2
There is general scholarly agreement that medieval English plays were, to a greater or lesser degree, didactic in their purpose and nature. Even so, Ann Eljenholm Nichols, in her ‘The Croxton Play of the Sacrament: A Re-Reading’, declares:
Many a critical argument could be resolved if disputants could agree on a definition of ‘didacticism’. I have accepted [David] Mills’ term ‘explanation’ as a synonym for a didactic text, although I prefer a stronger word than affirmation for a play whose tone is clearly devotional rather than explanatory. The divorce of didacticism from devotion, of course, reflects twentieth- rather than fifteenth-century mentality.1
The OED Online definition of ‘didacticism’ shifts the emphasis from ‘explanation’ and ‘affirmation’ to: ‘The practice or quality of being didactic; the fact of having instruction or teaching as a primary or ulterior purpose’. The earliest recorded use of the word with this meaning is 1816. Similarly, the OED Online defines the meaning of ‘didactic’ as:
2. B. b. Of a teaching method, teacher, etc.: that conveys knowledge or information by formal means such as lectures and textbooks, rote learning, etc. Frequently contrasted (often unfavourably) with teaching methods encouraging greater involvement or creativity on the part of those being taught.2
The OED Online does not record use of the word until an example of 1799. Although the words ‘didacticism’ and ‘didactic’ are clearly not medieval ones, it is the meaning, purpose and mechanisms that they represent that permit their use in medieval contexts. Throughout this work, I shall be concerned with ‘teaching’ and ‘instruction’ as the principal meanings of the terms ‘didacticism’ and ‘didactic’ as a means of promoting devotion.
Devotion through Teaching and Instruction
The impetus and conditioning of such didacticism came out of the decrees of the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, with one of its focal concerns on the education of both clergy and laity. The impact of this convocation was picked up and developed in England by the Council of Lambeth convoked by the Archbishop of Canterbury, John Peckham, in 1281. Out of this ecclesiastical council came an order from Peckham to the clergy to explain and teach the laity of doctrine at least four times a year on issues of the ‘Creed, the ten commandments, the two precepts of the Gospel, viz. love to God and man, the seven works of mercy, the seven deadly sins, the seven cardinal virtues, and the seven sacraments of grace’.3 These doctrines were regarded by Peckham as constituting the minimum to be understood by parishioners. He also considered that ‘Ignorance on the part of the clergy is the source of error in the people whom they are bound to guide’.4 In ‘The Office of Curates’, in a tone of thought often likened to that of John Wyclif, the author also bemoans the shortage of informed and available curates and expositors to teach the laity of Peckham’s doctrine:
But fewe curatis han þe bible & exposiciouns of þe gospelis, & litel studien on hem & lesse donne after hem. But wolde god þat euery parische chirche in þis lond hadde a good bible & good expositouris on þe gospellis, & þat þe prestis studiende hem wel & tauȝten trewely þe gospel & goddis hestis to þe peple; for þanne sculde good lif regne, & reste & pees & charite; & synne & falsnesse putt a bak. god brynge þis ende to his peple. amen.5
The same concerns as those issued by Peckham were also issued by John de Thoresby, Archbishop of York, in 1357, also in the form of a catechism. The motivation for the publication of this edict was the same as that of Peckham some 76 years earlier—that is to say, to educate both clergy and laity. Thoresby drew up two statements, one in Latin, ostensibly for the clergy, and one in English verse designed for the laity. He outlines his assessment of the poor understanding of clergy and laity and the responsibility of the clergy to teach the laity:
And all the knawyng þat we have in þis world of him,
Is of heryng, leryng [learning] and techyng of othir,
Of the lawe and þe lare [lore] þat langes till halikirke [the whole church],
The whilke al creatures that loues god almighten
Awe to knawe and to kun [memorise], and lede þaire lyue aftir;
And so com to that blisse that never more blynnes.
And forthi that mikill folke now in this world
Ne is noght wele ynogh lered to knawe god almighten,
Ne loue him, ne serue him als thai suld do,
Als thaire dedis ofte sithe openly shewes,
In gret peril of thaime to lyue and to sawle,
And perauenture the defaiter in thaime,
That has thaire saules to kepe, and suld teche thame,
Als prelates, parsons, vikers, and prestes
That er halden be dette [duty] for to lere thame—6
A third version exists as a Wycliffite adaptation of Thoresby’s verse for the laity. The purpose of Thoresby’s English version is recorded in Lollard Tracts, MS B.14.50, Trinity College, Cambridge:
Sire William thorsby [sic] erchebishop of ȝork did do to drawe a tretys in englishe be a worschipful clerk wos name was gaytrik in þe wiche weren conteyned þe articulis of þe feiþ ∙ seuene dedli synnes ∙ þe werkes of mercy & þe ten comandements and sente hem in smale pagynes to þe comyn puple to lerne yt ∙ & to knowe yt ∙ of whiche ben ȝit manye accompanye in englond.7
Although the principal means by which the laity were to be instructed was through the sermon, the implication from MS B.14.50 invites speculation on an interpretation of the meaning of ‘smale pagynes’ in relation to the York Corpus Christi Play, the Creed Play and the Pater Noster Play. Did Thoresby’s catechism cause or influence the formation of these plays in the city of York? The earliest record of the York Corpus Christi Play manuscript is generally dated between 1463 and 1477, although
The earliest possible evidence for the existence of a Corpus Christi Play in York appears in 1377, and the form it is known to have taken in 1415, reflected in the Ordo Paginarum drawn up in that year, resembles in many particulars what was set down in the manuscript some sixty years later.8
The earliest reference to the Creed Play at York is 1446, as recorded in the will of William Revetour,9 and the earliest record to date the Pater Noster Play is in the Pater Noster Guild’s returns of 1388–89.10 The above dates of the respective York plays suggest the likelihood that these ‘smale pagynes’ refer to one or other of the three plays developed at York. Certainly, there was common purpose in Thorseby’s didactic motivation and that of the instigators of the York plays.
Instruction of the laity through the sermon was directed to the intellectual and rational capacity of congregations to encourage devotion. This much is well known.11 Plays, on the other hand, were delivered by several players at a time who, between them, may have delivered the same or similar content to that of the individual preacher but who created a religious and theatrical environment in which audience responsiveness was sought and expected. Didactically created plays were able to fuse intellectual and rational concerns with developed affective behaviour in such ways as to intensify the witnessed experience. The difference between hearing of a miracle through a sermon and seeing it represented in a play makes for a fundamentally different devotional and theatrical experience for the congregation and audience. In the Play of the Sacrament (Croxton), the spectators witness the violent attempts to destroy the host and the miraculous transformation of the host into Christ and back again. Having been subjected to this experience, Episcopus, the Bishop, concludes the play by imploring the audience: ‘Crystys commandementys ten there bee; /Kepe well them; doo as I yow tell. /Almyght ˹God˺ shall yow please in euery degré, /And so shall ye saue yowr sollys from hell’.12 This is not an unreasonable devotional demand in this context, given the depth of the theatrical experience just encountered. This experience may be likened to that expressed in A Tretise of Miraclis Pleyinge:
Also ofte sithis by siche miraclis pleyinge men and wymmen, seinge the passioun of Crist and of his seintis, ben movyd to compassion and devocion, wepinge bitere teris, thanne they ben not scorninge of God but worschiping13
This kind of understanding between player and spectator inevitably created a more active relationship through which to receive and understand the doctrine promoted by Peckham. As a teaching/instructional aid, plays were probably more effective than sermons in creating three-dimensional experiences and understanding for spectators.14 In Wynkyn de Worde’s Dives et Pauper (1496), the didactic value of plays that were principally devised to promote devotion is described as:
In ryaltees as in playes & daunces yt ben done pryncypally for deuocion honeste and myrthe to teche men to loue god the more/& for no rybaudry/ ne medled with rybaudry ne lesynges ben lefull/so that the people be not letted therby from goddes seruyce/ ne fro herynge of goddes worde & yt none errours be meddled in suche ryaltees & playes ayenst the fayth of holy chirche ne ayenst good lyuynge. Alle other playes ben forboden bothe holy dayes & werken dayes.15
In addition to the developed content of the doctrine promoted by Peckham, a number of devices and techniques were used to promote didactic purpose.
