PREFACE
Not all plays in the canon of English medieval theatre contain stage directions. Readers will be aware of a number of well-known plays that have not been included for analysis. This is because either they do not contain explicit stage directions or they do not present any of significance. Of the five extant English morality plays, only four, The Castle of Perseverance, Mankind, the Pride of Life and Wisdom, contain stage directions worthy of examination. Everyman, the fifth, contains only simple records of entrances and exits to and from unknown stages. In the catalogue of this work, it would be academically sound and administratively neat to be able to say that the work presents coverage of all medieval English stage directions. But there are many stage directions, important in their context, that simply determine comings and goings, in both their Latin and English versions. Although I shall not ignore stage directions that simply record players ‘entering’ and ‘exiting’, I shall not concentrate on their examination.
I have imposed a restriction on the period under investigation, from the late fourteenth century to 1560. This is principally because of the difference in the nature and purpose of so-called stage directions prior to 1560 and those that appear after this date. The date is not a watertight one, and exceptions occur around this time. Stage directions that appear after this date, into the seventeenth century, have been admirably considered by Alan Dessen, Linda McJannet, Tiffany Stern and Leslie Thomson.
Some modern theatrical terminology is used in this work in relation to medieval theatrical processes. These are terms not used in the medieval era. As such they are used as a shorthand to refer to medieval roles, processes and conventions. They should be regarded with appropriate scepticism and suspicion in order to avoid superimposing unacknowledged modern perceptions on to medieval English practice. For a discussion of the inappropriate use of modern theatrical terminology in the context of medieval practice, see the Introduction in my Staging Conventions in Medieval English Theatre.
More than 2000 stage directions have been listed in the catalogue, and over 400 of those have been selected for analysis throughout the work.
This work examines early English explicit stage directions in use before 1560. The evidence to be examined consists of the stage directions themselves. These selected stage directions not only determine the evidence to be examined but also condition the framework by which examination is to take place. They determine the content and issues drawn from some 2000 stage directions contained in the accompanying catalogue. Stage-direction content has dictated division and organisation of the contained subject matter into eight chapters that encompass the principal recorded features of theatre in performance. These include the actions of players, player–spectator relationships, staging conventions and recorded practice. The range of topics delivered by these eight chapters is not a theoretically determined construction but a theatrically sequential one arising from the importance of theatrical criteria dictated by production.
In Chapter 1, ‘Observers, Options and Beneficiaries of Stage Directions’, the function of observing and recording action is identified as the principal function of medieval English stage directions, with information only tangentially aimed at organisational personnel in a position to affect subsequent performance. Chapter 2, ‘Didacticism’, discusses the importance of didactic conventions embedded in explicit stage directions to promote teaching, instruction, learning and devotion through ‘extraneous parts’1 such as the expositor, the narrator and the conveyour. Analogous functions are drawn upon from The Persian Passion Play (Ta’zieh) to amplify and explain some English conventions. The contractual arrangements between players and spectators established through the exercise of ‘agreed pretence’2 are discussed in Chapter 3, ‘The Nature of Pretence’, in relation to the use of representation, signs, symbols and signalling readiness for action. In Chapter 4, ‘Biblical and Other Narrative Sources’, stage direction adherence to narrative sources is examined together with the function of stage directions that make comments upon the narrative. Here, the concept and practice of ‘vanishing’ is discussed. Actions of denominating space are conducted in Chapter 5, ‘Spatial Practices’, through records of walking around, pomping, parading and boasting; coming and going, voyding, avoyding and devoyding; going up and down and going home to tents and scaffolds. Action leading to the establishment of conventions is recorded in Chapter 6, ‘Characteristics of Playing’, through the creation of stillness, silence, waiting; sorrow, sobbing, wringing of hands and wailing; wonderment, smiling and laughing; astonishment and anger; group voices and simultaneous and sudden action. Chapter 7, ‘Playing Alone’, is concerned with the action of the player playing alone with no others present and the convention of playing alone in the presence of others; additionally, accustomed conventions of being seen and not being seen, listening, hearing and not being heard are given prominence. The roles of banns players, prologue and epilogue players, expositors, narrators and storytellers are discussed in relation to stations and processions. Additional and alternatively named versions of properties are recorded in Chapter 8, ‘Ornaments and Effects’, as ornaments, implements, appurtenances, utensils, stock and parcels. The relationships between ornaments and effects are discussed in relation to the Star of Bethlehem and effects using taut cords; cloud effects; use of pulleys and block and tackle arrangements; knives, swords and spears and the processes of boiling and burning.
