7

Playing Alone

There are several levels of possible engagement between the player, the personage and the spectator. The speaker may speak as the banns player, the prologue speaker, the epilogue speaker, the personage, the expositor, the narrator or the storyteller. Each of these roles is capable of being played alone or separately from other personages. If the speaker adopting one of these roles is physically alone in the playing space, he may speak to himself, be seen to think aloud or speak to absent or imaginary personages. Additionally, he may speak openly or secretly or speak into the ether. He may literally be alone or he may be seen to be alone, while in the presence of others, by being cocooned in his apparently private existence. Furthermore, the speaker may be heard but not seen by the audience. He may also speak specifically or generally ‘to’, ‘at’, ‘with’ or ‘through’ spectators. These theatrical levels of engagement together with other related variations of these conditions are frequently recorded by stage directions.¹

Terens in englysh (Andria) and Skelton’s Magnyfycence

Given that the more conventional ways of developing theatrical intention occur through physical and verbal engagement between personages, it is clear that participants who play alone in support of didactic purpose are intrinsically bound by staging conventions that legitimise their roles. With the exception of Terens in englysh (Andria) (c.1520) and Skelton’s transitional play, Magnyfycence (1520–22), the roles and functions of those English personages who play alone, prior to 1560, use direct address in order to encourage, invite, placate and inform spectators of the terms with which agreed pretence may take place. Before examining these more conventional pre-1560 plays, it might be useful to consider exceptions to the general practice. Playing alone in Terens in englysh is a dominant feature drawing upon different conventions that define the character of the play, while Skelton’s Magnyfycence is a play that I have described as transitional because of its combined use of stage directions describing previously observed action as conceived by the author and directions to players. There are five stage directions in Magnyfycence that record aloneness of principal personages ‘in the place’ in which monologues of varying lengths are delivered by them.² They are:

Counterfet Countenance solus.

[Counterfeit Countenance alone.]

Courtly Abusyon alone in the place.

Crafty Conueyaunce alone in the place.

Magnyfycence alone in the place.

Here goth Cloked Colusyon awaye, and leueth Magnyfycence

alone in the place.³

Counterfet Countenance explains who he is, what he is able to counterfeit and who taught him. Courtly Abusyon parades the latest fashions from France and exhorts all English people to adopt them. Crafty Conueyaunce boasts of his juggling skill and justifies how such ability can protect petty thieves.⁴ Magnyfycence compares himself with other great leaders and boasts of his superiority. Deluded Magnyfycence enjoys his imagined status with no thoughts of his ‘fatall Desteny’. These stage directions that record personages ‘alone in the place’ create the means by which the authour is able to reinforce the respective identities and qualities of each of them. Their respective monologues are spoken immediately after the stage directions and directly to spectators as a means of convincing them of their personal qualities. Within these monologues of direct address, Crafty Conueyaunce, in his monologue, creates another imagined one-way conversation with his ‘dere harte’:

‘What howe! be ye mery; was it not well conueyed?’

‘As oft as ye lyst, so Honeste be sauyd;

Alas, dere harte, loke that we be not perseyuyd!’

Without crafte nothynge is well behauyd.

‘Though I shewe you curtesy, say not that I craued;

‘Yet conuey it craftely, and hardely spare not for me,’—

So that there knowe no man but I and she⁵

This imagined one-sided conversation introduces another theatrical layer to the content and purpose of the monologue by changing the player–spectator relationship from one of direct address, where the orientation of the player–spectator relationship is one that is instigated by the player and projected upon the audience, to one of apparent player isolation into which the audience is drawn. It is as if Crafty Conueyaunce exists in his own private ‘bubble’, effectively talking to himself, and yet the audience is still being addressed.

Talking to oneself does not only occur when the personage is alone in the playing place but can also occur when others are physically present, as demonstrated in the play Terens in englysh. This Roman convention may quite possibly be the precursor to the later and consciously developed ‘aside’ as used in England.⁶ The aside works as a convention where one personage speaks aloud and is not seemingly heard by or responded to by at least one other personage. There must be an intention on behalf of the personage who creates the aside for it not to be heard, or seemingly not heard, by another personage or personages. Also, the relationship between the personage who creates the aside and the audience must be one where spectators are permitted to recognise the convention. The stage directions in Terens in englysh, with my qualifications in parenthesis, are:

Here. Simo. & Dauus speke ich of them to himself a while.

(Both speak as if alone in the presence of each other.)

Here dauus spekyth all to hym self.

(Davus is alone on the stage.)

Here pamphylus & misis speke ich of them to them self

awhile.

(Both speak as if alone in the presence of each other.)

Here dauus spekith to hym self a whyle.

Here simo spekyth to hym self.

Here Biria standith in a corner & spekith to him self.

Here Symo standyth in a corner & spekyth to hym self.

Here Lesbia spekyth to archillis being within the house.

Here dauus standyth in a corner being aferd.

Here pamphilus & dauus stande in a corner a while.

Here misis spekth to glycery being wythin the house.

Here misis spekith to her self a while.

Here chremes standyth styll & heryth misis & dauus talk

togedyr.

Here dauus spekith a.while to him self.

(Davus speaks as if alone in the presence of Chremes and Simo.)

Here Crito spekith to pamyphilus a while.

Here spekith charinus & pamphilus ich to himself a while.⁷

(Both speak as if alone in the presence of each other.)

Although these stage directions occur in Terens in englysh (Andria), they do not appear to be present in the original Andria. Thus, the stage directions are a c.1520 interpretation of the original play. Vergil Emery Hiatt, in his doctoral dissertation, ‘Eavesdropping in Roman Comedy’, states of Roman drama in general: ‘We are handicapped by having before us only the printed text with no stage directions’.⁸ The stage directions above therefore need to be seen as early sixteenth-century English ones and not Roman ones.