Expositor Roles
The principal agent to develop didacticism was the expositor, whose role required him to bestride both the narrative and performance realities as a means of explaining and promoting the significance of the narrative. In the German Alsfeld Passion Play, some of the functions of the expositor are sternly labelled as:
opening and closing prayers, exhortations to silence and proper behavior, instructions on how to watch the performance […] repeated pleas for the spectators to be moved by, and learn from, the suffering of Jesus and Mary […] admonishes the spectators to view the play as a sacramental act; describes the scenes to be performed on the first day of the play; reminds himself not to talk so long as to bore the spectators […] and reads a mayoral declaration and warning which promises hellish punishment for spectators who cross the line onto the stage.16
Expositors occur in five of the Chester Plays, while others occur in the N.town Plays, The Conversion of St. Paul, Killing of the Children, The Pride of Life, The Cambridge Prologue, the Play of the Sacrament, The Castle of Perseverance and The Creation of the World. Expositors are not always identified and labelled by this name. Expository functions are also taken up by those named ‘Doctor’, ‘Preco’, ‘Nuntius’, ‘Messenger’, ‘Poeta’, ‘Prolocutor’, ‘Contemplacio’, ‘Vexillator’, ‘Reaport’ and ‘Conveyour’.17 Thus, in the N.town Procession of Saints (contained as a separate section at the end of Play 28), one of the two doctors, ‘primus doctor’, declares his purpose and function in the clearest terms:
To þe pepyl not lernyd I stonde as a techer,
Of þis processyon to ȝeve informacyon;
And to them þat be lernyd as a gostly precher,
That in my rehersayl they may haue delectacyon.18
The role of the expositor may be seen to lubricate didactic purpose. The expositor frequently explains the intention and stance taken by the presenters of the play. In doing so, he speaks directly to the audience in order to clarify and interpret the play and its significance. This position establishes the pretence of the narrative reality and the separate reality of the spectators’ existence. He is always able to draw upon the narrative to explain its relevance in such a way as to encourage devotional behaviour from spectators. Although performance of the narrative is seen and known of as a pretence by spectators, it presents theatrical examples of scriptural events to inculcate devotion. The audience is always aware of the narrative reality operating in a different reality to its own. The expositor’s didactic strength goes beyond that of the preacher because he is able to demonstrate and explicate the relationship of his words to the action of the players as witnessed by the spectators. He performs an analogous and related didactic role to the one in which pictures and spoken words may reinforce each other. Here, it is the action of the players and his performed explanatory words that reinforce each other. He is a performer but not a player or literary figure: he is a person seen by audiences to embody authoritative scriptural knowledge.19
Didactic action is that which reinforces recognisable representation. This may be seen through: the player who ‘represents’ his personage yet does not ‘become’ him/her;20 scenic or set dressing that exemplifies location; and staged stage management by personages other than players who also straddle the narrative and performance realities.
When the expositor delivers his words, his task is that of informing the audience of the religious significance of the play. He has a range of available forms of direct address at his disposal. When he is in the explanation mode, he speaks ‘to’ the spectators and, when he is in corrective mode, he addresses the audience by speaking ‘at’ it in order to impose or demand. Additionally, he may speak ‘with’ the audience as a means of assuaging, sharing confidentiality or intimacy. A slightly more complicated form of direct address occurs when the expositor attempts to speak ‘through’ the audience in a manner that regards the audience as a conduit for a purpose which is to find its expression, development or resolution back ‘on stage’.21 The same and similar modes of direct address are identified by Mark Rylance (actor/director) when he says:
It also became paramount to say to the actors, ‘Don’t speak to them, don’t speak for them, speak with them, play with them. Eventually, in my last years, I really came to feel that it was not just about speaking, it was about thinking of the audience as other actors, and not only when you are projecting on to them the role of the helpful crowd, like Henry’s army or the citizens of Venice at the trial in The Merchant of Venice. It was more about the fact that anything they did was like another player on the stage doing something, so they were always there and when you were alone they were your conscience or your soul.22
These distinctive modes of direct address present critical variations available to the expositor according to the purpose of his direct address. For instance, the expositors and doctors in the Chester Plays always address the spectators by talking ‘to’ them in order to explain the significance of the developing situation. In the play of Abraham (Play 4) at Chester, a brief stage direction records that the expositor arrives on horseback:
Expositor (equitando)
Lordinges, what may this signfye
I will expound yt appertly—
the unlearned standinge herebye
maye knowe what this may bee.23
Just as the expositor at Chester bestrides the narrative and performance realities, so too does he straddle the performance space by addressing the spectators from a raised position on horseback; he does not speak to the audience from the pageant carriage, nor does he stand in the street. This physical and spatial presence on horseback exemplifies his pivotal role and function. Contemplacio, the expositor, makes his first appearance in the N.town Play of Joachim and Anna (Play 8), where his approach and tone are courteous, formal and firm. He, too, speaks ‘to’ the audience. His communicated function is to explain ‘How be Joachym and Anne was here concepcyon’. He placates his audience in a manner that is not untypical of expositor stances to their spectators when he declares that few words will be used so as not to make the play a tedious experience for them. This supplication is, in itself, a didactic technique expressed through carefully considered humility: ‘In fewe wurdys talkyd, þat it xulde nat be tedyous/ To lernyd nyn [nor] to lewd, nyn to no man of reson’.24 On making his second appearance in the N.town Play of The Presentation of Mary in the Temple (Play 9), the expositor draws upon another didactic approach expressed as an apology for the shortage of available time as a reason to exclude ‘How oure Lady was conseyvid and how she was bore’ by saying ‘We passe ovyr þat, breffnes of tyme consyderynge’.25 Declaration of the shortage of time is a theatrical device to control the structure and a further seductive attempt to engage the interest and concentration of the spectators through recognition of any potential lack of interest. On Contemplacio’s third appearance, lack of time is again given as structural reasoning for avoiding the subject of Mary’s confinement:
And we beseche ȝow of ȝoure pacyens
þat we pace þese materys so lythly away;
If þei xulde be do with good prevydens,
Eche on wolde suffyce for an hool day.26
Contemplacio, on each of his first three arrivals, expresses concern for the potential creation of tedium for his spectators. On his fourth arrival, he behaves in quite a different way and makes no use of direct address. His role does not straddle the narrative and performance realities. He is firmly locked into the narrative reality and operates more like a personage in the narrative. This inconsistency is carefully analysed by Peter Meredith through examination of scribal markings in the N.town manuscript. He concludes that the expositor’s speech was previously two speeches and attributes the lines to two possible pairs of speakers as ‘a representative or representatives of the patriarchs and prophets, and a representative or representatives of the angels and archangels’.27 This seems entirely plausible, and Meredith’s argued case is for the roles to have been occupied by angels. Unlike Contemplacio’s earlier appearances, his verbal target is not the audience but God, within the narrative of the play. He speaks forcefully to God and has relinquished his use of direct address. This fact alone reinforces Meredith’s interpretation.
The Primus Vexillator in the proclamation to the N.town Plays takes on expository functions by attempting to ingratiate himself ‘with’ the audience. His demeanour is conciliatory as he seeks identification and recognition with and from the spectators. This is quite a different approach to direct address to that used by the Chester expositors. He says:
Now, gracyous God, groundyd of all goodnesse,
As þi grete glorie nevyr begynnyng had,
So þu socour and saue all þo þat sytt and sese,
And lystenyth to oure talkyng with sylens stylle and sad.
For we purpose us pertly styll in þis prese
þe pepyl to plese with pleys ful glad.
Now lystenyth us louely, bothe more and lesse,
Gentyllys and ȝemanry of goodly lyff lad, þis tyde.
