All Things Medieval

“The Castle of Perseverance” is a good model for how the basic morality play worked. It’s among the earliest allegorical plays written in English, possibly predating the ban on use of English Bible quotations. It’s also the only play that includes the stage plan with the manuscript. This suggests that even more than most plays, it was conceived as drama in a physical space, rather than a story adapted to dialogue.

The story isn’t very exciting to a modern audience; it’s an allegorical tale of a human soul sinning and asking for mercy. Briefly: Mankind is born and gets a Good Angel and a Bad Angel assigned to him. They make their pitches for his listening to their advice, and he decides to go with the Bad Angel. He joins World and World’s chief deputy, Greed. World, Greed and the Devil have seven servants (Flesh, Sloth, Gluttony, Lechery, Pride, Wrath, and Envy) and they dress up Mankind in fine clothes and take him to sit in Greed’s station. But God’s servants Confession and Penitence (“Schryfte”) prick Mankind with a lance and tell him to repent, and he does. Now comes the best part, in medieval eyes.

The play was staged with a small wooden castle in the center of the space. God, the Devil, World, Flesh, and Greed all had platforms in a circle around the castle. Moreover, the sketch makes clear that the Castle of Perseverance has a ditch around it, like a dry moat. Some have speculated that it wasn’t dry, and I guess that would depend on the event’s budget for extra work to put in water.

The castle was like a child’s playhouse, but it had to be large enough to fit nine people at once. It was built on a stilts, like a “treehouse” with no tree. It may have been framed up with timber, but the spaces covered with canvas, which was lighter and could be painted to look like stones. It had crenellations around the top, indicating that it was a serious fighting castle, not just a gentleman’s house. Under the castle, there was a bed. This bed was essentially the home of Mankind’s soul: it’s where he showed up when he was born, and where he died. I wonder if the bed had a hidden compartment so that Mankind could be “born” without walking on stage.

When Mankind agreed to leave World and Greed, he went into the Castle of Perseverance with his Good Angel and the seven virtues as knights: Meekness, Abstinence, Chastity, Charity, Patience, Generosity, and Busyness. Then World, Greed and the Devil scold their servant sins for losing Mankind, and they set out to besiege the castle. The first allegorical play in medieval Latin, “Psychomachia,” had shown duels between paired vices and virtues. Here too, Pride fought against Meekness, Abstinence against Lechery, and so on. When the seven duels had been fought out, the Devil himself attacked the castle with fireworks!

The twist in this play is that after the Virtues succeed in holding the castle, Mankind listens to Greed and just walks out, back into sin. Mankind is an old man by now; he wants to live a soft life with his riches. Just before he dies, a young man called “I Don’t Know Who” (I-Wot-Nevere-Whoo) takes his money, so he dies poor. And the Bad Angel takes him to Hell, to the Devil’s platform.

But this was the Middle Ages still, when hearts had not yet hardened to condemnation by the bloody battles and massacres of the Reformation era. They didn’t want Mankind to die condemned. Mankind got one more shot: on his deathbed, he had asked for God’s mercy. And now, the Four Daughters of God stepped forward to argue his case. Truth and Justice argued that he blew it, a deathbed confession isn’t worth a bus ticket, let alone heaven. But Peace and Mercy argued that a deathbed confession plus Christ’s redemptive death has sufficient value, and they succeed in persuading God to rule in Mankind’s favor. He is brought over from hell to heaven, and the play ends with a speech by God to the audience: consider your ways while you are still alive!

To save you fro synnynge
Evyr at the begynnynge
Thynke on youre last endynge!

The entire play is 3650 lines long and used 36 roles. Some of them might perhaps be doubled up, but the siege of the Castle of Perseverance kept most of them together on the field. The play’s demanding requirements must have made it costly to stage, but it appears to have been very popular, so apparently it was staged fairly often.

The part that puzzles modern drama scholars is where the audience stood. It’s easy to see how the play could be staged in a stadium, with the viewers able to look down on the action from all sides. But we don’t think most productions had that sort of equipment. Some have wondered if the castle’s ditch acted as a gate to keep out non-paying viewers, and the audience stood inside this large circle, near the platforms and even the castle. But it’s more likely that the ditch was simply part of the staging for the siege. In the end, the audience probably just stood around and saw what they could. I wonder if some towns had a natural amphitheater, a hillside that could help raise up viewers. Maybe anyone who was putting the investment into a production of Castle of Perseverance just dug deep and found the cash to build risers. We know so much about the staging and costumes—and yet the most basic fact, the audience, is passed over.

