All Things Medieval

The play in which King Herod interviews the Three Kings from the east is an interesting one because it probably used two wagons in tandem, each produced by a different guild. The Masons and the Goldsmiths cooperated in this play. The Masons put on the King Herod part, so their wagon arrived first at the stop. The Goldsmiths’ wagon pulled up just behind them, and one or other of the wagons must have put down a bridge between them so that the Three Kings could come to Herod’s court. It was probably the Masons’ wagon that held the bridge, their wagon’s only moving part, so that when Herod’s lines were done, they could pull up the bridge and move on if time was pressing, while the Goldsmiths finished out the arrival of the Three Kings.

It’s possible, too, that the stops had extra stage platforms that the wagons could use. They may have pulled up to a narrow but wide stage so that players from both wagons could step onto it and walk between, while at the same time being out in front where the audience could see clearly. It seems likely that at least some of the stops, perhaps ones where the street was wider, built extras like this.

The Masons may have chosen this play because Herod, a king, would live in a stone castle, so probably the back of their stage was painted like a stone wall. Herod’s robes would have been as rich as the Masons could pay the Mercers or Drapers for deep purple or bright red fabric. So, too, would have been the robes of the Three Kings on the Goldsmiths’ wagon. In fact, this play may have had the brightest colors and richest fabrics of any of them. The Goldsmiths certainly chose the Three Kings because they wanted to show off their craft.

Did the “kings” actually carry gold boxes and vases as gifts to Mary? I tend to think that they did, and that the wagon may have brought armed guards along for the day. The props may have had only gold foil, not solid gold, but gold foil had enough value that thieves must have eyed the crowns and gifts. However, I don’t know. Maybe it’s buried deep in the financial records of the play.

Herod’s character is established quickly with his first speech. He comes on stage bombastically, claiming that he can control the weather. This was the greatest hubris a medieval audience could imagine. His speech bristles with alliteration in five-foot lines that rhyme ABABBCBC (and then a short line to introduce a pause, perhaps the moment he sat down on a throne). Bear with the medieval spelling; I’ll put a modernized version below it:

The clowdes clapped in clerenes that ther clematis inclosis,
Jubiter and Jovis, Martis and Mercurii emyde,
Raykand overe my rialté on rawe me rejoyses,
Blonderande ther blastis to blaw when I bidde.
Saturne, my subgett, that sotilly is hidde,
Listes at my likyng and laies hym full lowe.
The rakke of the rede skye full rappely I ridde,
Thondres full thrallye by thousandes I thrawe
When me likis.

The clouds clapped in clearness that their climate encloses,
Jupiter and Jove, Mars and Mercury amid,
Raking (rushing) over my royalty in a row makes me rejoice,
Blundering their blasts to blow when I bid.
Saturn, my subject, that subtly is hid,
Listens to my liking (wishes) and lays himself low.
The rack (clouds) of the red sky full rapply (quickly) I [get] rid [of]
Thunders full thrally (violently) by thousands I throw
When I feel like it.

When his servants bring him news of the Magi, Herod’s first instinct is to order someone to beat the boy who brought the news. He growls and curses, calling people dastards and harlots. Herod’s character is bigger than life, because after all, what kind of monster would order babies to be killed? And everyone knew that was coming soon, three wagons later.

The Kings from the east meet by chance, all on the same errand, and agree to travel together. This is where it seems to me that they must come from corners of the Goldsmiths’ wagon and meet on the bridging platform, on the proscenium closest to the audience. Called to Herod’s castle, they walk onto the Masons’ stage. After Herod dismisses them, they return to the Goldsmiths’ wagon, but now there is a pop-up stable with Mary seated. Perhaps she was there the whole time, and a curtain drew back to reveal her.

The Kings’ speech is dramatically different from Herod’s. Their lines are shorter, and their use of alliteration is lighter. They speak piously, for example, here is how the second King introduces himself:

All weldand (powerful) God, that all has wroght,
I worshippe thee als is worthye
That with thy brightnes has me broght
Owte of my reame, riche Arabie.

When the Three Kings meet Herod, there’s a curious detail: the medieval writers in York thought it was likely that Herod would call his God “Mahounde.” In other words, Mohammed. Let’s count the ways that this is wrong: Herod was Jewish in a Roman culture and Mohammed was not yet born, nor do Muslims worship him. But to these medieval Britons who had heard tales of Saracens for the last two centuries, it made sense that some exotic king over there would cite Mohammed.