Roman comedies of the second century bc appear to have been conventionally staged on a generically designed wooden set:

Everything about the theatre context suggests that the set was generic: constructed by the magistrates for the ludi and not by the troupe hired to perform, a given performance area might be used by multiple troupes in a given festival.⁹

Such a generic set consisted of a facade of three or four adjacent buildings, each with a door designed to open inwards. These doors permitted entrances and exits. The buildings represented the street and at each end of the street were additional entrances/exits used to focus outdoor locations.¹⁰ The playing area in front of the facade was thus rectangular.

Staging conventions in Terens in englysh arise in conjunction with the nature of the set, which permits seen and unseen action both in front of and behind the doors. Most of the action behind the doors is clearly of an auditory nature. The stage directions that determine that a personage ‘spekith to him self’ occur at the start of a scene and take on some of the kind of introductory qualities found in medieval prologues where forthcoming action is outlined.¹¹ For instance, when a stage direction states, ‘Here Biria standith in a corner & spekith to him self’, he says:

My master commaundyd me all thingis a part layd

To Wait vppon pamphilus that he myght know

Of the mariagis What be don or sayd

I se him wyth dauus therfore I him folow

I shall Wayt vppon him.¹²

Apart from announcing imminent action, this stage direction also refers to another staging convention by requiring Biria to ‘standith in a corner’. Two more stage directions refer to the same convention: ‘Here dauus standyth in a corner being aferd’ and ‘Here pamphilus & dauus stande in a corner a while’.¹³ Here, the implication is that the ‘corner’ in question is one of the ones furthest away from the doors. Such a specified location and its frequency of use as recorded in stage directions point to a recognised staging convention the particular significance of which is not immediately obvious. One possibility is that ‘the corner’ signifies an apparently neutral position or an ‘out of action’ recognition by other personages, even though spectators are well aware of the personages standing in the corner. Another possibility might be that the personage in the corner is unrecognised by other personages but recognised by spectators to be in a listening, overhearing or eavesdropping mode. When the stage direction declares that ‘Here pamphilus & dauus stande in a corner a while’, they are each drawn back into the action at different times. Pamphilus draws himself back into the action after twenty-five lines, leaving Davus to remain in the corner for a further thirty-six lines. When the stage direction establishes that ‘dauus standyth in a corner being aferd’, at the beginning of the scene, his presence is not recognised by Pamphilus (who is the only other personage present) for another fourteen lines, when Davus says ‘I Am aspyed’ (espied).¹⁴ Thus, Davus draws himself back into the action. In these instances, the visual recognition of the personage in ‘the corner’ is made by the personage who opens the scene, and the theatrical potency of this recognition might have been most strongly enacted through an equivalent use of what we today refer to as a ‘double take’.¹⁵ In theatrical terms, the enactment of the double take by the personage lags behind an already established recognition by the audience. In this context, it is as if the personage is catching up with the understanding of the spectator, who has earlier been made aware of the presence of the other personage. The double take may take on additional dimension and rigour when performed by a masked personage. The mask worn by a masked player creates the principal focus of his presence. Through its position, it dictates his focus and the possible focus of the scene.¹⁶ Changed positions of the mask could quite easily be involved with staging conventions that indicate ‘listening’, ‘hearing’ and ‘not being heard’ or ‘seeing’, ‘being seen’ and ‘not being seen’. Staging conventions may also be established through use of the mask in relation to personages ‘waiting’, ‘stillness’ and ‘visibility’.

The staging convention of the personage who is not seen or heard by other personages is demonstrated in another stage direction that states: ‘Here chremes standyth styll & heryth misis & dauus talk togedyr’.¹⁷ Chremes listens into the conversation between Mysis and Davus only to interject with single-line comments as direct address to the audience that are permitted within a convention that allows Mysis and Davus to ignore his presence and thus not hear what he says. Effectively, he eavesdrops on their conversation, for his presence is not acknowledged by Mysis and Davus. Within the narrative, Mysis and Davus are unaware of Chremes, the eavesdropper. John L. Locke, in his work Eavesdropping: An Intimate History, declares:

Eavesdropping is communication, and it has two features that make it unusually interesting. The first is that it feeds on activity that is inherently intimate, and is so because the actors are unaware of the receiver, [and] therefore feel free to be ‘themselves.’ The second feature that makes the eavesdropping so interesting relates to the way the information travels. It is not donated by the sender. It is stolen by the receiver.¹⁸

In Terens in englysh, the purpose of eavesdropping lies within the narrative reality while its enactment exists as a staging convention. Hiatt refers to this relationship by saying:

It is not usually the result of any appreciation on the dramatist’s part of the value of eavesdropping as such, but rather is a derivative issue of certain stereotyped and conventionalized features of the dramatic technique of comedy in which eavesdropping values are accidental.¹⁹

These stage directions in Terens in englysh engage with fundamental theatrical notions of ‘seeing’, ‘being seen’, ‘not being seen’, ‘hearing’, ‘being heard’ and ‘not being heard’. Narrative requirements determine the means by which these conditions are delivered through secrecy, overhearing (accidental or incidental) and eavesdropping (deliberate). The street facades of the Roman theatre promote opportunities for this range of conditions to be developed. For instance, a related convention may be excercised when a speaker in front of the door engages in dialogue with someone behind the door. Effectively, both speakers are alone yet engaged in dialogue. Three stage directions exemplify this arrangement:

Here misis spekith to Archillis being wythin the hous.

Misis the mayd.

Here Lesbia spekyth to archillis within the house.

