Early Theatre 3

Early Theatre 3 (2000): The York Cycle
Then and Now
Articles
Introduction by Alexandra Johnston
Map of York
The City of York and Its ‘Play of Pageants’ by Peter Meredith
Places to Hear the Play in York by Eileen White
The Medieval Pageant Wagons at York: Their Orientation and Height by John McKinnell
Raging in the Streets of Medieval York by Margaret Rogerson
The Pageant Wagon as Iconic Site in the York Cycle by Ralph Blasting
High Places and Travelling Scenes: Some Observations on the Staging of the York Cycle by
Martin Walsh
Seeing and Hearing: Looking and Listening by Pamela King
Verbal Texture and Wordplay in the York Cycle by Richard Beadle
‘His langage is lorne’ (31/190): The Silent Centre of the York Cycle by Alexandra Johnston
Directors’ Notes
YORK 1998: What We Have Learned by Alexandra Johnston
PLAY 5: The Temptation and Fall by Garrett P J Epp
PLAYS 14-15: The Nativity / The Adoration of the Shepherds by Michael and Susan Barbour
PLAY 19: The Slaughter of the Innocents by Roland Reed
PLAY 33: The Judgment of Christ by Jonathan Herold
PLAY 38: The Resurrection by Karen Sawyer
PLAY 41: Christ’s Appearance to Thomas by Gwen Waltz
PLAY 42: The Ascension by Terri Cain
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PLAY 47: Last Judgment by Stephen Johnson
Overview on the York Cycle Performance by Joel Kaplan
WORKS CITED: A York Cycle Bibliography
Article Abstracts
The City of York and Its ‘Play of Pageants’ by Peter Meredith
Abstract
This paper first presents a brief overview of York’s physical growth and status as a mercantile
city and a county in its own right, and its relationships with the monarchy as they appear in royal
entries. It then moves on to examine the emergence of its Play from obscure beginnings in the
late fourteenth century, and to investigate the changing nature of the Play during its nearly 200-
year existence. The paper concludes with an investigation of the demise of the Play in the late
sixteenth century. Throughout, the paper emphasizes the instability of the evidence and the
necessity of open mindedness, and suggests that this essential absence of closure maintains the
value of the continued scholarly investigation .
Biography
Peter Meredith is Professor Emeritus of Medieval Drama at the
University of Leeds, England. His main area of research within medieval drama has been the NTown
manuscript of plays from which he has edited The Mary Play and The Passion Play. Most
recently he has produced an acting edition of Mankind. His primary interest has been and
remains in the practice of drama – he co-directed Mankind (1996) and directed Everyman (1997)
at Camerino and for the Leeds Medieval Congress. He is at present working on a full modernspelling
edition of the Towneley Plays, and on the liturgical drama section of the Cambridge
Documentary History of Theatre. He directed Play 20: Christ and the Doctors in the Temple at
the Toronto York Cycle.
Places to Hear the Play in York by Eileen White
Abstract
The unusual custom of using a procession of pageants playing at a series of preassigned ‘stations’
was the common practice in York. The route and each station can be ascertained from external
evidence. Bringing to bear historic and modern evidence from the actual spaces that survive on
the streets of York, the paper measures and describes each of the stations. Recent performances
in the streets of York are also considered and questions raised about the nature of the historic
performances.
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Biography
Eileen White holds a doctorate from Leeds University and is a private scholar working on
aspects of the local history of the West Riding of Yorkshire. She has done extensive research
into the records of the city of York and its playing places. When not recreating playing spaces
she recreates medieval banquets. She is a Research Associate of Records of Early English Drama
undertaking archival checking in many repositories in England.
The Medieval Pageant Wagons at York: Their Orientation and Height by John McKinnell
Abstract
This article considers some physical aspects of the medieval pageant wagons used for the York
Cycle. Many modern reconstructions have assumed that the pageants played side-on, but this
view rests on assumptions derived from modern theatre, medieval two-dimensional art, or the
demands of the open campus locations where many modern performances have taken place.