We xal ȝou shewe as þat we kan
How þat þis wered fyrst began,
And how God made bothe molde and man,
Iff þat ȝe wyl abyde.28
Here, the Vexillator directs audience responses through a mixture of cajolement and firm, friendly instruction. Spectators are instructed to ‘lystenyth to oure talkyng with sylens stylle and sad’ in order to permit the purpose of the play ‘þe pepyl to plese with pleys ful glad’. In delivering this statement, the Vexillator plants a role on the audience by which it can engage in the process of the play and reap the benefits of its performance.29 Effectively, he attempts to educate the audience in its contributory role.
When expositors or others who take on expository functions seek theatrical compliance from spectators, they invariably name audience members with hierarchical titles above their conventional status as a didactic device to win over audience support. The most commonly applied term is ‘lordings’, which, in this context, the MED30 defines ‘As a term of polite address used by persons of humbler station to their superiors; by poets, minstrels, or storytellers to readers or audience’.31 Another common title is ‘soverain’, which the MED defines ‘as a term of address to a superior, or merely in polite address: master, sir’.32 These terms of address contained in the text should not be taken to be literal ones from which to ascertain audience composition.33 In one way, the titles attempt to be all-embracing in order not to create offence by exclusion.
The Conveyour
In the Gwreans An Bys: The Creacon of the World, two stage directions state:
Adam and Eva aparlet in whytt lether in a place apoynted by the conveyour & not to be sene tyll they be called & thei knell & ryse
Let adam laye downe & slepe wher eva ys & she by the conveyour must be taken from adam is syde34
Of itself, the first of these two stage directions does not confirm the presence of the conveyour in the performance space. The ‘place apoynted by the conveyour’ may simply refer to a pre-arranged location.35 However, the second of these stage directions does confirm that the conveyour is a functionary witnessed in the performance space and someone engaged in the action. Reference to the conveyour in this stage direction thus confirms his presence and function in the first stage direction. Just as the spectator is constantly able to distinguish between the player and his personage, so too is he/she able to separate personages in the biblical story from non-fictional presentational agents. The conveyour is yet another important contributor to the panoply of didactic techniques. He is clearly not seen by spectators as a player or someone who exists in the biblical narrative: he is seen as a figure of authority who conditions and promotes action, but not as a player. His authority is established by the first of the stage directions above declaring that Adam and Eve occupy space ‘apoynted by the conveyour’. In modern terms, this is a directorial function. He exists outside the players’ reality but is permitted to connect with it and direct, organise and cue action. The didactic functions of the conveyour are clearly accepted by the audience as ones that negotiate between the narrative and performance realities.36 The same kind of negotiation exists between the expositor and the audience, although the functions of the expositor and the conveyour are different. Essentially, the expositor’s primary function is a verbal one, guiding, explaining, correcting, cajoling and assuaging spectators, whereas the conveyour operates silently and effectively shadows personages with physical direction.37 It is in this limited respect, of ghosting the personage, that the conveyour and Carew’s ‘ordinary’ may be compared. Inclusion of figures such as the conveyour and the expositor exemplify the strength of didactic purpose and theatrical intention. Their appearance in their respective plays provides measurement of the strength of didactic objectives. Like the expositor, the conveyour epitomises didactic intention by separating what happens in the narrative reality and the performance reality. Other didactically conditioned performance agents exist as the ordinary, the book bearer, the prologue speaker, the monitor or prompter and the vexillator.38 In each case, didacticism determines the roles of these operators. In turn, their existence strongly reflects and supports the purpose and existence of didacticism.
An all-embracing analogous didactic operator occurs in the Iranian Passion Play—the Ta’zieh, who was ‘called, in the time of Nasr od-Din Shah, Moin l’Buka and nowadays Ostad, Mirza, or Ta’zieh Gierdan’. He is the director/producer or ‘the contractor’ who:
is the most important member of the company. He is responsible not only for the play’s production, music, and mise en scène, but also for all props, arrangements with the local authorities, and financial returns. He acquires his skill through apprenticeship […] The producer is always on hand during the performance. He is like a traffic policeman, regulating the movement of actors, musicians, and audience. He remains constantly on the stage, gives the actors their cues, helps children and inexperienced actors to take up their positions, holds the stirrup for the horseman, and helps to dress a would-be martyr in his winding sheet. This may be distracting at first, but after a few minutes the spectator takes it in his stride.39
This quotation from Peter Chelkowski likens the animation of the ‘contractor’ to that of a ‘traffic policeman’. In my ‘Groningen Experiment’, spectators referred the prompter’s actions to those of a puppeteer (pp. 139, 142) or a choirmaster (p. 142). The range of animated actions associated with the ‘traffic policeman’, the ‘puppeteer’ and the ‘choirmaster’ are not very different from each other. The description offered by Chelkowski of the on-stage ‘producer’, ‘contractor’ or ‘Ta’zieh Gierdan’, and the functions that he adopts, resembles and includes the principal role of Richard Carew’s ordinary, namely, that of the visible prompter who supplies cues. Augustus H. Mounsey, in his A Journey through the Caucasus and the Interia of Persia (1872), describes the prompting function of this ‘producer or ‘contractor’:
Each of the performers in it had his part written on a bit of paper in his hand, so as to be able to refresh his memory whenever it failed him, and was conducted to his proper place and put in position by the prompter; who never quitted the stage, and gave us frequent explanations of what appeared to him ambiguous in the acting or declamation.40
Another similar eye-witness account of the martyrdom of Hossein, or the Iranian Passion Play—the Ta’zieh, occurs in S. G. W. Benjamin’s Persia and the Persians:
The entire performance was directed by a prompter, who walked unconcernedly on the stage, and gave hints to the players or placed the younger actors in their position. At the proper moment also, by a motion of the hand, he gave orders for the music to strike up or stop. But it was curious how soon I ceased to notice him at all; indeed, after a short time I was scarcely aware of his presence. So interested had I become in the extraordinary character of all that was going on before me, that I forgot there was no scenery, and actually seemed to myself to be gazing upon actual events as they once occurred on the banks of the Euphrates.41
This account corroborates Mounsey’s description in respect of prompting and cueing and verifies the presence of this figure visibly directing operations of players and musicians in full view of the audience. This is also the exact same function embodied by the ‘maestro’ in the present-day Representación de Moros y Cristianos in the village of Trevelez in the Sierra Nevada in Spain.42
Although Carew’s description of the ordinary does not refer to the extended scope of those functions taken on by the Ya’zieh Gierdan, it is quite possible that the ordinary’s principal function could have been widened since he was already seen to be active in a directorial role in the playing space. Such encompassing functions of ‘the contractor’ not only contribute to the comprehensiveness of his overall role but also demonstrate the didactic nature of this devotional theatre. The on-stage openness of all aspects of the presentation are central and pivotal to the theatrical identity of the work and open up further support to the understanding of the functions of the Cornish ordinary and the Cornish ‘conveyour’. The notion expressed in the last sentence of Chelkowski’s quotation that the ‘spectator takes it in his stride’ and Benjamin’s observation that ‘it was curious how soon I ceased to notice him at all; indeed, after a short time I was scarcely aware of his presence’ are ones that I have attempted to re-establish in respect of acceptance of the didactic performance logic of Richard Carew’s Cornish ordinary.43
The concept and practice of the conveyour establish a convention that an audience is able to comprehend as one that exists at the interface between both the biblical narrative and performance realities. Such a convention does not preclude the same sort of function and tasks being undertaken by a personage in the biblical narrative. For instance, in the Gwreans An Bys: The Creacon of the World, the angel is required to perform conveyour-type tasks when a stage direction requires:
The garmentis of skynnes to be geven to adam and eva by the angell. Receave the garmentis. Let them depart owt of paradice and adam and eva folowing them. Let them put on the garmentis and shewe a spyndell and a dystaff 44
A similar original stage direction occurs in the Beunans Meriasek: The Life of St. Meriasek, where Meriasek’s soul is prepared to ascend to heaven: ‘Et sic emisit spiritum’45 (And so he sent forth his spirit [or, and so he gave up the ghost]). Adjacent to this stage direction is a later added one that records: ‘ye holy goste aredy ffro heuyn to fett [fetch] ye sowle and ye sovle aredy’.46 Each of these actions distributed to an angel could be ones allocated to a conveyour. A further layering of theatrical pretence through conveyance is determined by another stage direction that requires God ‘the father [to] take a bone owt of adam is syde’.47 Here, the action is contained within the reality of the biblical narrative, although the didactic process is the same as that conducted by the conveyour. The same didactic action is governed by a similarly worded stage direction in the Drapers’ Playe of Adam and Eve; Cain and Abel at Chester (Play 2): ‘Then God taketh Adam by the hande and causeth him to lye downe, and taketh a ribbe out of his syde and saith’.48 Although God is seen to be a personage in the Drapers’ Playe, his player still operates within the realities of the biblical narrative and the performance reality. Again, the audience is able to recognise both realities simultaneously. The same is the case when the action is developed by another stage direction: ‘Then God doth make the woman of the ribbe of Adam, wakinge and sayth to God’.49 Later, in the Chester Cookes’ Playe of the Harrowing of Hell (Play 17), a stage direction records that Adam is yet again conveyed by God: ‘Hic extrahuntur patriarchi [Here must God take owt Adam]’ (Here the patriarchs are removed).50
In the N.town Nativity (Play 15), the birth of Christ is determined by a stage direction: ‘Hic dum Joseph est absens parit Maria Filium Vnigenitum’ (Here, while Joseph is absent Mary delivers the only begotten Son).51An initial interpretation of this direction might suggest that the bundled child has been previously placed out of sight and revealed at the appropriate moment. However, didactic intention could be equally promoted through use of an angel to deliver the child within the biblical narrative reality, or a conveyour-type figure within the performance reality.52 Either of these potential treatments would not be dissimilar in theatrical function to the one determined by a stage direction in the Gwreans An Bys: The Creacon of the World that refers to treatment of Adam’s soul: ‘An Angell conveyeth adams soole to lymbo’.53 A stage direction in the Digby Mary Magdalen also records the need for conveyance:
Here xal Satan go hom to hys stage, and Mari xal entyr into þe place alone, save þe Bad Angyl, and al þe Seuen Dedly Synnys xal be conveyyd into þe howse of Symont Leprovs, þey xal be arayyd lyke seuen dylf, þus kept closse; Mari xal be in an erbyr, þus seyyng.54
Reinforcement of Didactic Purpose
Clearly, as seen in the above stage directions, demonstration of action is yet another available technique to promote didactic intention. In the Chester Drapers’ Play (Play 2), a stage direction stipulates: ‘Then God, puttynge garmentes of skynnes upon them’.55 Here, Adam and Eve are clothed by God in the manner required by the biblical narrative. But the apparent simplicity of this action may be regarded by the audience as simplistic or childish unless the didactic convention is sufficiently well established for spectators to accept it as a device and for it to be enjoyed as such. Didactic techniques may be seen to be incorporated into the playing of the play in such a way as to be considered organic to its presentation. Such approaches do not appear to be laid upon the narrative but are organised in such a way as to organically grow out of it in performance. If an audience considered that it was being patronised by use of representation and demonstration, then it is likely that it would have imaginatively blocked the didactic intention. Potential responses of this kind may be seen demonstrated in another stage direction in the Chester Waterleaders and Drawers of Dee Play of Noyes Fludd (Play 3), which states:
Then Noe shall goe into the arke with all his familye, his wyffe excepte, and the arke muste bee borded rownde aboute. And one [on] the bordes all the beastes and fowles hereafter reahersed muste bee paynted, that ther wordes may agree with the pictures.56
On first encounter with this stage direction, it may appear that the simplicity of the intention is directed at the level of primary school-aged children. Whereas young children might take the painted relationships at face value, the seeming oversimplification of the stage direction requirements may be perfectly acceptable to an audience if the simplicity is seen to be filtered through a recognisably didactic scenic device. The means of strengthening audience acceptance of such a device would no doubt be to make use of the images in the performed text in such a way as to reinforce the relationship between the words and images in order to create meaning and significance. Indeed, this may be the meaning behind the expectation ‘that ther wordes may agree with the pictures’. However, it is also possible, but less likely, that this phrase may refer to painted words which label the images.57
The same point may be made in an analogous relationship demonstrated in two stage directions in the Gwreans An Bys: The Creation of the World: ‘Let Paradyce be fynelye made wyth iiv fayre trees in yt And an appell vpon the tree & som other frute one the other’ and ‘A fowntaine in Paradice & fyne flowers in yt painted’.58 Here, the symbiotic relationship between the painted images and the words of the text is completed by God’s description: ‘Abundance of flowers of every kind/ In this place are grown;/ And fruits on every tree/ Shall grow winter and summer likewise’.59
Reinforcement of words with their images is not only a modern teaching concern but one also encouraged in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In the fifteenth-century discussion between Diues and Pauper, Diues asks ‘wherof serue the ymages’, and Pauper replies:
They serue for thre thynges. For they be ordeyned to stere mannes mynde to thynke on Crystus Incarnacyon/and on his passyon/and on his lyuynge/and on other sayntes lyuyng. Also they ben ordeyned to styre mannes affeccyon/and his herte to deuocyon. For ofte a man is more stered by syght than by heryng or redynge. Also they be ordeyned to be a token and a booke to the lewde people/that they may rede in ymagerye and paynture/that clerkes rede in the booke as the lawe sayth.60
The value of ‘ymagerye and paynture’ to the education of ‘the lewde’ is again alluded to by Thomas Elyot in his The boke named the Gouernour where he quotes Quintilian’s approach to teaching children under 7, when he suggests that children should ‘be swetely allured therto with praises and suche praty gyftes as children delite in. And their fyrst letters to be paynted or lymned in a pleasaunt maner: wherein children of gentyl courage haue moche delectation’.61
According to Reginald Pecock in his Repressor of Over Much Blaming of the Clergy (1449), images are much more likely to stick in the memory than the ‘mater’ of words when they are ‘biholding an ymage coruen with purtenancis sett about him, or in biholding a storie openli ther of purtreied [portrayed] or peinted in the wal or in a clooth’.62 John Palsgrave, tutor to Edward VI, wrote to Henry VIII to ask him for the services of a painter for, in his estimation, it is ‘a great forderance [furtherance] in lerning as well to knowe the names of thynges as the thyngys sellffe by their pictures’.63 In addressing the supposed unlearned audience at Chester, the reinforcement of word and image is not different in principle to that articulated by Palsgrave in the education of the young prince. Additional reinforcement of image may be seen in the N.town Moses (Play 5), where a stage direction states: ‘Hic Moyses videns [rubum] ardentum admirande [admirans] dicit’ (Here Moses sees a burning bush and says in wonderment).64 The director of naturalistic theatre of today might be left scratching his/her head as to how this requirement might be theatrically contrived. Should it be an actual burning bush or a representation of it? Moses’s following speech offers a pointer to the answer to this question when he says: ‘A, mercy, God, what menyth ȝon syte/ A grene busch as fyre doth flame/ And kepyth his colowre fayr and bryghte/ Fresch and grene withowtyn blame!’65 If these words are intended to align with the requirement of the stage direction, then this green bush should remain green while it is burning. This suggests an artificial bush that is painted green and with artificial flames, similarly painted. Such a device clearly sits within didactic criteria as demonstrated above.