Here misis spekth to glycery being wyth in the house.²⁰

The principal evidence concerning production of Andria in England occurs in Thomas Warton’s The History of English Poetry where it is tentatively dated as 1559:

In an audit-book of the Trinity college in Oxford, I think for the year 1559, I find the following disbursements relating to this subject. ‘Pro apparatu in comoedia Andriæ, vii l. ix s. iv d … That is, For dresses and scenes in acting Terence’s ANDRIA’.²¹

Presumably, the staging conditions outlined above in relation to Roman practice mean corresponding staging arrangements would need to be employed at Trinity College. Depending on staging orientation, screen openings would need to have been scenically adapted to accommodate the Roman requirements, or, alternatively, the street facade could have been newly created down the length of the hall as opposed to across it. Evidence to confirm staging modification at Trinity is lacking.²²

Seeing and Not Seeeing

Examples of personages being out of sight of the audience have so far been concerned with staging conventions, stage settings or stage practice. There are, of course, examples of personages being out of sight, or apparently out of sight, as determined by play narratives. The Chester Late Banns warn potential audiences that when they see a gilded figure representing God they should listen to the voice only and pretend that they do not see a representation in human form. This kind of response to the representation of God is regarded by the bann speaker as an equivalent to an unseen God coming down in a cloud. Gilding of the player as God is regarded as a means of nullifying human facial features:

For then shoulde all those persones that as godes doe playe

in clowdes come downe with voyce, and not be seene;

for noe man can proportion that Godhead, I saye,

to the shape of man—face, nose, and eyne.

But sethence the face-gilte doth disfigure the man, that deme

a clowdye coveringe of the man—a voyce onlye to heare—

and not God in shape or person to appeare.²³

In the Ordinalia de Origine Mundi of the Cornish Ordinalia, a stage direction observes that Adam hides himself from God: ‘Adam abscondit se in paradiso’ (Adam hides himself in Paradise).²⁴ Within the play’s narrative, Adam needs to respond as if he has hidden perfectly from God. However, in order for the intention of this didactic action to work theatrically, Adam must be seen to be hiding by the audience. This is not a complicated theatrical moment, but it is a fundamental one in establishing what is seen, what is not seen and by whom. The same sort of condition occurs in a stage direction in Beunans Meriasek: The Life of St. Meriasek, where it is recorded: ‘her meryasek schall hydde hym sylfe vnder y^e rokke’ (Here Meriasek shall hide himself under the rock).²⁵ In this instance, Meriasek is presumably completely hidden ‘vnder y^e rokke’ and ostensibly invisible to both the torturers and the spectators. Importantly, the spectators have seen Meriasek get under the rock.

Hearing and Not Hearing

A stage direction in The Pride of Life (first half of the fifteenth century) states ‘Et tunc clauso tentorio dicet Regina secrete nuncio:’ (And then, with the tent/booth closed, the Queen will say secretly to the Messenger).²⁶ Here is another example of personages operating from either side of a physical barrier in order to promote a staging convention designed to fulfil a narrative requirement. The secrecy is here shared between the Queen, the Messenger and the audience, but not the King. The Messinger is secretly tasked by the Queen to bring the Bishop who, on arrival, delivers a discourse on the sinful nature of the world and warns the King, who has now come out of his booth, to contemplate death. The King is predictably angry and behaves in such a way as to justify the Queen’s need for secrecy.

In Henry Medwall’s Nature (c.1496), a stage direction records: ‘Then Pryde speketh to Sensua. /in /hys ere that all may here’.²⁷ As the scene referred to by this stage direction takes place between Pryde and Sensua, with no other personages present, the ‘all’ must refer to the spectators and their ability to hear the apparently softly-spoken words in Sensua’s ear. Ostensibly, it is implied that talking into Sensua’s ear is a private and confidential action. However, the stage direction implies that Pryde talks with an affected whisper, spoken loudly. No one, personage or spectator, is supposed to hear what Pryde says to Sensua, and yet the staging convention is such that it permits spectators to hear Pryde’s words. An almost identical stage direction occurs in Nice Wanton (1560), where it is recorded: ‘He telleth hym in hys ear the [that] all may heare’.²⁸ Here, Baily Errand, a corrupt official,²⁹ attempts to buy off the Judge in such a way that he and the audience may hear the bribe although the jury is not intended to hear what Baily Errand says.

Poeta and His Functions

Playing alone or in isolation from other players not only occurs with players but also with banns players, prologue and epilogue speakers, expositors, narrators and storytellers. In The Conversion of St. Paul, prologues and epilogues are delivered by Poeta, who works in the manner of a player yet deals with the kind of content normally used by expositors.³⁰ Thus, he operates overtly in a didactic mode of explanation and submission. It is in this sense that Poeta plays alone. He speaks directly to the audience in a manner to exhort understanding. The play is structured in three sections, each of which is both introduced and concluded by Poeta. Other than sharing the playing place, Poeta and the players do not interact with each other. They exist in different theatrical realities that are complementary but do not permit exchange of action.

Considerable speculation has taken place regarding the staging of this play. Scholars such as F. J. Furnivall, E. K. Chambers, Hardin Craig, Mary Del Villar, Alan H. Nelson, Richard Hosley, Donald C. Baker, John L. Murphy and Louis B. Hall have based their interpretations on readings of implicit and explicit stage directions and the overt didactic evidence supplied by Poeta. Furnivall, with typical Victorian certainty, regards the play to have been ‘playd at three Stations or open sites’ and that reference to the ‘pageant’ was to ‘a wagon [that] had an upper (?half-) stage’ and that this ‘is certain’. He also thought that the audience ‘followd the wagon from Station to Station’. Similarly, E. K. Chambers thought that the play was ‘probably written for a small village, and for scene had a platea, and two loca, for Damascus and Jerusalem (with possibly a third for heaven). The audience moved with the actors from one “station” or “pageant” to the other, and back again’. Craig considered that ‘There seem to be three separate playing-places’, and that ‘The audience moves through a town or city in a sort of procession’. Del Villar summarises and relegates the views of Furnivall, Craig and Nelson in their promotion of a processional audience between stations. She does so when she suggests ‘that the Poeta’s speech does not refer to a parade of the audience and actors but is simply a conventional request for attention, the word “processyon” being used in the sense of “process” or “story” ’. In his opening speech in the play, Poeta asks leave of the audience ‘to Procede owr processe’ and, a few lines later, he says the players are ‘begynyng owr proces’. Here, the word ‘process’ clearly refers to a story or narration, specifically a play. Hosley doubts that the mode of production that requires the audience to follow the players from station to station is correct:

Such a theatrical technique would be pointless, since the only purpose of procession, whether of actors or of audience, is to bring the moving show to successive different stationary audiences or successive different moving audiences to the stationary show. Moreover, the technique is without any analogue in the staging of medieval drama that I am aware of.³¹

The respective cases submitted by these eminent scholars are sometimes interpreted to fit in with existing examples of known staging and theatre form. The discussion centres on interpretation of the word ‘stacionis’, as found in two stage directions, and ‘stac[y]on’ as used by Poeta in his conclusion of the second section and prologue to his third section. The second contested term is ‘proces’ (also ‘processe’ and ‘prosess’), as used by Poeta in his opening address. The term ‘stacionis’ or ‘stac[y]on’ is taken to mean ‘station’, and ‘proces’ is deemed to be equivalent to the word ‘processyon’.³² Thus, some scholars have built an interpretation that players and spectators travelled in procession between stations, or playing places, in the manner of the cycle plays at York, Chester and Coventry. The territory of the discussion focuses on the disputed use of three stations, to accommodate three playing places, and the presumed movement of a mobile audience in procession between these supposed stations. The apparent necessity of three separate stages is considered by some to be essential to match the named narrative locations of Jerusalem, Heaven and Damascus. The sequence of narrative locations is determined as Jerusalem, Heaven, Jerusalem and Damascus. In the introduction to their edition of the play, Baker, Murphy and Hall cautiously, yet misguidedly, summarise some of the important conjectured assessments of the staging of the play. In doing so, they make the following statement with regard to the stations:

There were three stations. Whether they were separate playing locations (or carts) is not entirely clear. It would seem, however, that at an early part of the play’s history there was an occasion for the players’ wanting the audience to move from one station to a second. At this point only two ‘sets’—carts or platforms—would have been absolutely necessary: Jerusalem (with its stable) and Heaven.³³

Athough there are three sections to the play, this does not mean that there were three separate playing stations. Baker, Murphy and Hall suggest that only two playing stations would suffice for the needs of the play. My interpretation of the same evidence is that only one playing space is implied and needed. Recognition of the need for a procession between stations exists as an attempted literal interpretation of Poeta’s reference to ‘folow and succede with all your delygens this general processyon’.³⁴ Raymond Pentzell, in his ‘The Medieval Theatre in the Streets’, discusses the staging alternatives and as a result opts for a processional interpretation: ‘The only path out of this apparent quandary, of course, is the notion of three separate plateae, each with its own scenic units, set at enough distance apart to make processions between them meaningful’.³⁵ Alternatively, Alan H. Nelson argues that ‘No dramatic advantage is gained by the movement, which is apparently required only because the play is associated somehow with a “generall processyon” ’.³⁶ A stage direction in this play, referred to in Chapter 5 in this work, states: ‘Her Sale rydyth forth wyth hys seruantys abowt þe place, owt of þe pl⟨ac⟩e’.³⁷ If the processional mode was to be accepted, then each station would presumably contain a playing place in the manner suggested by Pentzel. However, this important stage direction implies that there was only one playing place. Whether such an arrangement followed the practice of ‘place and scaffold’ staging, with the spectators sitting or standing at raised levels around the playing space, or the audience standing at ground level in and around the playing place is unclear. No processional route would be required, and no mobile stages or vehicles (fashionably referred to as ‘wagons’ by many scholars) would be needed. The narrative locations of Jerusalem, Heaven and Damacus could simply and easily be located in one playing space. Such a possibility makes it less likely that ‘scenic units’, as described by Pentzel, were involved. As indicated in earlier chapters of this work, didactic needs merely required carefully chosen symbols to identify locations.³⁸

The stanzas allocated to Poeta contain evidence of two kinds: one relates to the narrative, and the other refers to matters of presentation. It is the second of these two processes that offers the firmer evidence of performance conditions that align with evidence found in explicit stage directions. I have outlined below, in sequence, the relevant prologue and concluding content that are delivered as direct address:

Station 1 Prologue

Honorable frendys, besechyng yow of lycens

To procede owur processe, we may [shew] vnder your correccyon,

The conuersyon of Seynt Paule, as þe Byble gyf experyens.

Whoo lyst to rede þe booke Actum Appostolorum,

Ther shall he haue þe very notycyon;

But, as we can, we shall vs redres,

Brefly, wyth yowur fauour, begynyng owur proces.

Station 1 Conclusion

Fynally, of þis stac[y]on thus we mak a conclusyon.

Besechyng thys audyens to follow and succede

Wyth all your delygens þis generall processyon;

To vnderstande þis matter, wo lyst to rede

The Holy Bybll for þe better spede,

Ther shall he haue þe perfyth intellygens,

And þus we comyt yow to Crystys magnyfycens!

Station 2 Prologue

Honorable frendys, we beseche yow of audyens

To here our intencyon, and also our prosses.

Vpon our matter, be your fauorable lycens,

Another part of þe story we wyll redres:

Here shalbe brefly shewyd, wyth all our besynes,

At thys pagent Saynt Poullys conuercyon.

Take ye good hede, and therto gyf affeccyon!

Station 2 Conclusion

Thus we comyte yow all to þe Trynyte,

Conkludyng thys stacyon as we can or may,

Vnder þe correccyon of them þat letteryd be;

Howbeyt vnable, as I dare speke or say,

The compyler hereof shuld translat veray

So holy a story, but wyth fauorable correccyon

Of my honorable masters, of þer benygne supplexion.