Thus, given these points of focus, I shall concentrate my discussion on the reconsidered criteria that determine the purpose and function of pre-1560 English stage directions as the kind of project that Linda McJannet, in her work on Elizabethan stage directions, describes as one where she makes ‘no claim to have described the full range and variety of medieval directions, though this strikes me as a fascinating and worthwhile project’.3
Theatrically speaking, we all think we know what an explicit stage direction is: we tend to think of it as an authorial requirement, devised to be complementary to the spoken text and directed at those who put on a play as to what, when, where, how or why a moment, action or its staging should be completed.4 This is the generally understood term to determine a theatrical convention known as the ‘stage direction’, the more modern extremities of which may be demonstrated by the descriptive fullness of stage directions provided by George Bernard Shaw and the brevity of stage directions prescribed in the plays of Harold Pinter. Shaw’s use of stage directions has frequently been criticised for being overly prescriptive, leaving no room for directors and actors to create and interpret the text. He considered it his responsibility as a dramatist to provide such staging detail through stage directions. Pinter, on the other hand, has been both criticised and praised for the brevity of his one-word stage directions, often requiring the actor to, simply, ‘pause’ or engage in ‘silence’. Both dramatists provide strong contextual reasons for the purpose and character of their stage directions. Shaw’s purpose in his use of stage directions is explained in correspondence with Henry Arthur Jones in 1894:
I don’t agree at all about the stage directions. They may bother you; but they make to the ordinary reader all the difference between an intelligible and readable drama and a mere dialogue […] Take the ordinary actor at a rehearsal. How often does he divine without a hint from you which way your lines are to be spoken in scenes which are neither conventional nor otherwise obvious? […] But I defy anybody to convey a complete impression of an acted play by dialogue alone. It is an attempt to do so that produces the literary play.5
Shaw clearly takes the stance that the playwright’s use of stage directions is to condition through description rather than guide actors in their performance. In a letter to Louis Wilkinson he states: ‘A stage direction need not tell an actor how to act: it should tell him what he is to act. There is only one effect to be produced; but there may be fifty different ways of producing it’.6 He is also conscious that his plays may be simply read, and his prescriptive stage directions are necessary ‘for the mass of readers who live too far from theatres to make the acquaintance of dramatic works by witnessing actual performance’.7 Pinter, however, provides more leeway for actors to interpret his stage directions. Requirements for the ‘pause’ and the ‘silence’ can only be made theatrically meaningful if the modern actor can make them so through feeling, rhythm and timing. These stage directions in Pinter plays are effectively elastic in their required responses.
However, the term ‘stage direction’ is not a medieval one, nor does an equivalent English medieval term exist to codify the functions contained in extraneous manuscript notes, requirements or records that may be designated as stage directions. It needs to be recognised that the term ‘stage direction’ is a designation imposed upon medieval scribal and theatrical practice. This condition provides a caveat to my use of the term ‘medieval stage direction’.
The genesis of the term appears to be that coined by Alexander Pope when he referred to staging notes as ‘notes of direction’ in his The Works of Shakespear in Six Volumes: ‘And in others the notes of direction to the Property-men for their Moveables, and to the Players for their Entries, are inferred into the Text, thro’ the ignorance of the Transcribers’.8 The earliest English record of the term ‘stage direction’ appears to be that coined by Lewis Theobald in his work Shakespeare Restored.9 Theobald is critical of the misuse of the convention that the ‘stage direction’ represents when he says: ‘I must now pass over to another Species of Errors […] where Stage-Directions are either misplac’d, or erroneously adopted into the Text’.10 Without using the term ‘stage direction’, Thomas Hawkins acknowledged the difference between the conventional text and those additional requirements that were considered to condition stage action when he stated: ‘the Knights are directed “to walk about the Stage,” while “Mary and the infant are conveyed into Egypt” in the Slaughter of the Innocents (1512).11 In 1774 Thomas Warton, in his The History of English Poetry, referred to a stage direction in the Chester Drapers Playe of Adam and Eve; Cain and Abel (Play 2) by saying: ‘They propose, according to the stage-direction, to make themselves subligacula a foliis quibus tegamus Pudenda. Cover their nakedness with leaves, and converse with God’.12 The term ‘stage direction’ was sufficiently well established by 1790, when Edmond Malone, in his edition of The Plays and Poems of William Shakespeare, wrote: ‘That the very few stage-directions which the old copies exhibit, were not taken from our author’s manuscripts, but furnished by the players’ and ‘All the stage-directions therefore throughout this work I have considered as wholly in my power, and have regulated them in the best manner I could’.13 Malone considered stage directions to be poorly represented in the early manuscripts and not written by the authors but ‘furnished by the players’ and, by implication, providing authority to action. Pope also considered ‘notes of direction’ to be addressed to ‘the Players for their Entries’ together with the ‘Property-men for their Moveables’ (properties). Theobald interpreted the function of stage directions to be concerned with ‘a Memorandum to the Promptor’. Malone clearly expected stage directions to be sufficient in number and quality to direct the player and concomitant action. Thus, by 1790, the identity and function of the English stage direction had been established and developed as a means of directing players and all forms of staged action. Pope, Theobald, Hawkins, Warton and Malone seemingly took their interpretations of stage direction functions from the late sixteenth century onwards. Even though the term ‘stage direction’ is not recorded before 1726, the function of directing players and all forms of staged action can be traced back to c.1560. Before this date, the so-called explicit English stage direction performed different functions. Identification and analysis of these functions and their influence on the nature of medieval English theatre are the subject and purpose of this work.