After Herod dismisses the Kings with order to return, smirking to his servants that he’s tricked them pretty good, there’s a stage direction line: “Nota: The Harrode passeth and the three kynges commyth agayn to make there offerynges.” The fact that it says this at all suggests that the Masons’ wagon may have actually moved away, leaving the Kings walking on the proscenium stage back to the Goldsmiths’, where Mary is now revealed. We really don’t know. But there are almost no stage directions in the York plays, leaving the actors free to come and go as seemed right, which suggests this one was a major deal.

The finale of this play had to be the rich gifts the Kings pulled out of bags. We should not imagine something like what a Sunday School play would have, things covered with tin foil or painted in gold spray paint. Whatever base metal may have been underneath, the Goldsmiths would have covered some very interesting vases and chests in thinly-beaten gold foil, something that was used in many applications, even paintings.

One of the Kings suggests that they’d better get some shut-eye before traveling back to see Herod, which allows an angel (who probably also had gold foil on some part of his costume) to advise them to return home. I enjoy the way two of the Kings’ lines repeat the same words and alliteration. “Rede” means advise:

2nd King:…Farre fro his force I rede we flee.
3rd King: Syrs, faste I rede we flitte…

There was one whole play about Joseph’s concerns when he found that his betrothed was pregnant. They didn’t make much of the Palestine-era custom of long betrothal that was like a quasi-marriage, since it wasn’t done that way in medieval northern Europe. Instead, they just assumed that the couple was married. But this assumption presents its own questions.

Medieval people found a simple way to understand the marriage of Joseph and Mary by applying one of their stock comic situations: an old man who takes a young wife. Now such marriages are rare in our culture outside of Hollywood, and even then, they were not commonplace. But they happened, and they are the cause of other comic situations, like the fairly young widow with suitors or the middle-aged widow with plenty of money and no intention of losing her independence. It was plain to medieval people that if the church said Jesus’s brothers and sisters were actually his cousins, because Mary remained a virgin all her life and had only one son, then Joseph was an old man who suffered from erectile dysfunction.

But in that case, why would he marry at all? York’s play about Joseph opens with a monologue in which he explains it: he went to the Temple on a day when they were having a lottery for which single man would need to marry. Joseph stood in the line-up and then a miracle happened. Each old man held a stick, and Joseph’s stick bloomed, like Aaron’s rod centuries before. He doesn’t say how Mary was selected, but I infer that in the story, the temple must have made the match. Joseph emphasizes how heavy his bones are, how feebly he moves, and how near he is to death. He knows he has never had sex; and yet his wife is pregnant.

In some medieval versions, he is a very angry old man. We have two versions of York’s play, in which he expresses doubts and then hears from the angel Gabriel. In the Registry version, produced by the Pewterers and Founders, he speaks very fully of his doubts, if not angrily then at least sadly. His troubles make up most of the play:

Joseph: Whose ist, Marie?
Mary: Sir, Goddis and youres.
Joseph: Nay, nay.

These three lines, as spoken, are to be taken as one line of verse. English verse was not yet operating in a measured metrical setting, but it was moving toward pentameter. We can scan these three lines in a now-conventional way: whose IST, maRIE? sir, GOD’s and YOURs. nay NAY. Joseph continues speaking, but his next words begin a new line, since this one is full.

But far more lines of verse in the York plays resemble the old Anglo-Saxon form that we see in Beowulf. In spite of the fusion of French vocabulary onto the old Germanic stock, their sense of poetry seems not to have changed much yet in York. Instead of counting metrical feet, they felt the beat of word stress, often measured in four per line. In Joseph’s next lines, I’ll put the strong stresses in all caps. The pronoun “I” is unstressed:

Joseph: Now WAT i WELE i AM beGILEd,
And REAsoune WHY?
With ME FLESSHely was thou NEVere FYLid,
And I forSAKE it HERE forTHY.

The short line “and reason why?” probably created a rest, as in music, leading up to the big reveal: “With me fleshly was thou never defiled.”