Station 3 Prologue

The myght of the Fadirys potenciall Deite

Preserue thys honorable and wurshypfull congregacyon,

That here be present of hye and low degre,

To vnderstond thys pagent at thys lytyll stacyon,

Whych we shall procede wyth all our delectac[y]on,

Yf yt wyll plese yow to gyf audyens fauorable.

Hark wysely therto—yt ys good and profetable

Station 3 Conclusion

Thys lytyll pagent thus conclud we

As we can, lackyng lytturall scyens,

Besechyng yow all, of hye and low degre,

Owur sympylnes to hold excusyd and lycens,

That of retoryk haue nonintellygens,

Commyttyng yow all to owur Lord Jhesus,

To whoys lawd ye syng: ‘Exultet celum laudibus!’³⁹

Poeta’s prologue and concluding comments are framed by his attempts to seek agreed pretence. He does this by directly addressing the audience as: ‘Honorable frendys, besechyng yow of lycens’ and later as ‘Honorable frendys, we beseche yow of audyens/To here our intencyon, and also our prosses./Vpon our matter, be your fauorable lycens’. The terms of agreed pretence are requested to be demonstrated by spectators giving ‘affeccyon’ and ‘fauorable lycens’. The audience offer of ‘fauorable lycens’ amounts to its contribution to agreed pretence. The technique of seeking agreed pretence involves flattering spectators in their assumed capacity to offer knowledgeable corrections to the ‘processe’: ‘To procede owur processe, we may [shew] vnder your correccyon, The conuersyon of Seynt Paule’ and ‘Vnder þe correccyon of them þat letteryd be’ and further ‘So holy a story, but wyth fauorable correccyon’. And, if correction is not enough, then audience members may consult the Actum Appostolorum for the definitive account. Further concsiously expressed humility, again as an expository technique, is acknowledged by Poeta on behalf of the company when he admits that they are all ‘lackyng lytturall scyens’.⁴⁰ Poeta’s concern for audience understanding of ‘owur processe’ is his central didactic concern. He says: ‘Besechyng thys audyens to follow and succede/Wyth all your delygens þis generall processyon;/To vnderstande þis matter’. It is the ‘processyon’ of the play—or, in other words, its development—that the audience is urged to follow with ‘delygens’ in order to understand.⁴¹ Poeta again stresses the need for ‘thys honorable and wurshypfull congregacyon,/That here be present of hye and low degre,/To vnderstond thys pagent at thys lytyll stacyon’. Audience understanding is the key objective of Poeta and all expositors. Poeta’s conclusion to the first station (section)⁴² requires the audience to ‘folow and succede’ with ‘delygens’ this ‘generall processyon’ in order to ‘vnderstande þis matter’. This is clearly a plea to follow the content and process of the play in order to understand it. It seems, therefore, that earlier scholars became locked into a deflected argument derived from understanding of the terms ‘stacionis’, ‘stac[y]on’ and ‘generall processyon’ that simply added layers of inaccurate conjecture.

Another Poeta, who takes on the same kind of theatrical functions as Poeta in The Conversion of St. Paul, occurs in Candlemes Day and the Kyllyng of þe Children of Israelle, where he too refers to the development of the play as ‘this processe’:

Frendes, this processe we purpose to pley, as we can,

Before you alle here in youre presens,

To the honor of God, Oure Lady, and Seynt Anne,

Besechyng you to geve vs peseable audiens!⁴³

Poeta also employs apologetic intent as a conscious didactic technique:

We be comen hedere as seruauntes diligent,

Oure processe to shewe you, as we can.

Wherfor of benevolens we pray euery man

To haue vs execused that we no better doo—

Another tyme to emende it if we can,

Be the grace of God, if our cunnyng be thertoo⁴⁴

Here, again, spectators are implored to engage with ‘Oure processe’ as the players propose to ‘shewe you’. More conclusive clarification of and support for the meaning of ‘processyon’ as ‘process’ is given through its identical use in the N.town Procession of Saints, where the ‘primus doctor’ declares his purpose and function to be:

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.⁴⁵

The technique of direct address as spoken to the audience by Poeta is similar, yet different, from that used by the two Vexillators who introduce The Play of the Sacrament (Croxton). They take it in turns to outline the story of the play. In doing so, they oscillate, as storytellers, between the reality of the narrative and the practical presentation that is about to happen. Like Poeta, they speak directly to the audience and operate outside the narrative reality occupied by the players.⁴⁶ The same role occurs when direct address is used by the Prolocutor in The Pride of Life (possibly mid fourteenth century) to identify the play as a ‘gam’ (game):

Lordinge[s] and ladiis þat beth hende,

Herkenith al with mylde mode

⟨How ou⟩re gam schal gyn and ende.⁴⁷

The same use of the word ‘game’ occurs in The Durham Prologue (probably early fifteenth century) spoken by an unnamed speaker who also operates alone in the manner of Poeta in The Conversion of St. Paul and the Prolocutor in The Pride of Life:

Pes, lordyngs, I prai ȝow pes,

And of ȝour noys ȝe stynt and ses,

Oure gamen to lett ne cry in pres

For ȝour courtasy.