In the play of Noah in the N.town Plays (Play 4), further didactic promotion is articulated in the stage direction: ‘Hic euolet columba, qua rede[u]nte cum ramo viridi oliue’ (Here he is to let fly a dove which returns with a green olive branch).66 Clearly, within a didactic context, the dove does not have to be a real one. Nor, indeed, does an artificial dove have to be a second-best alternative choice. Audience understanding of didactic devices presumably permitted use of the artificial dove as the perfect solution to this aspect of the story. The involvement of stage management/directorial figures such as the ‘conveyour’ in the Gwreans An Bys: The Creacon of the World could quite easily perform the stage management of this action—both in sending out the dove and retrieving it. At its simplest, a conveyour-type figure could hold up the dove and walk or run around the performance space and return it to the ark. More involved techniques might include the simulation of flight, although a clear method of retrieving the dove is provided by a stage direction in the Harley 2124 manuscript of the Chester Noah’s Flood (Play 3): ‘Tunc emittet columbam; et erit in nave aliam columbam ferens olivam in ore, quam dimittet aliquis ex malo per funem in manibus Noe; et postea dicat Noe’67 (Then he shall send out a dove; and in the ship there will be another dove carrying olive in its mouth, which someone shall let down by a cord from the mast into the hands of Noah; and afterwards let Noah say).68 This is a particularly important stage direction in that it determines the quality and pitch of the idea of a second dove to replace the first one. The notion of this simple replacement demonstrates the level at which didactic staging devices are set to deliver understanding of the narrative to the audience. Spectators are able to witness the second dove as a device and understand its purpose within the narrative. The idea and its device exemplify the kinds of theatrical resolutions that may be selected in order to explain the narrative.
A different form of ship from Noah’s ark is required to come into the playing space in Mary Magdalen where a stage direction requires: ‘Ett tunc navis venit in placeam, et navta dicit’ (And then the ship comes into the place, and the sailor says).69 What propels the ship is not specified here: is it a ship built on wheels or one that is carried? It seems that the answer to this question depends on identification of the playing surface. If hard ground could be guaranteed, then the ship could purposefully be built on wheels; if not, and the ground might be potentially soggy, then a carried ship might have been more manipulable.70 A carried ship would probably not have been of the kind conveyed by ‘xvj tall & stronge men [to] beare the pageant’ in the Lord Mayors’ Pageant on behalf of the Merchant Taylors’ Company, London, in 1561.71 This ship pageant appears to have been borne at shoulder height on detachable poles in the manner of a bier.72 It is more likely that the Mary Magdalen ship was constructed of relatively lightweight materials, such as cloth or paper stretched over wickerwork or withies, suspended by straps over the shoulders of the mariner ‘Navta’ and his presumed crew,73 whose upper bodies could be seen while their legs were masked from view.74 Presumably, they would power the ship by walking with it and be seen to travel in it. From a didactic point of view, it would not matter that an audience could witness presumed straps, or, indeed, the occupants legs beneath the hull of the boat.75 The obvious artificiality of such a presentation would, no doubt, have been able to signify use of a didactic device. A similar example of a represented ship is recorded in a 1501 account:
anoon cam owte … for the defendeours, Guyllam de la Ryvers … in a goodly shippe borne up wt men, wtin himself ryding in the myddes […] and the sides of the ship covered wt cloth peynted after the colour or lykeness of water.76
The description seems to suggest that the ship is carried by men with Guyllam de la Ryvers as a passenger who simply walks alongside the carriers inside the ship. Whether his legs and feet were hidden behind the painted cloth that represented the side of the ship in water is likely but unclear.
Just as reinforcement of image and word might be considered to have been more powerful in didactic reception by congregations and audiences than the spoken word of the sermon, so, too, is it likely that the play was more powerful than the reinforced image in its capacity to teach. Reginald Pecock, in his The Repressor, makes the same point when he observes that ‘a stok or a stoon graued into the likenes of Crist hanging on a cros nakid and woundid, with othere therto purtenauncis’ is probably the most effective way of understanding Christ ‘in his manhode […] except whanne a quyk [living] man is sett in a pley to be hangid nakid on a cros and to be in semyng woundid and scourgid’.77 In A Tretise of Miraclis Pleyinge, the author questions why the playing of a play should not be more pleasing than painted imagery:
Also sithen it is leveful [pleasing] to han the miraclis of God peintid, why is not as wel leveful to han the miraclis of God pleyed, sithen men mowen bettere reden the wille of God and his mervelous werkis in the pleyinge of hem than in the peintinge? And betere they ben holden in mennes minde and oftere rehersid by the pleyinge of hem than by the peintinge, for this is a deed bok, the tother a quick.78
Given the avowedly didactic purpose of the plays under consideration, it might be assumed that they were received as an imposition by spectators, but the author of A Tretise of Miraclis Pleyinge does not countenance this sort of limitation when he advances the notion that plays should be ‘leveful’ or pleasing. The implication from the Tretise is that the performance of such plays was welcomed by spectators for their ‘quick’ or living character. Didactic characteristics established the conventions by which audiences could accept and relate to the ‘quick’ action as recorded by explicit stage directions.
Notes
1. Ann Eljenholm Nichols, ‘The Croxton Play of the Sacrament: A Re-Reading’, Comparative Drama, 22.2 (Summer 1988), 117–37 (p. 131, n. 4).
2. OED Online didacticism, n. ‘The practice or quality of being didactic; the fact of having instruction or teaching as a primary or ulterior purpose’; OED Online didactic, n. and adj. 2.B.b. ‘Of a teaching method, teacher, etc.: that conveys knowledge or information by formal means such as lectures and textbooks, rote learning, etc. Frequently contrasted (often unfavourably) with teaching methods encouraging greater involvement or creativity on the part of those being taught’.
3. The Lay Folks Catechism or the English and Latin versions of Archbishop Thoresby’s Instruction for the People, ed. by Thomas Frederick Simmons and Henry Edward Nolloth, The Early English Text Society OS 118 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1901), p. xii; Margaret Deanesly, The Lollard Bible and Other Medieval Biblical Versions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1920), p. 196.
4. Simmons and Nolloth, Lay Folks Catechism, p. xii.
5. The English Works of Wyclif Hitherto Unprinted, ed. by F. D. Matthew, The Early English Text Society OS 74 (London: Trübner, 1880), p. 145. Matthew supposes ‘the writer to be one of Wyclif’s Oxford friends—perhaps Herford or Purvey’, p. 141.
6. Simmons and Nolloth, Lay Folks Catechism, p. 4; Thomas Frognall Dibdin, Typographical Antiquities; or the History of Printing in England Scotland and Ireland: containing Memoirs of our Ancient Printers, and a Register of the Books Printed by Them, 4 vols (London: John Murray, 1810–19), III (1816), pp. 257–58; W. H. Dixon, Fasti Eboracenses. Lives of the Archbishops of York, ed. by James Raine (London: Longman, Green, Longman, & Roberts, 1863), p. 470.
7. Cambridge, Trinity College, MS B.14.50, fol. 28v; Fasciculi Zizaniorum Magistri Johannis Wyclif cum Tritico, ascribed to Thomas Netter of Walden, ed. by Walter Waddington Shirley (London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longman, & Roberts, 1858), p. xiii; Matthew, The English Works of Wyclif, pp. 206, 429: ‘but nowe he þat kan best pleie a pagyn of þe deuyl, syngynge songis of lecherie, of batailis and of lesyngis, & crie as a wood man & dispise goddis maieste & swere bi herte, bonys & alle membris of crist, is holden most merie mon’ and ‘& herfore freris han tauȝt in englond þe paternoster in engliȝsch tunge, as men seyen in þe pley of ȝork, & in many oþere cuntreys’.
8. The York Plays: A Critical Edition of the York Corpus Christi Play as recorded in British Library Additional MS 35290, ed. by Richard Beadle, The Early English Text Society, 2 vols SS23 SS24 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), I, p. xix.
9. Alexandra F. Johnston, ‘The plays of the religious guilds of York—the Creed play and the Pater Noster play’, Speculum, 50 (1975), 55–90; repr. in The City and the Parish: Drama in York and Beyond, Shifting Paradigms in Early English Drama Studies, ed. by David N. Klausner (London, New York: Routledge, 2017), pp. 49–87 (p. 50).
10. English Gilds, ed. by Toulmin Smith and Lucy Toulmin Smith, The Early English Text Society OS 40 (London: Oxford University Press, 1870; repr. 1963), pp. 137–40; Matthew, The English Works of Wyclif, pp. 530–31n; Johnston, ‘The plays of the religious guilds of York’, p. 62.