Notice, second, the alliteration, which was the chief feature of Anglo-Saxon poetry and probably remained so in York folk poetry. Joseph speaks in W’s in the first two lines, then in F’s. In the classic Anglo-Saxon style, each line had an alliterative sound that began each of the stressed words, or just three of them. Many lines, not just in Joseph’s play, but in all the York mystery plays, ran on this plan (I capitalize the alliterative words):

God: I am Gracyus and Grete, God withoutyn beGynnyng,
I am Maker unMade, all Mighte es in Me.

Cain: Ya, Daunce in the Devil way, Dresse thee Downe,
For I Wille Wyrke even as I Will.

Noah: Bot nowe my Cares aren Keene as Knyffe
ByCause I Kenne what is Commaunde.

Joseph: Of grete Mornyng May I Me Mene
And Walke full Werily be this Way.

When characters in the York plays have a monologue, as often happens when they introduce the play, they speak in stanzas. Joseph’s opening prologue is rhymed ABAB-CC-BCCB (hyphens inserted just to make it easier to read the string of letters):

For bittirly than may I banne
The way I in the Temple wente,
Itt was to me a bad barganne,
For reuthe I may it ay repente.
For tharein was ordande
Unwedded men sulde stande
Al sembled at asent,
And ilke ane a drye wande
On heght helde in his hand,
And I ne wist what it ment.

Observe the interplay between alliteration patterns and rhyme. In the first four lines, the alliterative pattern emphasizes the first stress and the last: bittirly…banne, way…wente, reuthe…repente. But in the 3rd line, an A rhyme, it changes for variation, with no alliteration until the last two stresses: bad barganne. We see this kind of dance between the two sound elements, rhyme and alliteration, all through the York players’ lines.

Joseph’s troubles are finally resolved when Gabriel comes to tell him that it’s all right, Mary is only pregnant by an act of God. Previously, he had admitted that he knew there was a prophecy that a virgin would bear a child, he just assumed it couldn’t refer to his virgin. Now that he knows it does, he is very sorry. He will now take Mary straight to Bethlehem, as the angel commands. I think he plans to carry her on his back! When their poor bits of clothing are packed, he says he must carry it, and again we see the Yorkshire “bus” for “must.” Perhaps he’s only going to carry the bag on his back?

Till Bedlem bus me it bere,
For litill thyng will women dere.
Helpe up nowe on my bak.

“Noah and the Flood” was a good dramatic story with exciting stage effects, and it was also an image of God saving some of the world from sin, pointing to Christ, so it was a core part of the Mystery Cycle. In York, it was split into two parts: the Building of the Ark, and the Flood. The Ship-Builders Guild, of course, built the Ark, while the Fishers and Mariners put on the play, as cooperative separate guilds. The Fishers appear to have had the main franchise, with the Mariners choosing whether to just chip in money, or to be personally involved. I have to wonder if the Ship-Builders cooperated with these two guilds so that the “ship” they had assembled in the previous play might be used as the stage in this one. But that might be too much to ask, since the stage for the Flood play needed things that might have been too hard to build and take down 17 times for each performance.

The actors in the Flood were Noah and his three sons, one daughter, and his wife. One scholar notes that women had a large share in the craft of fishing, wondering if this was a reason why Noah’s Wife was given such a large role. The wife was probably played by a man, but her portrayal in York’s production was fuller, and more human, and might have been suggested by a woman.

The play’s subject matter was solemn, but any possibility for profane comedy was exploitable too. In this case, it was a prime moment for sitcom quarreling. Noah tells his son to go fetch his mother. It’s time to embark, for the water is rising. But the Wife isn’t ready to go. Apparently, this quarrel had become a popular folk feature of the Bible story, mentioned also in Chaucer’s “Miller’s Tale.” At first, the Wife tells her son she’s not going anywhere, but she comes along just to find out what all this means. Noah welcomes her, but she isn’t ready to stay. She wants to go back and pack up her household gear, then she wants to go find her friends and cousins. Noah won’t let her, saying it’s too late. When she scolds and even slaps him for not telling her sooner that it was the final day, he points out that he’s been building this ship for about a hundred years. Noah and his wife are playing Punch and Judy; some versions may have had her carried bodily onto the boat by her sons.

