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INTRODUCTION Across Europe in the late Middle Ages, people performed ‘mystery plays’, usually on a set day each year. Perhaps the earliest is the French Mystère d’Adam (c.1170) and, in fact, some of the grandest and longest mystery plays have come from France. Germany also saw early mystery plays – though not so grand as the French – and the Oberammergau play, which started in 1634, is still performed. There were mystery plays in Italy, the Netherlands and Spain, but some of the best-known come from Britain, which this article addresses. Though they comprised only a comparatively small proportion of performed British medieval drama, they are as spectacular and impressive as anything from the period.

The mystery plays, or ‘cycles’, consisted of a number of short plays, or ‘pageants’, each telling one incident from the Bible, from the Creation and the stories of the Old Testament, Christ’s Nativity, His Passion, resurrection and ascension to Doomsday or the Final Judgment. Each pageant in this vast story was self-contained, but each one – and there might be as many as 40, 50 or even more of them – was part of the larger ‘cycle’.

Because their content was religious, critics for long asserted that the mystery plays had evolved over centuries, and that they originated in the 10th-century Visitatio Sepulchri (‘Quem quaeritis in sepulchro, o Christicolae?’). Christian drama, they argued, had moved “from minster to market place”. Cultural Darwinism of this kind is no longer accepted.

In fact, people were always disposed to dramatise stories from the Bible, and this urge seems to have intensified at the time of the Black Death, the virus which devastated Britain in 1348 and 1349. Although the

DT+ FUNDAMENTALS

A Concise Introduction to: Mystery Plays

Robert Leach University of Birmingham

Last update: 06/02/2019

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population in the countryside was decimated, many towns and cities grew as the Black Death drove survivors off the land. The burgeoning cities became newly confident and one sign of this was a rapid growth of urban pageantry, processions, festivities and the like. The mystery cycles were probably part of this.

But the late 14th century was also a time of increasing social tensions, due not only to the plague’s destructiveness but also to the Kings’ never- ending wars in France, as well as the slow, barely noticeable breakdown of the old feudal order. As the tensions within British society increased, the traditional spiritual truths of the church also appeared to be coming into question through the activities of clerics like John Ball (c.1338-1381), a popular itinerant preacher whose extreme communistic Christianity seemed fresh and appealing, and John Wycliffe (c.1325-1384), a dissident priest and translator of the Bible, whose followers, known as ‘Lollards’, were growing rapidly in numbers.

In 1381, groups of discontented lower and middle order people, plebians, artisans, yeomen, craftsmen, servants, and apprentices, led by a former soldier, Wat Tyler (1341-1381), threatened both the State and the Church in what became known as the ‘Peasants Revolt’. Though they professed loyalty to the King, they demanded the King’s advisers, henchmen and ministers be removed and executed, Church property be seized and the ranks of the clergy be abolished. The revolt was crushed thanks to royal duplicity as well as the rebels’ naiveté, but its spirit still burned and there were Lollard uprisings in 1414 and 1431, and a further serious rebellion in 1450 under the fiery agitator, Jack Cade (c.1420-1450).

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HISTORY The response of those in power took several forms, including probably the encouragement of the mystery cycles. As huge demonstrations of the traditional verities of the Church, the plays were a conservative reaction to the Lollards’ radicalism, defending those in power against the supposed malcontents who urged change. By providing opportunities for people to participate in mystery plays, energies which otherwise might have become dangerous were effectively re-channelled. This narrative, however, is hard to prove and is not helped by the fact that what is known about the mystery cycles is often teasingly elusive. Only four more or less complete cycles have survived. Two can be placed, one from York, a centre of rebellion in 1381, the other from Chester. The remaining two are the so-called Towneley Cycle, so named because the manuscript containing the texts was sold in 1814 by the Towneley family, in whose library it had been kept, probably for centuries, and the ‘N-Town’ Cycle, which seems to be of East Anglian origin. The York Cycle was performed from before 1376 to approximately 1570; the Chester Cycle was known in 1422 and was performed until 1575. The other two complete cycles were recorded around 1500, but it is not known where or when they were performed. It is possible that they are not true cycles, but are somewhat random collections of separate texts. Other mystery plays have also been noticed, including Clerkenwell’s ‘play of the Passion of our Lord and the Creation of the World’; New Romney’s ‘Whitsun Play’; two pageants by Robert Croo which were performed in Coventry; and two Abraham and Isaac plays from Brome and Northampton. From Norwich, only Adam and Eve survives from at least 12 pageants which were performed in the 1530s, and other recorded performances include those at Beverley (‘Creation to Doomsday’) in 1375, Durham in 1403, Exeter before 1413, Ipswich before 1422, Worcester in 1424 and Newcastle in 1426. Later than these were the performances at Chelmsford between 1562 and 1576, the Hereford Cycle which was banned in 1548, plays at Preston and Lancaster which lasted into the 17th century, and Kendal’s ‘Corpus Christi play’ which was performed until 1612. In many but not all of these, the town’s Trade Guilds – associations of urban craftsmen or merchants – were involved, often one pageant being the responsibility of a particular guild, who created the scenery, costumes, and