Comparative European evidence (drawings of early ommegang wagons, and surviving Spanish
pageant wagons) suggests pageants designed as three-dimensional pieces of street architecture,
transpicuous wherever possible, and aligned toward the front or the rear. The narrowness of
York’s streets and practical experiments in 1988 and 1992 at some of the most popular medieval
performance places strongly support this model; side-on performance in these places makes it
impossible for much of the audience to see the pageants and would sometimes involve placing
the property of the stationholder backstage, from where no view would be possible. Medieval
pageants were probably higher than most of those used today, with wagon decks five to six feet
from ground level and any upper storeys at least eight feet above the lower ones. Large pageants
like the Mercers’ Doomsday need a total functional height of over twenty feet, excluding spires,
pinnacles, etc.; and even this looks modest beside some drawings of ommegang wagons. The
larger wagons used a good deal of machinery; study of one type of machine, the functional lift,
suggests that it needed grooved pillars, pulleys and a drum winch. Such a machine could be more
safely and effectively mounted on an end-facing wagon than a side-facing one. The York wagons
were technologically and artistically ambitious, and our modern efforts have yet to match their
inventiveness or their flamboyant magnificence.
Biography
John McKinnell is Reader in Medieval Literature at the
University of Durham; he directed PLAY 22: The Temptation of Christ in the 1998 production at
Toronto and is editing the REED volume for County Durham. His work on early drama includes
modern-spelling editions of the Chester Cycle Moses, Balaak and Balaam, the York Cycle Mary
Plays and the English Mary of Nemmegen; articles on reconstructive productions of the Digby
Mary Magdalen and the York Mary Plays; and monographs and articles on early drama in
Durham (eg The Sequence of the Sacrament at Durham, Teesside, 1998). Videos are available of
his productions of the York Assumption of the Virgin (1988), Mary of Nemmegen (1989),
Cambises (co-production with David Crane, 1992), Dame Sirith and Calisto and Melebea
(1996), and Everyman (1999).
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Raging in the Streets of Medieval York by Margaret Rogerson
Abstract
In the processional performance mode that was the norm for biblical cycle plays in several
English towns in the Middle Ages, the area of the pageant wagon stage was a restricted one.
Modern ‘original staging’ experiments have shown that off-wagon performance has advantages of
additional playing space and the enhanced contact between performance and audience
occasioned when the actors appropriate the space otherwise occupied by the observers. A stage
direction in a sixteenth-century pageant text from Coventry indicates that off-wagon
performance was used in some performances of the Nativity pageant, where Herod was seen
‘raging in the street’. This article examines the possibility that the Coventry practice was followed
in York. It begins with a review of the records of the stage history of Herod, from Chaucer to
Shakespeare. From the evidence available, we can learn about the use of rhetorical gesture and
props in the expression of the tyrant’s rage, but not about movement around the stage area or into
the audience space. The discussion considers the common tendency of scholarly investigators to
assume that off-wagon playing was widely employed in York, and outlines evidence for it in
implicit stage directions in the York texts. It also explores the advantages and appeal of
performances confined to the pageant wagon stage. It draws on modern ‘original staging’
experiments with the York texts in 1992 and 1998, and the work of Shakespearean scholars as
well as medievalists. It concludes that we should keep an open mind about the viability of onwagon
performance and should not privilege off-wagon playing in our thinking about the York
Play.
Biography
Margaret Rogerson is a Senior Lecturer at the
University of Sydney. She co-edited the REED volume for York (1979) and has written a
number of articles on the York and Coventry plays and other aspects of early English drama. She
is currently working on a project to investigate the modern staging traditions of the the York Play
in York.
The Pageant Wagon as Iconic Site in the York Cycle by Ralph Blasting
Abstract
Theories of pageant-wagon dramaturgy have ranged from viewing the wagons purely as
processional tableaux with no intention of mimetic performance to investing them with all the
complexity of place-and-scaffold staging. This is especially true for the York Plays. The paper
examines specific uses of the street as platea in the York Cycle, arguing that such use was limited
specifically to its function as a contrast to the iconography of the wagon stage. Characters leave
the wagon or approach it as a means of interrupting or re-establishing the iconic moment
represented by that pageant. The dramatic effect on the audience derives from the disruption or
reconfiguration of the stasis of the site.