I propose to demonstrate that the predominant function of explicit medieval English stage directions was to record observed action from earlier performances. Focus on the dominant function of these stage directions has not been given due recognition or attention. It has generally been assumed that pre-1560 stage directions were addressed to players in the manner of modern stage directions. But this is not the case.
The selected period under examination ranges from the late fourteenth century to the mid sixteenth century—specifically, 1560. This artificial cut-off date is one that I have selected because it represents a point at which the principal function of the stage direction had, by this time, evolved into the kind that we recognise in more recent theatre. That is, a requirement to direct those who intend to put on the play as to how, when, why and where they should do it. The post-1560 stage direction projects action forward; it does not, like the medieval stage direction, refer to previously performed action, and this difference makes for a major distinction in function between pre- and post-1560 stage directions.14 Auréliu Weiss, in her early twentieth-century generalised consideration of the stage direction, states: ‘The function of stage directions is to tell enough about what has already taken place to make what is about to happen easily comprehensible’.15 Although this perspective on the function of stage directions does not refer to previous action, it does take account of existing circumstances as it builds towards knowledge of projected action. In this work I shall make exceptions to the 1560 demarcation limit with reference to the York, Chester and Coventry cycles of mystery plays, which were effectively suppressed in 1568, 1576 and 1579, respectively, and the ‘plaie commonlie called Corpus Christi plaie […] in the towne of Wakefeld’, which was similarly suppressed in 1576.16 It is not clear or proven that the ‘plaie commonlie called Corpus Christi plaie […] in the towne of Wakefeld’ is the same as the Towneley collection of plays which purportedly belonged to the city of Wakefield, although it is the stage directions in that collection that I shall discuss. The long histories of each of these cycles and collections projected beyond 1560 into the 1570s, and in the case of the Chester cycle the play texts were further modified and recorded in the 1590s. The other major collections of stage directions occur in the N.town Plays and the Cornish plays of the Cornish Ordinalia, Beunans Meriasek: The Life of St. Meriasek, Bewnans Ke: The Life of St. Kea and the Creacion of the World.17 The auspices of the first three of these Cornish collections occur before 1560, and those of the last one, the Creacion of the World, after this date in 1611. Individual plays containing explicit stage directions that predate 1560 also occur in the broader East Anglian region.
Some stage directions in these predominantly outdoor plays present functions over and above the task of recording action from earlier performance. For instance, plays of The Chester Cycle, in their late sixteenth-century manuscripts, clearly present some stage directions recorded before 1560 as records of performance and other post-1560 stage directions addressed to those who present the plays. These Chester manuscripts may therefore be seen to straddle my 1560 demarcation in layering the provision of records of earlier performance with the function of promoting future requirements for presentation. They thus present a range of stage directions that may be seen to exhibit different functions in transition, where the intended recipients of stage directions change from those benefiting from records of earlier action, referred to by Linda McJannet and Walter J. Ong as ‘producers’, to those employed as production organisers and players.18 Stage directions in the York Cycle, the N.town Plays and the Towneley Plays all predate 1560, as do their recording functions. Similarly, the Cornish Ordinalia (fifteenth century), Beunans Meriasek: The Life of St. Meriasek (1504), Bewnans Ke: The Life of St. Kea (1453–60) also contain stage directions that principally function as records.