I wonder if the action began on the street, with Noah looking down from the pageant wagon’s platform. The Wife may have been pushed and shoved up a ladder onto the “ship,” then a gate closed behind her. This play opens a lot of questions about special staging effects. With later Renaissance-era stages that weren’t on wagons, they used water tanks. The ship’s prow may have stood in a tub of water in those cases. With a wagon-stage, that doesn’t seem likely, but the backstage area of the wagon might have been equipped with some buckets of water to drop as rain, splashing anyone standing nearby. In some productions, the animals may have been painted onto the sides of the “ship,” or they may have been represented by large pictures—or just assumed, since they were below decks. In this version, the animals are not mentioned by name, so it’s likely they were just assumed.

The time on board goes by quickly, with some lines about taking care of the animals. The sons and daughter have a few lines stating how sick of the ship they have become, with time passing. How was the time shown? Did the sons and daughter come and go with buckets, acting out daily tasks? Did the stage have the means to suggest changes in weather, or day and night? Or did the lines themselves suffice to mark the time?

Finally it’s time to send out a bird, and Noah duly sends first a raven, then a dove. And here is an interesting twist, apparently a medieval legend explaining why the raven is black. Noah’s raven is white, but he’s both cunning and mean (“crabbed”). He understands his task, but when he finds some drowned animals that he, a carrion-bird, can eat, he stays away. What good would a lot of drowned animals do Noah and his family? None. Since the raven did not care, the legend says that he became black. The dove, though, is faithful to bring back to Noah evidence of plants growing on dry land.

We have to wonder if real birds were used, but it seems unlikely since the play had to be performed up to 17 times in the day. It’s more likely that bird models swung offstage on a rope that hung from one high crane arm. And one more effect was needed: the rainbow. A painted rainbow must have appeared, hung in the “sky,” which again suggests a crane.

Noah’s Flood is a good exemplar of the way the mystery plays preserved medieval Yorkshire dialect for us. York is just south of Scotland, and their Anglo-Saxon dialect developed in some similar ways. It’s also part of the Danelaw, the land created by an 886 treaty between King Alfred of Wessex and Guthrum, leader of the invading Vikings. We see a lot of unusual words in the play, words that aren’t in use in modern English. Some were generally medieval and some suggest a Danish-speaking layer. Most of them overlap with Scots dialect.

When Noah’s family understands something, they “witte” it, with past tense “watte.” when they know it, they “kenne” it. Something done with joy is done with “wynne.” And when someone doesn’t make sense, they’re asked, “art thou wood?” Wood meant crazy, and it seems to have been general in medieval English.

Noah intends to “flitte,” that is, to flee, to depart from here on the Ark, in order not to “spille,” that is, to be killed. He won’t go alone, that is, “sen.” He wants his wife to come, but “sho” does not agree. I don’t know if “sen” and the pronunciation “sho” rather than “she” were just Northern Scots-like words, but I am guessing they were. “Sen” is still used in Yorkshire, with “thissen” for “thyself.”

Noah and his family answer “Ya” for “yes,” which suggests Danish influence. So does the spelling for the parents, “fadir” and “modir.” As in Norwegian, their children are “barnes,” but this is also common in Scots today. When Noah’s son tells his mother that she must come, he says she “bus wende.” The Northern dialects used words similar to “be,” such as “bain’t” for “isn’t,” so I assume this “bus” is some form of “must.” Of course, we see also the present tense “wend,” a word that we use only in its past, “went,” having adopted “go” instead of “wend.”

I was particularly interested in two words I hadn’t seen before. Noah says his father Lamech is worth mentioning, or “likes to neven.” Neven was a northern variant of the Anglo-Saxon verb nemnian, which became in southern dialects our word “name.” And he tells us that Lamech prayed “with stabill steven,” meaning with a trustworthy (stable) word or promise, “steven.” In modern Scots, steven seems to mean a loud cry, or perhaps also a promise.

Finally, I was charmed to see that “Armenia” comes out in York’s Middle English as “Hermony.” Noah says, “I se here certaynely the hillis of Hermony.” Since “harmony” means peace, I hadn’t ever considered that Harmony, Pennsylvania could be named for Armenia.

We have only a fragment of York’s Cain and Abel play; the guild duly submitted its script for the registry, but several pages in the middle were lost, so we have only the beginning and the end. It probably followed the same pattern as another “Cain and Abel” play, that of Wakefield, also in Yorkshire. The Wakefield text I have has been modernized by John Glassner and appears in his Medieval and Tudor Drama book.