In the decades when the Bubonic Plague visitations were thinning the European population, churches found themselves short of priests. Other skilled trades were just as hard-hit, and for stonemasons it was even worse. But the people cared about having enough priests since they sincerely believed that their souls lived or died based on the sacraments. In England, unlicensed preachers called Lollards stepped in to fill some of the vacuum, using John Wycliffe’s English translation of the Gospels. It wasn’t yet the historical Reformation, but this early movement was a proto-Reformation. Lollardy was especially strong in the West Midlands shire of Hereford.

During the reign of King Henry IV, the Lollards briefly became a political force. Prince Henry was leading a riotous youth with his friend, Sir John Oldcastle, the model for Shakespeare’s Falstaff. But Oldcastle was a devout supporter of Lollards and the High Sheriff of Herefordshire. After his third marriage to an heiress, he owned Cooling Castle in Kent and manor houses in five shires. The churches on their manors were often allowing unlicensed preaching.

In 1409, Lollardy was firmly and by name banned in England. Both unlicensed preaching and use of the Bible in English were singled out. Oldcastle’s manors in Kent were placed under interdict, and he was investigated personally. His friend King Henry V held off prosecution, but in 1413, Oldcastle was convicted of heresy. Henry V imposed a forty-day suspension of his execution. During that time, Oldcastle escaped.

For the next four years, Oldcastle was in hiding in Herefordshire and a political conspiracy formed to support him. It’s known as Oldcastle’s Revolt or Rebellion. It was a serious enough revolt that it came to open battle in 1414, where the rebels were defeated on St. Giles’ Fields. When Oldcastle was finally captured, he was quickly executed and the rebellion ended.

The open revolt had weaponized the Archbishop of Canterbury’s “Constitutions,” the strictures against Lollardy. The Constitutions outlawed, first, unlicensed preaching in any language or place. It certainly banned preaching things contrary to church doctrine, such as the Lollard’s belief that confession to someone other than a priest was good enough. Further, any Biblical material translated into English or any other language could not be presented in public unless they had been inspected and approved in writing by church officials.

All this may not have mattered as much in devoutly orthodox Yorkshire, where the Corpus Christi plays went on undisturbed until the actual Reformation during Henry VIII’s reign. But in Lollardy’s heartland of Herefordshire and Kent, crown officials were on high alert for anyone using Bible verses in English, as it might be an attempt to sneak Lollardish preaching into….for example….a play.

All during the medieval period, there had been another dramatic option, apart from Bible or saint stories: allegories. An allegory could show theological principles at work without actually quoting the Bible directly. The first dramatic allegory had been written in Latin in the 400s, as an alternative to naughty secular Roman plays. “Psychomachia,” the Battle of the Soul, became the model for more allegorical plays. “Psychomachia” presents a series of duels between opposing virtues and vices: Anger vs. Patience, Greed vs. Love.

Another option to avoid prosecution was to just switch into Latin when the Bible needed to be quoted. During the 1400s, there was an increase in this type of hybrid-language play. The problem, of course, was that while educated people understood without difficulty, the most common people knew only the Latin phrases used most often at church. Perhaps this problem accounts for the strange (to us) mix of serious theology and ribald clownery in “Mankind,” a popular allegory of salvation. “Mankind” uses Latin freely, avoiding English for scripture.

“Mankind” shows us how a pious message and liberal use of Latin could be offset by equally liberal use of that favorite medieval character, the devil. The protagonist, a farmer named Mankind, is plagued by devils who successfully tempt him to sin. They involve the audience at various points. When they first arrive on stage, they get the audience to join in a bawdy song, and later, they take up a collection that will supposedly allow them to call up an even worse devil. At times, the audience is asked to keep quiet about a secret, and at other times, the figure of Mercy asks the audience to pray for Mankind’s soul. The devils make Mankind swear an oath to join their criminal gang. Their crimes may not have been shown on stage—rape, jailbreaking, bank robbery—but they provided colorful dialogue.

