast at Simon’s House,” in which Mary Magdalene was introduced. But these scripts are lost, so we can only speculate.  There’s a silent partner in all of these productions, little noted in the scripts: music. Some scripts indicate that characters are to sing church music, like Te Deums or Glorias. But there were surely interludes of instrumental music and perhaps even a dance or two. How was that worked out?

By the late Middle Ages, when the Corpus Christi plays were at their height, the old wandering minstrel pattern of music performance was settling into a new pattern of town bands. They were far from the oompah bands of later folk imagery, but they had some simple brass and a few of the fingered woodwinds of the time. They would also have had string players, since early forms of violins and cellos were available. Percussion was mainly done by a set of tom-toms hung on a drummer’s belt, but they had a range of other options like triangles and cymbals. Additionally, there were church choirs and organists.

We know from some other town records that the guilds competed to hire the best musicians first. If you were putting on “Herod and the Magi,” you would want a trumpet fanfare for Herod’s entrance. If you were producing creation plays, you’d want some of the choir singers as angels. And I think the lost plays about the wedding and the feast would have featured instrumental ensembles — viols, shawms, flutes, and drums — to play dance music and evoke a festive atmosphere.

It’s also likely that some musicians set up busking stations to play music between dramas, when the wagons were moving and setting up. Some of the stops were probably more prestigious, and larger, than others. Some of them may have attracted more people from out of town. Musicians being a constant factor in human society, I can’t imagine there weren’t buskers or even entertainers hired by the groups who had leased the viewing stands.

We have a nearly-full play script for both “The Woman Caught in Adultery” and “The Raising of Lazarus.” These plays had been passed around among some minor guilds over the years. The Capmakers, the Bottlers, and the Pouchmakers were responsible for the woman caught in adultery, while the Plumbers and Pattenmakers took on Lazarus. (Pattens were the medieval form of rainboots; they didn’t protect shoes from raindrops, but they created a raised platform to keep leather moccasins up away from muddy streets.) But after 1422, the Hartshorners took over Lazarus.  This is interesting because hart’s horn may have been a medicinal component, so raising someone from the dead would be of interest to their marketing. We don’t know why the other guilds gave up the production, but the up-and-coming Hartshorners were standing by.

“The Woman Caught in Adultery” opens with a group of Jewish men discussing how they are about to put to death this woman who was caught in the act of adultery. Medieval people, ever on the look-out for comic potential, wanted to know what had happened to the man involved; since she was caught in the act, surely they had him, too? So another version of this play, one produced in various towns in northern England, opens with the man actually running away with his pants around his ankles. We don’t see that in the York script, but they might have done it anyway.

We’re missing a key part of the woman’s story, since the script has lost a page. Other northern English versions fill in that the Jews discuss asking Jesus to be a judge as a way of trapping him into a mistake. Jesus agrees, but he asks them which of them is without sin, stooping to draw in the dust while they gradually go in different directions off stage. The woman is left with no accusers, and the script picks up as Jesus admonishes her, “Loke thou no more to synne assentte.”

“The Raising of Lazarus” is certainly a drama-worthy event.  The play opens with the action not yet at the tomb, and again we are missing a few pages, probably the most emotional section. Mary and Martha express their sorrow:

“Allas, for ruthe (grief, pity), now may I rave
And febilly fare by frith and felde.
Wolde God that I wer grathed (buried) in grave,
That dede hadde tane (taken) me under telde (cover).”

But we don’t see where Jesus walks to their town and joins them in weeping before the grave. Although the audience knew what was coming, some of them probably joined with their own tears. At this time, in the late Middle Ages, it was seen as very devout and praiseworthy to participate in the sorrows of Jesus’ life and death by deep sympathy that moved the audience to tears. The script picks up where Jesus is praying then commands, “Lazar, veni foras.” When Lazarus emerges, he calls Jesus a “peerless prince.”

Lazarus’ tomb was probably a sarcophagus, a long box with a lid on top. It would have been made of wood, but painted to look like stone. It might have been covered with a cloth, then uncovered when Jesus “arrived” at Bethany, or it could have been rolled out from behind a curtain. The actor playing Lazarus was already in the box. Did they make him up to look like a medieval corpse? Medieval death art after the plague became very gory: not just skeletons, but in some cases rotting and missing body parts. Just as they exploited all comic situations, they were never shy to show something gory or violent, so he probably looked like a zombie. As the wagon moved on to the next stop, he climbed back into the box, ready to do it all again.

“The Transfiguration” shows a mysterious, singular event in Jesus’ life when he and a few disciples were alone, praying, and suddenly the disciples could see that Elijah and Moses had come to speak to Jesus. Instead of seeing their dusty, tired friend, they saw him shining with light, like the two figures who had come from heaven.

We don’t have clues about the production of this play from just seeing who produced it: the Curriers, that is, workers in leather. This may not be a case where there’s a marketing connection, nor a special connection in skills. Instead, the Curriers guild probably hired specialists to equip and run their wagon’s special effects.

In order for this play to be effective, it had to use lighting that was sudden and intense. We have some clues about what might have been done from seeing what was done in the Continental fixed-stage productions. In these, a sudden spotlight could be made with mirrors that focused the sunlight. Probably the stage was supposed to be darkened with curtains, because it was night. This would increase the contrast between dark and light.

A very simple effect could be created by sliding back a panel in the roof of the darkened stage, allowing sunlight to stream in over Jesus’ head. That’s probably too simple for a big town like York. As theater became big business carried out year after year, some men began to specialize in skills that were needed. It’s likely that the first lighting gaffers figured out how to use concave lenses to create very expensive, probably fairly small, beams of light. Glassmaking was a growing trade, and by the close of the Middle Ages, men were making eyeglasses as well as glass mirrors that were luxury goods (probably at the Paris Hilton level). My reference book suggests that on a cloudy day, candlelight might be concentrated this way to make a beam. Perhaps, but it’s hard for me to imagine a combustion flame, candle or torch, having any effect in outdoor daylight.

Other stage effects were simpler: dropping a colored or dusty cloak to reveal a white tunic on Jesus, and perhaps pulling back a curtain to allows Elijah and Moses to step forward. The wagon stage may have had a “hill” for Jesus to step onto, where the two prophets appeared. And finally, perhaps at a higher point on the stage, “God” spoke from a cloud.