Festivals and Plays in Late Medieval Britain [Reprint ed.] 0754660524, 9780754660521, 1138251844, 9781138251847

Table of contents :
List of Figures vi
Preface vii
Acknowledgments x
Abbreviations xii
Part I: The Landscape of Festival Drama and Play
1. Playing and the Ritual Year 3
2. "Corpus Christi Play" and the Feast of Corpus Christi 49
3. The York Corpus Christi Guild and Drama 81
4. Play and Spectacle at Pentecost 107
Part II: Some Aspects of Two Genres of Festival Drama
5. Suffering and the York Cycle Plays 141
6. The Vernacular Plays for Good Friday and Easter from MS. e Museo 160 169
Select Bibliography 187
Index 197

Citation preview

Festivals and Plays in Late Medieval Britain

In Memoriam Audrey Jean Ekdahl Davidson (1930–2006)

Festivals and Plays in Late Medieval Britain

CLIFFORD DAVIDSON Western Michigan University, USA

First published 2007 by Ashgate Publishing Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © Clifford Davidson 2007

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Clifford Davidson has asserted his moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Davidson, Clifford Festivals and plays in late medieval Britain 1. English drama – To 1500 – History and criticism 2. Mysteries and miracle-plays, English – England – History and criticism 3. Christianity and literature – England – History – To 1500 4. Politics and literature – England – History – To 1500 5. Literature and society – England – History – To 1500 6. Theater – Political aspects – England – History – To 1500 7. Festivals – England – History – To 1500 8. Cycles (Literature) I. Title 822.1’09 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Davidson, Clifford. Festivals and plays in late medieval Britain / by Clifford Davidson. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 978-0-7546-6052-1 (alk. paper) 1. English drama—To 1500—History and criticism. 2. Mysteries and miracle-plays, English—England—History and criticism. 3. Christianity and literature—England— History—To 1500. 4. Politics and literature—Great Britain—History—To 1500. 5. Literature and society—Great Britain—History—To 1500. 6. Theater—Political aspects—England— History—To 1500. 7. Festivals—England—History—To 1500. 8. Cycles (Literature) I. Title. PR641.D37 2007 822’.109—dc22 ISBN: 9780754660521 (hbk)

2007017961

Contents List of Figures Preface Acknowledgments Abbreviations

vi vii x xii

Part I: The Landscape of Festival Drama and play 1 Playing and the Ritual Year





3

2 “Corpus Christi Play” and the Feast of Corpus Christi

49

3 The York Corpus Christi Guild and Drama

81

4 Play and Spectacle at Pentecost

107

Part II: Some Aspects of Two Genres of Festival Drama 5 Suffering and the York Cycle Plays

141

6 The Vernacular Plays for Good Friday and Easter from MS. e Museo 160

169

Select Bibliography Index

187 197

List of Figures 1 St. George and the Dragon. Wall painting, Church of St. Gregory, Norwich.

35

2 Deposition/Burial figure of Christ for use in Good Friday ceremonies. Sculpture.

44

3 Desecration of the Host. Wall painting, All Saints Church, Friskney.

76

4 Seal of the York Guild of Corpus Christi.

83

5 Trinity with the Father holding the body of the slain Son. Painted glass, Holy Trinity Goodramgate, York.

85

6 Arma Christi. Painted glass, formerly in St. Saviour’s Church, York, now in All Saints Pavement, York.

86

7 Corpus Christi shrine. Illumination from a manuscript associated with York. Fitzwilliam Museum MS. 34.

88

8 St. James the Less, from Prophets and Apostles series. Painted glass, choir clerestory, York Minster.

97

9 The Betley Window.

113

10 Pentecost. Painted glass, Church of SS. Peter and Paul, East Harling, Norfolk.

122

11 Ecce Homo, showing Jesus with wounds from the Flagellation. Painted glass, All Saints, Pavement, York.

157

12 The Burial of Jesus. Alabaster carving.

161

13 Five wounds. Passion memorial. Painted glass, Church of St. Mary, Fairford.

163

14 Charter of Christ. Manuscript illumination, Carthusian Miscellany. British Library MS. 37,049.

165

Preface To study the range and variety of playing at festivals in late Middle Ages (and here I include some decades normally assigned to the Early Modern period) is to confront much information that is fragmentary and ambiguous. While the York Corpus Christi plays are extant and preserved in a fifteenth-century manuscript, the Coventry plays are only known through two pageants, one of which is made available from the nineteenth-century transcription of Thomas Sharp and not from an early manuscript. For Chester, the late manuscripts give direct evidence only concerning the plays’ presentation during Whitsun week, not of their earlier form when still associated with Corpus Christi. Neither the Towneley nor the N-Town collection is firmly attached to a specific place or festival. Nevertheless, in spite of their incompleteness, the dramatic records from many locations throughout Britain display rich documentation of playing on specific days distributed through the ritual year, with, of course, a concentration during the months with the most favorable weather when outdoor performance was feasible. If the records more often than not are lacking in specificity, they nevertheless provide a valuable picture of occasions for playing—a picture that I have attempted to explore in the present volume. In particular, the evidence shows that while sometimes there was a close connection between the subject matter of the plays and a festival, at other times there was not. The point may be well illustrated by reference to two puppet presentations, one apparently designed for Easter morning and the other telling the story of the three Kings of Cologne, associated with Epiphany but also shown at other times of the year. The Easter play, described in William Lambarde’s Dictionarium Angliae Topographicum et Historicum, which was not published until 1730, was a show of the “hole Action of the Resurrection” that was “set foorthe yearly” at Witney in Oxfordshire. The actors were “certein smalle Puppets, representinge the Parsons of Christe, the Watchmen, Marie, and others, amongest the which one bare the Parte of a wakinge Watcheman, who (espiinge Christ to arise) made a continual Noyce, like to the Sound that is caused by the Metinge of two Styckes, and was therof comonly called Jack Snacker of Wytney” (459). The other example was observed by foreign visitors in 1466 at Salisbury Cathedral, where puppet figures operated by weights represented the Magi bringing their gifts to Mary and the holy Child, with the latter extending his hand to receive the gifts, whereupon his parents bowed to the gift-givers. The kings then departed ceremoniously. “All this was presented with rare and masterly skill as if they were alive,” wrote the one of the visitors, Gabriel Tetzel, who also reported at Salisbury an equally fine puppet Resurrection skit produced by similar technology at the same location. The visitors had arrived at Salisbury for Holy Week, so we know that the latter puppet presentation was seen at the appropriate time in the ritual year, but the showing of the Nativity would have been another matter. This presentation, it will be recognized, had to be less closely connected to the feast, for its showing was

viii

Festivals and Plays in Late Medieval Britain

not limited to a specific season of the year, as in this case when it was seen by the Nurenburger Tetzel and the entourage with which he was traveling. For reference to these mechanical puppet shows at Salisbury, I am grateful to Nicholas J. Rogers, whose report, originally published in the newsletter of the Early Drama, Art, and Music project, has been reprinted in The Dramatic Tradition of the Middle Ages (2005, 46–47). The present volume divides into two parts, with the first being a review of the landscape, if we may call it that, of playing at feasts—playing that, as the initial chapter indicates, ranged from religious dramas on an array of topics, not always attuned to the festival being celebrated, to Robin Hood plays and other improvised theatrics. This review cannot pretend to be absolutely comprehensive on account of the spottiness of the documentation and the fact that the dramatic records for some regions of Britain are still being collected for the Records of Early English Drama project. But, as chapter 2 shows, the evidence is quite adequate to show that the term “Corpus Christi play” is not indicative of a particular genre of drama but rather, as used in the records, normally defines merely a play that was associated with this feast day in some way. Sometimes, too, there has been confusion concerning the role of guilds in presenting the religious drama, with the York Corpus Christi guild wrongly connected with the civic Creation to Doom cycle in that city. This guild was involved in production of drama, though as the producer of the York Creed play, for which we can now demonstrate, at least theoretically, a good deal about its structure through more careful attention to iconography than in previous scholarship. The second part of the present book focuses on specific dimensions in the interpretation of two genres of medieval drama. Chapter 5 examines an aspect of the York Corpus Christi pageants that is, in my view, vital to our understanding of them. This involves symbolic engagement with the sufferings of Christ in plays that are designed to reinforce cultural memory. The sponsor of these Corpus Christi pageants, the city Corporation, was an elite body determined that they should perform a function more serious than mere entertainment, for the stated goals were to reinforce devotion and to enhance the honor of the city. Nothing could be further from the carnivalesque, though, of course, this did not mean there was no room in these pageants for laughter. The central point of history, the Incarnation and Passion of Christ and their implications for the individual Christian, also took its place at the center of the cycle. Its most moving portions were those that dramatized the pain endured by the Savior following his arrest as he was tortured and executed on the cross. It was the imaginative act of identifying with the Suffering One in these scenes that characterized the piety embraced not only by the elite but also by the members of the craft guilds. Only the importance of their meaning to their producers could have inspired them to continue production over two centuries at such great expense, utilizing all the technological resources at hand for staging these pageants—a point that I have made in my Technology, Guilds, and Early English Drama (1996) and elsewhere. For the final chapter I have turned to the Bodley Christ’s Burial and Christ’s Resurrection, plays that have needed to be more clearly defined in their context, however little we can discover about any possible early performances of them. As plays that stand between liturgy and the vernacular drama as we know them,

Preface

ix

the Bodley plays are a unique window into a drama that, if performance was ever executed, would have been connected with the mystical and meditative traditions of medieval religion. These plays are, therefore, wonderfully enriched by comparison with the poetry and manuscript illumination of northern England. In any case, they are unique plays specifically designed for performance on Good Friday and Easter morning and very significant survivals from the corpus of the medieval religious drama of Britain.

Acknowledgments Completion of the present book was complicated by the need to attend to my wife Audrey in her illness, so I was constrained in my ability to travel, indeed in recent years only infrequently to Ann Arbor to use the libraries of the University of Michigan. If it was a sacrifice on my part, I have throughout been comforted by doing what I thought was the right thing and an act of love. This book is dedicated to Audrey’s memory. I need to acknowledge as essential, however, the work done in previous years at various British libraries and archives—the British Library, the Bodleian Library, the libraries of the Warburg Institute and the Society of Antiquaries, the photographic collections of the National Monuments Record, among others—and by the opportunity to examine much mainly ecclesiastical art on site. I can still remember my excitement upon serendipitously spotting the Betley Window, which I had previously known only through an eighteenth-century engraving, at the Victoria and Albert Museum more than a decade ago. Xavier Dectot brought my attention to the figure of Christ designed for use in Good Friday ceremonies at the Musée National du Moyen Age in Paris and further kindly arranged for a photograph to be sent. In my more recent labors, I have had invaluable assistance from the Western Michigan University librarians and especially its interlibrary loan staff. I am, of course, deeply indebted to the Records of Early English Drama (REED) project and the group of scholars who have diligently searched through archives and libraries for documentation concerning the staging of early plays, and I especially want to thank Alexandra F. Johnston, to whom the second chapter of the present book was dedicated in its original form when it appeared in Research Opportunities in Renaissance Drama. Sally-Beth MacLean of REED kindly read the first four chapters and made valuable suggestions. Among others who read portions of the manuscript, or helped by providing important information not otherwise at my disposal, were Barbara Palmer, John Marshall, James Gibson, James Stokes, David Mills, Pamela King, and Eve Salisbury, but I am likewise grateful to individuals who answered shorter queries of various sorts as well as to the knowledgeable reviewer for Ashgate Publishing. Finally, I must acknowledge my debt to all who contributed to the Early Drama, Art, and Music project in the Medieval Institute of Western Michigan University, since I owe so much to them over the period of more than a quarter of a century prior to my official retirement. Obviously, any lacks that remain in the book must be my own responsibility. My second chapter, “‘Corpus Christi play’ and the Feast of Corpus Christi,” is reprinted with permission from Research Opportunities in Medieval and Renaissance Drama 44 (2005): 1–37, and its editor, Peter Greenfield. Chapter 5, “Suffering and the York Plays,” is reprinted with permission from Philological Quarterly 81 (2002): 1–31, and Brepols has granted permission to use a revised and reworked version of my article, originally entitled “The Bodley Christ’s Burial and Christ’s

Acknowledgments

xi

Resurrection: Vernacular Dramas for Good Friday and Easter,” European Medieval Drama 7 (2003): 41–67, as chapter 6. For figs. 1, 3, and 4, Linda Judy contributed her graphic skills, and permissions for the use of the photographs illustrating this book are acknowledged as follows: fig. 2 (Deposition/Burial figure), by permission of the Musée National du Moyen Age; figs. 5 (Trinity), 6 (Arma Christi), 10 (Pentecost), 11 (Ecce Homo), and 13 (Five Wounds), by permission of ©English Heritage (National Monuments Record); fig. 7 (Corpus Christi shrine), by permission of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge; fig. 8 (image of James the Less) ©The Dean and Chapter of York: reproduced by kind permission; fig. 9 (Betley window), by permission of the Victoria and Albert Museum; and fig. 14 (Charter of Christ), by permission of the British Library.

Abbreviations CompD

Comparative Drama

EDAM Early Drama, Art, and Music EDAMR

Early Drama, Art, and Music Review

EETS Early English Text Society ET

Early Theatre

MSC

Malone Society Collections

METh

Medieval English Theatre

REED

Records of Early English Drama

RORD

Research Opportunities in Renaissance Drama

Part I The Landscape of Festival Drama and Play

Chapter One

Playing and the Ritual Year If, before clocks were universally present in people’s lives in the West, time tended to be fluid and experiences less chronologically organized throughout the individual day, there was still a consistent and rigorous marking of temporality by reference to the seasons and the calendar. Church bells, to be sure, marked the “hours,” but these were often only approximations of the time of day and signaled the canonical hours that were to be devoted to prayer by the clergy, monks and nuns, and pious laypersons. The calendar was in contrast fixed, with its yearly round of regular Church festivals, including the important saints’ days. Major feasts provided opportunities for ceremonies, playing games, performing plays, and engaging in various forms of entertainment. These observations naturally suggest a starting point in Charles Phythian-Adams’s study “Ceremony and the Citizen: The Communal Year at Coventry 1450–1550,” even though his division into sacred and secular seasons is oversimplified and needs to be treated with great flexibility, as Eamon Duffy has warned. An empirical survey of occasions for plays seems required, starting with the beginning of the Church year four Sundays before Christmas and the slackening of playing in the course of the increasingly busy summer season. In such a survey, one must not gloss over the fact that there was at times disappointingly little differentiation in the manner of celebration of certain of the dates and festivals, except that they were occasions for festivity, whether pious or worldly. The presence of a religious play on a particular topic (for example, a Magi drama) will not necessarily match the point in the liturgical year where it would be expected. Further, in dealing with dramatic records there is also much inherent ambiguity due to the fragmentary nature of the records, which were not normally written down as historical accounts designed to answer the questions we would like to ask, and in addition any description derived from such records must further be selective since there is no possibility of calling on evidence from every bit of documentation available from medieval Britain. Emphasis hence will here need to be directed toward those locations where the knowledge gained from such evidence  Charles Phythian-Adams, “Ceremony and the Citizen: The Communal Year at Coventry,” in Crisis and Order in English Towns, 1500–1700, ed. Peter Clark and Paul Slack (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1972), 57–85. See also Ronald Hutton, The Rise and Fall of Merry England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).  Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 46–47.  See Sally-Beth MacLean, “Festive Liturgy and the Dramatic Connection: A Study of Thames Valley Parishes,” Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England 8 (1996): 55, for citation of plays of the Three Kings of Cologne at Thame and Reading that were mounted at Corpus Christi in 1522 and May Day in 1498, respectively.



Festivals and Plays in Late Medieval Britain

will provide the contours of the story, though this will certainly also mean special attention to the major feasts and the neglect of minor local customs. To be sure, customs of playing and entertainment varied from one region to another, or even from one town or parish to another within a region. A reference to a particular play topic in one location does not necessarily translate into the same thing elsewhere. In addition to geography, much had to do with the size and affluence of the community as well as the presence of a guild structure capable of supporting theater. The royal court, for example, had far greater resources than a relatively small town such as Doncaster, which still was able to mount a Corpus Christi play, though hardly as elaborate as York’s play cycle. Of course, the ritual year was not celebrated in the same way by towns and parishes as by university, the court, or aristocratic households. Social groups do need to be differentiated. On the other hand, there are signs enough across the spectrum of all social groups of responsiveness to the ritual year and its opportunities for drama and entertainment. Occasions for playing might begin as early as St. Nicholas’s Day, on December 6, early in the liturgical year, which begins with the first Sunday in Advent. This beginning point will provide a considerably different view of the ritual year in relation to drama and entertainment than promoted by Phythian-Adams, and is more consistent with the way in which festivals available for playing were perceived prior to the Reformation. But, as a penitential season leading up to the great feast of Christmas, Advent, perhaps not surprisingly, gives little evidence for drama, even the liturgical music-drama more likely to have been presented at this time than entertainments or vernacular plays. Yet while evidence for St. Nicholas plays on the feast of the saint is very limited, there was an activity associated with this festival that was quite widespread. This involved the choosing, either on St. Nicholas’s Day or on the vigil of this feast, of a boy to be dressed up as the saint—the “Boy Bishop”—to perform his duties either then or on Holy Innocents (December 28).

 Admittedly, some of the comments made here may be subject to revision when the Records of Early English Drama project is completed. For a broad range of customs, a great many of which fall outside the scope of the present study, see, for example, A. R. Wright, British Calendar Customs, 3 vols. (London: Folk-Lore Society, 1936–40); John Brand, Observations on Popular Antiquities, new ed. (London: Chatto and Windus, 1913); and Ronald Hutton, The Stations of the Sun (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).  See Barbara D. Palmer, “Corpus Christi ‘Cycles’ in Yorkshire: The Surviving Records,” CompD 27 (1993): 222–25. For the ranking of Doncaster among English towns, see, for example, The Cambridge Urban History of Britain, ed. D. M. Palliser, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 768.  Phythian-Adams, “Ceremony and the Citizen,” 70–79.  Harold Newcomb Hillebrand, The Child Actors (1926; reprint New York: Russell and Russell, 1964), 22–23; Arthur Leach, “The Schoolboys’ Feast,” Fortnightly Review 59 (1896): 128–41. For Boy Bishop activity at Durham at another time of year—around Ascension and Pentecost rather than Advent or Christmas—see John McKinnell, The Sequence of the Sacrament at Durham (University of Teeside, 1998), 22.

Playing and the Ritual Year



St. Nicholas Day The first reference to a St. Nicholas play in England appears in a homily, possibly by a Dominican preacher, in which the saint grants the desire of a good monarch: “yf ye wollet stille ben / in þis pleye ye mowen isen.” The Boy Bishop and a Clerks’ play of St. Nicholas both appear in records from Gloucester in 1283, when the boy and the players were rewarded with 26s 8d by the king. The play treated the miracles of the saint, and the clerical involvement in the production suggests that this was a liturgical music drama, perhaps like the work of Hilarius, whose connection with England has been asserted by some scholars. Hilarius’ Iconia, for which unfortunately no music survives, concerns a character named Barbarus who comes to venerate and trust an image of St. Nicholas, to which he entrusts his wealth as he sets forth on his travels.10 He does not even lock the door to his house. Robbers enter and take away his goods. Upon his return, as Karl Young indicates in his summary, he first laments the loss of the property, and then denounces and beats the image. Meanwhile St Nicholas, in his own person, visits the robbers, and, with threats of disclosing their crime, charges them to return the plunder. When the robbers have carried out this command, Barbarus joyfully and penitently gives thanks to the image. St Nicholas himself now appears, bidding Barbarus transfer his gratitude to the Almighty. Accordingly the penitent renounces his past errors, and declares his belief in Christ, the Son of the one God.11

Barbarus is a pagan, not a Jew as is the case in the Fleury Playbook version, which nevertheless, because its music is preserved, provides indication of how a saint play of this kind would have sounded when staged. The three further St. Nicholas dramas in the Fleury Playbook also indicate other possibilities of plot formation that might have been used at Gloucester and elsewhere. These involve stories of the Three Clerks, the Three Daughters, and the Son of Getron.12 The Boy Bishop could be seen as less dramatic in spite of the complexity of his involvement in the liturgy, but because of the ample records pertaining to him he clearly deserves careful attention. He was a character who maintained the role of an actual bishop, except of course for consecrating the elements of bread and wine at Mass, and was as we would expect dressed in vestments like a prelate. The practice  Carleton Brown, “An Early Mention of a St. Nicholas Play in England,” Studies in Philology 28 (1931): 594–60, esp. 596. Brown speculates that the St. Nicholas story dramatized in the play may have been related to the Son of Getron in the Fleury Playbook (69).  REED: Cumberland, Westmorland, Gloucestershire, ed. Audrey Douglas and Peter Greenfield (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986), 290. 10 Karl Young, The Drama of the Medieval Church, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933), 2:337–41. 11 Young, The Drama of the Medieval Church, 2:341. 12 Young, The Drama of the Medieval Church 2:316–22, 330–33, 351–60. A performing edition that includes the Fleury St. Nicholas plays has been provided by Fletcher Collins, Jr., Medieval Church Music-Dramas: A Repertory of Complete Plays (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1976), 281–395.



Festivals and Plays in Late Medieval Britain

was recorded at Salisbury Cathedral as early as 1222,13 and in the seventeenth century a thirteenth-century image purported to be that of a Boy Bishop, holding a crozier and with right hand raised in blessing, was discovered there. This “Monument in stone” to a Boy Bishop who was believed to have died while in “office” was illustrated and described by John Gregory, bishop of Winchester, in his posthumously published Episcopus Puerum, in die Innocentium.14 In this illustration, the Boy Bishop is dressed in full episcopal vestments, including a cope and miter, and is standing on a dragon, obviously meant to designate a demon, perhaps Lilith, destroyer of children, according to Bishop Gregory’s speculations.15 Unfortunately, in spite of the fact that the image does give a suggestion of how a Boy Bishop would have appeared, Gregory’s views otherwise would seem to involve pure fantasy. Sarah Brown reports what seems to be the current view of archaeologists: instead of a boy bishop, the diminutive image might have been a monument to William de la Corner, who died in 1291.16 The Boy Bishop was recorded at other locations than cathedrals. Documents from various places, including records from the parish churches of London, indicate the presence of this custom and in some cases confirm the practice of having the Boy Bishop attended by a chaplain and his canons or other attendants.17 At Lincoln College, Oxford, the attendants were called “saynt nycolas clarkes.”18 At Bristol, in preparation for the Boy Bishop, his “suffrygann” along with the clerk of the Church of St. Nicholas were “to Dresse vppe the Bysshopes Sete [that is, his throne] A-yeniste Seynte Nicholas Daye.”19 According to Robert Ricart’s The Maire of Bristowe is Kalendar (1478–1479), this Boy Bishop also had a “Chapell,” a children’s choir that would sing evensong on the vigil of St. Nicholas Day at the Church of St. Nicholas, and the next day he would preside over the services, including Mass, and preach a sermon. Afterward, he was to bless those in attendance.20 In London, the church of 13 E. K. Chambers, The Mediaeval Stage, 2 vols. (London: Oxford University Press, 1903), 1:352. 14 John Gregory, Episcopus Puerum, in Gregorii Posthuma: or Certain Learned Tracts, ed. John Guargany (London, 1649), 93–123. When a Boy Bishop died in office, Gregory claimed, “his Exequies were solemnized with answerable glorious Pomp and Sadness. Hee was buried (as all Bishops) in all his Ornaments . . .” (ibid., 117). For commentary, see Richard L. DeMolen, “Pueri Christi Imitatio: The Festival of the Boy-Bishop in Tudor England,” Moreana 45 (1975): 18–20; Michael Milway, “Boy Bishops in Early Modern Europe: Ritual, Myth, and Reality,” EDAMR 22 (2000):80–90, esp. 80–81. For early attention to the image published by Gregory, see William Hone, Ancient Mysteries Described (London, 1823), 196–97. 15 Gregory, Episcopus Puerum, 97–98. 16 Sarah Brown, Sumptuous and Richly Adorn’d: The Decoration of Salisbury Cathedral (London: Stationery Office, 1999), 118–19, 150. 17 Hutton, The Stations of the Sun, 100–102. 18 REED: Oxford, ed. John R. Elliott, Jr., Alan H. Nelson, Alexandra F. Johnston, and Diana Wyatt, 2 vols. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), 1:52. 19 St. Nicholas Vestry Book, as quoted by Mark C. Pilkinton, ed., REED: Bristol (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997), 10. 20 St. Nicholas Vestry Book, in REED: Bristol, 19 . Ricart’s description does not make the claim, of course, that the Boy Bishop was the celebrant at Mass. Concerning the unique local tradition in which the Boy Bishop and his attendants participated with the mayor and

Playing and the Ritual Year



St. Michael-le-Quern had not only four “olde copes for children of bawdkyn” but also a “vestment for the bysshopp on Saynte Nicholas Daye,”21 suggesting activities on this feast rather than (or along with) Holy Innocents. The statutes of King’s College, Cambridge, dating from 1442–1443 indicate that the boys are allowed to “say and carry out vespers, matins, and the other divine services, saying and singing [them] according to the use and custom hitherto usual” and that this must be done at the feast of St. Nicholas (6 December) rather than at Holy Innocents.22 A King’s College inventory of 1505–1506 lists every article in the wardrobe of the Boy Bishop, as extracted below: a white wolen Coote a Rochett ij payr of lynyn slevys a skarlett Roobe with a whode to the same a gowne of skarlett with a whode for the same furred with white menyvere for the Crosyer [for the Crucifer] a payr of ffyne knytt gloves for the Bisshop a noche of gold havyng a precius stone in the myddes and iij grete perles aboute the same stone ij rynges of gold yn þe glovys Ringes of gold for the bisshop . . . and ye iiij havyng a stone a miter of white damaske with a white perle in the top and iiij stones and iiij knottes in the forehed and iiij stones and . . . v knottes with a Rose sett with vj perles and a stone in the middes and vnder the same a sterre with a Crosse in the middes sett a boute with iiij perles and vj other stones wherof iiij be red and ij grene and in the myddes of the Crosse a red stone a miter with xxti fynealles23

The miter, we learn, was a gift of Bishop Geoffrey Blythe of Chester,24 and many of the other accouterments were also most likely similar signs of official ecclesiastical approval of the role of the Boy Bishop. Importantly, the Boy Bishop’s activities

other civic officials in a game of dice after Mass, see the discussion in David Harris Sacks, “Celebrating Authority in Bristol, 1475–1640,” in Urban Life in the Renaissance, ed. Susan Zimmerman and Ronald F. E. Weissman (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1989), 198– 201. This Bristol tradition was intertwined with the practice of governance in the third largest city in the realm. 21 H. B. Walters, London Churches at the Reformation (London: SPCK, 1939), 510. Bawdkyn was a richly embroidered cloth, here possibly of gold woven into silk; see OED, s.v. ‘baudekin.’ 22 REED: Cambridge, ed. Alan H. Nelson, 2 vols. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989), 2:1064; for the Latin text, see 1:29. The present King’s College Chapel was not yet completed, so the ceremony would then have taken place in the old chapel, which collapsed in 1536–1537; see An Inventory of the Historical Monuments in the City of Cambridge, 2 vols. (London: Royal Commission on Historical Monuments, England, 1959), 99, 105. 23 REED: Cambridge, 1:79–80. 24 REED: Cambridge, 1:80; see also 2:1201.



Festivals and Plays in Late Medieval Britain

seem far from disruptive and should not be seen merely as a way for the boys to “let off steam.”25 Christmas Elsewhere, as the information supplied over a century ago by E. K. Chambers indicated, the Boy Bishop was more often associated with the three days following Christmas than with the feast of St. Nicholas.26 Childermas, or Holy Innocents, on December 28 quite logically was a favored festival. An inventory from the 1530s at Lincoln, where the Boy Bishop celebrated at least vespers on the vigil of Holy Innocents and matins on the day of the feast, listed a red velvet cope for him.27 Other inventories and accounts are also indicative of a full set of vestments, including the expected red cope and miter. Even the parish of little Boxford in Suffolk had a crozier in 1466 and a “cot of red of saynt necolas,” the latter motheaten when sold in 1542,28 and Long Melford had “a Sent Nycholas cote and [h]oode greatly eatyn wyth moth” at the Reformation.29 At Louth in Lincolnshire, a town then in severe decline, a “See” for the Bishop was built in the church in 1500–1501.30 At much larger Exeter, perhaps the fourth largest town in terms of wealth in the kingdom, one Robert Weston in 1527–1528 borrowed a miter, robe (cope?), pectoral, baldric, and gloves from the Cathedral chapter at Exeter for the “paruo Episcopo,”31 while St. Mary-at-Hill in London had an elaborate miter “for a bysshop at seint Nycholas tyde, garnysshid with sylver and amelyd [enamel] and perle and Counterfete stone”

25 Milway, “Boy Bishops in Early Modern Europe,” 83–89; De Molen, “Pueri Christi Imitatio,” 21. I am also indebted to a paper on the Boy Bishop read by Alan Nelson long ago at the International Congress on Medieval Studies. 26 Chambers, The Mediaeval Stage, 1:352–62, 369. 27 Christopher Wordsworth, “Inventories of Plate, Vestments, &c., belonging to the Cathedral Church of the Blessed Mary of Lincoln,” Archaeologia 53 (1842): 25, 50. The text on the cope read: “The hye wey ys best.” 28 Boxford Churchwardens’ Accounts, 1530–1561, ed. Peter Northeast (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, for the Suffolk Records Society, 1982), xiv; also cited by Hutton, The Stations of the Sun, 102. Cf. REED: Kent, Diocese of Canterbury, ed. James M. Gibson, 3 vols. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002), 2:539 (“ij lytell vestymentes for seynt Nycolas with ij Course Mitours,” at Faversham, 1512–1513), 2:910 (“ij olde Mytars for saynt nycholas of fustyan broderyd” and “a cope of red bawdekyn,” in an inventory of church goods at Minster, 1536). 29 William Parker, The History of Long Melford (London: Wyman and Sons, 1873), 94, as quoted by Gail McMurray Gibson, The Theater of Devotion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 92. 30 James Stokes, “The Lost Playing Places of Lincolnshire,” CompD 37 (2003–2004): 282; Records of Plays and Players in Lincolnshire, 1300–1585, ed. Stanley J. Kahrl, MSC 8 (Oxford, 1974 [for 1969]), 76. For Louth’s decline and the relative size of Exeter in the early sixteenth century, see The Cambridge Urban History of Britain, ed. Palliser, 1:633, 765. 31 REED: Devon, ed. John Wasson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986), 129.

Playing and the Ritual Year



as well as “vj Copes for children, of dyuers sorttes.”32 Even more splendid must have been the regalia of the Boy Bishop at Westminster Abbey, where at the dissolution his miter was of white silk as the ground for embroidery with silver and gilt flowers, both “gret and small,” and precious stones. The text “Ora pro nobis Sancte Nicholai” was embroidered on it. His crozier had a silver and gilt head “garnysshed with great perles and stonys haveyng therof an ymage of Seynt Peter and an other of Seynt Edward of sylver and gylt . . . the staff therof round of coper and tymber. . . .”33 The popularity of the Boy Bishop in London is demonstrated by the Edwardian inventories of church goods, which list approximately thirty churches that had children’s vestments, mainly copes and surplices, that would have been available for the for him and his attendants. Some vestments were specifically identified with the Boy Bishop, as in the case of the “Saynte Nicholas Cote,” two miters, a vestment for a deacon attending the “boye bysshopp,” and four “olde surplyses for children” at St. Peter, West Cheap.34 The inventories specified vestments of different kinds of cloth, ranging from buckram at St. Martin, Ludgate, to fustian at St. Margaret, Lothbury, and red silk at St. Nicholas Cole Abbey.35 At York, the Boy Bishop not only preached a sermon but also traveled widely around the region to deliver it at other locations as far away as Leeds, Fountains Abbey, and Beverley. For his role in the liturgy, he was expected to be handsome and to have a good singing voice.36 Even Boy Bishops from smaller towns might visit neighboring parishes, as in the case of the boy chosen at New Romney who for more than fifty years is recorded appearing at Lydd in the fifteenth century.37 From the evidence, Boy Bishops’ sermons were not subversive, and were undoubtedly written for them by adults, as was the case with the one provided by Erasmus for St. Paul’s School in London. The text read by the Boy Bishop affirmed that God has “placed us . . . as though in some wonderful theatre, so that in creation we might marvel at the creator’s wisdom, love his goodness, and revere his power”—hardly the inverted worldview of the Feast of Fools.38 The sermon reminded listeners that 32 The Medieval Records of a London City Church, A.D. 1420–1559, ed. Henry Littlehales, EETS, o.s. 125, 128 (1904–1905; reprint Millwood, NY: Kraus, 1987), 1:31. 33 Mackenzie E. C. Walcott, “The Inventories of Westminster Abbey at the Dissolution,” Transactions of the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society 4 (1873): 318–19. For citation of additional inventories, see Edward F. Rimbault, “Two Sermons Preached by the Boy-Bishop,” Camden Miscellany, n.s. 14 (1875), xxiii–xxvi. 34 Walters, London Churches at the Reformation, 566–67. 35 Walters, London Churches at the Reformation, 374, 351, 531. Vestments for the Boy Bishop were also recorded at St. Margaret, Southwark, and at St. Mary, Lambeth, next to the palace of the Archbishop of Canterbury; see Alexandra F. Johnston and Sally-Beth MacLean, “Reformation and Resistance in Thames/Severn Parishes,” in The Parish in English Life, ed. Kathleen L. French, Gary G. Gibbs, and Beat A. Kümin (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997), 185. 36 Chambers, The Mediaeval Stage, 1:356–57. 37 REED: Kent, Diocese of Canterbury, 2:646ff, 3:1345. 38 Homily on the Child Jesus, to Be Spoken by a Boy in the School Recently Founded by Colet in London, trans. Emily Kearns, in Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 29, ed. Elaine Fantham and Erika Rummel (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989), 59.

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Jesus had found childhood to be “so pleasing . . . that he compels even old men to become children again if they wish to be admitted to that society outside which there is no hope of salvation.”39 The headmaster of St. Paul’s School was John Colet, who was clear about his approval of the practice, for he demanded attendance by the scholars under his charge so that they should “here the Chylde Bisshoppis sermon” and, after Mass, make an offering to him.40 Neither Erasmus’s sermon nor the other evidence of the Boy Bishop homilies suggests anything of the subversiveness often claimed by modern scholars,41 though some early prohibitions—for example, at Exeter Cathedral and the Collegiate Church of Ottery St. Mary in the fourteenth century—do indicate that there were times during the ceremonies when boys will be boys to the serious discomfort of their elders.42 A far more hostile attitude toward the rite, whether on the feast of the saint or during the Christmas octave, is indicated when the regime of Henry VIII moved in 1541 to suppress gatherings by children “strangely decked and appareled to counterfeit priests, bishops, and women” on Innocents day, the feast of St. Nicholas, and other occasions, as well as “boys . . . sing[ing] mass, and preach[ing] in the pulpit, with such other unfitting and inconvenient usages.” Such practices were regarded as indicative of “vain superstition” of the kind that was to “be left and clearly extinguished throughout all this his [i.e., King Henry’s] realm and dominions.”43 The return to traditional Boy Bishop practices under Queen Mary44 would be thwarted when Elizabeth I came to power. 39 Homily on the Child Jesus, 62. 40 Quoted by J. H. Lupton, A Life of John Colet, D.D., 2nd ed. (1909; reprint Hamden, Conn.: Shoe String Press, 1961), 175. 41 See Rimbault, ed., “Two Sermons,” 1–29. The first of these sermons, on the text “Praise the Lord, ye children” (Ps. 112, Vulgate numbering), was, like Erasmus’s Boy Bishop sermon, written for St. Paul’s, London. The second, on the text “Unless you be converted, and become as little children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 18:3), was written by Richard Ramsay and read by a chorister named John Stubs in 1558. 42 REED: Devon, 6–7, 12–13. For the harsh treatment implied against boyish “disobedience,” see Eve Salisbury, “‘Spare the Rod and Spoil the Child’: Proverbial Speech Acts, Boy Bishop Sermons, and Pedagogical Violence,” in Speculum Sermonis: Interdisciplinary Reflections on the Medieval Sermon, ed. Georgiana Donavin, Cary J. Nederman, and Richard Utz (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), 141–55. 43 Tudor Royal Proclamations, ed. Paul L. Hughes and James F. Larkin, 3 vols. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964–69), 1:302. 44 Henry Machyn, The Diary, ed. John Gough Nichols, Camden Society 42 (London: J. B. Nichols, 1848), 121. Machyn, writing in 1556, mentions the going “a-brod” of the bishop and his attendants into the city on the vigil of St. Nicholas’s Day, their “syngyng after the old fassyon,” and being “reseyvyd with mony good pepulle in-to ther howses” and having “myche good chere.” This practice hardly appears carnivalesque, but the return to it in 1554 seems to have been interrupted by a countermanding of the order permitting it on account of fear of disorder (ibid., 75, 78). Susan Brigden, London and the Reformation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), 384, cites a reference in John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments (8 vols. [reprint New York: AMS Press, 1965], 8:579) to Protestant opposition to the rite. Foxe relates how a determined Protestant woman, Gertrude Crokhay, in 1556 “shut her door” against “the pope’s childish St. Nicholas” and refused his “blessing.” She recognized the “St. Nicholas”

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11

As for liturgical drama on themes associated with the Christmas season, evidence in England for plays such as the Pastores is scant.45 The only text, having English speeches and Latin liturgical items, occurs in the early fifteenth-century Shrewsbury Fragments (Shrewsbury School MS. VI, a liturgical part-book containing portions of three plays from Lichfield Cathedral, the statutes of which mention them specifically and identify them as representations).46 One of these fragmentary plays is a Pastores. Its text gives words for the third shepherd, possibly not fully, and cues only for the other two shepherds.47 This play, with which the Shepherds’ play in the York cycle shares some lines,48 contains musical notation for Latin items, possibly intending polyphony though the quote from Luke 2:8–9 at the beginning most likely would have used the Gospel tone.49 The musical setting of Transeamus usque Bethelem, according to Frank Ll. Harrison, “is related to the plainsong for the same words in Rouen”50 and, when sung by the shepherds, would have necessitated trained singers familiar with the liturgy just as would have been the case with the Gloria announcing the birth of Jesus. Special staging effects are required here, since the Third Shepherd comments not only on the marvel of the “angel briȝt/ Þat made þis nobull noyes” but also “þis liȝt” (14, 16–17), designating the star in the night sky. The third notated piece, Salvatorem Christum Dominum, included in the Fleury Playbook as well as at Rouen,51 would likewise have required the same level of ability as that needed for the performance of liturgical drama on the Continent or the Quem queritis for Easter. It needs nevertheless to be recognized that the Christmas season was not a particularly propitious time for vernacular plays in those locations where adequate indoor facilities were lacking. Further, references to “playing” and “games” are as a neighbor boy, but said that she was “afraid of them that came with him, to have had my purse cut by them: for I have heard of men robbed by St. Nicholas’s clerks.” 45 See the discussion of this form in James M. Gibson, “Quem queritis in presepe: Christmas Drama or Christmas Liturgy?” CompD 15 (1981–82): 343–65. 46 Richard Rastall, The Heaven Singing (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1996), 89; Susan Rankin, “Shrewsbury School, Manuscript VI: A Medieval Part Book?” Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association 102 (1976): 130–32; Statutes of Lincoln Cathedral, ed. Christopher Wordsworth, 2 vols. in 3 pts. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1897), 2:1:15. For a later reference, dated 1526, see ibid., 2:1:23, which calls the Pastores a “representation” and the Resurrection and Peregrinus plays “miracles.” 47 The Shrewsbury Fragments have been edited by Norman Davis, Non-Cycle Plays and Fragments, EETS, s.s. 1 (London: Oxford University Press, 1970), 1–7, and including “Notes on the Music” by Frank Ll. Harrison (124–33). References to plays in my text here and throughout are by line numbers, preceded when available by the number of the play in the edition cited. 48 Davis, Non-cycle Plays and Fragments, xvii, 1–2. 49 Harrison, “Notes on the Music,” 124–25; Rastall, The Heaven Singing, 91. 50 Harrison, “Notes on the Music,” 124. For comment on performance practice, see Rastall, The Heaven Singing, 94–101. 51 Harrison, “Notes on the Music,” 124–25; Rastall, The Heaven Singing, 91; the text only for the Rouen play appears in Young, The Drama of the Christian Church, 2:516. See also William L. Smoldon, The Music of the Medieval Church Dramas, ed. Cynthia Bourgeault (London: Oxford University Press, 1980), 395.

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particularly problematic here since this terminology as used in documents could refer to a range of activities.52 The season, extending from Christmas eve to Epiphany and sometimes beyond, was itself, however, a choice one for entertainment. One type of theatrical activity involved the Lord of Misrule which, along with actual stage works, logically tended in this season to appear at court, in households, at schools and universities, in the Inns of Court, but in some towns as well.53 In such venues, he was a sign of a festive season when a great deal of entertainment was concentrated. It is not always very easy to know what the documentary evidence is revealing. A school document from Magdalen College, Oxford, from the second or third decade of the sixteenth century indicates that the “cristinnmes holidays” involved the playing of “pleys” and “sportes” and engagement in other “mery conseittes.”54 However, what is it that the word “pleys” was intended to signify? Did it mean some form of drama or simply playing in the sense of games? This document, however, is clear about indicating the appointment of a Lord of Christmas, whose role may seem to have been reflected in the king chosen in the King Game, of which more in a later chapter. The Lord, in this case emerging as rather a rascal, was played for one day only by a boy, who appointed “companyounce,” including a carver, butler, and porter. One boy who refused orders from him he commanded to be beaten.55

52 See John Coldewey, “Plays and ‘Play’ in Early English Drama,” RORD 28 (1985): 181–88, and relevant remarks in Douglas Sugano, “‘This game wel pleyd in good a-ray’: The N-Town Playbooks and East Anglian Games,” CompD 28 (1994): 221–34. 53 The Puritan lecturer Thomas Thompson condemned “these wicked Lords of misrule reigning throughout all our Cities and townes.” But it is not clear that Thompson was referring to the Lord of Misrule in the Christmas season, for he may instead have had the summer King Game in mind (A Diet for a Drunkard [London, 1612], 31–32; quoted by Pilkinton, ed., REED: Bristol, xxiv). Not only Puritans objected to the practice. Youths meeting in the parish church to choose a Lord of Misrule at Harwich, Essex, in 1535, are an indication that the practice had by then spread to smaller municipalities, in this case a port town. At Harwich, the priest, who was no Puritan, expelled the youths from the church and assaulted a minstrel (Hutton, The Rise and Fall of Merry England, 71). Bishop Parkhurst’s injunctions for the Norwich diocese in 1569 specifically condemned anyone claiming to be a Lord of Misrule “in the Christmas time, or other irreverent persons at any other time,” who might enter a church “unreverently, playing their lewd parts with scoffing, jesting or ribaldry talk” (Visitation Articles and Injunctions of the Period of the Reformation, ed. Walter Howard Frere, 3 vols. [London: Longmans, Green, 1910], 3:209); for similar prohibitions in Archbishop Grindal’s injunctions of 1571 for the province of York, see 3:291. 54 REED: Oxford, 1:55. 55 REED: Oxford, 1:56. At Cambridge, the “Dominus ludorum” at Christmas was prohibited in 1548–1549 (REED: Cambridge, 1:164). For interesting variants, see the record at Dover in 1536–1537 of “a horne blowyng at the eleccion on . . . our lady of nativitye” (REED: Kent, Diocese of Canterbury, 2:433). The notorious case of John Gladman, said to have been a “kyng of Crestmasse” at Norwich in 1443, involved a procession through the city that occasioned a riot, occurring on January 25; see Victor I. Scherb, Staging Faith (Madison and Teaneck: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2001), 110–11.

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The Royal Court In the household of the monarch, the Christmas Lord, identified as the Lord of Misrule, inevitably would have differed from the one at Oxford since his behavior was largely to be executed in the presence of the actual king. His activities, based on the extant accounts, are judged by W. R. Streitberger to have been most likely quite “elaborate.”56 Records show that the role was adopted at the court of Henry VII, and that it extended into the reign of his son Henry VIII at least up to 1521, after which documentation for the court revels is for a period lost. Streitberger notes that when the king’s household records resume, they show that Henry had apparently dispensed with the practice.57 However, the reign of Henry VIII’s son Edward VI would lead to great extravagance in the Christmas season of 1551–1552, when George Ferrers was designated as Lord of Misrule and an amount more than £500 was spent on the entertainments. Ferrers participated in a Drunken Masque on January 2, and the season included a joust and a mock Midsummer Night.58 Tantalizingly, there was a payment of £6 “ffor gyldinge of a vyser [mask] for the lorde of Mysrule occupied in his playe before the king.”59 The Lord of Misrule with a large company in bright colors, with trumpeters, other musicians, and morris dancers, also made a “royal” entry into London, as famously recorded by Henry Machyn, who reported the coming of Ferrers after the others in “a gowne of gold furyd with fur of the goodlyest collers.” Following were fifty men “in red and wyht, tallmen of the gard, with hods of the sam coler.”60 At the royal court, as also in some aristocratic households generally, the preponderance of plays, masques, disguisings, and other entertainments in the Christmas season is striking.61 A reflection of the court atmosphere at this time of year is provided in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. When the Green Knight, carrying “his hed in his hande,” has departed from the castle of Arthur, it is thought a “meruayl,” and the king says to the queen: Dere dame, today demay yow neuer. be perturbed Wel bycommes such craft vpon Cristmasse — Laykyng of enterludez, to laȝe and to syng — Among þise kynde caroles of knyȝtez and ladyez.62 56 W. R. Streitberger, Court Revels, 1485–1559 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994), 89. 57 Streitberger, Court Revels,89. 58 Streitberger, Court Revels, 193–98, 290–91; Documents Relating to the Revels at Court in the Time of King Edward VI and Queen Mary, ed. Albert Feuillerat (Louvain: A. Uystpruyst, 1914), 66–85. 59 Documents Relating to the Revels, 66. 60 Machyn, The Diary, 13–14. 61 See the Calendar of Court Revels, Spectacles, Plays, and Entertainments, in Streitberger, Court Revels, 233–99. For a plan for elaborate household entertainments, see Ian Lancashire, “Orders for Twelfth Day and Night circa 1515 in the Second Northumberland Household Book,” English Literary Renaissance 10 (1980): 7–45. The earl’s festivities extended to having an Abbot of Misrule and to sponsoring a visit by a Boy Bishop. 62 The Complete Works of the Pearl Poet, ed. Malcolm Andrew, Ronald Waldron, and Clifford Peterson (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993), 290 (ll.

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Whereupon all are invited to return to their feasting. The event has seemingly been but a Christmas game, an interlude of an especially cunning character. The lack of surprise at an effect like that shown in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight seems consistent with the lavish entertainment and clever effects at the English court reflected in the revels accounts during the reigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII, especially in the first part of the latter’s reign, and continuing in the reigns of their immediate successors, Edward VI and Mary Tudor, though there was considerable variation in the levels of expenditure. It is possible, for example, that the play Respublica was performed at court for Queen Mary at Christmas 1553, less than five months after her accession to the throne,63 and the next year brought more plays and masques, including a masque featuring “Venetian senators with galley slaves as torchbearers, and six Venuses or amorous ladies with six Cupids as torch bearers.”64 Whatever records exist fully support the view that the early Tudor entertainments, or revels, at the court were highly visual and intended as spectacular show designed to impress upon viewers the magnificence of the monarch.65 Though not typical in theme in comparison with later entertainments, the show based on the story of St. George for the Twelfth Day of Christmas on January 6, 1494, involved elaborate preparations, including the building of scaffolds at Westminster, “The which halle at that tyme was hangid wyth aras, and stagid alength the halle . . . That the pepyll mygth well and easyly see the sayd dysport.”66 The show began after a festive meal in the evening. As “a goodly Interlude” was underway, William Cornish, the musician, who was costumed as St. George and on horseback, rode in and interrupted it to present a representation of the aftermath of most popular incident in the saint’s legendary life, best known through the account in the Golden Legend.67 As if following the defeat of the dragon in a battle that figured in Henry VII’s personal iconography, St. George led in “a ffayer vyrgyn attyrid lyke unto a kyngys dowgthyr.” She, in turn, was “ledyng by a sylkyn lace a Terryble and huge Rede dragun” spitting “ffyre at hys mowth.”68 Cornish brought them before the king, then made a speech and intoned the incipit of an antiphon invoking St. George, who had displaced Edward 458, 470–73). 63 Respublica, ed. W. W. Greg, EETS, o.s. 226 (London: Oxford University Press, 1952), ix–x. 64 Streitberger, Court Revels, 296. 65 See Roy Strong, Splendor at Court (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1973). 66 The Great Chronicle of London, A. H. Thomas and I. D. Thornley (London: George W. Jones, 1938), 251; Streitberger, Court Revels, 27–28; Sydney Anglo, “William Cornish in a Play, Pageants, Prison, and Politics,” Review of English Studies, n.s. 10 (1959): 348–50; Gordon Kipling, The Triumph of Honour (Leiden: Leiden University Press, for the Thomas Browne Institute, 1977), 101–102. 67 The Great Chronicle of London, 251; Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend, trans. William Granger Ryan, 2 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 1:238– 42. 68 The Great Chronicle of London, 251. For an anonymous painting that shows Henry VII and his family along with, above, St. George and the (winged and flying) dragon, in the Royal Collection, Windsor, see Samantha Riches, St. George: Hero, Martyr and Myth (Stroud: Sutton, 2000), fig. 4.5, and commentary, ibid, 113–15.

Playing and the Ritual Year

15

the Confessor as the primary patron saint of England in the previous century.69 The antiphon was “answerid” and sung by the musicians of the king’s Chapel. Cornish, still in the role of St. George, “avoydid wyth þe dragon,” while the “vyrgyn was ladd unto the Quenys standyng.” The revels continued with disguising and dancing.70 During the early part of the reign of Henry VIII, preparations for revels and combat shows, as well as actual tournaments, were shared by a number of different departments, but involved development toward what eventually became the revels office later in the century. Immense expenditures were recorded for some events. “Pageants,” here designating carriages, often on wheels but sometimes carried and of large size that were brought onto the hall floor, could be fashioned like mountains, ships, or castles.71 A principal person involved with the creation of these floats, which could be as large as twenty-six feet by sixteen by nine,72 was Richard Gibson, who frequently provided lavish costumes and properties.73 Allegorical constructions tended to be the norm at court. In 1512, a New Year’s entertainment at Greenwich included a pageant, Le Fortresse Dangerus, that was constructed as an elaborate fortified castle that had “gates, towers, and dungion, garnished with artilerie, and weapon after the moste warlike fashion.” Six richly clad ladies were positioned in it. Hall reports that the pageant, in being displayed to the queen, was “caried about the hal,” so it was apparently without wheels. Six men, including the king, then “assaulted the castle.” After the ladies came down to dance and then eventually returned with them to the castle, it “sodainly vanished, out of their sightes.”74 On the following Twelfth Night, a new kind of disguising was introduced “after the maner of Italie, called a maske,” that involved once again lavish costumes, dancing, and music.75 The 1515 Twelfth Night pageant, built by Gibson in London, was designed specifically to impress ambassadors from abroad. It had to be taken up the Thames to Richmond, where the festivities were scheduled. The set involved a pavilion “of clothe of golde” that included towers which appeared to be brick, each holding an elaborately dressed actor. Part of the entertainment involved knights being challenged by eight wildmen, who, suddenly appearing “oute of a place lyke a wood,” were 69 David Hugh Farmer, The Oxford Dictionary of Saints (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), 166. 70 The Great Chronicle of London, 151–52. Disguisings and the use of masks are extensively discussed by Meg Twycross and Sarah Carpenter, Masks and Masking in Medieval and Early Tudor England (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), esp. 128–90. 71 The Receyt of the Ladie Kateryne, ed. Gordon Kipling, EETS, o.s. 296 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 67–68; and, citing Continental examples, Strong, Splendor at Court, fig. 86; Glynne Wickham, Early English Stages, 3 vols. (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1959–1981), 1:213–16; but see also 1:223–26, for English practice. 72 Streitberger, Court Revels, 74. 73 For Gibson’s involvement later with the New Romney Passion Play, see chap. 4, below. By 1522 Gibson had become, in Sydney Anglo’s words, “the outstanding general factotum of the royal festivities” (Spectacle, Pageantry, and Early Tudor Policy, 2nd ed. [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997], 179). 74 Edward Hall, Chronicle (1809; reprint New York: AMS Press, 1965), 526. 75 Hall, Chronicle, 526; Streitberger, Court Revels, 82.

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dressed “in grene mosse, made with slyued sylke, with Vggly weapons and terrible visages.”76 Streitberger notes that, while the wildman or wodehouse had appeared previously in royal entertainments, such combat scenes introduced a new element in the revels.77 Further novelty was introduced in the 1516 Twelfth Night production of Troylus and Pandor, for which, though Gibson as usual had major responsibilities, child actors participated as players. These were members of the Children of the Chapel, under the direction of Cornish, who also organized the disguising for the event that may have introduced women speakers for the first time.78 Inns of Court, Households, and Towns In the city of London, the festivities at the Inns of Court were largely modeled on the court revels. In a passage quoted by William Dugdale from Fortescue’s De Laudibus Legum Angliae, the students at the Inns of Court “did not only study the Laws, to serve the Court of Justice, and profit their Country, but did further learn to dance, to sing, to play on Instruments on the ferial days; and to study Divinity on the Festival; using such exercises, as they did, who were brought up in the Kings Court.”79 Dugdale likewise understood “these Hostells” to be “Nurseries or Seminaries of the court.”80 The point is well demonstrated during the Inner Temple Christmas revels of 1561–1562 when Robert Dudley, presumed to be the queen’s favorite at the time, was made the Lord of Misrule in imitation of the pattern that had been established at court. Machyn reported that Dudley rode through the city in this role on December 27 “in clene complett harnes, gylt, and a hondered grett horse and gentyll-men rydyng gorgyously with chenes of gold, and there horses godly trapytt, unto the Tempull” for the revels, which were attended by many of the members of the queen’s council.81 The Inner Temple revels in this year included not only the Masque of Beauty and Desire but also the play Gorboduc by Thomas Sackville and Thomas

76 Hall, Chronicle, 580; Streitberger, Court Revels, 86–87. For wildmen, see Clifford Davidson, Illustrations of the Stage and Acting in England to 1580, EDAM Monograph Series 16 (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1991), 99, 101–3, and, for an extended study, Richard Bernheimer, Wild Men in the Middle Ages (1952; reprint New York: Octagon Books, 1979). The wildman also wore moss at Wymondham, Suffolk, in 1537–1538, and the Chester St. George procession included fireworks for wildmen; see Records of Plays and Players in Norfolk and Suffolk, David Galloway and John Wasson, eds., MSC 11 (Oxford, 1980–1981), 129, and REED: Chester, ed. Lawrence M. Clopper (Toronto: University of Toronto, 1979), 259. 77 Streitberger, Court Revels, 87. 78 Streitberger, Court Revels, 96. 79 Sir John Fortescue, De Laudibus Legum Angliae, chap. 49; quoted by Sir William Dugdale, Origines Juridiciales (London, 1666), 141. 80 Dugdale, Origines Juridiciales, 141; the passage is also quoted from a later edition by A. Wigfall Green, The Inns of Court and Early English Drama (1931; reprint New York: Benjamin Blom, 1965), 30. 81 Machyn, The Diary, 273–74.

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Norton.82 Both were embedded in the politics of the Inns of Court and especially the nation, the latter involving the matter of the queen’s matrimonial prospects in which the side of Dudley against the King of Sweden was taken.83 Of course, as Christmas entertainment the topic of the play, a tragedy, was clearly a departure from the norm at court and, indeed, was felt to have introduced a new type of drama in English to audiences. Gorboduc was to be performed for the queen, but only later, on January 18, 1562. The court also served as a model for many aristocratic households, where the themes developed in plays and entertainments tended less toward extending political influence than to secular and moral subjects. This is reflected in the earliest extant plays associated with such venues—for example, The Worlde and the Chylde and Fulgens and Lucrece, the latter dated in the 1490s and generally agreed to have been performed at Lambeth Palace for the household of John Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury.84 Fulgens and Lucrece, with its inclusion of a basse dance, mummers, and musicians, indicates a context of vigorous entertainment at Morton’s household, where disguisings and theatricals were reputedly frequent occurrences.85 Then, too, the use of disguise, if not always full-scale drama, was practiced at Christmas in civic settings and seems to have been common in spite of some political nervousness about the practice. Going about with masks (“faux visages”) in the Christmas season had been prohibited at London in the late fourteenth century, and a 1512 law banned the owning or sale of masks necessary for persons to disguise themselves as mummers.86 At Bristol in 1478–1479, Ricart’s Kalendar reported that no person of any “degree or Condicion” should “goo A mommyng with cloce visaged”—that is, disguised or masked.87 Mummings, including disguise, were, 82 For the masque, see the description by Marie Axton, “Robert Dudley and the Inner Temple Revels,” Historical Journal 13 (1970): 369–73. 83 For the discovery of documentation for the Swedish king as a rival to Dudley, see Norman Jones and Paul Whitfield White, “Gorboduc and Royal Marriage Politics: An Elizabethan Playgoer’s Report on the Premier Performance,” English Literary Renaissance 26 (1996): 3–16, and Greg Walker, The Politics of Performance in Early Renaissance Drama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 196–221. Other aspects are explored in Jessica Winston, “Expanding the Political Nation: Gorboduc at the Inns of Court and Succession Revisited,” ET 8 (2005): 11–34. 84 For Fulgens and Lucrece, see Henry Medwall, The Plays, ed. Alan H. Nelson, 2 vols. (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1980), 1:3. The Worlde and the Chylde was probably written for an unknown household perhaps a day’s journey away from London; see Clifford Davidson and Peter Happé, eds., The Worlde and the Chylde (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1999), 4–6. I am not suggesting here that either play was intended for performance in the Christmas season, only that they are two of the earliest extant plays associated with households. 85 For seasonal entertainment in households, see Peter H. Greenfield, “Festive Drama at Christmas in Aristocratic Households,” in Festive Drama, ed. Meg Twycross (Woodbridge: D. S. Brewer, 1996), 34–40, and Suzanne Westfall, Patrons and Performance: Early Tudor Household Revels (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990). 86 Anne Lancashire, London Civic Theatre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 41, 228 87 REED: Bristol, 10.

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nevertheless, an integral part of the Christmas ceremonies of the London mayors and sheriffs.88 As for what might be called the public stage, available information is relatively unclear, and, hence, we must be skeptical about the possibility of the existence in this season of a great many vernacular Christmas plays, which logic might suggest should have been heavily represented in the season’s repertoire. Lincoln Cathedral at first staged an Epiphany play with Magi and a mechanism representing the star in the nave, from 1317–1318 to 1389, and replaced it in 1390 with a Christmas drama, initially at Matins, that James Stokes believes was a “considerable spectacle,”89 but this may have been a lavish Latin liturgical drama on the Continental model. At Canterbury, as the editor of the Records of Early English volumes for Kent notes, plays are recorded at this time of year at monasteries,90 and in 1501–1502 city chamberlains’ records indicate the playing in the guildhall of “the iij kynges of Coleyn,” properly a play for the end of the season at Epiphany in which a gilded star and three painted hobby-horse “bestes” (camels?) of lath and canvas figured in the stage properties.91 Considering the weather at the end of December and beginning of January, indoor performance almost certainly must have been involved, as also in the case of the “Cristmasse pley” recorded in the 1451–1452 churchwardens’ accounts at Tintinhull, Somerset.92 Even when designated as a “Cryssmas game,” as when players performed at Ashburton, Devon, in 1533–1536 and perhaps subsequently, the fact that they were provided with costumes and played in the church itself, rather than in the church house or elsewhere,93 gives strong credibility to the belief that a scripted drama, most likely of a religious nature, was performed. However, a religious play for Christmas need not have been strictly a Nativity play, and, at a late date during Queen Elizabeth I’s time, in the church of St. Mary the Virgin in Tewkesbury some sort of New Testament play—but not on a Christmas subject since costumes, wigs and beards for the apostles, and a mask for the devil are specified— was being mounted by local players.94 How tempting it would be to believe that the best known of all the Nativity plays, The Second Shepherds’ Play, was written for performance in the actual season of Christmas. It is now widely felt that this play was designed for civic or parish 88 REED: Bristol, 115. 89 Stokes, “The Lost Playing Places of Lincolnshire,” 281; Records of Plays and Players in Lincolnshire, 28– 61. 90 REED: Kent, Diocese of Canterbury, 1:lxxxvi–lxxxvii. 91 REED: Kent, Diocese of Canterbury, 1:95. 92 REED: Somerset, Including Bath, ed. James Stokes and Robert J. Alexander, 2 vols. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), 1:231. 93 REED: Devon, 23. 94 REED: Cumberland, Westmorland, Gloucestershire, 339. A list of players’ costumes from a decade earlier, in 1577–1578, lists six “sheepe skyns for Christes Garmentes” and two more hides, perhaps from lambs, for “thunder heades”—that is, threatening clouds (337). Entertainments, including a Lord of Misrule, disguisings, interludes, or plays, being proposed to Wolsey by the Bishop of Exeter for Princess Mary Tudor at Christmas in 1525–1526 at Tewkesbury, however, seem to be entirely an extension of the royal court rather than the offering of locals (see 335).

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auspices rather than being written for inclusion in a play cycle at Wakefield, which the pageants collected in the Towneley manuscript (Huntington Library MS. HM1) were formerly believed to be.95 As a parish or civic play, The Second Shepherds’ Play represented a type of drama that Lawrence Clopper has identified as related to “lay spiritual interests rather than a strictly clerical agenda.”96 However, the play has all the marks of being designed for outdoor production, and this alone would make it obviously less suitable for the indoor performance required during the Christmas season. Further, its anti-aristocratic stance might also have made The Second Shepherds’ Play highly unlikely to have been performed in this season under private auspices. If adequate resources were available, a good candidate for performance in the Christmas season might seem to be the segment of the N-Town collection that Peter Meredith has designated The Mary Play,97 though again this drama, like the Second Shepherds’ Play, seems to fit better into the summer repertoire as a longer and more expansive work. Nevertheless, during the festivities of the Christmas season—a time when there would have been no lack of play as opposed to plays in civic and parish circles—there in fact would have been considerable opportunity for vernacular productions, and here the dramatic records are particularly frustrating. What kind of plays or interludes might have been performed by players in examples like the unspecified play by players in the guildhall at Exeter in 1430–1431?98 From Epiphany to Candlemas Playing seems to have continued after Twelfth Night, in the Epiphany season leading up to Candlemas on February 2, which sometimes was regarded as the last day of the Christmas season. We know that these weeks were an extension of the festive Christmas period.99 While the dramatic records cite specific quasi-dramatic ceremony, they are not, however, very helpful in identifying actual plays that might 95 See Barbara D. Palmer, “‘Towneley Plays’ or ‘Wakefield Cycle’ Revisited,” CompD 21 (1987–1988): 318–48, and “Recycling ‘The Wakefield Cycle’: The Records,” RORD 41 (2002): 86–130. For a suggestion that The Second Shepherds’ Play might even have been performed by the chapel choristers of a noble household, see Westfall, Patrons and Performance, 49–52, but I think this is unlikely. 96 Lawrence M. Clopper, Drama, Play, and Game (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 205. 97 Peter Meredith, ed., The Mary Play from the N. Town Manuscript (London: Longman, 1987). 98 REED: Devon, 92. 99 According to Richard Carew’s Survey of Cornwall (1602), fol. 68v (also quoted in REED: Dorset, Cornwall, ed. Rosalind Conklin Hayes, C. E. McGee, Sally L. Joyce, and Evelyn S. Newlyn [Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999], 534), the entire period from the harvest to Candlemas was a special time of festivity and of hospitality during which those with sufficient wealth would open their houses. Unfortunately, Carew says nothing of entertainment during this period. Queen Elizabeth I would see plays mainly between Christmas and Shrovetide (Leeds Barroll, “Shakespeare, Noble Patrons, and the Pleasures of ‘Common’ Playing,” in Shakespeare and Theatrical Patronage in Early Modern England,

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have been thought appropriate to the season, though it may be appropriate below to speculate about two extant texts that would have been good fits. Very suggestive but nevertheless ambiguous are such records as those that indicate the welcoming of touring players then by the Earl of Northumberland at Wressle in 1524–1527, and the notice of payments to one Thomas Mayowe “for playing [ludenti], with seven lights on the feast of the Lord’s Nativity and the Purification” in 1509 at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin.100 At court in 1540, “a stadge for the players” was set up in Henry VIII’s chamber on Candlemas evening, without mention of the play performed.101 More extensive records report dramatic activity at Candlemas in the city of London, where the expense accounts of the Carpenters’ guild in the period 1495 to 1513 regularly include payments, ranging from 20d in 1496 to 6s 8d in 1507, to players at the time of this feast, but again the plays are not specified.102 Candlemas was a major feast, celebrating the return of light in the winter darkness. On this day, the Beverley Guild of St. Mary, founded in 1355, sponsored an annual procession of its members, both brothers and sisters, beginning at a location “away from the church.” One of the guild members “shall be clad in comely fashion as a queen, like to the glorious Virgin Mary, having what may seem a son in her arms; and two others shall be clad like to Joseph and Simeon; and two shall go as angels, carrying a candle-bearer, on which shall be twenty-four thick wax lights.” Accompanied with music and carrying candles, they are to walk, the sisters first and then the brothers going two by two, slowly pacing behind the Virgin and her Son to the church. “And when they have got there, the pageant Virgin shall offer her son to Simeon at the high altar; and all the sisteren and bretheren shall offer their wax lights, together with a penny each.”103 Impressive as this quasi-dramatic ceremony must have been, there is no definitive record of anything in England on this day like the spectacular Candlemas play reported at Florence in the fifteenth century by the ed. Paul Whitfield White and Suzanne R. Westfall [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002], 93). 100 Francis Grose and Thomas Astle, eds., The Antiquarian Repertory, new ed., 4 vols. (London, 1807–1809), 4:45, 138, 254, as cited by Ian Lancashire, Dramatic Texts and Records: A Chronological Topogaphy of Britain to 1558 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984), no. 1541; Alan J. Fletcher, Drama, Performance, and Polity in Pre-Cromwellian Ireland (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000), 78. The same entry in the St. Patrick’s accounts also identifies “players with the great angel and the little one and with the dragon [dracone] on the feast of Pentecost.” For discussion, see ibid., 78–80. 101 Lancashire, Dramatic Texts and Records, no. 729, citing Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII, ed. J. S. Brewer, J. Gairdner, and R. H. Brodie, 21 vols. (1862–1918), 16:203. 102 Records of the Worshipful Company of Carpenters, ed. Bower Marsh, 4 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1913–1916), 2:108 and passim. Earlier payments suggest that the tradition of paying for players at this time in the ritual year might have begun around 1554 (see 2:17). 103 English Gilds, ed. Toulmin Smith, EETS, o.s. 40 (London: N. Trübner, 1870), 149. This ceremony, using candles and dating from perhaps as early as the fifth century, was at first permitted “as yet” in 1539 and then prohibited; see Frere, ed., Visitation Articles and Injunctions, 2:184–85, 3:289.