Þat we ȝow play it is no les,

Godmen, sikirly.⁴⁸

Riding the Banns

Further similarity of function occurs with the banns speaker reading and riding the banns at Chester.⁴⁹ Here too, the banns speaker speaks alone while in the company of others. There is no recorded dialogue and no dramatic interaction, although there may well be recognition of each other between the participants. The particular kind of address spoken by Poeta ‘to’ the audience is meant to be all-embracing and to provide the necessary information with which spectators may participate in ‘agreed pretence’. At Chester, direct address takes the form of reading the banns as proclaimed announcements, which is presumably why the Citty Crier (Town Crier) was called upon to fulfil the task.⁵⁰ The Smiths’, Cutlers’, and Plumbers’ Accounts for 1553–54 record: ‘for ridinge the banes xiij d. the Citty Crier ridd’.⁵¹ Again in 1560–61, the same accounts itemise: ‘Cost vs the rydinge the banes our horses & ourselues of the which symon was one_∧ ^⌈ij s.^⌉’.⁵² Further payments are made by The Smiths’, Cutlers’, and Plumbers’ Accounts to the named Citty Crier, Thomas Newton, in the 1566–67 accounting year: ‘to Newton for the banes j d. for bred for our horses that day we rod the banes xij d.’⁵³ In the accounts for 1567–68, The Painters’, Glaziers’, Embroiderers’, and Stationers’ Accounts also record payment to Newton: ‘Item to Newton for Rydyng of the banes j d.’⁵⁴ The accounts of a third guild, The Cordwainers’ and Shoemakers’ Accounts, also record ‘Item payde newton the same nyghte j d.’.⁵⁵ It seems that each guild made a payment of 1 penny to the Citty Crier for his services of reading the banns, and the last of these payments indicates that the event took place in the evening.⁵⁶ David Rogers, in his Breviary, records: ‘And before these playes there was a man which did Ride as I take it vpon St Georges daye [23 April] throughe the Cittie and there published the tyme and the matter of the playes in breeife’.⁵⁷ Those guild members who rode the banns normally did so on horseback. The Painters’, Glaziers’, Embroiderers’, and Stationers’ Accounts record: ‘Item for our horssces at the Rydyng of the banes xvi d.’.⁵⁸ However, the means of creating further appetite-whetting entertainment at the reading of the banns by the Painters was conducted by some of their players going on stilts: ‘Item for goyng vppon the styltes at Rydyng the banes vj d.’⁵⁹ Another payment in The Painters’, Glaziers’, Embroiderers’, and Stationers’ Accounts for 1574–75 identifies one of the painters going on stilts at the riding of the banns: ‘Item to rychard dobye for goynge one the styltes at the banes rydenge vj d.’⁶⁰

Notes

1. See the section on ‘Monological Speech’ in Pfister, The Theory and Analysis of Drama, pp. 126–40, and the section on ‘Discrepant Awareness’, pp. 49–55. See Chapter 4, n. 35, in this work.

2. The earliest relevant record where the term ‘monologue’ appears to be coined is in The Complaynt of Scotland (1548), ed. by John Leyden (Edinburgh: Archibald Constable, 1801), ‘Tabvla. The sext cheptor rehersis ane monolog recreatyue of the actor (fo. xxx)’, p. 293: ‘Ane Monolog of the Actor’, p. 56.

3. Ramsay, Magnyfycence, pp. 14, 27, 41, 46, 56; John Skelton, Magnyfycence, Tudor Facsimile Texts, ed. by John S. Farmer ([London]: Issued for Subscribers by the Editor, 1910; New York, AMS Press, 1970), sigs. B.ii^r, Cii^v, Diiii^r, Ei^v, Fi^r. The stage direction, ‘Counterfet Countenance solus.’ is an addition by Ramsay that is not contained in the facsimile.

4. See Philip Butterworth, Magic on the Early English Stage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), for an examination of juggling.

5. Ramsay, Magnyfycence, p. 42; Skelton, Magnyfycence, Tudor Facsimile Texts, sig. Diiii^r: Ramsay’s account contains different spelling and punctuation from the facsimile, which contains no punctuation.

6. Although the term ‘aside’ is often used loosely by modern editors in respect of late sixteenth-century English theatre, its use does not appear to be recorded earlier than 1728 by E[phraim] Chambers in his Chambers Cyclopædia: or an Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, 2 vols (London: James and John Knapton and others, 1728), I, p. 149, where he defines ‘aside’ as: ‘ASIDE, in the Drama.—An Aside, Seorsim, is something which an Actor speaks a-part, or, as it were, to himself, for the Instruction of the Audience, by discovering some Sentiment which otherwise did not appear, and which is to be concealed from the rest of the Actors then present’. The OED Online defines the term as: aside D. n. 1. ‘Words spoken aside or in an undertone, so as to be inaudible to some person present; words spoken by an actor, which the other performers, on the stage are supposed not to hear’; see Bain, Actors and Audience, pp. 16–19; C. W. Marshall, The Stagecraft and Performance of Roman Comedy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 166–67; Dessen, ‘Stage Directions and The Theater Historian’, pp. 513–27 (p. 515).

7. Publius Terenius (Terence), Terens in englysh (Paris: P. le Noir?, c.1520), sigs. A.vi^r, A.vii^r, A.vii^v, B.ii^r, B.iiii^r, B.iiii^r, B.v^r, Bv^v, C.ii^r, C. ii^v, C.v^r, D.i^v, D.iiii^v.

8. Vergil Emery Hiatt, ‘Eavesdropping in Roman Comedy’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Chicago, 1946), p. 9n.

9. Marshall, The Stagecraft and Performance of Roman Comedy, p. 49.

10. See Terence In English: An Early Sixteenth-Century Translation of The Andria, ed. by Meg Twycross, Medieval English Theatre Modern-Spelling Texts, 6 (Lancaster: Lancaster University, 1987), Introduction. In The Andria, it seems that only two doors were needed: those for Simo and Glycerium.

11. Bain, Actors and Audience, p. 171.

12. (Terence), Terens in englysh, sig. B.iiii^r.

13. (Terence), Terens in englysh, sigs. C.ii^r, C.ii^v.

14. (Terence), Terens in englysh, sig. C.ii^v.

15. OED Online, double-take | double take, n. ‘A delayed reaction to a situation, sight of a person, etc., rapidly following an earlier inappropriate reaction; esp. a procedure in comedy, etc., in which an actor at first reacts unexpectedly or inappropriately to a given situation and then, as if more fully realizing the implications, reacts in an expected or more usual manner. Also, a second, often more detailed, look’.

16. Marshall, The Stagecraft and Performance of Roman Comedy, pp. 160–61, 166.

17. (Terence), Terens in englysh, sig. Cv^v.

