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The Staging of the Chester Cycle: An Alternate Theory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 July 2009

Leonard Powlick
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Extract

The past fifteen years have been a period of active revisionism in the study of the stage history of medieval England. Through the efforts of Richard Southern, Martial Rose, and others, we have gained a quite different perspective on the staging of the religious drama of the Middle Ages. Now the Cornish plays are no longer considered to be an aberration, for we have seen the principle of stationary performance extended to Wakefield and Lincoln, and enough questions have been raised concerning performance in York that processional staging even there seems doubtful. More and more we are being led to the conclusion that not processional staging on pageant carts, but stationary performance was the norm in England, just as it was on the Continent.

Type
Research Article
Information
Theatre Survey , Volume 12 , Issue 2 , November 1971 , pp. 119 - 150
Copyright
Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 1971

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References

Notes

1. Hosley, Richard in “Three Kinds of Outdoor Theatre Before Shakespeare” TS, XII, (May 1971), 28Google Scholar, refers to an unpublished study by Ruth Gaede which seems to verify Rogers' description of the Chester plays and demonstrates the feasibility of processional staging. In examining Mrs. Gaede's study, I have found that she makes two basic assumptions. First of all, she assumes that Arch deacon Robert Rogers was the author of the description, even though there are references in other parts of the Breviarye of Cliester History to events which took place long after the death of Robert Rogers. Secondly, Mrs. Gaede begins her study convinced of the feasibility of processional staging, and relies simply upon a time-motion study to “verify” Rogers' account. She is quite correct in assuming that a processional performance could move only as fast as the longest play, and that the longest play should be first in order to ensure an uninterrupted flow of drama. However, to postulate that the first two plays of the cycle were combined to increase the length of the first “pageant” is to play fast and loose with the available material. Her justification for this is extremely tenuous. Besides, there are many other factors to be taken into consideration concerning the concept of processional staging in Chester in addition to that of time.

2. Given in Salter, F.M., Medieval Drama in Chester (Toronto, 1955), pp. 55–56.Google Scholar

3. Ibid., pp. 54–57.

4. Wickham, Glynne, Early English Stages, 1300 to 1660 (London and New York, 1963), I, 169.Google Scholar

5. Morris, Rupert, Chester in the Plantagenet and Tudor Reigns (Chester, 1893), p. 315Google Scholar.

6. Wickha, I, 171–173.

7. The Chester Plays, pt. I, ed. Deimling, H.; pt. II, ed. Matthews, G.W., EETS (London, 1959), p. 440, post 1. 356. (All subsequent citations from The Chester Plays will be noted parenthetically.)Google Scholar

8. Hosley, pp. 16–19.

9. Ibid., pp. 18–20.

10. See Hunt, Percival, Fifteenth Century England (Pittsburgh, 1962), p. 26Google Scholar; Trevelyan, G.M., English Social History (New York 1965), p. 31Google Scholar; Green, Alice Stopford, Town Life in the Fifteenth Century (London and New York, 1894), I, pp. 29–31Google Scholar.

11. Hosley, p. 22.

12. Salter, p. 77.

13. Chambers, E.K., The Mediaeval Stage (London, 1903), II, 133Google Scholar.

14. Ibid., II, 134.

15. Wickham, I, 347.

16. “Richard de Seynesburgh (1349–62) and Thomas de Newport (1362–85) [abbots of St. Werburgh's] were rash, quarrelsome and high-handed, and their pontificates saw a serious and permanent deterioration of relations with the city. The dispute turned upon four main points: the conduct of the [St. John's] fair, the obligation of the abbots' tenants … to pay scot and lot and to appear, when summoned, before the city courts, the boundary of the rival jurisdictions in Northgate Street, and the powers of the city officers within the precincts of the abbey. In form, the conflict was one between rival privileges; its content was a struggle to increase the financial profits accruing from those privileges. … [This] tedious feud … dragged its weary length through all the remaining history of the abbey” — Jones, Douglas, The Church in Chester, 1300–1540 (Manchester, 1957), pp. 40–41Google Scholar.

17. Ibid., pp. 39–40.

18. Morris, pp. 323–324.

19. Salter, p. 74.

20. Ibid., pp. 64–67.

21. Since only one play separated the two, if the plays were performed processionally, “The Shepherds' Play” would already have begun before the play of “Moses, Balaam and Balack” had finished.

22. Morris, p. 304.

23. See Ibid., and Chambers, II, 354.

24. Chambers, II, 133.

25. Craig, Hardin, English Religious Drama (Oxford, 1960), p. 123Google Scholar.

26. Chambers, II, 119, 135, 385.

27. Ibid., II, 359, 368–369, 398.

28. Craig, p. 118.

29. Wickham, I, 161.

30. Salter, p. 45.

31. Wickham, I, 168.

32. Chambers, II, 355.

33. “The first outdoor performance in English was devised about 1375 by Sir Henry Francis. It is probable that a single long play was produced, for the appearance of the Doctor or Interpreter in play after play after play of the late series suggests an original single work. This single ancestor … suggests stationary performance.” (Salter, p. 45) Craig, however, shows that the basic Old Testament cycle is a translation from the French Le Mystere du Viel Testement. (Craig, pp. 171–178) The Doctor or Interpreter, then, would have provided continuity from section to section of a stationary, multi-play productionGoogle Scholar.

34. Chester's Triumph in Honor of Her Prince, as it was performed upon St. George's Day, 1610, in the foresaid Citie, intro. by Corser, Thomas (Manchester, 1833), p. viGoogle Scholar.

35. Morris, p. 302.

36. Chester's Triumph, p. vii.

37. Ibid., p. vii; Chambers, II, 355.

38. Morris, p. 302.

39. Chambers, II, 348 and 354.

40. Chester's Triumph, sec. A, par. 5.

41. Because of its size and the fact that it maintains its position and function throughout the three days of the festival, I have postulated that Hell, along with Heaven, the Garden of Eden, and the hill would not be mounted on a carriage, but would be a setpiece built on the spot.

42. Rose, Martial, ed., The Wakefield Mystery Plays (London, 1961), IntroductionGoogle Scholar.

43. Chambers, II, 360.

44. Elst, Joseph van der, The Last Flowering of the Middle Ages (Garden City, New York, 1945), pp. 121–122Google Scholar.