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Biography
Ralph Blasting is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Department
of Theatre Arts at Towson University in Maryland. He has participated as a designer, director, or
technician in all four of the English cycle plays at the University of Toronto, most recently as
director of Towson’s production of the two Noah plays, Plays 8-9: The Building of the Ark and
The Flood, in the 1998 York Cycle. He has published numerous articles on the civic/religious
drama of medieval Germany and England; his review of Larry West’s translation and edition of
the Alsfeld Passion Play recently appeared in the Early Drama, Art, and Music Review.
High Places and Travelling Scenes: Some Observations on the Staging of the York Cycle
by Martin Walsh
Abstract
An argument for a more expanded use of the platea in staging certain (earth-bound) plays of the
York Cycle, based on the experience of producing Abraham and Isaac for the 1998 Toronto
project. Extended ‘travelling scenes’ focusing upon a high point (naked hill or elevated temple or
castle) are found throughout the Cycle, suggesting that significant playing at street-level with a
culminating action on the wagon-top was a distinct possibility for many plays of the Cycle.
Biography
Martin W. Walsh is Head of the Drama Concentration at the Residential
College and an Associate Professor in the Department of Theatre & Drama at the University of
Michigan. He is widely published in medieval studies, particularly in the area of early German
theatre and popular culture. He is co-editor and translator of the Dutch Morality Mariken Van
Nieumeghen (1994). He is currently pursuing research on the carnivalesque aspects of the
festival of Martinmas as well as on the traditional characters of the contemporary Carnival in
Trinidad. Prof. Walsh founded ‘The Harlotry Players’ at Michigan in 1983 and has regularly
participated in the Cycle projects at the University of Toronto. The group has also produced
several original translations of German Carnival plays, Dutch farces and, most recently, a Polish
Easter play. He directed Play 10: Abraham and Isaac and Play 30: The Dream of Pilate’s Wife in
the Toronto York Cycle.
Seeing and Hearing: Looking and Listening by Pamela King
Abstract
This paper speculates about what modern reception theory, focusing as it does on assumed
cultural norms, can and cannot offer the student of medieval drama. It can, for example, throw
into relief the fundamental question of what we can know about medieval reception, so that we
avoid foregrounding the evident literary simplicity of some of these texts at the expense of
acknowledging their cultural complexities. The student of medieval theatre does well to proceed
with caution in speculating on or theorizing the relationship between medieval plays and their
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audiences. The relationship between speech and action deserves at least to be problematized.
Beyond that lies the wider challenge of reconstructing the differences between medieval and the
modern audience assumptions about the cultural event in which they are participating and its
relationship to the world they inhabit. The paper suggests, drawing examples from the York
Cycle, that a modern audience member cannot avoid imposing upon the plays contemporary
ways of seeing, particularly when it comes to scenic arrangement; the paper, therefore, avoids
closure.
Biography
Pamela M. King is a graduate of the Universities of Edinburgh (MA) and
York (DPhil). She taught at Westfield Colege, then Queen Mary and Westfield, in the University
of London, before taking up the post of Head of English at St Martin’s College, Lancaster, where
she holds a personal chair and is currently Associate Dean of Arts Humanities and Social
Sciences. Her work on medieval theatre includes a modern spelling selection from the York
Cycle (with Richard Beadle, Oxford, 1984) and a forthcoming critical edition (with Clifford
Davidson) of the two surviving Coventry Plays (Kalamazoo, 2000), as well as numerous articles
on English religious drama including the chapter on ‘The Morality Plays’ in the Cambridge
Companion to Medieval Theatre (ed Beadle, 1994). She is co-director (with Meg Twycross) of
the York Doomsday Project , working on a number of
electronic projects related to medieval drama. She also writes on contemporary Spanish religious
spectacle, on other English medieval literature, and on medieval tomb sculpture, and has recently
brought out the York Notes Advanced on ‘The Miller’s Tale’ (York Press, 1999).
Verbal Texture and Wordplay in the York Cycle by Richard Beadle
Abstract
A preliminary overview of the verbal texture of the York Cycle is developed with reference to
several broad contexts: the physical circumstances of processional production; the ‘audiate’
culture of the audience; the aural (as distinct from literate) nature of the script, and its close
relationship to late 14th- and 15th-century northern homiletic verse, likewise designed for oral
delivery. Use is made of the ranking-frequency listings in G.B. Kinneavy’s Concordance to the
York Plays in order to characterize their comparatively restricted lexical range, which is seen as a
function of their essentialist and universalizing tendencies, and their preference for performative
and deictic language that closely integrates word and action. The presence of wordplay in this
environment is explored through a range of examples taken from across the cycle as a whole.