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Compagnia della Purificazione. This company’s Purification play included the use of extensive stage properties, even a whale in one year, and a large cast of angels, twenty prophets in addition to Anna, sibyls, Simeon, and Mary and Joseph.104 One English play that has been claimed to have a connection with the Epiphany– Candlemas period, though the prologue in the extant text of 1512 designates it as associated with St. Anne’s Day (July 26), is the East Anglian Candlemes Day and the Kyllyng of þe Children of Israelle.105 This play is, according to Gail McMurray Gibson, intimately related in its function “both to the liturgical events of the Epiphany season that is its subject and to the popular calendar observance of the event.”106 To be sure, it must be observed that the play as it appears in the manuscript actually also serves as a bridge between the feast of Holy Innocents on December 28 and Candlemas, but this would not have deterred performance in the Epiphany season. Gibson suggests the possibility of performance on St. Distaff’s Day (January 7), when women resumed the work of spinning following the Christmas holidays, for the distaff was the implement with which the women of Bethlehem attempted to fend off the soldiers who were under orders to slay their children.107 With its simple staging demands, Candlemes Day and the Kyllyng of þe Children could have been adapted to the indoor production demanded by the season.108 The subject of derision but yet a popular figure in medieval drama, Herod in his role in sending the soldiers out to do his malevolent work is critical to the story, as had been recognized by the author of the Fleury Ordo Rachelis, the critical second half of The Play of Herod that has become one of the most popular of the liturgical dramas since first introduced by Noah Greenberg and the New York Pro Musica at The Cloisters, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in 1963.109 Slaughter of the Innocents iconography generally includes this corrupt and angry king along with scenes of homicide involving the male children of Israel.110 As early as the middle of the twelfth century a stone metal-casting mould found at Norwich includes both 104 See Nerida Newbigin, “The Word Made Flesh: The Rappresentazione of Mysteries and Miracles in Fifteenth-Century Florence,” in Christianity and the Renaissance: Image and Religious Imagination in the Quattrocento, ed. Timothy Verdon and John Henderson (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1990), 363–68. 105 For the text, see The Late Medieval Religious Plays of Bodleian MSS Digby 133 and E Museo 160, ed. Donald C. Baker, John L. Murphy, and Louis B. Hall, Jr., EETS, o.s. 283 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), 96–115. 106 Gibson, The Theater of Devotion, 42. A play on Candlemas was regularly performed at Swaffham, Norfolk, where a stage was set up for it, as noted in the town’s early sixteenthcentury records (Galloway and Wasson, eds., Records of Plays and Players in Norfolk and Suffolk, 99–100). 107 Gibson, The Theater of Devotion, 42–43. 108 See Baker et al., eds., The Late Medieval Religious Plays, lxii, but the drama was not necessarily suited to being a traveling company’s play. 109 For a performing score for this production, see The Play of Herod, ed. Noah Greenberg and W. L. Smoldon (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965). 110 For perceptive discussion of Herod’s wrath in the earlier liturgical drama and in the vernacular English plays, see Hans-Jürgen Diller, The Middle English Mystery Play (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 41–45 and passim.

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Herod and the slaughter.111 The Biblia Pauperum has the king standing and extending his scepter toward a kneeling woman who is lamenting the death of her child, while a knight in the background cruelly holds a nude child and stabs him in his privy parts with his sword.112 Fifteenth-century painted glass now in the east window of St. Peter Mancroft at Norwich has Herod, on his throne, actually participating in the carnage.113 In Candlemes Day and the Kyllyng of þe Children Herod is a combination of terrifying and comic as he sends out his henchmen to “sle alle tho children, without excepcion,/ Of to yeeres of age þat within Israelle bene” (87–88). The first soldier promises “to perse them alle bare” (99), which is precisely what is shown in the Biblia Pauperum woodcut noted above. What is surprising then is the introduction of the comic Watkyn, the untried young squire who wishes to prove his valor by using his “sharpe sworde” to pierce through the children’s “guttes, for anger and despight” (143–44). The children were undoubtedly represented by doll-like figures with bladders containing red “blood” that would flow forth when stabbed.114 Watkin, in spite of his bragging, predicts correctly that he will turn out to be a coward who is terrified of “a woman with a rokke” (161) or distaff. Watkyn and the knights are to walk around the platea during an interlude during which the Angel advises Joseph to escape to Egypt, and then the Holy Family will “go out of þe place” (280+s.d.). Thereafter, the attack on the mothers with children will begin. Swearing by their saint, “Mahounde” (Mohammed), the knights and Watkyn are given stiff resistance by the women, who fight back fiercely with their distaffs in a scene that mixes the seemingly tragic and the comic in a manner that may seem strange if it is not remembered that after their slaughter, the children as Holy Innocents will be taken into bliss, though this is not dramatized as it had been in the Ordo Rachelis. When, having rescued Watkyn from the women, the knights return in triumph to Herod after leaving behind a “flood” of blood “[i]n the stretes” (355), they will witness Herod undergoing a painful and richly deserved death—a death that is illustrated in the roof bosses of Norwich Cathedral.115 His blasphemous request to “Mahound” to take his “soule into thy holy hande” (385–86) is spoken as he 111 Jonathan Alexander and Paul Binski, eds., Age of Chivalry: Art in Plantagenet England, 1200–1400 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1987), no. 447 112 Avril Henry, Biblia Pauperum: A Facsimile and Edition (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987), 60. 113 Christopher Woodforde, The Norwich School of Glass-Painting in the Fifteenth Century (London: Oxford University Press, 1950), 27, pl. III; for other examples from the region, see Ann Eljenholm Nichols, The Early Art of Norfolk, EDAM Reference Series 7 (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2002), 64. 114 For the use of dolls, see Sophie Oosterwijk, “Of Mops and Puppets: The Ambiguous Word ‘Mop’ in the Towneley Plays,” Notes and Queries 242 (1997): 169–71; M. D. Anderson, Drama and Imagery in English Medieval Churches (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963), 137. A bladder to simulate the flow of blood when pierced appears to have been used in the Thomas Becket pageant at Canterbury; see REED: Kent, Diocese of Canterbury, 1:98; and cf. Leo Kirschbaum, “Shakespeare’s Stage Blood and Its Critical Significance,” PMLA 64 (1949): 517. 115 For roof bosses at Norwich Cathedral, see Anderson, Drama and Imagery, pl. 11; Nichols, The Early Art of Norfolk, 299; and a complete set of photographs included in

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collapses and dies, whereupon the drama moves on to the Purification in the temple, a scene which, since there is no return of the holy family from Egypt, may have been a separate play added at some date before being copied into the manuscript. The Purification, or Presentation in the Temple, involves iconography that likewise appears in roof bosses in Norwich Cathedral, where the Virgin Mary is giving an offering of doves to Simeon, who is also shown, making a gesture of blessing, before an altar.116 Another East Anglian example appears in a historiated initial in an early fourteenth-century book of hours (Norwich Castle Museum MS. 158.926f, fol. 53v), where Mary holds out the Child, who is tenderly touching his mother’s chin. Joseph has the basket with the doves. Simeon has his hands covered with a cloth as he stands behind the altar and prepares to receive Jesus.117 In the play, Simeon recites the Nunc dimittis in English as he takes the Child “in his armys” (437s.d.), while later this item will be sung by a group of “virgynes, as many as a man wylle,” who “holde tapers in ther handes” (465s.d.). It seems, of course, quite remarkable that young women or girls would be called on to play such a large role in a play such as this, and Richard Rastall suggests that, unless the simplified psalm-tone setting was used, their role might have been played by choir boys on account of their training.118 In either case, their singing will accompany Simeon’s procession around “þe tempille” (484+s.d.), and probably they, too, would have joined in by following after him as he processed. As Rastall has noted, “the procession apparently includes all present, although this is not stated clearly.”119 This is a replication of the Candlemas procession used in the Sarum rite, which in some cases was expanded, as in the fourteenth-century ritual of the Guild of St. Mary at Beverley that has been cited above.120 The last word in the Digby play is offered by the prophetess Anna, whose speech again refers to St. Anne and, hence, may have been tacked onto previously existing material. The drama ends with “menstralles” playing and “a daunce” (565–66). One also may be tempted so view the Chester Smiths’ “Candilmas dey” (so called in the early banns)121 as connected with this feast, though it is embedded in the Chester cycle, which was transferred to Whitsun week in the early sixteenth century. As a conservative reminder of attachment to the Old Religion by certain segments of the city’s population, including the Cathedral singers who were paid to participate in this play, it, nevertheless, remained part of the drama cycle until its suppression in the time of Queen Elizabeth.122 However plausibly it fits with Norwich Cathedral Roof Bosses, CD-Rom prepared by Julia Hedgecoe, with commentary by Martial Rose (Norwich: Norwich Cathedral, 2003). 116 Nichols, The Early Art of Norfolk, 63. 117 Lucy Freeman Sandler, Gothic Manuscripts, 1285–1385, 2 vols. (London: Harvey Miller, 1986), no. 47, fig. 107. 118 Rastall, The Heaven Singing, 173. 119 Rastall, The Heaven Singing, 261. 120 The relevance to Purification drama of the Beverley procession has been stressed by David Mills, “Religious Drama and Civic Ceremonial,” in Medieval Drama, The Revels History of Drama in English 1 (London: Methuen, 1983), 159–60. 121 REED: Chester, 36. 122 See Sally-Beth MacLean, “Marian Devotion in Post-Reformation Chester: Implications of the Smiths’ ‘Purification’ Play,” in The Middle Ages in the North-West, ed.

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Candlemas, it, nevertheless, was never recorded as being shown on that feast, though it was included among the performances for Prince Arthur on August 4, 1498, so at least on that occasion it was presented separately from the other plays in the Corpus Christi (later Whitsun) cycle.123 Holy Week and Easter Concluding the penitential season of Lent, when playing was normally prohibited (though traveling troupes continued to play),124 the Palm Sunday feast in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries was the occasion for a quasi-dramatic ceremony that included a boy prophet and costumed adult prophets played by singers of the cathedral or church. The best known perhaps is the rite as it was performed at Salisbury, the center from which the Sarum rite derived. This Palm Sunday ritual was adopted in many parish churches throughout the region that used the Sarum rite, including several in London.125 The practice was to begin a procession out-of-doors with the reading of the first Gospel, concluding with the words “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” A second procession, with relics and the Host, came from the church, before joining the main procession. The Host represented Christ, who then was greeted by singers representing the prophets, who sang texts from the Old Testament prophetic writings.126 A late medieval tradition was to have the boy prophet stand, whenever possible, on a high place on the exterior of the church when the people approached as if in the manner of the Entry into Jerusalem. He would point to the sacrament and sing. In the ceremony at Long Melford, Suffolk, a special exterior turret by the door of the Clopton Chapel in the parish church of the Holy Trinity was provided as the place from which the boy sang.127 At Salisbury boys on a platform sang Gloria laus et honor and tossed down cakes and flowers.128 The ceremony on Tom Scott and Pat Starkey (Oxford: Leopard’s Head Press, 1995), 237–55. 123 REED: Chester, 21. 124 For an example of a play or masque on the Greek Worthies and four other masques at the royal court that had to be postponed from Shrove Tuesday to Easter and Mayday in 1553, see Lancashire, Dramatic Texts and Records, no. 1058. For the observation that traveling troupes continued to play during Lent, I am indebted to Sally-Beth MacLean (personal email correspondence of July 3, 2005). 125 Mary C. Erler, “Palm Sunday Prophets and Processions and Eucharistic Controversy,” Renaissance Quarterly 48 (1995): 63–71; Henry John Feasy, Ancient Holy Week Ceremonial (London: Thomas Baker, 1897), 67–80. 126 That the prophets were specially costumed and fitted with beards, and perhaps also wigs, is indicated by London accounts from St. Peter Cheap and St. Mary-at-Hill; see Feasy, Ancient Holy Week Ceremonial, 76. 127 Davidson, Illustrations of the Stage and Acting, 15–16, fig. 18; Roger Martin, “The State of Melford Church and Our Ladie’s Chappel at the East End, as I did know it,” Gentleman’s Magazine 146, pt. 2 (1830): 206. For the late introduction of the boy prophet singing from a high place, see Nigel Davison, “So which way round did they go? The Palm Sunday Procession at Salisbury,” Music and Letters 61 (1980): 12. 128 See John Walton Tyrer, Historical Survey of Holy Week: Its Services and Ceremonial, Alcuin Club Collections 29 (London: Oxford University Press, 1932), esp. 58; and see also

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this occasion was important for other reasons, to be sure, including its adaptation at other times of the year for royal entries, when citizens with expressions of love welcomed their monarch as an anointed king,129 and as a model for the Entry into Jerusalem plays that appear in the civic biblical play cycles. But as an introduction to Holy Week, this symbolic engagement with the original Entry into Jerusalem in a mimetic show on Palm Sunday served to enhance the cultural memory of the central events of salvation history as understood in the late Middle Ages.130 The culmination of Holy Week was, of course, Easter. Among theater specialists, this day is associated with the Visitatio Sepulchri, which dramatizes the story of the three Marys at the tomb of Jesus and which appears for the first time in its simplest form in the Regularis Concordia of c.973 from Winchester.131 Its core is the Quem queritis exchange, in which the angel (or angels) at the tomb will ask the Marys “Whom do you seek?” and they answer, “Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified.” This is the little ceremony or music drama that was done on Easter morning, usually at the end of matins, and that was long believed to be the ancestor of all Western drama, which, according to this view, had emerged from it by an evolutionary process of gradual secularization. Proof of this was deduced from the development of more expansive versions of the Visitatio that included the race of Peter and John to the tomb (Type II) and the appearance of Jesus to Mary Magdalen (Type III) by the twelfth century. Thus, in 1933, even Karl Young organized his great Drama of the Medieval Church from the simplest forms to the most complex as if this were an inevitable historical progression. The evolutionary view, which is still repeated in many college courses in the development of the theater, was dominant until demolished by O. B. Hardison, Jr., in his Christian Rite and Christian Drama in the Middle Ages a generation ago.132 Subsequent research has further demonstrated that variations in the Visitatio texts and music had more to do with geography and location.133 The evidence points to the widespread mounting of this little play or Christopher Wordsworth, Ceremonies and Processions of the Cathedral Church of Salisbury (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1901), 67–68. 129 Gordon Kipling, Enter the King (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 44–45 and passim. 130 In England there is no sign of the Palmesel, or Palm Sunday ass, that was part of the Palm Sunday procession in German-speaking lands; see Clifford Davidson, Technology, Guilds, and Early English Drama (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1996), 19– 20, and 106 (nn. 19–20), though it is mentioned in Barnabe Googe’s translation of Thomas Kirschmayr’s Regnum Papisticum (The Popish Kingdome, or Reigne of Antichrist, written in Latine verse by Thomas Naogeorgus [London, 1570], fol. 50; quoted by Young, The Drama of the Medieval Church, 2:532). 131 Young, The Drama of the Medieval Church, 1:249–50; Pamela Sheingorn, The Easter Sepulchre in England, EDAM Reference Series 5 (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1887), 18–23; translation in David Bevington, Medieval Drama (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1975), 27–28. 132 O. B. Hardison, Jr., Christian Rite and Christian Drama in the Middle Ages (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1965), 1–34. 133 See David A. Bjork, “On the Dissemination of Quem quaeritis and the Visitatio sepulchri and the Chronology of Their Early Sources,” CompD 14 (1980): 46–69; and also

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ceremony (for it could be either, depending on the circumstances of performance) on the Continent,134 only spotty appearances in England,135 and minimal influence on vernacular traditions of playing as these emerge in the later Middle Ages. As a parallel tradition to the vernacular drama, the Visitatio has been associated especially with monasteries and cathedrals—for example, at Lincoln Cathedral, where it apparently was the form indicated in the cathedral records when reference was made to a “ludus resurreccionis” at Easter.136 Cathedral inventories list a temporary Easter sepulcher that would have been used for the Holy Week and Easter ceremonies and the play, and there remains at Lincoln a stationary tomb carved with sleeping soldiers on the north side of the choir, which was the usual place for it to be placed in a church.137 A Customary from Norwich Cathedral indicates that great reverence was expected in the acting of the three Marys.138 Costumes, rather than vestments such as those used at Winchester in the tenth century, are verified at Wells Cathedral, where payment was recorded for blue buckram for making mantles for the three persons impersonating the Marys in the Easter play (ludus) in 1418–1419.139 The Visitatio seems never to have achieved the wide popularity in Britain that it achieved on the Continent, and, unlike the vernacular biblical cycles of Chester, York, and Coventry, it did not survive the Reformation even for a short time since it depended on Latin service books, which had been proscribed. One wonders, however, if it had found its way into the private chapels of the more spiritually inclined families of England by the early sixteenth century. What, for example, was “the Play of Resurrection” that was performed on Easter morning at Wressle in the mid1520s? This play, presented in the chapel, was acted by the Earl of Northumberland’s servants and members of the chapel.140 Was it a Visitatio, or, perhaps more likely, a vernacular Resurrection play? Records of an Easter play, possibly of St. Mary Michael Norton, “Of ‘Stages’ and ‘Types’ in Vistatione Sepulchri,” CompD 21 (1987): 34–61, 127–44. 134 For the large number of examples of the Visitatio Sepulchri on the Continent in comparison with the British examples, albeit incomplete through the widespread destruction of service books, see Walther Lipphardt, Lateinische Osterfeiern und Osterspiel, 9 vols. (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1975–90). 135 See the records and texts cited in Sheingorn, The Easter Sepulchre in England, passim. 136 Records of Plays and Players in Lincolnshire, 26. 137 Wordsworth, “Inventories of Plate, Vestments, &c.,” 81; Sheingorn, The Easter Sepulchre in England, 208–10; Davidson, Illustrations of the Stage and Acting, fig. 13. For temporary Easter sepulchers, see Ulla Haastrup, “Medieval Props in the Liturgical Drama,” Hafnia 11 (1987): 140–46, figs. 9–12; Audrey Ekdahl Davidson, Holy Week and Easter Ceremonies and Dramas from Medieval Sweden, EDAM Monograph Series 13 (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1990), fig. 3. 138 Sheingorn, The Easter Sepulchre in England, 250. 139 REED: Somerset, 1:243. 140 Grose and Astle, eds., The Antiquarian Repertory, 4:258–59; as cited by Lancashire, Dramatic Texts and Records, no. 1543. See Lancashire, “Orders for Twelfth Day and Night,” 13, for the suggestion that this chapel play might have been written by one William Pyers (Peers).

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Magdalen, at Magdalen College, Oxford, are even less revealing, though this could have been a Type III Visitatio.141 The difficulty actually may lie not only in the vagueness but also in the sparseness of records, which as we have just seen can be tantalizing while withholding precisely what we desire to know. Archaeological evidence is also difficult to interpret, though the presence of many existing Easter sepulchers in parish churches will lead to the suspicion that the Visitatio was present in more locations in Britain than can be verified from textual or records evidence.142 The rare reference to the Easter sepulcher at the Church of St. Mary Magdalene at Taunton that was used for a Type III Visitatio or a vernacular play on the topic occurs in a will of 1504, when Dame Agnes Burton left a “rede damaske mantell” to the “Sepulchre service” and a “mantell lyned with silke” to the “Mary Magdalen play.”143 At St. Saviour’s Church at Dartmouth, Devon, in 1494–1495 a painter was paid “for payntyng of the clothes for the play on Ester day”—a sign that costumes were used there too in whatever kind of play was performed.144 The best example of the Visitatio, with music, anywhere in the British Isles is contained in two manuscripts of c.1400 (Dublin, Marsh’s Library MS. Z.4.2.20, and Oxford, Bodleian Library MS. Rawlinson liturg.D.4) associated with the Church of St. John the Evangelist in Dublin.145 This is an example of Type II, but has extensive rubrics which specify the occasion (after the third respond of Matins), costumes (surplices, covered by silk copes, for the Marys), props (pyxes for spice jars), and directions for movement. The Marys are to enter through the nave of the church, which unfortunately was demolished in the nineteenth century so the exact design of the structure cannot be determined.146 Then they lament the loss of Jesus as they go up into the choir and toward the Easter sepulcher, whereupon they ask, “Who shall roll back the stone from the entrance of the burial chamber?” immediately before they are challenged by the angel with the traditional “Quem queritis” question. The fact that the Marys entered the sepulcher indicates that it was not a coffer tomb but a standing structure or even a chapel into which they could actually step.147 At the end, following the race of Peter and John to the empty sepulcher, the choir sang Scimus christum surrexisse a mortuis with loud voice, and then the liturgy continued with the Te Deum.

141 REED: Oxford, 1:38, 46, 52, 63. 142 For a catalogue, see Sheingorn, The Easter Sepulchre in England, 77–368. 143 REED: Somerset, 1:227. For an illustration of the interior of this church, see Davidson, Illustrations of the Stage and Acting, fig. 17, and for a tomb chest that may have been used as an Easter sepulcher, see Sheingorn, The Easter Sepulchre in England, 302. 144 REED: Devon, 62. 145 Fletcher, Drama, Performance, and Polity in Pre-Cromwellian Ireland, 289–301. 146 See, however, Fletcher, Drama, Performance, and Polity, 63–68. 147 For Easter sepulcher chapels, see Davidson, Illustrations of the Stage and Acting, 10, and the exploration of some Continental examples by Dunbar H. Ogden, “The Visitatio Sepulchri: Public Enactment and Hidden Rite,” EDAMR 16 (1994): 95–102, with further consideration of staging space in the same author’s The Staging of Drama in the Medieval Church (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2002), 39–99.

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Monastic records are also spotty, but the presence of a Visitatio at the Benedictine monastery at Eynsham in Oxfordshire may be significant. Eynsham was not a major house, but it nevertheless is known annually to have enacted a Type III Visitatio following Matins; this not only “shewid vysybly . . . howe the angel apperid and spake to the wemen at the sepulture,” including his command to announce the Resurrection to the disciples, presumably Peter and John, but also how “our Lord apperyd to his wel-belouyd Mary Mawdelen . . . in the figure of a gardner.”148 A Type III Visitatio was, however, present in a processional, known only through a nineteenth-century copy, from the great convent of St. Edith at Wilton.149 Susan Rankin notes that in this case the Mary Magdalen scene, in which the figure she meets while she is kneeling at the sepulcher called “angelus” in the rubrics, is “unique.”150 Better known is the Barking Visitatio, ordered sometime after 1358 by the abbess, Katherine of Sutton. This was part of a program of liturgical drama for the season that also included a representation of the Harrowing of Hell using a chapel in which the nuns represented the souls led out of limbo, all done for the stimulation of devotion.151 Beginning at the choir of their church, the nuns processed with unlit candles to the west and down into the chapel of St. Mary Magdalen that represented Limbo, and the door was shut upon them. Then a priest, representing the soul of Jesus coming to hell after the Crucifixion, arrived with attendants and knocked three times on the door with his cross staff, which had a banner on it, as in illustrations of the event. With each knocking Jesus and his attendants sang the antiphon Tollite portas, “Open up, ye gates, O ye princes.” Those who sat in darkness, like the Fathers released by Jesus at the Harrowing, as commonly depicted in the visual arts, were then led forth into light. Such an experience would hardly have been offered on the parish level. Even less likely than the Wressle and Taunton plays cited above to have been examples of the Latin Visitatio are several Resurrection dramas mounted at parishes in the Thames valley. These are Kingston-upon-Thames on Easter day (1520), Thame on Easter Tuesday (1522–1538), and Reading initially on Easter Monday, but later over two days in Easter week (1506–1534). At Henley (1511), the play was performed a week after Easter day, on Quasimodo Sunday, and involved the parish priest.152 148 The Revelation of the Monk of Eynsham, ed. Robert Easting, EETS, o.s. 318 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 27; I quote from the English translation of this work, which is printed on the page facing the Latin text. See also Rosemary Woolf, The English Mystery Plays (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1972), 18. 149 Susan K. Rankin, “A New English Source of the Visitatio Sepulchri,” Journal of the Plainsong and Mediaeval Music Society 4 (1981): 1–11. 150 Rankin, “A New English Source,” 1, 5, 9. Rankin comments that “the part was probably taken by the same priest who represented the angel at the sepulchre” (1). 151 Young, The Drama of the Medieval Church, 1:166–67, 381–85; Sheingorn, The Easter Sepulchre in England, 133–37; see also Ann Faulkner, “The Harrowing of Hell at Barking Abbey,” in The Iconography of Hell, ed. Clifford Davidson and Thomas H. Seiler, EDAM Monograph Series 17 (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1992), 141–57. 152 MacLean, “Festive Liturgy and the Dramatic Connection,” 54–55, 60–61. At St. Lawrence, Reading, a chantry priest named Laborne wrote out a playbook for this play (Alexandra F. Johnston, “‘What Revels are in Hand?’ Dramatic Activities Sponsored by

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Records from Rye, one of the Cinq Ports in Kent, from 1522 report that a stage was being constructed for a Resurrection drama “at Easter” that included “the part of Almighty God,” for whom a “coate” was provided,153 and the setting up of stages was also noted for the Kingston and Reading plays.154 And while it could be that “the Resurreccion att Ester” of which the city waits of Exeter were to “geve wornyng” in 1544–1545 was a Visitatio at the cathedral or a parish church,155 this is less probable than that it was similar to the other plays cited here, all more likely to have been vernacular drama designed to enhance the cultural memory of the Resurrection. In any case, they are more likely to represent the standard in parish Resurrection plays than the Latin Visitatio. It is not possible, so far as I know, to ascertain whether they were organized around an Easter sepulcher in each case. But sepulchers had other uses than the Visitatio that can be documented to have existed widely throughout Britain, and these involved the quasi-dramatic Depositio and Elevatio ceremonies that were performed on Good Friday and on Easter morning prior to the enactment of the Visitatio. At the Long Melford parish church, preparation of the sepulcher for these rites was effected on Maundy Thursday, as the mid-sixteenth-century account by the recusant Roger Martin explained. Martin indicated that it was set in the choir on the north side of the high altar and that it “was a fair planted [painted] frame of timber, . . . with holes for a number of fair tapers to stand in before the sepulchre, and to be lighted in service time.”156 The Depositio, or Burial rite, took place after the singing of the Passion from St. John’s gospel, itself a quasi-dramatic performance with roles being sung but not acted,157 and the creeping to the cross on Good Friday. The rite involved the solemn placing of a Host that had been consecrated on Maundy Thursday and, usually, a cross that sometimes included a corpus, in the sepulcher. At Durham, this was described as “a goodly large Crucifix, all of gold, of the picture of our Saviour Christ nailed uppon the crosse, lyinge uppon a velvett cushion, havinge St. Cuthbert’s armes uppon it all Parishes of the Thames Valley,” in English Parish Drama, ed. Alexandra F. Johnston and Wim Hüsken [Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996], 99). 153 Lancashire, Dramatic Texts and Records, no. 1346, citing William Holloway, The History and Antiquities of the Ancient Town and Port of Rye (London: John Russell Smith, 1847), 491. 154 Lancashire, Dramatic Texts and Records, no. 816, citing D. Lysons, The Environs of London (1792), 1:229–30; and MacLean, “Festive Liturgy and the Dramatic Connection,” 55. 155 REED: Devon, 140. 156 Martin, “The State of Melford Church,” 206. See also Sheingorn, The Easter Sepulchre in England, 313–15, for more details. 157 The singing of the Passion Gospel on Good Friday has been generally ignored by students of the drama, but important aspects call for our attention. There were commonly rubrics that were indicative of the quality of the sound and dynamic markings, as when Jesus is to have a sweet and not too loud tone, while the Jews are to be loud and brash, with unpleasant vocal qualities, to signify their attitude toward Christ. Some gestures might be specified, and choral passages might be introduced to represent the crowd. For a convenient survey, see Audrey Ekdahl Davidson, The Quasi-Dramatic St. John Passions of Scandinavia and Their Medieval Background (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1981), 17–25.

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imbroydered with gold.”158 It is possible that the Brigittine double monastery, Syon Abbey, followed the same ritual as Brigittine houses on the Continent, in which a woodcarving of Christ’s body, with jointed arms so that it could be removed from the cross and then placed in the sepulcher, was treated with reverence as if it actually were the body of the Lord.159 In England the Depositio was suppressed in 1548, approximately a decade after the dissolution of Syon Abbey and all other monastic houses in England in the 1530s,160 but previously the ritual had been a focal point for Holy Week devotion for a very long time, at the last being a particularly popular adjunct to lay piety.161 Unusually, this rite was very much in the mind of the author of a vernacular Burial play in Bodleian Library MS. E Museo 160, which will be discussed in the final chapter of the present book. The Elevatio ceremony occurred on Easter, when the Host, which had been deposited on Good Friday, would be removed from the sepulcher early in the morning. This quasi-dramatic rite was performed at Durham between 2:00 and 3:00 in the morning, when two monks came to the sepulcher, which was “all covered with red velvett and embrodered with gold,” and censed it while kneeling. Then they took out “a marvelous beautifull Image of our Saviour, representing the resurrection, with a crosse in his hand, in the breast wherof was enclosed in bright christall the holy Sacrament of the Altar.” This image, described as “another picture” of Christ (differentiating it from the crucifix used in the Depositio), had been deposited in the sepulcher when it “was sett upp in the morninge” on Good Friday. In the Elevatio the image was raised up on high and, while Christus resurgens was sung, was carried to the high altar. An elaborate procession around the church followed, at last terminating at the high altar where the image was “to remaine untill the Ascension day.”162 This description of the Durham ritual dates from many decades after the dissolution of

158 A Description or Breife Declaration of All the Ancient Monuments, Rites, and Customes Belonginge or Beinge within the Monastical Church of Durham before the Suppression, ed. James Raine (London: J. B. Nichols, 1842), 9–10. See also John McKinnell, The Sequence of the Sacrament at Durham (Middlesbrough: Centre for Local Historical Research, University of Teesside, 1998), 18–20. 159 Davidson, Holy Week and Easter Ceremonies, 112. For an extant example of c.1500 at the former Brigittine house at Mariager, Denmark, see ibid., fig. 3; Haastrup, “Medieval Props in the Medieval Drama,” 142–43, fig. 10; and Poul Grinder-Hansen, “Public Devotional Pictures in Late Medieval Denmark,” in Images of Cult and Devotion: Function and Reception of Christian Images in Medieval and Post-Medieval Europe, ed. Søren Kaspersen and Ulla Haastrup (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2004), 236–37, fig. 7. The presence at all times of a holy grave in Brigittine churches was specified by the ordinances of the order. 160 Pamela Sheingorn, “‘No Sepulchre on Good Friday’: The Impact of the Reformation on the Easter Rites in England,” in Iconoclasm vs. Art and Drama, ed. Clifford Davidson and Ann Eljenholm Nichols, EDAM Monograph Series 11 (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1989), 150–55. For a carved figure of this type, see fig. 2, p. 44, below. 161 Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars, 29–37. 162 A Description or Breife Declaration, 10–11. For discussion of the use of both the crucifix and an image at Durham, see John McKinnell, “Drama and Ceremony in the Last Years of Durham Priory,” Medieval English Theatre 10 (1988): 103.

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the monasteries, but it gives a unique account of the physical acts accompanying the Easter liturgy in the early sixteenth century. Elsewhere, however, the presence of a Resurrection drama was not necessarily indicative of performance in the Easter season. For example, a vernacular Resurrection play, performed outof doors and by masked players, is recorded in c.1220 at Beverley, but this seems to have been at a more propitious time of year, in the summer.163 One possibility that has been suggested is that the Beverley play was related to the AngloNorman La Seint Resureccion,164 but it seems more likely that the drama in this case would have been designed to appeal to a broader audience and hence would most likely have been in English. As we have seen, a number of other references to Easter plays also seem to indicate vernacular drama. But the Officium Resurreccionis and the Peregrinus from Lichfield, both designated as “representations,”165 do appear among the Shrewsbury Fragments as examples that, like the Shrewsbury Officium Pastorum, combine aspects of liturgical drama with the vernacular and would have been designed specifically for Easter and the following week. Only the Third Mary’s speeches, in Latin and English, along with her cues are retained for the first of these two plays, and there are specifications, including notation, for the music that was to be sung.166 This includes a text querying “who shall remove the stone from the tomb” as, carrying their ointments to anoint the body, the Marys approach the sepulcher. The beginning lines of the Third Mary’s final speech are derived from the Easter sequence Victimae Paschali laudes and are paraphrased freely in English: Crist is rysen, wittenes we By tokenes þat we haue sen þis morn! Oure hope, oure help, oure hele, is he, And hase bene best, sithe we were born! If we wil seke him for to se, Lettes noght þis lesson be forlorn; But gose euen vnto Galilee — Þere schal ȝe fynd him ȝow beforn! (37–44)

The Peregrinus, which gives the speeches of Cleophas and cues for the other characters, is a drama based on the Emmaus story that was associated liturgically with Easter Monday. It included some further singing, most noticeably a setting of the anti-Semitic Infidelis incursum populi, lacking music here but sung apparently by all the disciples and not merely the two whom Jesus meets on the way to Emmaus.167 As they are talking prior to recognizing Jesus, the two disciples sing Mane nobiscum, an

163 Lancashire, Dramatic Texts and Records, no. 375; James Raine, ed., The Historians of the Church of York and Its Archbishops (1879), 328–30. 164 “A Canterbury Manuscript; The Play of the Resurrection from a 13th Century Library,” The Times, Dec. 28, 1937, 13–14. 165 Statutes of Lincoln Cathedral, 2:1:15; Rankin, “Shrewsbury School, Manuscript VI,” 131; Rastall, The Heaven Singing, 89. 166 Rastall, The Heaven Singing, 102–6. 167 Rastall, The Heaven Singing, 93.

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Easter antiphon that also appears in the Peregrinus from Beauvais Cathedral.168 After Cleophas explains that “Went he is, and we ne wot how” (51)—that is, Jesus, whom they recognize only after he has disappeared from their sight after breaking bread and blessing it—they sing again.169 An interesting point is Cleophas’s statement that the risen Jesus “cutt oure bred withouten knyfe” (75). The play concludes with a Gloria normally attached to a liturgical item and another short Latin text, Frater Thoma, causa tristicie, with music.170 Apparently, these plays were designed to be presented before a mixed lay and clerical audience or, perhaps to be more exact, congregation, some of its members familiar with the Latin and some not. One thing is certain, and that is that these plays are connected to the larger tradition of liturgical drama on the Continent. There was, however, a play at Lincoln Cathedral that may have been a liturgical Peregrinus similar to Continental examples. This play was presented in the Easter season between 1321 and 1369. It was designated as Ludus de Sancto Thoma didimo and reported as being done in the cathedral nave.171 Spring and Summer Entertainment, as opposed to ritual, was officially proscribed after Shrove Tuesday, so it will be no surprise to see that mention of minstrels and players, suppressed during Lent, reappear in the record—for example, at Worcester, in the accounts of both the Cathedral and the household of Prior William More.172 Further, it was the case, according to Ronald Hutton, that “upon Easter Monday . . . the sports and fairs began in earnest.”173 Except in rare years, St. George’s Day, on April 23, occurred after Easter, and as a saint adopted as England’s patron his feast day could be a great occasion of pageantry, including ridings, most famously perhaps at Norwich where St. George was a popular figure who appeared in armor on horseback along with retainers, the lady (called “the Margaret”), and the dragon. The Norwich riding began with a mock battle at St. William’s Wood174 outside the city walls, a location consistent with illustrations of the battle in the visual arts. A payment in 1429 was made to a man for “playing in the dragon with gunpowder,” obviously a special effect 168 Rastall, The Heaven Singing, 93, 106; see Young, The Drama of the Medieval Church, 1:468. 169 Rastall, The Heaven Singing, 93, notes that the music seems unique to the play; see also the frontispiece to Non-Cycle Plays and Fragments, ed. Davis. Disappearances, as well as appearances, are discussed by Philip Butterworth, Magic on the Early English Stage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 74–97. 170 Rastall, The Heaven Singing, 108–9; Harrison, “Notes on the Music,” 133. 171 Records of Plays and Players in Lincolnshire, 24–25. 172 REED: Herefordshire, Worcestershire, ed. David Klausner (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990), 397, 502, 506, 520. As noted above, the official proscription was not always observed. 173 Hutton, The Stations of the Sun, 205; for discussion, see 204–13. 174 Records of the Gild of St. George in Norwich, 1389–1547, ed. Mary Grace, Norfolk Record Society 9 (1937), 2, 72, and passim. For the significance of beginning outside the walls, see Riches, St. George: Hero, Martyr and Myth, 138–39.

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designed as a concession to the iconography of dragons as fire-breathing creatures.175 At Norwich the riding might, to be sure, be moved from St. George’s Day to a different day, as also at Leicester where a 1523 order pertained that commanded “the George to be ridden, according to ancient custom, that is to say, between St. George’s Day and Whit-Sunday, unless there is reasonable cause.”176 Saint plays sometimes were performed either on or in close proximity to the feast day of the saint, but sometimes not. At Bassingbourn in 1511, for example, a play of the “holy martir seynt georg” was staged on the feast day of St. Margaret, 20 July.177 Prior to the Reformation, the celebration of St. George’s Day was a sign of the widespread prevalence of the cult of the saint which became central to the Order of the Garter that was founded by Edward III. As a Church festival, it was elevated to a principal feast by Archbishop Chichele in 1415.178 Not surprisingly, perhaps, relics purporting to be of the saint appeared in inventories, as at the Collegiate Church of St. Mary, Warwick, which had a “horn of glory that was sant Gorges,” a fragment of his knee, and a piece of the stone on which his blood had fallen when he was martyred.179 Lincoln had one of the saint’s joints, a fragment of his collarbone, and a piece of his breastplate.180 Salisbury Cathedral had two unspecified relics of the saint, one of which was probably the item placed in the “little cross, curiously ornate,” containing also relics of the Holy Innocents.181 St. Mary’s Cathedral at Coventry claimed an image of the saint “with a bone of his in his shelde.”182 Norwich’s Guild 175 Records of the Gild of St. George in Norwich, 17. 176 Thomas North, A Chronicle of the Church of S Martin in Leicester during the Reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary and Elizabeth (London, 1866), 238, as quoted by Riches, St. George, 137. For further discussion of pageants and plays of St. George, see my article “The Middle English Saint Play and Its Iconography,” in The Saint Play in Medieval Europe, ed. Clifford Davidson, EDAM Monograph Series 8 (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1986), 60–69; Alan H. Nelson, The Medieval English Stage (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), 121–22; and the brief comments of Hutton, The Rise and Fall of Merry England, who lists further communities with St. George processions and comments that “St George’s Day can still be described as one of the national festivals of early sixteenth-century England” (27). 177 Records of the Gild of St. George in Norwich, 34; J. Charles Cox, Churchwardens’ Accounts (London: Methuen, 1913), 270; B. Hale Wortham, “Churchwardens’ Accounts of Bassingbourne,” The Antiquary 7 (1883): 25. For records of saint plays which may have been staged on or in proximity to feast days, see Davidson “The Middle English Saint Play,” 31–122. 178 Farmer, The Oxford Dictionary of Saints, 166. 179 Clifford Davidson and Jennifer Alexander, The Early Art of Coventry, Stratfordupon-Avon, Warwick, and Lesser Sites in Warwickshire, EDAM Reference Series 4 (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1985), 172, citing British Library, Harley MS. 7505, fol. 7. 180 Christopher Wordsworth, Notes on Mediaeval Services in England, with an Index of Lincoln Ceremonies (London: Thomas Baker, 1898), 148. 181 Wordsworth, Ceremonies and Processions of the Cathedral Church of Salisbury, 55, 162. 182 Davidson and Alexander, The Early Art, 171, citing British Library, Egerton MS. 2603.

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of St. George had a reliquary “beryng þe Arme of Seynt George þe whiche was yoven’ to þe seid Fraternite by John Fastolf Knyght.”183 Following the dissolution of religious guilds by Edward VI, the George in the Norwich procession became secularized, with “for pastyme the dragon to com In and shew hym selff as in other yeares” but with the figures of the saint and the lady suppressed: “Ther shalbe neyther George nor Margett.”184 Replicas of the medieval dragon, none earlier than the eighteenth century, are extant and to be seen in the Norwich Castle Museum.185 A large number of images of the saint have survived at Norwich and the surrounding region as well as elsewhere in England, however, so a very clear idea is available to suggest the appearance of the George as he sparred with the dragon in pageantry. A late fifteenth-century wall painting at the Church of St. Gregory, Norwich, presented the saint in armor with a red cross on his jupon, feathers on his helmet, and a raised sword (fig. 1). The dragon is being trampled by St. George’s horse and has a broken lance thrust through his mouth. This scene, which includes the princess leading a lamb at the right, is placed against the backdrop of city walls surrounding a castle, from which the king and queen look down.186 Quite typical also is the statue of St. George in plate armor slaying the dragon (c.1470–1490), formerly in the Chapel of St. George, Gosford Gate, at Coventry,187 where the saint figured in a pageant for Prince Edward in 1474, albeit five days later than the regular feast day.188 On this occasion St. George appeared in armor with the dragon along with “a kynges doughter knelyng a fore hym with a lambe and the fader and the moder beyng in a toure a boven.”189 From nearby Stratford-upon-Avon, a wall painting of St. George slaying a winged and serpent-tailed dragon, already injured with a lance through his neck, is positioned on the west wall of the nave, while the princess, also crowned, appears with a lamb on a leash. The crowned king and queen, her parents, look on from the battlements of castle above.190 This scene 183 Records of the Gild of St. George in Norwich, 31. 184 REED: Norwich 1540–1642, ed. David Galloway (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984), 47. 185 Davidson, Illustrations of the Stage and Acting, 27–28, fig. 31. 186 Ernest A. Kent, “The Mural Painted of St. George in St. Gregory’s Church, Norwich,” Norfolk Archaeology 25 (1934): 167–69, including C. J. W. Winter’s watercolor of the wall painting before wrongheaded restoration and further damage; Nikolaus Pevsner and Bill Wilson, Norfolk 1: Norwich and North-East, Buildings of England (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1997), 238, fig. 50. See also Nichols, The Early Art of Norfolk, 197, who lists other representations of St. George in the city and in the surrounding county. 187 Davidson and Alexander, The Early Art, 48, fig. 17. 188 REED: Coventry, ed. R. W. Ingram (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981), 54. 189 REED: Coventry, 54. Compare the reference to the St. George pageant at Dublin in the mid-sixteenth century, when the saint appeared on horseback, attended by four other horsemen and “a Mayd well aparelled to lead the Dragon” by means of “a good Line.” The princess’ father and mother (“the King of Dele and the Queene of Dele”), the latter led by two knights and with two maids “to beare the trayne of her goune,” were also part of the show (Fletcher, Drama, Performance, and Polity in Pre-Cromwellian Ireland, 138). 190 Clifford Davidson, The Guild Chapel Wall Paintings at Stratford-upon-Avon (New York: AMS Press, 1988), 30–31, fig. 15. Currently this wall painting is nearly faded away;

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Figure 1

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St. George and the Dragon. Wall painting, Church of St. Gregory, Norwich.

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replicates the killing of the dragon event in the Golden Legend. The pageantry seems usually to have paraded these figures, as in the revival of “the auncient Custome” of “the Solempne procession” or riding on St. George’s Day in 1554 at York, where the George in armor, the “may,” and the king and queen were participants along with constructed figures of not only the dragon (of canvas and lath) but also St. Christopher, which were carried through the streets.191 There was also a play on that day in which the York city waits performed, as they had likewise done in the riding. This play probably featured an aspect of St. George’s legendary life, most likely, of course, his fight with the dragon, but we cannot be sure from the bare accounting in the City Chamberlains’ books.192 Between Easter and Ascension Day and on through the summer, seemingly unlimited opportunities, both modest and great, for play, game, and entertainment were available in Britain. The great London Passion Play, presented by the clerks at Clerkenwell (or nearby Skinners’ Well) over several days in the late fourteenth century and the early fifteenth century, were mounted between Midsummer, the feast of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist on June 24, and August 29.193 In 1390 this was said to be a “play of the Passion of our Lord and the Creation of the World,” and was misidentified as early as the sixteenth century as a Corpus Christi play, in spite of the fact that there originally was no association with this festival. While a skeptical view of the documentation has been put forward by Lawrence M. Clopper, the records indicate performance before royalty, and this alone, as Anne Lancashire insists, would have made the performances something more than “mere parish fundraisers, and would have had lavish resources poured into them.”194 The London plays were, at least in some years, major theatrical events. On the holidays and festivals of spring and the earlier part of summer, especially on May Day, liturgically identified as the feast of SS. Philip and James, and June, entertainment rather than fully staged plays tended to dominate in smaller towns and villages where parish fund-raisers or church ales were often a principal means of supporting the fabric of the church.195 Popular in parts of the country, noticeably in the southwest, was Robin Hood, who with his merry band seems mainly to have improvised dramatic action, though some scholars have been reluctant to see such

see Davidson and Alexander, The Early Art, 73–74. Stratford also sponsored a pageant of St. George, but on Ascension Day rather than the regular feast day of the saint, in the early sixteenth century. The dragon required mending in 1547, and in 1557 was carried by three men. See Minutes and Accounts of the Corporation of Stratford-upon-Avon, ed. Richard Savage, Dugdale Society 1 (1921), xix–xx. 191 REED: York, ed. Alexandra F. Johnston and Margaret Rogerson, 2 vols. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979), 1:310, 318–19; Eileen White, “‘Bryngyng forth of Saynt George’: The St. George Celebrations in York,” METh 3 (1981): 114–21. 192 REED: York, 1:318. 193 Lancashire, London Civic Theatre, 54–62. 194 Lawrence M. Clopper, “London and the Problem of the Clerkenwell Plays,” CompD 34 (2000): 291–303; Lancashire, London Civic Theatre, 240. 195 See Hutton, The Rise and Fall of Merry England, 28–31.

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entertainment as plays when unscripted.196 Extant are only two short combat dramas from East Anglia that in fact have scripts.197 The appearance of Robin Hood in a locale was not usually an annual (or nearly annual) event, the case of the early sixteenth-century church ale at the flourishing market town of Kingston-uponThames apparently being one of the exceptions.198 Another exception is the church ale at Yeovil in Somerset with record of Robin Hood, Little John, and the Sheriff on twenty-two occasions between 1516 and 1578.199 As James Stokes notes, the role of Robin Hood here was important, and the person to play the role was regularly a former senior warden of the parish church of St. John the Baptist.200 The accounts make clear that the purpose of Robin Hood entertainment was to raise money, which was turned over to the churchwardens. “Players Garments” are indicated at Yeovil, but otherwise there is reference in this village only to ribbons, lace, and bow and arrows.201 Yet it has been pointed out that in this case nearly half of the funds raised for the support of this small parish was from such entertainments, aptly called “gatherings.”202 John Marshall notes that in Devon among the ten percent of parishes with extant records nearly a quarter reported Robin Hood’s presence,203 and the records continued until the suppression of these types of entertainment as parish fund raisers in the 1560s.204 A play of Robin Hood is in evidence, perhaps at the 196 I have argued against the neglect of improvised theatrics in my “Improvisation in Medieval Drama,” Improvisation in the Arts of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, ed. Timothy J. McGee (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2003), 193–221, esp. 194–97. 197 These were edited by W. W. Greg in MSC 1, pt. 2 (Oxford, 1908), 117–42, while a text with conjectural speech attributions appears in David Wiles, The Early Plays of Robin Hood (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1981), 71–79. For a compendium of useful texts, see Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Tales, ed. Stephen Knight and Thomas Ohlgren (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1997). 198 See Sally-Beth MacLean, “King Games and Robin Hood: Play and Profit at Kingston-upon-Thames,” RORD 29 (1986–87): 85–94, and chap. 4, below. John Leland reported that this site was “the best market towne of all Southerey [Surrey]” (The Itinerary, ed. Lucy Toulmin Smith, 5 vols. [reprint Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1964], 4:86). For up-to-date survey of Robin Hood entertainments, I am indebted to John Marshall, who has kindly allowed me in advance of publication to read his “Gathering in the Name of the Outlaw: REED and Robin Hood,” in REED in Review: Essays in Celebration of the First 25 Years (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006), 65–84, esp. 93–94. 199 REED: Somerset, Including Bath, ed. James Stokes and Robert J. Alexander, 2 vols. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), 1:405–11. 200 REED: Somerset, Including Bath, 2:482. 201 REED: Somerset, Including Bath, 2:482. 202 French, “Parochial Fund-Raising in Late Medieval Somerset,” in The Parish in English Life, ed. French et al., 127. 203 Marshall, “Gathering in the Name of the Outlaws,” 73. For a list of the extant churchwardens’ accounts, see Hutton, The Rise and Fall of Merry England, 263–93. For discussion of the text of a Robin Hood play or game associated with a household—an occurrence not elsewhere recorded—see John Marshall, “‘goon into Bernysdale’: The trail of the Paston Robin Hood Play,” Leeds Studies in English, n.s. 29 (1998): 185–217. 204 See Johnston and MacLean, “Reformation and Resistance in Thames/Severn Parishes,” 190, and Hutton, The Rise and Fall of Merry England, 100. Condemnation of Robin

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earliest date in any extant record, at the cathedral town of Exeter in 1426–1427,205 but outside of London most larger towns and university communities provide little evidence of any such activity. Records from Chester, Coventry, York, Cambridge, and Oxford, for example, report none.206 This does not mean an absence of summer entertainment at larger centers. Midsummer eve, given legitimacy through being distinguished as the vigil of a principal feast day dedicated to the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, was, in fact, the last great pagan festival of Northern Europe207 but also a time when entertainments and military displays, probably originally designed to counter earlier traditions felt to be disorderly, were organized, as at Coventry,208 London,209 and Chester.210 Disorder is, in fact, suggested in a letter from Henry VIII, who noted “sundrye occasyons of evyll” in connection with the date and in this instance canceling the 1539 London Midsummer Watch, probably with ulterior motives in mind.211 The Midsummer Watch on the nights of June 24 and 29, the vigils of the feasts of St. John the Baptist and SS. Peter and Paul, respectively, had a marching component

Hood plays as subversive occurred earlier in the first phase of the Reformation. A document cited by Sydney Anglo and tentatively attributed by him to Sir Richard Morison called for the suppression of these summer plays, which included “mayde Marian and freer Tuck, wherin besides the lewdenes and rebawdry that ther is opened to the people, disobedience also to your officers, is tought, whilest these good bloodes go about to take from the shiref of Notyngham one that for offendyng the lawes shulde have suffered execution” (“An Early Tudor Programme for Plays and Other Demonstrations against the Pope,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 20 [1957]: 179). 205 REED: Devon, xvi, 89. 206 See the list, compiled prior to the most recent research in dramatic records to be sure, in Wiles, The Early Plays of Robin Hood, 64–67, who cites Machyn, The Diary, 201, for London, but see also Walters, London Churches at the Reformation, 129, for an Edwardian inventory from London’s Holy Trinity the Less that lists “xv Robyne Hoodes Cottes.” At the cathedral town of Wells, however, Robin Hood and dancing girls were reported as part of the church ale associated with the parish church, as indicated in a corporation document asking for an inquiry into whether some of the proceeds fell into private hands; see REED: Somerset, Including Bath, 1:252. 207 Midsummer has a sizable bibliography; see, for instance, Hutton, The Stations of the Sun, 311–21, on bonfires and other matters; and Sandra Billington, Midsummer: A Cultural Sub-Text from Chrétien de Troyes to Jean Michel (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000), for important Continental background. 208 REED: Coventry, 136; Thomas Sharp, A Dissertation on the Pageants or Dramatic Mysteries Anciently Performed at Coventry (Coventry, 1825), 181–99. 209 Lancashire, Dramatic Texts and Records, nos. 944, 969; Jean Robertson and D. J. Gordon, eds., A Calendar of Dramatic Records in the Books of the Livery Companies of London, 1485–1640, ed. Jean Robertson and D. J. Gordon, in MSC 3 (reprint New York: AMS Press, 1985), 1–36, with addenda in MSC 5 (1960 [for 1959]); Lancashire, London Civic Theatre, 153–70. 210 See REED: Chester, xliii, lii–liii, 70–73. 211 Letter of June 14, 1539 (Letter Book P, fol. 19), as quoted by Lancashire, London Civic Theatre, 163, and see also ibid., 165–66.

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at London as early as 1378,212 and by the late fourteenth century, this developed into an extensive show that included pageantry, some of which was dramatic in character, as well as pure spectacle. The heyday of the event was in the first half of the sixteenth century, ending in 1544 but with a revival in 1548 that Grafton said was “as brauely and freshly” done “as it had bene at any time set out before.”213 After this year, the pageantry “migrated” to the Lord Mayor’s Show on October 29.214 Various entertainments in May, including Robin Hood plays, also were called upon as substitutes for the Watch. In his diary entry for May 26, 1555, Machyn mentions “a goodly May-gam at sant Martens in the feld, with gyant and hobehorsses, with drumes and gonnes and mores danse and with othur mynsterelles.”215 The sponsors of the London Midsummer Watch were the twelve great livery companies of the city. In addition to the standing watch, London’s officialdom and soldiers in armor marched in procession in the night through streets lighted by “Lampes of glasse” on houses, “with oyl burning in them all the night,” as well as other lighting that illuminated some streets.216 Their procession included flaming cressets, banners, cloth-and-lath pageants, trumpeters, minstrels, city waits, morris dancers, gunners, archers, pikemen, city officials, and giants, as John Stow noted in his description of the event, distributed between St. John’s Eve and St. Peter’s Eve, that he had seen as a boy. Their marching route, “accustomed yearely, time out of mind” until 1539, was “through the principal streets.”217 The stated motive was the honor of the city—a motive that Sheila Lindenbaum has interpreted to be support for its ruling oligarchy.218 It was a sight that would impress a king, as, indeed, it did in 1523 when King Christian of Denmark visited London, albeit in this instance principally, it would seem, with regard to the Watch’s martial elements.219 In the previous year, the Drapers had added a pageant of the Golden Fleece, on a stationary stage, for the visit to London of the Emperor Charles V.220

212 Lancashire, London Civic Theatre, 51, 162. 213 Lancashire, London Civic Theatre, 157–59; Richard Grafton, Chronicle, ed. Henry Ellis, 2 vols. (London, 1809), 2:505. 214 See Lancashire, London Civic Theatre, 171–84. 215 Machyn, The Diary, 89; see also 137 (for May 30, 1557, with the Nine Worthies, a sultan, “a elevant with the castyll,” Moors, and “the lord and lade of the Maye”) and 201 (for June 24–25, 1559, with St. George and the dragon as well as Robin Hood and his band, who “had spechys rond a-bowt London”). 216 John Stow, A Survey of London, ed. Charles Lethbridge Kingsford, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1908), 1:101. 217 Stow, A Survey of London, 1:102–03. 218 Sheila Lindenbaum, “Ceremony and Oligarchy: The London Midsummer Watch,” in City and Spectacle in Medieval Europe, ed. Barbara A. Hanawalt and Kathryn L. Reyerson (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994), 171–88. 219 Hall, Chronicle, 658. 220 For Charles V, this Midsummer pageantry had been moved to June 6, and was not repeated on the regular date; see A Calendar of Dramatic Records in the Books of the Livery Companies, 11. The context for the visit is discussed by Anglo, Spectacle, Pageantry, and Early Tudor Policy, 170–206, esp. (for the pageant of the Golden Fleece) 187–89.

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The records of the Midsummer Show from 1512–1544 cannot by themselves give a full picture of the event at London, but the expenditures incurred do give a strong indication of its organizational elements and of the willingness to expend great financial resources toward the display of the pageants and other elements, including the services of jugglers, morris dancers, hobby horses, and musicians.221 The range of instruments named in the records, for example, involves most of the ones played by musicians at that time: rebec, kit, tabor, pipe, drum, “grete drum,” harp, lute, flute, virginals (tuned by a man named Norfolk, in 1534), shawms, bells, and “portatives” (organs). Flags and streamers added color to the procession. There were jugglers with swords and hand staves, mummers such as the four who marched with torches in the Ironmongers’ pageant of St. Elizabeth in 1535, and a King of the Moors (in a red satin mantle and carrying a “long swerd”) whose pavilion was “born vppon over his hede” in 1521 (elsewhere indicated as carried by four men). For the two nights of the marching, his part of the show was granted forty “reedes of wyld fyr.”222 Young girls took part, as on the newly repaired St. Ursula pageant in 1523 when one played the saint and was attended by six others, including a girl who was compensated for being injured by a cresset light, while in 1534 four girls played the Virgin Mary and her attendants.223 A girl had also played Mary in 1521 in the pageant of the Assumption, which had a winch system for raising her into heaven that required soap for lubrication and cord. That she was actually thus lifted up as if into heaven is shown by the purchase of three yards of “yelu cades,” whatever this was, to attach to her “in ij places of hir body.” Above her there were two harpers and lute players, as angels with wings, who wore albs and crowns, while on St. Peter’s night four child musicians performed.224 Naturally, there is no indication of what they sang, but as they were undoubtedly choristers from a London church or St. Paul’s Cathedral, they probably sang appropriate liturgical music.225 The Ursula and Mary pageants were carried by fourteen porters on the two nights in this year. Horse-drawn carriages were, however, not unknown, for one was recorded in 1519, when the Skinners presented their pageant of St. Thomas Becket, which appears to have involved a play about the legend of his birth (the prison would have been for his father, and his mother would be the Jewess, actually a Saracen princess in the legend) as well as the saint’s martyrdom.226 The physical pageants, though used only twice per year for the Midsummer Show, seem constantly to have been subjected to rebuilding. The 1529 Drapers’ pageants of St. Ursula and St. John the Evangelist were to be built new from two old pageants and then painted. Their elaborateness can only be imagined, as in accounts noting 221 A Calendar of Dramatic Records in the Books of the Livery Companies, 1–36. 222 A Calendar of Dramatic Records in the Books of the Livery Companies, 1­­–36. 223 A Calendar of Dramatic Records in the Books of the Livery Companies, 14–15, 24. For a cresset light, see Sharp, A Dissertation on the Pageants, pl. 9. 224 A Calendar of Dramatic Records in the Books of the Livery Companies, 14–15. 225 In 1536, one William Stoddard is noted as a parish clerk in charge of boy singers for the Assumption (A Calendar of Dramatic Records in the Books of the Livery Companies, 28–29). 226 For this and other plays of St. Thomas Becket, see Davidson, “The Middle English Saint Play,” 52–60.

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the “Castyll of Werr’” for the Drapers’ pageants and the building and painting of a pageant of St. John the Evangelist on a mount.227 In 1536, because of the promise of the presence in London of the king, queen, and “the most parte of the lordes spirituall and Temperall,” a new pageant of the Assumption was ordered as well as “A nother pagentt of the Castell of Monmoth,” both to be supplied by the painter John Ledes.228 The castle was to hold four or five children.229 The Drapers in 1541 had three new pageants made by Christopher Nedham and Christopher Feejohn, both painters, who provided Christ’s disputation with the doctors in the Temple, a “Rock of Roche,” and a St. Margaret pageant. In the latter, child singers who played angels were to have wings, two of them made from peacock feathers. The dragon in the St. Margaret pageant was to be provided with flame from his mouth that was fuelled by “aqua vyte.”230 Costumes were extravagant and intended to impress. The Drapers’ St. Christopher was outfitted in 1534, the year following the coronation of Anne Boleyn, with a black wig and beard, while a “payer of sloppes” was made for him of yellow buckram. He was also given “A wrethe of lynnen clothe and bockeram for his hed.” The hermit was likewise given a black wig and beard, and a coat and hood of cotton. Alice Baker was paid “for gevyng attendaunce of all þe Riche apparell . . . of þe Childr’n in þe said pagenttes,” which in that year also included the Virgin Mary as well as St. Christopher.231 The provider of costumes in 1541 was Felsted, presumably the Felsted of London who was identified as a silk dyer and a source of “players’ garments” as well as of a playtext noted in the Lisle letters. Perhaps he was the Thomas Felsted who, according to an Edwardian inventory, would purchase vestments and two tabernacles from the London church of All Hallows the Great for £3 6s 8d,232 and maybe he was also in his youth the Thomas Felsted who had been paid for juggling in 1521.233 The giants that graced the London Watch were obviously a special attraction. The extant records show that the London companies rented these and prepared them for showing in the procession. In 1535, along with their pageants of King Solomon, John the Evangelist, with a dragon, and Corpus Christi, which may have been a Pietà, the Skinners had not only a giant but also “mametts” or little giants.234 The giant hired by the Drapers from Barking required two men to carry it.235 The popularity of these 227 A Calendar of Dramatic Records in the Books of the Livery Companies, 5, 19. 228 A Calendar of Dramatic Records in the Books of the Livery Companies, 28. 229 A Calendar of Dramatic Records in the Books of the Livery Companies, 28–29. 230 A Calendar of Dramatic Records in the Books of the Livery Companies, 33–34. 231 A Calendar of Dramatic Records in the Books of the Livery Companiess, 23–24. 232 Walters, London Churches at the Reformation, 96, 99. 233 A Calendar of Dramatic Records in the Books of the Livery Companies, 33; Muriel St. Clare Byrne, ed., The Lisle Letters, 6 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 5:237–38. This reference was first noticed by Paula Neuss, “The Dyer’s Hand in Rex Diabole,” Theatre Notebook 38 (1984): 61–65; see also Meg Twycross, “Felsted of London: Silk Dyer and Theatrical Entrepreneur,” METh 10 (1988): 4–16. The playtext was for a drama called Rex Diabole, which has not been otherwise identified. 234 A Calendar of Dramatic Records in the Books of the Livery Companies, 25. 235 See A Calendar of Dramatic Records in the Books of the Livery Companies, 22.

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figures is affirmed in another way, for the processional giant became an element of Midsummer processions elsewhere in the kingdom. The Chester Midsummer Show had some particular advantages because of its occurrence at the same time as the Midsummer Fair and the Minstrel Court, to which minstrels from round about came on Midsummer Day to be licenced by the Dutton family.236 They found work at the Midsummer Show as well as for the Whitsun plays, as the records show. The Whitsun plays, in turn, would enrich the Show by lending pageants to it—for example, Christ and the Doctors, recorded in 1564–1565, when documents show the “Guildinge of Gods face” and payment to “God and the 2 docters.”237 Not to be outdone in other ways, Chester’s procession over the years came to include not only four giants among its “ornamentes” but also four lions, a camel, Balaam and the ass, a unicorn, a dromedary, a lynx, six hobby horses, an elephant, the “devill in his fethers,” angels on stilts, and sixteen “Naked boyes,” who were assigned to beat a dragon.238 Other pageantry—for example, shepherds on stilts for which the Painters, also sponsors of the Shepherds’ Play in the Whitsun cycle, and a “marchant mount” “with a shipp to turne”—was included in the show.239 Inevitably morris dancers were present. The Chester giants, as well as the dragon, devil, and the display of naked boys, were suppressed by a zealous mayor, Henry Hardware, but the giants, which had been broken up, were later replaced.240 While these giants are not extant, a giant from Salisbury does remain and is to be seen in the Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum.241 Other lost giants include Gogmagog and Hogmagog from Newcastle— figures that seemingly echoed the names that had been given to London giants as early as 1554.242 Thomas Sharp quoted a reference to the replication of the Chester giants in 1661 “as neer as may be lyke as they were before . . . and four men to carry them. . . .” They were made up from “hoops of various magnitudes, and other productions of the cooper, deal boards, nails, pasteboard, scale board, paper of various sorts, with buckram, size cloth, and old sheets for their bodies, sleeves and shirts, which were to be coloured; also tinsille, tinfoil, gold and silver leaf, and colours of different

236 David Mills, Recycling the Cycle: The City of Chester and Its Whitsun Plays (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), 132–44, and, by the same author, “Music in the City,” in Elizabeth Baldwin, Paying the Piper: Music in Pre-1642 Cheshire, EDAM Monograph Series 29 (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2002), 70–75. 237 REED: Chester, 73. 238 REED: Chester, liii, 72, 162, 198, 477, 481. 239 REED: Chester, 120, 481. 240 REED: Chester, 197–200, 526. 241 Hutton, The Stations of the Sun, fig. 23. See also the discussion of civic giants in Robert Withington, English Pageantry, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1918), 1:54–64 and illustration facing 62. 242 REED: Newcastle-upon-Tyne, ed. J. J. Anderson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982), xv; Withington, English Pageantry, 1:58. The London giants are shown in Hone, Ancient Mysteries Described, fig. facing 262; and, for a modern replica of Gogmagog, see “A Giant-Size Welcome,” The Times, June 17, 1985, 3.

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kinds, with glue and paste in abundance.”243 A Coventry giant was first noted in the Cappers’ records in 1533, and by 1561 a giantess, for which in that year the Drapers paid 20d “for beryng,” had been added.244 The male giant was reported to have a candle in its head in 1540, and in 1547 the records indicate that he had been given a canvas skirt and had been painted.245 Both giant and giantess were said to have been made anew in 1567 by Robert Croo,246 who had been involved with the Coventry Corpus Christi play in a number of capacities. These included revision and rewriting the texts of the Shearmen and Taylors’ and the Weavers’ pageants as well as acting and creating pyrotechnics for the Drapers’ Doomsday play.247 The Easter season properly came to a close with the Ascension, Pentecost, and Corpus Christi, the latter, of course, to be suppressed by the Reformation.248 In many regions on the Continent, the Ascension was celebrated with a quasi-dramatic or dramatic ceremony involving the raising of an image of Christ up through the roof of the church. This ceremony is given a hostile description in Googe’s translation of Kirchmayr’s Regnum Papisticum, which ridicules the raising of a “blocke” (image of Christ) “vp hie aboue the roofe, by ropes,” while “Priestes about it rounde do stand, and chaunt it to the skie” and then wafers (Hosts) and sprinklings of (holy?) water are thrown down upon the spectators.249 In Scandinavia and elsewhere, the practice utilized not a statue from the altar, as Kirchmayr-Googe claimed, but a special image, of which extant examples are held by the National Museum, Copenhagen, and (possibly) the Musée National du Moyen Age in Paris.250 An account from Berlin reports that the image there was accompanied by puppet angels and that trumpets played. The people kept their eyes focused on the image as it rose, and when it disappeared above into the roof, a drum sounded to symbolize a thunderclap. Finally, 243 Sharp, A Dissertation on the Pageants, 203–4. Sharp notes that the Chester giants were at risk of being eaten by rats, and cites a reference to “arsnick . . . put into the paste to save the giants from being eaten” by them (204). 244 REED: Coventry, 136, 217. 245 REED: Coventry, 153, 176. 246 REED: Coventry, 474. 247 See Pamela M. King and Clifford Davidson, eds., The Coventry Corpus Christi Plays, EDAM Monograph Series 27 (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2000), 52–53. 248 The abrogation of most saints’ days, indeed all holy days between July 1 and September 29, eliminated occasions for playing at the Reformation. In 1565, Bishop Bentham’s injunctions for Coventry and Lichfield prohibited superstitious keeping of holy days “as be abrogated by the laws of this realm,” and ordered “the people to occupy themselves on such days in their honest labour . . .” (Visitation Articles and Injunctions, 169) 249 Googe, trans., The Popish Kingdome, fol. 53; also quoted by Young, The Drama of the Medieval Church, 2:537. The passage further contains reference to the casting down of an image of Satan. 250 Haastrup, “Medieval Props in the Liturgical Drama,” 154, 156–57, fig. 21, and Davidson, Technology, Guilds, and Early English Drama, 94, fig. 95. The Paris effigy was discussed by Xavier Dectot in a paper entitled “‘Mobilis in mobile’: The Use of Sculpture in Urban Processions in the Late Middle Ages and Modern Times,” at the 2005 International Congress on Medieval Studies. For a satirical eighteenth-century illustration of the ceremony, also from the Continent, see Davidson, Technology, Guilds, and Early English Drama, 96.