Perhaps the most famous Morality play in our time is “Everyman,” another play in which the protagonist stands for any and all humans. Everyman is summoned by Death to stand before God, but he begs for more time, and he uses that time for a pilgrimage. He seeks companions, but Fellowship, Kindred, and Cousin must all be busy on their own accounts. Good Deeds, who is weak through neglect, takes Everyman to see Knowledge and Confession. Good Deeds, depicted as a woman, becomes stronger after Everyman confesses his sins. When other friends finally leave Everyman at death, Good Deeds is allowed to rise with him, and the narrator explains that only your good deeds accompany you after death. It’s a pretty sober story, but it had room for wit and slapstick. In 2002, the play was made into a modern straight-to-video movie, also called Everyman.

We’ll look next at one of the most popular and colorful Morality plays, “The Castle of Perseverance.” I’m focusing on this play because it had some notable staging requirements.

with thanks to “Morality Plays and the Aftermath of Arundel’s Constitutions” by Charlotte Steenbrugge in The Routledge Research Companion to Early Medieval Drama and Performance.

Medieval court theater could be called “London Meets Las Vegas.” We think of sparkle and feathers and over-the-top spectacle as being in poor taste, but it wasn’t that way at all, then. The court liked a good entertainment; one way to win favor with the king was to sponsor (pay for) and participate in a good rollicking fun of some sort. We have some records of such spectacles in royal wardrobe accounting, as well as in some contemporary diaries and archives.

By the late Middle Ages, jousting was no longer useful on the field of combat, so like any outdated skill, it became the playground of the rich. Real tournaments are somewhat their own topic, so just briefly, they were still held all through the medieval period and into Tudor times. In a real tournament, weapons were blunted and people won on points, but there were still serious injuries. So for indoor spectacles, jousting could be done with dancing. I couldn’t find more than a mention of this in my books, so we have to speculate. Maybe it was like pro-wrestling, with scripted jousts, or perhaps it was more like a dance that formed lines on either side of a barrier.

Dancing was the most popular form of court entertainment. Our modern idea of dancing as couples was only in a proto-form. Medieval dancing had been done in lines, with hands linked, moving about and crossing over like children playing “London Bridge is Falling Down.” Later medieval dances consisted of a prescribed pattern of hops and kicks, either singly or in pairs. The ideal of “courtly love” led to dances that paired men and ladies, who held hands or otherwise moved together around the room. Court dancing often used the center of the hall, which no longer had fire pits as it had in early medieval times. The pattern that we see still in use during Jane Austen’s Regency time was set by the medieval hall’s shape: couples moved to the head of the room, where they entered “the set” and moved through prescribed figures of linking arms, hopping, and circling, until they reached the end of the hall and either sat down or got back in line for the head of the room.

Early wardrobe accounts of King Edward III list costumes for grand royal dance spectacles. In 1347, he had fourteen peacocks’ heads and wings, with tunics that had peacock eyes painted on them. He also had a set of fourteen angel suits, with silver head masks and tunics painted with gold and silver stars. For Christmas, they had red and green tunics paired with animal-head masks. The same shenanigans showed up in royal wardrobes over the next two centuries, with wicker constructions making more elaborate animal masks and tails.

Records of a few major spectacles give us a taste of what they liked. In 1494, King Henry VII had a Twelfth Night spectacle in Westminster Hall. Westminster Palace is now used for the Houses of Parliament, but then it was an actual palace and its hall was the obvious place for court theater. They set up seating scaffolds for important guests, which included London’s City Council, and that’s how we got our account of it: they took notes and placed them in the Great Chronicle of London. The Lord Mayor was dubbed a knight during the feast, and he didn’t get home till dawn.

The royal troupe of actors were staging a more typical “Interlude,” a type of play we’ll get to shortly. But suddenly it was interrupted by St. George on horseback, who came in with a dragon led by a fair virgin! What was the dragon? It may have been like a Chinese New Year dragon, a long costume on men’s backs. It might have been something like a parade float. The fair virgin was ceremoniously taken into the queen’s retinue, and St. George, perhaps getting off his horse, sang anthems of St. George with the chapel choir. Twenty-four masked courtiers came into the hall to perform dances. They were dressed in gold spangles, among other things. The men’s dancing style was to leap high, while the women moved as if they were on wheels, with their skirts concealing foot movement.