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so on, and used the performances to advertise their trade. Guild members also often acted, though sometimes they hired semi-professionals for the major roles. Guilds thus subsidised their pageant, which was sometimes ironically appropriate, as with the Water-Leaders and Drawers of the Dee, for example, who presented the Chester play of Noah and the Flood. In York, the overall responsibility for the cycle of perhaps 50 plays belonged to the City Corporation, in what was probably an attempt both to bolster community identity and to enhance the population’s spiritual health. There may also have been an unspoken desire to emulate similar European displays of civic magnificence, as well as, of course, the reinforcement of traditional social, religious and political values. Nevertheless, the presentation of the whole cycle in a single day at York represents an enormous logistical challenge. At the first ‘station’, the first pageant was performed; when it was concluded, it moved on to the second ‘station’. The second pageant then appeared and was presented at the first station. When the first pageant was concluded at the second station, the second moved to that station and the third pageant appeared at the first station. Thus, the whole cycle was unrolled at each station. The huge pageant wagons were manoeuvred through the narrow streets, and in total each of up to 50 pageant wagons stopped to perform perhaps 12 times in a single day. At Chester, things were considerably easier: there were fewer wagons and only five stations. Each wagon was individually constructed. Most were about two and a half metres wide, four or more metres long, with a stage floor about a metre and a half from the ground. Some wagons were even ‘double-deckers’, with an upper storey (‘Heaven’), or a lower storey (‘Hell’), or both. It is hard to believe that such enormous trucks could be drawn through the narrow medieval streets with their overhanging upper floors. Perhaps a single wagon could be so manoeuvred, but there were 50 of them to be taken through the streets in a single day. It is possible that in York the wagons paraded through the streets but only performed at the final stopping place, as happened in Newcastle. Moreover, even if the first wagon’s first performance took place at four in the morning, the 50th would be nowhere near its final station by midnight. It may be doubted that the logistical challenge could be overcome.

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This is perhaps confirmed by the experience of the Chester Cycle. Here, by the 1530s, the cycle was being presented over three successive days, rather than all in one day, perhaps in response to the problems posed by pageant wagons in the streets. The Chester plays were recorded by a single clerk or scribe some time after performances had ceased, and its apparent unity was probably never achieved in practice. Moreover, the clerk probably knew the French Mystère du Viel Testament (n.d.) which seems to inform the Old Testament pageants, and the Stanzaic Life of Christ (n.d.) which likewise appears to lie behind some of those of the New Testament. The other two extensive cycles present even more problems. The Towneley was once thought to have belonged to Wakefield, but this now seems unlikely. It consists of 32 pageants and includes probably the best- known of all medieval mystery plays, The Second Shepherds Pageant (c.1500), as well as another fine shepherds pageant. It may be that these plays were created for individual, rather than cyclical, presentation. This possibility is strengthened by the way they appear to be written not for performance on pageant wagons, but in what is known as a ‘place-and- scaffold’ arrangement, that is, an open acting space with a number of self- contained booth stages positioned around it. The ‘N-Town’ Cycle also seems more suitable for ‘place-and-scaffold’ staging. The origins of these 42 pageants are almost impossible to determine. They may be an eclectic compilation by a monk or scribe from either Thetford or Bury St Edmunds, designed perhaps for touring, or as a kind of script bank from which individual village groups or others could borrow one or more pageants for performance.

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CRITICAL CONTEXT Little is known of the authors of these pageants, though most of them were probably priests. Two anonymous writers whose work has been identified are the ‘York Realist’, author of several of the York pageants of the Passion, who had a vigorous alliterative writing style and was able to characterise his villains particularly effectively, and the ‘Wakefield Master’, who may have written up to half a dozen of the Towneley plays. He used a distinctive stanza form and blends comedy, satire and tragedy into a unique and very actable dramatic form.