11. See G. R. Owst, Literature and Pulpit in Medieval England, 2nd edn (Oxford: Blackwell, 1966), pp. 149–209; Charlotte Steenbrugge, Drama and Sermon in Late Medieval England: Performance, Authority, Devotion, Early Drama, Art, and Music, Medieval Institute Publications (Kalamazoo, MI: Western Michigan University, 2017), pp. 19–42.
12. Davis, Non-Cycle Plays, p. 89; Gail McMurray Gibson, The Theater of Devotion: East Anglian Drama and Society in the Late Middle Ages (Chicago, IL, London: University of Chicago Press, 1989), pp. 34–40.
13. Davidson, A Tretise of Miraclis Pleyinge, p. 98.
14. Charlotte Steenbrugge, ‘ “I Speke so Miche to Ȝow”: Authority, Didacticism, and Audience Address in Middle English Sermons and Morality Plays’, Medieval English Theatre, 38, Part Two, Essays presented to John J. McGavin (2016), 84–99 (p. 87).
15. Henry Parker(?), Diues et pauper (Westmonstre: Wynkyn de Worde, 1496), sig.i iijr; OED Online, rialty n. (c) ‘A royal or magnificent feast or ceremonial’.
16. West, The Alsfeld Passion Play, pp. xxv, 11; Larry E. West, ‘The Expositor in the German Passion Play of the Late Middle Ages’ in Atti Del IV Colloquio della Société Internationale pour l’Etude du Théâtre Médiéval, ed. by M. Chiabò, F. Doglio, M. Maymone (Viterbo: Centro Studi sul Teatro Medioevale E Rinascimentale, 1983), pp. 97–110 (pp. 99–100).
17. The expositor is a key figure in five of the Chester plays where his identity is also designated as the ‘doctor’. Given this switch of names, his function does not change. In the Chester play of Abraham (Play IV), the ‘expositor’ and the ‘docter’ alternate their titles but not their roles; ‘Preco’ is also named. In Play V, Balaam, the expositor is additionally labelled as ‘doctor’ by a stage direction, ‘The Doctor speaketh’, and, in Play VI, Nativity, he is designated as the ‘expositor’: ‘Preco’ is again named, whereas, in Play XII, Temptation; the Woman Taken in Adultery, he is the ‘doctour’ and, in Play XXII, Antichrist’s Prophets, he is the ‘expositor’: Lumiansky and Mills, The Chester Mystery Cycle, I, pp. 56, 62, 78, 81, 95, 104, 107, 119, 224, 397; Spector, The N-Town Play, I, pp. 1–21, 71, 81, 99, 111, 131, 137, 294, 295, 299, 387; Baker, Murphy and Hall, Late Medieval Religious Plays, pp. 1, 96; Davis, Non-Cycle Plays, pp. 58–60, 90, 114; Eccles, Macro Plays, p. 3; Stokes, Gwreans an Bys: The Creation of the World, pp. 28, 32; Edward Hall, Hall’s Chronicle: Containing the History of England (London: J. Johnson; F. C. & J. Rivington; T. Payne; Wilkie & Robinson; Longman, Hurst, Rees & Orme; Cadell & Davies; and J. Mawman, 1809), p. 595.
18. Spector, N-Town, I, p. 294. See Chapter 7, n. 45 in this work.
19. Melissa Walter, in her ‘Performance Possibilities for the Chester Expositor, 1532–1575’, Comitatus: A Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 31.1 (2000), p. 176, determines that ‘Expositor is one of a series of mediating characters in mystery cycles’. Walter may have taken her cue from Jörg O. Fichte, for he also refers to the Expositor as ‘Expositor’ and also regards him as a ‘character’: Jörg O. Fichte, Expository Voices in Medieval Drama: Essays on the Mode and Function of Dramatic Exposition (Nuremberg: Hans Carl, 1975), pp. 102–03; as seen above, there are personages that take on expository functions but they are not labelled as ‘expositor’ or ‘the expositor’. Walter and Fichte refer to the ‘expositor’ as a ‘character’. There is no medieval use of the word ‘character’ to designate the person played by the player. A more fitting word, for which there is ample evidence, is ‘personage’. Even so, ‘the Expositor’ is not a personage with this name; see Butterworth, Staging Conventions, p. 125.
20. This reading of evidence provided by explicit stage directions throughout this work is in contrast to the kind of conclusion reached by those scholars who insist that ‘the goal of the medieval actor—at least in “serious” roles—was identical to the goal of every actor at all times: namely, to make it possible for his audience to imagine that he really was the character he was playing and to move the audience’s emotions accordingly’: John R. Elliott, Jr., ‘Medieval Acting’ in Contexts for Early English Drama, ed. by Marianne G. Briscoe and John C. Coldewey (Bloomington, IN, Indianapolis, IN, Indiana University Press, 1989), pp. 238–51 (p. 243).
21. Philip Butterworth, ‘The York Crucifixion: Actor/Audience Relationship’, Medieval English Theatre, 14 (1992), 67–76 (p. 68).
22. Mark Rylance, ‘Principles of Performance at Shakespeare’s Globe’ in Shakespeare’s Globe: A Theatrical Experiment, ed. by Christie Carson and Farah Karim-Cooper, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 103–14 (p. 107); see Butterworth, ‘The York Crucifixion’, p. 71.
23. Lumiansky and Mills, The Chester Mystery Cycle, I, p. 62.
24. Spector, N-Town, I, p. 71; appropriate humility is demonstrated in Davis, Non-Cycle Plays and Fragments, p. 123, where one of the epilogue fragments from The Reynes Extracts states: ‘For trewly oure entent was wel to do, / And if ony fawte be þer fowndyn it is oure neglygensy; / And short tyme avysement causet also, / For lytell tyme of lernyng we haue had sekerly, / And euery man is not expert in eloquensy / To vtteryn his mater gayly onto ȝour audiens. / Wherfor we beseche ȝou of ȝoure gret gentry / The best to reporte of vs in oure absens / In euery ilke a place. / Souereyns alle insame, / Ȝe that arn come to sen oure game, / We pray ȝou alle in Goddys name / To drynke ar ȝe pas’.
25. Spector, N-Town, I, p. 81.
26. Spector, N-Town, I, p. 94.
27. Peter Meredith, ‘Establishing an Expositor’s Role: Contemplacio and the N.Town Manuscript’, in The Narrator, The Expositor, and the Prompter in European Medieval Theatre, ed. by Philip Butterworth (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2007), pp. 289–306 (pp. 295–97).
28. Spector, N-Town, I, p. 5.
29. ‘Planting the role’ or ‘planting the image’ was a technique employed in England during the 1960s and 1970s in Theatre in Education programmes. See Pam Schweitzer, Theatre in Education: Four Junior Programmes (London: Eyre Methuen, 1980), p. 14. In the Towneley Play of the Prophets, Moses plants an image on the audience by addressing it as ‘All ye folk of Israell’: Stevens and Cawley, The Towneley Plays, I, p. 64; Moses plants the same image on the spectators in the Chester Moses and the Law; Balaack and Balaam (Play V) in Lumiansky and Mills, The Chester Mystery Cycle, I, p. 82, when he says ‘Godes folke of Israell,/herkens you all to my spell’; further examples addressed to the audience may be seen in other Towneley Plays such as Play 9, Caesar Augustus: ‘Be styll, beshers, I commawnd yow’, p. 84; in Play 20, Conspiracy and Capture, Pilate demands: ‘Peas, carles, I commaunde’, p. 227; in Play 22, Scourging, Pilate again demands: ‘Peasse at my bydyng, ye wyghtys in wold’, p. 270; in Play 23, Crucifixion, Pilate further demands: ‘Peasse I byd euereich wight’, p. 287; in Play 26, Pilate demands: ‘Peasse, I warne you, woldys inwytt’, p. 335. These lines as introductory commands in the Towneley Plays are often cited as means of controlling audience responses. However, the lines operate beyond controlling ones by planting roles on audiences in order to effect reaction.