The story of Abel’s murder at Cain’s hands would have been another popular medieval one. In a culture that saw dogfighting and bull-baiting as wholesome sports, that allowed little boys to stone sparrows to death on St. Stephen’s Day, depicting torture or murder was just fine, as long as a moral lesson came out of it. The stage production notes in one medieval “Cain and Abel” suggested that Abel’s tunic should conceal a thin-walled pottery flask that Cain could shatter in striking him, which sounds to me like the use of fake stage blood.

And while it wasn’t acceptable to have fun at the expense of noble or saintly people, sinners or common folk were fair game. We start to see in Wakefield’s “Cain” the use of a “clown” as it’s often called when Shakespeare has one: a peasant farmer or city laborer with rough language and a bad attitude, always looking to dodge work or sass his boss. Cain has a hired-help farm boy, just to increase the comic potential. In Wakefield’s “Cain,” the hired-help gets the opening lines, “Here come I, a merry lad,” while exhorting the audience to be quiet when his master comes. In fact, whoever keeps talking, he says, may “blow my black hole both behind and before till his teeth bleed!” And so Cain’s lad rings in the first butt joke of the scene.

Abel convinces Cain to tithe his grain with much earnest arguing, while Cain slaps his hired lad, cracks more butt jokes, and swears by the devil. He greets Abel with “kiss my arse” and “kiss the devil’s bum,” and announces that God has always been his foe, pointing to his poor harvests. But when they arrive at the place of sacrifice, the slapstick really begins.

Abel’s sacrifice is soon burnt, and I really think the wagon stage must have had an iron pan with a real fire struck up in it, for the talk on stage is about the fire burning bright and clean—whereas when Cain gets around to setting fire to his sacrifice, it smokes and goes out. But before Cain lights his fire, he spends a long time counting out how many sheaves of grain he will put on the altar. He mutters to the side, swearing he’ll keep the best for himself, and he counts very grudgingly, taking up most of scene getting from two to twenty. He puts them down, pulls them back; he counts with his eyes closed (no fault to him if he misses some, right?), he sifts through his sheaf to find the skinniest stalks. Farm humor, to be sure, and probably played in a very comic way. And the whole time, he’s swearing by the devil, cursing his brother, and finally saying “in the devil’s name” when he lights it.

Nobody in the audience should be surprised when he’s such a mean cur that he knocks Abel out with an old jawbone lying on the stage ground. We’ve had ample warning that he’s very, very bad. Cain then turns to address the audience; medieval theater didn’t hesitate to break the fourth wall, and productions often used the audience and its spaces as part of the set. “And if any of you think I did amiss, I shall amend it worse!” he cries, threatening them. God comes to condemn Cain, and then his tone changes to be a little less defiant.

But before the play has a chance to become moralizing or dull, Cain calls back his hired lad. “Hide the body!” he commands. The boy is horrified, and then begins a line of patter straight out of Vaudeville. Cain is making a speech about how the boy will always go before him, crying “Oyez! (hear ye)” and claiming the king’s protection. But the boy is mugging to the audience, punctuating each line with his own rhyming parody about what’s for supper.

Cain: “Oyez! Oyez! Oy!”
Boy: Brewes (soup), brewes, to thy boy!
Cain inventing the king’s safe-passage letter: “I command you in the King’s name—”
Boy: And in my master’s, false Cain!
Cain: “That no man them may fault or blame—”
Boy: Yea! Cold roast is at my master’s hame [home]!

In the end, the boy climbs a tree to get away, before Cain dismisses him and prepares to exit, saying, “Fare well less, and fare well more, for now and evermore I will go to hide!”

When York began to stage the Corpus Christi plays again in 2006, they faced the original problems of the medieval designers: how do you put the universe on a wagon? Specifically, how do you make the wagon’s base stable and heavy enough not to blow over in the wind, while keeping it narrow enough to maneuver medieval streets and gates? While portraying Heaven, Earth, and Hell?