18. John L. Locke, Eavesdropping: An Intimate History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 3. Locke also uses the term to mean ‘surreptitious observation as a technique for sampling the intimate experiences of others—whether the surveillant is peeking through a keyhole or just feigning inattention to ambient activity’, p. 6.

19. Hiatt, ‘Eavesdropping in Roman Comedy’, p. 86.

20. (Terence), Terens in englysh, sigs. A.vii^v, B.v^v, C.iiii^r.

21. Warton, The History of English Poetry, vol. II, p. 380; John R. Elliott, Jr., Alan H. Nelson, Alexandra F. Johnston and Diana Wyatt, Records of Early English Drama: Oxford, 2 vols (Toronto, Buffalo: The British Library; University of Toronto Press, 2004), I, p. 101.

22. For an example of the necessary scenic modification to convert the Roman staging in an English hall setting, see That Girl from Andros, dir. and des. by Meg Twycross (Rufford Old Hall: Crossbow Productions, 1988) [on DVD].

23. Lumiansky and Mills, Essays and Documents, p. 294; Salter, F. M. ‘The Banns of the Chester Plays’, The Review of English Studies, 16.62 (Apr. 1940), 137–48 (148); Mills, The Chester Mystery Cycle: A New edition with Modernised Spelling, p. 12n.: Mills suggests that ‘The lines seek to defend the players from the charge of blasphemous impersonation’. The concern for the theatrical impersonation of God has come down into the twentieth century: see Philip Butterworth, ‘Discipline, Dignity and Beauty: The Wakefield Mystery Plays, Bretton Hall, 1958’, in Porci ante Margaritam: Essays in honour of Meg Twycross, ed. by Sarah Carpenter, Pamela King and Peter Meredith, Leeds Studies in English: n.s. 32 (Leeds: Leeds School of English, 2001), pp. 49–80 (pp. 78–79).

24. Norris, The Ancient Cornish Drama, I, p. 20.

25. Stokes, Beunans Meriasek: The Life of St. Meriasek, p. 56.

26. Davis, Non-Cycle Plays and Fragments, p. 99; Butterworth, Staging Conventions, p. 39.

27. Henry Medwall, Nature, Tudor Facsimile Texts, ed. by John S. Farmer (London: issued for Subscribers, 1909), sig. c.iii^v. Alan Nelson argues the case for Nature having been performed in the Great Hall at Lambeth Palace: The Plays of Henry Medwall, ed. by Alan H. Nelson (Cambridge, Totowa, NJ: D. S. Brewer and Rowman & Littlefield, 1980), pp. 18–19.

28. Anon, Nice Wanton, ed. by John S. Farmer, The Tudor Facsimile Texts (London, Edinburgh: T. C. & E. C. Jack, 1909), sig. B.iii^r; Shakespeare’s preoccupation with the inherent dramatic and theatrical opportunities afforded by incorporation of different levels of awareness between players and spectators through listening, hearing, not hearing and overhearing leading to secrecy, deceit and misunderstanding is given a thorough airing in Shakespeare’s Auditory Worlds: Hearing and Staging Practices, Then and Now, ed. by Laury Magnus and Walter W. Cannon (Vancouver, Madison, NJ, Teaneck, NJ, Wroxton, UK: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 2021): see the Roundtable Discussion, pp. 237–68; see also Pamela M. King, ‘Seeing and Hearing; Looking and Listening’, Early Theatre, 3 (2000), 155–66.

29. Baily Errand is Iniquity in disguise.

30. Baker, Murphy and Hall, The Late Medieval Religious Plays, pp. 1–23.

31. F. J. Furnivall, The Digby Mysteries, p. ix; repr. The Early English Text Society (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1896); E. K. Chambers, The Mediaeval Stage, II, p. 429; Hardin Craig, English Religious Drama of the Middle Ages, pp. 312–13; Alan H. Nelson, ‘Principles of Processional Staging: York Cycle’, Modern Philology, 67.4 (May 1970), 303–20 (316); Mary Del Villar, ‘The Staging of the Conversion of Saint Paul’, Theatre Notebook, 25.2 (Winter 1970–71), 64–68 (66); Richard Hosley, ‘Three Kinds of Outdoor Theatre Before Shakespeare’, Theatre Survey, 12.1 (May, 1971), 33, n. 38: Although Hosley’s point is sound in general, I have used the technique of players and spectators processing together in a production of the Towneley Crucifixion. Here, the role of a mob was insinuated into the audience in such a way as to make clear the purpose and composition of the procession in pursuit of the Crucifixion: see Butterworth, Staging Conventions, pp. 226–27, n. 47; see also the titles of the Towneley plays of Noah, ‘Processus Noe cum filiis Wakefeld’, the Play of the Prophets, ‘Processus prophetarum’, Crucifixion, ‘Sequitur processus crucis’ and Play of the Dice, ‘Incipit processus talorum’: Stevens and Cawley, Towneley Plays, I, pp. 25, 48, 64, 287, 309, 322.

32. The MED does not define ‘proces’ as ‘prōcessiŏun’ or ‘prōcessiŏun’ as ‘proces’, although the word ‘processyon’ in The Conversion of St. Paul is clearly used to mean ‘proces’. The word ‘processyon’ is used only once by Poeta, in his conclusion to Section 1, and then it is required to rhyme with ‘conclusyon’ two lines above. The word ‘proces’, in its different spellings, is used several times by Poeta to refer to the progressional unfolding of the play, and it seems that the word ‘proces’ and its meaning should have been used, as part of a modified rhyme structure, instead of ‘processyon’. Unless, of course, the author’s use of ‘processyon’ was intended to mean ‘proces’. This is how the word ‘processyon’ is used in the N.town Procession of Saints cited below.