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Figure 2

Festivals and Plays in Late Medieval Britain

Deposition/Burial figure of Christ for use in Good Friday ceremonies. Sculpture.

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boys sang the antiphon Viri Galilei, quid aspicitis in celum (“Ye men of Galilee, why stand you looking up to heaven?”), based on Acts 1:11.251 This spectacle seems not to have taken hold in Britain, though the Ascension would be expected to be present as a pageant in the Creation to Doom cycles and similar collections of plays. The only suggestion of a ceremony comes in an eleventh-century Ascensiontide trope (Quem ceritis ascendisse super astra, o christicole) in the Winchester Troper that is reminiscent of the Easter Quem queritis.252 From the scant evidence available, the Ascension as a holiday, since it occurs in a season of potentially good weather (England being England), seems like other similar dates to have been a time available for entertainment that might be neither religious nor solemn. At Oxford, an early morning town-gown altercation in 1597– 1598 occurred on the Sundays before Ascension and on the feast day itself when there was, on each occasion, an assembly armed with weapons and attended by a drummer. This crowd included men cross-dressed as women and a “Queene of May.” There was morris dancing along with “other disordered and vnseemely sportes.”253 Another case of cross-dressing by boys, along with maids, was reported at Wells a few years later.254 Though the date is likewise late, the indication of a Fool at Carlyle on this day, designated as “hallow thursdaie,” in 1604–1605 may also have been more than an anomaly.255 The day was, of course, available for other kinds of entertainment, including payment for entertainers (“histrionibus”) at Cambridge in 1388–1389 or for plays or interludes like the one presented before the mayor by visiting players at Norwich in 1544–1545.256 But records in Coventry’s Holy Trinity Guild and Corpus Christi Guild accounts, reporting a cross bearer at Ascension in 1518 and 1539, respectively, as at other feast days,257 suggest a procession and, hence, a less secular practice that likely was widely replicated elsewhere on this major feast, one of the most important in the calendar. At Durham, processions as well as Boy Bishop ceremonies were recorded in the season of Ascension and Pentecost.258 Attention will be given to Corpus Christi and Pentecost, or Whitsun, in subsequent chapters. One might expect the festival that would have concluded the summer playing season with a play on the subject of the feast should have been the Assumption of the Virgin, which has been especially noticed by scholars in recent years on account of the survival of the annual Assumption play at Elche (Elx) in Spain. Though the subject was immensely popular in the visual arts before the Reformation and the feast was one of the principal ones of the Church year, records give little support to drama or pageantry specifically on this occasion in Britain. For example, at Lincoln 251 Young, The Drama of the Medieval Church, 1:696–97; translated in part in William Tydeman, The Medieval European Stage, 500–1550 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 119. 252 The Winchester Troper, ed. W. H. Frere (1894; reprint New York: AMS Press, 1973), 110. 253 REED: Oxford, 1:246–49. 254 REED: Somerset, 1:277. 255 Cumberland, Westmorland, Gloucestershire, 67. 256 REED: Cambridge, 1:13; REED: Norwich, 15. 257 REED: Coventry, 113, 151. 258 See McKinnell, The Sequence of the Sacrament at Durham, 22.

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Cathedral the Assumption show, probably involving an image of the Virgin being raised up through the roof as at Elche, in the years 1459 to 1543 seems always to have been mounted on the feast of St. Anne.259 Other and much smaller locations in Lincolnshire also seem to have had Assumption plays. Sleaford, for example, had an “Ascencon” in c.1480 that Stokes believes was an Assumption; this play had a “regenal,” which confirms that it had a script, and payments were made not only for “the wrytyng of spechys” but also for “payntyng of a garment for God.”260 Holbeach, which had risen to a position of ninety-second in the top hundred towns of England in 1524–1525, had a “Clowd” that needed repair and a new “lyne” for it as well as a “Marye Cartt” that was carried in 1539,261 but there is no guarantee that the play, apparently an Assumption, was performed on the feast day itself. Then, too, the Assumption pageant during the marching watch at Canterbury in 1532–1533 was unrelated to the feast on August 15.262 Mayors lists from Chester, to be sure, mention the Assumption play as presented separately from the civic biblical cycle on unspecified days in 1489–1490 when it was performed for Lord Strange at the High Cross and in 1515–1516 when it was mounted in St. John’s churchyard along with a shepherds’ play,263 but there is insufficient reason to believe that these performances were, in fact, on the feast day itself. More likely to have been planned for the day of the feast itself was the staging of the Assumption pageant at the Abbey gates for Prince Arthur on August 25, only ten days off from August 15, in 1499.264 The text of this pageant, for which the Chester Wives were responsible, unfortunately is not extant. Another Assumption text was once presumably found in the Towneley manuscript, from which the leaves that would have contained it were at some point removed. Martin Stevens, who suggested that the missing plays may have included Pentecost, the Death of Mary, and Our Lady’s Appearance to Thomas as well as the Assumption and Coronation, believed these had been excised as an act of censorship—an effort to make the pageants in the manuscript more acceptable to Protestantism.265 Stevens’ now-discredited view of the Towneley collection as containing a “Wakefield cycle,” however, also does not explain how it came to be acquired by the Towneley family 259 Records of Plays and Players in Lincolnshire, 33–62. 260 Records of Plays and Players in Lincolnshire, 86; Stokes, “The Lost Playing Places of Lincolnshire,” 284. But an actual Ascension play using a lifting device is also fully as plausible; for a Continental example, see the stage directions from Bozen, reported in Tydeman, ed., The Medieval European Stage, 374. 261 Records of Plays and Players in Lincolnshire, 18–19; The Cambridge Urban History of England, ed. Palliser, 1:763. 262 REED: Kent, Diocese of Canterbury, 1:144; see also 3:1280. Interest has also focused on the raising of Assumption images in Renaissance Italy; for the technology, see, for example, Götz Pochet, “Brunelleschi and the ‘Ascension’ of 1422,” Art Bulletin 60 (1978): 232–34, and the discussion in Andrea Campbell, “A Spectacular Celebration of the Assumption in Siena,” Renaissance Quarterly 58 (2005): 435–63. 263 REED: Chester, 22–23. 264 REED: Chester, 23. 265 Martin Stevens, “The Missing Parts of the Towneley Cycle,” Speculum 45 (1970): 259–65.

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of Lancashire,266 and with regard to the missing Assumption and Coronation there is another possibility that is worth exploring. The Assumption pageant, if, indeed, originally contained in the manuscript (as I strongly suspect it was), may have been contained among pages removed for potential individual production by a company of recusant players, since the manuscript’s location at Towneley Hall in Lancashire was in an area of strong Roman Catholic resistance to Anglicanism. But, again, the idea that the play may have been written specifically for the feast of the Assumption prior to being included in the Towneley anthology must be seen as speculation for which there is no records evidence. With regard to a date when the N-Town Assumption pageant would have been staged, we are on no firmer ground; however, its status as an interpolation of ten leaves with different water marks in the manuscript (British Library MS. Cotton Vespasian D.8)267 provides convincing evidence that here we have an independent drama on the subject that could well have been used on the feast day itself. Whatever the case, the drama is designed for spectacular staging, with movement up and down between earth and heaven that would have required sophisticated lifting machinery and coordination.268 And as a dramatization of the entire narrative between the death of Mary through her ascent into heaven, the pageant derives directly from the Golden Legend with additional material from the Transitus Mariae.269 The liturgical items that were sung would have required the presence of experienced church or cathedral singers. Like Richard Rastall, one must lament that the play cannot be assigned to Ely, where indoor performance “on a sunny 15 August under the great lantern of St Etheldreda’s cathedral would have been a wonderful experience.”270

266 For the puzzle of the plays’ provenance, see Palmer, “‘Towneley Plays’ or ‘Wakefield Cycle’ Revisited,” 318–48. 267 Stephen Spector, ed., The N-Town Play, EETS, s.s. 11–12 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 1:xxixxiv; Peter Meredith and Stanley J. Kahrl, introd., The N-Town Plays: A Facsimile of British Library MS Cotton Vespasian D VIII, Leeds Texts and Monographs: Medieval Drama Facsimiles 4 (Leeds: University of Leeds School of English, 1977), xiii, xv, fols. 214–22v. 268 See Davidson, Technology, Guilds, and Early English Drama, 98, fig. 101. 269 See Spector, ed., The N-Town Play, 2:527–35. 270 Rastall, The Heaven Singing, 298.

Chapter Two

“Corpus Christi Play” and the Feast of Corpus Christi Misconceptions and Problems In her article “The Feast of Corpus Christi in the West Country,” Alexandra F. Johnston has commented that the notion of “a recognizable genre called ‘Corpus Christi play’ has proved very difficult to eradicate.” The idea is traceable to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but the real impetus behind its prevalence in recent times may be claimed for the use of this terminology by V. A. Kolve. According to Kolve, “Corpus Christi plays” are a “kind” of drama, commonly thought to include pageants beginning with the Fall of the Angels and the Creation and ending with Doomsday. Forty years later, the usual belief outside of a small group of specialists in early drama still seems to be that such pageants were always presented by “rude mechanicals,” members of local craft guilds, on wagon stages at various stations throughout the cities that sponsored them, and that such cities were widespread throughout Britain. And remarkably, the existence of the text of a very different kind of drama, The Play of the Sacrament, is rarely cited in connection with Corpus Christi. Four play “cycles” with extant texts are normally mentioned: York, Chester, Wakefield, and N-Town. Scholars, however, have demonstrated that N-Town is a collection of plays, not a true cycle, and claims for Wakefield as the home of a Creation to Doom “cycle” of plays contained in the Towneley manuscript have

 Alexandra F. Johnston, “The Feast of Corpus Christi in the West Country,” ET 6 (2003): 15.  Johnston, “The Feast of Corpus Christi,” 15–18.  V. A. Kolve, The Play Called Corpus Christi (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1966), 1, for his identification of “the Corpus Christi kind” of drama; see also esp. 35–56. Kolve’s title is taken from the title added in a sixteenth-century hand to the N-Town collection: “The plaie called Corpus Christi” (The N-Town Plays: A Facsimile of British Library MS Cotton Vespasian D VIII, introd. Peter Meredith and Stanley J. Kahrl (Leeds: University of Leeds School of English, 1977), fol. 1.  See Peter Meredith, “Scribes, Texts and Performance,” in Aspects of Early English Drama, ed. Paula Neuss (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1983), 19–29, and Stephen Spector’s Introduction to his edition of The N-Town Play: Cotton MS. Vespasian D.8, EETS, s.s. 11–12 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991). I am using cycle in the specific sense of a theatrical “play cycle.” A less prescriptive meaning of cycle is implicit in Peter Happé, Cyclic Form and the English Mystery Plays (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2004).

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also been convincingly disputed. While Chester had a Corpus Christi play as early as 1422 when three components or “pageants” were identified, the only existing texts, aside from the fragment of the Resurrection (probably fifteenth-century) and the Peniarth Anti-Christ pageant (c.1500), are late sixteenth-century and early seventeenth-century copies of the “Original” (“Regenall”) that had been used for production on the three days following Pentecost—and, on the last occasion of performance, in 1575, at Midsummer, over three and one-half days. Not only had the play been moved to a different Church festival in c.1520 and expanded from a one-day production, but the presently extant texts also need to be seen as influenced by a Protestantism that had abolished the feast of Corpus Christi in 1548 and that was essentially hostile to traditional religion. Reference in Chester’s early banns to a “pley of corpus christi” is already anachronistic since the “playes” (now identified in the plural, rather than in the singular, “play,” as previously) are here said to be performed on Monday through Wednesday “in whitson weeke.” References in the dramatic records are indicative of twenty-three or more pageants, played by various craft guilds, by 1500 in Chester’s civic Corpus Christi play.10 These pageants were performed, under the sponsorship of various craft guilds, after a procession from the Church of St. Mary on the Hill to the churchyard of St. John’s, a church that was especially important locally on account of its possession of a relic of the true cross; there the play was presented on “carriages” or wagon stages.11 This was the same location at which the Shepherds’ play was separately

 Barbara D. Palmer, “‘Towneley Plays’ or ‘Wakefield Cycle’ Revisited,” CompD 21 (1987–1988): 318–48, and “Recycling ‘The Wakefield Cycle’: The Records,” RORD 41 (2002): 88–130; Garrett P. J. Epp, “‘Corected and not playd’: An Unproductive History of the Towneley Plays,” RORD 43 (2004): 38–53.  REED: Chester, ed. Lawrence M. Clopper (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979), 6–7. Two of these pageants, as they were called, are identified; they are the Flagellation and Crucifixion.  REED: Chester, 109; R. M. Lumiansky and David Mills, The Chester Mystery Cycle: Essays and Documents (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983), 224.  See Lawrence M. Clopper, “The History and Development of the Chester Cycle,” Modern Philology 75 (1978): 219–46; Lumiansky and Mills, The Chester Mystery Cycle: Essays and Documents, 165–202; and also Peter W. Travis, Dramatic Design in the Chester Cycle (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 30–69. For the texts, see The Chester Mystery Cycle, ed. R. M. Lumiansky and David Mills, EETS, s.s. 3, 9 (London: Oxford University Press, 1974–1986), vol. 1.  REED: Chester, 31. 10 See Lumiansky and Mills, The Chester Mystery Cycle: Essays and Documents, 174, for listing of three further pageants for which they see evidence by 1521. One of the latter, however, is the Painters’ Shepherds play, which seems unlikely to have been omitted in earlier performances at Corpus Christi. 11 See David Mills, Recycling the Cycle: The City of Chester and Its Whitsun Plays (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), 106–12; for wagons in 1466–1467, see REED: Chester, 11. Sally-Beth MacLean notes that the “relic of the true Cross was [an] important local shrine, known as [the] ‘Crucifix of Chester’” (Chester Art, EDAM Reference Series 3 [Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1982], 42).

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performed at a different time of year in 1515–1516 by the Painters,12 a guild that would have been responsible for creating a wall painting in the Church of St. Peter which included the angel appearing to the Shepherds, associated with a now-lost image of the Nativity.13 As the early banns indicate, St. John’s churchyard was also the site where a lost play of unspecified content would continue to be “sett forth by the clergye / In honour of the fest” after the change of the cycle to Whitsuntide.14 Some evidence concerning the earlier play which had been performed at Corpus Christi, prior to the change to Whitsuntide that took place by 1521–1522 and the expansion into a production extending over three days, is embedded in the objections to alleged “absurdities” (i.e., matter involving traditional Catholic content) outlined by the rigid Calvinists Christopher Goodman and Robert Rogerson in 1572 that have been explored by David Mills.15 Nevertheless, the fact that the some of these “absurdities” could have been added after the shift to Whitsun (the Edwardian Reformation was some years yet in the future, and even after the advent of Queen Elizabeth Catholic feeling was not easily suppressed in Chester16) makes the search for the embedded remains of the historical Corpus Christi play problematic at best. Inevitably, Goodman and Rogerson objected to whatever might be suggestive of the doctrine of Transubstantiation, as in Play 23, Antichrist, which also exists, as noted above, in a pre-Reformation copy. Here Elias’s blessing of “breadd,” which turns out to have imprinted on it the sign of the cross indicating that it is an oble or consecrated wafer, reveals the true nature of the men supposedly raised from the dead. In lines excised from the extant Chester texts and quoted with disapproval by Goodman and Rogerson, the Resurrection had included the following: “And therto a full ryche messe, in bred myn one bodie, and that bred I you gyve, your wyked lyffe to amend, becomen is my fleshe, throgh wordes 5 betwyxt the prestes handes.”17 Such matter clearly points to Corpus Christi, though, as Mills aptly comments elsewhere, the 12 For the Painters’ involvement with this play, along with the Glaziers and Embroiderers, see the early banns (REED: Chester, 35). 13 See MacLean, Chester Art, 31–32, fig. 12. 14 REED: Chester, 38. The play was presented at the conclusion of the Corpus Christi procession in which the merchant and craft guilds took part bearing torches. However, this section of the early banns was later erased in the manuscript to remove reference to Roman Catholic practice. See also 33, where here, too, civic control is asserted, for the consent of the mayor for this play, brought forth by “the collegis and prestys,” is invoked. 15 David Mills, “‘Some Precise Cittizins’: Puritan Objections to Chester’s Plays,” Leeds Studies in English, n.s. 29 (1998): 219–33. Rogerson was also known as Rogers, and is better known as Archdeacon Rogers, whose antiquarian notes were utilized by his son David in preparing the well-known Breviary that includes information about the Chester plays; for this and further biographical information about Goodman and Rogerson, or Rogers, see 221– 22. 16 See Sally-Beth MacLean, “Marian Devotion in Post-Reformation Chester: Implications of the Smiths’ ‘Purification’ Play,” in The Middle Ages in the North-West, ed. Tom Scott and Pat Starkey (Oxford: Leopard’s Head Press, 1995), 237–55. 17 Mills, “‘Some Precise Cittizins’,” 225–30. See also Jesus’ speech immediately upon his resurrection in the Skinners’ play (18.154–85); here, though Catholic doctrine is implied, it is mitigated by the Protestant view in lines that assert that the bread “becomes my fleshe through your beleeffe” rather than through the ritual action of the priest.

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cycle in later times would be “enacted not under the sacramental pressure of the Eucharist but in the context of the Whitsun commemoration of the coming of the Holy Spirit and of the following Sunday in honour of the triune God.”18 Goodman and Rogerson objected, as we might expect, to references to Purgatory, the Harrowing of Hell, and, interestingly, to the Devil’s quoting in the Last Judgment play from the Bible, apparently on the basis that it was wrong to put “the Scriptures into the mouth of the devils.”19 They also unsympathetically referred to a scene, removed in all the extant manuscripts, of the Troubles of Joseph about Mary as well as to Marian devotion, in the latter case including the veneration of the Blessed Virgin by the Magi. “The kings honour the virgin in place of Christ,” Goodman and Rogerson complained.20 And as records from 1499 and the early banns indicate, there had been a play, sponsored by the wives of Chester, of the Assumption of the Virgin,21 an event from Catholic salvation history that prominently appears in a carving of about the same time above the west door of the abbey church (later Chester Cathedral).22 It is a scene that includes a number of angel musicians arrayed around the Virgin, as would likely have been the case in the Wives’ play.23 In spite of the Chester Whitsun play’s verifiable descent from the Corpus Christi play that had been staged in that city before c.1520, York alone thus emerges as having a fairly complete playtext or “Register” (British Library Add. MS. 35,290) used for staging an actual Corpus Christi cycle, the “corpus christi Plaie” mentioned in 1476 in the York records—a cycle that dramatized the history of the world from Creation to Doom.24 The Coventry Corpus Christi plays, perhaps once the most famous in England, are now lost except for two pageants. For these the testimony of William Dugdale, writing in the seventeenth century, appears to support only a New Testament cycle at Coventry, to which the dramatic records add evidence

18 David Mills, “The Chester Cycle,” in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre, ed. Richard Beadle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 117. 19 Mills, “‘Some Precise Cittizins’,” 226, 228. The entire list of objections merits close attention. 20 Mills, “‘Some Precise Cittizins’,” 225, 228–29. 21 REED: Chester, 21, 37–38. 22 MacLean, Chester Art, 46–47, fig. 24. 23 Mary Remnant, “Musical Instruments in Early English Drama,” in Material Culture and Medieval Drama, ed. Clifford Davidson, EDAM Monograph Series 25 (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1999), 174–75, fig. 46. Richard Rastall points out that instrumental music is indicated at various places in the extant Chester playtexts and that otherwise instruments often accompanied angels’ singing (“Music in the Cycle,” in Lumiansky and Mills, The Chester Mystery Cycle: Essays and Documents, 117). 24 Ordinacio pro Ludi Corporis christi, in REED: York, ed. Alexandra F. Johnston and Margaret Rogerson, 2 vols. (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1979), 1:109; for the text of the York cycle, see The York Plays, ed. Richard Beadle (London: Edward Arnold, 1982). Sarah Beckwith’s claim in Signifying God: Social Relation and Symbolic Act in the York Corpus Christi Plays (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 59–71 and passim, concerning the York Corpus Christi plays as sacrament is overstated, however; see my review of this book in the Sixteenth Century Journal 23 (2002): 902–4.

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of a Last Judgment pageant.25 As Johnston has argued, other plays designated in the dramatic records as “Corpus Christi plays” are indicative of differing local traditions, including cycles that dramatize salvation history and those that do not fit this pattern.26 Though we need to recognize that the records are fragmentary and favor large collaborative civic projects over against individual guilds and parishes whose expense accounts, inventories, and other surviving documentation are more likely to be lost, a fairly wide-ranging survey of the available information will be useful and will, I think, allow us definitively to reject the idea of anything like a “standard Corpus Christi play.”27 Further, within the limitations of this discussion, it will be desirable to touch on the matter of connections—or lack of them—with the theology, spirituality, and liturgy of the feast of Corpus Christi. Our survey will confirm that records of “Corpus Christi plays” sometimes designate only the occasion on which they were produced, and sometimes such an identification of a play is even more complicated. Ultimately, only one of the extant plays, the Croxton Play of the Sacrament, which has been noted above, is intimately associated with the Eucharist and, as a miracle play, has been plausibly claimed as belonging to Corpus Christi, though it is nowhere overtly identified as attached to this feast. A discussion of this play will conclude the present chapter. Interpreting Records The difficulty of interpreting the records when no playtexts are extant will immediately be evident as our examination begins. A reference to a 1535 performance of a “Corpus christi play” that brought in £4 5s 10d on “the fyrst play day” appears in the churchwardens’ accounts for Boughton under Blean in Kent, and a later annotation indicates that it was played in the principal village of the parish, Boughton Street,28 but there is no indication of the content of the drama and, as James M. Gibson notes, there is nothing extant in the records from any other year that provides evidence 25 William Dugdale, The Antiquities of Warwickshire (London, 1656), 116; Pamela M. King and Clifford Davidson, eds., The Coventry Corpus Christi Plays, EDAM Monograph Series 27 (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2000), esp. 14–52; and, for the dramatic records, REED: Coventry, ed. R. W. Ingram (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981). A subsequent edition of Dugdale revised by William Thomas would claim, probably on the basis of the idea of what a comprised a Corpus Christi cycle, the inclusion of Old Testament pageants. 26 Johnston, “The Feast of Corpus Christi in the West Country,” 15–34, but see her argument as originally set forth in her article “What If No Texts Survived,” in Contexts for Early English Drama, ed. Marianne G. Briscoe and John C. Coldewey (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989), 11–12. 27 John Wasson, “Records of Early English Drama: Where They Are and What They Tell Us,” in Proceedings of the First Colloquium (Toronto: REED, 1979), 138–39; Johnston, “What If No Texts Survived?” 11–12. 28 REED: Kent, Diocese of Canterbury, ed. James M. Gibson, 3 vols. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002), 1:18, and see Gibson’s note at 3:1261.

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for this play, whatever it was.29 And what, for example, was the “Corpus Christi playe” at Yeovil, Somerset, in 1539–1540, and was there any comparison to be made between it and the Robin Hood entertainment also mentioned in the records for that year?30 Both were produced in support of the Church of St. John the Baptist, and if the Robin Hood entries are fairly explicit,31 the reference to the Corpus Christi play is not. The subject matter of the play cannot be known, but it is a fair assumption that it was nothing like the York Corpus Christi cycle.32 At Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, the ambiguity of the words “pley” and “Game”—terms that sometimes were used interchangeably—fails to distinguish what, in fact, was going on at Corpus Christi in 1473, 1486, 1493, and 1508.33 There is no reason to doubt that a play at Corpus Christi could be an entertainment or that a game might be signified,34 though it is more likely that the Great Yarmouth references are indicative of drama of some sort. At Louth, Lincolnshire, a playbook (the “hole Regenall of corpus christi play”), now lost, is recorded in 1515–1516, and references to pageants appear in subsequent years.35 This led Stanley Kahrl to argue that some kind of cycle may have been involved,36 though such a claim would assume that the play and the annual pageants were one and the same. The final reference to payment of 16d to the schoolmaster, Mr. Goodall, in 1557–1558 to reimburse “certeyn mony by him laid furth for the furnishing of the play played in the Markit stede on corpus christi Day” in the previous year,37 however, indicates that at this time a single play on a fixed stage was involved rather than a cycle staged on pageant wagons throughout the town. At Great Dunmow, Essex, churchwardens’ accounts from 1525–1526 to 1545– 1546 have been interpreted as referring to a play on the feast of Corpus Christi that might have been a Passion drama.38 The subject of the Great Dunmow play can hardly be definitively determined from the dramatic records, though reference 29 REED: Kent, Diocese of Canterbury, 1:lvii. 30 REED: Somerset, including Bath, ed. James Stokes and Robert J. Alexander, 2 vols. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), 1:406. 31 See James Stokes, “Robin Hood and the Churchwardens in Yeovil,” Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England 3 (1986): 1–25. 32 Stokes, in his commentary in REED: Somerset, 2:482–83, questions whether this play was “a play traditionally sponsored by Yeovil or . . . a performance visiting from nearby Sherborne, which certainly had a Corpus Christi play.” For the play at Sherborne, see below, and also the discussion of this and other West Country locations in Johnston, “The Feast of Corpus Christi in the West Country,” 15–34. 33 Records of Plays and Players in Norfolk and Suffolk, 1330–1642, ed. David Galloway and John Wasson, MSC 11 (Oxford, 1980–81), 15–16. 34 Anna Jean Mill, Mediaeval Plays in Scotland (1924; reprint New York and London: Benjamin Blom, 1969), 244, citing Glasgow civic records. For discussion of the term ‘play,’ see John C. Coldewey, “Plays and ‘Play’ in Early English Drama,” RORD 28 (1985): 181– 88. 35 Records of Plays and Players in Lincolnshire, 1300–1585, ed. Stanley J. Kahrl, MSC 8 (Oxford, 1974), 78–80. 36 Stanley J. Kahrl, “Medieval Drama in Louth,” RORD 10 (1967): 129–33. 37 Records of Plays and Players in Lincolnshire, 84. 38 W. A. Mepham, “Mediaeval Drama in Essex: Dunmow,” Essex Review 55 (1946): 57–65, 129–36. Mepham prints and discusses accounts from 1526–43.

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in 1527–1528 to the purchase of “lyne and pakthrede and whepcorde” (cord, stout thread or twine, and cord of hemp) used for pageants on the feast of Corpus Christi could conceivably have involved rope scourges such as were depicted in illustrations of the Scourging.39 These items were purchased when one Parnell came to Great Dunmow and “made the pagantes,” and, since this person was probably the John Parnell who provided “the ornaments” for the Ipswich Corpus Christi play in 1505 and subsequently, the inclusion of these pageants in the “Corpus chrysty play” mentioned in the 1532–1533 accounts gains in credibility.40 Payment of 2s 8d for a “pleyeboke of corpus χρi pagannts” is recorded the next year,41 so we know that it was a scripted drama.42 Players were paid for performing “at owre Corpus Christi” in 1540–1541.43 Already in 1526–1527 there is mention of a scaffold that may have been used for playing,44 perhaps in a single location in the village since, as W. A. Mepham notes, Great Dunmow “was not sufficiently extensive to warrant the use of movable pageants.”45 In 1537–1538 “players garments” were fetched from Chelmsford.46 Payments for minstrels in some years may indicate that music was included in the production, though there is a possibility that they only played for the feasting, of which there is ample record.47 After 1530–1531, receipts not only from “our owyn towne,” including the priory, but also from numerous villages within about a ten-mile radius indicate that others contributed to the play, which is specifically mentioned as the purpose of these payments in accounts for 1532–1533, 1539–1540, and 1541– 1542.48 The amounts collected locally and at these other locations—amounts that would go to the support of the parish at Great Dunmow—indicate that something more than a brief skit must have been presented. However, in spite of the presence of scripted drama in the play, no information is available to indicate just how it might have been related (if at all) to the veneration of the Sacrament that was central to the liturgical procession or to the Mass for the day.

39 John C. Coldewey, “Early Essex Drama: A History of Its Rise and Fall, and a Theory Concerning the Digby Plays,” Ph.D. diss. (University of Colorado, 1972), 236. For Coldewey’s edition of the relevant accounts relating to Great Dunmow, see 235–56. 40 Coldewey, “Early Essex Drama,” 236, 239. For Parnell, see J. W. Robinson, “Three Notes on the Medieval Drama,” Theatre Notebook 16 (1961): 61–62, and Records of Plays and Players in Norfolk and Suffolk, 178. 41 Coldewey, “Early Essex Drama,” 240. 42 Some of the Dunmow accounts do indicate games rather than plays (see Coldewey, “Early Essex Drama,” 257), but it seems a stretch to claim, as Lawrence Clopper does, that the Corpus Christi playbook reference here is to a game rather than drama (Drama, Play, and Game [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001], 12–13). 43 Coldewey, “Early Essex Drama,” 251. 44 Coldewey, “Early Essex Drama,” 235. 45 Mepham, “Mediaeval Drama in Essex,” 58. 46 Coldewey, “Early Essex Drama,” 247. 47 Coldewey, “Early Essex Drama,” 242, 246, 256. 48 Coldewey, “Early Essex Drama,” 237, 239, 250, 253. For the view that these payments indicated travel by the Great Dunmow players to the other villages, see Mepham, “Mediaeval Drama in Essex,” 58.

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In fact, the Corpus Christi drama seems to have been as varied as the pageantry that was mounted in different locations in Great Britain, and also Ireland, on the feast. Pageants that included tableaux depicting scenes in biblical history seem commonly enough to have appeared in Corpus Christi processions. At Dublin in the fifteenth century and continuing until the 1560s, the city’s pageants began with Adam and Eve being expelled from Eden and continued through the Passion, but also included apostles, prophets, tormentors, King Arthur, the Nine Worthies, and a dragon.49 The pageantry described by John Lydgate in the London procession had similarly begun with Adam, but then had next shown Melchisedek along with patriarchs and prophets before moving on to John the Baptist, St. John the Divine, the apostles, Wisdom, and the fathers of the Church, all obviously vivid iconographic tableaux.50 Elsewhere all too often, however, references to pageantry on Corpus Christi in the records do little to allow us to see what was in fact exhibited. Documents sometimes indicate little more than a procession of guild members or citizens and clergy. The Rites of Durham, written in 1593, long after the suppression of the event by the Reformation, provided a record of how the various “occupations,” according to their “degree,” walked with banners and torches, and before them was carried a consecrated Host, which was enclosed in “a foure squared box, all of christall” at the top of a shrine borne by four priests.51 The civic procession was met by a banner that bore the image of St. Cuthbert, the prior, and the choir, whereupon, after the prior had censed the Host, it was carried to the abbey church, where the Te Deum was “solemnly songe” to the accompaniment of the organ. Following the Mass, the Sacrament was returned in procession to St. Nicholas’ Church. At Sherborne, Dorset, references to Corpus Christi begin in 1508 with expenditures for repair of the shrine used for displaying the Sacrament and for carrying it in the procession, and these continue until 1537.52 This procession included no pageants or tableaux vivants. The parish Corpus Christi play, associated with the great abbey church of St. Mary the Virgin that the townsmen had acquired after the dissolution of the monastery, appears to have been established in 1542, when expenditures “for the pleyeres at Corpus christi Day” were recorded.53 The subject matter is not named, but the play seems to have utilized both the churchyard and the inside of the church, where a platform had been set up “before the ij lowe alteres.”54 Vestments inherited

49 Alan J. Fletcher, Drama, Performance, and Polity in Pre-Cromwellian Ireland (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000), 91–94. 50 John Lydgate, The Minor Poems, pt. 1, EETS, e.s 107 (1911; reprint London: Oxford University Press, 1962), 35–43. 51 A Description or Breife Declaration of All the Ancient Monuments, Rites, and Customes Belonginge or Beinge within the Monastical Church of Durham before the Suppression, ed. James Raine, Surtees Society 15 (London: J. B. Nichols, 1842), 89–90; a selection from this description is quoted by Victor I. Scherb, Staging Faith (Madison and Teaneck: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2001), 69. 52 REED: Dorset, Cornwall, ed. Rosalind Conklin Hayes, C. E. McGee, Sally L. Joyce, and Evelyn Newlyn (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999), 250–58. 53 REED: Dorset, Cornwall, 259. 54 REED: Dorset, Cornwall, 259, 261.

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from the abbey were used as costumes. Sherborne was a conservative town;55 hence it seems unlikely that a mitre and a cope would then have been put to anticlerical uses, as might have been the case in communities that were hostile to traditional religion. Other garments were painted, and additional cloth was purchased for costumes for the drama. The presence of “the bokes of corpus christi play” would suggest further that the drama was a fairly elaborate one.56 When the play was discontinued, garments were rented out for profit and eventually sold. In 1572 a new Corpus Christi play was introduced on the topic of Sodom and Gomorrah. This elaborate production was apparently an outdoor play, and was all the more remarkable because, in spite of the official rejection of the Old Religion in Queen Elizabeth’s England, it was still called a “corpuscrystie playe” or “playes.”57 The payments for accouterments for this new play may well reveal something about the drama that had been introduced in the 1540s, but there seems to be no doubt that the earlier drama had been on a different subject about which we cannot make the assumption that it was directly related to Corpus Christi in its subject matter. “Corpus christi play” in this case seems to be merely a generic term for any religious drama associated with the feast day or originally associated with the date. Allowing for linguistic slippage, it might even designate any religious play performed on another day in the summer. There are few instances in which records suggest a direct association between a lost play and the feast. Perhaps one was the Corpus Christi pageant for which Thomas Eve, a singing man, was director in 1535, in this case presented as part of the London Midsummer Show. The performers were six children, along with an organist. The children were secured for their safety in the pageant with “white tape.”58 One thinks of the way in which the boy angels are strapped in while descending and ascending in the Assumption of the Virgin play still being performed at Elche in Spain; hence some action on the part of the children seems plausible. Though we know even less about the staging of the “ludi de ly haliblude” at “Wyndmylhill” at Aberdeen, Scotland, in 1440 and 1445,59 there is little doubt in this case that the play was connected to the feast very intimately. The veneration of the Sacrament, while focused on the Host, was also necessarily in close proximity to the cult of the Holy Blood, for it was argued that the consecrated Host, displayed during the Corpus Christi procession, not only remained irreversibly the true body of Christ but also included his blood.60 A number of possibilities for the subject matter of this play may be suggested, mainly related to the subject of Corpus Christi. But like a number of other references to Corpus Christi plays at various sites in England and Scotland, the 55 See REED: Dorset, Cornwall, 24. 56 REED: Dorset, Cornwall, 260–62 . 57 REED: Dorset, Cornwall, 266–67. For this play “a Cope and Banner” had been acquired and new “players garmentes” made (266–67). 58 A Calendar of Dramatic Records in the Books of the Livery Companies of London, ed. Jean Robertson and D. J. Gordon, MSC 3 (Oxford, 1954), 25; Records of the Skinners of London, Edward I to James I, ed. J. J. Lambert (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1934), 148–50. 59 Mill, Mediaeval Plays in Scotland, 61, 115. 60 See the discussion in Miri Rubin, Corpus Christi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 68.

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citation of the play at Aberdeen would almost certainly have designated a modest play on a single subject. Reference at Cambridge to the playing of unnamed drama on Corpus Christi has been noticed in one of Robert Holcot’s lectures of c.1335,61 but the expenditure “in ludo filiorum Israel” by Cambridge’s Corpus Christi Guild in 1352–1553 seems to be the first such play with an identifiable subject.62 Though it is not entirely clear what was dramatized in the Ludus filiorum Israel other than an Old Testament story of some sort, it was again most likely a single-subject play of limited scope. At this time the feast of Corpus Christi was quite new, for it had been officially commanded by Pope Urban IV in 1264 and only arrived in England in the early fourteenth century.63 The dramatic records of Ashburton, Devon, identify two subjects of Corpus Christi drama: Herod, in 1537–1538, and St. Rosemont (including “god almyghty” as a character for whom gloves were provided) in 1555–1556.64 An allusion to the role of Herod appears also in a letter of 1478 from J. Whetley to John Paston II in which John de la Pole, duke of Suffolk, is described: “ther was neuer no man þat playd Herrod in Corpus Crysty play better and more agreable to hys pageaunt then he dud.”65 No location is specified, though Norwich has been suggested,66 yet it seems sensible not to speculate without proof here or elsewhere that a Corpus Christi cycle was necessarily implied on the basis of reference to a single play. Thus, I believe, we cannot assume that the play of Adam and Eve presented on Corpus Christi in c.1506 at Reading was anything more than a single play rather than part of a cycle.67 The records suggest otherwise at Pontefract, which had an individual “Pageant” that was “called Noe” in the local “Corpus Christi playe.” This reference appears in a seventeenth-century copy of the ordinances of the amalgamated guild of “Wrights Bowers Cowpers Patenners Turners Sawers and Sewers.”68 But certainly any cycle associated with this town would have been much more limited in scope than York’s. A similarly scaled down presentation seems also to have been presented 61 Siegfried Wenzel, “An Early Reference to a Corpus Christi Play,” Modern Philology 74 (1977): 390–94. The Latin term used here is ludus. 62 REED: Cambridge, ed. Alan H. Nelson, 2 vols. (Toronto: University of Toronto, 1989), 1:5. 63 Rubin, Corpus Christi, 176–77, 199–200. She notes that the “feast had safely arrived in England” by the year 1318, and was encouraged in the archdiocese of York in 1322. 64 REED: Devon, ed. John Wasson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986), 24, 28. In 1558–1559, gloves are specified for “chryst on corpus christi daye” (29). See also the discussion in Johnston, “The Feast of Corpus Christi in the West Country,” 20–21. 65 Paston Letters and Papers of the Fifteenth Century, ed. Norman Davis, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), 2:426. 66 Alan H. Nelson, The Medieval English Stage (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), 131. 67 Charles Kerry, A History of the Municipal Church of St. Lawrence, Reading (Derby, 1883), 233–34; Payments were made for costumes for Adam and Eve of “crescoth” as well as doublet and hose of leather. See also Ian Lancashire, Dramatic Texts and Records of Britain (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984), no. 1319. 68 Barbara Palmer, “Corpus Christi ‘Cycles’ in Yorkshire: The Surviving Records,” CompD 27 (1993): 221–22.

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at Doncaster, where a document of 1540 records a “fysher play att the fest of Corpus christi” without indicating its subject matter.69 Later records at Doncaster verify pageants participating in the local Corpus Christi play by the Glovers and Skinners, the clothworkers (Weavers, Walkers, Shearmen, Fullers, and Dyers), and the Shoemakers.70 While the term ‘pageant’ elsewhere, as at Hereford in 1503, Ipswich between c.1400 and 1542, and perhaps Norwich between 1389 and 1557,71 might mean tableaux vivants in a Corpus Christi procession, here it designates a play within a more extensive offering involving productions by several guilds. Elsewhere the meaning of the term is, however, unclear. At Stamford in Lincolnshire in 1465– 1466, forty-three crafts were “sett to gether in [eleven] pagents,” which were to choose wardens,72 while in 1482 five or six “pagents” were to produce the “ludus Corporus Christi” as they had in the past.73 And at Bungay, where on a Friday night after Corpus Christi in 1514 five pageants, “whyche wer euer wont tofore to be caryd Abowt the seyd Town . . . in the honor of the blissyd Sacrement” representing heaven, paradise, Bethlehem, the world, and hell, were broken up by Richard Wharton, bailiff, and two accomplices.74 In other instances, the content of the play is completely unknown, as in the case of the Corpus Christi play reported between 1492 and 1531 at Ipswich, where it was entirely separate from the procession and was apparently begun only after other events of the day were finished—that is, around the middle of the afternoon; hence, as John Wasson remarks, it could not have been a long play.75 So, too, no evidence has been forthcoming regarding Canterbury in c.1530 when “a play called Corpus Christi play,” mentioned as having been formerly “meynteyned and plaide att the costes and charges of the Craftes and Mistiers,” was ordered revived after a period of neglect “by the feste of seint Michel next comyng.”76 In fact, this reference may have been misleadingly copied into the document from an external source — that is, it may be a “ghost.”77 In the Southwest, Exeter had a Corpus Christi play that, according to 69 Palmer, “Corpus Christi ‘Cycles’ in Yorkshire,” 223. 70 Palmer, “Corpus Christi ‘Cycles’ in Yorkshire,” 223–24. 71 REED: Herefordshire, Worcestershire, ed. David N. Klausner (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990), 115–16; Records of Plays and Players in Norfolk and Suffolk, 170– 83; REED: Norwich 1540–1642, ed. David Galloway (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984), 19, 43; Nelson, The Medieval English Stage, 128–31. Ipswich also staged a Corpus Christi play, for which see below. 72 Records of Plays and Players in Lincolnshire, 87–88. James Stokes, who is preparing the Records of Early English Drama volume on Lincolnshire, has suggested to me in private correspondence that “pagent” here means “company,” or “guild,” and this seems, indeed, to be the most probable explanation of this ambiguous record. 73 Records of Plays and Players in Lincolnshire, 89. 74 Records of Plays and Players in Norfolk and Suffolk, 141. 75 Records of Plays and Players in Norfolk and Suffolk, 175, 178–79; John Wasson, “Corpus Christi Plays and Pageants at Ipswich,” RORD 19 (1976): 101–3. 76 REED: Kent, Diocese of Canterbury, 1:lxxviii, 139–40; see also Gibson’s note in ibid, 3:1279–80. 77 James Gibson, in personal correspondence, cited Andrew Butcher, lecturer in history at Canterbury, as believing that “these records were probably copied from some other cities’

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an entry in the Mayors’ Court Roll in 1414, was said normally to have been played each year “by ancient custom up until just a short time ago.”78 At this time the play, for which a playbook (“ordinale”) was recorded, was to be transferred to Tuesday in Whitsun week, and, on account of a report of the failure of the Skinners to produce their two required portions or parts, we might believe that the performance was made up of a number of discrete pageants to create a continuous narrative and that these pageants were mounted by various crafts. Johnston, however, has argued that while the Skinners, indeed, had a Corpus Christi play, the events of 1414 involved a power play by the mayor and Corporation to take it over, divide it into parts, and move it to Tuesday of Whitsun week in conjunction with their Whitsun celebrations and fair.79 This did not happen, and it would be foolish to believe under the circumstances that anything like the York cycle could have been established even if the guilds had wanted to do so. The Skinners, through their Corpus Christi guild, continued to present a play on the feast day until the final decade of the fifteenth century, when the population of Exeter would already have grown considerably.80 The Exeter records here certainly conceal much more than they reveal, but elsewhere even greater mysteries indeed abound.81 The authentic local records of the Corpus Christi pageants at Wakefield, stripped of the spurious forgeries of the town historian John Walker, provide no convincing evidence of a connection between its plays and the plays in the Towneley manuscript (Huntington Library MS. HM1) in spite of the continued insistence of some scholars.82 We are left with references to “pagyauntes,” which have “speches,” in

ordinances.” Gibson noted that there are no other records indicative of a Corpus Christi play at Canterbury in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and it is possible that there was some confusion with the pageants presented at the feast of the translation of St. Thomas Becket on July 7. 78 REED: Devon, 82–83 and, for the translation quoted here, 357–58. 79 Johnston, “The Feast of Corpus Christi in the West Country,” 24–29. 80 REED: Devon, 106–12. Exeter’s ranking in the estimation of W. G. Hoskins was twenty-third after London in 1377 and fifth in 1523–1527 (Local History in England, 3rd ed. [London: Longman, 1984], 277–78). 81 What, for example, was the subject of the “enterlude” played by the Queen’s Players at Corpus Christi in the guildhall at Exeter in 1557–58 (REED: Devon, 147)? What play did the players present for which 4s 2d was spent “for drynke for ye players on corpus Chrysty day” at Eye, Suffolk, in 1536 (Records of Plays and Players in Norfolk and Suffolk, 159)? It is tempting, but hardly more than an unsubstantiated guess, to speculate that the London Skinners, through their identification with the city’s Corpus Christi Guild, might have been involved in play presentation on Corpus Christi. The account book in which the Skinners recorded their outlay for pageantry and other expenses for the feast in the fifteenth century is now lost; see Anne Lancashire, London Civic Theatre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 80, 253 n. 51. 82 The late Martin Stevens was insistent on the connection and made the claim for Wakefield in his introduction to The Towneley Plays, ed. Martin Stevens and A. C. Cawley, EETS, s.s. 13–14 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), xix–xxii. In the current reexamination, even the authorship of a single “Wakefield Master” has been challenged; see Epp, “‘Corected and not playd’,” 47–48, referring to a paper by Warren Edminster, “Authorship

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1556, and to a “Corpus Christy play” and a playbook (“regenall”) in 1559.83 Some of the plays in the Towneley manuscript are borrowings in whole or in part from York; three others seem to have some connection with the Wakefield area.84 Some of the latter potentially could have used as the basis for performance as part of a Wakefield celebration of Corpus Christi, and the best opinion concerning this late collection favors seeing the manuscript as a mid-sixteenth-century West Riding or Lancashire anthology from which plays could be chosen for performance and certainly not as a ready-made Creation to Doom cycle encompassing all of history.85 Whatever it was, the “plaie commonlie called Corpus Christi plaie” of the Wakefield records, even though transferred to Whitsuntide, was considered too Catholic and too much tending to superstition to receive Dean Matthew Hutton’s approval in 1576.86 Salvation History and Corpus Christi Salvation history was depicted in a series of plays or pageants in a number of other locations, including York, where the city corporation had organized the guilds into a major production of a very costly nature. Martin Stevens argued that the origin of this cycle was to be found in the tableaux vivants paraded through the streets of York in the fourteenth century,87 but other theories have been found more convincing.88 Very likely the affluent citizens of York who made up the Corporation were modeling their cycle on what they had seen on the Continent since there was a vigorous trade

and Lexical Source Analysis of the Towneley Cycle,” read at the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University in May 2004. 83 Palmer, “‘Towneley Plays’ or ‘Wakefield Cycle’ Revisited,” 329; A. C. Cawley, Jean Forrester, and John Goodchild, “References to the Corpus Christi Play in the Wakefield Burgess Court Rolls: The Originals Rediscovered,” Leeds Studies in English n.s. 19 (1988): 85–104. For the authentic and fabricated Wakefield records, see Palmer, “Recycling ‘The Wakefield Cycle’,” 120–23. 84 Palmer, “‘Towneley Plays’ or ‘Wakefield Cycle’ Revisited,” 336. 85 See Palmer, “Recycling ‘The Wakefield Cycle’,” 88–89. 86 York diocesan records, transcribed and quoted by A. C. Cawley, ed., The Wakefield Pageants in the Towneley Cycle (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1958), 125. 87 Martin Stevens, “The York Cycle: From Procession to Play,” Leeds Studies in English, n.s. 6 (1972): 37–61. 88 The “big bang” theory of the origin of the York cycle has merit in that it gives credit to the Corporation for choosing the plays in order to control the craft guilds and channel them into an activity that would provide structure for the community and to encourage spiritual activity. That Corpus Christi should be chosen will not be surprising when the town elite’s devotion to this relatively new feast is considered. See Pamela M. King, “The York Plays and the Feast of Corpus Christi,” METh 22 (2000): 13–32; and R. B. Dobson, “Craft Guilds and the City: The Historical Origins of the York Mystery Plays,” in The Stage as Mirror: Civic Theatre in Late Medieval Europe, ed. Alan E. Knight (Woodbridge: D. S. Brewer, 1997), 91–107; cf. Jeremy Goldberg, “Craft Guilds, the Corpus Christi Play and Civic Government,” in The Government of Medieval York: Essays in Commemoration of the 1396 Royal Charter (York: University of York, 1997), 141–63.

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with the Low Countries in particular,89 while their decision to use wagons on which to stage the plays possibly was their own innovation. The germ of the cycle therefore seems not to be found directly in the feast of Corpus Christi but rather apparently in the attempt to imitate and perhaps even to surpass Continental rivals, for in the case of York the stated motives for the plays, according to an entry as early as 1399 in the A/Y Memorandum Book, were to enhance the honor of the city and to promote reverence directed toward “nostreseignour Iesu Crist.”90 That this could result in somewhat of a disconnect with the feast of Corpus Christi is made clear in the objections of William Melton, the friar who in a sermon of 1426 encouraged a separation of the play cycle and the liturgical procession, both of which shared the same route up to the Minster Gates. Melton did not condemn the plays, which he believed had their usefulness, but as described by him they failed to bring everyone into a proper devotional mood.91 His recommendation, which was to separate the procession and the plays and to place the latter on the previous day before Corpus Christi, was not followed, though in later years there was a shift that instead moved the procession rather than the plays to Friday. An examination of the individual plays, which range in their coverage from the Creation to the Last Day, will not show a great deal of attention being paid specifically to the Eucharist—or, indeed, to the sacraments generally. The Bakers’ play of the Last Supper is a case in point. Unfortunately, the Bakers’ play is incomplete and is missing a leaf (sig. R2, folio following fol. 132) containing the crucial moment in which Jesus offers up bread and wine to his apostles as a model for the Eucharist. The Ordo paginarum of 1415 describes the scene as involving the “institution of the Sacrament of Corpus Christi according to the new law,” along with “the communion of the apostles.”92 Brevity would have been demanded since the missing leaf would have held only around thirty lines on each page, and then the text picks up at Jesus’ words to Judas from John 13:27: “Quod facis fac cicius,/ Þat þou schall do, do sone” (ll. 90–91).93 We know from the dramatic records that there was a stage prop, a “lam” that was mended in 1553 and 1557,94 for the celebration of the Old Law, and undoubtedly there were 89 See Alexandra F. Johnston, “Traders and Playmakers: English Guildsmen and the Low Countries,” in England and the Low Countries in the Late Middle Ages, ed. Caroline Barron and Nigel Saul (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 1995), 99–114, and “The Continental Connection: A Reconsideration,” in The Stage as Mirror, ed. Knight, 7–24. For a general survey that looks at both Continental and British Corpus Christi drama, see Lynette R. Muir, The Biblical Drama of Medieval Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 22–27 and passim, and for comparisons and contrasts between English and Continental “cycles,” see Happé, Cyclic Form, passim. 90 REED: York, 2 vols. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979), 1:11. 91 REED: York, 1:43. For the context of Melton’s statement concerning the plays at York as well as biographical details, see Richard Homan, “Old and New Evidence of the Career of William Melton, O.F.M.,” Franciscan Studies 49 (1989): 25–33. For discussion of connections between the plays and the Eucharistic piety, see King, “The York Plays and the Feast of Corpus Christi,” 13–32. 92 REED: York, 1:20 and, for the translation quoted here, 2:706. 93 The York Plays, ed. Beadle, 230–31. 94 REED: York, 1:309, 325.

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a chalice and bread (or, most likely, hosts) on a table to represent the institution of the new covenant. There is ample evidence that this play was not regarded as a high point of the York cycle thematically. The verse lacks the skill of the Passion segment, especially where some see the revisions of the so-called York Realist to be present.95 Nowhere in the Bakers’ play do we see the kind of Sacrament mysticism or the careful doctrinal admonition that is found in Nicholas Love’s treatment of the same subject in his adaptation of the popular Meditations on the Life of Christ.96 Nevertheless, we must not doubt that the Bakers’ play, like Love’s Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, would have insisted that the Eucharist “is verrey goddus body in forme of brede, and his verrey blode in forme of wyne.”97 The Host and the wine in the play, therefore, would have been regarded as representing those elements, under the accidents of bread and wine, that were transubstantiated into the “verrey Cristies body þat suffrede deþ vpon þe crosse” and “his verrey blode vndur likenes of wyne substancially and holely, without any feynyng or deceit, and not onely in figure as þe fals heretike seiþ.”98 The connection with the Mass and with its close association with the sacrifice on the cross are there, though for a Corpus Christi play one might have expected the scene to have been highlighted.99 The other extant plays that treat the sweep of salvation history fail to bring the institution of the Eucharist to the fore. In the Towneley collection, which, as noted above, was for a time thought to be the Wakefield Corpus Christi cycle, there is no Last Supper play. In the late texts of the Chester cycle as these evolved after transfer of the plays to Whitsuntide and were written out after their suppression, there are portions that survive from the earlier Corpus Christi cycle. For example, there is reference in the Resurrection (play 18) in these late versions to the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist, though, as noted above, some lines that offended the puritanical Goodman and Rogerson were removed and a Protestant gloss added.100 The Chester pageant that presents the Last Supper, however, seems less interesting from this point of view than the scene that includes Melchisedek’s offering of bread and wine to Abraham (Play 4),101 regarded as an Old Testament type of the Eucharist and in traditional iconography identified with the Mass by the assignment to the royal high priest of a chalice and paten.102 The dialogue in the late texts of this play seems to be rather thoroughly cleansed of any association with the Roman Catholic ritual that 95 See J. W. Robinson, “The Art of the York Realist,” Modern Philology 60 (1962– 1963), 241–51. 96 Nicholas Love, Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, ed. Michael G. Sargent (New York: Garland, 1992), 146–59. 97 Love, Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, 153. 98 Love, Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, 153–54. 99 See William Tydeman, “An Introduction to Medieval English Theatre,” in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre, ed. Richard Beadle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 21. 100 See n. 17, above. 101 Lumiansky and Mills, eds., The Chester Mystery Cycle, 1:58–63. 102 See Yumi Dohi, “Melchisedech in Late Medieval Religious Drama,” in The Dramatic Tradition of the Middle Ages, ed. Clifford Davidson (New York: AMS Press, 2005), 109–27; Rubin, Corpus Christi, 129–31.

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probably was present prior to the Reformation. Nevertheless, stage directions in one of the manuscripts (British Library, MS. Harley 2124) apparently reveal the earlier strata when Melchisedek “extendens manus ad coelum” and “offerrit calecem cum vino and pane super patenam” to Abraham.103 The royal high priest Melchisedek’s offering of bread and wine had been represented as a Host and a chalice in the Speculum humanae salvationis and the Biblia Pauperum, where these were regarded as prefiguring the Last Supper,104 and tentatively it may be speculated that this was what had been represented in the Chester Corpus Christi play.105 Some explanation is given in the typology that is invoked in Expositor’s speech, as Yumi Dohi has argued,106 though again the original meaning is undermined by the Protestant insistence that the bread and wine are merely given “in signification” (4.131). The typological interpretation of Melchisedek’s offering had been explicitly affirmed in Hebrews, chaps. 5–10, and perhaps, as Margaret Barker has recently argued, this is indicative of a stratum of influence from much earlier Hebrew temple worship that found its way into early Christianity.107 Barker’s work is important because she is able to explain a possible source for understanding the Eucharist as sacrifice and the canon of the Mass as occurring in the presence of heavenly angels. The Sanctus was always considered the song of angels (see Isaiah 6:3 and Apoc. 4:8). At Durham an alderman left £10 “in honor of the sacrament” in order to provide for mechanical angels to descend at the high altar at the elevation of the bread (“corporis Christi”) and wine (“sanguinis Domini”) and to ascend again at the conclusion of the Lord’s Prayer.108 Such a device had been seen by him at Bishop’s (now King’s) Lynn. This conception of the consecration of the Eucharist is essential for the interpretation of the Last Supper in the context of Corpus Christi, and it also shows how the York play as well as other extant pageants from the historical cycles fail to provide a perfect amplification of the feast except insofar as they do emphasize the Passion, the suffering and sacrifice of Christ on the cross.109 The Passion section of the York cycle, rewritten sometime after 1422, thus probably represents an effort to make the plays that deal with this segment of Jesus’ life stand out. In Lydgate’s Exhortation to Priests, the poet insists upon the necessity of remembering the events surrounding “hys most peynfull passyoun” 103 Lumiansky and Mills, eds., The Chester Mystery Cycle, 1:59–60. 104 Adrian Wilson and Joyce Lancaster Wilson, A Medieval Mirror: Speculum humanae salvationis (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984), 172–73; Avril Henry, Biblia Pauperum: A Facsimile and Edition (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987), 81, 83. 105 This view differs from Clopper’s assessment of the contents of the earlier Corpus Christi play (“The History and Development,” 241, 243). To be sure, the scene is not included in the early banns; see REED: Chester, 31–39. 106 Dohi, “Melchisedech in Late Medieval Religious Drama,” 123–24. 107 Margaret Barker, The Great High Priest: The Temple Roots of Christian Liturgy (London: T. and T. Clark International, 2003). 108 Testamenta Eboracensis, ed. James Raine, 6 vols. (Durham, 1836–1902): 4:209. 109 See chap. 5, below. For further discussion of suffering on the cross, see Ellen M. Ross, The Grief of God: Images of the Suffering Jesus in Late Medieval England (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), though her treatment of the drama is not always up to date.

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and Crucifixion “louyngly,”110 and, indeed, this is the attitude that so frequently was recommended and practiced in the fifteenth century. The elevation involved memory (anamnesis) of when Jesus was raised up on the cross to atone for the sins of the world. Roods, carvings of the crucified Christ, were canonically required to hang in front of the chancel area where the Mass commemorated the event that was seen as the center of all history, and it appears that the altar itself was regarded as like the tomb of Christ. Gregory Dix cites a fourth-century writer who compared the linen altar covering to the grave clothes of the Savior on Good Friday,111 while a Brigittine Mass devotion cited by Eamon Duffy insists that “the processe of the masse representyd the verey processe of the Passyon off Cryst.”112 We may, therefore, see the York Passion pageants not only as an aid to understanding and imaginatively seeing the Passion but also as an adjunct to the ritual of the Mass, which through the miracle of Transubstantiation was believed to make the body of the crucified Jesus present in the Host. It should be kept in mind that the usual act of devotion for laypersons at Mass was not communion but seeing the consecrated Host or, as the experience was then understood, eating through seeing.113 Seeing an imaginative replication of the Passion on wagon stages was not the same thing but, in spite of the complaints of William Melton in 1426 of some inappropriate behavior on the part of some members of the audience,114 was undoubtedly a moving event as viewed by a great many of those who watched in the streets of York at a time of excitement surrounding a major festival in the calendar. The celebration also had a goal of uniting the community not only in play production or in the Corpus Christi procession but also, as John Mirk says in his sermon on the topic of the feast, so that all might live “in perfite charite and in gret socoure and reles of her payne þat ben in purgatori.”115

110 Lydgate, The Minor Poems, 1:84–86 (italics mine). 111 Gregory Dix, The Shape of the Liturgy (1945; reprint London: A. and C. Black, 1975), 104. 112 Langforde, Meditations in the Time of the Mass, in Tracts on the Mass, ed. J. Wickham Legg, Bradshaw Society (1904), 19; cited by Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 119. In the Brigittine tract, the reader is advised to meditate specifically on “the ho[ll pro]cesse of the passyon frome [the] Mandy vnto the poynt of [crysts] deeth” at the time of the canon of the Mass (Langforde, Meditations, 24). 113 See Ann Eljenholm Nichols, “The Bread of Heaven: Foretaste or Foresight?” in The Iconography of Heaven, ed. Clifford Davidson, EDAM Monograph Series 21 (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1994), 40–68. 114 REED: York, 1:42–44. 115 John Mirk, Festial, ed. Theodor Erbe, EETS, e.s. 96 (1905; reprint Millwood, N.Y.: Kraus Reprint, 1987), 168. For the goal of uniting the community through the festival and its plays, see Mervyn James, “Ritual, Drama and Social Body in the Late Medieval English Town,” Past and Present 98 (1983): 3–29; and Charles Phythian-Adams, “Ceremony and the Citizen: The Communal Year at Coventry 1450–1550,” in Crisis and Order in English Towns, 1500–1700, ed. Peter Clark and Paul Slack (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1972), 57–85.

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York was, to be sure, not the only cycle of plays in Britain to dramatize salvation history on the feast of Corpus Christi. But just as the presence of an Adam and Eve at Reading, cited above, does not prove the existence of a Creation to Doom cycle, so also a city might choose to dramatize only the New Testament, to which, in the case of Coventry, Doomsday was added. Two pageants from the Coventry Corpus Christi cycle are extant, and from the city’s dramatic records we know a good deal about its other plays—enough, that is, to recognize that, like York’s cycle, there was probably little that could be construed as a direct reflection of Corpus Christi’s meaning as a Eucharistic festival. Unfortunately, the Passion segment, produced by the Coventry Smiths, is here only known through the guild records,116 which tell us very little about the aesthetic of the play or its presentation of the establishment of the Eucharist. Significantly, however, this guild seems to have had a special devotion to the Passion. The surviving sixteenth-century texts of the Shearmen and Taylors’ and Weavers’ plays, by Robert Croo, seem to have little of the emotional devotion that, for example, is said to characterize Spanish Corpus Christi processions and pageantry. Nevertheless, this cycle must have had a spectacular conclusion, for the sixteenthcentury records of the Doomsday play sponsored by the Drapers are indicative of an elaborate production and specify fireworks.117 Because the iconography of the Last Judgment as reflected in the Drapers’ play seems to have displayed a Christ with still-bleeding wounds, one might suppose that this and other similar Judgment plays may be counted as relevant to the meaning of Corpus Christi.118 William Dugdale reported that the Coventry cycle, which was to continue until suppressed in 1579, had drawn an “extraordinarily great” annual “confluence of people” and apparently drew visitors from all around England at the time of Corpus Christi.119 It is doubtful but not altogether certain, however, that the Corpus Christi play noted at Lincoln in the cathedral account books for 1472 and subsequently was a dramatization of salvation history.120 As Alan Nelson has noted, “It is impossible to assert that the Lincoln Corpus Christi play had the same subject as the Corpus Christi plays of York and Coventry.”121 The “ludus Corpus christi” first recorded in 1472 is specified in 1477–1481 in connection with the chamber of John Sharpe in the cathedral close that Nelson thought was the site of the play.122 The current editor of the Records of Early English Drama volume of Lincolnshire records is skeptical

116 See the numerous entries (as cited in the index) in REED: Coventry, and The Coventry Corpus Christi Plays, ed. King and Davidson, 29–33. 117 REED: Coventry, 230, 473–74, 477–79. 118 See REED: Coventry, 230, and the Chester Last Judgment play, in which Christ describes his blood issuing from his side as he speaks (ll. 425–28), and this is followed by a stage direction indicating that his blood should flow from his side at this point. 119 Dugdale, The Antiquities of Warwickshire, 116. 120 Hardin Craig’s theory that the “Hegge” (N-Town) plays were Lincoln’s Corpus Christi play (English Religious Drama of the Middle Ages [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955], 278–80) has been generally rejected. 121 Nelson, The Medieval English Stage, 114. 122 Records of Plays and Players in Lincolnshire, 35–36; Nelson, The Medieval Stage, 114.

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of this view.123 The civic sponsorship of the play would thus argue for a site more accessible for the people, both of high estate and of lower, who would wish to see it. In 1495 the audience included, apparently in addition to the cathedral clergy, many others of high estate, and a dinner was also specified.124 It is also impossible to tell what was involved in the late fifteenth-century “ludus Corporis Christi” at Stamford to which reference has been made above.125 Elsewhere the records are more clear, and in one instance a copy of a text from a Corpus Christi cycle preserves, albeit in a corrupt form, a Noah play. This is the copy in modernized—that is, eighteenth-century—English made by Henry Bourne of the Newcastle Shipwright’s play and included in his posthumously published History of Newcastle upon Tyne; or, The Ancient and Present State of that Town (1736).126 In spite of some incomprehensible readings that scholars have attempted to untangle, Bourne’s text has considerable interest, not least since it introduces a devil who gives the wife of Noah a drink to administer to him, at which point he exclaims that he has “nere lost [his] Wit” (157). Other lines indicate that the creators of the play in this important port city127 knew something about how a ship should have been built, even if there is some comedy in Noah’s lack of knowledge in this respect. But, other than alluding to the wickedness into which the created world had fallen and to the hope that the ark presents, there is little here that points to salvation history—and no connection, so far as I can see, to the Corpus Christi liturgy. Nor do the ordinaries of various guilds, beginning with the Coopers in 1427, provide any rationale for the plays specifically in relation to Corpus Christi. Several of these documents follow the Newcastle Coopers in repeating the formula “To the Worshippe of godde And sustentacion of the procession And Corpus christi play . . . Aftur the laudable and amycient [sic] Custome of the seide towne”.128 Nevertheless, here and elsewhere the spirit of the feast is affirmed as promoting unity in the community and “in eschewyng of discencion And discorde that has benne emong diuerse Craftes.”129 More than a hundred years later the 1537 Tailors’ ordinary repeats the same formula but lists specifically the crime of murder as well as “other myscheves” that recently have occurred among the members of the craft guilds. Here we encounter as a specific motive for the plays the healing of social wounds in the body of the community and, in words practically echoing Mirk’s Corpus Christi sermon (cited above), they are “to induce love charite pease.”130 123 Personal communication from James Stokes. 124 Records of Plays and Players in Lincolnshire, 39. 125 Records of Plays and Players in Lincolnshire, 87–89. 126 Non-Cycle Plays and Fragments, ed. Norman Davis, EETS, s.s. 1 (London: Oxford University Press, 1970), xl–xli, 19–20. 127 Newcastle was eleventh in size among English provincial towns in 1377, or slightly smaller than Beverley and much larger than Hull, ranked tenth and twenty-fourth in the kingdom at this time; by 1523–1527, Newcastle may have ranked third (Hoskins, Local History in England, 277–78), though its size at this time may be overstated. 128 REED: Newcastle upon Tyne, ed. J. J. Anderson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982), 3. 129 REED: Newcastle upon Tyne, 3. 130 REED: Newcastle upon Tyne, 21.