These functions have determined my choice of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century plays that contain explicit stage directions which identify and record observed action. The function of recording observed action makes for a more secure strengthening of stage direction content as evidence of what actually happened in performance. Carol Symes demonstrated her concern for the possible gap between that which was supposed to have happened in the performance of medieval English plays and that which did happen.19 Had she concentrated on the evidence produced by explicit stage directions as records of observed performance, she might have located a means of clarifying and confirming previously staged action. Such observation is not qualitatively different from the sort of action that might be described as an eyewitness account. The observer’s function is to record that which he sees and hears. That which he records arises from his deliberate task to observe the performed action. He is not an accidental eyewitness of the kind that may have been a passing witness to an accident or crime.20 He is a deliberately employed eyewitness of the performed event. Given the formality of his appointment, is he seen by those whom he is observing? Does his visible presence affect that which he observes? How do the players and others involved in the production regard him? The observer’s role is to record that which he sees and hears, and, as John Berger observes: ‘We only see what we look at. To look is an act of choice’.21 From an observational standpoint, Berger’s assessment may also be reconsidered to apply to the reception of sound as: ‘We only listen to what we hear. To listen is an act of choice’. In the case of the medieval observer’s role, he chooses to look at and listen to the action of the play in front of him, and what he sees and listens to is not only affected by his choice, it is also determined by those who put on the play and the way the activity is chosen to be focused for him and others. According to Richard Tauerner: ‘One eye wytnesse, is of more value, then tenne eare wytnesses, yt is to saye, Farre more credite is to be gyuen to suche as reaporte the thynge they sawe wyth theyr eyes, thā to such as speake but by heare saye’.22 Given the purpose of the observer’s role, his witness and record of the performed action are likely to be of a high order.
It is not always clear whether explicit stage directions were provided by the author, someone else or the scribe(s). Given that the scribe’s function was that of a copyist, it is less likely that he provided the content of the explicit stage direction. So, provision would seem to lie with the author or ‘someone else’. And, of course, Malone erroneously considered them to be ‘furnished by the players’. There is often more than one scribe involved in the completion of a manuscript. There are many examples of this condition, but the position with the Cornish Beunans Meriasek provides a typical example of the layering of information and commensurate evidence provided by sequential scribal activity. Myrna May Combellack-Harris, in her Critical Edition of Beunans Meriasek, identifies the scribal contributions as follows:
On internal evidence, it would appear that Scribe A was responsible for the main writing down or copying of the text, certainly from pp. 11–179, that Scribe B wrote down the first ten pages, that Scribe C added some stage directions to the existing ones which Scribe B had included in his text, and that there is a possible fourth scribe, Scribe D, who wrote in some comments and made some doodles (or tried to overwrite something which had previously faded almost away). Examination of the binding shows that undoubtedly, the first ten pages are written on their own quires, and that the watermarks of those quires differ from those of the paper on which the main text is written. […] My conjecture, from examination of the watermarks, the binding of the quires, the texture of the papers and the colour and fadings of the inks, as well as the condition of the early pages of the manuscript, is that Scribe A wrote the whole script. Scribe C wrote the extra stage-directions and made some corrections in the script. He was possibly a producer, or a potential one. B found the manuscript, some years later, to be getting damp and faded towards the front, and he undertook to re-write the first ten pages. (It will be noted that none of Scribe C’s work appears until the eleventh page, after which it is consistent throughout the manuscript). D made some very slight alterations and remarks on the manuscript at some point. The existence of Scribe D is very dubious indeed, and is discussed fully in Appendix B [of the thesis].23
Subsequent editors of medieval plays have often considered it necessary to add their own stage directions to original or existing ones where it is thought that insufficient staging information is provided. Such editors have created amended stage directions on the mistaken premise that the original stage directions should be complete in directing subsequent action. They assume that the original stage directions were intended to function like stage directions of today and thus fall short in providing adequate staging or performance information. Mostly, the newly created stage directions are spurious additions that impose unacknowledged modern staging preconceptions on the originals or make obvious statements that may be deduced by anyone attempting to understand the text.24 Fortunately, most scholarly editors present their interpolated and extended stage directions differently from original ones by, for example, enclosing the additions in square brackets.25 In my analysis of medieval stage directions I shall therefore attempt to distinguish between original stage directions in manuscripts, later manuscript additions, first-printed texts and later editorial treatments. I shall largely disregard the latter. Where a named author is declared, and is responsible for the printing of his text, it is almost certain that he wrote the stage directions and determined their function. In such cases, the purposeful correspondence between the text and its stage directions was deliberate and synchronised in such a way as to promote the play and its production. The same point cannot be reliably made in relation to the anonymously written play and its stage directions. The principal named authors in this work are Medwall, Skelton, Rastell, Bale and Redford.26 Each of their plays contain explicit stage directions seemingly written by them. Had Salz (n. 2 above) been specifically referring to the stage directions of these authors when he wrote ‘With a few notable exceptions, stage directions in plays from the medieval and early modern periods in Europe indicate little beyond entrances and exits’, he may have been reasonably accurate, for the stage directions in other writers’ work are limited in scope and mainly targeted at ways of coming into and retiring from focus or action. Stress is laid upon the manner of arrival or leaving of scenes which tend to be described and emphasised. Another distinctive feature of these stage directions is that they refer to indoor performances, whereas plays produced outdoors are predominantly written by unidentified authors. It is also the case that plays written for outdoor performance tend to be scriptural in content and purpose. Thus, these kinds of plays written for outdoor performance provide the principal focus for the vivid and varied volume of stage directions to be examined in this work.