The York cycle divided Creation into three plays: the creation of the angels and the fall of Lucifer; the creation of the earth and its plants and animals; the creation of Adam and Eve. God’s prohibiting the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was in a fourth play, and their fall into sin by eating the fruit was in a fifth. I wonder whether each play had its own wagon, or whether some wagons may have been shared: there seems no good reason why the two plays with the Tree could not be on the same stage. But the reason might have been civic pride, so they may have had five separate wagons for these parts of the stories.

“The Fall of Lucifer” was the dramatic opening of the cycle. It opened with God in heaven speaking as he created angels and named Lucifer their chief. The actor playing God wore a mask that covered his whole head,  like a helmet. In the modern productions at York, they often show that someone is an angel or God by placing them on stilts or, perhaps, a ladder, with a robe that flows ten feet down to the ground, so the person looks very tall. “God” may have been perched on a half-story above the second stage.

The second story was Heaven, of course. A number of the stages required two levels or even three, so the wagons were built heavily on the bottom. There is one drawing of a pageant-wagon in 1615 that appears to show a wagon slung very low, so that the body hangs down below the axle. The space below could always be used for something: a place to catch falling water, or a place for concealed smoking pots to release steam and smoke of Hell. I don’t know how they kept the fires safe, but it seems certain that they did.

On the 2006 York wagon, they built two heavenly staircases going up to Heaven from the main stage platform. Everything on the stairs and in the upper story is painted white, silver, or gold. Underneath the stairs and the central high platform, everything is dark. That’s the lower region where the smoke of Hell can drift up from the space underneath.

Lucifer’s Fall is straightforward: he stands on the top platform, after God has created him and named him the chief angel, with another angel or two at his side. On the stairs, the other angels sing a Te Deum hymn, and they praise God in spoken verses too, but Lucifer preens and praises only himself. Here is the key passage, Lucifer speaking:

Ther sall I set myselfe, full semely to seyghte,
To ressayve my reverence thorowe righte o renowne.
I sall be lyke unto hym that es hyeste on heghte —
Owe, what I am derworth and defte.
Owe, Dewes, all goes downe!
My mighte and my mayne es all marrande.
Helpe, felawes, in faythe I am fallande.

“I shall be like unto Him that is highest in height—Oh, how I am worthy and noble!” And then suddenly, “Oh God, all goes down!” He literally tumbles off his platform to the darker lower stage, and at least one other angel goes with him, also lamenting.  The medieval wagon might have had a hole in the upper stage floor, possibly with a pole to slide down, possibly just for a stunt fall. Falling, as we know, is always good for slapstick comic effect, and the Devil was worth laughing at. Lucifer probably had a mask with two faces, light and dark. He and his angel/devil companion may have had a cloak that could be suddenly flipped white to black. The stage directions mark his last lines in “Inferno.”

The closing lines show God separating darkness from light, which is the opening line of Genesis. The dark night morally belongs to Hell, where “shall mirkness never be missing.” So that, says the play, is why God said Let there be Light. In this play, he doesn’t say it in quite those words, because he speaks in rhymed, alliterative verse. “This day’s work is entirely done, and it pleases me well, and I give it my blessing.”

This day warke es done ilke a dele,
And all this warke lykes me ryght wele,
And baynely I gyf it my blyssyng.

Since the English Mystery Play Cycles for Corpus Christi developed from processions, they were expected to go through the center of the town and stop by many of the churches, as the procession had done. The procession had celebrated a short Mass at each parish church, and the pageant wagons may have included this type of stop at first. But as the plays grew longer, they became the substitute for the procession, which was eventually scheduled for the following day. The stops were just for each wagon to put on its play.

In 1399, the pageant wagons had twelve stops. During the 1400s, more parish churches were included, up to seventeen stops. At each stop, the pageant wagon had to lock its wheels and perform its play, then move on a few blocks to the next.

The physical demands of the large wagons put some limitations on the route. Sharp corners were avoided, of course, though the wagons had some turning ability. It’s worth noting that for most city load-hauling, wagons were not used, just as we wouldn’t use an 18-wheeler to move things inside New York City. The medieval equivalent of a delivery van was the two-wheeled cart, often a platform with wicker walls to hold the load. Wagons were for special purposes, like moving the king’s household furniture from castle to castle. Carts could dodge potholes and back up easily; wagons lumbered along. But by the 14th century, at least the pivoting front axle could be counted on.