More impressive than any individual pageant, however, is the overarching epic sweep of the cycles. Their unity lies in their variety, including the variety of playwrights. The cycles all contain a diversity of scenes – realism, social satire, broad comedy, besides the expected and powerful scenes of devotion and piety. Some contain scenes from the life of Christ – His baptism, His Temptation by the devil, His raising of Lazarus, and so on; some move straight from the Nativity to the Passion. Key moments in the story are always presented uniquely – one sequence of the Passion of Christ, for example, emphasises the soldiers’ cruelty, another Mary’s suffering, and another Jesus’ unruffled self-possession; one Resurrection pageant focuses on the miracle of the event, another on Mary Magdalene. There are the widest variations of style and metre, contrasts, repetitions and prophecies, and it is here that the overall impact is achieved. Often this is reinforced by unstated but insistent parallels, contradictions and comparisons, as in the implied relation between Eve and the Virgin, Mrs Noah and Mary Magdalene, or the resonances achieved between those who do evil – Lucifer, Pharaoh, Herod, Pilate, Judas.

The theatricality of the cycles is also remarkable. This is seen for instance in the dramatic tableaux which punctuate the epic: the expulsion from Eden with the angel’s extended finger pointing inexorably away, Abraham poised to kill Isaac, the Annunciation, the crucifixion and the taking of Jesus from the cross. The devil is a an unusual and fearsome creature, with claws, or horns, or bats’ wings or a tail, and almost always hairy. Supernatural characters, whether godly or villainous, were often masked.

Besides these serious considerations is the diversity of comedy and humour. This includes the scatological – N-Town’s Lucifer trembles: “For fear of fire, a fart I crack!” and Cain murderously mumbles “Kiss my arse”

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whenever he is vexed. Pick-Harness, Cain’s cheeky servant in the Towneley pageant, mocks his master like a naughty pupil mocking a pompous teacher, while Joseph, discovering Mary’s pregnancy, behaves like the traditional stage cuckold. The Towneley Second Shepherds Pageant is a sustained free-standing social comedy. Frequently, this wide-ranging humour is offset with social satire: Cain is comical, but he is also a bad master; the shepherds in the field are not simply funny, they also voice grievances about their hard lives; the soldiers who slaughter the children or nail Christ to the cross are cruelly typical of law enforcement agents throughout history; Annas and Caiaphas are examples of the self-serving power elites with no thought for the poor. The interplay of the disparate pageants is also notable, as they echo and prefigure the cycles’ central concerns. The Ark prefigures the cross. The argument between Moses and Pharaoh is deepened when Christ argues with Satan in The Harrowing of Hell (n.d.). Jesus’ intervention of Hell in The Harrowing of Hell mirrors Lucifer’s disruption of Heaven in the pageant of the Fall. And the exodus from Egypt is echoed in different ways in the flight into Egypt by Joseph, Mary and the infant Jesus, the triumphant entry into Jerusalem in Holy Week, and the Harrowing of Hell when the faithful are led forth. Thus, the cycles comprise a vast epic of Christianity: first, the series of apparently unconnected Old Testament scenes challenge our identity and ideas of morality; then there is the intimate comedy of the Nativity, which is almost like a painting by Pieter Bruegel (1525-1569) brought to life; and finally Christ’s Passion, crucifixion and resurrection, rises to genuine tragedy. The Doomsday finale turns the whole into a kind of celebration. It is a uniquely powerful achievement, a fine story and an intensely spiritual journey.

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FURTHER READING Chester Mystery Plays. (2018). Chester Mystery Plays - Home Page. [online] Available at: https://chestermysteryplays.com/ [Accessed 1 Nov. 2018]. Happé, P. (1975). English Mystery Plays. London: Penguin. Harris, J. (2017). Medieval Theatre in Context: An Introduction. Abingdon: Routledge. Lancashire, I. (1984). Dramatic Texts and Records of Britain: A Chronological Topography to 1558. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lichfield Mysteries. (2018). Lichfield Mysteries - Be Part of Something Amazing. [online] Available at: http://www.lichfieldmysteries.co.uk/ [Accessed 1 Nov. 2018]. Milling, J. and Thomson, P. eds. (2005). The Cambridge History of British Theatre, Vol.1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rogerson, M. ed. (2011). The York Mystery Plays: Performance in the City. York: York Medieval Press. Warren, E. (2005). The Preaching Fox: Festive Subversion in the Plays of the Wakefield Master. New York, NY: Routledge. Waterhouse, O. (2016). The Non-Cycle Mystery Plays. London: Routledge. Wickham, G. (2002). Early English Stages. Abingdon: Routledge. Wickham, G. (1987). The Medieval Theatre. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. York Minster. (2018). York Minster. [online] Available at: https://yorkminster.org/ [Accessed 1 Nov. 2018].