Ostensibly, the explicit medieval stage direction is addressed to those who put on the play or cause to put on the play. If this is the case, why do many explicit stage directions appear to be incomplete in their contained information and instruction? Part of the reason is because the addressees are not normally the players. Most plays written for outdoor performance contain stage directions that were written as records of earlier performed events: they were not written as directions or instructions to players as to how they should play.27 This is why stage directions in these plays appear to be incomplete when they are assumed to be constructed to direct players. The reason for apparently incomplete and obscure stage directions involved with outdoor production is that they are made by observers who do not necessarily understand the requirement or do not know of the practical or technical means of delivering the outcome.28 The observers simply record what they see and hear.
A clear example of this condition occurs in a stage direction in the Chester Drapers Playe (Adam Cain) where the relationship between the observer’s function as a recorder and the nature of his recorded observation make for a generalised record that does not establish theatrical relevance: ‘Then goinge from the place where he was, commeth to the place where he createth Adam’.29 This stage direction no doubt accurately records the action as seen by the observer but, because the observation relates to a given performance that the reader of the stage direction may not have seen, the relationship between the recorded ‘places’ is not described with sufficient detail to establish the theatrical means by which the purpose or significance of the description can or could be achieved. Thus, the stage direction is of no use to the player, even if he had been the presumed recipient of it. The same sort of condition might be seen to apply through two identical stage directions in The Castle of Perseverance, where it is recorded ‘Tunc pugnabunt diu’30 (Then they shall fight for a long time). There is no sense in these stage directions as to what constitutes a long time. And there would be no value in these descriptions as instructions to players, who would need more specific information to determine how long they should fight or what was required of their fighting skill. The recorded length of time is that which the observer perceives as a long time within the context of the observed play.
Medieval stage directions record what has previously happened and they do this somewhat indiscriminately and interchangeably in the past and present tenses. Most stage directions are written in the present tense, with fewer examples recorded in the past tense. Both tenses are employed because the observer records what he sees in the present tense, but his purpose is to create a record of what has happened and this may thus be recorded in the past tense. The present tense records action that is happening at those points in the play which thus become recorded observations. Different tenses are sometimes used in the same stage direction. For instance, in the Ordinale de Resurrexione Domini Nostri Jhesu Christi of the Cornish Ordinalia, a stage direction uses both the future simple and present tenses in saying: ‘dimittet eum et recedit non procul’ (He shall let him go and he retires to no great distance).31 Other utilised tenses such as the past historic and subjunctive will be seen throughout this work.32
Notes
1. Martha Gause McCaulley, ‘Function and Content of the Prologue, Chorus, and other Non-Organic Elements in English Drama, from the Beginnings to 1642’, in Studies in English Drama, First Series, ed. by Allison Gaw (New York: Appleton, University of Pennsylvania, 1917), pp. 161–258.
2. The fundamental theatrical concept of ‘agreed pretence’ is discussed in some of my earlier work: Philip Butterworth, Staging Conventions in Medieval English Theatre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), Introduction; Philip Butterworth ‘Magic through Sound: Illusion, Deception and Agreed Pretence’, Medieval English Theatre 21 (1999), 52–65; Philip Butterworth, Magic on the Early English Stage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005) pp. 1–2; European Theatre Performance Practice, 1400–1580, edited by Philip Butterworth and Katie Normington (Ashgate: Farnham, 2014), pp. 347–367.
3. Linda McJannet, The Voice of Elizabethan Stage Directions: The Evolution of a Theatrical Code (Newark, NJ: University of Delaware Press, 1999), p. 30.
4. OED Online, stage direction n. (a) a direction inserted in a written or printed play where it is thought necessary to indicate the appropriate action, etc.; (b) stage-management (also fig.); The Oxford Companion to the Theatre, ed. by Phyllis Hartnoll, 4th edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983; repr.1988), pp. 787–88: ‘Stage Directions, notes added to the script of a play to convey information about its performance not already explicit in the dialogue. Generally speaking, they are concerned with the actors’ movements and the scenery or stage effects’; this edited and shortened entry concerning stage directions was written as a longer entry in earlier editions by Richard Southern and displayed little of his obvious understanding of medieval theatre for he referenced his definition to later Elizabethan and proscenium theatre forms, as does Hartnoll in this edition. The same is the case in Phyllis Hartnoll and Peter Found in The Concise Oxford Companion to the Theatre, 2nd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), online ebook. Most commentators who attempt to define ‘stage directions’ do not include medieval contributions and usually go back to the Greeks or late sixteenth-century theatre for their evidence. David Z. Salz writes: ‘With a few notable exceptions, stage directions in plays from the medieval and early modern periods in Europe indicate little beyond entrances and exits’: The Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre & Performance, ed. by Dennis Kennedy, 2 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), II, p. 1277. Salz’s so-called ‘notable exceptions’ form the majority of stage directions examined in this work.