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The Fishers’ Noah play was preceded by the Bricklayers and Plasterers’ Creation of Adam, cited in 1454 in the guild ordinances, which also indicate that they were responsible for The Flying of our Lady into Egype.131 In the shifting organization of Newcastle guilds, the Bricklayers joined the Slaters in 1579, at which time they were designated as producers of The Offering of Isaack by Abraham,132 a scene that to be sure looked forward to the offering of the Lamb of God at the Crucifixion. The Passion and Crucifixion seem to have been fully covered, and there appears to have been a Last Supper play by the Fullers and Dyers for which “Mawndy Loves and Caks” were supplied along with “the Trowt and wyn.”133 We know that in some representations of the Last Supper fish were part of the meal. In painted glass at Great Malvern and in the Hours of Elizabeth the Queen, Judas is seen in the act of stealing a fish!134 Bourne had also seen the “ancient Manuscript, beautifully wrote, in Old English Rhime,” of the Saddlers’ play and reported that “it relates to our Saviour’s Sufferings.”135 In all, the records are indicative of at least fifteen plays in the cycle, which was staged on pageant carriages that seem to have been without wheels and carried through the city between stations where they were performed,136 but there is also reference in 1564 to a scaffold at Sandhill near the castle.137 In 1599, nearly thirty years after the plays had been suspended, a playbook was still included in an inventory of the company of Goldsmiths, Plumbers, Pewterers, Glaziers, and Painters.138 The Corpus Christi plays and pageants mounted by the craft guilds of Beverley were presented “in the fashion and form of the ancient custom of the town of Beverley, to play in honour of the Body of Christ.”139 The pageants had been initially noted in a document of 1377, only a year later than the first reference to the York plays.140 An inventory of properties for a play identified as “Paradise” (the Fall of Adam and Eve) from 1391 gives, among other items, “visers” (masks), angels’ wings, other costumes, a “firsparr” or pole for the forbidden tree, a “worme” (serpent), and a sword for the angel of the Expulsion as well as a “karre,” which would seem in this case to have been a wheeled pageant wagon from which the play was played at various stations throughout the town.141 The route, at locations throughout Beverley,

131 REED: Newcastle upon Tyne, 6. 132 REED: Newcastle upon Tyne, 63. For a list of other pageants at Newcastle, see xii. 133 REED: Newcastle upon Tyne, 29. 134 Gordon McN. Rushforth, Medieval Christian Imagery (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1936), 58, 61, figs. 13–14. 135 REED: Newcastle upon Tyne, xiii. 136 J. J. Anderson, “The Newcastle Pageant ‘Care’,” METh 1 (1979): 60–61. 137 REED: Newcastle upon Tyne, 38. 138 REED: Newcastle upon Tyne, 132. 139 Nelson, The Medieval English Stage, 91; Arthur F. Leach, “Some English Plays and Players, 1220–1548,” in An English Miscellany Presented to Dr. Furnivall in Honour of His Seventy-Fifth Birthday (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1901), 208–9, and also Report on the Manuscripts of the Corporation of Beverley (London: HMSO, 1900), 65–68. 140 REED: York, 3. 141 Leach, “Some English Plays and Players,” 210.

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was set by 1423,142 and in that year a Dominican friar, Thomas Bynham, composed the banns.143 Already a dozen years earlier the more affluent citizens of the city were commanded to join the craft guilds in contributing to the cycle—a contribution that was to include appropriate and proper plays for the occasion.144 There clearly were speeches, since actors were constantly being fined for their incompetence in not knowing their roles—evidence that verifies tight control exerted by the City’s governors on the play.145 One record lists three dozen pageants, ranging, in order, from the Fall of Lucifer to Doomsday, the latter presented by the affluent merchants of the town. These were listed in an undated document (but possibly from 1520– 1521) in the Great Guild Book.146 In at least one year, the Bakers of Beverley, as at York, presented a play about the Last Supper (called “the Maundy”), and an extensive group of plays on the Passion followed. Whether the Beverley plays at this date or earlier were any more closely related to the theology, liturgy, or spirituality of Corpus Christi than the York plays we cannot say. That they were immensely expensive to produce for a town of the size of Beverley is certain.147 While the Beverley records break off at 1539 and the York and Coventry plays were suppressed in 1569 and 1579, respectively, Corpus Christi plays treating salvation history were continued in remote Westmorland and Lancashire. In the case of Kendal, its Corpus Christi drama was not laid aside until the beginning of the reign of King James I. The Kendal play is first mentioned in the town’s Boke off Recorde in 1575–1576 at the time of its incorporation as a municipality, but the presentation by “Occupacions” of “their severall pagiandes of Corpus Christi playe” is clearly a dramatic event that is merely being continued rather than instituted as something new.148 At the time of the play, aldermen were required to wear their official gowns, as also on other special holy days and on fair day, on pain of a fine. No evidence is provided for the kind of processional performance that was maintained at York and Beverley, and Audrey Douglas, the editor of the Cumberland and Westmorland dramatic records, insists that “it is clear that the Kendal play was stationary,” having been played “in one particular street location.”149 Records of 1600–1601 indicate payment for paving the “stret whear playe was,”150 and we may presume that a stationary stage would have been installed for performances if there was not a raised platform of some kind already in place. The play was cited as a 142 For the Beverley pageant route, see Diana Wyatt, “The English Pater Noster Play: Evidence and Extrapolations,” CompD 30 (1996–1997): 457–58. 143 Report on the Manuscripts of the Corporation of Beverley, 160. 144 Nelson, The Medieval English Stage, 92. 145 Nelson, The Medieval English Stage, 93–94. 146 Lancashire, Dramatic Texts and Records of Britain, no. 376; Leach, “Some English Plays and Players,” 218–19; Nelson, The Medieval English Stage, 94. 147 Leach, “Some English Plays and Players,” 214. 148 REED: Cumberland, Westmorland, Gloucestershire, ed. Audrey Douglas and Peter Greenfield (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986), 18, 168–69. 1575 marks the incorporation of the borough, therefore, not the beginning of play production on Corpus Christi. 149 REED: Cumberland, Westmorland, Gloucestershire, 18. 150 REED: Cumberland, Westmorland, Gloucestershire, 178.

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dramatization of scriptural subject matter in the course of a debate at Oxford in 1638,151 and reference to it was made in 1631 by John Weever, who had been born near Preston in Lancashire in 1576.152 He had seen it before it was suppressed in 1605, and his account is all the more useful since he linked the Kendal play with similar plays at Preston and Lancaster. The passage from Weever’s Ancient Funerall Monuments provides a hint of what these plays treated and also gives a suggestion, albeit in vague terms, about what the objections to them in Protestant times would have been. He is discussing the eightday play, which, according to John Stow, was staged in the time of Richard Marlow’s mayoralty (1409) at Skinners’ Well in London. This play was a dramatization, Weever says, of “the sacred Scriptures, from the creation of the world: They call this, Corpus Christi Play in my countrey, which I haue seene acted at Preston, and Lancaster, and last of all at Kendall, in the beginning of the raigne of King Iames; for which the Townesmen were sore troubled; and vpon good reasons the play finally supprest, not onely there, but in all other Townes of the kingdome.”153 This still does not prove that the Kendal play, or the other plays he cites from Preston and Lancaster, followed the model of York in selecting topics for plays that provided a continuous spectacle showing the history of the world from beginning to end with the Incarnation at its center. The size of these communities and their municipal structure could hardly have meant anything other than support for much more modest cycles, if that is what they were. Yet there is anecdotal evidence that these plays made a deep impression on the minds of the viewers. The Puritan clergyman John Shaw, having gone to Cartmel to preach during the Civil Wars, encountered an aged man who, though he had been “a good Churchman” who “constantly went to Common-prayer,” had only heard about Jesus as representing the means of salvation from seeing the Kendal Corpus Christi play. Regarding the Savior who had died on the cross and the salvation offered through his atonement, the man seemed not to have learned of him except from the play, where he saw “a man on a tree, and blood ran downe etc.”154 With so many images of the Crucifixion having been removed from the churches at the Reformation, the visual impact of this depiction of the Passion that this person had seen on the stage four decades previously was what he retained in his memory. For the historian of early drama, his testimony provides evidence of the presence of a vivid 151 REED: Cumberland, Westmorland, Gloucestershire, 213, citing Thomas Crosfield’s Diary (Oxford, Queen’s College MS. 390, fol. 84), where the topic for debate was “whether Corpus Christi play long since acted in Kendall, was tolerable by Gods [sic] law because it seemes to be a kind of preaching or setting out of ye scripture to edification. . . .” 152 REED: Lancashire, ed. David George (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991), 320. 153 John Weever, Ancient Funerall Monuments (London, 1631), 405; quoted in REED: Cumberland, Westmorland, Gloucestershire, 219; and see John Stow, A Survey of London, ed. Charles Lethbridge Kingsford, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1908), 2:171. With regard to this play, Stow reports that “the most part of all the great Estates were there [in London] to behold it” (ibid.). 154 The Life of John Shaw (British Library Add. MS. 4460, fol. 7), as quoted in REED: Cumberland, Westmorland, Gloucestershire, 219.

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Passion segment of the play called Corpus Christi at Kendal. Since the Lancaster and Preston plays were said to have been similar in content, we may surmise that they too emphasized the Passion. This also emerges as a principal emphasis of the Corpus Christi plays at Kilkenny in Ireland which continued even longer, until very nearly the middle of the seventeenth century when the city fell to Cromwell’s forces. Alan Fletcher, who has remarked on the obsessive devotion to Corpus Christi drama in Kilkenny, has concluded that its substance was in the main the dramatization of the Passion, the Harrowing of Hell (with fireworks), and the Resurrection, to which might be added the Nine Worthies, perhaps in imitation of the Dublin pageants.155 The playing place was at the “stone-flanked” Market Cross, with its “sympathetically resonant acoustic,”156 but abbreviated performances were also presented at other “stations” in the town.157 Payments were made for acting, albeit for a lesser fee, at these other locations; roles of devils, St. Michael, and Christ were included, probably involving, according to Fletcher, “a few lines, . . . some suitable action and gestures.”158 The town additionally supported a Corpus Christi procession. The Kilkenny Corpus Christi cycle, then, represents one model—that is, a series of plays that survey salvation history—which could be adapted to local circumstances where resources of population, wealth, and guild support made such plays possible. Despite the difficulty of working with fragmentary evidence, we see that a “Corpus Christi play” might include as its core the dramatization of the Passion, which was closely identified with the feast on account of the belief in Transubstantiation which held that the body of Christ appeared under the visible appearance of the bread in the Eucharistic rite. Further, the ancient idea of the Mass as sacrifice made the rite into a reflection of the action of the Passion in which Christ on the cross atoned for the sins of the world. Nevertheless, this emphasis was clearly not always the case, for a “Corpus Christi play” seems often to have been any religious drama that was deemed appropriate for performance on the feast day, especially if it had become a regular event. Finally, in some instances a “Corpus Christi play” might be a play usually performed on the feast of Corpus Christi but, for some reason, transferred to another day in the Trinity season. The Croxton Play of the Sacrament The feast of Corpus Christi had as the focus of its devotion the Body of Christ, exhibited in the transubstantiated Host that was carried through towns and cities in the course of the celebration of the feast. But even civic Corpus Christi processions, more widespread than plays organized for this day, sometimes displayed pageants that had little directly to do with the feast and more to do with advertising their sponsors. And none of the plays noted above, as we have seen, provides a full155 Fletcher, Drama, Performance, and Polity, 192. The play, however, seems to have alternated between Corpus Christi and Midsummer. 156 Fletcher, Drama, Performance, and Polity, 187, figs. 15–16. 157 Fletcher, Drama, Performance, and Polity, 187. 158 Fletcher, Drama, Performance, and Polity, 190.

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scale dramatization involving a major role for the Host. The Croxton Play of the Sacrament, however, is such a drama, and, in the view of Gail McMurray Gibson, “has some festival connection with Corpus Christi.”159 Gibson also points to the references in the text to locations near Bury St. Edmunds that argue for its origin at that town, the site of a great Benedictine monastery but also possessing a market square and adjacent St. James Church where the play could have been presented.160 There was a play—obviously not the Play of the Sacrament but possibly more directly related to the theme of the feast than the cycles such as those at York and Coventry—on Corpus Christi at Bury as early as 1389, when it was presented by the Corpus Christi Guild.161 If a tradition of Corpus Christi drama persisted at Bury, then it would indeed be an especially plausible place of origin for the Play of the Sacrament, and the banns referring to Croxton fourteen miles to the north may well have been additions made at the time when the extant manuscript was copied in the sixteenth-century. Performance at Croxton162 was advertised in the banns for the next Monday, without locating the date in the Church calendar, rather than specifying the feast day of Corpus Christi, but this does not rule out the possibility of original performance shortly after 1461 at Bury on or near the actual day of the feast. The key here is the choice of the antiphon O sacrum convivium, used for the Corpus Christi procession in English service books,163 during the procession into the church with the “Host” that had been tortured. Upon arrival in the church, the “Host” is placed on the altar, perhaps using sleight of hand to reveal (in a monstrance?) a real Host there for the veneration of the audience (or, by now, a congregation).164 In this case, the play would dissolve into something quite different, a reverential 159 Gail McMurray Gibson, The Theater of Devotion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 35. As Lynette R. Muir has noted, the only play which has explicit reference to Corpus Christi dramatizes the miracle of the blood-stained corporal that is preserved as a relic at the Cathedral of Orvieto; in this play a German priest who doubts Transubstantiation finds the Host which he has consecrated no longer white in color but red and dripping with blood on the corporal (“The Mass on the English Stage,” CompD 23 [1989–90]: 316–17). The shrine of the miraculous corporal (c.1360) is illustrated in William Tydeman, ed., The Medieval European Stage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 188. Muir also notes, however, that a performance of the Sainte Hostie, a French analogue to The Play of the Sacrament, was recorded at Laval on Corpus Christi in 1533, though she doubts that the date is more than a coincidence (“The Mass on the English Stage,” 318); see also below for a Corpus Christi procession related to the Miracle of the Host in Paris. Quotations from The Play of the Sacrament are from Non-cycle Plays and Fragments, ed. Davis, 58–89, and are identified in my text by line numbers. 160 Gibson, The Theater of Devotion, 35. 161 Karl Young, “An Interludium for a Gild of Corpus Christi,” Modern Language Notes (1933): 84–86. 162 For Croxton’s church and churchyard as a place to stage the play, see William Tydeman, English Medieval Theatre 1400–1500 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986), 53–75. 163 Sr. Nicholas Maltman, “Meaning and Art in the Croxton Play of the Sacrament,” ELH 41 (1974): 151. 164 This solution to the play’s conclusion is not chosen by Tydeman (English Medieval Theatre, 74–75).

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tableau presided over by the bishop and concluding with the Te Deum, which also, as noted above, figured prominently in the Durham Corpus Christi procession when it has entered the church. However, whatever the occasion or location for which it was initially written, The Play of the Sacrament deals symbolically with themes that are very central to the feast of Corpus Christi in the late Middle Ages. This may have resonated particularly well in East Anglia, where Lollardy had been active earlier in the fifteenth century.165 Lollardy, of course, promoted scepticism regarding the Eucharist and a dislike of Church authority. Ann Eljenholm Nichols, who properly remains highly distrustful of interpretations of the play as anti-Lollard polemic,166 nevertheless, finds specific examples of anti-sacramental terminology used by Lollards that here have been given to the Jewish unbelievers, who initially disbelieve in the truth of the doctrine of Transubstantiation and, indeed, in Jesus’ act of atonement on the cross.167 She cites, for example, Lollards who were forced to abjure the statement “there remaineth nothing but only a cake of material bread” in the Eucharistic Host.168 The Jews’ rejectionism, of course, goes much further, for one of Jonathas’s cohorts insists not only that the Christian faith is false but also that Jesus was never executed on Calvary (213–14). The thrust of the play at this point is to present the Jews, prior to their conversion, as blind — the inverse of what is being proven by the miracles that take place in the course of the action. In this a familiar sign is being set forth, for the iconographic commonplace representing Judaism is Synagoga (as opposed to the Church), and Synagoga is always depicted as blind or blindfolded.169 Yet these Jews are not implacable enemies of Christianity like the Jew who appears in the Mystère de la Sainte Hostie, the Continental analogue of The Play of the Sacrament said to have been staged at Metz in 1513. In the French play, the Jew, who does not repent, is punished by execution for similarly desecrating a Host.170 The English playwright 165 Cecilia Cutts overstates the case for the play as polemic against Lollardy; see her article “The Croxton Play: An Anti-Lollard Piece,” Modern Language Quarterly 5 (1944): 45–60. 166 Ann Eljenholm Nichols, “The Croxton Play of the Sacrament: A Re-Reading,” CompD 22 (1988): 117–20. 167 Ann Eljenholm Nichols, “Lollard Language in the Croxton Play of the Sacrament,” Notes and Queries 234 (1989): 23–25. 168 Nichols, “Lollard Language,” 25, citing Norman P. Tanner, Heresy Trials in the Diocese of Norwich, 1428–31 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1977), 73–74. 169 See Margaret Schlauch, “The Allegory of Church and Synagogue,” Speculum 14 (1939): 448–64. Honorius, writing to the province of Rouen in 1225, speaks of Jews as heretics whose hearts are “still covered by a veil” and who therefore grope blindly; quoted, with translation, in Solomon Grayzel, The Church and the Jews in the XIIIth Century (New York: Hermon Press, 1966), 174–75. A great deal of information about Jewish stereotypes is to be found in this work and in Ruth Mellinkoff, Outcasts: Signs of Otherness in Northern European Art of the Late Middle Ages, 2 vols. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993). For useful comments, see Scherb, Staging Faith, 73–75. 170 See Lynette R. Muir, “Further Thoughts on the Tale of the Profaned Host,”EDAMR 21 (1999): 88–97. The original miracle of the profaned Host was said to have taken place in 1290 at Paris, and in 1444 a Corpus Christi procession in Paris included “the little knife with which the false Jew had cut up Our Lord’s flesh” and thereafter pageantry showing “the

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has instead made the Jews in his play to be doubters, like “Doubting” Thomas, whose belief was revived by the miracle of seeing and touching the risen Christ with the wounds of his crucifixion (John 20:24–29). Jonathas, though believing the answer to be in the negative, actually sets out to test whether the Old Testament prophecy may after all be correct: “But thys bred I wold myght be put in a prefe / Whether þis be he that in Bosra of vs had awe” (442–43).171 The real betrayer of the Sacrament is not the Jew Jonathas, however, but the rich merchant Aristorius, who, like Judas, sells his Lord, for belief in Transubstantiation interprets the consecrated Host to be the true flesh of Jesus, as the Corpus Christi sequence Lauda Sion salvatorem asserts. The change of bread into flesh (Aquinas speaks of it as a “sacramental species”172) is not accessible to the understanding but can be known only by faith. The bread is the outward appearance, for Christ in his wholeness exists under the outer form that is visible to the eye.173 Aristorius, being a Christian, fears being apprehended as a heretic and burned (see 302, 857), the punishment specified for heresy in De heretico comburendo, passed by Parliament in 1401.174 Jonathas and his cohorts are guilty instead of the very serious sin of blasphemy, and this is the charge that the image of the Child Jesus levels at them (731). Such a charge, reversing the accusation of blasphemy against Jesus at his trial in the Bible, is in line with fairly common accusations against real-life Jews.175 The edicts of the Lateran Council of 1215 specifically ordered that Jews who were blasphemers were to be punished.176 John Godolphin’s Repertorium Canonicum describes blasphemy as “speaking Treason against the Heavenly Majesty, the belching out of execrable words against God, whereby the Deity is reproached.”177 whole Mystery of the Jew” (91–92, quoting A Parisian Journal, trans. Janet Shirley [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968], 330). For a recent study, see Jody Enders, “Theater Makes History: Ritual Murder by Proxy in the Mistere de la Sainte Hostie,” Speculum 79 (2004): 991–1016. 171 Derived from Isaiah 63:1–2: “Who is this that cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from Bosra . . . ” (Douay-Rheims). See James H. Marrow, Passion Iconography in Northern European Art of the Late Middle Ages and Early Renaissance (Kortrijk: Van Ghemmert, 1979), 50–52. 172 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q. 77, a. 7 ad. 3, as cited in translation by Rubin, Corpus Christi, 14. 173 The concern with orthodoxy in relation to the Eucharist and the other sacraments in East Anglia in the same time period as that of the original composition of The Play of the Sacrament seems also to be reflected in the carving of Seven Sacrament fonts in this region; see Ann Eljenholm Nichols, The Early Art of Norfolk, EDAM Reference Series 7 (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2002), 252–53, and, by the same author, Seeable Signs: The Iconography of the Seven Sacraments (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1994), passim. 174 Margaret Aston, Thomas Arundel: A Study of Church Life in the Reign of Richard II (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), 335. 175 See Grayzel, The Church and the Jews, 156–57; and Leonard W. Levy, Treason against God: A History of the Offense of Blasphemy (New York: Schocken, 1981), 114–17. 176 See, for convenience, Grayzel, The Church and the Jews, 308–9. 177 John Godolphin, Repertorium Canonicum; or An Abridgement of the Ecclesiastical Laws of This Realm (London, 1678), 559–60. Apparently open and public blasphemy was considered too serious a crime to be absolved by an ordinary priest but rather required a

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For Aquinas, it was uttering an insult to or making a wrong statement about God, and for him it was the most serious of sins.178 Corpus Christi was, on the other hand, a celebration of the power of the Eucharist, and as such it serves in The Play of the Sacrament to stimulate, even as a result of its desecration, the conversion of the Jews. Prayer for the Jews’ conversion appeared, as Nichols reminds us, in a collect for Good Friday in the Sarum rite.179 Yet in the light of attitudes of the time and of the veneration with which the Host was viewed,180 the desecration scenes are shocking.181 The bishop later will identify the acts of desecration as “thys vnlefull work” which, if I understand the statement correctly, is meant to have a visceral effect (819). The Jews indeed present a “newe tourmentry” or torture of the Savior under the element of the bread and also a “new passyoun” (38, 731, 803–04). The scenes of desecration that take place are, in fact, parallel to the ordeal of Christ immediately prior to and at his Crucifixion, as they also establish some parallels to the order found in the canon of the Mass. The beginning involves placing the Host on a table, over which a cloth has been spread as if on an altar, then the invoking of Jesus’ giving of himself to his apostles at the Last Supper and the recitation of the words “Comedite Corpus meum” (391, 404). Jasdon promises that they will beat “him,” and they set out to “smyte ye in the myddys of þe cake” in order to replicate the “woundys fyve” (457–58). This bears resemblance to the scene in the now lost wall painting at Friskney, Lincolnshire (fig. 3),182 and in an illumination in the Lovel Lectionary (Harley MS. 7026, fol. 13) in the British Library.183 In these illustrations, as in Paolo Uccello’s Profanation of the Host and in other examples of this iconography, the Host is being stabbed with swords or long daggers.184 bishop (560); undoubtedly this is why the Bishop appears in the play instead of a member of the lower clergy in The Play of the Sacrament. 178 See The Catholic Encyclopedia, s.v. “Blasphemy.” 179 Nichols, “The Croxton Play of the Sacrament,” 129–30. 180 See Nichols, “The Bread of Heaven,” 40–68; Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars, 95–102. 181 See Heather Hill-Vásques, “‘Miraclis Pleyinge’ and the Croxton Play of the Sacrament,” ET 4 (2001): 64, for the remark that the staging of these scenes “allows [the] audience and actors to examine, without direct recrimination, what amounts to the danger as well as the potential of ‘miraclis pleyinge’.” In terms explored in my Deliver Us From Evil (New York: AMS Press, 2004), the play allows for symbolic engagement with the forbidden and with the darker forces that are encountered in human life. 182 See also the description in Henry John Cheales, “On the Wall-Paintings in All Saints’ Church, Friskney, Lincolnshire,” Archaeologia 53 (1893): 430–32. 183 Kathleen L. Scott, Later Gothic Manuscripts, 1390–1490, 2 vols. (London: Harvey Miller, 1996), catalogue no. 10, fig. 57; also reproduced in Tydeman, English Medieval Theatre, fig. 7. 184 Marilyn Aronberg Lavin, “The Altar of Corpus Domini in Urbino,” Art Bulletin 49 (1967): 8–10; Nichols, “The Croxton Play of the Sacrament,” 121; M. A. Goukovski, “A Representation of the Profanation of the Host: A Puzzling Painting in the Hermitage and Its Possible Author,” Art Bulletin 51 (1969): 170–73. Goukovski calls attention to woodcuts in a sixteenth-century printed edition of Un Miracolo del Corpo di Cristo illustrating the profanation of the Host.

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Figure 3

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Desecration of the Host. Wall painting, All Saints Church, Friskney.

Jonathas’ compatriots first stab the Host “in iiij quarters” with their daggers, then he himself stabs it in the “myddys” so that it bleeds in replication of the wound in Christ’s side (469 s.d., 480). Their response here is exactly opposed to the veneration of the holy blood or the five wounds by devout Christians of the time, for he and the other Jews become distraught and call for a cauldron of boiling oil. But then, after he has grasped the Host and it has stuck to his hand, Jonathas truly goes mad with fear and rage while his compatriots nail it with the hand still attached to a post in

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remembrance that Christ was nailed to the cross. When they try to pull him away, Jonathas’ hand comes off and “shall hang styll with þe Sacrament” (516 s.d.). Only after leaving the scene and returning following the interlude of the Flemish doctor, Brundiche of Brabant, will they take up pincers to remove the nails in imitation of the Deposition, whereupon they will place the Host, with the hand still attached, in a cloth as if for burial, then “throw yt in þe cawdron” of oil (660) with the result that it boils as if it has turned to blood.185 The final and most spectacular moment of the Jews’ desecration of the Host comes as they remove it with the pincers to an oven, which, though sealed by Jasdon with clay, begins to bleed, “and an image appere[s] owt with woundys bledyng” (713 s.d.).186 It is as if the image, the Child Jesus, has now harrowed hell and conquered (in Jonathas’ words at 783) “infernall tene.” There is a comparison to be made here with the image that appears emerging from a tomb over the altar to inspire the conversion of the skeptical woman in the Mass of St. Gregory; she had provided the communion bread for the service but laughed when the saint offered a consecrated Host to her as a benefit for everlasting life. In this iconography, as confirmation of the truth of Transubstantiation, the crucified Jesus makes his appearance in the form of the Man of Sorrows.187 But in The Play of the Sacrament the image rising from the furnace is a “chyld apperyng with wondys blody” (804), not a figure of the crucified Christ. The expected image of pity has been transformed into a form that may remind us of the figure in Robert Southwell’s poem “The Burning Babe.” This poem joins a vision of Jesus’ infancy with a conceit in which his “breast” is perceived as a “furnace” that, with reference to the atonement on the cross, will purify “mens defiled soules.”188 In this the shedding of his blood is a crucial part of his sacrifice. So, too, in The Play of the Sacrament the Child is bleeding, joining the Incarnation and Infancy to the Crucifixion and Resurrection, the latter understood from very early times to be identified with the consecration of the “bread of heaven” in the Mass.189 This connection is not at all unusual in late medieval sacramental iconography, as Leah Sinanoglou has observed.190 It is only one step away from the idea that the Body that 185 For this effect, see Philip Butterworth, Theatre of Fire (London: Society for Theatre Research, 1998), 49–51. 186 For a connection between the oven and bread/Host, see Rubin, Corpus Christi, 145–46. 187 See Gertrud Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art, trans. Janet Seligman, 2 vols. (Greenwich, Conn.: New York Graphic Society, 1972), 2:226–28; Émile Mâle, Religious Art in France: The Late Middle Ages, trans. Marthiel Mathews (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 95–98; Nichols, “The Croxton Play of the Sacrament,” 123. In an earlier version of the miracle, St. Gregory, in response to the skepticism of the woman, places the oble on the altar, prays, “and when he rose, he found the particle of bread changed into flesh in the shape of a finger” (Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend, trans. William Granger Ryan, 2 vols. [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993], 1:179–80). 188 Robert Southwell, The Poems, ed. James H. McDonald and Nancy Pollard Brown (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), 15–16. 189 See Barker, The Great High Priest, 68. 190 Leah Sinanoglou, “The Christ Child as Sacrifice: A Medieval Tradition and the Corpus Christi Plays,” Speculum 48 (1973): 491–509; see also Rubin, Corpus Christi, 135–39.

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is present in the Mass is identical with the Child in the manger as well as with the body of the grown Christ on the cross. Sinanoglou remarks, “the greatest and most consistent emphasis on the Christ Child as sacrifice is to be found in the literature surrounding the Feast of Corpus Christi.”191 In Lydgate’s description of the London Corpus Christi procession, for example, the poet tells how a “chylde yong of age” was seen on a paten as a demonstration of the identity of the consecrated communion bread and the one who “dyed for oure outrage.”192 Miri Rubin cites a painting by the workshop of Bernardo Daddi at the Florentine church of S. Maria Novella in which the Child in the Virgin’s lap holds a scroll with a text from John 6:51: “Ego sum panis vivus qui de celo descendi.”193 In the play under consideration, the Child’s first speech begins with a Latin tag that echoes Lamentations 1:12 and then continues with words challenging the Jews for being “onkynd” to their “kyng,” the one who has atoned for them on the cross (717ff). The purpose of his speech, based on the Good Friday Reproaches, is to bring the Jews of the play to belief so that they will accept his mercy. It is Jonathas’s compatriot Jasdon who remarks on how this vision of the Child Jesus has “shewyd vs þe path . . . owt of grevous slepe and owt of dyrknes to lyght” (751–52). The image, whether an actual child or a carving supplied with a hidden speaker to provide the words of his speeches, then speaks comforting words to Sir Jonathas and his associates. Jonathas is told to reach into the cauldron, whereupon his hand is whole once more, but this is only after he has directed all of the Jews into the way of contrition, which implies penance that will wash their hearts clean. Then, following a prayer by the bishop to whom Jonathas has confessed, the image is transformed back into bread, and the actors shortly will be ready to begin to take the “sacrament” to the altar in the church in procession. The bishop forgives the negligent curate but gives a warning about keeping the Sacrament safe in a locked pyx in the church, and Aristorius, who confesses his offense of covetousness, is absolved on condition that he should perform as penance not only the abandonment of his profession as a merchant but also the taking on of a life of poverty and good works along with fasting and prayer. In turn, the kneeling Jews request baptism, which is effected “with gret solempnyté” (952 s.d.), an act which must have involved sprinkling with water, probably from the font, but not the customary words. As has been noted, the Jews are accepted as Christians, but not into the present community,194 for they, too, are to set forth on a “vyage” (969) which is also apparently a pilgrimage. 191 Sinanoglou, “The Christ Child as Sacrifice,” 497–98. 192 Lydgate, The Minor Poems, 1:39. 193 Rubin, Corpus Christi, 143. 194 As Lisa Lampert notes, “The Jews are not permanently integrated into the immediate Christian community; they go into a wandering exile, spreading the message of their new belief” (“The Once and Future Jew: The Croxton Play of the Sacrament, Little Robert of Bury and Historical Memory,” Jewish History 15 (2001): 247; cf. Dorothea Dox, “Medieval Drama as Documentation: ‘Real Presence’ in the Croxton Conversion of Ser Jonathas the Jew by the Myracle of the Blissed Sacrament,” Theatre Survey 38 (1997): 103, who observes a conflicted attitude toward the conversion of Jews. On this point, see the recent commentary by Ruth

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One cannot help but wonder if plays similarly focused on the Eucharist might have been produced at such locations as Worcester in 1423–1424 and 1446–1447 when payments of 3s 4d and 13s 4d respectively were mentioned for players at Corpus Christi;195 at Salisbury in 1469 when players, with costumes, were recorded in the records;196 or at Bishop’s (later King’s) Lynn, where several records from 1384–1385, 1447–1448, 1457–1458, 1461–1462, and 1483–1484 indicate payments of differing amounts for plays or playing on Corpus Christi.197 These and other references to plays on Corpus Christi may well have been on any number of subjects, but then again there is a possibility that in some cases such plays dramatized narrative matter immediately relative to the feast. The fact that “Corpus Christi plays,” or plays performed on Corpus Christi, were not all cast in the same mold is significant. The present survey should be sufficient warning that the term “Corpus Christi play” or “Corpus Christi plays” should be used with caution and an understanding of all the possible options for drama on this summer feast.

Nisse, Defining Acts: Drama and the Politics of Interpretation in Late Medieval England (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), 99–123. 195 REED: Herefordshire, Worcestershire, 399–400. The 1496 civic ordinances that specify crafts playing on pageants “in ther due ordre” on Corpus Christi and the following Sunday not only differ but are even more tantalizing. In 1559 the pageants were described as being “Dryven and played vpon corpus christi day this yere acordinge to the auncyent Custom of this Cyte” (414–16, 423). 196 Lancashire, Dramatic Texts and Records, no. 1366; Churchwardens’ Accounts of S. Edmund and S. Thomas, Sarum 1443–1702, ed. Henry J. F. Swayne, Wiltshire Record Society (1896), 36–37. 197 Records of Plays and Players in Norfolk and Suffolk, 38, 49–51, 54.

Chapter Three

The York Corpus Christi Guild and Drama Among the religious guilds of medieval England, the York Corpus Christi Guild was one of the most prestigious and from 1408 to its dissolution in 1547 enrolled, according to Robert H. Skaife, editor of the guild’s register, more than 16,850 individuals of both sexes. The list of members included a king of England, Richard III, and his wife Anne, misidentified as Elizabeth. It has significance for drama on two counts, neither of them involving the mounting of the pageants of the York Creation to Doom cycle on Corpus Christi. These plays were entirely the project of the city Corporation, which was their patron and overseer—and, according to one view noted in the previous chapter, may have brought them into existence initially in order to provide control over the participating guilds. The documents definitively state that they were intended to honor the city and to provide shows that would enhance civic piety. The Corpus Christi Guild, interested as its members might have been in the success of the Creation to Doom series of pageants, had no direct role in them whatsoever. The Guild and the Procession The York guild was founded to give praise and to honor “the most sacred body of Our Lord Jesus Christ,” and appropriately the sermon that appears at the beginning of its register is based on the text “Hoc est corpus meum” (Matt. 26:26). The anonymous clergyman-author makes a claim for the sacrament, a “memorial of intercession” that “unites the members with the head through [Christ’s] precious

 The Register of the Guild of Corpus Christi in the City of York, ed. Robert H. Skaife, Surtees Society 57 (Durham: Andrews, 1872), xii.  The Guild of Corpus Christi, 101. The date of their induction into the Guild was 1477, when Richard was as yet duke of Gloucester.  See, for example, an entry in the York Memorandum Book A/Y, fol. 19v; quoted in REED: York, ed. Alexandra F. Johnston and Margaret Rogerson, 2 vols. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979), 1:11.  The point was forcefully made by Alexandra F. Johnston, “The Guild of Corpus Christi and the Procession of Corpus Christi in York,” Mediaeval Studies 38 (1976): 373.  The Guild of Corpus Christi, v.  The Guild of Corpus Christi, 1; Paula Ložar, ed. and trans., “The ‘Prologue’ to the Ordinances of the York Corpus Christi Guild,” Allegorica 1 (1976): 94–113.

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passion,” in order that they may participate in this “sign of piety and unity.” Rather than Communion in which lay people would partake only once or twice a year, the “sign” here must be recognized as a visible one that would be available to those present at the Elevation at Mass on a regular basis. To see the Host, especially newly consecrated, was considered of great spiritual value, a privileged view of the bread of heaven, a “sacramental viewing.” In the civic celebration of Corpus Christi with which the guild would become identified, the Host was with great ceremony taken out into the city to be looked upon and venerated. As a representation of this display of the consecrated bread, the seal of the guild had a chalice, itself standing on a book with clasps, that was surmounted with a radiant Host marked with the letters ihc (fig. 4), indicating the orthodox late medieval belief in the doctrine of transubstantiation that had been promoted by St. Thomas Aquinas. The Host, in this view, is the Body of Christ, and might be referred to as “godys body.”10 Lauda Sion, the sequence for Corpus Christi that is attributed to Aquinas, explains that “wondrous things lie hidden under the different species, which are only signs and not realities. . . . [T]he whole Christ remains under each kind.” The bread of the Eucharist is “the bread of angels.”11 After the Corpus Christi Guild had taken over St. Thomas’ Hospital, located immediately outside the city walls near Micklegate Bar, in 1478, it was responsible for imprinting its symbol multiple times in its painted glass, presumably in the chapel but also possibly elsewhere in the building. This is known because a hundred years later, in a spurt of Protestant iconoclasm, images of “challices and hoastes, and other sentences therin, ageinst God’s woorde,” in “the glasse wyndowes” were ordered to be “taken forth and defased.”12 Associated with the emblematic depiction of the Host, the “bread of angels,” was another image that was connected with Christ’s sacrifice of himself in the Crucifixion for the salvation of his people. The 1449–1451 inventory of the guild specifically  Ložar, “The ‘Prologue,” 105 (Ložar’s translation), and see 104 for Latin text.  Ann Eljenholm Nichols, “The Bread of Heaven: Foretaste or Foresight?” in The Iconography of Heaven, ed. Clifford Davidson, EDAM Monograph Series 21 (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1994), 40–68; Miri Rubin, Corpus Christi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 63–64, 150–53; Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 96–102  The procession antedates the founding of the Corpus Christi Guild; see Johnston, “The Guild of Corpus Christi,” 373. 10 J. F. Nicholls and J. Taylor, Bristol, Past and Present, 3 vols. (Bristol, 1881–1882), 2:160, as quoted by Rubin, Corpus Christi, 46. 11 Translation by Frederick Brittain, ed. and trans., The Penguin Book of Latin Verse (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1962), 251–53. 12 The Register of the Guild of Corpus Christi, 310. The painted cloth and valances listed in the Guild’s 1449–1451 inventory as decorated with this design (REED: York, 2:632) would also presumably not have survived Reformation iconoclasm. It may well be that widespread destruction of representations of the Host and chalice in the Reformation has resulted in a distorted understanding of Eucharistic iconography. The most common image, as Ann Eljenholm Nichols notes, is of the Mass at the moment of the Elevation when those attending were invited to adore the consecrated bread (Seeable Signs: The Iconography of the Seven Sacraments 1350–1544 [Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1994], 251– 53).

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Figure 4

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Seal of the York Guild of Corpus Christi (enlargement).

links the sign of the Eucharist described above with another symbol also present, a rare Trinitarian image known as the Corpus Christi. The “sign of the fraternity” exists “to the honour of Corpus Christi,” the body of Christ, “as though in the presence of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.”13 This form of the Trinity differs from the more usual Gnadenstuhl figure in which the Father holds the Son on the cross, with the dove of the Holy Spirit positioned above the head of Christ—the form of

13 REED: York, 2:854; for the original Latin text, see 2:631.

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the Trinity that appeared on the seal of the Mercers and Merchant Adventurers.14 The Corpus Christi Trinity likely was borrowed from the Low Countries with which the city had close commercial connections and a shared emphasis on Eucharistic piety.15 Several examples are still present at York.16 One of these appears in fifteenth-century painted glass in a window on the south side of the choir clerestory in York Minster, where today the Father, missing most of his original gold face, holds the Son with fingers on which some gold still may be seen. This glass has been dated as midcentury—that is, at roughly the same time when the new Corpus Christi shrine was put into use and when efforts were being made toward the formal incorporation of the Corpus Christi Guild, which received authorization from the king in 1458.17 Some years later, in about 1470, the figure of John Walker, a member of the Corpus Christi Guild,18 was included in the lower left in the central light in the east window of Holy Trinity Goodramgate, the parish church of which he was rector, in the posture of adoration before another figure of the Father (the present head is a replacement) holding the slain Son (fig. 5).19 This iconography also appears in the painted glass of the very end of the fifteenth century now inserted in a window in the north transept of York Minster but formerly in the church of St. John Ousebridge. The current state of this glass owes rather too much to efforts at restoration, but still the figure of the Son, with its loincloth and crown of thorns, is remarkable for the wounds that cover his body.20 Here the Father is grasping and holding the Son as if offering him and displaying him for adoration. It is an image that may be looked upon as a representation of the Eucharist with its miraculously transformed essence, the body and blood of Christ. An actual fifteenth-century devotional image, however, 14 The Corpus Christi Trinity is discussed by John A. Knowles, Essays in the History of the York School of Glass-Painting (London: SPCK, 1936), 169–77. For the Mercers and Merchant Adventurers’ seal, see B. P. Johnson, “The Gilds of York,” in The Noble City of York, ed. Alberic Stacpoole (York: Cerialis Press, 1972), 476; and for the Gnadenstuhl (Throne of Grace) Trinity see Gertrud Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art, trans. Janet Seligman, 2 vols. (Greenwich, Conn.: New York Graphic Society, 1971–1972), 2:122–24. 15 See Alexandra F. Johnston, “Traders and Playmakers: English Guildsmen and the Low Countries,” in England and the Low Countries in the Late Middle Ages, ed. Caroline Barron and Nigel Saul (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 1995), 99–114; and Knowles, Essays in the History of the York School, 172–73, pl. XLVI. 16 Knowles, Essays in the History of the York School, 169–77; Clifford Davidson and David E. O’Connor, York Art, EDAM Reference Series 1 (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1978), 85–87. 17 The Register of the Guild of Corpus Christi, vii–viii. 18 Knowles, Essays in the History of the York School, 169. Walker was inducted into the Corpus Christi Guild in 1462–1463 (The Register of the Guild of Corpus Christi, 64). 19 See An Inventory of the Historical Monuments in the City of York, 5 vols. (Royal Commission on Historical Monuments, England, 1962–81), 5:8; Knowles, Essays in the History of the York School, 171–72; Peter Gibson, “The Stained and Painted Glass of York,” in The Noble City of York, ed. Stacpoole, color pl. 3A. 20 Davidson and O’Connor, York Art, 85–86, fig. 24; Knowles, Essays in the History of the York School, pl. XLVII.; An Inventory of the Historical Monuments in the City of York, 3:19, pl. 123. The window in which this glass was originally placed was inserted in memory of Sir Richard Yorke (d. 1498).

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Figure 5

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Trinity with the Father holding the body of the slain Son. Painted glass, Holy Trinity Goodramgate, York.

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Figure 6

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Arma Christi. Painted glass, formerly in St. Saviour’s Church, York, now in All Saints Pavement, York.

has been preserved at the Yorkshire Museum, where an alabaster, though damaged still retaining some traces of the original coloring, shows the Trinity with the Father and the Holy Spirit as a dove supporting Christ. Two clerical donors appear below in postures of adoration.21 There is every likelihood that this representation of the Trinity was the one that appeared on the painted cloth noted in the inventories of the guild from 1449–1451 and 1465,22 and it could well have been one of the symbols displayed among the banners and pennons used in the procession. The guild possessed banners with the 21 G. F. Wilmot, “A Discovery at York,” Museums Journal 57, no. 2 (May 1957): 35–36, fig. 13. 22 REED: York, 2:632, 639. Another Eucharistic image noted in these inventories is a Mass of St. Gregory, with the figure of the crucified Christ appearing above the altar where Mass is being celebrated as a sign to a doubter who is looking on (2:632, 638).

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Arma Christi (“scutis fidei”), for which see the example in painted glass now in the church of All Saints, Pavement (fig. 6), and not surprisingly also the chalice symbol,23 presumably identical to the representation of the chalice and Host on the guild’s seal. The civic procession, in which the Host was carried through the city much of the way along the same route as the pageant wagons on which the York plays were presented, was intended as a spectacular show that qualifies as quasi-dramatic in some sense since it was a sight and enacted an action, the going forth of the Host, the means of salvation, into the community. A stated purpose was to inspire the people to devotion,24 as might be expected. Certainly, preparations for it were elaborate, with the streets being cleaned and “beddes and Coverynges of beddes of the best that thay can gytt” hung out on buildings along the route. From this entry in the York House Books we learn that people were to “Strewe before ther doores resshes and other suche fflowers and Strewing as they thynke honeste and clenly for the honour of godd and worship of this Citie.”25 Of York’s Corpus Christi processions, which also included separate processions by the Minster and St. Mary’s Abbey, the civic procession was without question the most impressive and hence has been the subject of the most interest to drama scholars for more than a quarter of a century.26 The Corpus Christi Guild was quite early in its history, in 1417–1422, given pride of place as ten torches assigned to them were positioned at the end of the procession near the shrine where they followed the members of the city council, the aldermen, and the mayor.27 Then in 1432 the guild was assigned the task of carrying the shrine, at that time, as Johnston notes, “quite a simple affair of carved wood . . . ornamented with gold and silver.”28 This was replaced by mid-century. The guild account rolls of 1449–1451 indicate that over the new shrine was a “baudekyn” carried by four deacons,29 as in various illustrations, like a miniature in the late fourteenth-century Leventhorp Missal (Cambridge, Trinity College MS. B.11.3, fol. 155), in which a monstrance is being carried by a priest wearing an ermine cope.30 A miniature in a missal (Fitzwilliam Museum MS. 34, p. 212) of Yorkshire provenance (c.1470) shows a shrine that, though not being carried, is of similar interest since it is fitted with staves for carrying, but it also has a rather curious steeple that suggests the design of a church (fig. 7).31 Its shape indeed may have been roughly modeled on the York Corpus Christi Guild’s shrine, a gift of Bishop Thomas 23 REED: York, 2:639, and for the Arma Christi formerly in St. Saviour’s and now in All Saints, Pavement, see also Davidson and O’Connor, York Art, 77–78. 24 REED: York, 1:15. 25 REED: York, 1:283. 26 See Douglas Cowling, “The Liturgical Celebration of Corpus Christi in Medieval York,” REED Newsletter 1, no. 2 (1976): 6–9. 27 Johnston, “The Guild of Corpus Christi,” 375–76. 28 Johnston, “The Guild of Corpus Christi,” 378. 29 REED: York, 1:79. Payments for carrying the “Bawdkyn” appear in 1477 and subsequently (1:116 and passim). 30 Rubin, Corpus Christi, 252, fig. 12; Lucy Freeman Sandler, Gothic Manuscripts, 1285–1385, 2 vols. (London: Harvey Miller, 1986), no. 148. 31 See Davidson and O’Connor, York Art, 6–7.

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Figure 7

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Corpus Christi shrine. Illumination from a manuscript associated with York. Fitzwilliam Museum MS. 34.

Spoford of Hereford, that had been put into use in 1449.32 An inventory of this shrine made in 1546 suggests the richness of jewels, gold, and images accumulated over the years, but the basic design nevertheless was “all Gilte” and included a steeple, a silver bell within it, with a weathercock; the space for the Sacrament was of crystal or “Berall” so that it could be seen along the processional route.33 But the shrine would, in fact, have been much more elaborate than the illustration in the Yorkshire missal, with images, jewels, and other sumptuous decorations, as the fifteenthcentury inventories also demonstrated.34 The inventory of 1465 lists an image of the Trinity (“ymago sancte Trinitatis”) atop the shrine,35 not inappropriately since this was part and parcel of the iconography of the Corpus Christi Guild. The procession, as noted above, was initially mounted on the same day as the Creation to Doom cycle of plays and from the same location, Holy Trinity Priory on Micklegate inside Micklegate Bar. While the wagons used in the plays were brought around from nearby Toft Green, the shrine had been carried, probably for protection 32 REED: York, 2:633; Johnston, “The Guild of Corpus Christi,” 378. 33 REED: York, 2:643. See for comparison the Corpus Christi shrine given by John Welborne (d. 1381) to Lincoln Cathedral in the late fourteenth century: “Item one great Fertur silver and guilt with one crosse Iles and one Stepell in ye Middle and one Crosse in ye toppe with twentye Pinnacles and an Image of our Lady in one end and an Image of St. Hugh in ye other and haveing in length half a yard and one ynche, and it is sett in a Table of Wood and athing in ye middle to put in ye Sacrament when it is borne . . .” (Christopher Wordsworth, “Inventories of Plate, Vestments, &c., belonging to the Cathedral Church of the Blessed Mary of Lincoln,” Archaeologia 53 [1893]: 44). 34 REED: York, 2:631–42. 35 REED: York, 2:634.

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in the chest especially designed for it,36 from the other direction—that is, up Micklegate from St. William’s Chapel near the city’s Common Hall, over the bridge across the Ouse, and past the church of St. John Ousebridge. St. William’s Chapel was associated not with the Corpus Christi Guild but with the city government,37 and as the place where the Corpus Christi shrine was kept it harked back to the time before the guild was founded and, hence, before its involvement with the procession. The Host used in the procession undoubtedly came from the priory, where it had been consecrated. Margaret Rogerson (née Dorrell) believes that the procession set out along the route before the plays were underway,38 but even if this was true the potential for confusion must have been great prior to the separation of the procession from the plays. This seems affirmed by William Melton’s 1426 sermon that urged the separation of the procession and play by moving the latter to the vigil of the feast.39 However, as noted in the previous chapter, no change occurred at this time. In fact, no change can be documented until a date no later than 1468, when the procession was moved instead to the day following the feast day and the city began paying for a sermon at the chapter house of the Minster.40 After 1476, the procession was noted as belonging to the Friday following Corpus Christi until both procession and feast were suppressed in 1547.41 The civic procession was led by a crucifer who was retained by the Corpus Christi Guild.42 Those who carried the shrine in the procession did so on a bier, with the staves on their shoulders padded with white pillows. In 1477, following and attending at the end of the procession was the master of the guild in a silk cope who was flanked by two previous masters. Senior wardens of the guild, who wore silk stoles, were in attendance with white wands.43 Participating and carrying torches were members of the various craft guilds in their liveries, all marching in a specified order according to their rank from the lowest to the highest (following the dictum from Mark 10:31 that “the first shall be last: and the last, first”) in the social order. The codification of the order first appears in a torch list of 1415 as more or less an appendix to the Ordo Paginarum.44 The torch list in 1501, a date when the city had resumed responsibility for the procession, is recorded in the A/Y Memorandum Book as follows,45 with the number of torches indicated in parentheses: 36 REED: York, 2:632. 37 See Angelo Raine, Mediaeval York (London: John Murray, 1955), 213–16. 38 Margaret Dorrell, “Two Studies of the Corpus Christi Play,” Leeds Studies in English, n.s. 6 (1972): 71. 39 REED: York, 1:43–44. 40 See Johnston, “The Procession and Play of Corpus Christi,” Leeds Studies in English, n.s. 7 (1973–1974): 58–59, and, by the same author, “The Guild of Corpus Christi,” 380. The procession was revived under Queen Mary at least three times, however, in 1555, 1556, and 1557; see 383. 41 Johnston, “The Guild of Corpus Christi,” 383. 42 See, for example, payment to a clerk for carrying the cross in 1477 and up to 1541 (REED: York, 1:116, 277). 43 REED: York, 1:116–17. 44 REED: York, 1:24. 45 REED: York, 1:186.

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Festivals and Plays in Late Medieval Britain [Crucifer] Cobblers (4) Porters (8) Ropers and Hasters46 (2) Glovers (4) Butchers (4) Bakers (6) Fullers (6) Carpenters (6) Coverletweavers (4) Smiths (4) Fishmongers, Fishers, Mariners (14) Cordwainers (blank) Weavers (16) Tailors (8) Mercers (blank) The Twenty-Four and the Aldermen (each preceded by a torch bearer) Corpus Christi Guild (blank) [Shrine]

The guild ordinances of 1477 indicate that two of the chaplains of the fraternity should be responsible for the singing of appropriate “letanias” (litanies) and “Alios cantus conuenientes pro tempore.”47 These would undoubtedly have been such chants as Salve feste dies, Pange lingua, or other items from the liturgy of Corpus Christi.48 Attractive as the picture implied above may superficially seem, we must be very careful not to romanticize it. The sermon at the head of the Guild’s Register makes much of “fraternal unity” and the way in which its members ought to be, through their association, folded by love into unity with the Savior whereby they would “become members of Christ.”49 In spite of the intention of the guild, and presumably of the Corporation, that the civic procession on the day of or on the day following Corpus Christi should promote amity in the city, numerous indications in the civic records show that there sometimes were hard feelings, indeed, in regard to matters of precedence, as indicated by the Cordwainers and Weavers, who were at odds for many years and even came to blows over who should be in the more honored position.50 Status was a matter of very grave importance for the craft guilds, who were always politically under the shadow of the great Mercers’ Guild and the Corporation. Such conflicts are indicative of seeing the procession as a unifying event only when the individual guilds and their members felt comfortable in their designated place in society. Corpus Christi may be “a point of reference in relation to which the structure of precedence and authority in the town is made visually present on Corpus Christi

46 Hasters (heisters) were makers of hair ropes and cloth; see 2:917–18, s.v. ‘haster.’ 47 REED: York, 2:917–18. 48 See Rubin, Corpus Christi, 246–47, who calls attention to the texts of York versions of Salve feste dies in Analecta Hymnica, 54 vols. (1886–1915), 52:25–26 and 43:34–35. 49 Ložar, ed. and trans., “The ‘Prologue’ to the Ordinances of the York Corpus Christi Guild,” 107–11. 50 REED: York, 1:158–59, 162, 167, 169–74.

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Day,” as Mervyn James has claimed,51 but disputes about “precedence and authority” seem to have been inevitable in the shifting economic conditions of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century York.52 Then, too, there are the complaints of William Melton to which reference has been made above that also are indicative not only of confusion on account of having the procession and plays on the same day but also of less than decorous audience behavior.53 And earlier, in 1415, it had been decreed that no one was to be found “hynderyng . . . þe processioun of Corpore christi.” If relations had always been amicable, there would have been no reason for a proclamation prohibiting weapons, except for “knyghtes and sqwyers of wirship þat awe haue swerdes borne eftir þame,” under “payne of forfaiture of þaire Wapen and inprisonment of þaire bodys.”54 All of this warns us not to take expectations to be identical to fulfillment or further to accept the argument that the procession was necessarily “a mirror of the city.”55 Such an argument is, indeed, an overstatement. Miri Rubin points out also that the procession itself was exclusive rather than inclusive, for it was dominated, when the Corpus Christi Guild was in charge, by clergy, and including only certain privileged citizens, while non-citizens (the majority of the city’s population, since free-of-the-city status was very restrictive), women, visitors from outside the city walls, and even many of the city’s guild members could only watch.56 Yet there is no question that, in spite of inevitable tensions, the civic procession, like York’s plays, would on the whole have served as a magnet to draw the people of the city together at the time of a major religious festival. There is no doubt, too, that procession as it set out from Holy Trinity Priory sometime between 4:00 and 5:00 in the morning would have been impressive, with the craft and guild members in their colorful gowns, with torches, Corpus Christi Guild members carrying banners and attending the spectacularly rich shrine being carried on its bier, and the clergy. Inevitably, bells would have been rung.57 The route, which, as noted above, was strewn with rushes and flowers, wound over the Ouse, to the left through Spurriergate and Coney Street that led past the church of St. Martinle-Grand and the center of the civic government, then past St. Helen’s Square and along Stonegate to the Minster.58 At this point, unlike the pageant route which turned 51 Mervyn James, “Ritual, Drama and Social Body in the Late Medieval English Town,” Past and Present 98 (1983): 5. 52 See David Palliser, Tudor York (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), esp. 111– 45. 53 REED: York, 1:43. 54 REED: York, 1:24. 55 The term is from Charles Phythian-Adams, Desolation of a City: Coventry and the Urban Crisis of the Late Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979). 56 Rubin, Corpus Christi, 263, 265–66; see also her rejection of Mervyn James’s centering of the social body (271). 57 For an example of payments to bell ringers in Corpus Christi processions in the early sixteenth century, see Henley Borough Records: Assembly Books I–IV, ed. P. M. Briers (Oxfordshire Record Society, 1960), 205, 211, 229. 58 See REED: York, 1:126, and, for a map of York showing the pageant route, Clifford Davidson, Illustrations of the Stage and Acting in England to 1580, EDAM Monograph Series 16 (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1990), 24.

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to the right in order to proceed toward the final playing station at the Pavement, the civic procession turned left, perhaps first entering the Cathedral precincts even before 1468, the date when the Corporation began paying for a sermon in the chapter house.59 Thereafter, the procession set off from the south end of the Minster as it moved on to St. Leonard’s Hospital, whereupon it entered the chapel through the gate on Blake Street.60 Douglas Cowling notes that the guild statutes do not specify a religious service at St. Leonard’s Hospital,61 but, when one returns to the detailed description of the Rites of Durham, some sort of rite seems likely, even inevitable, in this setting. At Durham when the shrine arrived at the doorway to the abbey it was censed, then carried into the choir of the abbey church where it remained during a “solemne service don before ytt, and Te Deum solemnly songe and plaide of the Orgaynes”; “all the Banners of the occupacions,” having followed “the said Shrine into the Church,” were carried around along with torches.62 The chapel of St. Leonard’s Hospital was actually known as “the great church” with several altars in addition to the high altar,63 and hence there would have been ample room for similar ritual. Very likely the shrine was placed at the high altar for the Host to be venerated before it was taken away to be returned to St. William’s Chapel until the next year. The Creed Play The Corpus Christi Guild, however, not only was involved with the Corpus Christi procession but also was responsible for adding to the York dramatic repertoire a fullscale drama, the Creed Play, which seems to have been first staged under its auspices in the early fifteenth century. No text is extant, nor was there any mention of the play anywhere until the playbook appeared in the codicle to the will of William Revetour, chantry priest at St. William’s Chapel, in 1446, when it was designated as a bequest to the Corpus Christi Guild on condition that it should be performed every twelve years.64 The book seems to have been his personal copy, and it was perhaps natural that scholars should even have speculated about whether he himself was the author. Very likely, copies had been made from this text for presentation by various religious or craft guilds, and it has been suggested that the six-page St. James play left to the 59 Johnston, “The Guild of Corpus Christi,” 380. 60 Cowling, “The Liturgical Celebration of Corpus Christi,” 8. For the chapel of St. Leonard’s Hospital, see Raine, Mediaeval York, 114–16, and An Inventory of the Historical Monuments in the City of York, 5:93–94. 61 Cowling, “The Liturgical Celebration of Corpus Christi,” 8. 62 A Description or Breife Declaration of All the Ancient Monuments, Rites, and Customes Belonginge or Beinge within the Monastical Church of Durham, ed. James Raine, Surtees Society 15 (London: J. B. Nichols, 1842), 90. 63 Raine, Mediaeval York, 115. 64 REED: York, 1:68, 88; Alexandra F. Johnston, “The Plays of the Religious Guilds of York: The Creed Play and the Pater Noster Play,” Speculum 50 (1975): 59. For the full text and translation of Revetour’s will, see Alexandra F. Johnston, “William Revetour, Chaplain and Clerk of York, Testator,” Leeds Studies in English, n.s. 29 (1998): 151–71.

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St. Christopher Guild in Revetour’s will may have been such a playscript for one of the twelve individual pageants, in this case mounted by this confraternity.65 Nine years later the Creed playbook was freshly copied at the insistence of Revetour’s executor, John Foxe, since the copy bequeathed to the guild was “old and worn.”66 In 1465 three copies were reported, one identified as the “Originale” containing “the articles of the Catholic faith,” which would seem to have been the book bequeathed by Revetour, and a less valuable “old book” of the same play. The third copy, presumably the one recently copied out, contained twenty-three quires.67 In 1565 this playbook was designated as “the Auncient booke or Registre of the Crede play,” and in 1568 as “the Original or Regestre.”68 The “Originale” must have been written out early in the fifteenth century and presumably had been used for staging the play prior to the 1440s, though no documentation is present to authenticate this speculation. In fact, the records evidence is even thereafter meager for the play, and, as we will see, its structure can be surmised only by means of careful attention to iconographic evidence. But it is known that Revetour had been a member of the Corpus Christi Guild since 1423–1424,69 and his association with prominent families and his position with the city Corporation as deputy city clerk also link him to the city’s elite.70 This must not be regarded as indicating that he would have been a reviser or transcriber of the playtext as it appeared in the old book, but it is significant that Revetour had the right connections. His patron, who was responsible for his appointment to the chantry chapel of Richard Toller at St. William’s Chapel, was Nicholas Blackburn, Sr., a parishioner of All Saints North Street and a leading member of the York oligarchy.71 If nowhere do we have a portrait of Revetour, at least we are able even today to see a portrait in glass of Blackburn in the east window of his parish church.72 As for the playbook, after the suppression of the Corpus Christi Guild by the Act of Dissolution in 1547, it survived and as before continued to be kept at St. Thomas’ Hospital, which the city also was able to acquire. The Creed Play was not performed annually at any time, so far as we know, nor was Revetour’s specification of performance at twelve-year intervals73 ever followed. An agreement was reached in 1449–1451 that the drama, like the Corpus Christi play, was to be presented “openly and publicly through the city of York in 65 Nelson, The Medieval English Stage, 52; Stephen K. Wright, “The York Creed Play in Light of the Innsbruck Playbook of 1391,” Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England 5 (1991): 43. 66 REED: York, 2:764 (original Latin text at 1:88) 67 REED: York, 1:98, 2:770 (translation). 68 REED: York, 1:348, 352–53. 69 The Register of the Guild of Corpus Christi, 23. 70 See Johnston, “William Revetour, Chaplain and Clerk of York,” 154. 71 Johnston, “William Revetour, Chaplain and Clerk of York,” 154. 72 E. A. Gee, “The Painted Glass of All Saints’ Church, North Street, York,” Archaeologia 102 (1969): 156–57, pl. XIX. The figure, in the main original, of Nicholas Blackburn, Sr., appears in the lower panel of the south light along with his wife Margaret, actually in her case a nineteenth-century replacement. 73 REED: York, 1:80.

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various places” (that is, we must assume, at stations along the usual pageant route through the city),74 and in 1455 it was proclaimed that it would be scheduled at tenyear intervals “in various places of the said city of York for a suitable audience for the sake of their spiritual health.”75 It appears that the plan was to present the Creed Play as a substitute for the Creation to Doom cycle that was normally staged at York on the feast of Corpus Christi. Only once, however, was the Creed Play noted as having been presented on that feast day, in 1535 when the civic records indicate that it was staged on “Corpuscristi day and the fryday after.”76 On the other dates of which there is record, it was played on the vigil of the feast of St. Bartholomew (August 23, 1495)77 and at Lammas (August 1, 1505).78 In 1483 the Creed Play had been especially staged for King Richard III on September 7, a date which, as a letter from the king’s secretary noted as late as August 16, allowed only a very short time to prepare the “pageantes, with soch good speches as can goodly, thys short warnyng considered, be devised.”79 On the “sunday next” following 28 July 1525, in the Trinity season, the Creed Play “was playde before my lorde mayer and his brederin” at the Common Hall,80 while for performance on St. Barnabas Day (11 June 1562) the Creed play was offered as an option but not chosen.81 As scholars have long been aware, the Creed Play was based on the tradition, current since St. Augustine’s time, that at Pentecost each of the apostles contributed one clause of the Apostles’ Creed.82 This legendary event is dramatized in the Chester Pentecost pageant, which is a sort of Creed play in miniature,83 though not likely to be very much like the pattern adopted at York. Following the descent of the Holy Spirit in the form of fire upon the apostles and two angels, who sing the antiphon Accipite spiritum sanctum and speak, the Chester apostles are given the wisdom to proclaim the Apostles’ Creed. This is done by them as in turn they each state a clause of the Creed, perhaps intoning it, and then present a farsure in English of the Latin

74 REED: York, 2:757; for the Latin text, see 1:80. 75 REED: York, 2:764–65; for the Latin text, see 1:88. 76 REED: York, 1:257–59, esp. 259. 77 REED: York, 1:177. 78 REED: York, 1:200. 79 Extracts from the Municipal Records of the City of York During the Reigns of Edward IV, Edward V, and Richard III, ed. Robert Davies (London: J. B. Nichols, 1843), 163. Pamela Tudor-Craig observes that the beginning of preparations had actually begun somewhat earlier, on August 4, when the Council met to ready the city for the king’s visit (“Richard III’s Triumphant Entry into York,” in Richard III and the North, ed. Rosemary Horrox [Hull: Centre for Regional and Local History, University of Hull, 1986], 111). 80 REED: York, 1:236, 238. 81 REED: York, 1:340. 82 See Curt F. Bühler, “The Apostles and the Creed,” Speculum 28 (1953): 335–39. 83 See The Chester Mystery Cycle, ed. R. M. Lumiansky and David Mills, EETS, s.s. 3, 9 (London: Oxford University Press, 1974–1986), play 21.239–366. For discussion, see Peter W. Travis, Dramatic Design in the Chester Cycle (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 205–17.

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text.84 For example, St. Peter gives the following English paraphrase for the first clause: I beleeve in God omnipotent that made heaven and yearth and fyrmament with steadfast hart and true intent, and hee ys my comford. (21.311–14)

Andrew follows with the second clause and its farsure in English: And I beleeve, where I be lent, in Jesu, his Sonne, from heaven sent, verey Cryste, that us hath kent and ys our elders lord. (315–18)

The subsequent clauses in this instance are spoken and interpreted by James the Great, John, Thomas, James the Less, Philip, Bartholomew, Mathias, Simon, Thaddeus, and Matthew in this order. This section of the Chester Pentecost play, extending from the descent of the Holy Spirit to the end of the Creed, is only 128 lines long, to which are added only an antiphon and a short concluding scene. The sheer size of the York Creed Play, perhaps as much as two-thirds the size of the great York Creation to Doom cycle, and its reported sumptuousness argue for a production that would take up a good portion of a day and a drama that must have been more complex than a mere presentation of the characters and didactic speeches by them, though, indeed, the didactic and pedagogical elements are emphasized in the dramatic records, which indicate the work’s purpose as instruction and bringing the truth of the Apostles’ Creed to the ignorant (“ad ignorantium”).85 The Creed Play may be regarded as part of the program to educate and inform as well as to insure orthodoxy in the period when anxiety about the rise of Wycliffe and the Lollards had arisen. Thus, in some sense, it requires to be seen within a context that also produced the Lay Folks’ Mass Book in the fourteenth century and that led to attempts to guide spirituality in approved channels in the fifteenth century.86 With regard to the content of the lost York Creed Play, Hardin Craig’s belief that it may have staged the legendary lives of the apostles on the basis of, for example, the Northern Legendary87 seems remote. M. D. Anderson instead suggested looking to 84 Cf. The Lay Folks Mass Book, EETS, ed. Frederick Thomas Simmons, o.s. 71 (London: N. Trübner, 1879), 20–23. 85 REED: York, 1:80. 86 Notorious in this regard were Archbishop Thomas Arundel’s Constitutions of 1407– 1409. In spite of the attempt to proscribe the English Bible, the city’s biblical plays at York and elsewhere seem actually to have been encouraged. In place of the Bible there was approval for Nicholas Love’s Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, an adaptation in English, as noted above, of the anonymous Meditations on the Life of Christ formerly attributed to St. Bonaventure. 87 Hardin Craig, English Religious Drama of the Middle Ages (1955; reprint, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960), 337–38.

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the iconographic tradition, and in this she was followed by Alexandra Johnston.88 As I argued in 1977, such an approach, though necessarily speculative and tentative, has provided some likely details that might flesh out our slender knowledge of the play.89 More recently, Stephen K. Wright has introduced information about Continental Creed plays which suggests that unquestioning dependence on iconography is risky.90 Nevertheless, the iconographic tradition, about which we do have some solid knowledge at York, cannot be ignored and is most likely, after all, to be the key to understanding the play. If Christopher Wilson is correct, the earliest example at York of an apostles series tied to the Creed was the set of large life-size figures of c.1190 formerly in the chapter house of St. Mary’s Abbey and now in the Yorkshire Museum. While the only one of these currently identifiable is St. James, retrieved from the churchyard of St. Lawrence, Walmgate, the presence of the figures of Moses and John the Baptist strongly suggests that the arrangement was of apostles and prophets, all with scrolls.91 Originally, Wilson suggests, the apostles very likely were positioned above the prophets, along with John the Baptist, so as to indicate that they stood as if on their shoulders.92 Also, judging from the size of the scrolls, we may conjecture that the prophets carried inscriptions foretelling the Gospel message, and that the apostles’ scrolls were adorned with the clauses of the Creed. If this is correct, the alignment of apostles and prophets is earlier than the pairing cited by Émile Mâle, who believed the earliest to appear in manuscripts dated c.1300,93 but some Continental examples in wall paintings are dated as early as the tenth century.94 While these chapter house figures were outside the view of most York citizens, other representations of the Creed arrangement were in full view. No Creed series is complete, and so it is in the case of the single panel of painted glass of the middle of the fifteenth century—that is, roughly contemporary with Revetour’s will—from the church of St. Denys that is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum; here St. Andrew appears with a scroll containing the words “et in iesum christum.”95 Nicole 88 M. D. Anderson, Drama and Imagery in English Medieval Churches (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963), 37–40; Johnston, “The Plays of the Religious Guilds,” 66–70. 89 Clifford Davidson, Drama and Art: An Introduction to the Use of Evidence from the Visual Arts for the Study of Early Drama [EDAM Handbook] (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute, 1977), 119–21. 90 Wright, “The York Creed Play,” 31–44. 91 Christopher Wilson, “The Original Setting of the Apostle and Prophet Figures from St. Mary’s Abbey, York,” in Studies in Medieval Sculpture, ed. F. H. Thompson, Occasional Paper 3 (London: Society of Antiquaries, 1983), 114, 116 n. 8. John the Baptist is not, however, present in the later prophets series. 92 Wilson, “The Original Setting,” 114–15, and Wilson’s drawing showing his conjectural reconstruction (pl. XLII). 93 Émile Mâle, Religious Art in France: The Late Middle Ages, trans. Marthiel Mathews, Bollingen Series 90, pt. 3 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 231–32. 94 Karl Künstle, Ikonographie der christlichen Kunst, 2 vols. (Freiburg-im-Breisgau: Herder, 1926–1928), 1:182; cited by Gordon McN. Rushforth, Medieval Christian Imagery (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1936), 141. 95 Davidson and O’Connor, York Art, 125.