30. Middle English Dictionary, ed. by Hans Kurath and Sherman M. Kuhn and others, 118 vols (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1954–2007).
31. MED, lording(e sb 7(a); for ‘lordinges’ see Lumiansky and Mills, The Chester Mystery Cycle, I, Play IV, pp. 62, 65, 78, 79; Play V, p. 81: Play VI, pp. 104, 123: Play XII, p. 224: Play XXII, p. 403; The Durham Prologue in Davis, Non-Cycle Plays, p. 118; The Pride of Life in Davis, Non-Cycle Plays, p. 90; Rickinghall (Bury St. Edmunds) Fragment in Davis, Non-Cycle Plays, p. 117; for ‘Lordes and ladyes’, see Lumiansky and Mills, The Chester Mystery Cycle, I, Play V, p. 95; for ‘goode neyborys’, ‘Dere frendys’, ‘feythful frendys’, ‘fayre frendys’, see The Castle of Perseverance in Eccles, Macro Plays, p. 7; for ‘Honorable frendys’, see The Conversion of St. Paul, in Baker, Murphy and Hall, The Late Medieval Religious Plays, pp. 1, 6; for ‘Gentyllys and ȝemanry’, see Spector, N-Town, I, p. 5.
32. MED soverain n. 1. (d) ‘as a term of address to a superior’; for ‘S[o]uereyns’ see The Play of the Sacrament in Davis, Non-Cycle Plays, p. 58; Spector, N-Town, I, p. 387; for all the above titles and more, see Dux Moraud in Davis, Non-Cycle Plays, where comprehensive strata are included, p. 106.
33. See John Marshall, ‘O ȝe souerens þat sytt and ȝe brothern þat stonde ryght wppe’: ‘Addressing the Audience of Mankind’, Medieval European Drama, 1 (1997), pp. 189–202; repr. in John Marshall, Early English Performance: Medieval Plays and Robin Hood Games, Shifting Paradigms in Early English Drama Studies, ed. by Philip Butterworth (London, New York: Routledge, 2019), pp. 144–58.
34. Stokes, Gwreans An Bys: The Creation of the World, pp. 28, 32.
35. Other contradictory suggestions have been made as to who or what the ‘conveyour’ might be: see Paula Neuss, ‘The Staging of “The Creacion of the World” ’, Theatre Notebook, 33.3 (1979), 116–25 (p. 123); Paula Neuss, The Creacion of the World: A Critical Edition and Translation, ed. and trans. Paula Neuss (New York, London: Garland, 1983), lxviii–lxix; E. K. Chambers, The Mediaeval Stage, 2 vols (London: Oxford University Press, 1903; repr. 1967), II, p. 140; Glynne Wickham, Early English Stages, 4 vols (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966–2002), I, pp. 297–300; Glynne Wickham, The Medieval Theatre (London: Weidenfield & Nicolson, 1974), p. 83; Sydney Higgins, Medieval Theatre in the Round: The Multiple Staging of Religious Drama in England, Centro Linguistico (Camerino: University of Camerino, 1994), pp. 117–19; Sydney Higgins has republished a retitled, rearranged and re-edited version of his Medieval Theatre in the Round as Theatre in the Round: The Staging of Cornish Medieval Drama (North Carolina: Create Space, 2013), pp. 143–45 (p. 145). For analogous evidence of the possible extended role of Carew’s ‘Ordinary’ see note 38 below.
36. John Palsgrave, Lesclarcissement De La Langue Francoyse (London: Johan Haukyns, 1530), fol. C.xcviiv: ‘I Conuaye I take a thyng away out of a place’; ‘I Conuay or lede one to a place’.
37. MED conveien v. 1. (a) ‘To escort or accompany’; 2. (a) ‘To guide, lead, or take (sb. to a place, etc.)’; ‘And when seynt Birget was deed he and his suster Katheryne conueyed the relikes & the bones of seynt Birget their moder to ye sayd Monastery of Watzstenes in Swethyn’: Anon., Here begynneth the kalendre of the newe legende of Englande (London: Rycharde Pynson, 1516), fol. Cxxvii; for other examples of conveyance see: Spector, N.town, I, p. 289; Baker, Murphy and Hall, Late Medieval Religious Plays, p. 42. The silent operation of the conveyour in negotiating stage management-type tasks may be likened to and compared with the black-clad figures of the kurombo (sometimes called the kurogo) and the kōken of the Japanese Kabuki: see Earle Ernst, The Kabuki Theatre (Oxford: Oxford University Press; Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1956, 1974), pp. 106–07; A. C. Scott, The Kabuki Theatre of Japan (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1955), pp. 110–11.
38. See Meredith, ‘Establishing an Expositor’s Role’, pp. 289–306: see also, in the same volume, David Mills, ‘Brought to Book: Chester’s Expositor and his Kin’, pp. 307–25: again in the same volume, see Philip Butterworth, ‘Richard Carew’s “Ordinary”: The First English Director’, pp. 327–43; Butterworth, Staging Conventions, pp. 125–39.
39. Peter Chelkowski, ‘Dramatic and Literary Aspects of Ta’zieh-Khani—Iranian Passion Play’, pp. 134–35; see also ‘Ta’ziyah’ in Islamicus (http://islamicus.org/taziyah); cf. my ‘Prompting in Full View of the Audience: The Groningen Experiment’, Medieval English Theatre, 23 (2002 [for 2001]), 122–71: see also the Encyclopædia Iranica Online (www.iranicaonline.org/articles/tazia) [accessed 20 February 2021]. The kind of observation outlined in Chelkowski’s description is much more useful in attempts to understand the didactic nature of medieval English plays and their production than comparisons with contemporary examples of Brechtian philosophy and resultant production: ‘The “contractor” for the ta’ziyeh is the troupe head, the one who determines who will perform what role. He may reserve the lead role for himself: Imam Hussein or a similar part. The performers sit down on the night before the ta’ziyeh, and the contractor (who may also serve as the ta’ziyeh gardan, or director) assigns the roles. The performers respect him, and even if they do not agree with the casting, they will accept what he has designated’: William O. Beeman and Mohammad B. Ghaffari, ‘Acting Styles and Actor Training in Ta’ziyeh’, in Eternal Performance, ed. by Peter J. Chelkowski (London, New York, Calcutta: Seagull, 2010), p. 86.
40. Augustus H. Mounsey, A Journey through the Caucasus and the Interia of Persia (London: Smith, Elder, 1872), p. 314; Reza Ale-Mohammed, ‘An Iranian Passion Play: “Taziyeh” in History and Performance’, New Theatre Quarterly, 17.1 (2001), 54–66 (p. 58).
41. S. G. W. Benjamin, Persia and The Persians (London: John Murray, 1887), p. 392.
42. For analysis and account of the operation of the ‘maestro’, see my ‘Prompting in Full View of the Audience: A Medieval Staging Convention’ in Drama and Community: People and Plays in Medieval Europe, ed. by Hindley, pp. 231–47.
43. For similar audience responses to the notion of the ‘spectator takes it in his stride’, see my ‘Prompting in Full View of the Audience: The Groningen Experiment’, Medieval English Theatre 23 (2001), pp. 158–59, where the academic audience members responded to concerns of the visible/invisible or obtrusive/unobtrusive functions of the prompter.
44. Stokes, Gwreans An Bys: The Creation of the World, p. 78.
45. Stokes, Beunans Meriasek: The Life of St. Meriasek, pp. 250–51.
46. Ibid; see also Markham Harris, ed., The Life of Meriasek: A Medieval Cornish Miracle Play (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1977), p. 141, n. 104.