5. Doris Arthur Jones, The Life and Letters of Henry Arthur Jones (London: Victor Gallancz, 1930), p. 146; Erika Meier, ‘Realism and Reality: The Function of the Stage Direction in the New Drama from Thomas William Robertson to George Bernard Shaw’ (published doctoral thesis, University of Basel, Winterthur, 1967), p. 243, later published with the same title by the Cooper Monographs (Bern: Francke Verlag, 1967).
6. Frank Harris on Bernard Shaw: An Unauthorised Biography Based on Firsthand Information with a Postscript by Mr Shaw (London: Victor Gallancz, 1931), p. 245.
7. Ibid.
8. The Works of Shakespear in Six Volumes, ed. by Mr. [Alexander] Pope (London: Jacob Tonson, 1723), I, p. xviii [the collection is dated 1725; the first volume is dated 1723].
9. Lewis Theobald, Shakespeare restored: or, A Specimen of the Many Errors, as well Committed, as Unamended, by Mr. Pope in his late Edition of this Poet. Designed not only to correct the said Edition, but to restore the True Reading of Shakespeare in all the Editions ever yet publish’d (London: R. Franklin, T. Woodman, Charles Davis, and S. Chapman, 1726); see also Lewis Theobald, The Works of Shakespeare, 7 vols (London: A. Bettesworth, C. Hitch, J. Tonson, F. Clay, W. Feales, and R. Wellington, 1733), V, p. 443; VII, p. 295.
10. Theobald, Shakespeare restored, pp. 154, 138, 157, 158.
11. Thomas Hawkins, The Origin of the English Drama, 3 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1773), I, p. vii; The Digby Plays Facsimiles of the plays in Bodley MSS Digby 133 and e Museo 160, intro. by Donald C. Baker and J. L. Murphy, Medieval Drama Facsimiles, III (Leeds: School of English, University of Leeds, 1976), fol. 150v; The Late Medieval Religious Plays of Bodleian MSS Digby 133 and e Museo 160, ed. by Donald C. Baker, John L. Murphy and Louis B. Hall Jr., Early English Text Society OS 283 (Oxford: Oxford Univerity Press, 1982), pp. 96–115 (p. 104).
12. Thomas Warton, The History of English Poetry, from the Close of the Eleventh to the Commencement of the Eighteenth Century, 4 vols (London: Dodsley, Walter, Becket, Robson, Robinson, Bew and Fletcher, 1774–81), I, p. 243, n.t: II, pp. 362, 363, n.b: III, pp. 219, 380, n.m. [Volume 4 was not completed].
13. Edmond Malone, The Plays and Poems of William Shakespeare, 10 vols (London: J. Rivington and others, 1790), p. lviii; see also Edmund Malone, Historical Account of the Rise and Progress of the English Stage, and of the Economy and Usages of the Ancient Theatres in England (Basil: J. C. Tourneisen, 1800), pp. 11, 13 where he repeats use of the term ‘stage direction’ and also coins the term ‘scenical direction’, p. 12; Robert Dodsley, in his 12-volume edition of A Select Collection of Old Plays (London: R. Dodsley, 1744), does not use the term ‘stage direction’. The earliest edition of Dodsley’s works to make use of the term occurs in A Select Collection of Old Plays in Twelve Volumes, ed. by Robert Dodsley, 3rd edn, rev. by Isaac Reed, Octavious Gilchrist and the Editor, 12 vols (London: Septimus Prowett, 1825–27), IV, p. 225n: ‘This stage direction is not in any of the old copies. It is however a necessary explanation’; XI, p. 64n: ‘This necessary stage direction is not marked in either of the old Copies’. The term ‘stage direction’ also occurs in William Hazlitt’s subsequent edition of Dodsley’s works, A Select Collection of Old English Plays, 15 vols, 4th edn (London: Reeves and Turner, 1874), IV, p. 154, VI, pp. 21, 318n, 488n.
14. See Robert Carl Johnson, ‘Stage Directions in the Tudor Interlude’, Theatre Notebook, 26.1 (Autumn 1971), 36–42.
15. Auréliu Weiss, ‘The Author, the Work, and the Actor: G. B. Shaw and Stage Directions’, The British Journal of Aesthetics, 8.1 (January 1968), 49–53.
