Mystery Cycles and Trade Guilds

One other possible experience of theatre in his youth may have made its mark. In 1579, when he was fifteen, Shakespeare could have witnessed one of the last performances of the great cycle of mystery plays at Coventry, staged on moving pageant wagons by the craft guilds around the streets of the old city.7 He seems to reference them in Hamlet’s advice to the actors:

Oh, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig‐pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who for the most part are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb‐shows and noise. I would have such a fellow whipped for o’erdoing Termagant. It out‐Herod’s Herod. Pray you, avoid it. (3.2.8–14)

Herod’s role in the Massacre of the Innocents pageant was one of ranting violence, associated with over‐the‐top acting, as apparently was that of Termagant, a supposed Moslem deity. The Elizabethan authorities waged a long campaign to suppress these mystery plays, which were closely associated with their Roman Catholic roots and the midsummer festival of Corpus Christi, which was not recognized by the Protestant Church of England. The local authorities in towns where they were traditionally staged – York, Chester and Wakefield, as well as Coventry – fought long and hard to keep them going, as much for the trade they attracted as for their religious associations.8 But eventually the Queen’s ministers prevailed. This brought to an end what must have been a strong tradition of amateur theatricals, tied closely to the local community and to the occupations of those who sponsored or performed in them. It perhaps opened up opportunities for the traveling players. As we shall see, many of Shakespeare’s actor colleagues retained links with the trade guilds to which they had been attached (either by indenture or by family ties) before they became players. Robert Armin, for example, was apprenticed as a goldsmith; and Ben Jonson – a player before he became a dramatist – had been with the bricklayers. The organization of the London acting companies had some affinities with that of trade guilds.

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