Biography
Richard Beadle is Reader in English Literature in the Faculty of English,
University of Cambridge, and Fellow and Director of Studies in English at St John’s College,
Cambridge. He was general editor of The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre
(1995) and is currently revising and enlarging his critical edition of The York Plays (1982) for
republication by the Early English Text Society.
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‘His langage is lorne’ (31/190): The Silent Centre of the York Cycle by Alexandra Johnston
Abstract
In their portrayal of the character of Christ, the York playwrights exploited the concept of logos.
In the plays of the ministry and again in the post-resurrection plays, he is indeed, ‘The Word on
the Street’, actively teaching and preaching the ways of holy living openly, colloquially,
humanly. But at the centre of the sequence, in the hands of his enemies, Christ, the logos, falls
silent. The playwrights understood Christ to be the Word and the Word to be Truth. The action
of the trial plays is based on deceit and lies, reflecting Peraldus’ exposition of the ‘peccata
linguae’. All the Word needs to do is stand silent, to be the ‘still centre’ and even as they
condemn him his enemies condemn themselves out of their own mouths.
Biography
Alexandra F. Johnston is a professor of English at the University
of Toronto and has been director of Records of Early English Drama (which she was
instrumental in founding) since 1975. She is co-editor with Margaret Rogerson of the first of the
REED series, the Records of York (1979) and is also co-editor of the Oxford University and City
records to be published soon. She has written extensively on many aspects of early drama. Since
1974 she has been closely associated with the Poculi Ludique Societas and is presently chair of
the PLS Board. She convened the symposium mounted in association with the production of the
York Cycle in 1998.
Directors’ Notes
ALEXANDRA F. JOHNSTON
YORK 1998: What We Have Learned
Alexandra F. Johnston is a professor of English at the University
of Toronto and has been director of Records of Early English Drama (which she was
instrumental in founding) since 1975. She is co-editor with Margaret Rogerson of the first of the
REED series, the Records of York (1979) and is also co-editor of the Oxford University and City
records to be published soon. She has written extensively on many aspects of early drama. Since
1974 she has been closely associated with the Poculi Ludique Societas and is presently chair of
the PLS Board. She convened the symposium mounted in association with the production of the
York Cycle in 1998.
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GARRETT P.J. EPP
PLAY 5: The Temptation and Fall
Garrett Epp is an Associate Professor of English at the University of
Alberta. He was the Artistic Director for the PLS production of the Towneley Plays in 1985,
while working on his dissertation on the York Plays; he is currently engaged in research on early
English drama and sexuality.
MICHAEL AND SUSAN BARBOUR
PLAYS 14-15: The Nativity / The Adoration of the Shepherds
Michael and Susan Barbour work at Le Moyne College in
Syracuse, NY; Michael as Assistant Director of Theatre and Susan as an Instructor in the English
Department. Both are graduates of the Graduate Theatre Program at The Catholic University of
America. Together they have worked as director and dramaturg, respectively, on a variety of
medieval plays staged at the University of Toronto, including the N-Town Noah (1988), The
Apple Tree (1992), and Man’s Desire and Fleeting Beauty (1995).
ROLAND REED
PLAY 19: The Slaughter of the Innocents
Roland L. Reed , Associate Professor of Drama at The Catholic
University of America, has directed the Graduate Playwriting Program at Catholic University,
the directing and playwriting programs at The University of South Carolina and The University
of North Carolina – Charlotte. He has directed more than 100 major productions as well as many
staged readings and workshop productions of new plays. He is Playwright in Residence for the
Stanislavski Theatre Studio in Washington, DC. Six of his plays have been produced: Vera was
produced by Signature Theatre in Arlington, Virginia; Wearing Louie was produced off-off
Broadway, and the others received student productions. He has conducted site visits for NEA
Expansion Arts Theatre and served on its national panel.