16. An account in the York House Books for 1568 records the effective suppression of the York Corpus Christi Play: ‘Assemblyd in the Counsell Chambre of owsebrige of this Citie/ whan & where my Lord Mayour declaryd to these presens/ that dyverse commoners of this Citie were muche desyerous to haue Corpuscrysty play this yere/ wherunto these presens woll not agree, but that the book thereof shuld be perused/ and otherwaise amendyd/ before it were playd’.The play book was subsequently not released by Dean Hutton: Records of Early English Drama: York, ed. by Alexandra F. Johnston and Margaret Rogerson (Dorrell), 2 vols (Toronto, Buffalo, London: Manchester University Press; University of Toronto Press, 1979), I, p. 354; Records of Early English Drama: Cheshire including Chester, ed. by Elizabeth Baldwin, Lawrence M. Clopper, and David Mills, 2 vols (Toronto Buffalo: The British Library; University of Toronto Press, 2007), I, pp. 161–2, 168–74; Records of Early English Drama: Coventry, ed. by R. W. Ingram (Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press, 1981), p. xix; Harold C. Gardiner, Mysteries’ End: An Investigation of the Last Days of the Medieval Religious Stage, Yale Studies in English, 103 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1943; repr. Archon: 1967), p. 78.
17. The only other possible evidence of another play is the fragment that is known as The Middle Cornish Charter Endorsement or The Middle Cornish Interlude. Interpretation of the text as evidence is divided between those who consider the text to have been part of a drama and those who do not. See The Middle Cornish Charter Endorsement: The Making of a Marriage in Medieval Cornwall, ed. by Lauran Toorians (Innsbruck: Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft, 1991); Evelyn S. Newlyn, ‘The Middle Cornish Interlude: Genre and Tradition’, Comparative Drama, 30.2 (Summer 1996), pp. 266–81: Newlyn makes a compelling case for this fragment to be considered as a player’s part consisting of three ‘groups of spoken lines’ (speeches) that are divided by ‘bars’ to indicate ‘pauses for responses by other characters’. The case for ‘pauses’ does not seem appropriate, although these bars may well indicate a replacement for cue words as found in other extant parts. It might therefore be expected to find ‘bars’ written at the equivalent points in the other players’ written parts—if they existed. See also David N. Klausner, ‘Drama in Cornwall, Wales, Ireland, Scotland and Brittany’ in The Routledge Research Companion to Early Drama and Performance, ed. by Pamela M. King (London, New York: Routledge, 2017), pp. 60–80 (p. 63): writing of stage directions in the Cornish drama Klausner says: ‘This is an area of research in serious need of attention, for all the Cornish plays provide extensive stage directions that have largely been ignored’. My purpose in this work embraces an attempt to address this omission.
18. See McJannet, The Voice of Elizabethan Stage Directions, pp. 38, 42–44; Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (London, New York: Routledge, 1982; Methuen, repr. 2002), p. 120.
19. Carol Symes, ‘The Medieval Archive and the History of Theatre: Assessing the Written and Unwritten Evidence for Premodern Performance’, Theatre Survey, 52.1 (May 2011), pp. 29–58.
20. Eyewitness accounts and their credibility are most frequently scrutinised in legal cases in courts of law. The science of the reliability of eyewitness accounts has undergone much investigation in recent years. See: the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology, ‘Improving Witness Testimony’, Postnote, 607 (July 2019), 1–6, www.parliament.uk/post [accessed 9/7/21]; Adele Quigley-McBride, Laura Smalarz, and Gary Wells, ‘Eyewitness Testimony’, Oxford Bibliographies (2018), DOI:10.1093/OBO9780199828340–0026 [accessed 9/7/21]; Cara Laney Thede and Elizabeth Loftus, ‘False Memory’, Oxford Bibliographies (2018), DOI:10.1093/OBO/9780199828340–0216 [accessed 9/7/21].
21. John Berger, Ways of Seeing (Harmondsworth: British Broadcasting Corporation; Penguin Books, 1972; repr. 1982), p. 8.
22. Richard Tauerner, Proverbes or adagies with newe addicions gathered out of the Chiliades of Erasmus (London: Ricardum Bances [Richard Bankes], 1539), sig. F. iiiv.
23. Myrna May Combellack-Harris, ‘A Critical Edition of Beunans Meriasek’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Exeter, 1985), pp. 11–12; see also Beunans Meriasek: The Life of Saint Meriasek, Bishop and Confessor. A Cornish Drama, ed. and trans. by Whitley Stokes (London: Trübner, 1872).