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St. James the Less, from Prophets and Apostles series. Painted glass, choir clerestory, York Minster. © The Dean and Chapter of York; by kind permission.

Mezey has also identified a panel showing Amos and fragments of other panels from a Creed series in St. Michael Spurriergate, located near Ousebridge and the former site of St. William’s Chapel. The Amos figure has a scroll with the text “Qui edificat in celo [a]scensione[m] suum” (Amos 9:6), while two heads inserted in a Jesse Tree appear to Mezey to be those of prophets and fragments of texts now in the Orders of

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Angels window point to David (Ps. 20:7), Isaiah (7:14), Micah (3:9), and possibly Ezekiel (12:10).96 Far more important for our purposes is the glass showing the Creed arrangement in glass, perhaps by John de Burgh,97 in the Lady Chapel clerestory at York Minster (see fig. 8). This too is incomplete, though in a far better state of preservation so that up to a point the order of the prophets and the apostles can be determined. Further, the date of this glass is c.1385–90,98 hence antedating the formation of the Corpus Christi Guild and undoubtedly also the York Creed Play. It would be unwise to suggest that this glass served as a model for the play, but quite plausibly the same local traditions served to inform both the windows and the drama, the latter presumably written at some time after 1408 when the Corpus Christi Guild was founded. The order of the apostles in the Minster glass seems to follow the ordering in the canon of the Mass, and these figures were designed to be aligned with a set of prophets, of which seven are extant. Corroborating evidence from other examples, including painted glass from Great Malvern in Worcestershire and Hampton Court in Herefordshire which has been identified as related to York work,99 helps to fill out a conjectural series for the 96 Nicole Mezey, “Creed and Prophets Series in the Visual Arts, with a Note on Examples in York,” EDAM Newsletter 2, no. 1 (1979): 9–10. Attention has also recently been called to the possible connection between the Creed Play and the York Minster choir clerestory glass by Sue Powell, “Pastoralia and the Lost York Plays of the Creed and Paternoster,” European Medieval Drama 8 (2004): 38–39. 97 For this tentative identification, I am indebted to Jeremy Haselock. 98 Davidson and O’Connor, York Art, 28–29, 124; Sarah Brown, “Our Magnificent Fabrick”: York Minster, An Architectural History c 1220–1500 (Swindon: English Heritage, 2003), 166–67; for color photos of Daniel and Amos, see pls. 4.3, 4.4, and 4.5. 99 Rushforth, Medieval Christian Imagery, 337– 43; Madeline H. Caviness, “Fifteenth Century Stained Glass from the Chapel of Hampton Court, Herefordshire: The Apostles’ Creed and Other Subjects,” Walpole Society 42 (1968–1970): 35–60. For a general note on the iconography of the apostles and the Creed, see 78–79, where attention is especially also called to illustrations in the Queen Mary Psalter and painted glass at Drayton Beauchamp, Buckinghamshire (St. Thomas is shown in fig. 60), and Ludlow. For the latter, see also Edwin William Ganderton and Jean Lafond, Ludlow Stained and Painted Glass (Ludlow: Friends of the Church of St. Lawrence, 1961), 43–46, pls. 27–31, and the color reproduction in Richard Marks, Stained Glass in England During the Middle Ages (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993), pl. XXII. Some further examples are at Weston Longville, Norfolk, Mattishall, and elsewhere (screen paintings) as well as Bale, Norfolk, and Fairford (painted glass). For these, see Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars, 64–65, figs. 29–31; and Hilary Wayment, The Stained Glass of the Church of St. Mary, Fairford, Gloucestershire (London: Society of Antiquaries, 1984), 42–51. East Anglian screen and glass paintings are identified and discussed in relation to manuscript illuminations by Ann Eljenholm Nichols, The Early Art of Norfolk, EDAM Reference Series 7 (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2002), 306–10. Apostles with scrolls showing the Creed are present in painted glass at Coughton and, along with prophets, in the screen painting at Astley, where the texts were painted over in English in 1624; see Clifford Davidson and Jennifer Alexander, The Early Art of Coventry, Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwick, and Lesser Sites in Warwickshire, EDAM Reference Series 4 (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1985), 106, 143–45, figs. 51–52.

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Corpus Christi Guild’s Creed Play. In this list, the subjects found in Minster glass are marked with a star, the others are drawn from the other arrangements appearing in English iconography which seem most stable.100 1. *Peter—I believe in God Almighty, maker of heaven and earth 2. *Andrew—And in Jesus Christ, his Son, Our Lord 3. *James Major—Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary 4. *John—Suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried 5. *Thomas—Descended into hell, on the third day rose from the dead 6. *James the Less101—Ascended into heaven, seated at the right hand of the Father Omnipotent 7. Philip—He will come to judge the living and the dead 8. Bartholomew—I believe in the Holy Spirit 9. Matthew—The Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints 10. Simon—The remission of sins 11. Jude—The resurrection of the body102 12. Matthias—[And] life everlasting. Amen.

The corresponding prophets, following the ordering of those in the Minster windows (marked with a star), foreshadow the clauses of the Creed. The prophets’ order and their texts are more variable than in the case of the apostles.103 I have provided texts following the Douay-Rheims translation, and for those prophets that are not extant in the York glass, I have had to speculate on the basis of various sources. 1. *Jeremiah—Thou shalt call me, my father (Jer. 3:19). 2. *David—The Lord said to me: Thou art my son, this day have I begotten thee (Ps. 2.7). 3. Isaiah—Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son (Is. 7:14). 4. *Daniel—After seventy-two weeks Christ shall be slain (altered from Dan. 9:26).104 5. *Hosea—O death, I will be thy death O hell (Hos. 13:14). 6. *Amos—He that buildeth his ascension in heaven (Amos 9:6). 7. *Joel—Let the nations come up into the valley of Josaphat: for there I will sit to judge all nations round about (Jl. 3:12). 8. *Haggai—My spirit shall be in the midst of you (Hag. 2:6). 9. *Zephaniah—This is the rejoicing city that dwelt in security (Zeph. 2:15). 10. [Malachi—Iniquity shall cover his garment (Mal. 2:16).] 11. [Ezekiel—Behold, I will open your graves (37:12).] 12. [Obadiah—The kingdom shall be for the Lord (1:21).]

100 See especially Mezey, “Creed and Prophets Series,” table 1. 101 Sarah Brown believes that this figure, not identified with an inscription, might be St. Bartholomew instead of James the Less (“Our Magnificent Fabrick,” 284). 102 Sometimes Thaddeus appears in this position in the Creed series. 103 The prophets and their texts are identified by Mezey, “Creed and Prophets Series,” table 2. See also Nichols, The Early Art of Norfolk, 310–11. 104 Mezey notes that the alteration in this text (from “sixty days”) is usual for prophets’ series (“Creed and Prophets Series,” 9).

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By analogy with the Coventry Corpus Christi pageants, which are prefaced by speeches of prophet figures (Isaiah in the case of the Shearmen and Taylors’ play),105 one might expect that the twelve individual pageants that made up the Creed play would have been similarly introduced. The often-invoked tradition of having a monologue introduce a play or pageant was well established, as was the practice of announcing the play in advance by means of the banns.106 All of this does not definitively reveal the subject matter of the individual pageants themselves, and there is little that is not circumstantial evidence here. If the pageant wagons, costumes, and available stage properties from York’s usual Corpus Christi play had been used, and there is every reason to believe that they were since the properties and costumes belonging to the guild listed in inventories would have been woefully inadequate for a “sumptuous” Creed Play, in general the conjectures of Anderson and Johnston appear to be on the right track.107 Presumably, like the prophets, the apostles were placed as a frame outside the main action of each pageant, which would have a specific story to tell that was related to the sense of the clause of the Creed that had been presented. There is iconographic support for such an arrangement from the English manuscript tradition as well as block books and Credo tapestries created on the Continent. In this regard the schematic illustration in the fourteenth-century Robert de Lisle Psalter (British Library, MS. Arundel 83, fol. 128) provides a useful analogue since it links the prophecies of the prophets on the left with salvation history in central roundels and then with clauses of the Creed and individual apostles.108 But there are other relevant examples, including the two pages of illuminations in Queen Mary’s Psalter (British Library MS. Royal 2.B.vii, fol. 68).109 The de Lisle Psalter and Queen Mary’s Psalter are, to be sure, potentially significant since it has been plausibly suggested that in these manuscripts the order of the prophets is close to the ordering in the York Minster glass.110

105 See The Coventry Corpus Christi Plays, ed. Pamela M. King and Clifford Davidson, EDAM Monograph Series 27 (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2000), 15–16, for resemblance to the liturgical Ordo Prophetarum. 106 See Johnston, “The Plays of the Religious Guilds of York,” 62, and, for the records of the banns being called in 1595, REED: York, 1:177–78. 107 Anderson, Drama and Imagery, 39–40; Johnston, “The Plays of the Religious Guilds,” esp. 68–69. 108 Lucy Freeman Sandler, The Psalter of Robert de Lisle in the British Library (1983; reprint London: Harvey Miller, 1999), 48, pl. 7. 109 George F. Warner, Queen Mary’s Psalter (London: British Museum, 1912), pls. 121–22. The order of the prophets, with their texts, in this manuscript is as follows: Jeremiah (31:19/32:17), David (Ps. 2:7), Isaiah (7:14), Zechariah (12:10), Hosea (13:14), Amos (9:6), Malachi (3:5), Joel (2:28), Zephaniah (3:9), Micah (7:19), Ezra (37:12), Daniel (12:2). This order is very nearly the same as that which appears in the De Lisle Psalter. For tabulation of prophets in various series, see Mezey, “Creed and Prophets Series,” table 2, and Nichols, The Early Art of Norfolk, 310–11, esp. table 6. 110 Anderson, Drama and Imagery, 39–40; Mezey, “Creed and Prophets Series,” 9 and table 2.

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Continental block books such as the Biblia Pauperum and the Exercitum Pater Noster flourished in the fifteenth century, as is well known.111 During the same period, block books and individual broadsheets were also printed up with Creed arrangements. A fifteenth-century German example now in the Metropolitan Museum in New York is a single sheet of approximately 11 by 15 inches printed from eighteen woodblocks, each with a clause (or portion of a clause) of the Creed at the bottom and above an illustration showing a scene from the Christian story, beginning with the Creation and ending with the resurrection of the body and life everlasting. The prophets and disciples are not included in this example, however,112 but elsewhere they are, as in the Symbolicum Apostolicum. In this block book there are scrolls for the clauses of the Creed and prophecies though the texts were never inserted in the example made available by Paul Kristeller. On each page, above the small apostle and prophet and their scrolls, the corresponding scene from salvation history, beginning with the creation of the cosmos and ending with the resurrection of the body and the Coronation of the Virgin, fills the main part of the page above.113 Tapestries intended to illustrate the Creed are loosely related to the block book tradition, and these usually include the disciples and apostles. Two of these appear in an inventory of the tapestries possessed by King Henry VI.114 A particularly pertinent Credo design, in a tapestry given by the queen of Spain to Pope Leo XIII, is discussed and illustrated by D. T. B. Wood in his Burlington Magazine article.115 In this tapestry, scenes of salvation history are framed by prophets and apostles, as in the instance of the Baptism, the central figure, in which David appears with his prophecy while St. Andrew, holding his St. Andrew’s cross, is shown at the right. Just such framing of dramatic action has been suggested above as the role of the prophet and apostle figures in the York Creed play, though there the scene that was depicted at this point might have been Jesus displaying his wounds—that is, in a Passion sequence—rather than the Baptism. However, there is further evidence from English iconography for connecting the prophecies and the Apostles’ Creed to the visualization of events in salvation history. Eamon Duffy has called attention to a spandrel carving showing the Annunciation at Mattishall, Norfolk, which relates to the figure of St. James Major on the screen painting below, in this instance standing, with his scroll, beside St. John.116 One 111 For examples, see Avril Henry, ed., Biblia Pauperum (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987), and Barbara Jaye, ed., Pilgrimage of Prayer: The Texts and Iconography of the Exercitum super Pater Noster (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Universität Salzburg, 1990). 112 William H. Forsyth, “A ‘Credo’ Tapestry: A Pictorial Interpretation of the Apostles’ Creed,” Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, n.s. 21 (1963): 242, fig. 2. 113 Paul Kristeller, Decalogus, Septimania Poenalis, Symbolicum Apostolicum (Berlin: Bruno Cassirer, 1907), pls. 17–25 (some pages were missing, so the entire series of twelve could not be shown); and, for the Munich Blockbook of 1420, Künstle, Ikonographie der christlichen Kunst, 1:183–84. 114 D. T. B. Wood, “‘Credo’ Tapestries,” Burlington Magazine 24 (1914): 248; see also the tapestry, illustrated by this author, formerly in the cathedral at Toledo (314–15, pl. III). 115 Wood, “‘Credo’ Tapestries,”253, pl. I, and Forsyth, “A ‘Credo’ Tapestry,” 240–51. 116 Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars, 65, figs. 31–32.

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might argue that this by itself suggests only an instance of a medieval mode of thinking, in this case linking ancient Jewish prophecy and the Creed with a particular event. But there is further corroborating evidence that is indicative of a possible widespread iconography and that also indicates the importance of some examples that are believed to have a connection to York artists. The painted glass at Great Malvern has been mentioned above, and there a fifteenth-century Creed window in the choir aisle is a case in point.117 This glass, in poor condition, represented not only the prophets and apostles but also scenes that are important for our consideration here. Rushforth believes that an enthroned miniature of God the Father, now misplaced in a different window, could have been associated with the first clause of the Creed, while St. Andrew might have been illustrated not by Christ’s Baptism but by his Passion, for “[b]etween the apostle and prophet [David] is the lower half of a figure of Christ, showing the bare legs with feet pierced and bleeding,” and the inscription “Ihesus Christus deus et homo.”118 Better preserved is the panel with St. James and Isaiah, naturally positioned with the Nativity, with the Infant (now lost) between the ox and the ass, while St. John and Zechariah were associated with the Crucifixion, of which only some fragments of the cross remain.119 The fifth panel had Hosea and St. Thomas, along with the Resurrection, now only fragmentary, and the next, St. James the Less and Amos, can only be surmised to have contained the Ascension. The prophet accompanying St. Philip may have been Zephaniah, but the extant fragment of text is from Malachi (3:5); the scene could, according to Rushforth, have been the Last Judgment, if the pattern established in the Robert de Lisle Psalter was followed. Bartholomew, and probably Joel, were likely illustrated along with Pentecost, and then Matthew.120 St. Simon, known only through a fragment of his Creed sentence (misplaced, and all that is left), likely was accompanied by Malachi, who sometimes appeared with a misascribed verse from Micah (7:19). These figures could have been placed with a penitence or confession scene;121 in the York Creed play, such a scene could have been borrowed from the Pater Noster Play. The final two panels have St. Jude, Daniel, the latter with a text derived from Ezekiel 27:12, and the resurrection of the dead, and Matthias, Ezekiel (text from Daniel 12:2), and the Coronation of the Virgin.122 The above does show that there was considerable flexibility in British iconography even including that which was associated with York, and hence the following can be offered as only a conjectural though carefully considered list of subjects that may have been presented in the individual pageants of the Creed Play at that city:

117 Rushforth, Medieval Christian Imagery, 337–43. 118 Rushforth, Medieval Christian Imagery, 338–39. Rushforth points out that Baptism is the more usual scene in Continental iconography (339). 119 Rushforth, Medieval Christian Imagery, 340–41. 120 Rushforth, Medieval Christian Imagery, 342–43. 121 Rushforth, Medieval Christian Imagery, 342. 122 Rushforth, Medieval Christian Imagery, 342–43.

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1. The Creation, or the story of Adam and Eve 2. The Suffering of Christ (Five Wounds),123 or the Baptism 3. The Annunciation to Mary, and the Nativity 4. The Crucifixion 5. The Harrowing 6. The Ascension 7. The Last Judgment 8. Pentecost 9. Holy Church 10. The Confession of Sins 11. The Resurrection of all those who have died 12. The Coronation of the Virgin, or Everlasting Life

It appears that, whatever they were, the pageants that made up the drama were presented publicly in the streets of the city and that “expert and mete players” were needed “for the conyng handlyng of the seyd playe,”124 as we might expect in the case of such a long performance, divided, we must assume, into twelve parts to accommodate the twelve apostles. A careful assessment of the stage properties corroborates the intent of presenting a spectacle, attended processionally by banners, of which seventeen “sumptuous” examples appear at the beginning of the Corpus Christi Guild’s inventory in the account rolls in 1449–1451.125 Additionally, there were four banners with gold work in them and containing angels and “mysteries of the play,” and there were four pennons.126 While one may wonder how these were distributed among the separate pageants in the course of presenting them, the play’s stated purpose as a drama of instruction and information about the Christian faith127 would have set it apart from the Creation to Doom cycle regularly presented at York on the feast day of Corpus Christi with its emphasis on establishing a shared cultural memory of salvation history and on devotion in its reception by the audience. Nevertheless, we must presume that the Creed play would not have been ineffective in the time in which it was played. To be sure, we must expect that the members of the audience would have been moved to respond in different ways both spiritually and aesthetically. Like the banners in Revetour’s will and in the inventories, other properties of the Creed Play also appear in the 1465 inventories. The thirteen diadems for Christ

123 This topic seems the more likely also on account of the popularity among the York elite of devotion to the Five Wounds, represented in the Arma Christi emblem; see Davidson and O’Connor, York Art, 77–78. For relevant commentary, see Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars, 238–48; and also, for the Mass of the Five Wounds, R. W. Pfaff, New Liturgical Feasts in Later Medieval England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), 84–91. 124 REED: York, 1:353. 125 REED: York, 1:76 126 REED: York, 1:80 and, for translation, 2:757. 127 REED: York, 1:80. However, for the view that the Creed Play, like the Pater Noster Play, “may have been closer to pastoral instruction illustrated by written text and tableau than to the fully-fledged dramatized performances which were the staple of the Corpus Christi cycle,” see Powell, “Pastoralia and the Lost Plays,” 43.

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and the apostles are reduced to ten—an indication that three are missing.128 The gilt mask and wigs also remain, along with a chest with a lock and key for storing the banners. Twenty-four “sokettes” are added for holding up the banners. A key is now provided for St. Peter, and there is a papal miter as well as two bishops’ miters, a king’s crown, a scepter, a glove, and a tunic. So, too, there were added twelve scrolls recently acquired with the articles of the Creed, so as to have one each for the apostles.129 Other ornaments of the play are unspecified, but their value is tabulated as so low that they could not have been extensive.130 All of these could never have been adequate for staging a series of pageants involving a playtext of the size recorded for the manuscript of the Creed Play known as the “Original or Regestre,” or for a play that, after the city had taken over sponsorship from the guild, brought in £7 10s 8d to the “Comon Chambre” in 1535.131 Thus, more must have been involved in assembling “the pageantes playeng geare and necessaries” for performance, as was ordered in readiness for the abortive production of 1568.132 Johnston is very likely right in understanding this as “the first time that pageant wagons are specified clearly for the Creed Play.”133 A further point is the statement in the York House Books in 1483 when Richard III was present for the performance, at which time the king was to be attended at his “Seyng of the Creid play.”134 The play was a sight to be seen, and it was a sight worthy of being mounted before favored royalty, for Richard was highly popular in the North. So, too, the play was to be heard, as when the York Minster Chamberlains’ rolls in 1483 indicate that the Dean and his clergy heard (audierunt) the play from over the gates to the cathedral close.135 It was also far too Roman Catholic to survive in the Protestant atmosphere of Queen Elizabeth’s England when traditional religion was in retreat. Dean Matthew Hutton’s reaction to the playtext was that it would “of the ignorant sort be well liked,” at the present time, in 1568 “in this happie time of the gospell, I knowe the learned will mislike it and how the state will beare with it I knowe not.”136 His objection was to those things in the text of the York Creed Play that “be Disagreinge from the senceritie of the gospell”—that is, retaining elements of traditional religion—but his remarks also are indicative of drama that had audience appeal beyond what could be delivered by a didactic presentation of doctrine alone. Wright notes, however, that an examination of Continental Creed plays reveals two types, neither of them at all like the model suggested above.137 The first is a 128 REED: York, 1:98, 2:639. 129 REED: York, 1:98, 2:639. 130 REED: York,1:98, 2:639. 131 REED: York, 1:352, 257–59. 1535 was the final year in which the Creed Play was actually performed; see 261–62. 132 REED: York, 1:353. Apparently at this time, after a lapse of some years, it was necessary again “to haue [the players’] partes fair wrytten and delyuered them . . . soo that they may haue leysure to kunne euery one his part.” 133 Johnston, “The Plays of the Religious Guilds,” 65. 134 REED: York, 1:131. 135 REED: York, 1:132. 136 REED: York, 1:353. 137 Wright, “The York Creed Play,” 32, 36.

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recitation and exposition of the Apostles’ Creed by prophets and apostles as well as by others. This could hardly have been what was involved at York since there is no way that such a performance could hold the attention of an audience for the length of time necessary for its Creed Play, perhaps as long as two-thirds the length of York’s Creation to Doom cycle on Corpus Christi.138 The second, Wright observes, re-creates “the legendary composition of the Creed at Pentecost as a prologue to scenes of the travels, preaching, and martyrdom of the apostles.”139 Though the latter may seem less than likely at York, such a form could, like structure of the Innsbruck Ludus de assumptione, have concluded with a pageant of the Assumption and Coronation—two very popular subjects at York—rather than the depiction of heavenly bliss.140 On other grounds the Assumption and Coronation must, however, be admitted as alternate possible ways to conclude the York Creed Play. The conclusion that “any reconstruction of the York [Creed] play must remain tentative at best” thus may, to be sure, be the optimum at which we can arrive. We can be certain about its processional form at stations through the city and the presence of prophets and apostles, with scrolls as in the York Minster windows, but beyond this we can only construct a plausible model on the basis of evidence of iconography. The analogy with the visual arts, including those examples that give more than mere depictions of the prophets and apostles and their phrases, will, I believe, seem the most convincing to the majority of scholars, though the forms taken by the Continental Creed Plays will cause us to recognize that we must be humble before the fact of the inevitable ambiguity of the English records and the loss of the playtext of the York Creed Play. Yet one thing is absolutely certain, and that is that the York Corpus Christi Guild, from early in its history, had a major role to play in the theatrical endeavors of the city for both its involvement with the Corpus Christi procession and its role in the production of the Creed Play. That the Guild had no part, at least officially, in the Creation to Doom play with its fifty pageants on the feast of Corpus Christi does not make its contribution insignificant. We can only lament that the copy of the Creed Play that Dean Hutton called in and apparently failed to return has never been found, nor has any trace been discovered of any other copy. As for the procession that was sponsored by the Corpus Christi Guild, we need to accept that, even if we knew more about it, no modern re-creation of it in an Anglo-Saxon country could replicate precisely the meaning or, especially, the devotional feeling of the spectacle of shrine and participants entering and passing through the city. 138 Wright, “The York Creed Play,” 29. 139 Wright, “The York Creed Play,” 32. 140 Wright, “The York Creed Play,”42. For known examples of the Assumption and Coronation in the visual arts at York, see Davidson and O’Connor, York Art, 105–11, figs. 31– 32. In the York Corpus Christi play, the pageants of the Weavers’ Assumption and Hostelers’ Coronation provide a high point in the action with special music provided in the manuscript for the former; see Richard Beadle, ed., The York Plays (London: Edward Arnold, 1982), 392–404, 465–74. Richard Rastall notes that the Assumption in particular “is musically the most important play in the cycle” (The Heaven Singing [Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1996], 246).

Chapter Four

Play and Spectacle at Pentecost Whitsuntide was a propitious time for the pageants and plays that we know were sponsored by town or parish in Britain. The prime example must be found in the Chester plays, transferred to Whitsuntide, the week following Pentecost, in the early sixteenth century. There should be no puzzlement about why the civic authorities of this town of perhaps five thousand people at this time thought this Church festival to be an appropriate time for a cycle that embraces the entire history of the world from the beginning to the end, from alpha to omega, as the encapsulation of all things and events within the mind and will of the Creator God. Such a range involved expansion in Tudor times of Chester’s civic play as it had existed in its earlier incarnation as a drama on Corpus Christi—a drama that very likely, as Lawrence Clopper has argued, was “more a Passion play than a cycle.” As such, it was likely a play in several parts or segments performed at a single station—appropriate enough, of course, for a celebration of the Eucharist. Pentecost, the feast recalling the reception of the Holy Spirit by the apostles and including the legendary revelation to them of the clauses of the Creed, as dramatized in the Chester Fishmonger’s play, was considered, along with Christmas and Easter, one of the three most important festivals in the Church’s ritual year. From early times the feast had been the commemoration of the birthday of the Church. The Chester Whitsun plays, dedicated to maintaining the cultural memory of the Church and its founding in the first century, thus attend to the stories preliminary to the Incarnation, to the culmination of the soteriological event presented in the Nativity, Crucifixion, Resurrection, Ascension, and Pentecost, as well as to the other events at the center of salvation history. They also do not neglect the end of history when the role of the Church will have been completed. Yet Whitsunday and the following week leading up to Trinity Sunday not surprisingly elsewhere provided a time of other and very varied kinds of pageantry, drama, and entertainment. Processions were one type of local expression honoring the feast of Pentecost, though they were less common than those occurring on Corpus Christi and some other occasions in the ritual year. At Leicester in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the Whitsun procession, beginning at the church of St. Martin or of St. Mary de Castro and concluding at the church of St. Margaret outside  Lawrence M. Clopper, “The History and Development of the Chester Cycle,” Modern Philology 75 (1978): 219–20.  Play 21.311–358, in The Chester Mystery Cycle, ed. R. M. Lumiansky and David Mills, EETS, s.s. 3, 9 (London: Oxford University Press, 1974–1986).  See for convenience F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone, eds., The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 1738.

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the walls, included the impersonation of the disciples who were present at Pentecost in biblical history as well as St. Martin, virgins, and, following a group of minstrels and carried under a canopy, an image of the Blessed Virgin Mary. An antiquarian account reports that this image preceded the twelve apostles in the procession and that each “had the name of the apostle whom he personated written on parchment, and fixed on his bonnet.” At Norwich, the Guild of St. Luke sponsored a procession in the early sixteenth century “vpon the Mundaye in pentecost weke,” which, circling through the city, annually displayed pageants “of the lieffes and marterdams of diuers and many hooly Sayntes as also many other light and feyned figures and pictures of other persones and bestes.” On the following day, revels, which included a role for a Lord of Misrule, took place at Tombland near the Cathedral close and the location of the popular annual Pentecost fair, through which the mayor’s procession also proceeded on that same day. Since the Guild of St. Luke was the fraternity of the painters and related crafts that had been especially strong on account of work being done toward the construction and completion of the Cathedral, the pageantry prior to 1527 would have involved colorful spectacle—and possibly dramatizations rather than merely tableaux vivants. The cathedral artisans and their pageants necessarily continued to have a large role after the city took control of the event. The artisans were all the more important because they were the men who on account of their skill were required for the construction and painting of the pageants and properties, even the painting or gilding of the faces of some of the actors. It is thus also plausible to assume that the designs carved and painted for the Cathedral and other sites were closely related to much that was put on view in pageants and plays both before and after 1527. The development of an actual Whitsun drama cycle for the period after 1527 will be noticed below.  William Kelly, Notices Illustrative of the Drama, and Other Popular Amusements, Chiefly in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries . . . Extracted from the Chamberlains’ Accounts and Other Manuscripts of the Borough of Leicester (1865), 7, as quoted by Robert Withington, English Pageantry, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1918), 1:16. In 1555–1556, the procession also included three shepherds, while in 1546–1547, Herod had been included (Ian Lancashire, Dramatic Texts and Records of Britain [Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984], no. 831).  Alan H. Nelson, The Medieval English Stage (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), 119, quoting the Norwich Assembly Books. This passage, from a different manuscript, is quoted by Norman Davis, ed., Non-Cycle Plays and Fragments, EETS, s.s. 1 (London: Oxford University Press, 1970), xxvii. In addition to the pageants, “disgisinges” were reported.  See JoAnna Dutka, “Mystery Plays at Norwich: Their Formation and Development,” Leeds Studies in English 10 (1978): 107–8.  Dutka, “Mystery Plays at Norwich,”107–20.  See Dutka, “Mystery Plays at Norwich,” 112, as well as the claims, no longer accepted, concerning the influence of the plays on the design of the Norwich Cathedral bosses by M. D. Anderson, Drama and Imagery in English Medieval Churches (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963), 87–104; and M. Q. Smith, “The Roof Bosses of Norwich Cathedral and Their Relation to the Medieval Drama of the City,” Norfolk Archaeology 32 (1958): 12–26.

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Game and Play at Whitsun The variety in Whitsuntide pageantry could extend to a choice of subjects that had little connection with the festival but rather had everything to do with the availability of the date for entertainment or ceremony. In 1486, Henry VII, faced with widespread unpopularity, especially in the North and West, after his successful coupe against Richard III, made a progress through the country for the purpose of pacifying various cities and towns lying outside London. At Hereford, plans for pageants were prepared for the king’s Whitmonday entry. St. George would slay the “worme” (dragon) “with the helpe of that blessed virgyn,” two bishops with censers would accompany St. Ethelbert “that sumtyme Was king of kent” and a patron of Hereford Cathedral, and, at the entrance to the cathedral, the Blessed Virgin herself, also a patron of the cathedral, would appear with “many virgins mervealous and Richely besene.”10 The Whitsun entry of Henry VII was a one-time affair, but civic processions at Whitsun, as at other important festivals, were more normally annual events which frequently survived for centuries. The procession at Pentecost, associated with folk tradition, at Lyme Regis in Dorset was still being recorded in the seventeenth century. Here townspeople as late as 1609 went out with a flag, drum, and instruments of music into the countryside on the feast day to gather boughs early in the morning on Pentecost before a breakfast and Morning Prayer at the church.11 Often Whitsuntide was taken to be a propitious time for a church ale, organized for the purpose of raising money for the support of the parish church or for needed repairs to the fabric. One form of entertainment on such occasions was the King Game, which involved choosing a mock king and queen to preside over the festivities. Though unscripted and, therefore, improvised, this game had many of the marks of true drama, with the summer king in particular mimicking the acts and speeches that he imagined to reflect the behavior of an actual monarch. Richard Carew, in his Survey of Cornwall, provided a description of such one such event at Lostwithiel: Vpon little Easter Sunday [i.e., Pentecost], the Freeholders of the towne and mannour, by themselues or their deputies, did there assemble: amongst whom, one (as it fell to his lot by turne) brauely apparelled, gallantly mounted, with a Crowne on his head, a scepter in his hand, a sword borne before him, and dutifully attended by all the rest also on horseback, rode thorow the principall streete to the Church: there the Curate in his best beseene, solemnely receiued him at the Churchyard stile, and conducted him to heare diuine seruice: after which, he repaired with the same pompe, to a house foreprouided for that purpose, made a feast to his attendants, kept the tables end himselfe, and was serued

 See Richard III and the North, ed. Rosemary Horrox (Hull: Centre for Regional and Local History, University of Hull, 1986), passim. 10 REED: Hereford, Worcestershire, ed. David N. Klausner (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990), 114–15, 279; see also John C. Meagher, “The First Progress of Henry VII,” Renaissance Drama, n.s. 1 (1968): 67–88. 11 REED: Dorset, Cornwall, ed. Rosalind Conklin Hays, C. E. McGee, Sally L. Joyce, and Evelyn S. Newlyn (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999), 222–23.

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Carew emphasized the antiquity of this practice, which, he believed, “outreach[ed] remembrance”; nevertheless, he was willing to conjecture that the ritual originated in the desire to enhance “the royalties appertaining to the honour of Cornwall.”13 Of course, at other locations where the King Game was recorded for Whitsunday or the week following, identical traditions would not necessarily have applied. However, as an attraction designed to bring in people from the region round about as part of a fundraiser, this game, at least so far as we can tell, was never the domain of the lower levels of town or village society, and it appears to have engaged a specific gender and age group. For example, the records for Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, at Whitsuntide in 1500 when income of 15s 6d was recorded, indicate that the King Play was for young men.14 The game at Whitsuntide also, as later records from Henley show, involved the choosing of a queen as well as a king,15 with the role of the queen being taken by a young unmarried woman. The income that was generated might be quite substantial. In 1527 Harry Sampson was “kyng of Shirborne,” who brought in the sum of £7 9s 5d at the Whitsuntide church ale; in 1536 John Yonge the younger was the Sherborne king, bringing in even more when £17 was reported as the profit turned over to the churchwardens of All Hallows’ Church.16 The Sherborne tradition continued at Whitsuntide after the Reformation, and in 1567 the amount of £22 0s 14d was collected at the church ale and turned over by William Foster to the churchwardens of St. Mary the Virgin, which had commenced as the town’s parish church at the dissolution of the monasteries.17 The Whitsun ale did not, of course, always include the King Game, so references to unspecified activities could signify any number of things, whether plays or games.18 What, for example, did the wardens of the Mercers, Ironmongers, and Goldsmiths’ Company at Shrewsbury have in mind on April 26, 1526, when they wondered if the guild members wished “to haue any sport or play at Penticost next foloyng or not”?19 It is highly unlikely here that anything subversive was implied or intended, though 12 Richard Carew, Survey of Cornwall (London, 1602), fol. 137v. 13 Carew, Survey of Cornwall. For relevant discussion, see Nicholas M. Davis, “‘His Majesty shall have tribute of me’: The King Game in England,” in Between Folk and Liturgy, ed. Alan J. Fletcher and Wim Hüsken (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1997), 97–108; and also, for a general study of summer games of this sort, Sandra Billington, Mock Kings in Medieval Society and Renaissance Drama (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), esp. 55–113. 14 Henley Borough Records: Assembly Books I–IV, 1395–1543, ed. P. M. Briers (Oxford: Oxford Record Society, 1960), 128; see also 140 (for 1502), 210 (for 1535), 216 (for c.1538), and 223 (for 1539). 15 Henley Borough Records, 211. 16 REED: Dorset, Cornwall, 255, 257. 17 REED: Dorset, Cornwall, 265 and (for the church of St. Mary the Virgin) 38. 18 Some possibilities are noted in Ronald Hutton, The Rise and Fall of Merry England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), and, by the same author, The Stations of the Sun (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996). 19 REED: Shropshire, ed. J. Alan B. Somerset, 2 vols. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994), 1:184.

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in the post-Reformation period there were many among the clergy who opposed traditional entertainment and saw in its various forms something to be denounced and put down. Henry Burton’s hostile account in his A Divine Tragedie Lately Acted, or, A Collection of Sundrie Memorable Examples of Gods Judgements upon Sabbathbreakers describes “a solemn Whitson ale” in the church house presided over by a miller of Churchdown, Gloucestershire, in the 1630s. Continuing the festivities after Morning Prayer and a sermon, “the Drumme is struck up, the peeces discharged, the Musicians play, and the rowt fall a dauncing, till the evening,” whereupon they went with the miller, with whom they were to enjoy a meal. Against these activities they had been admonished both privately and publicly by the minister. When the mill and the miller’s house burned to the ground, according to Burton, God’s judgment was being carried out.20 Burton would hardly have approved of Robin Hood plays or entertainments—in either case activities engaged in raising funds for the parish—at Whitsuntide or at any time during the church year. Whitsuntide was, in fact, the time chosen for a Robin Hood entertainment at Thame, Oxfordshire, in the late fifteenth century and, in certain years at least, at Henley. In accounts for 1474, for example, the Thame churchwardens recorded both the receipt of 8s 4d from a Whitsun ale and, listed separately, 26s 9d from the “Robyn hodg Ale at Wytsontyde.”21 Borough records from Henley in 1499 refer to a “ludi de Robin Hode, and in 1520 the profit, designated as “Robyne Hoodys money,” amounted to £4 13s 4d.22 Early sixteenthcentury churchwardens’ accounts from Kingston-upon-Thames, Surrey, give insight into Whitsun entertainments, apparently including a Robin Hood play, that lasted five days beginning at Pentecost. The 1507 accounts record the production of liveries in great quantities; these were either garments for players or, in the case of the small “leveres,” inexpensive badges with painted emblems that were pinned to one’s clothes to show that the recipient was Robin Hood’s “man.”23 Philip Stubbes, like Burton hostile to entertainment, sneered about similar badges given out for the 20 Henry Burton, A Divine Tragedie Lately Acted, or, A Collection of Sundrie Memorable Examples of Gods Judgements upon Sabbath-breakers (London, 1642), 10–11, quoted in REED: Cumberland, Westmorland, Gloucestershire, ed. Audrey Douglas and Peter Greenfield (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986), 289. 21 W. Patterson Ellis, ed., “The Churchwardens’ Accounts of the Parish of St. Mary, Thame,” Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire Archaeological Journal 19 (1913– 1915): 22. 22 Henley Borough Records, 125, 189. 23 David Wiles, The Early Plays of Robin Hood (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1981), 68– 70; Sally-Beth MacLean, “King Games and Robin Hood: Play and Profit at Kingston-uponThames,” RORD 29 (1986–1987): 85–94; Clifford Davidson, “Improvisation in Medieval Drama,” in Improvisation in the Arts of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, ed. Timothy McGee, EDAM Monograph Series 30 (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2003), 196–97. See also Davis, “His Majesty shall have tribute of me,” 101, for a citation of Melton Mowbray in Leicestershire, and, especially, for the most up-to-date research, John Marshall, “Gathering in the Name of the Outlaw: REED and Robin Hood,” in REED in Review: Essays in Celebration of the First Twenty-Five Years, ed. Audrey Douglas and Sally-Beth MacLean (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006), 65–84.

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“innobling” of the Lord of Misrule and remarked that they were “certaine papers, wherein is painted some babblerie or other, of Imagerie worke.” These were pressed on “euery one that will giue them money for them. . . .”24 Such badges were peddled by the young men who were members of Robin Hood’s “company” and who were arrayed in Kendal green. Along with Maid Marian, they also danced as part of the entertainment, all for the support of the parish church.25 So, too, at Netherbury, Dorset, in 1567–1568, church ales were kept on Whitsunday with “Robert hoode and Littell Iohn and the gentle men of the said parish the cheef acters in it.”26 Was such subject matter the topic (or one of the topics) of the Whitsun plays, designed “for the benefit of the Towne” at Hadleigh, Suffolk, that were prohibited by the Privy Council in 1597?27 Though now established as of early seventeenth-century date, the Betley window, currently in the Victoria and Albert Museum, shows eleven characters, including Robin Hood, Friar Tuck as a Franciscan, Maid Marion wearing a crown as queen of the May, Tom the Piper, a fool, and a hobby horse as well as morris dancers, that might well have stepped out of one of the entertainments to which reference has been made above (fig. 9).28 At other locations as well, the utility of Whitsuntide, falling within a propitious time of year, for pageants, plays, and games is proven by a survey of the documentation provided by archival research in recent years. These not surprisingly were most often local affairs. The Guild of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Boston, Lincolnshire, processed with Noah’s ark,29 and there was an unspecified play planned at Brookland, Kent, in 1527, when James Hoggelyn of Old Romney left a small bequest to William Ealdishe on condition that he should “playe yn brokeland playe on penticost next.”30 At Lincoln there is corroborating evidence to indicate in broad terms what was represented in a play that was produced twice at Whitsuntide in the early years of the reign of Elizabeth I—a play that seems, as Stanley J. Kahrl noted, “to have been designed to fulfil traditional expectations in the audience without violating the injunction against treating matters of religion (that is, disputed doctrine) on the stage.”31 This was the two-day “staige play of the Storye of Tobye” from the Old 24 Philip Stubbes, The Anatomie of Abuses, ed. Margaret Jane Kidnie (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2002), 207–8. 25 Maclean, “King Games and Robin Hood,” 86; John Forrest, The History of Morris Dancing, 1458–1750 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999), 161. 26 REED: Dorset, Cornwall, 230. 27 Records of Plays and Players in Norfolk and Suffolk, 1330–1642, ed. David Galloway and John Wasson, MSC 11 (Oxford, 1980–1981), 162–63. 28 This glass is best known through the engraving provided for vol. 5 of Samuel Johnson and George Steevens, eds., The Plays of William Shakespeare (1778), pl. facing p. 248, reproduced in Clifford Davidson, Illustrations of the Stage and Acting in England to 1580 (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1991), fig. 86. 29 Records of Plays and Players in Lincolnshire, 1300–1585, ed. Stanley Kahrl, MSC 8 (Oxford, 1974), 3. The Noah pageant was also used at Corpus Christi. 30 REED: Kent, Diocese of Canterbury, ed. James M. Gibson, 3 vols. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002), 1:23. 31 Stanley J. Kahrl, Traditions of Medieval English Drama (London: Hutchinson, 1974), 133.

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Figure 9

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The Betley Window.

Testament apocrypha that was presented at Lincoln “in Whytson holye days” in 1566 and again in 1567.32 An inventory for the one previous performance, in 1564 when it was not mounted on Pentecost, gives an elaborate list of properties, including 32 Records of Plays and Players in Lincolnshire, 67–68.

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a hell mouth “with a neithere Chap” presumably allowing opening and closing, “a prison with a Coueryng,” and a “Sara Chambre” being stored at one location, and “a fyrmament with a fierye clowde and a Duble Clowde” elsewhere in private hands. The remainder was stored at St. Swithin’s Church: “a greate Idoll with a Clubb”; a tomb, with a tomb cover; cities of Jerusalem and “Raiges,” both “with towers and pynacles”; the city of Ninevah; the houses of Toby, the Israelites, and neighbors; and the palace of the king at “Laches.”33 These properties may, as Kahrl suggests, be survivals derived from earlier plays, in particular the drama mounted on the feast of St. Anne,34 and they are certainly indicative of production on a fixed stage or stages, as the term “standyng play” in the Lincoln records indicates.35 The earlier production, in July of 1564, had been shown at Broadgate, with town officials as play wardens,36 and undoubtedly the same conditions of outdoor performance would have been chosen for the 1566 and 1567 performances. Lacking the text, we can only make assumptions on the basis of the information in the records, but very likely there was some attempt to assuage the new Protestant establishment with a drama that appeared to be supportive of iconoclasm, perhaps even conflating the “greate Idoll” with both Catholic images and the demon Asmodeus who had killed the seven husbands of Sarah, the wife-to-be of Tobit’s son Tobias.37 The “Chambre” was presumably the wedding chamber in which the couple slept while her father prepared a tomb for the son-in-law he was convinced would be killed like the others on their wedding night. Asmodeus’s flight to Egypt, where he would be bound by the archangel Raphael, was presumably changed into a descent of the devil into hell. Rages in Media was the city to which Tobias was sent by his father to collect his ten silver talents, while Jerusalem probably only figured in the earlier part of the story prior to Tobit’s abduction to Ninevah. Interestingly, the Tobit story is illustrated—less completely to be sure than must have been the case in the play—in a wall painting, very nearly contemporary with the Lincoln drama, at the White Hart Hotel in Stratford-upon-Avon. The first scene in the wall painting shows Tobit, wearing somber Elizabethan garb, and his wife Anna; he is handing a letter to his son Tobias, who is accompanied by the archangel Raphael in disguise. Next, in a scene restored from fragments, is the city of Nineveh, with turrets, and Tobias and Raphael; Tobias’s dog was present, but the painting has suffered damage in this area. Finally, Tobias and Raphael appear at the Tigris River, with a city in the background. Tobias has a very large fish, and the inscription reads “leap . . . a fysshe that lookid grave [?greate]. But raphel bade tobias. . . .”38 It would be interesting to know how the play at Lincoln staged the great fish which, threatening to swallow the youth, managed to leap out of the water 33 Records of Plays and Players in Lincolnshire, 67–68. 34 Kahrl, Traditions of Medieval English Drama, 133. 35 Records of Plays and Players in Lincolnshire, 67. 36 Records of Plays and Players in Lincolnshire, 67. 37 The story told in Tobit, chaps. 3–9, is a variant of the Dangerous Bride story, of which Puccini’s Turandot is a modern example. 38 Philip Mainwaring Johnston, “Mural Paintings in Houses, with Special Reference to Recent Discoveries at Stratford-upon-Avon and Oxford,” Journal of the British Archaeological Association, n.s. 37 (1931): 91–93, pls. xx–xxii.

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of the Tigris, and, of course, in this regard the painting is not of any help in spite of the obvious significance presented by this analogue to the drama in the visual arts. Was the play-fish a creature of canvas over lath, perhaps like the snap dragon in the St. George’s Day procession at Norwich?39 How would it have been cut open, as the story demands, to remove its heart and liver in order to burn them as protection against Asmodeus? Religious Plays and Ceremonies Other religious plays at Whitsuntide focused more directly on salvation history or saints’ lives. These were representative of traditional religion prior to the Reformation, but some survived afterward as well, at least for a time. At Shrewsbury, plays were being mounted at Whitsuntide as early as 1445–1446 and continued sporadically to 1532, then revived in the 1550s.40 It was in the dry quarry outside the walls of the city that a play of Feliciana and Sabina was staged in Whitsun week in 1515–1516.41 The drama of the lives and martyrdoms of these saints, a play (ludus) staged “for the honour of the said town” by players who received payment of ten shillings,42 could have made good use of the acoustics and possibilities for lavish spectacle inherent in the staging area, which has been identified and described by Alan Somerset.43 The quarry also was chosen for the play of Julian the Apostate, said to have been played at Whitsun in the same location in 1556–1557.44 Later, if the reports in the records are accurate, the great Shrewsbury Passion play made by the schoolmaster Thomas Ashton, and to which the city and the guilds contributed for Whitsuntide performance in the same quarry, would seem to have been a notable success. A “greate nvmber of people of noblemen and others” who came to see the play are reputed to have given it strong praise.45 This performance, early in Elizabeth’s reign, was undoubtedly Protestant and humanist in character since Aston had been a student of Martin Bucer at Cambridge.46 The quarry had been adapted for use as a theater since it was (in Thomas Churchyard’s words) “deepe and hye, in goodly auncient

39 Davidson, Illustrations of the Stage and Acting, 27–28, fig. 31. The snap dragon illustrated here is but one of several late examples of the Norwich dragon, a device first noted in the Norwich records in 1408; see Records of the Guild of St. George in Norwich, 1389–1547, ed. Mary Grace, Norfolk Record Society 9 (1937), 31. 40 REED: Shropshire, 1:134, 2:378. 41 REED: Shropshire, 1:172. 42 REED: Shropshire, 1:172; I have quoted from Somerset’s translation (2:591). 43 J. A. B. Somerset, “Local Drama and Playing Places at Shrewsbury: New Findings from the Borough Records,” Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England 2 (1985): 1–31; REED: Shropshire, 2:387–89. 44 REED: Shropshire, 1:205. 45 “Dr. Taylor’s History,” fol. 107, as quoted in REED: Shropshire, 1:214. See, however, 2:378, for assessment of the reliability of the records in this case. 46 See Paul Whitfield White, Theatre and Reformation (Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, 1993), 104.

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guise”—that is, a replica insofar as it was possible of the semicircular form of the theater of antiquity.47 In contrast, a traditional Catholic Passion play, dating back to the fifteenth century and utilizing conventional fixed stages, survived at New Romney, one of the Cinque Ports. This play apparently outlived all the other parish plays of Kent.48 It continued to be played until 1567–1568 when its players were ordered “effectually to procecute and playe” the play, or “every player having partes shall presently surrender all their partes vpp agayne . . . and so to be no more spoken of, or any more repeticion and rehersall had and made.”49 The play probably developed from the Resurrection drama that had been mentioned in 1456–1457 and the interlude of the Passion toward which Agnes Forde contributed (“pro ludo interludij passionis domini”) in 1463–1464.50 But since town players had been mentioned even earlier, in the early 1430s or, as visitors to Lydd, in the previous decade,51 the New Romney Passion may even have had a history dating from the early part of the fifteenth century. Though such an early date for the play is speculative, nevertheless, at its inception, it was unlikely to have been the elaborate play extending over several days that it later has been determined to be. We can, I believe, confidently say that the play’s roots were in the spiritual climate of lay piety that is so attractively described by Eamon Duffy.52 It also was designed to honor the town that sponsored it even as that municipality went into a long period of economic decline after the river silted up, at which time it was no longer a functioning seaport on account of the sea being removed from New Romney by two miles. According to Leland, “withyn remembrance of men” ships came “hard up to the towne, and cast ancres yn one of the chyrch yardes,”53 but this chronology is considerably off the mark since it was the Great Storm of 1287 that had closed the port.54 Yet Leland’s report of the great decay of the town, so that “where ther wher iii. great paroches and chirches sumtyme is now scant one wel maynteined,”55 is credible. Nevertheless, it has been suggested by James Gibson and Isobel Harvey that the continuance of the play, heavily supported by the more 47 Thomas Churchyard, The Worthines of Wales, Spenser Society 20 (1876; reprint New York: Burt Franklin, 1967), 85. It is claimed by Churchyard that 20,000 people had seen Aston’s play in this location. The passage is quoted from the 1587 edition in REED: Shropshire, 1:28. 48 REED: Kent, Diocese of Canterbury, 1:lviii. 49 REED: Kent, Diocese of Canterbury, 2:798. 50 REED: Kent, Diocese of Canterbury, 2:737–38. 51 REED: Kent, Diocese of Canterbury, 2:734; and, for Lydd, 2:646 (1428–1429), and 648 (1431–1432). 52 Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992). 53 John Leland, The Itinerary, ed. Lucy Toulmin Smith, 5 vols. (reprint Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1964), 4:67. 54 Margaret Brentnall, The Cinque Ports and Romney Marsh (London: John Gifford, 1972), 91. For a useful map showing New Romney before the storm that closed its port, see E. W. Parkin, “The Ancient Buildings of New Romney,” Archaeologia Cantiana 88 (1973):119, fig. 1. 55 Leland, The Itinerary, 67.

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substantial citizens of the town,56 may have been regarded as a means of helping to maintain New Romney’s status as the center of administration for the Cinque Ports.57 With the demise of other opportunities for playing in Kent,58 amateur actors from round about came to New Romney to act in its elaborate Passion play, and the large audience that it drew made a substantial financial contribution to the town. It would be foolhardy to claim that the New Romney Passion was written to order for Whitsuntide, but the town records do indicate that this was the occasion for its performance as early as 1476–1477, when the chamberlains’ accounts indicate a watchman was paid on Tuesday of Pentecost week at the time of the play.59 Fragmentary playwardens’ accounts remain from 1483–1486, and costumes were hired in 1490–1491.60 In 1516–1517 “le Pleyboke” was delivered to Henry Robyn, and play wardens were elected for the play “de passione Christi” which they were accustomed to have from ancient times (“de antiquo tempore”).61 The play’s popularity in the region may be judged from the record of five men being hired at Lydd as watchmen to guard the town while everyone went to New Romney for the play.62 A mention of the playbook again occurred in 1517–1519, when oddly the Passion was not supposed to be played without the license of the king.63 Some support from the royal court is, however, suggested after Richard Gibson, who was deeply involved with dramatic productions and entertainment for the royal court, was first approached for assistance with costumes in 1526–1527.64 The circumstantial evidence provided by records specifying the crying of the banns suggests that the New Romney Passion continued to be played at intervals at least throughout much of the reign of Henry VIII.65 However, there may have been a hiatus prior to a revival that was planned in the reign of Queen Mary, when traditional religion again was encouraged. A “Playe booke” is listed in a 1555 inventory of town books and records,66 and in 1555–1556, 56 James M. Gibson and Isobel Harvey, “A Sociological Study of the New Romney Passion Play,” RORD 39 (2000): 209–14. Their “inescapable conclusion” is that the Passion Play at New Romney “was performed and produced . . . primarily by the wealthy men of the town” (209). 57 Gibson and Harvey, “A Sociological Study,” 216. 58 See REED: Kent, The Diocese of Canterbury, 1:lviii. 59 REED: Kent, The Diocese of Canterbury, 2:740. However, in 1560–1561 the play was mounted on July 14 and August 3 as well as at Pentecost (2:794). 60 REED: Kent, The Diocese of Canterbury, 2:745–51. 61 REED: Kent, The Diocese of Canterbury, 2:763–64. 62 REED: Kent, The Diocese of Canterbury, 2:675. 63 REED: Kent, The Diocese of Canterbury, 2:765. 64 REED: Kent, The Diocese of Canterbury, 2:681; see also the discussion in 3:955; and W. R. Streitberger, Court Revels, 1485–1559 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994), 71–74 and passim. In 1529, Gibson also served as a burgess for New Romney. 65 See REED: Kent, Diocese of Canterbury, 2:674, 681, 687, 691–92 (Lydd); 2:448 (Dover). 66 REED: Kent, The Diocese of Canterbury, 2:778; but see 3:1362 for the suggestion that there is a chance that “Playe” may be a variant spelling of “plea” and hence not a reference to the playbook at all.

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at the Master Bailiff’s command, payments were made to John Forsett “for wryting owt the partes for the playe” and to John Stephans for the “making of A fauchen [falchion] to rehearse the playe with.”67 On December 27, 1555, recognizances were prepared that, identifying forty-four characters by name, ordered the persons playing them to have their parts memorized by the next Pentecost.68 The actors, from nearby towns and villages as well as locals, were further commanded to “com to Romney . . . and reherse theire seyd partes withowten eny collusyon.”69 However, these preparations may not have resulted in a performance in this year, as shown thereafter in the record of payment to one Richard Owton “for his paynes in goyng to Rye to spek to the waytes for our playe yat shuld have byn played.”70 Plans for production were made again in 1560, and at a February 18 town meeting it was agreed “that the playe of New Romney shall be playd at wytsontyde next folowynge.” The amount each person was to contribute to the play was specified at this time.71 Parts and perhaps the entire playbook were again written out by Forsett, who was also paid for “keeping the book.”72 Professional help was acquired in the person of the “deviser,” Gover Marten, from London, and musicians were retained.73 On April 1, according to the Jurats’ Record Book, play wardens were chosen, and, in preparation for the performance commencing on the Monday after the day of Pentecost, which would fall on June 2 in that year, the records for May 13 indicate the making of platform stages for Pilate and the princes, Annas and the tormentors, the Pharisees, and Herod as well as for heaven and “the Cave,” presumably the burial place of Jesus. Mortises were prepared “for the iij crosses.”74 Such staging, perhaps influenced by Continental practice since the traders of the Cinque Ports would have had ample opportunity to observe productions there, differs from the wagons used at York, Coventry, and Chester. Fixed stages of this kind meant the ability to present the Passion play to much larger audiences in single performances at one location.75 So too the sponsorship of the play, which was not produced by guilds but by the town directly, provides a different model, bringing to bear local resources that could purchase, borrow, or rent lavish costumes and create an elaborate setting for performance. That the New Romney Passion was, in fact, a four-day play cycle has been affirmed by James M. Gibson, who has indicated that the ordering was as follows: 67 REED: Kent, The Diocese of Canterbury, 2:778; see also 2:783, for a 1556–1557 inventory in The Book of Notte. 68 REED: Kent, The Diocese of Canterbury, 2:779–82. 69 REED: Kent, The Diocese of Canterbury, 2:780. 70 REED: Kent, The Diocese of Canterbury, 2:782. 71 REED: Kent, The Diocese of Canterbury, 2:783–85. Many contributed labor instead of financial support. 72 REED: Kent, The Diocese of Canterbury, 2:790–91. Forsett was the town clerk. 73 REED: Kent, The Diocese of Canterbury, 2:787, 789, 791, 793. 74 REED: Kent, The Diocese of Canterbury, 2:794. 75 For an example of Continental staging at Alençon, see Peter Meredith and John E. Tailby, The Staging of Religious Drama in Europe in the Later Middle Ages: Texts and Documents in English Translation, EDAM Monograph Series 4 (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1983), 74–75.

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Day 1 Ministry—Baptism of Jesus; Samaritan Woman; Healing the Blind Man; Raising of Lazarus; Entry into Jerusalem (Palm Sunday) Day 2 Passion I—Last Supper; Betrayal; Jesus before Annas, before Pilate, and before Herod Day 3 Passion II—Crucifixion; Burial; Harrowing of Hell Day 4 Resurrection and Ascension76

Gibson suggests heavy reliance on the gospel of St. John, though very likely John’s account would have been mediated by another source or sources. Evidence concerning the contents of the play mainly comes from three sources. The first is the set of 1483–1486 play wardens’ accounts, incomplete and covering only a portion of the expenditures for playing but including heaven, hell, hell’s bells (“Campanis pro inferno,” possibly, Gibson suggests, “Morris bells strapped to the arms and legs of devils”77), rosin for fireworks, tormentors’ garments, and halters for the ass.78 These will identify the action as covering the period from Palm Sunday to the Harrowing. The remarkable cast lists in three recognizances of 1555–1556 include, in the first, Herod, knights, Pilate, six tormentors (Mischaunce, Falce at Nede, Vntrust, Faynthart, Vnhappe, and Evil Grace), Cayphas and Annas as well as the latter’s maid, messengers, and the blind man with his boy and his parents. The second recognizance identifies the apostles, including Judas, Pharisees, Lazarus, Mary Magdalene, and Martha with her servant as well as one of her neighbors. The third specifies a doctor, a butcher, the Virgin Mary, princesses, Malchus, Mary Salome, a third devil, and Simon of Cyrene.79 All the women’s roles were played by men. Finally, the records of the 1561 performance provide an extensive prop list for the first day of play that even indicates the presence of a horse (for the centurion) in the production. Among the payments were amounts for John the Baptist’s and Judas’ coats, sheepskin for God’s coat (undoubtedly to simulate nudity for Jesus on the cross), as well as a pascal lamb, unspecified players’ “gere,” beards, wigs, the “city of Samry” (Samaria), birch boughs, parchment and fourteen quires of paper for the deviser. The latter was also paid for gold foil and skin, and, among other things, buckram, but also for shoeing a mare and the return of “gere” to London.80 76 James M. Gibson, “‘Interludium Passionis Domini’: Parish Drama in Medieval New Romney,” in English Parish Drama, ed. Alexandra F. Johnston and Wim Hüsken (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996), 139–44. 77 Gibson, “‘Interludium Passionis Domini’,” 143. 78 REED: Kent, Diocese of Canterbury, 2:747. For the use of rosin, see Philip Butterworth, Theatre of Fire (London: Society for Theatre Research, 1998), 38, and, for further information about rosin, 228. 79 REED: Kent, Diocese of Canterbury, 2:781–82. 80 REED: Kent, Diocese of Canterbury, 2:789–92.

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New Romney was unusual in its sponsorship of such a great play project without the kind of elaborate guild structure to be found in cities usually associated with other major cycles. The affluent city of Norwich, on the other hand, had an extensive network of guilds, which entered into the city’s Whitsun plays rather late.81 The plays emerge in the city’s dramatic records after 1527, when the Guild of St. Luke petitioned the city to be relieved of the burden of alone supporting its Whitsun pageantry each year as it has done for “long tyme paste” since “the said Gilde is almost decayed and not in noon wise but to remayne in decaye.”82 A pageant of The Holy Ghost, the responsibility of the affluent Worsted Weavers’ Guild, appears in the records two years later, and the first (incomplete) text of the Grocers’ play dates from 1533.83 These Norwich plays, like the York, Chester, and Coventry plays, were presented on pageant wagon stages. They also were to begin with the Creacion off the World by the Mercers, Drapers, and Haberdashers, followed by a pageant identified as Helle Carte (Fall of the Rebel Angels) by the Glaziers, Stainers, Scriveners, Parchmentmakers, Carpenters, Engravers, Colormakers, and Wheelwrights; and the Grocers’ Paradyse, dramatizing the temptation of Adam and Eve.84 In a record dating from c.1530 in the so-called Old Free Book, twelve “Pageantes” in all are listed, each of them supported by a number of guilds. In addition to the three initial pageants noted above and The Holy Ghost, a Pentecost play that concluded the cycle, the others were, in order, Abell and Cayme, Noyse Shipp, Abraham and Isaak, Moises and Aron with the Children off Israell and Pharo with his knyghtes, Conflicte off Dauid and Golias, The Birth of Crist with Sheperdes, and iij Kynges off Colen, The Baptysme of Criste, and The Resurreccion.85 Caution is required in approaching these plays and connections that might have existed between them and the bosses in Norwich Cathedral for which the members of the St. Luke’s Guild would have been responsible. Surely, we must look with skepticism at any claim that the bosses themselves were modeled on what had been seen by the artists in the plays.86 But the association of St. Luke’s Guild, which included not only carvers but also painter-stainers, with the pageantry for which they were responsible before 1527 needs to be taken into account, as JoAnna Dutka indicates,87 while Martial Rose is absolutely correct in stressing the way in which

81 For the context of religious drama in the region, see especially Gail McMurray Gibson, The Theater of Devotion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989); and Victor I. Scherb, Staging Faith (Madison and Teaneck: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2001). 82 Non-Cycle Plays and Fragments, ed. Davis, xxvii–xxviii; see also Dutka, “Mystery Plays at Norwich,” 107, 112–13. 83 Dutka, “Mystery Plays at Norwich,” 113; for the 1533 text (Text A), see NonCycle Plays and Fragments, 8–11; corrected by JoAnna Dutka, “The Lost Dramatic Cycle of Norwich and the Grocers’ Play of the Fall of Man,” Review of English Studies, n.s. 35 (1984): 12. 84 Non-Cycle Plays and Fragments, xxix. 85 Non-Cycle Plays and Fragments, xxix–xxx. 86 See Smith, “The Roof Bosses of Norwich Cathedral,” 12–16; Anderson, Drama and Imagery, esp. 87–104. 87 Dutka, “Mystery Plays at Norwich,” 112.

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the cathedral bosses are “closely analogous to the drama of the time.”88 And it must be recognized that, though other guilds were responsible for the individual plays after the changes made in organization in the third decade of the sixteenth century, the workmen who still were employed to create the pageant wagons and to paint them as well as the props and even costumes would have been members of the same guild credited with the remarkable set of bosses that may still be seen on the cathedral roof.89 Attention to the costumes, properties, and arrangement of the persons shown on the bosses will thus give at least an impression of what audiences in early sixteenth-century Norwich might have seen during Whitsun week, and these scenes include multiple details of the Creation, the Fall, Cain and Abel, Noah’s ark, the sacrifice of Isaac, Moses, Pharaoh’s chariot engulfed by the Red Sea, the Nativity with shepherds and the Magi, and the Resurrection, and Pentecost.90 The boss showing the Fall, with nude Adam and Eve holding the forbidden fruit that is being handed to them from the tree by the serpent, would probably bear comparison with the scene of the eating of the fruit in the Grocers’ play. The pageant, according to accounts dated 1565, had a tree in that year that was garnished with “Orenges, fyges, allmondes, dates, Reysens, preunis, and aples” as well as with flowers that were attached with “collerd thryd.”91 Additional impressions of the colors and designs that could have been drawn on for the plays are available in the stained and painted glass for which the Norwich school of glass painters were famous. One need look no further than the Adoration of the Shepherds scenes in the glass of East Harling and, in Norwich itself, the church of St. Peter Mancroft.92 In addition to its brilliant colors, the latter has such details as a grate with a fire to warm the Child, who is shown nude and being held 88 Martial Rose and Julia Hedgecoe, Stories in Stone: The Medieval Roof Carvings of Norwich Cathedral (London: Herbert Press, 1997), 138. 89 See the extended argument set forth for the role of craft guilds in play production in my Technology, Guilds, and Early English Drama, EDAM Monograph Series 23 (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1996); and, for the role of painters who monopolized their industry, see Jon Terry Wade, “The Economics/Economies of the Medieval Palette: Paint, Painters, and Dramatic Records,” EDAMR 23 (2001): 83–99. 90 For a detailed listing of these scenes as depicted in narrative fashion on the Norwich Cathedral bosses, see Ann Eljenholm Nichols, The Early Art of Norfolk, EDAM Reference Series 7 (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2002), 37–40, 43, 60–61, 63, 71, and 99–101; also 298–99 (commentary). Several bosses are included in fine color photographs in Rose and Hedgecoe, Stories in Stone, the cover for which has the Fall with Adam, Eve, and the serpent in the tree, and all of the bosses appear in their CD-ROM: Norwich Cathedral Roof Bosses (Norwich: Norwich Cathedral, 2000). Some photographs are available in Anderson, Drama and Imagery, pl.10–13 (for the Fall, see pl. 13c), and C. J. P. Cave, Roof Bosses in Medieval Churches (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1948), figs. 138–65. 91 REED: Norwich 1540–1642, ed. David Galloway (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984), 343. The fruits and nuts listed in the accounts represented Grocers’ wares imported from the Continent at this time (Paul Whitfield White, “Lay Initiative and Religious Drama in Reformation England,” unpublished paper read at the International Congress on Medieval Studies, May 2006). 92 Christopher Woodforde, The Norwich School of Glass-Painting in the Fifteenth Century (London: Oxford University Press, 1950), 25, 46–47, pl. XI, and frontispiece.

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Pentecost. Painted glass, Church of SS. Peter and Paul, East Harling, Norfolk

by his mother as she extends her breast to him, and shepherds playing musical instruments. Though Joseph sits in a chair, located on a tiled floor, that could have been appropriate in any affluent person’s bedroom, the setting is still a stable with

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the ox and the ass behind the main figures, a stylized star, and angels.93 Very likely the sophistication of this fifteenth-century glass would also have been observable in the Nativity represented in the Birth of Crist, with Sheperdes, and the iij Kinges play presented by the Norwich “Dyers, Calaundrers, Goldsmythes, Goldbeters, and Sadelers, Pewtrers, [and] Brasiers.”94 Likewise, the splendor of the glass showing Pentecost at East Harling with the Dove, descending in glory and its “semicircle of tongues of fire” on the apostles and the Virgin Mary (fig. 10),95 is suggestive of the kinds of pyrotechnics that may have been called upon for the Worstedweavers’ play of The Holy Ghost. But in spite of the demand expressed by the city in the 1527 document that all the occupations should join in setting forth the Whitsun pageants annually as “assigned and appoynted by Master Mayer and his brethern Aldermen,”96 the first prologue of the B-text, from 1565,97 of the Grocers’ play makes an important admission that indicates there had been a failure in regularly dramatizing the essential points in salvation history: “when the Grocers Pageant is played withowte eny other goenge befor yt then doth the Prolocutor say in this wise.”98 The speech itself reveals that the plays, affirmed as deriving from “Godes scripture,” dramatized “stories” in “pageantes apparellyd in Wittson dayes” which now have “fallen into decayes.”99 In contrast, the other B-text prologue assumes that the “former pageantes” have covered the creation of the world, the beginning point of history, and the fall of the rebel angels in preparation for making the first man and woman, the latter brought into being in the play from the “Rybbe Colleryd Redd” cited in the Grocers’ inventory of 1565.100 In the play, humankind’s first parents were provided with simulated nudity by means of wigs, gloves, a coat and hose,101 probably made of tawed leather as in the Cornish Creacion of the World for the scene of Eve’s seduction by the serpent,102 which at Norwich was given “a Cote with hosen and tayle . . . stayned with a whitte heare [wig]” listed in the same 1565 inventory.103 Attached to this inventory is a notice concerning the pageant wagon on which the guild’s play was performed. The pageant wagon itself, fitted when ready for a performance with a painted cloth on each of three sides, is described as “a Howsse of Waynskott paynted and buylded on a Carte witth fowre whelys.” It had “a square

49.