Large lumber had become extremely expensive by the time of the Corpus Christi processions. A large wagon with pivoting front axle, four or even six wheels, full-wooden sides and structure on top, and some special effects cranes or doors was a major investment. Sometimes, a guild that had contracted to provide a pageant wagon found that it could no longer afford the expense. Another guild, whose fortunes were on the ascent, took it over, and the fading guild was just assigned to support some other production with fees.

The pageant procession crossed the River Ouse into the city, through the gates of the old city wall and then around a square inside the walled Old City, choosing streets that were wide enough. At the beginning and end of the route, they needed a place for the pageant wagons to wait. Without Walmart parking lots, they used some Greens–open areas with grass–and some market squares, including one in York called The Pavement. (Clearly, it was named at the time when the expense of paving stones pounded into the dirt, to avoid rivers of mud in spring, was an extravagant investment.) A parish church, All Saints, was conveniently located on The Pavement to serve as the last stop. The circuit went from east to west, following the sun through the day, so at the eastern greens where wagons lined up at sunrise, it was convenient to have sheds to rent storage space during the rest of the year. To some extent, the play cycle prompted the type of transient and permanent structures needed by county fairs.

The Feast of Corpus Christi was a new event for the medieval church, established in 1264 and promoted with more enthusiasm during the 1300s. Its purpose was to celebrate and educate about the meaning of the Host and the doctrine of transubstantiation, in which the bread became the body of Jesus. But its main event was a procession through every town, carrying the Host so that everyone could see it. By this time, there were superstitions about the good luck that would accrue to anyone who saw the Host being lifted up, which is when the miracle occurred. To keep the Mass from being the playground for this superstition, the church just permitted everyone free viewing, once a year.

In a procession, the priests and everyone who held any sort of rank in the town formed a parade. By the 1300s, the craft guilds were highly developed. They were part of a town’s ordinary government; the term “mayor” indicated that the person was the leading guild leader that year, the “major” one. The guilds were all framed as religious organizations, in a time when it was normal to have church and state united. They had patron saints, so sometimes they had their own processions on their saint’s day.

In the Corpus Christi procession, these men carried banners, torches, and images of their patron saints. But they also made large images, probably just pictures on signboards at first, illustrating scenes from the story of Jesus—which, as we know, was considered to start with Adam. Over a period of time—and we have few records so we just have to guess—the guilds began to compete with each other for magnificence of display.

The next step was to pull a pageant that held a living tableau showing the Bible story in question. The “pageant” meant a stage on wheels, a specialized wagon. Sometimes pageants were exactly like floats in a modern parade, showing a castle, a mountain, or a ship. Fully-rigged ships on wheels were very popular, in fact. They also showed animals, exotic ones like elephants, lions, or dragons. But these types of floats were more appropriate for other civic occasions, such as inauguration of a Mayor, or the king’s visit to the town. For Corpus Christi, they stayed with the Bible’s stories alone (with one notable exception, later).

The stage was moving, but the scene shown on it, at first, was not. Medieval towns loved living tableaux because they were simpler than full plays with spoken lines, and they could be staged by children, too. In 1313, the King of England was welcomed to Paris with a series of living tableaux of Bible scenes. Eventually, in Paris at least, these living tableaux began to have some silent movement, the beginning of the Mime tradition. In England, silent tableaux eventually turned into the parlor game of Charades, but only after a long run of civic celebration, such as inaugurations and welcome feasts.

Thus far, the procession was like a Rose Bowl parade with “floats,” or a Macy’s Thanksgiving parade with giant balloons. But at some point next, a guild’s pageant wagon had actors giving short dramatic presentations for their stage of the story. The wagons may have kept moving, again like a Macy’s parade with moving figures. They may have saved their best moments for times when the procession paused, as it did at various churches on the route. It’s not hard to imagine that after one guild had a short play with speaking parts, they all felt challenged to up their game for the following year.

And so eventually the Corpus Christi celebration in northern England, in particular, came to be a cycle of Bible plays, each put on by a different guilt or fraternity, usually on wagons that moved through the town. There are several full scripts and some detailed wagon descriptions that have come to us through fire and flood. The fullest set is from York, but we also have texts and records from Chester and Wakefield. There’s even an intriguing set of play scripts that has an opening line about putting on this cycle in “N-Town,” where “N” stands for “Name.” It seems to be a script that’s available for a town to adopt, perhaps one that has accumulated the best ideas from various towns, or perhaps written by someone who thought he could improve on them all.