24. For examples of this kind of misdirected intervention, see Dodsley, A Select Collection of Old Plays, XI (1827), p. 32, n. 23: ‘The stage direction ought to run Exeunt all excepting Queen Elinor, Jean and Glocester’; p. 82, n. 104: ‘The whole of this stage direction is confused: it ought to run […]’; p. 96, n. 135: ‘In this stage direction perhaps the reading ought to be “Enter Messenger, express from Mortimer” ’; Robert Lee Ramsay, in his introduction to Magnyfycence, regards the play to be ‘strikingly poor in its indications of scene and staging […] No part of the play has suffered more at the hands of the printers than the stage directions […] and a great many of the most necessary directions have been omitted’. Ramsay’s judgement is based on the presumption that medieval stage directions were the same as modern ones in their function of directing players in their action. He brings unacknowledged modern criteria to bear on medieval practice: John Skelton, Magnyfycence: A Moral Play, ed. by Robert Lee Ramsay, the Early English Text Society ES98 (London: Oxford University Press, 1908; repr. 1958), p. xliv; for more cautious and nuanced thinking on this issue, see David Bevington, ‘Drama Editing and Its Relation to Recent Trends in Literary Criticism’ in Editing Early English Drama: Special Problems and New Directions, ed. by A. F. Johnston (New York: AMS Press, 1987), p. 31.
25. See, for example, Paula Neuss, The Creacion of the World: A Critical Edition and Translation, ed. and trans. by Paula Neuss (New York, London: Garland, 1983), p. lxxx: ‘Stage-directions, which are mainly written in the right-hand margin of the manuscript […] have been placed next to the line to which they appear to refer, although they sometimes occur earlier in the manuscript for the convenience of the stage-manager, or occupy a whole stanza’s space. A few directions have been added to help the reader visualise the action: these appear in square brackets’. Although Neuss’s intention is clear and laudable, she does not consistently use square brackets to distinguish her added stage directions from those of the manuscript. She introduces two stage directions (not in Stokes) at ll. 535 and 551 (not in square brackets).
26. The descriptions of John Shirley as a copyist/recorder of Lydgate’s texts bear some superficial resemblance in descriptive terms to those of recorded stage directions, although Shirley appears not to have had much interest in performance itself. Shirley’s annotations are not records or descriptions of action and are therefore excluded from this work. See John Lydgate, Mummings and Entertainments, ed. by Claire Sponsler, TEAMS Middle English Text Series, Medieval Institute Publications (Kalamazoo: Western Michigan University, 2010); Claire Sponsler, The Queen’s Dumbshows: John Lydgate and the Making of Early Theater (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), pp. 21–25.
27. This is a conclusion that I came to in a paper I offered to one of the early Medieval English Theatre (METh) meetings at Westfield College in 1981 when discussing stage directions in the Towneley Plays: ‘What we could have here are not stage directions as we know them but a record of the event or moment previously created’ [my paper]; Peter Happé, ‘Stage Directions in Lyndsay’s Ane Satire of the Thrie Estaitis’, The Best Pairt of our Play: Essays presented to John J. McGavin, Medieval English Theatre, 37, 2 parts (2015), 57–72: Happé considers the conception of stage directions to be twofold: ‘Firstly the author, or someone connected with the production, needs to prescribe details which are necessary for the enactment, or, in a complementary sense, the stage directions might be a record of what had actually been done onstage’. I put more stress on explicit stage directions as observations, descriptions and records and not as directions to players.
28. Elisabeth Dutton, in her ‘The Croxton Play of the Sacrament’ in The Oxford Handbook of Tudor Drama, ed. by Thomas Betteridge and Greg Walker (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 68, refers to stage directions in the play being ‘more descriptive than practical, that they can describe the action of the play as if it were real, rather than acknowledging its theatrical illusion and giving any hint as to how the illusion is to be achieved: these might well be stage directions which would be more useful to a reader, imagining a performance, than a troupe having to realize one’. This may well be the case. However, plays considered to be created for ‘reading’ as opposed to ‘performance’ are often cited by scholars when the evidence for their performance is not clearly demonstrated. Often, the assumption is that, if the play is not to be considered for its performance, then it must have been written for reading. These oppositional viewpoints miss recognition of stage directions as records of observed performance. What the observer records is ‘real’ in terms of described action.
29. Lumiansky, R. M. and David Mills, eds, The Chester Mystery Cycle, The Early English Text Society, 2 vols, SS 3, SS 9 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974 and 1986), I, p. 16.
30. The Macro Plays The Castle of Perseverance Wisdom Mankind, ed. by Mark Eccles, Early English Text Society, OS 262 (London: Oxford University Press, 1969), pp. 68, 73. See also Chapters 6 and 8.
31. Norris, Edwin, ed. and trans., The Ancient Cornish Drama, 2 vols (Oxford: University Press, 1859), II, p. 138.
32. See the notes provided by Michael Spence in the Introduction to the Catalogue.