93 Woodforde, The Norwich School, 25, frontispiece. 94 Non-Cycle Plays and Fragments, xxix. 95 See Nichols, The Early Art of Norfolk, 101; Woodforde, The Norwich School, 48–

96 Non-Cycle Plays and Fragments, xxviii. 97 As Dutka notes, aside from the Grocers’ pageant wagon, “after this date, nothing more is heard of the Norwich plays” (“Mystery Plays at Norwich,” 116). 98 Dutka, “Mystery Plays at Norwich,” 11 (B-text, First Prologue, s.d. prior to line 1). 99 The defensiveness of this text, as might be expected in the religious climate enforced by the new Protestant officialdom, will be obvious. 100 REED: Norwich, 53. 101 Non-Cycle Plays and Fragments, xxxii; REED: Norwich, 53. 102 “Adam and Eva aparlet in whytt lether” (The Creacion of the World, ed. and trans. Paula Neuss [New York: Garland, 1983], 28, s.d. at line 344). 103 REED: Norwich, 53.

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toppe to sett over ye sayde Howsse,” with “a Gryffon gylte with a fane to sett on ye sayde Toppe.”104 Added to the inventory at a later date is the complaint that the pageant wagon had been abandoned outside to the elements for six years and “was so weather beaten, yat ye cheife parte was rotton.”105 Prior to its final decay, this wagon, the designated Paradise location on which the Fall of Adam and Eve was played, was clearly designed to reflect the standing of the guild in the community in addition to its religious function, and hence we can only believe that it displayed the high level of workmanship appropriate to the affluent Grocers who sponsored the pageant. In some years, the Grocers’ play itself was not produced, and this is further evidence that the full Norwich Whitsun cycle was not thought to be an inviolable unit. Records of the company indicate that it was played in 1534, 1535, and perhaps 1537, but not at Whitsuntide in 1536. In 1538, when the pageants were ordered to go on the Monday of Pentecost week “as they haue goon beffore in tymes paste,” wheels needed to be replaced as well as “many other thynges yat war in dekaye” before the play could be staged.106 In 1539 and 1540, no Grocers’ play seems to have been performed. But in 1541, only four plays were ordered to be produced, and the guilds alerted to present their plays were (1) the Butchers, (2) the Bakers, Brewers, and Innkeepers, (3) the Worstedweavers, and (4) the Smiths.107 As Dutka notes, the performance at Whitsun “could include as many or as few plays as the supervising group desired,”108 and, indeed, in 1547 a proclamation, apparently quite unpopular, prohibited any of the plays from being “sette forth this yere at the daye appoynted” and gave the mayor immunity from being injured in any way on account of this order.109 Norwich, though not a great center of play production, nevertheless was clearly fond of its tradition of pageantry, which, as we have seen in chapter 1, also was brilliantly displayed in its St. George’s Day festivities, from which some late versions of the Snap Dragon—the enemy defeated by the person impersonating the saint in the procession of the day, as recorded as early as 1408110—are still to be seen in the Castle Museum.111 In that performance there would have been an element of pure fun that would hardly have dominated the religious Whitsun plays at this city, though, of course, the entertainment associated with the Whitsun fairtime revels with their Lord of Misrule was another matter and obviously an occasion of merriment.

104 REED: Norwich, 52–53. 105 REED: Norwich, 53. 106 Dutka, “Mystery Plays at Norwich,” 113. 107 Dutka, “Mystery Plays at Norwich,” 113–14. 108 Dutka, “Mystery Plays at Norwich,” 114. 109 REED: Norwich, 19. 110 Records of the Guild of St. George in Norwich, 31 and passim; Nelson, The Medieval English Stage, 121–22. 111 Davidson, Illustrations of the Stage and Acting, fig. 31; see also William C. Ewing, Notices and Illustrations of the Costumes, Processions, Pageantry, etc. formerly displayed by the Corporation of Norwich (Norwich: Charles Muskett, 1850), pl. opposite p. 35 and unnumbered color pl.

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Nevertheless, it must not be forgotten that, in spite of the jollity that often prevailed at Whitsuntide in various locations in Britain, it was a time in the ritual year that long had been officially associated with solemn spectacle, with the week culminating on the next Sunday in the feast of the Trinity. On Pentecost at Norwich Cathedral, an angel, with a thurible and incense, famously descended from the roof to the accompaniment of minstrels.112 The opening of two feet in diameter in the nave roof used for this display remains still visible today.113 At Lincoln Cathedral, Pentecost was marked by the spectacular descent of a dove from the roof, documented from the late fourteenth century to the early sixteenth century.114 The ceremony at Lincoln is known because of payments for repair and required servicing for the dove and an angel in 1395–1396,115 while for St. Paul’s Cathedral in London a similar ceremony was described by an eyewitness. This description appears in William Lambarde’s Dictionarium Angliae Topographicum et Historicum. Lambarde, who was born 1536, had as a child seen the ceremony prior to its suppression at the Reformation. In it there was “the comynge downe of the Holy Gost . . . set forthe by a white Pigion, that was let to fly out of a Hole . . . in the mydst of the Roofe of the great Ile, and by a long Censer, which descendinge out of the same Place almost to the verie Grounde, was swinged up and downe at suche a Lengthe, that it reached with thone Swepe almost to the West Gate of the Churche, and with the other to the Quyre Staires of the same, breathinge out over the whole Churche and Companie a most pleasant Perfume of suche swete Thinges as burned thearin.”116 Evidence for the dove and also fiery effects in European drama representing the Pentecost event may be found in the Lucerne Passion Play117 and in the fifteenth-century Paris Resurrection play. In the latter, the dove, made of metal and painted white, descended within a “blazing circle” of material that had been “soaked in burning spirit”; “tongues of fire” from around it were made to “fall on Our Lady, on the women, on the apostles and disciples.”118 This effect may have been involved at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin, where payments were made in 1555 “for little threads [pro paruis cordulis] employed about the Holy Spirit on the feast of Pentecost.” These were, as Alan Fletcher suggests, either for moving a dove representing the

112 H. W. Saunders, An Introduction to the Obedientiary and Manor Rolls of Norwich Cathedral Priory (Norwich: Jarrold and Sons, 1930), 103; Lancashire, Dramatic Texts and Records, no. 1222. 113 Eric Fernie, An Architectural History of Norwich Cathedral (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 190–91; and, for a good photograph, see Rose, Stories in Stone, 50. 114 Records of Plays and Players in Lincolnshire, 27, 41. 115 Records of Plays and Players in Lincolnshire, 27. 116 William Lambarde, Dictionarium Angliae Topographicum et Historicum (1730), 459–60. A description of this censer appears in John Orlebar Payne, St. Paul’s Cathedral in the Time of Edw. VI (London: Burns and Oates, n.d.), 5. 117 Meredith and Tailby, The Staging of Religious Drama, 148. The Lucerne mention of the “doves for the Holy Ghost and for Pentecost” is followed by the question, “[H]ow are the fires to go rushing along in front of the Holy Ghost?” 118 Meredith and Tailby, The Staging of Religious Drama, 107.

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Holy Spirit or a “censing angel” (also mentioned in the accounts), or for the “descent of tongues of fire.”119 Spectacle in the Chester Whitsun Cycle A choice of stage spectacle for Whitsun drama is clearly visible in the Chester cycle. As David Mills has noted, the pageant wagons are presented in the early banns “as sources of visual display”; as such, these banns “seem at times to imply that their spectacular effects are the main attraction for the audience.”120 When the Chester pageants were transferred from Corpus Christi to Whitsun, probably in c.1520,121 the task was to change a play that had been presented at one exterior location, at St. John’s Church, and to create a cycle that would be appropriate to a different festival and a different manner of performance at stations through the town, beginning at the abbey (later cathedral) gates and then processing to the Pentice as well as three other locations in the town.122 The extant playtexts of the Chester cycle present immense problems, and in no sense can we speak of a single “author” of any kind or even of a single hand aiming at producing formal unity. The only complete versions are late Elizabethan and Jacobean, and in fact their source, the “Regenall” or master copy of the cycle’s text, had demonstrably been revised frequently.123 To be sure, the late banns claim that the Skinners’ Resurrection is “Not altered in menye poyntes from the olde fashion,”124 and in this pageant a direct connection with the earlier Corpus Christi play seems evident. But, in fact, it is otherwise often very hard to determine which texts are authentically from the earlier strata before the change to Whitsuntide, in part because this change in date took place prior to the Reformation. The extant dramatic records give very sparse information even for the middle of the sixteenth century. Alterations were inevitably being made as copying and recopying was done, and we may presume also that some of the changes were induced by shifting guild involvement in individual pageants. More serious changes appear again to have been involved for the final performance in 1575 when the plays were transferred once again, to Midsummer, and certain ones (and very likely portions of others) were 119 Alan J. Fletcher, Drama, Performance, and Polity in Pre-Cromwellian Ireland (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000), 78–79. 120 David Mills, Recycling the Cycle: The City of Chester and Its Whitsun Plays (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), 117. 121 See REED: Chester, ed. Lawrence M. Clopper (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979), 24. For a cautious view that the move to Whitsun could have taken place earlier, perhaps as early as 1472 but not later than 1521, see Mills, Recycling the Cycle, 112. 122 John Marshall, “‘The manner of these playes’: “The Chester Pageant Carriages and the Places Where They Played,” in Staging the Chester Cycle, ed. David Mills (Leeds: University of Leeds School of English, 1985), 38–41; and Davidson, Illustrations of the Stage and Acting, 27, figs. 29–30. 123 See, for example, the discussion in Clopper, “The History and Development of the Chester Cycle,” 219–46. 124 REED: Chester, 245.

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“vnplaid which were thought might not be Iustified for the superstition that was in them.”125 For example, it may have been that a decision was made then to produce a Passion segment that was less overtly Catholic and that combined the pageant of “the Tormentors/ that bobbyde god with gret horrors” with the pageant of the Crucifixion, both mentioned in the early banns and very likely at the center of the earliest strata of the original Corpus Christi cycle.126 On the other hand, there were also additions by the scribe in 1575 to provide a new scene in the pageant of the Three Kings and a new introduction to the Glovers’ Ministry play that dramatized the miracles performed by Jesus.127 Ultimately, then, there is available no authoritative or original text but only copies derived from the “Regenall” as it existed at a very late state of the cycle’s development. The most striking characteristic about the Chester Whitsun plays as they have come down to us in the various late manuscripts, then, is their reliance on visual and musical effects. These effects are a sign of the expertise of the various guilds that produced the plays and supplied goods and services for them. Further, the theatrical possibilities are dependent not only on the design of the wagons, called “carriages” in the dramatic records,128 but also on the facilities afforded by the locations at which they were positioned for playing. The exact construction of the wagons has proved elusive, and this is so both in spite of and because of the descriptions in the various versions of Rogers’ Breviary.129 While it does not matter very much from the standpoint of staging whether they had four or six wheels, the very basic matter of the number of levels for playing is significant. A higher level for God and heaven is important for the spectacle, and this is so from the first play of the cycle to the last, from the Creation and Fall of Lucifer to Doomsday when Jesus returns to show the bleeding wound in his side (24.428+s.d.) as a sign of his offer of salvation to those who are destined to be among the blessed in heaven. His descent was as if from a cloud, if possible (“quasi in nube, si fieri poterit”), according to the stage directions (24.357s.d.)—an admission, I believe, that at some locations where the pageant was to be played this was done, but not where facilities, perhaps utilizing nearby structures rather than an upper level of the wagon, were unavailable. Such external structures that were possibly used might well have included the abbey gates, where the Dean and Chapter made available a “mansyon” for the plays in 1572,130 or the Pentice, which had been built at the very end of the fifteenth century.131 Peter 125 REED: Chester, 110. 126 REED: Chester, 37. See also Clopper, “The History and Development of the Chester Cycle,” 219–20. 127 Noted by F. M. Salter, “The Banns of the Chester Plays,” Review of English Studies n.s. 17 (1940): 16–17. 128 Mills points out that the term used at Chester for pageant wagons was “carriage,” while “‘pageant’ is used of the individual play assigned to a company” (Recycling the Cycle, 117). 129 REED: Chester, 239, 325, 355, 436. See the discussion in Marshall, “‘The manner of these playes’,” 17–48. 130 REED: Chester, 96. 131 Mills gives the date of completion as 1498–1499, but notes that additions were made in 1573–1574 (Recycling the Cycle, 30).

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Meredith has suggested other locations that may have been previously available in the sixteenth century in Watergate Street and Bridge Street.132 Corroborating evidence comes from an entry from a will dated 1614 in the Trinity parish register which reports that church steeples had been used by a mason, John Brookes, for “many showes and pastymes.”133 Whatever the case, Christ’s descent through the air at the Last Judgment was accompanied by angels who sang Letamini in domino (Be glad in the Lord) or the Sarum hymn Salvator mundi, domine (24.508+s.d.), the latter if less qualified singers were used.134 Upon their appearance in the Doomsday play they had been revealed holding the signs of the Passion, specified as the cross, the crown of thorns, the lance, and other instruments used in Jesus’ torture and crucifixion (24.357s.d.)—instruments that appear in Passion shields in painted glass of c.1500 in the Troutbeck Chapel in the Chester church of St. Mary on the Hill135—which link the final disposition of the true members of his Church with Christ’s suffering and death. His descent at the Last Judgment also confirms the radical inversion of another descent, the literal fall of Lucifer and his followers as they “sincke in sorrowe” into hell “dongion,” a place “of darkenes” previously prepared by God (1.74, 241), as well as the metaphoric fall of Adam and Eve in Paradise at the beginning of the cycle.136 The sense of height would have been all the greater on account of the use of the “place” or ground level. Even here, as in the Cappers’ Moses and Balaam, a raised location other than the wagon is often identified, in this case the mount where God’s revelation of the Ten Commandments to Moses takes place. After Moses’ descent, the tyrant Balaack rides in, whereupon he dismounts and demonstrates a number of sword tricks (for example, when the marginal stage direction preceding line 115 signals him to “Caste up” his sword, a gesture also used by Herod in the Vintners’ play) that may have been difficult or even impossible in a covered space such as a pageant wagon with a roof.137 It also would not have been possible initially to present Balaam on a wagon stage since it is his journeying on an ass and being apprehended by an angel threatening him with a sword that provides the stage effect which is central to the play. This, of course, is a scene that, taking place at ground level, is all the more fabulous on account of the talking ass—an effect which, to be sure, involves a technological solution at which we can only guess since the stage direction requires a person to undergo a transformation so as to appear like the 132 Peter Meredith, “‘Make the asse to speake,’or Staging the Chester Plays,” in Staging the Chester Cycle, ed. Mills, 67. 133 Meredith, “‘Make the asse to speake’,” 286. 134 Richard Rastall, “Music in the Cycle,” in R. M. Lumiansky and David Mills, The Chester Mystery Cycle: Essays and Documents (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983), 154. 135 Sally-Beth MacLean, Chester Art, EDAM Reference Series 3 (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1982), 37–38, figs. 20–21. 136 See Davidson, Technology, Guilds, and Early English Drama, 81–100, and also comment on the Ascension, below. 137 See Peter Meredith, “‘Make the asse to speake’,” 58, and, by the same author, “Scribes, Texts and Performance,” in Aspects of Early English Drama, ed. Paula Neuss (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1983), 25–26.

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animal (5.224s.d.). When Balaam arrives at the court of Balaack, he is told to go up onto “this hill” (5.265) and to curse his people—an order which Balaam subverts by giving his blessings instead. Similarly a “hyll” had been present for the sacrifice of Isaac episode in the Barbers’ Abraham pageant (4.228), where again a sword blow is threatened but averted when the angel comes in the traditional gesture of grasping “the sworde by the end and staye[ing] yt” (4.421).138 The “place” is also, for example, required in the Vintners’ Magi play in which the kings ride into sight of the audience on horses, apparently disguised as “dromodaryes” (8.102, 105).139 Again a raised level apart from the pageant wagon is needed when they dismount and go up into a mountain to pray for illumination. When the star appears to them, the yet higher level of heaven is involved, for in this case the star is a prop carried by an angel (8.84+s.d.)—a fairly “low-tech” way of staging this effect.140 On the other hand, it appears, if we are to take seriously the early banns’observation that the ark is to “be sett on hie,”141 the Noah play would have been acted mainly beside and on a specially designed pageant wagon, with a place for God “in some high place—or in the clowdes, if it may bee” (3.1), though once more the “high place” may also have been an elevated place on a nearby structure when available.142 Thus, in keeping with this expectation of what a Whitsuntide drama should be, the Fishmongers’ Pentecost play, which emphasized the gift of the Apostles’ Creed to the apostles, was not merely a didactic exercise in presenting the reception of the doctrinal basis for the Christian religion. The miraculous is displayed here in a dramatic affirmation of the power of prayer—a power that was generally accepted in the popular spirituality prevalent in English towns in the period under discussion, both prior to and immediately after the Reformation. The reception of the Holy Spirit, for which the apostles have prayed, is effected following the singing of Veni Creator Spiritus (Come, Holy Spirit), the well-known chant for Whitsunday, and the appearance of Christ (“Lyttle God”), who “must speake in heaven” in support of the apostles’ prayer (21.153 s.d.). It is to his request as effective intermediary that the 138 For discussion of the iconography and meaning of the sacrifice of Isaac in medieval drama, see my History, Religion and Violence (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), 124–48. 139 An interesting point of comparison is with the Magi dance-drama of Kerala in South India, which utilizes oxen upon which the three kings ride before meeting and continuing on to Herod’s court; see Joly Puthussery, “Chavittunātakam: Music Drama in Kerala,” CompD 38 (2004): 327, fig. 4. This drama is an acculturated form dating from the introduction of religious drama by Portuguese missionaries in the sixteenth century, and is still being performed. 140 On the implications of the star angel, see Meredith, “‘Make the asse to speake’,” 64. 141 REED: Chester, 34. An added complication is that the text of the play calls for the ark to have a mast (3.91), required for releasing the raven and dove in a section of the Noah play omitted from all manuscripts except the latest, Harley 2124, dated in 1607 (The Chester Mystery Cycle, ed. Lumiansky and Mills, 1:464). For shipbuilding and drama, see Davidson, Technology, Guilds, and Early English Drama, 6–16. The rainbow that God sets “in the fyrmamente” (3.309) as a token is likely to have been an important element both of the play’s spectacle and of its symbolic meaning, as Peter W. Travis recognizes (Dramatic Design in the Chester Cycle [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982], 102). 142 See Meredith, “‘Make the asse to speake’,” 67.

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Father responds when he sends the Holy Spirit, normally depicted as a dove in PreReformation depictions of the Trinity,143 down to the apostles. In the Chester Whitsun play, the Holy Spirit descends at the Father’s command not as a dove but as fire. In this the pageant follows Acts 2:2–3, where the flame is described as filling the entire house in which the apostles were seated. In the play the fire would need to have been dropped quickly from above, perhaps in the manner described in the Paris Resurrection cited above. The flame might have followed strings of twine so as to appear as if it were descending directly upon the heads of those standing below, and this would need to have been done without harming them. Since the fire is from heaven, it surely would not have included a pyrotechnic substance that utilized sulphur or gunpowder. These were considered demonic144 and anyway could not have been safely used here. Whatever was used at Chester in this instance, would a similar combustible substance have been adopted to create the effect of the “swordes of fyre” held by the “Cherubynn” who are ordered by God to guard Paradise (2.385–92, 413, 422) after the expulsion of Adam and Eve? Would the fire at Pentecost be a flame akin to that which was used for igniting Abel’s sacrifice? Up at least to the time of Edward VI, the Pentecost play may have added incense (the odor of heaven, as the stink of sulphur was the odor of hell)145 since this would have provided yet another sensory effect. In any case, the visual and perhaps the olfactory effects did not stand by themselves but were accompanied with the singing by two angels, no doubt professional singers from the abbey (later, the cathedral) of the antiphon Accipite Spiritum Sanctum (Receive the Holy Spirit). These, then, are not to be regarded as bumbling amateur performances by “rude mechanicals” involving the crudity of language (“groosse wordes”) and outdated learning of “the tyme of Ignorance” for which the late banns apologized,146 but rather they clearly presented quite sophisticated effects designed to enhance the reputation of the town of Chester and, of course, to assist in the retention of a cultural memory of the Pentecost event as it had taken place in sacred history. In pre-Reformation times, according to the early banns, the object of these “godely” pageants had also been to inspire “gud deuocion and holsom doctryne,”147 while a copy of William Newhall’s proclamation even added indulgences said to have been granted by Pope 143 For the extant roof boss in the Lady Chapel of Chester Cathedral showing the Trinity with the Holy Spirit as a dove, see also MacLean, Chester Art, 49, fig. 27. In some depictions of the Annunciation, the dove representing the Holy Spirit as if on a beam of light descends to the Virgin Mary. 144 Meredith, “‘Make the asse to speake’,” 65. 145 Angels are frequently shown swinging thuribles; see my “Heaven’s Fragrance,” in The Iconography of Heaven, ed. Clifford Davidson, EDAM Monograph Series 21 (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1994), 113–19, while for sulphur, see Meredith and Tailby, The Staging of Religious Drama, 90. Other foul smells associated with hell are also noted in Thomas H. Seiler, “Filth and Stench as Aspects of the Iconography of Hell,” in The Iconography of Hell, ed. Clifford Davidson and Thomas H. Seiler, EDAM Monograph Series 17 (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1992), 132–40. Incense is offered to honor the Child Jesus by Octavian in the Chester Nativity pageant (6.659–66). 146 REED: Chester, 240–41. 147 REED: Chester, 33, 38.

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Clement to those who resort to the pageants “in pecible manner with gode devocion to here and se. . . .”148 The early banns, advertising the Whitsun plays both as a source of “right good chere” and as a solemn setting forth of the biblical story, are themselves an occasion for calling upon “Iesu crist that syttys on hee” and, before the Reformation, “his blessyd mother marie” to “Saue all this goodely company”— meaning those in attendance at the crying of the banns.149 But preeminently the early banns promised a splendid show to honor the feast celebrating the miracle of the birth of the Christian Church. Yet, for all the emphasis on show in the cycle, in the Painters’ play there is an effort to be mindful of the humble origins of the first ones (aside from Jesus’ parents and the midwives) to encounter the Infant. The shepherds, based on actual shepherds from the countryside, share the rural concerns of English or Welsh sheepherders. They imbibe, eat a meal, and engage in a wrestling match before they go off to seek the Christ Child, apparently a real child held by a woman representing Mary and placed between painted images of the ox and the ass.150 Perhaps the Child had a gilt face, as was the case with the “litle Gods face” for which an amount was paid “for guildinge” in the Smiths’ Purification in 1566–1567 and in other years when their play was performed.151 The Puritanical David Goodman and Robert Rogerson would object not only to the material added to the biblical account but also to the comedy of these lowly and uneducated folk, whose lack of reverence and then their awkward response to the angelic singing announcing the birth of Jesus seemed to these clergymen to be inappropriate.152 Even more, perhaps, was their scorn for the shepherds’ “kissing of the cratch and clothes,” undoubtedly seen as a sign of popery, and “Their vain offerings to move laughter and to maintain Supersitition.”153 Certainly the offer to the Child of “a payre of my wyves ould hose” by the ragged Trowle (7.591) must have been worth a laugh by the audience, even if they had witnessed the scene previously on another occasion when the play was performed. Finally, Goodman and Rogerson criticize having the shepherds “forsake their vocation, not mentioned in Scripture,” and two of them “to have been an Anchorate or Eremite.”154 But the abandoning of their vocation is important in the context of the play and the Whitsun feast, especially since two of them become not hermits but disciples of the Christ Child, pastors in the metaphorical religious sense in the service of the yet-to-be148 REED: Chester, 28. 149 REED: Chester, 39. The reference to the Virgin Mary is erased in the manuscript, obviously in response to the rejection of her role by the Protestant reformers. 150 Painters, Glaziers, Embroiderers, and Stationers’ Records, quoted in REED: Chester, 82–83, 92. 151 REED: Chester, 67, 78, 86, 88, 91. See also the late banns, referring to God’s face: “sethence the face gilte doth disfigure the man . . .” ( 247). For discussion of the use of gold face painting for God and Jesus in the mystery plays, see Meg Twycross and Sarah Carpenter, Masks and Masking in Medieval and Early Tudor England (Aldershot, Hants.: Ashgate, 2002), 220–32. 152 David Mills, “‘Some Precise Cittizins’: Puritan Objections to Chester’s Plays,” Leeds Studies in English, n.s. 29 (1998): 225. 153 Mills, “‘Some Precise Cittizins’,” 225. 154 Mills, “‘Some Precise Cittizins’,” 225.

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established Christian Church. Thus, Harvey and Tudd are forerunners of the apostles who receive the Holy Spirit and who will be the prime witnesses proclaiming the Christian faith to persons in all countries and in all languages after Pentecost. The late banns are also defensive about the Painters’ pageant, for the actual biblical narrative, it is claimed, did not yield anything beyond the singing of the Gloria upon which to build a drama—and there was again some nervousness about the addition of non-scriptural and comic elements to so solemn a narrative.155 But if Richard Rastall is correct about the musical setting of the Gloria in excelsis Deo that was used, at this point the splendor appropriate to Whitsunday emerged fully. One of the manuscripts, British Library MS. Harley 2124, contains a line of notated music, omitting a setting for the words “et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis” (7.358s.d.)—an indication in Rastall’s view of “a pre-existent polyphonic piece” available to the person organizing the music for the pageant.156 The comments of the Chester shepherds surely point to a florid and complex work, which may have been, as Rastall suggests, a setting of the verse for the first responsory of Matins, but since only a single angel sings,157 the other parts would probably have been played by an instrumentalist, probably on the regals.158 The Infancy series draws toward its close with two Magi pageants, first the Vintners’ play in which there is a confrontation with the angry Herod, made all the more vivid by his juggling acts, and then the Mercers’ play with its rich display of gifts to the Child that serve as a contrast to the poor shepherds’ offerings. The Mercers were responsible for a most impressive pageant wagon, which the early banns cited as sumptuously and colorfully set forth “both within and also without.” This guild apparently spared no expense in decorating its wagon set with satin, velvet, taffeta, damask, and fine silk, described as “Sersnett of poppyngee greene.”159 Oddly, however, at least from the time when the early banns were written or revised, the Infancy series was broken off before its completion on the first day of playing.160 Thus the next pageant, the Massacre of the Innocents, was mounted not on Whitmonday but on the following day, and its producers, the Goldsmiths, 155 REED: Chester, 243. 156 Richard Rastall, The Heaven Singing (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1996), 152–59, esp. 154. See also the same author’s “Music in the Cycle,” 147–48. 157 Rastall, The Heaven Singing, 157. Payment to a single angel is listed in the guild accounts for each of the years 1567–1568, 1571–1572, and 1574–1575 (REED: Chester, 84, 93, 107). 158 Rastall, The Heaven Singing, 152–55, 159. For the music at Chester Cathedral (formerly the Abbey of St. Werburgh) and connections with the Painters’ play and other pageants, see David Mills, “Music in the City,” in Elizabeth Baldwin, Paying the Piper: Music in Pre-1642 Cheshire, EDAM Monograph Series 29 (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2002), 56–61. The music for the Gloria is contained only in the play manuscript copied by James Miller, who was also a precentor attached to the cathedral (58–59, and Mills’ “James Miller: The Will of a Chester Scribe,” REED Newsletter 9, no. 1 [1984]: 11–12). 159 REED: Chester, 36. 160 As Salter notes, at one time only five plays were performed the first day, but by the time of the writing (or revision) of the early banns, the number had been increased to nine (“The Banns of the Chester Plays,” 4–5).

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were required to share a wagon with the Vintners after 1531–1532.161 Here strong visual and emotional effects would have been achieved, from the gold crown of the tyrant king and his inappropriate displays of anger to the episode of the killing by the knights of the children, who are impaled on the soldiers’ swords or spears in the same way as often presented in the visual arts.162 The victims include Herod’s own son as a sort of prelude to the tyrant’s own death and damnation, which allow the Holy Family to return from Egypt. But strong visual effects were also recommended, if it was possible to work out the technicalities, in presenting the scene that took place on the way toward Egypt when the “mahometes” (idols) of that country fell down upon the arrival of the Christ Child and his mother (10.285–88+s.d.), an event, prophesied in Isaiah 19:1 (“Behold, the Lord . . . will enter into Egypt, and the idols of Egypt shall be moved at his presence”), that had been illustrated in the popular Biblia Pauperum.163 There are numerous special effects in the pageants that follow, including the Butcher’s Temptation in which Satan “in his ffeathers, all ragged and rente,”164 takes Jesus up a steeple representing the temple in Jerusalem, a stage property cited as “the pynacle,”165 from which he is invited to cast himself down; his angels, he says, will keep Jesus safe so that he does not “hurt no foote ne knee” (12.118). Jesus, however, shows his power and mastery in a different way by refusing and then by descending, though it is not clear how this was done in production. In the next Ministry play, he also displays his supernatural powers by disappearing when he is accused and threatened with stoning (13.284+s.d.). The bringing back to life of Lazarus involves a more conventional show of his power, which, applied symbolically to his gift to loose or forgive sins, will be transferred to his Church through Peter.166 The exhibition of power here also more immediately sets the stage for the Shoemakers’ play, which involves preparation for the Passion of Jesus, who in 1550 was given a gold mask.167 This play stages the entry into Jerusalem, a city represented in fact by a “Ierusalem carryage”168 with a steeple signifying the temple. Records indicate that this steeple required assembly (“ssetteng op of oure stepoll”),169 probably at each 161 Salter, “The Banns,” 27, 32. 162 For examples, see Avril Henry, Biblia Pauperum (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987), 60; E. W. Tristram, English Wall Painting of the Fourteenth Century (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1955), 153 (for Chalgrove, Oxfordshire); Rushforth, Medieval Christian Imagery, 287–88; Woodforde, The Norwich School, 27, pl. III (for St. Peter Mancroft, Norwich). 163 Henry, Biblia Pauperum, 57, 59. 164 REED: Chester, 244. Following the preference of Lumiansky and Mills (The Chester Mystery Cycle: Essays and Documents, 309), I have adopted “ragged” in preference to “Rugged” in the manuscript followed by Clopper. 165 REED: Chester, 32. 166 See for convenience The Catholic Encyclopedia, s.v. “Power of the Keys.” This power involves the power to bind as well as to loose sins; compare Herod’s blasphemous “For I am kinge of all mankynde;/ I byd, I beate, I loose, I bynde” (8.178). 167 REED: Chester, 50. 168 REED: Chester, 50. 169 REED: Chester, 50, 244.

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station where the pageant was played. Very likely here the scene would have been three-dimensional—that is, a stage property potentially more elaborate than the twodimensional mappa mundi reportedly held up by God at the Creation.170 As revealed by the dramatic records from 1549–1550, the entry involved the use of a real ass, for which payment was also made for leading it, and six children were employed,171 presumably for singing the powerful Hosanna, filio David! Benedictus qui venit in nomine domini! Hosanna in excelsis! (14.208+s.d.) that was familiar from the Palm Sunday liturgy.172 The children probably were positioned at an upper level in a manner consistent with the way in which they performed on Palm Sunday,173 and this would have established a close association between the play, the historical event, and the commemoration of the event by the Church. As an obligatory segment of any civic cycle of biblical plays whatever the festival chosen for performance, the two-part Chester Passion must be seen as dramatizing the central point in salvation history as it was then understood. These pageants, as the texts make clear, tacitly assert throughout that without Christ’s sacrifice of himself there would have been no possibility of a Christian Church and, of course, no Pentecost. Jesus, however much his “hart is in great mislikinge” the prospect of his coming death on the cross, as the scene at Gethsemane in the Bakers’ pageant shows (15.289–90), cannot renege on his duty to do that which is demanded of him by the Father who has sent his Son into the world to be the second Adam—the one who, reversing the Fall, must redeem the world. But for Jesus the way ahead must be shown to be one of pain and suffering, with all the gestures of hatred against him necessarily being acted out convincingly. In spite of the many changes that took place over time in the production of the cycle and among the guilds responsible for producing it, the companies that appear in the texts and late banns linked to the pageants of this section—that is, the Passion—in the main had a long association with them. The association indeed went back to the first reference in 1421–1422 to the “fflagellacione” and Crucifixion pageants with which the Fletchers, Bow Makers, Stringers, and Coopers and the Ironmongers were respectively already associated.174 The early performances, if we could view them in our own time, would probably bring forth all the objections that have been raised about the violence and insensitivity of Mel Gibson’s the Passion of Christ, but the spiritual center certainly was quite different in spite of the sensationalism involved 170 REED: Chester, 34. A world map superimposed on an oversized illustration of the cosmos could have been used. For an example of a mappa mundi, with Jerusalem at its center, see P. D. A. Harvey, Mappa Mundi: The Hereford World Map (London: British Library, 1996). This map is also reproduced in color in Jonathan Alexander and Paul Binski, Age of Chivalry: Art in Plantagenet England (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 1987), no. 36. Cf. W. O. Hassall, The Holkham Bible Picture Book (London: Dropmore Press, 1954), fol. 2, which includes God with compasses as Creator set against the cosmos he is creating. 171 Clopper, REED: Chester, 50. 172 See Rastall, The Heaven Singing, 265–71; and, for useful background, see Mary Erler, “Palm Sunday Prophets and Processions and Eucharistic Controversy,” Renaissance Quarterly 48 (1995): 58–81. 173 See Davidson, Illustrations of the Stage and Acting, 15, 17, fig. 18. 174 REED: Chester, 7.

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in the display of simulated nudity, torture (even spitting, splashing Jesus with snot, and stripping away of his clothes,175 the latter an act of cultural embarrassment in medieval England just as in Middle Eastern cultures today), and blood following the torment and flogging endured by the Savior.176 When the sensationalism of the Passion segment of the cycle is considered, there should be no surprise that some remarkable cosmic events occurring at Jesus’ death (an earthquake, the rending of the veil of the temple, the opening of graves are reported in Matthew 27:39–40) should be included in the story. But how far these expected cosmic “sygnes” were actually displayed in the Crucifixion may be debatable, since they may merely all have been reported by Nicodemus at the end of the pageant. Creating an eclipse would have been impossible in an out-of-door setting, of course, and one would be very surprised, indeed, if “dead men did ryse” (16A.464–71). But the “yearthquake” could well have been managed, as it was for the Coventry Doomsday play, where barrels were used for this effect.177 The Cooks’ Harrowing of Hell that concluded the second day of playing was definitely rich in special effects as the pageant set out, following the traditional narrative derived ultimately from the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus,178 to demonstrate the power of the crucified one. The late banns are again defensive about this play, which the writer alleged was the author’s “opynion” rather than solid theological fact.179 Nevertheless, as spectacle appropriate for the occasion it must have presented a light show when those who have been sitting in darkness—that is, Adam and Eve, and the prophets, including John the Baptist—see a great light; then there is the assault by Christ on the gates of limbo, not a static piece of stage property as depicted in the visual arts180 but a place of movement, shouting, and plausibly a bad odor from which release would be highly desired. The Cooks, after all, would have been ideally suited to the production of unpleasant smells, and would have had 175 Undoubtedly simulated nudity, as in the Grocers’ Adam and Eve play at Norwich, cited above. 176 See the chapter “Nudity, the Body, and Early English Drama” in my History, Religion and Violence, 149–79. For an analytic review of the torments afforded the suffering Savior, see James H. Marrow, Passion Iconography in Northern European Art of the Late Middle Ages and Early Renaissance (Kortrijk: Van Ghemmert, 1979). 177 R. W. Ingram, ed., REED: Coventry (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981), 230, 474. 178 The Apocryphal New Testament, trans. M. R. James (1924; reprint Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), 123–42. See the useful, though brief discussion in Rosemary Woolf, The English Mystery Plays (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1972), 269ff. 179 REED: Chester, 245. 180 See Rushforth, Medieval Christian Imagery, 385–86, who points out that the broken-gates imagery appeared as early as the eighth century; but Rosemary Woolf mentions (The English Mystery Plays, 404) that the gates were noted as early as Tertullian’s treatise on the resurrection of the dead (44.7); further, for general discussion, Pamela Sheingorn, “‘Who can open the doors of his face?’ The Iconography of Hell Mouth,” and Peter Meredith, “The Iconography of Hell in the English Cycles: A Practical Perspective,” both in The Iconography of Hell, ed. Davidson, 1–19 and 158–86. I have discussed the iconography of the Harrowing in connection with the York cycle in my From Creation to Doom: The York Cycle of Mystery Plays (New York: AMS Press, 1984), 136–47.

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available fleshhooks to equip the devils.181 They also, however, would need to have had access to reflectors or a condenser system in order to generate a bright light visible in the daytime, as demanded in the Mons Harrowing: “there must be in the Limbo of the Patriarchs great brightness . . . and the gates of Hell must fall down.”182 And Jesus—actually, his soul, Anima Christi—appears always in the visual arts as the triumphant figure like the resurrected Christ, who, probably dressed in a red cloak opened to display his wounds, carries a cross staff with a banner to show his victory over the grave.183 And there is the powerful and triumphant singing of the Te Deum, for which the archangel St. Michael intones the incipit and which is sung by all the righteous who have been let out of limbo as they process to heaven (17.276+s.d.). This is the Church’s preeminent song of praise which includes (in translation) the words “When thou hadst overcome the sharpness of death, thou didst open the Kingdom of Heaven to all believers” and ends with a plea that God’s servants, “redeemed with thy precious blood,” might be made “to be numbered with thy Saints, in glory everlasting.”184 The segment of the Chester cycle following the Resurrection continues with the Road to Emmaus and Doubting Thomas play attributed to the Saddlers, and then culminates in the Ascension and Pentecost pageants. The Taylors’ Ascension includes a scene with Jesus and his disciples that is closely related to the previous pageant, and this could have been moved from that play in order to expand the rather short Ascension scene. The first scene in the Ascension, to be sure, does provide a link between the miraculous events of Christ’s appearances and the coming of the Holy Spirit that will take place in the Pentecost play that follows. The “vertue of they Holye Ghoste” shall, Jesus says, be sent to assist the apostles to witness to the whole world (20.65–72). This witnessing indeed will be an obligation, and for assistance they will be given “newe tonges” to facilitate preaching “the faye [faith]” (20.87). The Ascension itself was itself hugely spectacular. It brought forth the effect of the Savior in his red robe and visible wounds with “bloodye droppes” issuing from them185 as he rises up and passes into a cloud machine against a background of heavenly song. The late banns speak of the “gloriose bodye” of Jesus being “taken 181 See Barbara D. Palmer, “The Inhabitants of Hell: Devils,” in The Iconography of Hell, ed. Davidson and Seiler, 25, fig. 14. 182 Meredith and Tailby, The Staging of Religious Drama, 113. See especially Butterworth, Theatre of Fire, 63–78, for discussion of lighting techniques appropriate to this scene. 183 See Rushforth, Medieval Christian Imagery, 385–86; and, for an entry that refers to Anima Christi’s “hede” (mask), “cotte,” and “crose” in the 1567 Coventry Cappers’ inventory, see REED: Coventry, 240. Rastall connects the dramatization with the rite for the dedication of a church (The Heaven Singing, 278–83). 184 Translation from the Book of Common Prayer. On the significance of the Te Deum in this context, see Rastall, The Heaven Singing, 181–83. 185 The only extant example of the risen Christ in Chester is the appearance to the Blessed Virgin Mary in the seal of the Dean and Chapter of Chester Cathedral, where he has a cruciform nimbus, a mantle that extends to the knees but leaves his chest open for view, and a cross staff with a banner (MacLean, Chester Art, 44–45, fig. 23). The wounds are not visible, but would have been so in other depictions.

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uppto the heauens,”186 a description that is made explicit in the stage directions to the play itself; having sung the antiphon Ascendo Patrem meum “alonne” while ascending (20.105+s.d.),187 he is said to stand as if he were above the clouds while singing antiphonally with the angels.188 The usual iconography of Jesus’ feet and the bottom of his gown showing beneath the cloud, into which he has disappeared as he ascends, will not do, for he needs to be seen and heard, as he would have been in a the tableau shown in the Holkham Bible Picture Book, where interestingly the angel musicians play instruments and swing thuribles with incense.189 Following the initial ascent into the cloud, that the tableau in the play was static seems indicated,190 and that the cloud was artificial (since the Taylors were involved, very likely made of cloth) rather than smoke as in the Lucerne Passion play191 cannot be doubted. But no records are available to indicate precisely how the Taylors’ Guild effected the ascent or to inform us specifically about the musicians required for the show with its extensive musical demands. However, one may speculate once again that use might have been made of structures such as the Pentice at the High Cross positioned near the pageant wagon, and certainly if the carriage itself were to have provided the entire mechanism needed to raise Jesus, it would have been necessary for it to be very stable and with a high superstructure even if an image were substituted for the human actor.192 While placing such machinery on a wagon might have been problematic, there is evidence otherwise that a suitable mechanism was already available in the late fourteenth century, for this is verified by a writer who saw a device of this kind that involved a tower “suspended on cords” at the 1392 entry for Richard II in London and wondered how it worked—“by what machines I know not.”193 In the same manner as at the Ascension it is promised that Jesus will return to judge the world; as the Primus Angelus says, “right so come agayne shall hee / as yee seene him goo” (20.159–60). More immediately, the apostles, understanding now that the “uppsteyinge” of Jesus is a “sygne vereye/ that hee ys Godes Sonne” truly (20.173–74, 181), will pray that the Holy Ghost be sent upon them, as will occur in the next pageant when the Fishmongers mount their play. Indeed, this is that for which the apostles are again praying when they kneel and apparently sing the entire 186 REED: Chester, 246. 187 Rastall translates the antiphon: “I will go up to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God. Alleluia” (The Heaven Singing, 178). For identification of this antiphon, and comment, see Rastall, “Music in the Cycle,” 152; and JoAnna Dutka, Music in the English Mystery Plays, EDAM Monograph Series 2 (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1980), 20. 188 For the source of the angels’ questions, see Frances A. Foster, ed., A Stanzaic Life of Christ, EETS, o.s. 166 (London: Oxford University Press, 1926), 301–03. 189 Hassall, The Holkham Bible Picture Book, fol. 38. 190 See Rastall, The Heaven Singing, 230. 191 Meredith and Tailby, The Staging of Religious Drama, 149. 192 See Davidson, Technology, Guilds, and Early English Drama, 93–97. 193 Quoted in translation from Richard Maidstone’s account of the royal entry, in Glynne Wickham, Early English Stages, 3 vols. (London: Routledge Kegan Paul, 1959–1981), 1:69–70.

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Veni creator Spiritus, the English paraphrase of which is then begun by St. James Major: “Come, Holye Ghoost; come, creatour!” (21.120 and preceding s.d.).194 The Chester cycle, then, is the prime example in Britain of Whitsuntide drama, albeit adapted from an earlier Corpus Christi play that had been produced under civic auspices. As drama attached to this feast, it was never performed annually. The cycle was continued intermittently until 1572, for the Elizabethan prayer book considered the days after Pentecost as red letter days and, hence, allowed a space of time for the presentation of religious drama until the Protestant atmosphere became too hostile for the plays to continue. To be sure, the cycle by then had been much changed and revised, very notably by the excision of the apparently popular “wurshipfull” Wives’ Assumption of the Virgin,195 which, like the Ascension, had demanded machinery for performance as the Mary was lifted up, presumably with the song and instrumental music of angels as indicated in the carving on the west front of St. Werburgh’s Abbey (later Cathedral),196 to be crowned the queen of heaven. As noted above, the controversial performance of the Chester cycle in 1575, at Midsummer rather than Whitsuntide, was to mark the final date at which these plays were staged.

194 See Rastall, The Heaven Singing, 82. 195 REED: Chester, 37–38 (early banns), 20–24 (extra-cyclic performances at different locations in 1489–1490, 1498–1499, 1516–1517); see also 517. Lumiansky and Mills suggest suppression of the pageant in 1548 (The Chester Mystery Cycle: Essays and Documents, 190). 196 MacLean, Chester Art, 46–47, fig. 24; Mary Remnant, “Musical Instruments in Early English Drama,” in Material Culture and Medieval Drama, EDAM Monograph Series 25 (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1999), 174–75, fig. 46.

Part II Some Aspects of Two Genres of Festival Drama

Chapter Five

Suffering and the York Cycle Plays [H]aue trewe ymaginacion & inwarde compassion of þe peynes & þe passion of oure lorde Jesu verrey god & man. [W]e shole vndurstande þat as his wil was to suffre þe hardest deþ & most sorouful peynes, for þe redempcion of mankynde[,] so by þe self wille he suspendet in al his passione þe vse & þe miht of þe godhede fro þe infirmite of þe manhede . . . after þe kynde of manne. —Nicholas Love, Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ

The York civic Corpus Christi plays, known today from those entered in the Register (British Library MS. Add. 35,290) prepared in c.1463–1477, cannot be separated from the civic milieu in which they developed. As noted in a previous chapter, the first reference to them in the dramatic records is 1376, when the York Memorandum Book A/Y made mention of a pageant house for the storage of three pageant wagons used at the festival of Corpus Christi, but the lack of previous evidence does not rule out a history for the plays that could have extended some years earlier. The York Memorandum Book entries only go back to 1376, and no earlier references are extant that provide any information on which to make a judgment about the date when the play cycle with its Creation to Doom structure was initiated. However, several things are clear—for example, that the guild system in the city was in the process of developing its organization and establishing its relationship to the city’s ruling elite. Guilds would have been a particularly valuable asset in times of insecurity and, most importantly perhaps, in those years in which the city, never a very healthy place, periodically endured epidemics. The plague, which had come to York in 1349 in a particularly virulent form, was again recorded in 1361 and 1369, with a return in 1378 and 1390, when a thousand people are said to have died in the city.  Nicholas Love, Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, ed. Michael G. Sargent (New York: Garland, 1992), 161.  Richard Beadle and Peter Meredith, “Further External Evidence for Dating the York Register (BL Additional MS 35290),” Leeds Studies in English, n.s. 11 (1980): 51–55.  REED: York, ed. Alexandra F. Johnston and Margaret Rogerson, 2 vols. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979), 1:3.  York Memorandum Book, Lettered A/Y in the Guildhall Muniment Room, ed. Maud Sellers, 2 vols., Surtees Society, 120, 125 (Durham: Andrews, 1912–1915), 1:i.  See D. M. Palliser, “Civic Mentality and Environment in Tudor York,” Northern History 18 (1982): 90–91.  J. F. D. Shrewsbury, A History of Bubonic Plague in the British Isles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 134, 136, 138. The plague, of course, reappeared from time to time into the seventeenth century. In the middle years of the sixteenth century, burials in the parish of St. Martin Micklegate, for example, increased from 8 in 1549 to 67 in 1550,

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The inability of the population to grow or even remain stable without an influx of people from outside the city meant that there was always a degree of precariousness in maintaining its size and economic position, both of which were, nevertheless, diminished after 1460. No doubt influenced by the feeling of the fragility of human life that led the people to think about the hereafter, the late fourteenth, fifteenth, and early sixteenth centuries were times of very strong civic support for York’s religious foundations, including not only parish church building and repair but also endowments for chantry chapels, donations to friaries, and funding of other sacred functions. Jeremy Goldberg suggested in 1996 that the initial impetus for the staging of the plays may have come from the guilds rather than the Corporation, which ultimately controlled them. Their motives would have included the strong desire among their members to achieve identity by this and other means, as well as, at the same time, to establish a visual testimony to the history of Christianity and its devotional practices. In R. B. Dobson’s article, published in the following year, the possibility of the reverse of Goldberg’s theory was raised. Dobson, as noted in chapter 2, speculated that the developing guild structure and the plays could instead have been part of an effort of the merchant elite who dominated the city government for organizing and controlling the crafts which made up the guilds.10 But in spite of the resentment that some guilds occasionally voiced in response to overly heavy taxation in times of economic decline, their enthusiasm for playing on the whole must be assumed since the plays continued to be played at Corpus Christi through the fifteenth century and

followed by 52 in 1551, with not a single marriage listed in the records in the latter year (George Benson, An Account of the City and County of York, 3 vols. [1911–1925; reprint East Ardsley, Wakefield: S. R. Publications, 1968], 2:112). However, the term “plague,” like “pestilence,” was notoriously imprecise and could refer to a number of diseases.  See D. M. Palliser, Tudor York (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), esp. 201– 25.  Sarah Rees Jones, “York’s Civic Administration,1354–1464,” in The Government of Medieval York: Essays in Commemoration of the 1396 Royal Charter, ed. Sarah Rees Jones, Borthwick Studies in History 3 (York: University of York, 1997), 136–38. The evidence of York wills has been surveyed by D. M. Palliser, The Reformation in York, Borthwick Papers 40 (York: St. Anthony’s Press, 1971), 2 and passim. See also the account of the change of religion in Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992).  Jeremy Goldberg, “Craft Guilds, the Corpus Christi Play and Civic Government,” in The Government of Medieval York, ed. Rees Jones, 141–63. 10 R. B. Dobson, “Craft Guilds and the City: The Historical Origins of the York Mystery Plays Reconsidered,” in The Stage as Mirror, ed. Alan E. Knight (Woodbridge: D. S. Brewer, 1997), 103–4.

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into the third quarter of the sixteenth century.11 The plays were suppressed in 1569,12 when, following the death of Archbishop Young in the previous year, the diocese was being administered by Dean Matthew Hutton. This would also be a year of political turmoil on account of the Northern rebellion, which, in spite of sympathy for the Old Religion in York, the city resisted joining.13 Neither Goldberg’s nor Dobson’s theory, of course, provides anything like a definitive explanation of the origin of the original texts of the pageants in the York Corpus Christi cycle, though Alexandra Johnston has found the latter “big bang” theory to be plausible and consistent with a possible connection between the city corporation and the Augustinian friary next door to the Guildhall, which might have been called on to assist with the writing of the plays.14 Relations between the city leaders and this order of friars are believed to have been close and cordial, and certainly the extremely well-stocked library of the friary was more than adequate for the task at hand,15 if, indeed, the Augustinians of this house were involved with this very extensive endeavor. We also can only guess concerning the content or sponsorship of the individual plays in the York cycle prior to the preparation of the Ordo paginarum of 1415,16 but we do know that already in 1399 the guilds had petitioned the corporation to ask for the assigning of an orderly schedule of stations at which they were to be played. This petition is also interesting for ascertaining the guilds’ motivation, which was to present the pageants as a “work of charity” (“ouere de charitee”).17 The plays were to be an offering by the citizens for the spiritual welfare, and they were to honor God— to which another motive, “þe honour of þe Citie and Worship of þe . . . Craftes,”18 would later be asserted. To be sure, as Pamela King has observed, we need “to 11 In addition to complaints about the heavy costs of having to support a pageant in times when a guild was suffering from poverty and shortage of members, one other objection was made by the guilds, and this is worth noting in connection with the argument I am making in the present article. The now-lost play of “Fergus,” or the Funeral of the Virgin Mary, was deemed by its sponsors to be inappropriate on account of the audience’s rowdy response in support of its anti-Semitism; see REED: York, 1:47–48. 12 See REED: York, 1:355–57, for the final performance. 13 See J. C. H. Aveling, Catholic Recusancy in the City of York 1558–1791 (Wolsingham, Durham: Catholic Record Society, 1970), 34–38. 14 Alexandra F. Johnston, “John Waldeby, the Augustinian Friary and the Plays of York,” paper presented at the International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, in May 2000; see also her article “The York Cycle and the Libraries of York,” in The Church and Learning in Late Medieval Society, ed. Caroline Barron and Jenny Stratford (Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2002), 355–70, as well as Angelo Raine, Mediaeval York (London: John Murray, 1955), 131–32. The new Guildhall, completed in 1459, was built on the same location as the earlier one (135). 15 K. W. Humphreys, The Friars’ Libraries (London: British Library, 1990), 11–154. 16 See REED: York, 1:16–24. The 1415 listing and the later abbreviated list must be seen as working indexes since they were apparently frequently emended. 17 REED: York, 1:11; 2:697–98 (translation). See Eileen White, “Places for Hearing the Corpus Christi Play in York,” METh 9 (1987): 23–63, as well as her more recent study of the pageant route in “Places to Hear the Play in York,” ET 3 (2000): 49–78. 18 REED: York, 1:109.

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proceed with caution in speculating on or theorizing about the relationship between medieval plays and their audiences.”19 However, with regard to those who produced the plays, we can at least determine from the documentation what purposes for which the pageants, in particular those of the Passion and Crucifixion, were intended, and if these downplay the recreational aspect of the dramas20 we need in the case of York to remember that their enormous expense and their association with a solemn religious festival, Corpus Christi, would preclude this as the primary purpose. Another factor that must not be forgotten is the inherent conservatism of York, which would retain its Catholic character far longer to the distress of the ecclesiastical and secular authorities of Queen Elizabeth’s time, when the description “backward in religion” was commonly used to describe the city.21 Placing the York plays in context, then, will locate them against the background of civic endeavor expended by the guilds and the corporation to improve the spiritual condition of the citizens and other residents as well as visitors to the city. If medieval medicine could do little to make life less fragile or physical suffering less severe, they could take measures that were believed to be of far more lasting value than merely to cheer up spectators of all sorts and to provide recreation for guild members, whose excitement concerning playing cannot on the whole, I believe, be doubted. Since the traditional religion of the late Middle Ages focused so heavily on the Passion and Crucifixion as events of crucial importance for the individual Christian as well 19 Pamela M. King, “Seeing and Hearing: Looking and Listening,” ET 3 (2000): 155. Some of the evidence is contradictory, to be sure. York records report instances of what was regarded as inappropriate behavior by the audience, while the Wycliffite Tretise of Miraclis Pleyinge from the Midlands suggests pious reception, even tears in response to the religious drama. Some possible further dimensions, from a theoretical standpoint, are explored by Kathleen Ashley, “Sponsorship, Reflexivity and Resistance: Cultural Readings of the York Cycle Plays,” in The Performance of Middle English Culture: Essays on Chaucer and the Drama in Honor of Martin Stevens, ed. James J. Paxson, Lawrence M. Clopper, and Sylvia Tomasch (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1998), 9–24. For comment on modern production, see Philip Butterworth, “The York Crucifixion: Actor/Audience Relationship,” METh 14 (1992): 67–76. See also, for a valuable perspective on the reception of medieval plays, Hans-Jürgen Diller, “Laughter in Medieval English Drama: A Critique of Modernizing and Historical Analyses,” CompD 36 (2002), 1–19; but also, for a controversial argument with regard to Continental drama, Jody Enders, The Medieval Theater of Cruelty (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999). 20 See the discussion in Glending Olson, Literature as Recreation in the Later Middle Ages (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982), esp. 64–77. 21 For the period 1534–1553, see Palliser, The Reformation in York, esp. 4, 18, 27–32. In contrast to the execution of a very few Protestant martyrs at York in Queen Mary’s time, Roman Catholics executed at York were numerous in the next reign, and the people watching sometimes are reported to have been unusually sympathetic to the victims. Relics of executed martyrs were sought after, and in one instance, in 1583, the crowd prevented the hangman who had hanged William Hart from drawing and quartering him. See Peter Lake and Michael Questier, The Antichrist’s Lewd Hat: Protestants, Papists and Players in Post-Reformation England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 248; and, for Protestant attitudes toward the city, which they considered “ignorant . . . rude and blind,” see Aveling, Catholic Recusancy in the City of York, 1, 22.

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as for the good of the community, it is not surprising that the plays came to possess a very strong series of pageants on this portion of salvation history that was at the time so much emphasized and regarded as a crucial element in cultural memory; everywhere there were reminders of Christ’s suffering, most visibly in the roods that were placed above the entrance to the chancel in parish.22 Further, at York as elsewhere in Western Europe in the late Middle Ages, these remembrances of the Crucifixion spoke to people of the need to identify with the physical suffering of one whose pain was said to have been more intense than that of any other person at any time in history.23 The dynamic that was involved here seems to me to provide a crucial (though not necessarily the only) element for our understanding of these plays, which, like the East Anglian drama studied by Gail McMurray Gibson, may be identified as a “theater of devotion.”24 To be sure, the plays of the Passion as they exist in the Register give every appearance of having been written or revised well after the pageants had begun to be produced in the late fourteenth century and indeed after the Ordo paginarum was written out, for the pageants in this portion of the cycle do not match up with the 1415 list—for example, in the matter of Pilate’s wife added to the Tapiters and Couchers’ play of the first appearance of Christ before Pilate. The alliterative verse form adopted in much of the Passion segment of the cycle has been attributed, though not with certainty, to a single writer, who has come to be identified as the “York Realist.”25 These pageants have most often been dated 1422–1433, years when life was still regarded as delicately balanced between living and dying, between earth and heaven, purgatory, or hell, the latter a place of terror against which the only defense available to humanity was believed to be the incarnation and, especially, the crucifixion of Christ. The suffering in the pageants on the Passion and Crucifixion, we must assume, spoke directly to audiences, and also we can quite firmly establish 22 For roods and other imagery originally present in York churches, see Raine, Mediaeval York, passim. All roods were ordered to be removed under Protestantism. England, unlike Lutheran countries such as Sweden on the Continent, officially adopted an iconoclastic ideology. Resistance at York is indicated in the unusually complete records of St. Michael Spurriergate, which report storage of images to preserve them from destruction or confiscation by placing them under lock and key in the schoolhouse, though much damage was done in the removal; see The Churchwardens’ Accounts of St Michael, Spurriergate, York 1518–1548, ed. C. C. Webb, 2 vols. (York: Borthwick Institute of Historical Research, University of York, 1997), 1:7, 2:330–32, 316–17. 23 So, too, in Greban’s Passion a prologue announces that “human mouth is not able to treat the offense” of the tortures to which Christ will be made to endure (ll. 19,898–99, as quoted in translation by Véronique Plesch, “Étalage complaisant? The Torments of Christ in the French Passion Plays,” CompD 28 [1994–95]: 460). 24 Gail McMurray Gibson, The Theater of Devotion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989). 25 Jesse Byers Reese, “Alliterative Verse in the York Cycle,” Studies in Philology 48 (1951): 639–68; J. W. Robinson, “The Art of the York Realist,” Modern Philology 60 (1962– 1963): 241–51. On the problematic state of the texts of the pageants of the Passion that contain verse that has been claimed for the York Realist, see Richard Beadle, ed., The York Plays (London: Edward Arnold, 1982), 443–51. I have also discussed these plays in terms of their iconography in my From Creation to Doom (New York: AMS Press, 1984), esp. 117–34.

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that the plays absorb the affective religiosity of the time that depended so much on visualizing the suffering of the Savior, in part surely as a way of diminishing one’s own suffering and anxiety. In any case, these plays definitely show evidence, as Hans-Jürgen Diller has argued, of a deliberate attempt by the “York Realist” to go “out of his way to ‘de-carnivalize’ the Torture scenes.”26 Suffering in the centuries prior to the Reformation had two possible significations. One, which will be discussed below, involved the identification of the individual with the suffering of Christ in the Passion, while the other was based in the Genesis account of the Fall, when Eve and all subsequent women were condemned to the pain of childbirth and Adam and his progeny were consigned to physical labor. Adam in the York Armorers’ play reflects on how they had been placed in “grete plenté/ At prime of þe day” but by noon had already lost everything (6.89–90). Eve, in turn, comments that they are “fulle wele worthy . . ./ To haue þis myscheffe for oure mys” (6.123–24). Suffering and, indeed, all painful activity forced upon humankind are the result of the rejection of God and his commands. Ultimately, those who persevere in such behavior, symbolized as in the York Mercers’ Doomsday play by the failure to perform the charitable deeds specified in the Corporal Acts of Mercy, are threatened with a permanent state of suffering, which should elicit no sympathy from the audience since these reprobates will deserve what they will get. Like Cain, the first permanent resident of hell, these have been neither penitent nor concerned about the welfare of their fellow humans. Among them are the Jews who, echoing the common opinion of the time, are said to have “spared [Jesus] no more þan a theffe” (47.262). Belief in suffering as a punishment in this life for misdeeds informed the interpretation of Henry IV’s affliction by a mysterious illness that was reputed to be leprosy. According to legend, Henry’s skin disease struck him at the moment when Archbishop Scrope was executed outside York in a field at Clementhorpe on June 8, 1405. The archbishop had requested five strokes of the axe, one for each of the five wounds of Christ at the Crucifixion, and it was said that each blow was simultaneously felt by the king. At the time of the execution, Henry was said to have been dining with the Archbishop of Canterbury, who had come to intercede with the king. The beheading was a shocking deed that was carried out following a legal charade in which the king had replaced Chief Justice Gascoigne on the bench because he refused to convict York’s archbishop for his role in the rebellion against the Crown.27 Punishment for misdeeds—in fact, for the most serious crime of all, the 26 Hans-Jürgen Diller, “The Torturers in the English Mystery Plays,” in Evil on the Medieval Stage, ed. Meg Twycross (Lancaster: Medieval English Theatre, 1992), 62. See also my “Carnival, Lent, and Early English Drama,” in History, Religion and Violence: Cultural Contexts for Medieval and Renaissance English Drama (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), 207–25. Some of the other articles collected in my History, Religion and Violence treat aspects related to the topic under study in the present chapter. See also Plesch, “Étalage complaisant? The Torments of Christ in French Passion Plays,” 458–85. 27 James Hamilton Wylie, History of England under Henry the Fourth, 3 vols. (1894; reprint New York: AMS Press, 1969), 2:232–42; I have also consulted Clement Maidstone’s The Martyrdom of Archbishop Scrope, trans. Stephen K. Wright, available at , along with Wright’s commentary in his article “Paradigmatic

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rejection of Jesus as the Messiah—had likewise, according to the common belief, resulted in retribution against the Jews in 70 A.D. when Jerusalem with its temple was destroyed. As the subject of a lost play from Coventry, the destruction of the city and the temple was to foreshadow the subsequent suffering of the Jews for their headstrong rejectionism.28 But the anti-Semitism of the York plays, written long after the massacre by fire of Jews of that city who had gone to Clifford’s Tower for safety, and after their eventual expulsion from England,29 also emerges from the strong feeling of the playwrights that the Jews’ suffering was both deserved and the working out of the divine judgment against them. Although there is no scene at York like the one in the N-Town play that depicts the death of Herod,30 the Girdlers and Nailers’ Massacre of the Innocents presents a horrific tyrant whose malice against Christ, then a young child, makes him a strong candidate for retribution. But the ultimate figure of rejection is Judas, the false disciple whose betrayal leads to his recognition of his crime, his despair, and his suicide in the York Waterleders and Cooks’ pageant. In the extant text in the Register, however, his death takes place off stage,31 though for the now-lost Coventry Smiths’ play there is record as late as 1578, the year before the suppression of the Coventry cycle, of payment for “a new hoke to hange Judas,”32 undoubtedly in full sight of the audience. Because he believed his guilt to be beyond the possibility of forgiveness, he was presumed to have gone directly off to the eternal punishment of hell. In depictions of Judas at the Last Supper in the visual arts, he is normally turned away at the table so that his eyes do not directly meet those of the viewer. His gaze, as in the Betrayal when he looks upon and kisses Jesus, was to be perceived as dangerous. It is hard to see otherwise than that the audience response to Judas’s crime would have been extremely unsympathetic and that spectators at the representation of his demise in drama would have reacted as they did when their contemporaries who were criminals and heretics were punished, often brutally, at York and elsewhere in England.

Ambiguity in Monastic Historiography: The Case of Clement Maidstone’s Martyrium Ricardi Archiepiscopi,” Studia Monastica 28 (1986): 311–42. See also J. W. McKenna, “Popular Canonization as Political Propaganda: The Cult of Archbishop Scrope,” Speculum 45 (1970): 608–23. 28 See Stephen K. Wright, The Vengeance of Our Lord: Medieval Dramatizations of the Destruction of Jerusalem (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1989), 190–207. Some relevant remarks on the general topic are found in Robert Chazan, Jewish Suffering: The Interplay of Medieval Christian and Jewish Perspectives, Lectures on Medieval Judaism at Trinity University, Occasional Papers 2 (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1998). 29 R. B. Dobson, The Jews of Medieval York and the Massacre of March 1190, Borthwick Papers 45 (York: St. Anthony’s Press, 1974). 30 Play 20.232–84, in The N-Town Play: Cotton MS Vespasian D.8, ed. Stephen Spector, EETS, s.s. 11–12 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991). 31 At some point there appears to have been a play of the Death of Judas at York. In the second list in the Ordo paginarum (REED: York, 1:26), the Saucemakers are noted as having such a pageant, designated “Suspensio iude.” 32 REED: Coventry, ed. R. W. Ingram (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981), 289.

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Execution was then no sanitized and painless affair. Only the more highly placed could be expected to be favored by being put to death by beheading. Thomas More or Anne Boleyne may come to mind, but this was also the fate of Roger Layton, who was executed for treason on the Saturday following the delayed performance on August 5, 1487, of the York Corpus Christi cycle through the city and before Henry VII—an execution that took place at the Pavement, the same location that had served as the final station at which the pageants were presented.33 Burning, the punishment designated for intransigent heretics by the statute De heretico comburendo of 1401, is made vivid in the pages of John Foxe’s Protestant martyrology, which also contained powerfully graphic woodcuts.34 The depictions of the Protestant martyrs under Queen Mary are best known, but Foxe’s book also vividly portrays earlier executions that were fully as brutal if not more so. In the edition of Foxe’s Actes and Monuments published by John Day in 1570, the Lollard John Badby, a tailor, is shown at his burning at Smithfield on March 1, 1410. He is depicted standing in an empty barrel, while the fire beneath is being stoked by two men, who are watched by onlookers.35 A marginal note identifies his accusers as wolves in sheep’s clothing. Much more horrific is the scene of the hanging and burning of a large group of Lollards who “suffered before Lord Cobham.” Their deaths by hanging in chains and burning in the first year of Henry V’s reign are specifically compared by Foxe to Christ’s hanging between thieves at his Crucifixion.36 The resemblance to depictions of martyrdom in Catholic books is striking, for these showed all sorts of creative methods of execution for various saints such as St. Erasmus, who is shown having his intestines literally drawn out of his body by means of a windlass, as in the Heller Hours (Berkeley, University of California MS. UCB 150, fol. 249v) of c.1470–1480, a manuscript probably illuminated at London.37 Such innovative methods of execution would not have been seen as particularly cruel and unusual at a time when the ordinary manner of execution applied to 33 REED: York, 1:155. Layton was decapitated, but his body and his head were allowed to be buried in his parish church, Holy Trinity, Goodramgate. Considering the city’s “respect” for the Yorkists and the last Yorkist king, Richard III (Francis Drake, Eboracum: or The History and Antiquities of the City of York [1736], 125), one can hardly call this beheading “entertainment,” as Kathleen Ashley suggests (“Sponsorship, Reflexivity and Resistance,” 13), since it was part of King Henry VII’s program “earnestly to weede out, and purge his land of all seditious seede, and double harted fruyte, if it were possible, and suche as were founde culpable in any one point, were committed to prison, and eyther punished by fine or extinct by death” (Grafton’s Chronicle, 2 vols. [London, 1809], 2:169). 34 The examples of executions of Lollards provide some of our best depictions of capital punishment in the late Middle Ages; see John Foxe, Actes and Monuments (London, 1570), passim. I am not suggesting that conservative York was sympathetic to Lollardy. At the same time, the religious restrictions imposed by the hierarchy certainly could not but have affected traditional religion as it was practiced at York and to which the citizens were particularly devoted. 35 Foxe, Actes and Monuments, 624. 36 Foxe, Actes and Monuments, 699. 37 Kathleen L. Scott, Later Gothic Manuscripts, 1390–1490, 2 vols. (London: Harvey Miller, 1996), no. 126, fig. 459.