JONATHAN HEROLD
PLAY 33: The Judgment of Christ
Jonathan Herold holds a BA in History from the University of
Wisconsin – Milwaukee and is currently a graduate student at the Centre for Medieval Studies at
the University of Toronto. Prior to pursuing his interest in medieval history at university,
Jonathan worked as an actor and stage combat choreographer in the United States. His longest
theatrical affiliation was with Tony Award-nominated American Players Theatre in Spring
Green, Wisconsin, where he appeared in productions, including Titus Andronicus, The Comedy
of Errors, Romeo and Juliet, Taming of the Shrew, Tamberlaine the Great Part I, The Merchant
of Venice, Hamlet, Julius Caesar, Merry Wives of Windsor, Loves Labours Lost, and A
Midsummer Night’s Dream from 1982 to 1987. Jon worked as a stage combat instructor both
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independently and with Bradley Waller, teaching stage combat techniques at schools, colleges
and universities in Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa and Minnesota. He choreographed stage violence
for productions of Macbeth for the University of Wisconsin and Oklahoma! for Children’s
Theater of Madison (with Brad Waller), Love and Death in Verona and The Yearling for CTM,
Macbeth for First Stage – Milwaukee and Carmen for Milwaukee’s Florentine Opera Company.
KAREN SAWYER
PLAY 38: The Resurrection
Karen Sawyer worked at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota
and studied medieval literature at Oxford University before coming to the University of Toronto
to unite her practical and academic interests in early English drama. She produced, performed in,
and directed productions for Poculi Ludique Societas while pursuing her Ph.D. Her interest in the
York Resurrection play was sparked in part by her dissertation, an edition and study of the
sixteenth-century Protestant play The Resurrection of Our Lord. She now teaches in the English
department at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota.
GWEN WALTZ
PLAY 41: Christ’s Appearance to Thomas
Currently an independent scholar, Gwendolyn Waltz is working
on Our Mutual Cousin: The Shared Stage of American Multi-Media Performance, a book based
on her research of theatre and cinema confluence in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries. As a director in the 1998 York Cycle, she completed a two-year Visiting Assistant
Professorship at Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan.
TERRI CAIN
PLAY 42: The Ascension
Terri Cain graduated MDiv from Yale University – Institute of Sacred
Music. She works as a director, choreographer, and performer for stage and film, with special
interests in early drama and liturgy. Recently she directed for the Beinecke Rare Book and
Manuscript Library the modern premiere of The Play of the Burgher’s Son, a St. Nicholas play
from Beineck Library MS 841, a rare Franco-Provencal manuscript (late 14th or early 15th c.).
She is devoted to bringing theatre to the streets. What will ever compare to the wonderful
experience at York ’98!
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STEPHEN JOHNSON
PLAY 47: Last Judgment
Stephen Johnson teaches in the Graduate Centre for Study
of Drama and in Erindale College’s Theatre and Drama Program at the University of Toronto. As
a scholar, he has published in (among other journals) TDR, CTR, Essays in Theatre, Theatre
Topics, Nineteenth Century Theater, and Theatre Research in Canada, for which he has acted as
co-editor for the past nine years. He was the artistic director of the Environmental Theatre
Workshop in Hamilton and of Handmade Performance in Toronto, for which he wrote/adapted
and/or directed Juba, The Insect Play, The Last Judgment, A Little Grief, and Dr Faustus (in coproduction
with CREED and the Drama Centre). His radio adaptation of Juba, produced by the
CBC, was nominated for the Writer’s Guild of Canada Top Ten Award. He is a member of the
WGC and the Playwrights Union of Canada.
JOEL KAPLAN
Overview on the York Cycle Performance
PLAY 2: Creation to the Fifth Day/ PLAY 39: Christ’s Appearance to Mary Magdalene
Joel Kaplan is Professor of Drama and Head of Department of
Drama and Theatre Arts, University of Birmingham. His research areas are nineteenth- and
twentieth-century British theatre, especially the Victorian and Edwardian periods; Oscar Wilde;
medieval drama; theatre and cultural history; and performance reconstruction. His recent books
include: (with Sheila Stowell) Theatre and Fashion: Oscar Wilde to the Suffragettes
(Cambridge, 1994) and (with Michael Booth) The Edwardian Theatre: Essays on Performance
and the Stage (Cambridge, 1996). His current projects focus on the theatre of the 1890s, Oscar
Wilde, and Noel Coward.
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