In the rest of Europe, Passion Plays developed as staged, stationary events, and they were often presented at other times of the year. I’ll write about those stages and plays as we go, but for now, the pageant wagons of York are calling.

The biggest development in European medieval theater begins with a free-thinking scholar questioning how bread can become the literal body of Christ. When Berengar of Tours was himself a student, he studied under a former student of Gerbert of Aurillac, who became Pope Sylvester II (see my linked archived article). Now the dean of the cathedral school at Chartres, Berengar was one of the most influential thinkers of his time. His questioning drew attention to a theological question that had never been fully pinned down before: just how is the bread the body of Jesus? Berengar guessed that it “was” both things at the same time in some sense, but not literally.

The subsequent letters and hearings devoted to judging Berengar’s orthodoxy led to the Church forming an official doctrine that the bread mystically and miraculously becomes the literal body of Christ at the moment when the priest raises it. The term “transubstantiation” first came into use not long after, around 1125. In 1215, the Fourth Lateran Council determined that transubstantiation was the official doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church. In 1246, the Bishop of Liège began to have a regional feast day to celebrate the miracle of transubstantiation: the Feast of the Body of Christ, that is, Corpus Christi. In 1264, it became an official feast day of the entire Catholic Church. The idea was to form a procession through the town with an elevated Host — post-miracle — and allow everyone in the town to see it, for a blessing. They could also focus on education about the doctrine, to make sure everyone understood it. Even then, it wasn’t until 1317 that Popes really began to promote it.

During the 13th century, the church was also discouraging clergy from participating in plays outside the church. In 1210, the Pope had issued an edict forbidding them from going on a public secular stage. So over the course of the century between this edict and the promotion of Corpus Christi Day, the transition from church interior to church steps to public stage was complete.

The highlight of the Feast of Corpus Christi became the town’s Passion Play, a set of plays devoted to illustrating the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection, thus explaining the meaning of the Host. All over Europe, the tradition caught on. In Germany, by 1380, the play in Frankfort took plays over two days, it was so long. The plays grew more and more magnificent, so that by 1500, the Passion Play in Tyrol, Germany, it took seven days! It wasn’t enough to tell the story of Jesus’ life and death, so instead, the story began at the beginning of time, in Genesis.

I’m going to write in more detail, though, about the Corpus Christi plays in York, England. They’re interesting because they used stage wagons, and because they were a true civic project put on by the guilds. We have a lot of documentation, too. The guilds kept all sorts of records, so naturally historians have written all sorts of articles about aspects of the production.

There are two medieval Daniel plays, both dating from the mid-1100s. One was written by Hilarius, a pupil of Abelard (which seems worth mentioning). The second is more famous, and it probably was based on Hilarius’s play. This one was written by the choir school at Beauvais Cathedral. We know exactly who wrote it because the play begins by proclaiming the authorship! It’s possible that it was an advanced student assignment: to take the play by Hilarius and improve on it, showing off their ability to work with music and Latin meter.

This play is no longer just a few characters in simple settings. It presents nineteen scenes and a full cast (two kings, a queen, royal counselors, soldiers, angels, plus both Daniel and Habakkuk)  with extras: singers, musicians, waiters, members of processions. All were to be costumed for the Babylonian court. The musicians specifically include harps, drums, and zithers, and there may have been others. There’s a sunken lion’s den with some provision for “lions.” Furthermore, the stage notes stipulate for the prophet Habakkuk to arrive at the lions’ den not walking, but flying. Ropes, pulleys, a wire? later medieval stages were equal to all of these tricks.

You can see modern revivals of “The Play of Daniel” on YouTube. It was first premiered in our time at the Met in 1958, using the Chapel at “The Cloisters” as the setting. The Met staged it again 50 years later, and some scenes from this version are posted on YouTube. I’m linking here to Balshazzar’s Feast and Daniel Interpreting the Writing.  Additionally, the University of Oklahoma has posted their full production.

The Medieval French Drama. Grace Frank. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960.

The New Oxford History of Music: The Early Middle Ages to 1300. Richard Crocker, David Hiley.