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commoners was incredibly brutal and bloody—and, for those believed by the public to be guilty of crime, a sport for spectators, who often came in large numbers. The hangman’s shout “God save the king [or queen]” or “Here is the head of a traitor” as he held up the head of the victim for all to see might be echoed by those standing around to watch—unless, of course, there was widespread sympathy for the victim.38 In comparison with the Crucifixion, hanging might, indeed, be regarded as less civilized. Assuming that he had not starved or died of disease—for example, “jail fever,” or typhus—in prison,39 the convict was dragged on a hurdle through the streets to the place of execution, in London typically at Tyburn, and when hanged he might be cut down before dead, whereupon he was laid on a block to be disemboweled and literally dismembered, a process that could include castration.40 The entrails and heart might be burned, and the head and body, which was cut into quarters, would be boiled in a cauldron in order to preserve them for placement in prominent locations such as over city gates or, in London, over the entrances to London Bridge as a warning and a deterrence against crime or treason. Robert Aske, the leader of the Pilgrimage of Grace, was hanged in chains above Clifford’s Tower at York on Thursday, July 12, 1537—a market day, to allow for maximum publicity41—and left there as a warning to those who might be disposed to rebel against the king. Many others were also executed at that time, and body parts, which are reported to have been called “strange fruit,” were displayed on trees in the city in that year.42 Following the suppression of the rising in the North in 1569, four conspirators were hanged, beheaded, and quartered at York. The York historian Francis Drake reports: “Their four heads were set up on the four principal gates of the city, with four of their quarters. The other quarters were set up in diverse places in the county.”43 It was in 1586, only a few years after the final attempt to stage the York cycle, when Margaret 38 A classic case of crowd sympathy is the execution of Robert Southwell in London, where crowds could normally be quite hostile to condemned Roman Catholics; see Christopher Devlin, The Life of Robert Southwell, Poet and Martyr (1956; reprint London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1967), 319–24. Differing, even opposing, reactions by members of a crowd at an execution are noted in Lake and Questier, The Antichrist’s Lewd Hat, 275. 39 Palliser, Tudor York, 94–95. On jail conditions in England, see also Lake and Questier, The Antichrist’s Lewd Hat, chap. 6. 40 The sentence delivered by the court in the case of Edmund Campion for treason in 1581, for example, included the order to be hanged, then “let down alive, and your privy parts to be cut off, and your entrails taken out and burnt in your sight” (Richard Simpson, Edmund Campion: A Biography [London: John Hodges, 1896], 436). See also Lake and Questier, The Antichrist’s Lewd Hat, 233, 238. The entire sequence of Campion’s execution is depicted in wood engravings from Nicolo Circignani and Giovanni Battista Cavalleriis, Ecclesiae Anglicanae Trophaea, that are reproduced by Lake and Questier, The Antichrist’s Lewd Hat, 256–57. 41 Palliser, Tudor York, 50, citing Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII, ed. J. Gairdner et al., 22 vols. (London: H.M.S.O, 1864–1932), vol. 12, pt. 2, nos. 205, 229. 42 Alberic Stacpoole, “The York Martyrs,” in The Noble City of York, ed. Alberic Stacpoole et al . (York: Cerialis Press, 1972), 682. 43 Drake, Eboracum, 130.

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Clitherow was pressed to death for refusing to plead when accused of attendance at Roman Catholic Mass and of harboring Roman priests.44 Torture was also routine and accepted as a means of eliciting confessions and of discovering names of others who might have been transgressors of the law or the will of the Crown. The use of the rack, as in cases over which Thomas More himself presided while he was Lord Chancellor,45 is perhaps relevant to one manner of crucifixion suggested in Nicholas Love’s English adaptation of the Meditations on the Life of Christ46 and imaginatively dramatized in the York plays. The holes in the cross are bored too far apart, and hence the executioners tie ropes to Christ’s arms and legs in order to “rugge hym doune”—that is, to stretch his body to fit. In this process, “all his synnous go asoundre” (35.131–32). They are pleased at their ingenuity in finding this solution, for thus the ropes “haue evill encressed [Christ’s] paynes” (35.145) as they tug away to bring his hands and feet into line with the holes where the nails are to be driven. While this symbolism also is suggestive of the symbolism of Christ’s body on the cross as a harp with its taut strings that create a music bringing together earth and heaven—a symbolism that may be noted in the S-shape of the corpus in late medieval crucifixes47—the intended effect would have been strikingly visceral. Another method of torture, “hanging by the hands,” was later utilized by Queen Elizabeth’s notorious agent Richard Topcliffe upon the Jesuit John Gerard and others; in this, the victim would be made “to stand against the wall, his feet standing upon the ground and his hands stuck as high as he can reach against the wall.”48 When the body was suspended by the hands in this manner, such a way of torture was the cause of supreme suffering by an individual and could be lethal.49 Indeed, “hanging by the hands” was a kind of crucifixion, as modern medical experts have shown. Elaine Scarry has argued that the object of such torture is the loss of the subject’s “selfhood.”50 In the York plays the torment which Christ undergoes is indicative of the attempt to reduce his humanity to the feeling of unendurable pain and thus 44 Stacpoole, “The York Martyrs,” 693–99; David Hugh Farmer, The Oxford Dictionary of Saints (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), 84–85. These accounts are dependent on John Mush’s life of Margaret Clitherow. 45 See Susan Brigden, London and the Reformation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), 192. 46 Love, Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, 177. For a possible connection between Love and the Augustinian Friary in York prior to his appearance as prior of Mount Grace, see Johnston’s “The York Cycle and the Libraries of York,” 360, citing A. I. Doyle, “Reflections on Some MSS of Nicholas Love’s Myrrour of the Blessed Lyf of Jesu Christ,” Leeds Studies in English, n.s. 14 (1983): 82. 47 See F. P. Pickering, Literature and Art (Coral Gables: University of Miami Press, 1970), 285–308; Douglas Gray, Themes and Images in the Medieval English Religious Lyric (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972), 129. 48 Devlin, The Life of Robert Southwell, 285–86. 49 Devlin, The Life of Robert Southwell, 285–86. 50 Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 35. Her comment in this regard is corroborated by reports of torture in the Iraq war surfacing in 2005–2006.

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to make the pain dominate his whole being like the figures on capitals in the south transept at Wells Cathedral who are conscious only of a toothache or a painful thorn in the foot.51 The failure of the tormentors to succeed in their aim must have been important for the actor impersonating Christ to communicate in presenting the role before audiences at the various stations where the play was performed in the streets of York. Of course, there was more to the role than maintenance of his sense of self, for the Savior is the patient and silent one whose sufferings were purposefully directed toward the salvation of humankind.52 If Jesus is a sufferer, he must also be heroic, a model of endurance for other sufferers to follow. Christ, then, not only was a model whose sufferings were replicated by those who were martyred in his name—for example, those shown in the numerous instances of martyrdom in painted glass, wall paintings, woodcarvings, and sculpture in medieval York53—but his intense pain was also a requirement to be felt and shared by his followers. Instead of reacting with hostility to the person being shamed and executed in play, the audience was invited to be sympathetic and to identify with him. Crucially, the character in the drama was a symbolic imaging forth of the biblical Jesus—the historical Word made flesh—in the body of an actor who is, in fact, a member of the local community.54 Since Jesus further was to be seen as an integral part of the kinship group to which each member of the audience belonged,55 his suffering was like seeing a very close relative tormented in the most outrageous manner possible. Anselm, following a hint by the writer of Hebrews (2:17), had identified him as “our brother,”56 and spectators at York were apparently expected to think of him as a person as close to one emotionally as a son or parent. So, too, Ludolphus of Saxony had specified what should be the normal reaction of one viewing Christ’s sufferings: “Would you not cast yourself upon our Lord, saying, ‘Do not harm him so; behold, here am I, strike me instead’.”57 Jesus’ suffering is in atonement for the lapsed human condition, and hence, on account of his innocence, is represented as at once different and more sorrowful than the suffering of fallen members of the human race. “Soþely,” wrote Nicholas 51 Arthur Gardner, English Medieval Sculpture, revised ed. (1951; reprint New York: Hacker, 1973), 96, fig. 165. 52 Cf. Alexandra F. Johnston, “‘His language is lorne’: The Silent Centre of the York Cycle,” ET 3 (2000): 185–95. 53 See the listing in Clifford Davidson and David E. O’Connor, York Art, EDAM Reference Series 1 (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1978), 129–30, 133–35, and 139–78 passim; and also Raine, Mediaeval York, passim. 54 See further the discussion in Gail McMurray Gibson, “Writing before the Eye: The N-Town Woman Taken in Adultery and the Medieval Ministry Play,” CompD 27 (1993–1994): 400–402. 55 For a relevant study, see J. Bossy, “Blood and Baptism: Kinship, Community and Christianity,” Studies in Church History 10 (1973): 129–43. 56 See St. Anselm of Canterbury, Cur Deus homo, for convenience in Basic Writings, trans. S. N. Deane (LaSalle, IL: Open Court, 1962), 177–288. 57 Ludolphus of Saxony, Vita Jesu Christi, 2.60, as quoted in translation by James Marrow, “Symbol and Meaning in Northern European Art of the Late Middle Ages and the Early Renaissance,” Simiolus 16 (1986): 155.

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Love of Christ’s anguish in the garden of Gethsemane in his immensely influential translation of the Pseudo-Bonaventure Meditations on the Life of Christ, “here is grete matire of sorowe and compassione, þat ouht to stire þe hardest herte þat is in þis worlde to haue inwarde compassion of þat grete and souereyn anguish þat oure lorde Jesus suffrede in þat tyme, and for oure sake.”58 Paradoxically, his subsequent torment and crucifixion are in the interest of our health and of salvation from the fate with which Adam and Eve were threatened in Genesis. Hence, in order to effectuate our own salvation, we need to make ourselves “as present in alle þat befelle aboute þat passion and crucifixione.”59 It is one’s duty to identify compassionately with the suffering of Jesus as one who is both human and divine—and as one who is lacking in sin and yet is subjected to intense torment and humiliation. By transference, therefore, suffering becomes a personal duty, at its most extreme involving the desire to wrap oneself in Christ’s battered and bleeding skin—a wish expressed by the anonymous author of a poem in John of Grimestone’s Preaching Book.60 In the York pageant that initiates the Passion, the Cordwainer’s Agony and Betrayal, Jesus’ fear is presented as very real and thoroughly human when he enters upon his ordeal. His flesh trembles in the scene in the Garden of Gethsemane as he anticipates his betrayal by Judas. He sweats “both watir and bloode” (28.50). He is faced with a test that he must endure, and his humanity is not able to suppress fear at the prospect of physical assault and crude humiliation. It must be his choice to carry on without complaining through the suffering. He opposes violence, and at the time of his arrest he heals the ear of the lantern-bearing soldier Malchus that Peter has cut off. But now he will himself be the object of violence, and he is rudely taken away by the soldiers and his hands bound. The threat of beating begins as he comes in the nighttime before the high priests (29.286–87), who treat him like an animal.61 They find themselves offended by his failure to reverence them and by his blasphemous admission to be the Son of God. The beating will indeed follow, and in the scene of the Buffeting which concludes the Bowers and Fletchers’ pageant, he is treated like the one who is “it” in a game of “popse,” which is similar to Blind Man’s Buff, but here the devilish game is played with a shocking and sadistic vindictiveness intended to generate sympathy for the victim. We have every reason to believe that the soldiers were made to appear as ugly and unlikeable as possible, just as they are in York Minster glass that is probably contemporary with the play.62 Outrageously, Jesus is told to tell who has hit him when presumably he does not know the names of the soldiers who torment him, but rather than speaking out he will retreat into silence. He will be, as the Passion tradition derived from Isaiah 53:7 58 Love, Mirror of the Blessed Life, 165. 59 Love, Mirror of the Blessed Life, 162. 60 Carleton Brown, ed., Religious Lyrics of the XIVth Century, 2nd ed., rev. G. V. Smithers (1952; reprint Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957), 88. See also Edward Wilson, A Descriptive Index of the English Lyrics in John of Grimestone’s Preaching Book, Medium Ævum Monographs, n.s. 2 (1973; reprint n.p., 1977). 61 See J. W. Robinson, Studies in Fifteenth-Century Stagecraft, EDAM Monograph Series 14 (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1991), 176–200. 62 Davidson and O’Connor, York Art, 73. A poem in John of Grimestone’s Preaching Book speaks of the “orible criȝing” of Christ’s tormentors (Wilson, A Descriptive Index, 40).

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has it, as silent as a sheep being prepared for slaughter.63 His tormentors also reflect an Old Testament source, Psalm 21:17 (AV: 22:17), read as part of the liturgy for Good Friday: “For many dogs have encompassed me: the council of the malignant hath besieged me.”64 Jesus also bears resemblance to the iconography of Patience, who is surrounded by hostile and threatening vices in illustrated manuscripts of the Psychomachia of Prudentius.65 During Jesus’ subsequent trial before Pilate, he displays a quiet dignity in spite of the scurrilous charges, including witchcraft, that are made against him. The Roman governor marvels at the malice of his vindictive clerical accusers: “Me meruellis ye malygne o mys” (30.508)—a reference to the law against malicious prosecution, for their action, as Elza Tiner has noted, “was a violation of both canon and secular law.”66 In this play, sponsored by the Tapiters and Couchers, Jesus with hands bound will be dragged at midnight into the presence of Pilate, who has been awakened to sit in judgment on the one who at the end of history will be the Judge of all humankind.67 Earlier in the play, the inclusion of drunken Pilate’s featherbed and Procula’s kisses stands in direct contrast to the (symbolic) bed of pain and the isolation to which Jesus is treated in the plays of the Passion.68 As the conspirators pursue his conviction and a sentence of death, Jesus’ humiliation will be continued in the Listerers’ pageant as soldiers drag him in bonds with the intent of taking him to Herod. A clue to the king’s irascible and irreverent nature is given prior to the arrival of the soldiers at his court, for he prays to his “sire” Satan and to Lucifer (31.51–52). It is the middle of the night when Jesus comes before the Galilean king. He gives Herod the silent treatment even when the king indecorously shouts at him in a nonsensical mixture of words in different languages and engages his two sons to do likewise. One of them then will call Jesus a “mummeland myghtyng” (31.318). Ultimately, Jesus is mocked by having a scepter placed in his hand and being clothed in white like a fool-king. Herod then acquits him as a fool and curses him: “Daunce on, in þe deuyll way” (31.423). These words

63 See James H. Marrow, Passion Iconography in Northern European Art of the Late Middle Ages and Early Renaissance (Kortrijk: Van Ghemmert, 1979), 96–99; cf. Rosemary Woolf, The English Mystery Plays (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1972), 257. 64 See the discussion in James H. Marrow, “Circumdederunt me canes multi: Christ’s Tormentors in Northern European Art of the Late Middle Ages and Early Renaissance,” Art Bulletin 59 (1977): 167–81. 65 See, for example, Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS. 23, pt. 1, fol. 8v; illustrated in Mildred Budney, Insular, Anglo-Saxon, and Early Anglo-Norman Manuscript Art at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, 2 vols. (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1997), vol. 2, pl. 234. 66 Elza C. Tiner, “English Law in the York Trial Plays,” in The Dramatic Tradition of the Middle Ages, ed. Clifford Davidson (New York: AMS Press, 2005), 145–46. 67 On this hearing, see Pamela M. King, “The Trial Plays in the York Cycle,” in Drama and Community: People and Plays in Medieval Europe, ed. Alan Hindley (Turnhout: Brepols, 1999), 207–8. 68 See Davidson, From Creation to Doom, 106–7.

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are an echo of Cain’s “Ya, daunce in þe devil way” in the Glover’s pageant of Cain and Abel (7.52). Worse, including the worst kind of physical torment, is, of course, yet to come. After the Tilemakers’ play of the second trial before Pilate, whose court Jesus has refused to recognize as having jurisdiction,69 Jesus comes away utterly brutalized and wounded. In English law, one who refuses to plead could be sentenced to death by pressing,70 the fate of one who, like Margaret Clitheroe, would neither affirm nor deny his or her “guilt” before the judge.71 In the Tilemakers’ pageant, however, the Roman governor will order that Jesus should be scourged prior to receiving his sentence (see fig. 11, below).72 This action, presumably made all the more realistic by the use of a leather body suit to represent nudity and to receive the blows of the scourges,73 requires that he should be “bun faste” (33.351). He would have been tied to a column, which is always present in the iconography of the Scourging and is noted, along with four scourges, in an inventory of the Coventry Smiths’ play.74 In a historiated initial in the so-called Bolton Hours (York Minster Library MS. Add. 2, fol. 57v), illuminated in York in c.1410, Jesus, tied to a pillar and with only a loincloth for cover, is being assaulted by two men. In fulfilment of Isaiah’s prophecy (1:6), every part of his body from the top of his head (“crune”) to his toes will be filled with “peine and wo,” as a poem in John of Grimstone’s Preaching Book has it.75 Jesus’ entire body will show the marks of the bloody beating—a scene which was widely depicted in the visual arts in numerous other illustrations, including many of those which show him after his death. As Nicholas Love’s English adaptation of the Meditations describes the inflicting of this suffering on Christ, he uncomplainingly receives the scourging, which is so severe that he emerges like a leper in appearance, and those who inflict it are made out to be the most despicable of men, or so they would seem by their appearance.76 They bear comparison to their brutal counterparts in the Arras Passion who offer the blood coming from Christ’s wounds to those who might wish to make blood sausages,77 and with the tormentors in the St. Geneviève Passion whose beating is said to be so merciless “[t]hat they stain the earth with his

69 King, “The Trial Plays in the York Cycle,” 209–10. 70 King, “The Trial Plays in the York Cycle,” 209–10. 71 Farmer, Oxford Dictionary of Saints, 84. 72 For the biblical sources for the iconography, see Marrow, Passion Iconography, 134–41. 73 A leather body suit simulating nudity and marked for the wounds is presumably what is indicated for the York Mercers’ Doomsday play; see REED: York, 55. 74 REED: Coventry, 73. At York, a fragment of the pillar of the Flagellation weighing one pound had been given to the Minster in 1418 by Archdeacon Stephen Scrope; it was embedded in the cross on the high altar (Benson, An Account of the City and County of York, 2:128). 75 Wilson, A Descriptive Index of the Lyrics in John of Grimstone’s Preaching Book, 51. 76 Love, Mirror of the Blessed Life, 170–71; cf. Marrow, Passion Iconography, 52–58. 77 Le Mystère de la Passion, ed. Jules-Marie Richard (1981; reprint Geneva: Slatkine, 1976), ll. 14,472–74, as quoted in translation by Plesch, “Étalage complaisant? The Torments of Christ in French Passion Plays,” 467.

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blood / Which flowed down over his body.”78 Hans-Jürgen Diller, who emphasizes the point that at York the strategy was to keep “Christ’s suffering from being submerged in the excitement of the Torturers,” also observes that here Jesus “visibly becomes the Man of Sorrows.”79 So, too, Christ must be seen as prefigured by Job, whose suffering had been joined with patience.80 Throughout this torment and to the disappointment of his tormenters, Jesus does not even cry out. Though Pilate predicted he will weep “for wo” (33.338), he fails to do so. Instead, in his patient way he appears to the soldiers as if he “nappes” (33.364), whereupon they accelerate their blows until the victim swoons. The brutality displayed in the Scourging should make one’s “herte melte in to sorouful compassion,” Love maintains, unless “þou hast to harde a stonene herte.”81 Such a hard heart is, as Sarah Beckwith indicates, “an image of closure”82 and the opposite of the condition encouraged by either the celebration of the feast of Corpus Christi at York or its plays. Following the Scourging, Jesus’ tormenters seat him for the humiliation of the Mocking when a crown of thorns is thrust cruelly upon his head and he is given a reed for his scepter. Derisively hailed as a king, the hails of the Entry into Jerusalem have painfully turned into the most brutal and scornful ridicule.83 In a final miscarriage of justice, Pilate washes his hands before sentencing Jesus to the death on the cross. And the humiliation continues in the next play, sponsored by the Shearmen, where he is treated like a “traytoure” (34.11) as he is led like a sheep to the slaughter toward Calvary, the place of the Crucifixion. His tormentors threaten to “rugge hym tille he raue” (34.53) and otherwise mistreat him. The Ordo paginarum specifies that in this pageant Jesus is covered with blood.84 James Marrow notes that the tradition of dragging Christ, often with a rope, and of mistreatment on the way to his execution developed in the late Middle Ages.85 The purpose was clearly again meant to elicit compassion. The appearance of his weeping mother, Mary, and John was also intended to create sympathy for the sufferer, especially when they are harassed and chased away by the soldiers, whose bearing is utterly crass and sadistic. When Jesus swoons and is unable to carry the cross further—he “is brosid and all forbledde,” the third soldier says (34.243)—Simon is forcibly enlisted to assist in carrying it. Jesus will be unbound at the end of his journey and stripped, but then he is tied up 78 Mystère de la Passion Nostre Seigneur du manuscript 1131 de la Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, ed. Graham A. Runnalls (Geneva: Droz, 1974), ll. 88–89, as quoted in translation by Enders, The Medieval Theater of Cruelty, 93–94 79 Hans-Jürgen Diller, The Middle English Mystery Play (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 236. 80 Cf. G. von der Osten, “Job and Christ,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 16 (1953): 153–58. 81 Love, Mirror of the Blessed Life, 171. 82 Sarah Beckwith, Christ’s Body: Identity, Culture and Society in Late Medieval Writings (London: Routledge, 1993), 59. 83 Pamela King has commented to me that in both the Entry and in this instance the “Hails” echo the form of the royal entry and thus provide “additional parodic complexity” (personal correspondence). 84 REED: York, 1:21. 85 Marrow, Passion Iconography, 163.

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once more “as beeste in bande,/ That is demed for to dye” (34.341–42)—that is, as a fulfillment of the prophecies in Isaiah 53:7 and Jeremiah 11:19.86 The first soldier insists that for his pretense of being a king he must not be allowed to be clothed at his hanging but must be “naked as a stone be stedde” (34.312). As they try to remove Jesus’ clothes, the first soldier remarks that they stick to his bloodied sides from the Scourging. The intended response to the scene seems to me to have been somewhat similar to the power of a devotional image of the suffering body of Christ, which also was a depiction that provided a mental and spiritual bridge between the viewer and the figure who was represented (fig. 11).87 Already in this series of pageants, the impression that is projected is of a Jesus who bears resemblance to dissidents in countries living under tyranny in our own and in earlier times. Humiliation and physical suffering have been endemic under certain regimes, which have been known to use beating, electric shock, and incarceration in filthy windowless cells as means of punishment and torture. Some men, guided by higher ideals of decency and religion, have endured years of hideous treatment without breaking down, and they have often been admired since their achievement, like Nelson Mandela’s, seems so far beyond the ability of the ordinary person. While the idea of “human rights abuses” has been identified as a product of Enlightenment thinking, one must not think that earlier men and women were impervious to the pain and suffering inflicted by out-of-control individuals or by violations of law. There also clearly was immense admiration for those who were able to sustain their identity in the face of torture, whether saints or others unjustly tyrannized. Such persons must have remarkable inner strength to endure, and in the case of Jesus this strength came from being the Son of God, having joined in one person two natures, divine and human. Among the three categories of pain identified in modern clinical studies, we shall have to believe that for Jesus its “affective center” involved (1) intense rhythmic/throbbing and (2) constrictive/pressure, leaving aside perhaps only (3) burning/heat.88 The York plays as they were presented in the streets of the city were a remarkable presentation of a devotional stance that maximized the suffering that was inflicted on Jesus between the Betrayal and the carrying of the cross to Golgotha. The Pinners’ Crucifixio Cristi and the Butchers’ Mortificacio Cristi complete the story of Jesus’ suffering and death. The first of these pageants includes the attaching of cords to stretch the body to fit the cross so that “assoundir are bothe synnous 86 Marrow, Passion Iconography, 163. 87 In this respect, the character as seen in the staging of a play would have been regarded as a visual conduit to the person represented, but such a spiritual bridge, in spite of the claim (reported in A Tretise of Miraclis Pleyinge) that a lively image in a play is more capable of moving the viewer than a carving or painting, still is ephemeral by its very nature as theater. See also the commentary on stage and image in Victor I. Scherb, Staging Faith (Madison and Teaneck: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2001); and David Freedberg’s study, The Power of Images (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), passim. The efficacy of images of suffering to convey powerful messages in our own day is affirmed by the photographs taken at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and has been reason enough for the American government to this point to refuse access to its prisoners at Guantánamo Bay. 88 These studies are reported by Scarry, The Body in Pain, 7–8.

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Figure 11

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Ecce Homo, showing Jesus with wounds from the Flagellation. Painted glass, All Saints, Pavement, York.

and veynis” (35.147)—an episode to which allusion has been made above. The remarkable thing here is the lack of feeling among the tormentors for the one who is being tormented. As has been frequently noted, they are very like workmen going

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about their work, as if that work were their normal occupation in medieval York.89 Because the holes are bored incorrectly, they are disappointed just as they would be if they had to cope with badly prepared materials acquired for their ordinary work. They are, nevertheless, concerned that the task should be done properly and, with reference to their nailing of the body on the cross, that “no faute be foune” (35.142). The executioners, who are “just doing their job,”90 surely appear to represent that which Hannah Arendt has called the “banality of evil.”91 They are anaesthetized to suffering—a theatrical strategy to deconceal the manner in which the love of God is expressed through the great sacrifice of the Son. Once he is on the cross, Jesus, following a convention that adapts the Holy Saturday responsory O vos omnes to vernacular poetic form,92 addresses “Al men þat walkis by waye or strete” to call their attention to the wounds in his head, hands, and feet and deeply to “feele” his suffering (35.253–58), which is the worst that ever might be. He also forgives the soldiers who have crucified him, for they are not aware of what they have done, though as they divide up his clothing they show little sign of repentance. The Third Soldier derisively calls upon his colleague to allow Jesus to “hynge here stille/ And make mowes on þe mone” (35.285–86). To him, Christ is someone outside his circle of concern and is certainly not regarded as kin. The soldier sees Jesus as representative of the “Other,” which is a condition diametrically opposed to the way in which the audience is invited to perceive him. The Mortificacio Cristi opens with Pilate’s warning that those who are guilty of rebellion or treason will be treated like Jesus, whose fate, nevertheless, does make him uneasy since “cause non in hym cowthe [he] knawe” (36.52). In contrast, the high priests Caiphas and Anna are convinced of Jesus’ guilt and mock him as he suffers on the cross, while he in turn will urge sinful men and women to look upon him in his “ragged and rente” state (36.120) with understanding. His suffering is, in fact, being endured for them: Þus for thy goode I schedde my bloode, Manne, mende thy moode, For full bittir þi blisse mon I by. [buy

(36.127–30)

This is followed by the Virgin Mary’s planctus in which she complains that her Son is a “blossome so bright/ Vntrewely . . . tugged to þis tree” (35.137–39). Her sorrow is another important cue for audience response, leading up to a second reproach in which he stresses the obedient “bend[ing]” (36.186) of his body in pain—a reference to the posture taken by Jesus in the visual arts in the late Middle Ages. As a foreshadowing of the separation of the saved and the damned at the Last Day, Jesus

89 See, for example, Ashley, “Sponsorship, Reflexivity and Resistance,” 21. 90 Enders, The Medieval Theater of Cruelty, 55, quoting La Passion d’Auvergne, ed. Graham Runnalls (Geneva: Droz, 1982), l. 3326, in translation. 91 Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem, rev. ed. (New York: Viking, 1965). 92 See Beckwith, Signifying God, 66.

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then observes and judges the two thieves, the one on his right and the other on his left, who have also suffered with him. Adding to Jesus’ suffering is the perverse offering (by Stephaton) of “Aysell and galle” (35.244) on a sponge, followed by Christ’s final speech. It is after he has given up his spirit that blind “Longeus” (Longinus) is directed to pierce Jesus’ side, from which blood flows. The theatrical practice seems to have been to hide a small bladder of blood or other red liquid in Jesus’ costume where it might be pierced to simulate this effect,93 which included the sight of blood running down the spear and of Longinus touching his eye with it, whereupon he proclaims the healing of his blindness. Stephaton and Longinus appear frequently in iconography, as in the painted glass of 1339 in the window by Thomas de Bovesden in the south aisle at the west end of the nave of York Minster,94 but it is the contact of Longinus with the holy blood that is most significant. The blood of the Savior, who is “ragged and rente” on the “rode,” has been “spitously spilte” in order “to bringe vs to blis/ Full free” (36.304, 306–08). The final section of this pageant further gives opportunity for Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea to display the body of the innocent sufferer which has “woundes wide” on “bakke and side” (36.374–75) as they remove the corpus from the cross. It is important to keep in mind the depiction of the body of the Savior in the sacred art that adorned the churches prior to the Reformation.95 The visual display here would not be as elaborate as the remarkable Entombment alabasters in the Victoria and Albert Museum, which show Mary Magdalen with her ointment jar and, in some cases holding, the right hand of the wounded corpus, already laid in a coffer tomb (fig. 12).96 These alabasters now have none of the paint which originally marked the wounds, but the color of the five deep gashes in hands, feet, and side and the smaller lesions which cover the body can be seen in a painted panel of c.1400 in the Ipswich Museum.97 The last words of the Burial scene are spoken by Joseph of Arimathea to the audience, and these provide a focus for the entire Passion series of pageants:

93 In Thomas Preston’s Cambyses, a stage direction had specified “A little bladder of vineger prickt”; cited by Leo Kirschbaum, “Shakespeare’s Stage Blood and Its Critical Significance,” PMLA 64 (1949): 517. 94 Thomas French and David O’Connor, York Minster: A Catalogue of Medieval Stained Glass, Fascicule 1: The West Window of the Nave (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 79–80. The window has been heavily restored. The sorrowing angels about the Crucifixion are said by French and O’Connor to be a borrowing from iconography first introduced by Cimabue, but they usefully illustrate the attitude expected in the presence of this scene. 95 See Davidson and O’Connor, York Art, 79–87; note especially the depiction of the Trinity with the Father holding and displaying the crucified Son, whose wounds from the Scourging are very visible (85–87); see fig. 6 in the present volume, above. 96 See Francis Cheetham, English Medieval Alabasters (Oxford: Phaidon, Christie’s, 1984), nos. 191–97. 97 Jonathan Alexander and Paul Binski, eds., Age of Chivalry (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1987), no. 712.

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(36.413–16)

The emphasis in these pageants on Christ’s suffering body and his blood—an emphasis shared with the late medieval religious lyric—is indicative of a spirituality that was connected with the religious ritual of the Mass with its transubstantiation of bread and wine into body and blood. Here the body, like the Host at the Elevation in the Mass and in the Corpus Christi procession, was exhibited to the people. The physical reality of blood as a sign of the suffering body was also made visible and depicted in the visual arts, where it was set forth as a focus of piety. The most potent symbol to be derived from such piety was perhaps the Five Wounds emblem depicting the wounds in the hands, feet, and side of Jesus. This was the emblem chosen for his standard during the rebellion of 1405 by Archbishop Scrope,98 and a variant of it would be brought back during the Northern rebellions of 1536 and 1569.99 The Five Wounds provide the subject for an illumination in a manuscript of York provenance, Bodleian Library MS. Lat. liturg.f.2, in which a heart appears with the five bleeding wounds imposed upon it (fol. 4v). The date of this illumination has been suggested as 1405–1413 and may have been connected to the attempt to obtain canonization for Archbishop Scrope, whose portrait was given a role in the same effort in a painted glass panel of c.1420 in the clerestory of the choir of York Minster.100 He also appears in an illumination in the so-called Bolton Hours (York Minster Library MS. Add. 2, fol. 100v), where he is being invoked by a female figure with a scroll requesting “S[an]c[t]e ricarde Scrope ora pro nobis”; this manuscript prominently features devotion to the five wounds—for example, in an illumination presenting a bleeding heart with the wounds shown on it and obviously intended as a devotional image for the viewer’s gaze (fol. 181).101 The same iconography appears in another York book of hours, York Minster Library MS. XVI.K.6, fol. 25v,102 and a further example of the Five Wounds, in painted glass with 98 Drake, Eboracum, 107, 239. 99 Drake, Eboracum, 129. Drake, who defends Queen Elizabeth and her government, reports that the emblem of the five wounds painted on a banner was adopted by the rebels in 1569 following a Mass at Ripon Cathedral “to give the greater sanction to their cause.” 100 David O’Connor and Jeremy Haselock, “The Stained and Painted Glass,” in A History of York Minster, ed. G. E. Aylmer and Reginald Cant (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), 377–38; Davidson and O’Connor, York Art, 172. 101 See the discussion in Pamela M. King, “Corpus Christi Plays and the ‘Bolton Hours’ 1: Tastes in Lay Piety and Patronage in Fifteenth-Century York,” METh 18 (1996): 46–62. The function of the devotional image is described by Sixten Ringbom, “Devotional Images and Imaginative Devotions,” Gazette des Beaux-Arts 111 (1969): 159–70. 102 John B. Friedman, Northern Books, Owners, and Makers in the Late Middle Ages (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1995), fig. 34. This manuscript was associated with All Saints Pavement, the guild church. King notes that it also contains “on fol. 27 a suffrage to [Archbishop] Scrope based around his five wounds” (“Corpus Christi Plays and the ‘Bolton Hours’,” 52).

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Figure 12

The Burial of Jesus. Alabaster carving.

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possible York connections, is a shield with the wounds as bleeding gashes at Great Malvern.103 Appearing in painted glass nearly contemporary with the Pilgrimage of Grace in one of the windows on the north side of the York church of St. Michael-le-Belfrey is a Passion memorial with the wounded heart in the center and the wounded hands and feet positioned above and below.104 This was, in fact, the badge of the Pilgrimage of Grace in which people of the region rose up spontaneously against the depredations of Henry VIII and the dissolving of the smaller monasteries. The king’s actions before and after the rebellion—including his broken promises and treatment of Robert Aske and others—generated deep resentment in the North since the Crown, guided by the sinister Thomas Cromwell, seemed determined to carry through its campaign against the monasteries—a campaign which in itself caused great dislocation and suffering among many of those affected. The Five Wounds thus tended to serve as an emblem that both indicated allegiance to the Old Religion and signified the identification of the individual with the sufferings of Christ imaginatively and, in the case of Archbishop Scrope in 1405, literally at the time of his execution. In no sense, as we have seen, was devotion to the Five Wounds unique to York or the North of England. Douglas Gray reminds us that all Sir Gawain’s “afyaunce vpon folde watz in þe fyue woundez/ Þat Cryst kaȝt on þe croys.”105 Various examples are extant, as in a roof boss at Winchester Cathedral,106 and the iconography is also familiar elsewhere. A good example appears in the tracery of the East Window at Fairford (fig. 13).107 King Henry VI, who would be venerated like a saint before the statue representing him on the choir screen at York Minster, had asked that a representation of the Five Wounds be positioned before him at table so that he could see it when eating.108 But in Yorkshire and the North, there seems to have been a particularly strong sense of devotion to this emblem, which also needs to be seen in the context of the Mass of the Five Wounds, a devotion specified, for example, by John Tenand, a York metal craftsman, in 1516 in his will for “the day

103 Gordon McN. Rushforth, Medieval Christian Imagery (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1936), 367. 104 Davidson and O’Connor, York Art, 78. 105 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, ll. 642–43, in The Complete Works of the Pearl Poet, ed. Malcolm Andrew et al. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993); the passage is cited in Douglas Gray, “The Five Wounds of Our Lord,” Notes and Queries 208 (1963): 87. 106 C. J. P. Cave, Roof Bosses in Medieval Churches (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1948), fig. 240. For a roof boss with the five wounds geographically closer to York, at Methley, see Barbara D. Palmer, The Early Art of the West Riding of Yorkshire, EDAM Reference Series 6 (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1990), 110, fig. 27. 107 See William E. A. Axon, “The Symbolism of the ‘Five Wounds of Christ’,” Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society Transactions 10 (1882): 67–77. Still valuable is W. Sparrow Simpson, “On the Measure of the Wound in the Side of the Redeemer, Worn Anciently as a Charm; and on the Five Wounds as Represented in Art,” Journal of the British Archaeological Association 30 (1874): 357–74. 108 Thomas Frederick Tout, “Henry VI,” Dictionary of National Biography, 9:518.

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Figure 13

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Five wounds. Passion memorial. Painted glass, Church of St. Mary, Fairford.

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of [his] beryall.”109 Devotion to the Five Wounds was strongly encouraged by the Carthusians, and Eamon Duffy reproduces a printed holy card distributed by the monks of Sheen that depicts a shield held before a cross by angels which that has on it the hands, feet, and heart, the latter with its blood flowing into a chalice.110 The Carthusian Miscellany contained in British Library MS. Add. 37,049, possibly written and illuminated at Mount Grace in Yorkshire, contains not only several examples of hearts with the wounds but also of Christ on the cross with bleeding wounds that in their magnitude are indicative of the most severe suffering—and all are presented as a cure for the lapsarian sickness of humankind.111 On fol. 23r of this manuscript the artist has created a drawing designated as the Charter of Christ (fig. 14). The seal is Christ’s wounded heart, which has been pierced by the spear entering his side, and the text explains that the “wounde in my syde þe seale it is.” The five wounds—hands and feet are nailed to the cross, and he has a large wound in his right side—as well as smaller wounds from the beating and scourging are present on the body of Christ, who appears crowned with thorns and with the implements of the Passion in the background—the scourges, the hammer, the column of the flagellation with ropes wound around it, the sponge, and the spear. Such illuminations had a devotional purpose and were designed, like the York Passion pageants, to stimulate the imagination to bring to mind the suffering of the Savior. Such acts of the imagination, whether focused on a painted image or sculpture or on Passion scenes played by living actors, were not, however, characterized by gloom or despair. Instead, since Jesus’ suffering was endured for his people on earth, those who consider this with a penitent heart will feel not only compassion but also joy.112 An anonymous sermon quoted by G. R. Owst indicates how Christ will give remission of sins and mercy: “myn armys ben sprede a brode for to clyppe the and to take the to grace, and myne hedde I bow doun for to gyfe the a kisse of luffe.”113 The response to Jesus’ love for humans is emphasized by Nicholas Love, who insists on the presence of both pity and joy in the sight of the crucified Savior, disfigured and

109 Testamenta Eboracensia, ed. James Raine and John W. Clay, 6 vols., Surtees Society 4, 30, 45, 53, 79, 106 (Durham: Andrews, 1836–1902), 5:79; attention is called to this will by Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars, 245–46. 110 Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars, fig. 99. 111 Black and white photographs of the miniatures are shown in James Hogg, ed., An Illustrated Yorkshire Religious Miscellany, British Library London Additional MS. 37049, Analecta Cartusiana 95 (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Universität Salzburg, 1981). These reproductions, of course, do not give the full effect of the manuscript; there the illustrations place great emphasis on the red of the blood of Christ. 112 Cf. Ellen M. Ross, The Grief of God: Images of the Suffering Jesus in Late Medieval England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 36–40, for “three types of suffering”: Contrition, Compassion, and Longing. 113 G. R. Owst, Preaching in Medieval England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1933), 347–48; this passage is usefully cited in Ross, The Grief of God, 18, though she mistakes the essential nature of the vernacular civic drama, which she persists in identifying as “liturgical.”

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Figure 14

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Charter of Christ. Manuscript illumination, Carthusian Miscellany. British Library MS. 37,049.

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covered with blood and spit (the latter not likely to be neglected in the York plays,114 however disgusting it might seem in our own time): “A pitevous siht in him” since it was a “harde passion þat he suffrede for oure sauacion, bot it is a likyng siht to vs, for þe matire and þe effecte þat we haue þerbye of oure redempcion.” Indeed, those who meditate on this sight with “deuoute ymaginacion of þe soule” sometimes come to feel “so grete likyng not onely in soule bot also in þe body þat þei kunne not telle, and þat noman may knowe, bot onely he þat by experience feleþ it.”115 So, too, other Northern mystics such as Richard Rolle could be moved to ecstasy by meditations on the Passion. Meditation on the wounds, the blood covering the body, and even “his fayre face defowl[ed] with spittyng” not only may separate one from this world but also may draw one up in sweet love-longing toward Jesus who is now in heaven.116 Christ’s suffering will not be forgotten in the staging of the remainder of the Christian story in the York plays. In his first appearance after the Resurrection, he tells Mary Magdalen that she should “of mournyng amende thy moode/ And beholde my woundes wyde” (39.62–63). She finds the resurrected Christ to be “a rewfull sight;/ And all is for oure goode” (39.121–22). There is further emphasis on the wounds in the Sledmen’s Emmaus pageant, the Scriveners’ Incredulity of Thomas, and the Tailors’ Ascension. In the latter, Jesus will warn that those he will leave behind on earth will “suffir sorowes sadde and sare” and that they will be “[d]ispised and hatted” (42.68–69). The very last pageant, the Mercers’ Doomsday, stages the Last Judgment as an event when the Father will send back to earth the Son, his bloody lesions from the Scourging still visible on his “Sirke Wounded,”117 his “woundes fyue” (47.71) again bleeding as a sign of his mercy. “Here may ȝe see my woundes wide,/ Þe whilke I tholed for youre mysdede[,] / Thurgh harte and heed, foote, hande and hide,” Jesus says (47.245–47) as he asks those who have appeared for the Last Judgment to look on the sight of his “body, bak and side” (47.249). And then: “Þes bittir peynes I wolde abide— / To bye you blisse þus wolde I bleede”

114 Following the accounts in the gospels of Matthew 27:30 and Mark 15:19, spitting appears in other British mystery plays. In the Towneley Scourging (Play 22/81), the Second “Tortor” announces that he “shall spytt in [Jesus’] face” (The Towneley Plays, ed. Martin Stevens and A. C. Cawley, 2 vols., EETS, s.s.13–14 [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994], 1:272); and in the Cornish Passion a stage direction specifies that the Second “Tortor” is to spit “in faciem Jhesu” (The Ancient Cornish Drama, ed. and trans. Edwin Norris, 2 vols. [1859; reprint New York: Benjamin Blom, 1968], 1:334). This occurs also in the visual arts. A roof boss in the remarkably complete set of the symbols of the Passion at Winchester shows the face of a Jew spitting (Cave, Roof Bosses in Medieval Churches, fig. 245), and the same act is included among the symbols represented in a wall painting above an altar formerly under the East Window in York Minster (John Browne, The History of the Metropolitan Church of St. Peter, York, 2 vols. [London, 1847], pl. 150). 115 Love, Mirror of the Blessed Life, 181. For spitting in the Arras Passion, see Plesch, “Étalage complaisant? The Torments of Christ in French Passion Plays,” 465–66. 116 Richard Rolle, English Writings, ed. Hope Emily Allen (1931; reprint Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), 67–69. 117 REED: York, 1:55.

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(47.251–52). “All þis,” he says, “I suffered for þi sake— / Say, man, what suffered þou for me?” (47.275–76). The York plays of the Passion and the pageants that follow them in the cycle are not didactic in their main emphasis. They do not teach doctrine, or at least this is hardly their primary aim, but instead as part of their role in maintaining cultural memory they encourage a complex devotional spirituality that relates emotionally and existentially to the events of salvation history. The focus is not on dogma but on bringing viewers into the religious/historical scene of pain and suffering where they may be encouraged to feel compassion and thereafter choose with good will to do the Seven Corporal Acts of Mercy that are specified as the test of a person’s worthiness in Matthew 25:34–46 and in the Doomsday play. This choice must be made within the context of longing and love for the one who suffered on the cross. To be sure, such a way of perceiving the purpose of the York plays of the Passion as having principally to do with the citizens’ spirituality will tell only part of the story when all factors—theatrical, political, religious, economic, and so forth—are considered. But, importantly, it does provide a perspective that precludes seeing the York Passion pageants within the context of carnival, nor does it allow viewing them principally for the explication of doctrine or simply their educational value.118 Indeed, with regard to the York plays, Lawrence Clopper is precisely correct in observing that “the biblical drama did not support a clerical educational agenda but a spirituality reflective of late medieval lay piety.”119 More specifically, this was a drama attuned to a traditional religion that identified with the suffering of the Savior and the saints as if they were part of the viewer’s own immediate family. Indeed, these plays were intended to reinforce the collective memory of Christ’s pain and to do so as a way of promoting symbolic engagement with his suffering among a population that itself was accustomed to life in close proximity to disease, death, grief, and, in times of dearth, malnutrition and hunger.120 Such imaginative and compassionate participation in the long-ago events of the Passion could paradoxically be of great comfort and ultimately of joy, since traditional religion had taught people that the Savior’s suffering was done to rescue them from far greater pain and torture in the place of darkness to which the wicked would be consigned at Doomsday.

118 In this the civic Corpus Christi plays differed from the Creed Play; see chap. 3, above. 119 Lawrence M. Clopper, Drama, Play, and Game (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 169. 120 See my “York Guilds and the Corpus Christi Plays: Unwilling Participants?” Early Theatre 9, no. 2 (2006): 11–33.

Chapter Six

The Vernacular Plays for Good Friday and Easter from MS. e Museo 160 The two unique festival plays for Good Friday and Easter in Bodleian Library MS. e Museo 160, dating apparently from the second decade of the sixteenth century, may have an importance far beyond what has already been suggested by the scant scholarship directed to their study. They were only briefly noted by E. K. Chambers, and were dismissed by Hardin Craig as a “literary exercise.” Rosemary Woolf saw them as lacking in “dramatic action.” Even the matter of whether the Bodley plays were originally dramas with which the scribe tinkered before deciding to retain their original genre has been questioned. Yet the alternative, that they are merely adaptations of meditative prose works, seems much less plausible under the circumstances. These plays, whether or not they were ever performed, provide important corroboration for the presence of vernacular drama inside churches in Holy Week and at Easter. As such, they differ substantially from out-of-doors plays such as the great civic cycles of York, Coventry, or Chester performed at Corpus Christi or on some other occasion in the summer. Hence, whether they were ever actually staged perhaps matters less than the intent to provide vernacular drama for liturgical occasions. To be sure, their connection with a Carthusian priory in the

 These plays have not been separately edited, but have been included in The Late Religious Plays of MSS Digby 133 and e Museo 160, ed. Donald C. Baker, John L. Murphy, and Louis B. Hall, Jr., EETS, 283 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), 141–93; quotations from this edition are cited by line number and the abbreviations CB (Christ’s Burial) and CR (Christ’s Resurrection). See also The Digby Plays: Facsimiles of the Plays in Bodley MSS Digby 133 and e Museo 160, introd. Donald C. Baker and J. L. Murphy, Leeds Texts and Monographs, Medieval Drama Facsimiles 3 (Leeds: University of Leeds School of English, 1976).  E. K. Chambers, The Mediaeval Stage, 2 vols. (London: Oxford University Press, 1903), 2:129; Hardin Craig, English Religious Drama (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955), 318– 19. While the edition of Baker et al. is the starting point for current discussion (lxxiv–xcix), see also the remarks by Donald Baker, “When Is a Text a Play? Reflections upon What Certain Late Medieval Dramatic Texts Can Tell Us,” in Contexts for Early English Drama, ed. John C. Coldewey and Marianne G. Briscoe (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989), 35–37.  Rosemary Woolf, The English Mystery Plays (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1972), 331–35.  See the summary of the problem in Peter Meredith, “‘The Bodley Burial and Resurrection’: Late English Liturgical Drama?” in Between Folk and Liturgy, ed. Alan J. Fletcher and Wim Hüsken (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1997), 133–55, esp. 147–49.

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North of England creates additional difficulties but also suggests a very rich context for the preparation of these playscripts. Atypical Dramas The Bodley Christ’s Burial and Christ’s Resurrection are characterized by their strong appeal to emotion, but in other ways as well they seem quite separate from the main traditions of early English drama as understood in modern scholarship. They also differ in spirit from the traditional Latin liturgical ceremonies and dramas designated for Holy Week and Easter. While Peter Meredith has suggested tentatively that they might be viewed as “late English liturgical drama,” it is hard to see how they can be considered to have been fully absorbed into the liturgy even though they seem clearly enough to have been designed for performance within a church on the appropriate liturgical occasion. Meg Twycross claims them as “the one complete surviving example of vernacular liturgical drama,” but Richard Rastall sensibly observes that “[i]t would be quite wrong to regard these plays as ‘liturgical’ in the usual sense. . . .” It is also quite correct to assert that such an assignment of genre fails to solve the problem of their intended aesthetic and religious function as plays and their relation to other ceremonies and plays in the late Middle Ages. Yet they do, in fact, stand between the other extant vernacular plays and the liturgy as, with the possible exception of the Shrewsbury Fragments, no other extant British plays do. As late dramas, there can be no question of fitting the Bodley plays into an evolutionary scheme, but they are a challenge to the view of medieval drama that would separate liturgical strictly from vernacular drama. They indicate that an opaque wall of separation did not exist between the two acting traditions, nowadays usually thought to be more or less independent, as David Bevington has argued. The dramas in MS. e Museo 160, standing outside and yet between these two categories, very possibly would not have seemed anomalous in early Tudor England, and that there seems to be a puzzle here may owe much to our inability to penetrate fully with our scholarship the festival practices of the time. Some suggestions for potentially similar productions or rites may be available, however, in the celebrations designed by the abbess, Katherine of Sutton, for the great Benedictine convent at Barking in

 See The Late Medieval Religious Plays, ed. Baker et al., lxxxi–lxxxiii; The contents of the manuscript are treated at length by C. B. Rowntree, “A Carthusian World View: Bodleian MS. E Museo 160,” Analecta Cartusiana 35, no. 9 (1990): esp. 13, 23.  Meredith, “‘The Bodley Burial and Resurrection’: Late English Liturgical Drama,” 133–55.  Meg Twycross, “The Theatricality of Medieval English Plays,” in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre, ed. Richard Beadle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 65; Richard Rastall, The Heaven Singing (Woodbridge: D. S. Brewer, 1996), 13.  David Bevington, “Discontinuity in Medieval Acting Traditions,” in The Elizabethan Theatre V, ed. G. R. Hibbard (London: Macmillan, 1975), 1–16.

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Essex in the fourteenth century. On the whole, however, the Barking performances seem to have been closer to the conventional Latin Church drama. The Barking plays and ceremonies, which also included taking a corpus from a crucifix and washing it with water and wine in preparation for burial on Good Friday, are, nevertheless, signs of considerable variety in the liturgical marking of Holy Week and Easter, as other indications also show. For example, an image was used on Good Friday at Hereford Cathedral in connection with the Easter sepulcher, and it was washed as if in actual preparation for burial.10 Practices like this were probably widespread. Corroboration perhaps comes from an unusual source, Jennifer Alexander’s identification of the tradition of washing a secular sepulchral image mistakenly called Molly Grime in Glentham, Lincolnshire. There until 1836, an endowment paid out seven shillings annually to seven spinsters for doing the task.11 This practice was identified by Alexander as a corruption of the burial of a crucifix or corpus along with the Host in the Depositio ceremony at the Easter Sepulcher to represent the Burial of Christ. Whether the English Carthusians of the North of England performed a variant of a quasi-dramatic ceremony, utilizing a removable corpus from a cross, is not known, but it would seem that this would have been the model for the Burial in MS. e Museo 160 just as the Resurrection in this manuscript seems to echo the Visitatio Sepulchri sometimes performed in churches on Easter morning. The Carthusian Context The use of an image separated from the cross and with jointed arms and legs in the Bodley Burial is indicated by the Virgin Mary’s request to “sit vnder your rude,/ And holde my son a space” (CB 604–05). The taking of the image of the body of Christ from the cross in this instance seems to parallel the Depositio rite in Brigittine practice, and it is known that there were close connections between the Brigittines of Syon Abbey and the Carthusians. The bringing in of a life-size corpus for a devotional ceremony on Good Friday has been reported in modern times in a Brigittine house at Uden in Holland, and a corpus for this purpose from the Maribo monastery has been preserved in the Danish National Museum while elsewhere such effigies with moveable limbs were also used.12 One of these, from the Musée  See Karl Young, The Drama of the Medieval Church, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933), 1:164–67; Pamela Sheingorn, The Easter Sepulchre in England, EDAM Reference Series 5 (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1987), 131–37; and chap. 1, above. 10 Sheingorn, The Easter Sepulchre in England, 159. 11 Jennifer Alexander, “The ‘Molly Grime’ Ritual in Glentham Church, Lincolnshire,” in The Dramatic Tradition of the Middle Ages, ed. Clifford Davidson (New York: AMS Press, 2005), 48–57. 12 Audrey Ekdahl Davidson, Holy Week and Easter Ceremonies and Dramas from Medieval Sweden, EDAM Monograph Series 13 (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1990), 112, citing a conversation with Sister M. Patricia, now of Sankta Birgittas Kloster at Vadstena, Sweden; but see also the citations in chap. 1, n. 159, above. For an example of a jointed image in Spain, see Susan Verdi Webster, Art and Ritual in Golden-Age Spain

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National du Moyen Age, is shown in fig. 2, p. 44, above. If similar practices obtained among the Carthusians of England, the author of the Bodley play would have had at hand an image that could have been the model for the one used in the drama which he devised. To be sure, the Customs of the Carthusian order prohibited all images except a crucifix at each altar, in a particularly “solemn” location in the church, and in the individual cells, where an image of the Virgin Mary was also permitted.13 But the addition of another image, in this case a jointed Christ for the Deposition, would not have been unusual or surprising. The records of the London Charterhouse, for example, list a number of images beyond what the Customs normally allowed. Its church and chapels contained a gilt alabaster of the Assumption, an image of St. Michael the archangel, an alabaster of the Resurrection, an image of St. Bernard, an alabaster with the Trinity and the Doctors of the Church, alabasters with the Passion and “of saint anne and owr ladye with certeyn other Imagys,” and other images of saints. The chapter house had an alabaster of the “vij yoies of owr ladye.”14 The same excess beyond the rule was probably allowed by the priors of the Northern houses. C. B. Rowntree consulted a former Carthusian prior, the Very Reverent Guy Thackrath, who even “saw nothing implausible or contrary to the regulations in the possibility that these [Bodley] plays might actually have been performed in a Charterhouse.”15 Nevertheless, the likelihood is that the plays in MS. e Museo 160 were written for use at a church not connected with the Carthusian order just as clerical writers seem to have been involved with the preparation of the texts of the plays at York and in the Towneley manuscript, both of which, incidentally, show signs of Augustinian, Carthusian, Brigittine, and other influences.16 This is the more likely on account of the restrictive nature of Carthusian worship, which was supposed to follow the ritual of the mother house of the Grand Chartreuse and which favored private devotions though not entirely to the exclusion of corporate worship. The order’s reputation for intense spirituality was legendary,17 and the cruel suppression of the London

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 63–64, fig. 16. The Depositio, Elevatio, and Visitatio for Good Friday were not, of course, included in the Carthusian rite, which was held to be in no need of reformation at the time of the Council of Trent since it had not been susceptible to the kinds of elaborations that had taken hold elsewhere; see especially Archdale A. King, Liturgies of the Religious Orders (Milwaukee: Bruce, 1955), chap. 1, esp. 1, 29–30. 13 E. Margaret Thompson, The Carthusian Order in England (London: SPCK, 1930), 106. 14 William St. John Hope, The History of the London Charterhouse (London: SPCK, 1925), 182–87. 15 Rowntree, “A Carthusian World View,” 15 n. 16 See, for example, Alexandra F. Johnston, “The York Cycle and the Libraries of York,” in The Church and Learning in Late Medieval Society, ed. Caroline Barron and Jenny Stratford (Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2002), 355–70; and also J. W. Robinson, Studies in Fifteenth-Century Stagecraft, EDAM Monograph Series 14 (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1991), passim. 17 Carthusian rigor was still to be celebrated in the nineteenth century by Matthew Arnold in his “Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse,” which describes the “silent courts” and the monks in white brushing by as “cowled forms” “in the deepening night” on the way to

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Charterhouse by Henry VIII remains one of the greatest scandals of his reign.18 Characterized by a mixture of the eremitic and cenobitic, the Carthusians represented an extremely ascetic Christianity, with each monk assigned a cell, which he could leave only at specified times and for specific and approved purposes. The purpose of the Carthusian order was immersion in the meditative life as opposed to the active, and the very architecture of the monastery was designed to further this goal. Excavations at Mount Grace in Yorkshire and resulting conjectural reconstructions have shown how each monk would have had a cell fashioned like a small house with its proper place for various functions, especially prayer and contemplation, and with a connection to a small private garden.19 The individual monks (at Mount Grace there were no more than twenty-four in addition to the lay brothers) would recite the office, except for Matins and Vespers, both extended services, and Mass, in their cells on non-feast days while the sacristan said it in the church.20 Food would on ordinary days not be served in a refectory but be brought to the cell and passed through an opening—a practice that would contradict the idea that the Bodleian plays were designed for reading at meals with the monks of the Carthusian house assembled together. The length of the plays also militates against such a possible reading venue, at least if the reading were designed for Good Friday and Easter day. The other contents of MS. e Museo 160 have been found to be indicative of production of the manuscript at a Northern Carthusian house, possibly Mount Grace but more likely Kingston-upon-Hull; a third and less likely site that has been suggested is Axeholme in Lincolnshire.21 But again it needs to be emphasized that we know nothing about the actual original location where these dramas may have been staged. Yet since the evidence is indicative of having been written in the solitude of a Carthusian cell, we can see them to have been imbued with a meditative aim consistent with that of Nicholas Love’s Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, for in this work Love, the prior of Mount Grace in the early fifteenth century, had set out to establish a form for meditative and imaginative experience that would establish collective memory of those events at the center of the Creation, especially

participation in “the stern and naked prayer.” On the Carthusians, see also David Knowles, The Monastic Order in England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963), 374–91. 18 See the accounts in Thompson, The Carthusian Order in England, 379–485; David Mathew and Gervase Mathew, The Reformation and the Contemplative Life: A Study of the Conflict between the Carthusians and the State (London: Sheed and Ward, 1934); Lawrence Henriks, The London Charterhouse (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, 1889), 115–240; and David Knowles, The Religious Orders in England, 3 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959), 3:222–40. 19 A diagram showing the layout of Mount Grace is included in Thompson, The Carthusian Order in England, facing 237; see also Colin Platt, The Abbeys and Priories of Medieval England (New York: Fordham University Press, 1984), figs. 129–30, for a photograph of the ruins of Mount Grace and a reconstruction by Alan Sorrell. 20 Hendriks, The London Charterhouse, 32–33. 21 The Late Religious Plays, ed. Baker et al., lxxxi–lxxxiii; Rowntree, “A Carthusian World View,” 23–29.

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the Passion of Christ which was regarded as the most important redemptive act of God in history.22 The emphasis on the Passion and the suffering of Christ also found expression in a great many illuminations in the unique illustrated Carthusian Miscellany, British Library Add. MS. 37,049, which contains drawings of the wounded Christ and of his wounds as meditational images.23 For example, on fol. 24r a Carthusian monk kneels in devotion before a large wounded and bleeding heart that is being offered to him by the wounded Christ, who has lesions from the top of his head (crowned with thorns) to his feet in addition to his five wounds. The large heart is inscribed with the number of wounds (1,475) and the number of drops of blood (547,500), and the text at the right explains: O man-kynde, Hafe in þi mynde My passion smert, And þou sal fynde Me ful kynde. . . .24

This manuscript probably was produced at Mount Grace or Kingston-upon-Hull perhaps around seventy years before MS. e Museo 160 but exploits the same emphasis on Christ’s wounds and his suffering at the Crucifixion, which is presented as an act of mercy in which God’s overflowing love for humankind impels him to sacrifice his only Son. In the Bodley Burial, too, the corpus that is on display is described as wounded “From the crowne of the hede vnto the too”: “alle his body with blude is wete,/ So paynfulle was his presse” (CB 310, 317–18). The play and the Carthusian Miscellany are both infused with the same intense spirituality 22 See Nicholas Love, Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, ed. Michael G. Sargent (New York: Garland, 1992). I have here and elsewhere used the term “collective memory,” introduced by Maurice Halbwachs, as set forth in his On Collective Memory, ed. and trans. Lewis A. Coser (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), rather than “charismatic memory,” a term that might be found by some to be more immediately applicable. For the term “charismatic memory” see Rowan Williams, Why Study the Past: The Quest for the Historical Church (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 92; Williams is indebted to Georges Florovsky, “The Work of the Holy Spirit in Revelation,” The Christian East 13, no. 2 (1932): 49–64. 23 The reduced black and white facsimile of this manuscript (An Illustrated Yorkshire Carthusian Religious Miscellany: British Library London Additional MS. 37049, 3: The Illustrations, ed. James Hogg [Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Universität Salzburg, 1981]), has been cited above. For discussion of devotion to the wounds of Christ, see, for example, Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 244–46. Some common characteristics shared by MS. e Museo 160 and MS. Add. 37,049 are discussed by Rowntree, “A Carthusian World View,” 15–16; and see the relevant comments, from a different perspective, in Jeffrey Hamburger, Nuns as Artists: The Visual Culture of a Medieval Convent (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997), 101–36. 24 For discussion and transcription, see Thomas W. Ross, “Five Fifteenth-Century ‘Emblem’ Verses from Brit. Mus. Addit. MS. 37049,” Speculum 32 (1957): 275–76.

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and emotional vibrancy—qualities which, to be sure, are hardly in tune with the twentieth-century- or twenty-first-century temperament. It is no surprise, therefore, that a staging of the Burial at a colloquium in Dublin in 1980 was felt by most of the audience to be interesting but “wearisome,”25 though the opposite surely would have been true in the case of an early audience attuned to an emotional response to the wounds of Christ and to the Passion generally.26 Such a reaction, potentially eliciting the tears that the hostile Tretise of Miraclis Pleyinge reported as a normal response upon seeing religious drama,27 would have been in keeping with Carthusian spirituality28 as well as with the Northern piety shared with parts of the Continent and famously condemned by Michelangelo, who, according to Vittoria Colonna, allegedly ridiculed the work of the Flemish painters and those who wept at the sight of religious paintings.29 But the Carthusians and many others were clearly affected by the body and blood of Christ as if he were a close kin, and, indeed, the closeness between the worshipper and the worshipped is also strongly emphasized in the Carthusian Miscellany, both in the texts and in the illustrations. One poem, for example, speaks of the penitence that is required of man as being, like Christ, nailed through the hands and feet and pierced in the heart by a spear. “Þe blode and þe watyr þat fro þe hert ryns clere,/ Sal be wepyng for þe syns þou has done here” (fol. 28r).30 Without the recognition of similar feeling of closeness and kinship evident in the plays in MS. e Museo 160, the reception of the Burial especially can be only of academic interest. Almost at every turn of the page in the Carthusian Miscellany in the British Library such kinship is affirmed, and it is also evident that the illustrations actively 25 Meredith, “‘The Bodley Burial and Resurrection’: Late English Liturgical Drama?” 149. 26 For the comment that “only an audience which brought to them an alert devotional receptiveness could find [the plays] moving and unwearisome,” see Woolf, The English Mystery Plays, 335. 27 A Tretise of Miraclis Pleyinge, ed. Clifford Davidson, EDAM Monograph Series 19 (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1993), 98: “ofte sithis by siche miraclis pleyinge men and wymmen, seinge the passioun of Crist and of his seintis, ben movyd to compassion and devocion, wepinge bitere teris, thanne they ben not scorninge of God but worschiping.” 28 The ancient customs of the order provided a description of the manner of singing, which was traditionally extremely slow: “Since the business of a true monk is far more to weep than to sing, let us use our voices in such a way as to arouse in the soul that deep joy which comes from tears, rather than the emotions produced by a harmonious blending of notes. To this end, we will, by God’s grace, suppress those methods of producing sensations which when not sinful are always worthless, as for example what are called the fractio vocis, inundatio vocis, geminatio puncti, etc.—variations having nothing in common with simple devotional singing” (quoted by King, Liturgies of the Religious Orders, 32–33; italics mine). 29 Francisco de Hollanda, Dialogus, as cited by Erwin Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting, 2 vols. (1953; reprint New York: Harper and Row, 1971): 1:2; but for the reliability of this report of Michelangelo’s position on Northern art, see Laura Camille Agoston, “Male/ Female, Italy/Flanders, Michelangelo/Vittoria Colonna,” Renaissance Quarterly 58 (2005): 1175–219. 30 For the full text of this poem, see for convenience Ross, “Five Fifteenth-Century ‘Emblem’ Verses,” 278–79.