47. Stokes, Gwreans An Bys: The Creation of the World, p. 2, l. 383.
48. Lumiansky and Mills, The Chester Mystery Cycle, I, p. 18.
49. Ibid.
50. Lumiansky and Mills, The Chester Mystery Cycle, I, p. 333.
51. Spector, N-Town, I, p. 156.
52. An angel appears at the birth of Christ in both of the Towneley Shepherd’s Plays by singing ‘Gloria in Excelsis’ and waking up the sleeping shepherds. Thus, in production, he may well have delivered Christ to Mary. At Chester, in the Wrights Play of The Annunciation and the Nativity (Play 6) and the N.town play of The Nativity (Play 15), angels are not recorded in the text or stage directions. The same is the case in the York Cycle Tilethatchers Play of the Nativity (Play 14), although Richard Beadle suggests that an angel may well have been recorded in a separate section that for some reason was not copied into the scene: see Beadle, The York Plays, II, p. 100.
53. Stokes, Gwreans An Bys: The Creation of the World, p. 160.
54. This stage direction does not appear to say how or by whom ‘þe Seuen Dedly Synnys xal be conveyyd’, unless it is by ‘þe Bad Angyl’: Baker, Murphy and Hall, Late Medieval Religious Plays, p. 42.
55. Lumiansky and Mills, The Chester Mystery Cycle, I, p. 28.
56. Lumiansky and Mills, The Chester Mystery Cycle, I, p. 48.
57. In response to the description of the ark in the stage direction at n. 50 above, a strange but effective reading is made by William Marriot in his A Collection of English Miracle Plays or Mysteries (Basel: Schweighauser, 1838), p. 9: ‘In the stage direction the sons of Noah are enjoined to mention aloud the names of the animals which enter; a representation of which, painted on parchment, is to be carried by the actors’. The description is ‘strange’ because (a) Marriot does not print the stage direction; (b) Noah’s sons and their wives do not refer to the animals in the stage direction: they are itemised in the text after the stage direction; (c) the stage direction printed in Lumiansky and Mills does not mention the idea of ‘a representation of which, painted on parchment, is to be carried by the actors’. However, from a didactic perspective, the idea is equally as plausible and valid as a way of ensuring ‘that ther wordes may agree with the pictures’.
58. Stokes, Gwreans an Bys: The Creation of the World, p. 30.
59. Stokes, Gwreans an Bys: The Creation of the World, p. 31.
60. Henry Parker(?), Diues [et] pauper, sig. aviir.
61. Thomas Elyot, The boke named the Gouernour (London: Tho.[mas] Bertheleti, 1531), fol. 18v.
62. Reginald Pecock, The Repressor of Over Much Blaming of the Clergy, ed. by Churchill Babington, 2 vols (London: Longman, Green, Longman, & Roberts, 1860), I, p. 212; Claire Sponsler, The Queen’s Dumbshows: John Lydgate and the Making of Early Theater (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), p. 95.
63. The Complete State Papers Domestic 1509–1702, ed. by Michael Hawkins, Series 3, Henry VIII, 1509–47, SP1/55, (Reading: Research Publications, 1990–95), fols 1–104 (fol 10, 1529) [Unit 37 on microfilm]; The Comedy of Acolastus, trans. by John Palsgrave, The Early English Text Society, OS 202 (London: Oxford University Press, 1937), p. xxxiv, n. 2; Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII, ed. by J. S. Brewer, vol. 4, part III, 5806 (London: H.M.S.O., 1875), p. 2594 (1529–30).
64. Spector, N-Town, I, p. 59.
65. Ibid.
66. Spector, N-Town, I, p. 49.
67. Lumiansky and Mills, The Chester Mystery Cycle, I, Appendix 1A, p. 464; see also Peter Meredith, The Practicalities of Early English Performance: Manuscripts, Records, and Staging, ed. by John Marshall, Shifting Paradigms in Early English Drama Studies, Variorum Collected Studies Series (London, New York: Routledge, 2018), p. 83.
68. The late David Mills wrote some unpublished notes concerning the staged manipulation of the arrival of the dove as indicated by this stage direction. He suggested: ‘The birds are obviously sent up and down by a pulley system requiring someone to be high on the mast […] The two key terms in the Chester description are ‘topcastle’ and ‘bowsprit’. The topcastle was clearly the place where the stagehand hid to operate the pulley system’. Even though the mast appears to have been secured by ropes (‘gables’, l.90; MED gable n. (2) (a) A heavy rope or cable used on a ship), a person located at the top of the mast would seem to be an unnecessary top-heavy weight situated on a relatively flimsy and rapidly constructed mast. Even if a stagehand was positioned at the top of the mast, didactic purpose and theatrical orientation does not determine the need for such a person to be ‘hidden’. The mechanism by which the effect was produced is likely to have been observable by spectators. A long loop of cord looped around two pulleys, one at the top of the mast and one at the bottom, to which the dove was attached would have been a simpler and possibly a more effective means of achieving the effect described in the stage direction. This could have been operated from the deck of the ark. I am grateful to Joy Mills for providing me with access to these notes and to David Mills for his inspiration.
69. Baker, Murphy and Hall, Late Medieval Religious Plays, p. 81.
70. This production issue was inevitably encountered in the version of Mary Magdalen directed by John McKinnel at Durham University in 1982: ‘it was difficult to move a light structure with wheels smoothly on rather bumpy grass, and a heavy wheeled ship would probably have become bogged down’: John McKinnell, ‘Staging the Digby Mary Magdalen’, Medieval English Theatre, 6.2 (1984), 126–52; Sydney Higgins is also convinced that the ships in the Digby Mary Magdalene and the Beunans Meriasek: The Life of St. Meriasek should be constructed with wheels: Sydney Higgins, Medieval Theatre in the Round: The Multiple Staging of Religious Drama in England (Camerino: Università di Camerino, 1994), p. 83.
71. R. T. D. Sayle, Lord Mayors’ Pageants of the Merchant Taylors’ Company in the 15th, 16th & 17th Centuries (London: printed for private circulation, 1931), pp. 35, 48, 52.
72. After use, the ship was suspended from the rafters in the Merchant Taylors’ Hall: Sayle Lord Mayors’ Pageants, pp. 41, 65, 84.
73. At l. 1807, the King gives payment to the mariners: ‘Eche of yow a marke for yower wage!’ The number of mariners is unspecified by text or stage direction, but their number must have been such as to be able to manage the lifting of the ship.
74. See Philip Butterworth, ‘Late Medieval Performing Dragons’, The Yearbook of English Studies, 43, ed. by Pamela M. King, Sue Niebrzydowski and Diana Wyatt (Birmingham: Modern Humanities Research Association, 2013), pp. 310–34 (p. 326).
75. This is the technique used in some hobby-horse traditions and the example provided by ‘Snap’ the dragon at Norwich where skirts covered the operator’s legs and feet. In the mourning and commemoration of Husein in an early form of the Taziyeh in Iran (1704), Cornelius Le Bruyn, in English translation, records: ‘The murder of this saint is represented by persons in arms, and by his image which is very large and hollow, and put into motion by a person inclosed within it, and whole legs are plainly to be seen’: M. Cornelius Le Bruyn, Travels into Muscovy, Persia, and part of the East-Indies, 2 vols (London: Bettesworth and others, 1737), I, p. 215; see Violet Alford, The Hobby Horse and other Animal Masks (London: Merlin, 1978), p. 36; Max Harris, ‘From Iraq to the English Morris: The Early History of the Skirted Hobbyhorse’, Medieval English Theatre, 25 (2003), 71–83; Femke Kramer, ‘Writing, Telling and Showing Horsemanship in Rhetoricians’ Farce’ in Medieval Theatre Performance: Actors, Dancers, Automata and their Audiences, ed. by Philip Butterworth and Katie Normington (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2017), pp. 161–78 (p. 164).
76. Glynne Wickham, Early English Stages, 4 vols (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966–2002), I, pp. 223–24.
77. Reginald Pecock, The Repressor of Over Much Blaming of the Clergy, ed. by Churchill Babington, 2 vols (London: Longman, Green, Longman, & Roberts, 1860), I, p. 221.
78. Davidson, A Tretise of Miraclis Pleyinge, p. 98.