In 1501, Henry VII’s son Prince Arthur married Princess Catherine of Aragon. At the wedding, three pageant wagons came into the hall, portraying a castle, a ship, and a mountain. Young nobles in costume came out to act an allegory: Knights from the Mountain of Love assaulted the Castle of Ladies. When they won (of course), the ladies came out to join them in dances. What’s really notable is that the participants were actual aristocrats, not actors. It was considered a great honor to put on masks or costumes and act in this pageant.

The aristocrats were, of course, also guests at the wedding. In a court spectacle, there was a fluid boundary between audience and actors.

In 1519, young King Henry VIII staged a disguising. Eight old men (that is, wearing “old man” masks) came out to dance very soberly, as if they had difficulty moving. Then twelve young masked men wearing yellow and green came in, dancing quickly and leaping high. The Queen (Catherine of Aragon again, of course) insisted on pulling off their masks when the old men refused to speak. The young men’s masks were also removed, and among them was (surprise!) the king himself.

These shows don’t appeal to our tastes. What’s so funny or amazing about masked dancers? We can imagine that the court audience roared with laughter when the old men refused to speak to the queen, but it wouldn’t impress our much more sophisticated taste. They were easily amused, for sure, and of course, powerful people being involved as participants guaranteed flattering applause.

thanks to “Researching Court Performance,” by Sarah Carpenter, in The Routledge Research Companion to Early Drama and Performance.

During this same period, there were Passion plays on Corpus Christi, as well as at Easter, all over Europe.

The Passion plays in continental Europe grew much longer than the English versions. The earliest surviving French Passion play, “La Passion de Semur,” took two days to perform. Another 15th century play from Arras (that hotbed of dramatic innovation) took four days. German-language plays in the Tyrol region of Austria developed into week-long marathons that had to start well before the Feast of Corpus Christi in order to be completed in time for the church procession.

The Passion d’Arras included an allegorical scene in which Justice and Mercy argue mankind’s fate before the throne of God. It was such a success that subsequent French Passions included it. But you can’t expand a play indefinitely; you have to cut something eventually. The next developments in French Passion plays cut Old Testament stories and portrayed only the Life of Jesus with a grand theme of good vs. evil, complete with many devils capering about attempting to derail Grace. This play, by Paris theology student Arnoul Greban, became the model for Jean Michel’s 1486 play that focused entirely on the adult public life of Jesus. This play, “Mystère de la Passion,” focused on the stories of sinners converted, showing the external and internal changes. But it still took four days to perform!

In Bolzano, the main city in the Tyrol region, the play was generally produced by members of the church, but in the public square, not inside the church. The community became involved as deeply as York’s was, only they were all seeking bit parts in one giant production. The staging showed a setting of the ancient Middle East, but costumes were contemporary to the 15th century. Men played all of the roles, since it was considered shameful for a woman to be on stage.

During the 15th century, the Passion plays in Tyrol were well-funded by the wealthy of the city, but during the 16th century, perhaps due to Reformation influences, funding dropped off. The plays became coarser and even included obscene characters and jokes. Finally the church suppressed them.

But then, the town of Obergammerau in Bavaria made a vow to produce Passion Plays if they survived an especially ferocious visitation of the plague. Starting in 1634, this small village put on as big a play as they could manage, every ten years. They started out performing it in the graveyard to honor the plague dead, and that’s where it was played for a century. During the 1700s, they worked at finding a new venue, and eventually in 1815 they started designing stages just for the play. In a performance year, it’s not performed once at Corpus Christi, it’s put on daily for some months. In 2010, it ran from May to October! The current next performance year will be 2022, hoping to steer clear of Covid-19.

I’ve tried to find more detailed information on the anti-Jewish riots that often took place after Passion plays, but so far I’m coming up short. All I can say is: it happened. Some plays emphasized wicked Jews more than others, but even a relatively neutral one like York’s demonstrated clearly that Jews were headed for hell and might try to take you with them. Some went farther, with horned masks for the Jews, as if they were devils. The waves of emotion that the Corpus Christi plays evoked in their audiences had mixed effects, as all emotion does. Emotion plus alcohol usually adds up to violence.

Obergammerau’s modern play was rewritten to remove the anti-Semitism that by then had become a major feature. Jesus is given some lines and prayers in Hebrew, and the wicked Rabbi character has been removed. The Roman guards are more prominent than Jewish ones, and Pilate’s character has been given much of the grit and grumble that belonged to the Jewish priests.

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.” 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.