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promote mental imaging in which devotional scenes and images are made to appear in imagination. These may be concrete or symbolic. At fol. 59v a nun prays to Mary, “swete virgyn, gods moder fre,” who appears above as if in a vision surrounded by angels in the clouds in the manner of her appearance at her Assumption. At fol. 60v a generic monk at the bottom of the page looks up in devotion at a shield held by an angel who bears the arms of the Passion—that is, the Arma Christi with all the instruments of torment and execution on the cross as well as drops of Christ’s blood. Eamon Duffy notes that inexpensive woodcuts showing the Arma Christi were disseminated by Carthusian houses in England.31 Looking upon such an image was considered to be spiritually beneficent, and sometimes offered indulgences.32 The artist of the Carthusian Miscellany also depicted a few saints with whom such a kinship bond might have been established— for example, Mary Magdalen, Mary of Egypt, Antony the Hermit, and, significantly, Richard Rolle of Hampole (fol. 52v), whose spontaneous, even extravagant spirituality was in many ways consistent with the Carthusian outlook. In at least one case, a work by Adam the Carthusian has been erroneously attributed to Rolle by an editor of a printed edition.33 Rolle, who was never officially canonized,34 pursued the same identification of self with the second person of the deity suggested by many of the drawings in Add. MS. 37,049. In colloquy with Christ, Rolle would request to be bound “Fast in þi lufe” and to be given grace “To lufe þe over al thyng.”35 The fastness implied here is informed by the spiritual eroticism of the Song of Songs, and Rolle looks to Jesus as “þi weddyd keyng” and to life with him “in his hall, ever his face to se” throughout eternity.36 Elsewhere he writes: “luf copuls God and manne.” In this context, “Lufe is hatter þen þe cole” and “ravysches Cryste intyl owr hert.”37 Contemplation, in the visual depictions in the Carthusian Miscellany, is based in the heart, in which are rooted qualities such as chastity, prayer, reason, dread, pity, love, mercy, dread, and the trinity of faith, hope, and charity that are depicted like the leaves of a tree (fol. 62v). The Carthusian kneeling before the heart from which this tree grows looks upward to the vision at the very top of the illustration that has an image of pity with Jesus, attended by two angels in the clouds, displaying the wound in his side from which blood is flowing as a sign of his mercy. The contemplative task is hence ultimately a visual effort to see beyond one’s present reality to a higher transcendent reality that is linked to salvation history. The books that were present in Carthusian libraries thus naturally included such works as The Cloud of Unknowing 31 Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars, 246, fig. 99. See also Ann Eljenholm Nichols, The Early Art of Norfolk, EDAM Reference Series 7 (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2002), fig. 14. An example, in painted glass, appears as fig. 6 in the present volume. 32 Rossell Hope Robbins, “The ‘Arma Christi’ Rolls,” Modern Language Review 34 (1939): 415–21. 33 Thompson, The Carthusian Order in England, 338. 34 See David Hugh Farmer, The Oxford Dictionary of Saints (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), 424–25. 35 Richard Rolle, English Writings, ed. Hope Emily Allen (1931; reprint Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), 50. 36 Rolle, English Writings, 51. 37 Rolle, English Writings, 44.

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(British Library, Harley MS. 2373) and Nicholas Love’s translation of the PseudoBonaventura Meditations on the Life of Christ (Cambridge University Library, Add. MS. 6578) at Mount Grace, and from other houses works by Walter Hilton (Bodleian Library, Douce MS. 262) and lost books by Rolle, St. Birgitta of Sweden, Ludolphus of Saxony, and St. Bernard of Clairvaux.38 Such writings must also to be regarded as direct stimuli to the visualization involved in the dramatization of the Deposition and Burial as well as the Resurrection in the Bodley plays in MS. e Museo 160. The Bodley Christ’s Burial The first of these plays is announced in the heading to the Prologue as a “tretye or meditation off the buryalle of Criste and mowrnyng þerat,” for at the inception of the project the scribe’s plan appears not to have been the retention of a playtext at all. The reader is advised to “Rede this treyte,” which “may hym moue” and provide him with an existential experience of the sorrow of the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalen (CB 3–5). The focus of the work will be on the loss in history of the living Christ on the cross where he shed his “innocent bloode,” which on Good Friday “stremyt owt lik a floode” or “ryvere grete” (CB 6, 24–27). Only following the stage direction at line 55, which was emended to read “Off the wepinge of the thre Maries,” is there an addition written in red to indicate that “This is a play to be played, on part on Gud Friday afternone, and þe other part [Christ’s Resurrection] opon Ester Day after the resurrection in the morowe. . . .” The meditative experience of imagining the scene is thus changed into a text designed to stage the actual visual depiction of the scene with spoken lines and action. Those who act in this play are to carry the imaginative act one step further in a live performance that will aid the viewer in physically seeing what the historical event might have been like. The lamentations of the Marys, approaching Joseph of Arimathea, thus involve coming before the image of the dead Christ on a cross, for Mary Magdalen says, “O, gud Josephe, approche vs nere./ Behold hym wowndit with a spere” (CB 77–78). Like Joseph, she places emphasis on the wounds, which are noted under the terminology of the “welle of mercy” (CB 83), invoking the Fountain of Life imagery that was commonly used in reference to the holy blood.39 This iconography, which appeared in Netherlandish painting and in emblem literature, involved a representation of a fountain that might bring the saving blood of Christ to the people of God. In the iconography the symbolism is Eucharistic in reference to the wine in the Eucharist. 38 N. R. Ker, Medieval Libraries of Great Britain: A List of Surviving Books (London: Royal Historical Society, 1964), 122, 132, 178; Thompson, The Carthusian Order in England, 313–34. For a survey of the spirituality that was involved, see, for example, James Walsh’s introduction to his edition of The Cloud of Unknowing (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1981), 1–97. There were also close connections between the Carthusians and the Devotio Moderna in the Low Countries; see Rowntree, “A Carthusian World View,” 39–40. 39 See Clifford Davidson, “Repentance and the Fountain: The Transformation of Symbols in English Emblem Books,” in The Art of the Emblem: Essays in Honor of Karl Josef Höltgen, ed. Michael Bath, John Manning, and Alan R. Young (New York: AMS Press, 1993), 5–37.

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In the play it is literally the blood of Christ that is being represented as an object of devotion. The physical scene as staged is at this point not abstract symbolism but a depiction using an image of a “highe kinge þat hinges befor our face” (CB 116). It is also not the ubiquitous rood under the chancel arch with its figures of Mary and John—figures almost always present on roods in pre-Reformation parish churches— but a single crucifix painted to show Christ’s wounds that serves as a focus for the scene and the lamentations of Magdalen. Mary, however, is soon enough mentioned, and Magdalen recalls that at the Crucifixion “Sche swownyd with most dedly chere,/ Ose mothere mekest kente” (CB 155–56). This is in the context of the Magdalen’s own planctus, which will be expanded at great length as the play continues. To the modern reader or spectator, the tenor of her lament may seem to share the excesses that would appear in certain of Richard Crashaw’s poems in the seventeenth century. Like Crashaw’s verse, the Bodley lament is skillful in terms of its own extravagant aesthetic and its spiritual purpose: Thes are the swete fete I wipet with heris, And kissid so deuowtlye. And now to see tham thyrlite with a nayle, How shulde my sorowfulle harte bot fayle, And mowrn contynually? (CB 266–70)

Echoing the commonplace, which may be found in Rolle’s Passion Meditation and which identifies Jesus’ body as “lyke a boke written al with rede ynke,”40 Magdalen bids Joseph of Arimathea to look and see “How many bludy letters beyn writen in þis buke — / Smalle margente her is” (CB 272–73). The symbolism is picked up by Joseph: “this parchment is stritchit owt of syse” (CB 274). As the play’s latest Early English Text Society editors indicate, the reference here is to an iconography suggested by Christ as the Agnus Dei, the sheepskin being stretched in order to create a space for writing the Charter of Christ.41 Such a depiction is present in one of the illustrations in the Carthusian Miscellany (fol. 23r) in the British Library that has been illustrated above (see fig. 13, p. 163). Here the crucified Lord, unattached to the cross but with large nails in hands and feet, holds a parchment for all to see. In appearance it is a legal document—a charter from which hangs a seal, which has on it a wounded heart. The text offers a conditional promise to humans that they will receive the bliss of heaven if they will reciprocate the love of God and extend their love to their neighbors.42 In this illustration, Christ has not only a bleeding wound in his side but also bloody lesions over his whole body. In the background are the whips, column of the flagellation, hammer, spear, and sponge, all of them sources of great pain for the crucified one in the course of his ordeal. But the iconography is even more complex, for it also suggests the stretching of the body of Christ on the cross that was so important for late medieval depictions of him. The Carthusian Nicholas Love, following his source in the Meditations on 40 Rolle, English Writings, 36. 41 The Late Medieval Religious Plays, 223. 42 See also Douglas Gray, Themes and Images in the Medieval English Religious Lyric (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972), 129–30.

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the Life of Christ, describes one manner in which the placing of Christ on the cross may be imagined to have happened—a manner that, with the victim stretched out on the cross on the ground, emphasizes the extreme pain that would have accompanied this act. The holes in the cross were drilled too far apart, and hence to make the body fit on it the soldiers stretched it until “alle þe senewes [were] to breken, to his souereyn peyne.”43 This was seen as the fulfillment of the prophecy that “þei mihten telle and noumbre alle hees bones”44—a verse echoed by Joseph of Arimathea in the Burial: “euery bone ye may nowmbere of his body tender” (CB 302). As the Virgin Mary says in the course of her planctus, “His synows and vaynes, drawne so straytlee,/ Ar brokyn sonder by payns vngude” (CB 674–75). The iconography is common enough, and appears, for example, in painted glass now in the church of All Saints Pavement in York, in an alabaster in the Victoria and Albert Museum, and in the Speculum humanae salvationis, while a variant is shown in the Holkham Bible Picture Book.45 It also, as we have seen, was the way in which Jesus was attached to the cross in the York Corpus Christi cycle, where the second soldier says, “Þat corde [rope] full kyndely can I knytte,/ Þe comforte of þis karle to kele [comfort].”46 The invoking of intense pain is deliberate and designed also to appeal to those who felt an intense kinship with Jesus—a point also stressed in the previous chapter in the present book, along with the extending of this imagery to visualize the body of Jesus on the cross in the shape of a harp in late medieval iconography.47 Indeed, the object of the devotional image of the Crucifixion might be seen as the bringing into harmony of the human with the Savior. This interpretation should not be seen as farfetched, for one of the purposes of the Bodley Burial surely was to create a condition of being in tune spiritually with the second person of the Trinity whose Deposition and Burial were being depicted by the actors. It is the lack of being in tune, however, that is emphasized at lines 277–321 by Joseph’s long lament, which begins as do Passion lyrics normally spoken by Christ from the cross and based on the O vos omnes model:48

43 Love, Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, 177. 44 Love, Mirror, 177, referring to Psalm 23 (AV: 22), appointed for Good Friday in the liturgy. 45 For the painted glass, see Clifford Davidson and David E. O’Connor, York Art, EDAM Reference Series 1 (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1978), 75–76; this All Saints Pavement panel was formerly in the church of St. Saviour, York. For the alabaster, see Francis Cheetham, English Medieval Alabasters (Oxford: Phaidon, Christie’s, 1984), no. 170; and, for the Speculum humanae salvationis, see Adrian Wilson and Joyce Lancaster Wilson, A Medieval Mirror (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984), 186; see also W. O. Hassall, The Holkham Bible Picture Book (London: Dropmore Press, 1954), fol. 31v. 46 Crucifixio Cristi (Play 35.133–34), in The York Plays, ed. Richard Beadle (London: Edward Arnold, 1982). 47 See the discussion in F. P. Pickering, Literature and Art (Coral Gables: University of Miami Press, 1970), 285–381. 48 See Gray, Themes and Images in the Medieval English Religious Lyric, 141.

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The pain of her own suffering nearly overcomes Magdalen, who wishes to join Jesus in death; when she swoons, she and the other Marys are reprimanded by Joseph, who carefully explains to them that this death paradoxically was planned “by deth to sloo deth for mannes sake,/ And to restor hym to blysse” (CB 347–48). She is not consoled, however, even though she admits that the “bludy welles . . . dyggide so depe” of Christ’s wounds and the “bludy streymys” issuing from them are “Balme more preciose than golde,” “fontains flowinge with water of life,” and “springes of mercy” (CB 362–64, 366, 371). The play will now turn to the next scene in the Passion story, the Deposition, when Nicodemus appears coming “vpward the hille” (CB 388)—suggesting moving up from a lower level of the church, or perhaps from the west end of the nave. In his speech, he accuses the Jews of being criminally responsible—an echo of the anti-Semitic Improperia formerly included in the Good Friday liturgy. The actual Deposition itself is brief, and is done very much as in the many examples in the visual arts, which offer to be sure a limited number of choices.49 In the play Nicodemus will assist by holding one arm and helping “To knokk out thes nayles so sturdy and grete” (CB 438). He will then gently take the body in his arms while Magdalen, who urges haste before Christ’s mother Mary arrives (most likely a cue for the actor playing that role), holds his feet. The arrival of Mary “so fulle of woo” (CB 455) is marked by a swoon, an action that is described in terms of her “harte . . . plungid with payn” (CB 462), a condition explained later in terms of the Dominican iconography of “the sword of sorow” transfixing her “hart” (CB 502).50 Once more familiar iconography is invoked in the text, not in the visual representation, but again, as in the case of the well of mercy, the audience is presumably expected to recognize the Sorrows of the Virgin and the image of the sword piercing her heart imaginatively.51 In spite of efforts to remove her from the painful scene, she insists on her right as Jesus’ mother to remain. Her presence is, of course, necessary for the extended planctus that will follow as she 49 See, for example, Davidson and O’Connor, York Art, 83, for the painted glass panel now in All Saints Pavement; Cheetham, English Medieval Alabasters, nos. 186–90; Wilson and Wilson, A Medieval Mirror, 190, for the Speculum humanae salvationis. 50 For this iconography, see W. H. Gerdts, “The Sword of Sorrow,” Art Quarterly 17 (1954): 213–29. The Virgin Mary was “the first and principal patron” of each Carthusian monastery, and this was reflected in the Carthusian rite (King, Liturgies of the Religious Orders, 31–32). 51 For similarly requiring the imagining of a sword piercing the Virgin’s heart, in the Planctus Mariae from Cividale del Friuli, see Young, The Drama of the Medieval Church, 1:509 (l. 46). In iconography, however, Mary may be shown literally with a sword piercing her heart, sometimes expanded to seven swords to represent the Seven Sorrows of the Virgin.

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takes the body of her Son into her arms in the familiar posture of the “ymage of pitee” (CB 796) or Pietà. Her planctus involves a long tradition of lament,52 but here it is carefully structured to elicit tears (“Who þat cann not wepe, at me may lere,” she says [CB 637 etc.]) and the sympathy of the audience. She kisses Christ’s wounds and displays his face, whereupon she, too, blames the Jews for their cruelty at the Crucifixion. Her kiss upon the lips that Judas had kissed is followed again by the refrain “Who can not wepe, com lern at me” (CB 692–93), and she continues to hold her Son in her arms like the child that he once was. Then he had “sowket her breste” (CB 773)—the text recalls the iconography of Maria lactans.53 But also it is an invitation to the spectators to see themselves as members of the extended family comprised of all Christians past, present, and future, for symbolically on one level Mary is the Church. In this instance, her attachment and love for her Son are so great that, as preparations for interment are about to proceed, she wishes to be buried with him. His body is taken and wrapped in a gravecloth, which is removed from the face of the image for Mary his mother to have one last loving look. As for the grave itself, it was most likely a coffer tomb as in the alabasters depicting the Entombment in the Victoria and Albert Museum and in most other examples in English art.54 The act of placing Christ in the tomb is effected in the Bodley play without much ado after the Virgin Mary departs, contrary to many visual depictions in which she is present. The Magdalen, on the other hand, remains at the scene, though she, too, then departs to prepare to buy “Summe preciose balmes . . ./ Tille anoynt and honour this blessit body” (CB 845–46). The scene has been a realistic depiction of the action presented symbolically by the Depositio rite,55 which was widely performed in English churches and cathedrals before the Reformation, but, as Richard Rastall points out, the expected ritual at the interment is missing, presumably since in practice this was deferred until later when the actual Depositio was presented as part of the Good Friday liturgy.56 Nevertheless, Mary Magdalen at the end of the Good Friday Burial looks ahead to the Easter event and her postResurrection visit to the tomb, the latter much more rarely presented in England in the Visitatio Sepulchri ceremony or music-drama than on the Continent. The Visitatio was, of course, highly unlikely to have been presented in any Carthusian house, but there is no question that the author of Christ’s Resurrection in MS. e Museo was familiar with it.

52 Sandro Sticca, The Planctus Mariae in the Dramatic Tradition of the Middle Ages, trans. Joseph R. Berrigan (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1988), passim. 53 See Beth Williamson, “The Virgin Lactans as Second Eve: Image of the Salvatrix,” Studies in Iconography 19 (1998): 105–38. 54 Cheetham, English Medieval Alabasters, 191–97; see also, for example, Hassall, The Holkham Bible Picture Book, fol. 33v, and the wall paintings described by E. W. Tristram, English Wall Painting of the Fourteenth Century (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1955), esp. 154 (Chalgrove) and 164 (Croughton). 55 Sheingorn, The Easter Sepulchre in England, passim. 56 Rastall, The Heaven Singing, 292–93.

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The Bodley Christ’s Resurrection Christ’s Resurrection (designated in the manuscript as “Her begynnes his resurrection on pashe daye at Morn” [fol. 156v]) is not actually about the Resurrection event, the moment when Christ rises from the grave, for instead it dramatizes the discovery of that event by Mary Magdalen, the other holy women, and the apostles. It begins with a continuation of Mary Magdalen’s lamenting, which stresses her desire to see her Master and her denunciation of those who were responsible for his cruel death. Her speech is, of course, ironic since the audience will know that Christ has already arisen, but, like the entire play, it is infused with affective piety, which stands in contrast to the devotional mood of the Visitatio Sepulchri in its various forms, whether tending toward ritual or, as in the case of the Fleury plays and other similar examples, dramatic form.57 Nevertheless, the connection with the Type III Visitatio seems clear enough. The core of the Bodley Resurrection is the procession by the three Marys to the tomb, the angel’s “Whom seke ye, women sanctifiede?”—a direct reflection of “Quem queritis, O Christicole”— followed by the expected answer “Jhesus of Nazareth crucified” and the response: “He is resyne! He is not here!” (CR 134–35, 137). The appearance of the risen Christ “in specie ortulani” to Mary Magdalen—the mark of the Type III Visitatio—occurs later in this play, following her reentry at line 570 and her monologue in which she speaks of her great desire and love for him. She will tell the other Marys of her “sight” of her Lord and of her great joy, for he is, she tells them, “the springe and welle,/ And of my lyfe sustenaunce” (CR 641, 649–50). (These words are ones that will resonate with recent scholarship on the topic of the Magdalen and even some popular misconceptions concerning her.58) Then the author includes another scene that, while rare, was already present in the Barking Visitatio: Jesus’ second appearance in which he appears to all three of the holy women. His speech, in which he salutes and blesses the three holy women, nevertheless, is quite different from the Barking text, though it shares with it the first word of greeting, “Auete!” (CR 666).59 In the vernacular play, Jesus makes an important statement since he reports his role in the harrowing of hell: “I haue deliuert my presoners frome helle,/ And made tham sure for aye” (CR 671–72). In their response to this sight of “his joyefulle presence” and “wordes of swetnese” (CR 677–78), the women begin to sing Wipo’s Easter sequence Victime paschali, traditionally used in many of the Latin versions of the Visitatio Sepulchri, which was

57 See Young, The Drama of the Medieval Church, 1:201–410. 58 I am thinking here of the spurious fictionalized history of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code: A Novel (New York: Doubleday, 2003). 59 Young, The Drama of the Medieval Church, 1:384. Young, following the manuscript, gives only the incipit for this item; see also Sheingorn, The Easter Sepulchre in England, 136, for the full text. The inclusion of the greeting “Auete” demonstrates that the author of the Bodley play was familiar with the form of the liturgical drama that reintroduced the three Marys at this point, but he need not, of course, have known the Barking play specifically. Young gives an example from Rouen that likewise includes this scene (The Drama of the Medieval Church, 1:371).

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sung on Easter morning in the context of the liturgy.60 The sequence proclaims Christ as the sacrificial victim who has “redeemed the sheep” and “reconciled sinners to the Father.” Mention is made of the Marys and their reaction to the empty tomb from which Christ has arisen.61 In the play in MS. e Museo 160, the holy women are joined by Peter, Andrew, and John, with the rubrics specifying which portions are to be sung by them and which are to be done by the women. Only thereafter will occur the race of the apostles to the sepulcher, invariably included in the more complex forms of the Visitatio. The Bodley Resurrection will conclude with all the participants singing another sequence or a hymn celebrating the Resurrection (Scimus Christum, an item that has not been identified by scholars in any service book, is recommended) and a speech by John the Evangelist lauding the “gudnese of God” following the “sorow and mouriynge, lamentacion and wepinge” (CR 757–58) of the Passion and its aftermath of waiting for evidence of Christ’s victory over the grave. There is a strong awareness throughout the play that this point in history marks the inception of the “tym of grace” (CR 497) and the effectuation of the power of the keys “to lowse and to bynd” (CR 459–60) given to Peter,62 whose repentance after his denial of Christ during the Passion becomes part of the fabric of the play. Peter’s “teres of contrition” (CR 287) provide an emotional presentation of repentance and a reminder that human fragility could exist even among the first of the apostles. Mary Magdalen, who before her conversion “hade levid in fowlle delite,/ In syn of licherye” (CR 236–37), is another reminder of the weakness of the human condition and of the transformative power of penitence, especially when joined to total devotion to Christ. Now that Good Friday’s “gret bataile . . . on crosse of tree” (CR 251–52) is done, the fiend’s power, responsible for the Fall at the beginning of history, is terminated by the Crucifixion. But what comes through clearly is that access to the salvation promised by the death on the cross is not easy to achieve. Carthusian rigor, involving the hours of silence in meditation, the long hours from 10:00 to 2:00 in the middle of the night at prayer, the avoidance of meat at all times even when suffering from sickness, and the wearing of hair shirts, was hardly conducive to reliance on cheap grace. Christ’s suffering had not been easy: great drops of bloody “swet” had run down his body (CR 340–41), as also depicted numerous times in the Carthusian Miscellany cited above. In patience he had endured the torments, including the suffering inflicted by “the nayles and þe spere” (CR 480). He was even “Defilid with deformyte,/ Of fowlle spittinge” (CR 540–41) to the point of being unrecognizable. In response, the author of the play implies, one should not expect salvation and release from the fear of death and hell to be automatic or without difficulty for the follower of Christ. Indeed, his or her life should best be an ascetic following of 60 Rastall, The Heaven Singing, 13; Young, The Drama of the Medieval Church, passim. 61 I have quoted for convenience from the translation by Frederick Brittain in The Penguin Book of Latin Verse (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1962), 175–76. 62 For “binding and loosing,” see the brief entry in The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, ed. F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 208.

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the role model that is Jesus, and yet, like Mary Magdalen who was considered the exemplar of the meditative life, the path to be taken should also involve ecstasy and an outflowing of love for the Creator who gave life initially at the beginning of time and for the Savior who restored life through his death on the cross at the exact center of history. Conclusion The strictest forms of Northern piety provide the context in which the two plays in MS. e Museo 160 must be seen. The Carthusian author, aware of the existential realities that people faced in the period immediately before the Reformation, crafted dramas that would have resonated well with those audiences of the time—audiences made up of people concerned about their temporality and, indeed, about the uncertainties of life in a land still ravaged by disease, including, at regular intervals, the plague. The years since the arrival of the plague in 1348–1349 had inspired an intensive period of church building and renovation in England that was to come to an end abruptly in the 1530s when Henry VIII broke with Rome, closed the monasteries, dissolved chantry chapels, and began the process of iconoclasm aimed at the images and paintings which had graced the interior of the churches and cathedrals.63 The author of the Bodley plays of the Burial and Resurrection (or the scribe, if he was a different person from the author) could not have known what was to come, especially the cruel suppression of the Carthusians themselves. Those who refused to conform would be executed or starved to death in prison by the machinations of the king’s minister, Thomas Cromwell,64 who also was to see to the execution of Sir Thomas More, a man who had lived for four years “in great deuotion and prayer with the monkes of the Charterhouse of London, without any maner of profession or vowe, eyther to see and proue whether he could frame himselfe to that kinde of life, or at least . . . to sequester himselfe from all temporall and worldly exercises.”65 With the suppression of Roman Catholicism, the intense spirituality represented by the plays in MS. e Museo 160 would be widely eroded, though it, nevertheless, would emerge again not only in some of the figures of the Counter-Reformation in England, most notably in men like the martyr Robert Southwell, who was the author of a poem entitled “Saint Peters Complaint” in which the apostle, like the Peter of the Bodley Resurrection, laments his denial of his Master, but also among some Protestants such as the early Richard Crashaw, even Puritans such as Richard Baxter, but never in drama, which,

63 See especially Margaret Aston, England’s Iconoclasts, vol. 1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988); Clifford Davidson and Ann Eljenholm Nichols, eds., Iconoclasm vs. Art and Drama, EDAM Monograph Series 11 (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1989); Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars, 379–503. 64 Thompson, The Carthusian Order in England, 396–435; Mathew and Mathew, The Reformation and the Contemplative Life, 207–44. 65 Nicholas Harpsfield, The Life and Death of Sr Thomas Moore, Knight, Sometymes Lord High Chacellor of England, ed. R. W. Chambers, EETS, o.s. 186 (London: Oxford University Press, 1932), 17.

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of course, was heavily censored.66 But over the centuries that followed, the change in attitudes would be inexorable in the English-speaking world so that eventually the plays in MS. e Museo 160 would, like the extravagant verse of Richard Rolle, seem foreign and flawed in their alterity to most Anglophone audiences. Nevertheless, the Bodley plays speak out of a passionate past that was conscious of human vulnerability and of drama’s ability to engage viewers—and listeners—in an imaginative re-creation of events at the center of history. The scenes and the words of the texts clearly were able thus to come alive in the context of a world that was fragile and subject to much suffering and grief. To a small degree, it was a world of which most of us in the West who were living during the deprivations of the immediate pre-World War II period could have a faint glimpse, though younger generations seem to have lost sight totally of the world we have lost. But for the study of drama in connection with the festivals of medieval and early modern Britain, it is also a world that requires being conjured into being, at least imaginatively, if these plays are to be viewed as something more than interesting, though dull period pieces. There is also the matter of their historical importance with regard to what I have called the “Landscape of Festival Drama and Play.” It is altogether possible that these dramas provide a window into kinds of English vernacular church drama that have hitherto eluded us because of the lack of texts and more explicit references in the dramatic records.

66 Robert Southwell, The Poems, ed. James H. McDonald and Nancy Pollard Brown (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), 75–100; Louis L. Martz, The Poetry of Meditation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1954); and see my article “The Anglican Setting of Richard Crashaw’s Devotional Verse,” Ben Jonson Journal 8 (2001): 259–76.

Select Bibliography Works frequently cited as well as publications considered to be of special significance for the present study are listed. For abbreviations, see above, p. xii. Primary Sources A Calendar of Dramatic Records of the Livery Companies of London, 1485–1640. Edited by Jean Robertson and D. J. Gordon. MSC 3. Reprint New York: AMS Press, 1985. The Chester Mystery Cycle. Edited by R. M. Lumiansky and David Mills. EETS, s.s. 3, 9. London: Oxford University Press, 1974–86. The Chester Mystery Cycle: Essays and Documents. Edited by R. M. Lumiansky and David Mills. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983. The Coventry Corpus Christi Plays. Edited by Pamela M. King and Clifford Davidson. EDAM Monograph Series 27. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2000. A Description or Breife Declaration of All the Ancient Monuments, Rites, and Customes Belonge or Beinge within the Monastical Church of Durham before the Suppression. Edited by James Raine. Surtees Society 15. London: J. B. Nichols, 1842. de Voragine, Jacobus. The Golden Legend. Translated by William Granger Ryan. 2 vols. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993. Drake, Francis. Eboracum: Or The History and Antiquities of the City of York, 1736. English Gilds. Edited by Toulmin Smith. EETS, o.s. 40. London: N. Trübner, 1870. Extracts from the Municipal Records of the City of York During the Reigns of Edward IV, Edward V, and Richard III. Edited by Robert Davies. London: J. B. Nichols, 1843. Foxe, John. Acts and Monuments. Edited by G. Townsend. 8 vols. 1843–1849; reprint New York, AMS Press, 1965. Grafton, Richard. Chronicle. Edited by Henry Ellis. 2 vols. London, 1809. The Great Chronicle of London. Edited by A. H. Thomas and I. D. Thornley. London: George W. Jones, 1938. Hall, Edward. Chronicle: Containing the History of England during the Reign of Henry the Fourth and Succeeding Monarchs. 1809; reprint New York: AMS Press, 1965. Hassall, W. O. The Holkham Bible Picture Book. London: Dropmore Press, 1954. Henry, Avril. Biblia Pauperum: A Facsimile and Edition. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987. Holy Week and Easter Ceremonies and Dramas from Medieval Sweden. Edited by Audrey Ekdahl Davidson. EDAM Monograph Series 13. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1990.

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An Illustrated Yorkshire Religious Miscellany, British Library Additional MS. 37049. Edited by James Hogg. Analecta Cartusiana 95. Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Universität Salzburg, 1981. Lateinische Osterfeiern und Osterspiel. Edited byWalther Lipphardt. 9 vols. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1975–1990. The Late Medieval Religious Plays of Bodleian MSS Digby 133 and E Museo 160. Edited by Donald C. Baker, John L. Murphy, and Louis B. Hall, Jr. EETS, o.s. 283. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982. Love, Nicholas. Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ: A Critical Edition Based on Cambridge University Library Additional 6578 and 6686. Edited by Michael G. Sargeant. New York: Garland, 1992. Machyn, Henry. The Diary. Edited by John Gough Nichols. Camden Society 42. London: J. B. Nichols, 1848. The Medieval European Stage, 500–1550. Edited by William Tydeman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Meditations on the Life of Christ. Translated and edited by Isa Ragusa and Rosalie B. Green. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961. Non-Cycle Plays and Fragments. Edited by Norman Davis. EETS s.s. 1. London: Oxford University Press, 1970. The N-Town Play: Cotton MS. Vespasian D.8. Edited by Stephen Spector. EETS, s.s. 11–12. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991. Rankin, Susan. “A New English Source of the Visitatio Sepulchri.” Journal of the Plainsong and Medieval Music Society 4 (1981): 1–11. Records of Plays and Players in Lincolnshire, 1300–1585. Edited by Stanley J. Kahrl. MSC 8. Oxford, 1974 (for 1969). Records of Plays and Players in Norfolk and Suffolk. Edited by David Galloway and John Wasson. MSC 11. Oxford, 1980–1981. Records of the Gild of St. George in Norwich, 1389–1547. Edited by Mary Grace. Norfolk Record Society 9. 1937. REED: Bristol. Edited by Mark Pilkinton. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997. REED: Cambridge. Edited by Alan H. Nelson. 2 vols. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989. REED: Chester. Edited by Lawrence M. Clopper. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979. REED: Coventry. Edited by R. W. Ingram. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981. REED: Cumberland, Westmorland, Gloucestershire. Edited by Audrey Douglas and Peter Greenfield. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986. REED: Devon. Edited by John Wasson. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986. REED: Dorset, Cornwall. Edited by Rosalind Conklin Hayes, C. E. McGee, Sally L. Joyce, and Evelyn S. Newlyn. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999. REED: Herefordshire, Worcestershire. Edited by David N. Klausner. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990.

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REED: Kent, Diocese of Canterbury. Edited by James M. Gibson. 3 vols. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002. REED: Lancashire. Edited by David George. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991. REED: Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Edited by J. J. Anderson. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982. REED: Norwich 1540–1642. Edited by David Galloway. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984 REED: Oxford. Edited by John Elliott, Alan H. Nelson, and Diana Wyatt. 2 vols. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004. REED: Shropshire. Edited by J. Alan B. Somerset. 2 vols. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994. REED: Somerset, Including Bath. Edited by James Stokes and Robert J. Alexander. 2 vols. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996. REED: York. Edited by Alexandra F. Johnston and Margaret Rogerson. 2 vols. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979. The Register of the Guild of Corpus Christi in the City of York. Edited by Robert H. Skaife. Surtees Society 57. Durham: Andrews, 1872. Religious Lyrics of the 14th Century. Edited by Carleton Brown, 2nd ed., rev. G. V. Smithers. 1952; reprint Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957. Sharp, Thomas. A Dissertation on the Mysteries Anciently Performed at Coventry. Coventry, 1825. Sheingorn, Pamela. The Easter Sepulchre in England. EDAM Reference Series 5. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1987. The Staging of Religious Drama in Europe in the Later Middle Ages. Edited by Peter Meredith and John T. Tailby. EDAM Monograph Series 4. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1983. Stow, John. A Survey of London. Edited by Charles Lethbridge Kingsford. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1908. The Towneley Plays. Edited by Martin Stevens and A. C. Cawley. EETS, ss. 13–14. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. A Tretise of Miraclis Playinge. Edited by Clifford Davidson. EDAM Monograph Series 19. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1993. Tudor Royal Proclamations. Edited by Paul L. Hughes and James F. Larkin. 3 vols. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964–1969. Visitation Articles and Injunctions of the Period of the Reformation. Edited by Walter Howard Frere. 3 vols. London: Longmans Green, 1910. Walters, H. B. London Churches at the Reformation. London: SPCK, 1939. York Memorandum Book, Lettered A/Y in the Guildhall Muniment Room. Edited by Maud Sellers. 2 vols. Surtees Society, 120, 125. Durham: Andrews, 1912–1915. The York Plays. Edited by Richard Beadle. London: Edward Arnold, 1992. Young, Karl. The Drama of the Medieval Church. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933.

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Secondary Sources Anderson, M. D. Drama and Imagery in English Medieval Churches. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963. Baldwin, Elizabeth. Paying the Piper: Music in Pre-1642 Chester. EDAM Monograph Series 29. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2002. Beadle, Richard, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Beckwith, Sarah. Signifying God: Social Relation and Symbolic Act in the York Corpus Christi Plays. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001. Bjork, David A. “On the Dissemination of Quem quaeritis and the Visitatio sepulchri and the Chronology of Their Early Sources.” CompD 14 (1980): 1–34. Bossy, J. “Blood and Baptism: Kinship, Community and Christianity.” Studies in Church History 10 (1973): 129–43. Briscoe, Marianne G., and John C. Coldewey, eds. Contexts for Early English Drama. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989. Brown, Sarah. “Our Magnificent Frabrick”: York Minster, An Architectural History c 1220–1500. Swindon: English Heritage, 2003. Butterworth, Philip. Magic on the Early English Stage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. ———. Theatre of Fire: Special Effects in Early English and Scottish Theatre. London: Society for Theatre Research, 1998. Cave, C. J. P. Roof Bosses in Medieval Churches. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1948. Chambers, E. K. The Mediaeval Stage. 2 vols. London: Oxford University Press, 1903. Cheetham, Francis. English Medieval Alabasters, with a Catalogue of the Collection in the Victoria and Albert Museum. Oxford: Phaidon, Christie’s, 1984. Clopper, Lawrence M. Drama, Play, and Game: English Festive Culture in the Medieval and Early Modern Period. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001. ———. “History and Development of the Chester Cycle.” Modern Philology 75 (1978): 219–46. Coldewey, John. “Early Essex Drama: A History of Its Rise and Fall, and a Theory Concerning the Digby Plays.” Ph.D. diss. University of Colorado, 1972. ———. “Plays and ‘Play’ in Early English Drama.” RORD 28 (1985): 181–88. Cowling, Douglas. “The Liturgical Celebration of Corpus Christi in Medieval York.” REED Newsletter 1, no. 2 (1976): 5–9. Cox, J. Charles. Churchwardens’ Accounts. London: Methuen, 1913. Davidson, Clifford, ed. Deliver Us from Evil: Essays in Symbolic Engagement in Early Drama. New York: AMS Press, 2004. ———, ed. The Dramatic Tradition of the Middle Ages. New York: AMS Press, 2005. ———. From Creation to Doom: The York Cycle of Mystery Plays. New York: AMS Press, 1984.

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———. History, Religion and Violence: Cultural Contexts for Medieval and Renaissance Drama. Variorum Collected Studies. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002. ———, ed. The Iconography of Heaven. EDAM Monograph Series 21. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1994. ———. Illustrations of the Stage and Acting to 1580. EDAM Monograph Series 16. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1991. ———. “Improvisation in Medieval Drama.” In Improvisation in the Arts of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, ed. Timothy McGee, 193–221. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2003. ———, ed. Material Culture and Medieval Drama. EDAM Monograph Series 25. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1999. ———. “The Middle English Saint Play and Its Iconography.” In The Saint Play in Medieval Europe, ed. Clifford Davidson, 31–122. EDAM Monograph Series 8. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1986. ———. Technology, Guilds, and Early English Drama. EDAM Monograph Series 23. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1996. ——— and Jennifer Alexander. The Early Art of Coventry, Stratford-uponAvon, Warwick, and Lesser Sites in Warwickshire. EDAM Reference Series 4. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1985. ——— and David E. O’Connor. York Art. EDAM Reference Series 1. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1978. ——— and Thomas H. Seiler, eds. The Iconography of Hell. EDAM Monograph Series 17. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1992. DeMolen, Richard L. “Pueri Christi Imitatio: The Festival of the Boy Bishop in Tudor England.” Moreana 45 (1975): 17–28. Diller, Hans-Jürgen. “Laughter in Medieval English Drama: A Critique of Modernizing and Historical Analyses.” CompD 36 (2002): 1–19. ———. The Middle English Mystery Play: A Study in Dramatic Speech Form. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Duffy, Eamon. The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400– 1580. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992. Dutka, JoAnna. “Mystery Plays at Norwich: Their Formation and Development.” Leeds Studies in English 10 (1978): 106–20. Farmer, David Hugh. The Oxford Dictionary of Saints. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978. Fletcher, Alan J. Drama, Performance, and Polity in Pre-Cromwellian Ireland. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984. ——— and Wim Hüsken, eds. Between Folk and Liturgy. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1997. Forrest, John. The History of Morris Dancing. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999. Freedberg, David. The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989. Gibson, Gail McMurray. The Theater of Devotion: East Anglian Drama and Society in the Late Middle Ages. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989.

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Gibson, James M., and Isobel Harvey. “A Sociological Study of the New Romney Passion Play.” RORD 39 (2000): 209–14. Gray, Douglas. Themes and Images in the Medieval English Religious Lyric. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972. Haastrup, Ulla. “Medieval Props in the Liturgical Drama.” Hafnia 11 (1987): 133– 70. Halbwachs, Maurice. On Collective Memory, ed. and trans. Lewis A. Coser. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. Hardison, O. B., Jr. Christian Rite and Christian Drama in the Middle Ages: Essays in the Origin and Early History of Modern Drama. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1965. Hindley, Alan, ed. Drama and Community: People and Plays in Medieval Europe. Turnhout: Brepols, 1999. Hutton, Ronald. The Rise and Fall of Merry England: The Ritual Year 1400–1700. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. ———. The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. James, Mervyn. “Ritual, Drama, and Social Body in the Late Medieval English Town.” Past and Present 98 (1983): 3–29. Johnston, Alexandra F. “The Feast of Corpus Christi in the West Country.” Early Theatre 6 (2003): 15–34. ———. “The Guild of Corpus Christi and the Procession of Corpus Christi in York.” Mediaeval Studies 38 (1976): 372–84. ———. “The Plays of the Religious Guilds of York: The Creed Play and the Pater Noster Play.” Speculum 50 (1975): 55–90. ———. “The Procession and Play of Corpus Christi.” Leeds Studies in English, n.s. 6 (1973–1974): 55–62. ———. “Traders and Playmakers: English Guildsmen and the Low Countries.” In England and the Low Countries in the Late Middle Ages, ed. Caroline Barron and Nigel Saul, 99–114. Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 1995. ——— and Wim Hüsken, eds. English Parish Drama. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1966. ——— and Sally-Beth MacLean. “Reformation and Resistance in Thames/Severn Parishes.” In The Parish in English Life, ed. Kathleen L. French, Gary G. Gibbs, and Beat A. Kümin, 178–200. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1977. King, Pamela M. “Corpus Christi Plays and the ‘Bolton Hours’ 1: Tastes in Lay Piety and Patronage in Fifteenth-Century York.” METh 18 (1996): 46–62. ———. “Seeing and Hearing: Looking and Listening.” ET 3 (2000): 155–66. Kipling, Gordon. Enter the King: Theatre, Liturgy, and Ritual in the Medieval Civic Triumph. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998. Knight, Alan E., ed. The Stage as Mirror: Civic Theatre in Late Medieval Europe. Woodbridge: D. S. Brewer, 1997. Knight, Stephen, and Thomas Ohlgren, eds. Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Tales. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1997. Knowles, John A. Essays in the History of the York School of Glass Painting. London: SPCK, 1936.

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Lake, Peter, and Michael Questier. The Antichrist’s Lewd Hat: Protestants, Papists and Players in Post-Reformation England. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002. Lancashire, Anne. London Civic Theatre: City Drama and Pageantry from Roman Times to 1558. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Lancashire, Ian. Dramatic Texts and Records: A Chronological Topography of Britain to 1558. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984. MacLean, Sally-Beth. Chester Art. EDAM Reference Series 3. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1982. ———. “Festive Liturgy and the Dramatic Connection: A Study of the Thames Valley Parishes.” Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England 8 (1996): 49–62. ———. “King Games and Robin Hood: Play and Profit at Kingston-upon-Thames.” RORD 29 (1986–87): 85–94. ———. “Marian Devotion in Post-Reformation Chester: Implications of the Smiths’ ‘Purification’ Play.” In The Middle Ages in the North-West, ed. Tom Scott and Pat Starkey, 237–55. Liverpool: Leopard’s Head Press, 1995. Mâle, Emile. Religious Art in France: The Late Middle Ages: A Study of Medieval Iconography and Its Sources. Bollingen Series 90, pt. 3. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986. Marrow, James H. Passion Iconography in Northern European Art of the Late Middle Ages. Kortrijk: Van Ghemmert, 1979. ———. “Symbol and Meaning in Northern European Art of the Late Middle Ages and Early Renaissance.” Simiolus 16 (1986): 150–69. Marshall, John. “Gathering in the Name of the Outlaw: REED and Robin Hood, 65– 84. In Audrey Douglas and Sally-Beth MacLean, eds., REED in Review: Essays in Celebration of the First Twenty-Five Years. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006. __________. “‘goon into Bernysdale’: The Trail of the Paston Robin Hood Play,” Leeds Studies in English, n.s. 29 (1998): 185–217. McKinnell, John. The Sequence of the Sacrament at Durham. Middlesbrough: Northeast England History Institute, University of Teeside, 1998. Mellinkoff, Ruth. Outcasts: Signs of Otherness in Northern European Art of the Late Middle Ages. 2 vols. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993. Mezey, Nicole. “Creed and Prophets Series in the Visual Arts, with a Note on Examples in York.” EDAM Newsletter 2, no. 1 (1979): 7–10. Mill, Anna Jean. Mediaeval Plays in Scotland. 1924; reprint New York and London: Benjamin Blom, 1969. Mills, David. Recycling the Cycle: The City of Chester and Its Whitsun Plays. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998. ———. “Religious Drama and Civic Ceremonial.” In A. C. Cawley et al. Medieval Drama, 152–206. The Revels History of Drama in English, 1. London: Methuen, 1983. ———. “‘Some Precise Cittizins’: Puritan Objections to Chester’s Plays.” Leeds Studies in English, n.s. 29 (1998): 219–33.

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———, ed. Staging the Chester Cycle. Leeds: University of Leeds School of English, 1985. Muir, Lynette. The Biblical Drama of Medieval Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Nelson, Alan H. The Medieval English Stage. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974. Neuss, Paula, ed. Aspects of Early English Drama. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1983. Nichols, Ann Eljenholm. The Early Art of Norfolk. EDAM Reference Series 7. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2002. ———. Seeable Signs: The Iconography of the Seven Sacraments. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1994. Norton, Michael. “Of ‘Stages’ and ‘Types’ in Visitatione Sepulchri.” CompD 21 (1987): 34–61, 127–44. Olson, Glending. Literature as Recreation in the Later Middle Ages. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982. Palliser, D. M., ed. The Cambridge Urban History of England. 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. ———. Tudor York. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979. Palmer, Barbara D. “Corpus Christi ‘Cycles’ in Yorkshire: The Surviving Records.” CompD 27 (1993): 218–31. ———. The Early Art of the West Riding of Yorkshire. EDAM Reference Series 6. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1990. ———. “‘Towneley Plays’ or ‘Wakefield Cycle’ Revisited.” CompD 21 (1987–88): 318–48. Pickering, F. P. Literature and Art. Coral Gables: University of Miami Press, 1970. Phythian-Adams, Charles. “Ceremony and the Citizen: The Communal Year at Coventry.” In Crisis and Order in English Towns, 1500–1700, ed. Peter Clark and Paul Slack, 57–85. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1972. Plesch, Véronique. “Étalage complaisant? The Torments of Christ in the French Passion Plays.” CompD 28 (1994–95): 458–85. Powell, Sue. “Pastoralia and the Lost York Plays of the Creed and Paternoster.” European Medieval Drama 8 (2004): 35–50. Raine, Angelo. Mediaeval York: A Topographical Survey Based on Original Sources. London: John Murray, 1955. Rastall, Richard. The Heaven Singing. Music in Early English Religious Drama, 1. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1996. Rees Jones, Sarah, ed. The Government of Medieval York: Essays in Commemoration of the 1396 Royal Charter. Borthwick Studies in History 3. York: University of York, 1997. Robinson, J. W. “The Art of the York Realist.” Modern Philology 60 (1962–1963): 241–51. ———. Studies in Fifteenth-Century Stagecraft. EDAM Monograph Series 14. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1991. Ross, Ellen M. The Grief of God: Images of the Suffering Jesus in Late Medieval England. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.

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Rubin, Miri. Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Rushforth, Gordon McN. Medieval Christian Imagery, as Illustrated by the Painted Windows of Great Malvern Priory Church, Worcestershire. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1936. Sandler, Lucy Freeman. Gothic Manuscripts 1285–1385. Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles 5. 2 vols. London: Harvey Miller, 1986. Scherb, Victor I. Staging Faith: East Anglian Drama in the Later Middle Ages. Madison and Teaneck: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 2001. Scott, Kathleen. Later Gothic Manuscripts 1390–1490. Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles 6. 2 vols. London: Harvey Miller, 1996. Stacpoole, Alberic, ed. The Noble City of York. York: Cerialis Press, 1972. Stokes, James. “Robin Hood and the Churchwardens in Yeovil.” Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England 3 (1986): 1–25. Streitberger, W. R. Court Revels, 1485–1559. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994. Strong, Roy. Splendor at Court: Renaissance Spectacle and the Theater of Power. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1973. Thomas, A. H., and I. D. Thornley, eds. The Great Chronicle of London. London: George W. Jones, 1938. Travis, Peter W. Dramatic Design in the Chester Cycle. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982. Tristram, E. W. English Wall Painting of the Fourteenth Century. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1955. Twycross, Meg, and Sarah Carpenter. Masks and Masking in Medieval and Early Tudor England. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002. ———, ed. Festive Drama. Woodbridge: D. S. Brewer, 1996. Walker Greg. The Politics of Performance in Early Renaissance Drama. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Westfall, Suzanne. Patrons and Performance: Early Tudor Household Revels. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990. White, Paul Whitfield. Theatre and Reformation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Wickham, Glynne. Early English Stages 1300 to 1576. 3 vols. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1959–1981. Wiles, David. The Early Plays of Robin Hood. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1981. Wilson, Adrian, and Joyce Lancaster Wilson. A Medieval Mirror: Speculum humanae salvationis. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984. Withington, Robert. English Pageantry: An Historical Outline. 2 vols. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1918. Woodforde, Christopher. The Norwich School of Glass-Painting in the Fifteenth Century. London: Oxford University Press, 1950. Woolf, Rosemary. The English Mystery Plays. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1972.

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Wright, A. R. British Calendar Customs. 3 vols. London: Folk-Lore Society, 1936– 1940. Wright, Stephen K. “The York Creed Play in the Light of the Innsbruck Playbook of 1391.” Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England 5 (1991): 27–53. Wyatt, Diana. “The English Pater Noster Play: Evidence and Extrapolations.” CompD 30 (1996–1997): 431–51.

Index Aberdeen, Holy Blood play at 57–8 Accipite spiritum sanctum 94, 130 Alençon, staging at 118 Alexander, Jennifer 171 Anderson, M. D. 95 angels, mechanical 64 Anglo, Sydney 38 Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury 151 anti-Semitism 31, 73–5, 78, 78, 143, 147, 180 Aquinas, St. Thomas 74–5, 82 Arendt, Hannah 158 Arma Christi 86–7, 103, 176, fig. 6 Arnold, Matthew 172 Arthur, Tudor prince 24, 46 Arundel, Thomas, archbishop 95 Ascension ceremony 43 Ascension play, at Innsbruck 105 Ascendo Patrem meum 137 Ashburton 18, 58 Ashley, Kathleen 148 Ashton, Thomas, schoolmaster 115 Aske, Robert 149, 162 Assumption Elche play 45 pageant of 40–1 play or show of 46–7, 57 Axeholme Priory 173 Badby, John, Lollard martyr 148 Bale 98 Barker, Margaret 64 Barking 41 Benedictine convent 28, 41, 170, 182 basse dance 17 Bassingbourn 33 Baxter, Richard 184 Becket, St. Thomas 22, 40 bells 3, 91, 119 Betley Window 112–13, fig. 9 Beverley 9, 68–9 Guild of St. Mary 20 Bevington, David 170 Biblia Pauperum 22, 64, 101, 133 Bishop’s Lynn 64, 79

Blackburn, Nicholas, Sr. 93 blasphemy 74 blood 22, 57, 72, 76–7, 135–6, 155, 159–60, 164, 166, 174–5, 177–8 Blythe, Geoffrey, bishop 7 Bodleian Library, Oxford MS. Douce 262 177 MS. e Museo 160 30, 169–85 MS. Rawlinson liturg.D.4 27 Boleyne, Anne 148 Bolton Hours 154, 160 Boston 112 Boughton under Blean 53 Bourne, Henry 67 de Bovesden, Thomas, glass painter 159 Boxford 8 boy bishop 4–10, 45 Brigden, Susan 10 Brigittine Mass devotion 65 Bristol 6–7, 17 British Library, London MS. Add. 35,290 52, 141 MS. Add. 37,049 164, 174, 176 MS. Harley 2124 64, 132 MS. Harley 2373 177 MS. Harley 7026 75 Brookland 112 Brooks, John, mason 128 Brown, Sarah 6, 99 Bucer, Martin 115 Bungay, pageants at 59 de Burgh, John 98 Burton, Henry 111 Bury St. Edmunds 72 Bynham, Thomas, friar 69 Cambridge 12, 38, 45, 58 King’s College 7 University Library, MS. Add. 6578 177 Campion, Edmund 149 Candlemas 20–24 Candlemas Day and þe Kyllyng of þe Children of Israelle 21–3 Canterbury 18, 22, 46, 59–60 Carew, Richard 109–10

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Carlyle 45 Carthusian Miscellany 164, 174–6, 178, 183 Chambers, E. K. 8, 169 Charles V, emperor 39 Charter of Christ 164–5, 178, fig. 14 Chester 38, 42, 46 Abbey, later Cathedral 52, 132, 136, 138 cycle plays 26, 49–52, 63–4, 94–5, 107, 118, 120, 169 Chichele, Henry, archbishop 33 Children of the Chapel 16 Christian, king of Denmark 39 Christmas 8–14, 16–19 game 18 Lord of 12 Christus resurgens 30 church ale 110–11 Churchdown 111 Churchyard, Thomas 115–16 Clement, pope; supposed indulgences of 130 Clitherow, Margaret, martyr 149–50, 154 Clopper, Lawrence 36, 64, 107, 167 Cloud of Unknowing 176–7 Colet, John 10 Colonna, Vittoria 175 de la Cornier, William, bishop 6 Cornish, William 14, 16 Corporal Acts of Mercy 167 Corpus Christi plays 3–4, 24, 36, 43, 49–79, 81, 127, 141–67 Corpus Christi Trinity 83–5, 159, fig. 5 Coughton 98 Coventry 34, 38, 43, 45 cycle plays 26, 43, 66, 72, 100, 118, 120, 147, 169 Destruction of Jerusalem 147 St. Mary’s Cathedral 33, 66 Cowling, Douglas 92 Craig, Hardin 95, 169 Crashaw, Richard 178 Credo tapestries 101 Cromwell, Oliver 71 Cromwell, Thomas 162 Croo, Robert 43, 66 Croxton; see Play of the Sacrament Cutts, Cecilia 73 Daddi, Bernardo 78

dance drama, from Kerala 129 Dangerous Bride 114 Dartmouth, costumes at 27 Dectot, Xavier 43 De heretico comburendo 74, 148 Depositio 29, 171–2, 181, fig. 2 devils 42, 52, 136, 183 Diller, Hans-Jürgen 146, 155 Dix, Gregory 65 Dobson, R. B. 142–3 Dohi, Yumi 64 Doncaster 4, 59 Douglas, Audrey 69 dragons 14, 32, 34–6, 41–2, 56, 115, 124, fig. 1 Drake, Francis, York historian 149, 160 Drayton Beauchamp, iconography at 98 Drunken Masque 13 Dublin 27, 34, 56, 71 colloquium at 175 St. Patrick’s Cathedral 20, 125 Dudley, Robert 16–17 Duffy, Eamon 65, 101, 116, 164, 176 Dugdale, William 16, 52–3, 66 Durham 4, 29–31, 45, 64, 73 Dutka, JoAnna 120 Easter sepulchers 27, 29, 171 East Harling, iconography at 121, fig. 10 Edward the Confessor 14–15 Edward, prince 34 Edward III 33 Edward VI 14, 130 Elche, Assumption play 45–6, 57 Elevatio 29–30, 172 Elizabeth I 10, 17–18, 51, 57, 104, 112, 115, 144, 150, 160 Ely 47 Epiphany 19 play of 18 Erasmus, Desiderius 9 Eve, Thomas, singing man 57 execution 148–50 Exercitum Pater Noster 101 Exeter 8–10, 19, 29, 38, 59–60 Cathedral 8, 10 Eynsham 28 Fairford, iconography at 98, 162, fig. 13 Faversham 8 Feast of Fools 9

Index Feejohn, Christopher, painter 41 Feliciana and Sabina, play of 115 Felsted, of London 41 Ferrers, George 13 Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, MS. 34 87–8, fig. 7 Five Wounds 103, 160, 162–4, 166, 174, 180, fig. 13 Fletcher, Alan 71, 125 Fleury Playbook 5, 11, 21 Florence, play at 20–21 Forsett, John, scrivener 118 Fortescue, Sir John 16 Le Fortresse Dangerus 15 Fountain of Life 177 Foxe, John 10, 148 Frater Thoma causa tristicie 32 Friskney 75–6, fig. 3 Fulgens and Lucrece 17 Gascoigne, chief justice 146 Gerard, John 150 giants 39, 41–3 Gibson, Gail McMurray 72, 145 Gibson, James M. 53, 59–60, 116, 118–19 Gibson, Mel 134 Gibson, Richard, property designer 15, 117 Gladman, John 12 Glasgow 54 Glentham, “Molly Grime” ceremony 171 Gloria, angels’ song 11, 32, 132 Gloucester 5 Godolphin, John, canonist 74 Goldberg, Jeremy 142–3 Golden Fleece, pageant of 39 Golden Legend 14, 36 Goodall, Mr., schoolmaster 54 Goodman, Christopher, precisian 51–2, 63, 131 Googe, Barnabe 25, 43 Gorboduc 16–17 Grafton, Richard 39 Gray, Douglas 162 Great Dunmow 54–55 Great Malvern, iconography at 68, 98, 102, 162 Great Yarmouth 54 Greenberg, Noah 21 Greenwich 15 Gregory, John, bishop 6 Grindal, Edmund, archbishop 12

Hadleigh 112 Halbwachs, Maurice 174 Hall, Edward 15 Hampton Court, Herefordshire 98 Hardison, O. B., Jr. 25 Hardware, Henry 42 Harrison, Frank Ll. 11 Hart, William, martyr 144 Harvey, Isobel 116 Harwick 12 Heller Hours 148 Henley 28, 110–11 Henry IV 146 Henry V 148 Henry VI 101 Henry VII 13–14, 109, 148 Henry VIII 10, 13–15, 20, 38, 117, 162, 173, 184 Hereford 109 Cathedral 109, 171 Herod 58, 118, 128, 133, 153 Hilarius 5 Hill-Vásques, Heather 75 Hilton, Walter 177 hobbyhorse 18, 40, 112 Holbeach 46 Holcot, Robert 58 Holkham Bible Picture Book 137 Holy Innocents 6–8, 21–2 Hosanna, filio David 134 Hours of Elizabeth the Queen 68 Hutton, Matthew, dean, later archbishop 104–5, 143 Hutton, Ronald 32, 37, 61 Infidelis incursum populi 31 Innsbruck 105 Inns of Court 12, 16–17 Ipswich 59 James, Mervyn 65, 91 James I, king 69 John of Grimestone 152, 154 Johnston, Alexandra F. 49, 61, 104, 143 Julian the Apostate, play of 115 Kahrl, Stanley J. 54, 112–13 Katherine of Sutton, abbess 28, 170 Kendal 69–71 Kilkenny 71 King Game 12, 109

199

200

Festivals and Plays in Late Medieval Britain

King, Pamela 143, 155 King’s Lynn; see Bishop’s Lynn Kingston-on-Thames 28–9, 37, 111 Kingston-upon-Hull, priory at 173–4 Kirschmayr, Thomas 25, 43 Kolve, V. A. 49 Kristeller, Paul 101 Lambarde, William 125 Lancashire, Anne 36 Lancaster 70–71 Lateran Council 74 Lauda Sion salvatorem 74, 82 Lay Folks Mass Book 95 Layton, Roger 148 Ledes, John, painter 41 Leeds 9 Leeds, John, painter 41 Leicester 33, 107–8 Leland, John 37, 116 Lent 24, 32 Leo XIII, pope 101 Letamini in Domino 128 Leventhorp Missal 87 Lichfield Cathedral 11, 31 Lincoln 112–14 Cathedral 18, 26, 32–3, 45, 66, 86, 125 Lindenbaum, Sheila 39 Lisle Letters 41 Lollards 73, 95, 148 London 6–7, 9, 15, 17, 20, 24, 56,78, 109, 119, 137, 149 Charterhouse 172–3, 184 Midsummer Watch 38–42 Passion 36, 70 St. Paul’s Cathedral 40, 125 Long Melford 8, 24, 29 Lord and Lady of May 39; see also Queen of May Lord Mayor’s Show 39 Lord of Misrule 12–13, 16, 108, 112, 124 Lostwithiel 109 Louth 8, 54 Love, Nicholas 63, 95, 141, 150–52, 154, 164, 173, 177, 178 Lovel Lectionary 75 Low Countries 62 Ludlow, iconography at 98 Ludolphus of Saxony 151, 177 Ludus Corpus Christi 66 Ludus de Sancto Thoma didimo 32

Ludus filiorum Israel 58 Lydgate, John 56, 64, 78 Lyme Regis 109 Machyn, Henry 10, 13, 16, 39 MacLean, Sally-Beth 50 Magi play 3, 18 Maidstone, Clement 146 Maidstone, Richard 137 Mâle, Émile 96 Mane nobiscum 31 Mandela, Nelson 156 Man of Sorrows 155 Mariager, Denmark, Brigittine monastery at 30 Maribo, Denmark, Brigittine monastery at 171 Marlow, Richard, mayor 70 Marrow, James 155 Marshall, John 37 Marsh’s Library, Dublin, MS. Z.4.2.20 27 Marten, Gover, deviser 118 Martin, Roger 29 Mary Tudor, queen 10, 14, 18, 89, 117, 144, 148 masks 13, 17, 68, 104, 136 Masque of Beauty and Desire 16 Mass of St. Gregory 77, 86 Mattishall, iconography at 98, 101 May Day 36 Mayowe, Thomas, player 20 Meditations on the Life of Christ 95, 150, 152, 154 Melton, William 62, 65, 89, 91 Mepham, W. A. 55 Meredith, Peter 19, 127–8, 170 Methley, iconography at 162 Mezey, Nicole 96–7, 99 Michelangelo 175 Midsummer 13, 36, 38–9, 50, 71, 126, 138 Midsummer shows 40–43, 57 Mills, David 51, 126–7 Minster 8 minstrels 39–40, 108–9, 132 Minstrel Court 42 Un Miracolo de Corpo del Cristo 75 Mirk, John 65, 67 Mons, Harrowing from 136 More, Sir Thomas 148, 150, 184 More, William, prior 32 Morison, Sir Richard 38

Index morris dancers 39–40, 42, 45, 112 Morton, John, cardinal 17 Mount Grace Priory 150, 164, 173–4, 177 Muir, Lynette R. 72 mummers 17 Nativity play 18 Nedham, Christopher, painter 41 Nelson, Alan H. 8, 66 Netherbury 112 Newcastle upon Tyne 42, 67–8 Newhall, William 130 New Romney 9, 15 Passion Play 116–20 Nichols, Ann Eljenholm 73, 98 Nicodemus, gospel of 135 Northern Legendary 95 Northumberland, Earl of 20, 26 Norton, Thomas 16–17 Norwich 21–2, 32–5, 45, 108, 115, 120–26 Castle Museum MS. 158.926f 23 Cathedral 22, 26, 108, 120–21, 126 diocese 12 Whitsun plays 120, 123–4 Nunc dimittis 23 N-Town plays 19, 47, 49 Ordo Rachelis 21–2 organs 92 O sacrum convivium 72 O vos omnes 158, 179 Owst, G. R. 164 Oxford 45 Lincoln College 6 Magdalen College 12, 26–7 Palmesel 25 Palm Sunday 24–5 Pange lingua 90 Paris Resurrection play 130 Parnell, John, maker of pageants 55 Passion Gospel, singing of 29 Passion play at Arras 154 at London 36 at Lucerne 125 at New Romney 116–20 at St. Geneviève 154 at Shrewsbury 115 from Cornwall 166 of Gréban 145

201

Passion, signs of 128 Paston, John II 58 Patricia, Sr. M. 171 Pentecost; see Whitsun Peregrinus 31–2 Play of the Sacrament 49, 53, 71–9 Phythian-Adams, Charles 3–4 Pilgrimage of Grace 149, 160, 162 Planctus Mariae, from Cividale 180 de la Pole, John 58 Pontefract 58 Preston 70–71 processions 16, 24, 33, 56, 66, 71–2, 78, 87–92, 105, 107, 160 Protestantism 10, 43, 50, 61, 63–4, 82, 104, 144, 149–50, 184 Prudentius 153 puppets 43, 64 Purification 20–24 pyrotechnics 71, 119, 123, 125–6, 130 Queen Mary Psalter 98, 100 Queen of May 45 Queen’s Players 60 Quem certis ascendisse super astra 45 Quem queritis; see also Visitatio Sepulchi 11 Rankin, Susan 28 Rastall, Richard 23, 32, 47, 52, 105, 109, 132, 137, 170, 181 Reading 28–9, 58, 66 Reformation 43, 51, 56 Regularis Concordia 25 relics 33–4, 50, 72, 144; see also blood Respublica 14 Resurrection plays 26, 29, 31, 130 Revetour, William 92–3, 96, 103 Ricart, Robert 6, 17 Richard II 137 Richard III 81, 94, 104 Ripon Cathedral 160 Rites of Durham 56, 92 ritual year 4, 12 Robert de Lisle Psalter 100, 102 Robin Hood 36–9, 54, 111–12 Rogers, archdeacon 127 Rogerson, Robert, precisian 51–2, 63 Rolle, Richard 166, 176–8, 185 Rose, Martial 120 Rouen, liturgical drama at 11

202

Festivals and Plays in Late Medieval Britain

Rowntree, C. B. 172 Rubin, Miri 78, 91 Rushforth, Gordon McN. 102 Rye 29 Sackville, Thomas 16 St. Anne 46 St. Bernard of Clairvaux 177 St. Birgitta 177 St. Edward (the Confessor?) 9 St. Erasmus 148 Sainte Hostie 72–3 St. George 14, 16, 32–6, 109, 115, 124, fig. 1 St. James, play of 92 St. Nicholas 4–8, 10 St. Rosemont 58 St. Ursula 40 Salisbury 42, 79 Cathedral 6, 24, 33 Salter, F. M. 132 Salvatorem Christum Dominum 11 Salvator mundi domine 128 Salve feste dies 90 Sanctus 64 Scarry, Elaine 150, 156 Scimus Christum surrexisse a mortuis 27 Scrope, Richard, unofficial saint 146, 160, 162 La Seint Resurreccion 31 Sharp, Thomas 42, 66 Shaw, John, puritan 70 shepherds’ plays 11, 18, 42, 46, 50–51, 131–2 Sherborne 54, 56–7, 110 Shrewsbury 110, 115 Shrewsbury Fragments 11, 31, 170 Sinanoglou, Leah 77–8 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight 13–14 Skaife, Robert H. 81 Sleaford 46 Somerset, Alan 115 Southwell, Robert 77, 149, 184 Speculum humanae salvationis 64 Spoford, Thomas, bishop 87–8 Stamford 59, 67 Stevens, Martin 60–61 Stokes, James 18, 37, 46, 59, 67 Storye of Tobye 112 Stow, John 39, 70 Strange, Lord 46

Stratford-upon-Avon, iconography at 34, 36, 114 Streitberger, W. R. 13 Stubbes, Philip 111–12 Swaffam, Candlemas play 21 Syon Abbey 30, 171 Symbolicum Apostolicum 101 Synagoga 73 Taunton 27–8 Te Deum 27, 56, 73, 92, 136 Tenand, John, will of 162–3 Tewkesbury 18 Thackrath, Guy, prior 172 Thame 111 Thompson, Thomas, puritan 12 Tiner, Elza 153 Tintinhull 18 Tollite portas 28 Topcliffe, Richard, pursuivant 150 torture 75–7, 150–8, fig. 11 Towneley Hall 47 Towneley plays 18–19, 46–7, 49–50, 60–61, 63 Transeamus usque Bethelem 11 Transitus Mariae 47 Transubstantiation 51, 65, 71–3, 82 Travis, Peter 129 A Tretise of Miraclis Pleyinge 144, 175 Troylus and Pandor 16 trumpets 43 Tudor-Craig, Pamela 94 Twycross, Meg 170 Tydeman, William 72 Uccello, Paolo 75 Urban IV, pope 58 Veni Creator Spiritus 129, 138 Victimae Pascali laudes 31, 182 Viri Galilei, quid aspectis in celum 45 Visitatio Sepulchri 25–9, 171–2, 181 Wakefield 49–50, 60–61 Walker, John, Wakefield historian 60 Walker, John, priest at York 84 Warwick, relics at 33 Wasson, John 59 Weever, John 70 Wells 38, 45 Cathedral 26, 151

Index Westminster 14 Abbey 9, 14 Weston Longville, iconography at 98 Wharton, Richard, bailiff 59 Whetley, J. 58 Whitsun 42, 50–2, 61, 63, 107–38 wildmen 15–16 Williams, Rowan 174 Wilson, Christopher 96 Wilton, convent of St. Edith 28 Winchester 26, 45 Cathedral 162, 166 Wolsey, Thomas, cardinal 18 Wood, D. T. B. 101 Woolf, Rosemary 135 Worcester 79 Cathedral 32 The Worlde and the Chylde 17 Wressle 20, 26, 28 Wright, Stephen K. 96, 104–5 Wycliffe, John 95 Wymondham 16

203

Yeovil 37 Yonge, John, Sherborne “kyng” 110 York 9, 36, 38, 141–2 Augustinian friary 143, 150 Corpus Christi Guild 81–105 Creed Play 92–105, 167 Minster 84, 91–2, 96–8, 105, 152, 159, 162, 166 Ordo paginorum 62, 89, 143, 145, 155 Pater Noster Play 102–3 play cycle 11, 26, 50, 52, 58, 61–6, 68–70, 72, 81, 93–4, 103, 118, 120, 141–67, 169, 179 St. Mary’s Abbey 96 York Minster Library MS. Add. 2 154, 160 MS. XVI.K.6 160 “York Realist” 63, 145–6 Young, Karl 5, 25, 182 Young, Thomas, archbishop