33. Baker, Murphy and Hall, The Late Medieval Religious Plays, p. xxviii: the authors refer to ‘carts’ as potential stages. As ‘carts’ are and were two-wheeled vehicles, their use is relegated and negated. Similarly, use of the term ‘wagon’ is also invalidated as there is no medieval evidence of its use to describe the pageant vehicle; for the distinction between the cart and the wagon, see John Fitzherbert, Here begynneth a newe tracte or treatyse moost profytable for all husbande men: and very frutefull for all other persons to rede (the boke of husbandrie) (London: Rycharde Pynson, 1523) fol. iii^v–fol. iiii^r.

34. Baker, Murphy and Hall, The Late Medieval Religious Plays, p. 6.

35. Raymond J. Pentzell, ‘The Medieval Theatre in the Streets’, Theatre Survey, 14.1 (May 1973), 1–21 (12); Mary del Villar, ‘The Medieval Theatre in the Streets: A Rejoinder’, Theatre Survey, 14.2 (November 1973), 76–81; Raymond J. Pentzell, ‘Reply to Mary Del Villar, Theatre Survey, 14.2 (November 1973), 82–90: the acerbic discussion between Mary Del Villar and Raymond Pentzell exemplifies the different interpretations based upon the limited evidence concerning the staging of The Conversion of St. Paul. Their respective stances represent the fixed-site performance and the mobile performers and spectators. They both draw upon external evidence to buttress their respective cases.

36. Nelson, ‘Principles of Processional Staging: York Cycle’, 316.

37. Baker, Murphy and Hall, The Late Medieval Religious Plays, p. 5.

38. Comparison of these kinds of needs may be made with the Persian (Iranian) Passion Play (Taziyeh, Ta’zia), where ‘Symbolic props serve as décor: a basin of water, for example, represents the Euphrates River; a branch of a tree stands for a palm grove. The empty stage represents the desolate plain of Karbala’ (www.iranicaonline.org/articles/tazia) p. 7 [accessed 20 February 2021]; Mahjub, ‘The Effect of European Theatre and the Influence of Its Theatrical Methods Upon Ta’ziyeh’, in Ta’ziyeh: Ritual and Drama in Iran, ed. by Chelkowski, pp. 137–53 (p. 138); see also Chelkowski’s Eternal Performance, p. 107; Mahani, The Holy Drama: Persian Passion Play in Modern Iran, p. 35; a clear English equivalent example of this kind of symbolic arrangement occurs in Stokes, Gwreans an Bys: The Creation of the World, where stage directions outline the elements that are organised to represent Paradise: ‘Let Paradyce be fynelye made wyth ii^v fayre trees in yt And an appell vpon the tree & som other frute one the other’, ‘A fowntaine in Paradice & fyne flowers in yt painted’, ‘Lett flowres apeare in paradice’, p. 30; see Chapter 2, n. 38, in this work.

39. Baker, Murphy and Hall, The Late Medieval Religious Plays, pp. 1, 6, 13, 23.

40. This kind of apology occurs in the prologues of French mysteries: ‘We constantly find apologies for the acting, and expressions of fear lest the subject-matter should not be fitting. The fear of the disapproval of the Church is very apparent […] there seeming to be the general desire to please everybody’: David Hobart, The Prologue in the Old French and Provençal Mystery (New Haven, CT: Morehouse & Taylor, 1905), p. 62; the Epilogue in Terens in englysh (Andria) also contains apologies, but, in this case, it is the quality of the translation for which apology is made, together with the request that the text be corrected by anyone in the audience who may be wise: (Terence), Terens in englysh, sig. D.vi^v; the ‘concluser’ in the German Redentin Easter Play states ‘If something has been overlooked here, //Do not blame us too severely’, The Redentin Easter Play, trans. by A. E. Zucker (New York: Columbia University Press, 1941), p. 112.

41. Furnivall and Wickham both assume that wagons (sic) used in processional mode became the stages at the stations. There is no evidence for this practice. Their conjecture arises out of the need to legitimize Poeta’s reference to ‘folow and succede with all your delygens this general processyon’ as a literal one; Furnivall, The Digby Mysteries, p. ix; Wickham, ‘The Staging of Saint Plays in England’, in The Medieval Drama, ed. by Sticca, p. 106.

42. Although the generally understood meaning of ‘stacionis’ or ‘stac[y]on’ is derived from the practices of cycle plays at York, Chester and Coventry, the OED Online confirms this meaning and also offers another definition:’14. a. An act of a pageant or a mystery play’ which equally permits ‘stacionis’ or ‘stac[y]on’ to refer to sections of the play: see OED Online station 14. a. and 20. a.

43. Baker, Murphy and Hall, The Late Medieval Religious Plays, p. 97.

44. Baker, Murphy and Hall, The Late Medieval Religious Plays, pp. 96–115 (p. 96); for similar apologetic content see also Henry Medwall, Fulgens and Lucrece, intro. by Seymour De Ricci, The Henry Huntington Facsimile Reprints (New York: George D. Smith, 1920), sig. giii^r; Brian W. Schneider, The Framing Text in Early Modern English Drama: ‘Whining’ Prologues and ‘Armed’ Epilogues (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), p. 60.

45. Spector, N-Town, I, p. 294. See Chapter 2, n. 18, in this work.

46. See Sister Mary Maltman, ‘Meaning and Art in the Croxton Play of the Sacrament’, ELH, 41.2 (Summer, 1974), 149–64; Richard L. Homan, ‘Devotional Themes in the Violence and Humor of the Play of the Sacrament’, Comparative Drama, 20 (1986), 327–40; Ann Eljenholm Nichols, ‘The Croxton Play of the Sacrament: A Re-Reading’, Comparative Drama, 22 (1988), 117–38; Cecilia Cutts, ‘The Croxton Play: An Anti-Lollard Piece’, Modern Language Quarterly, 5 (1944), 45–60; Ann Eljenholm Nichols, ‘Lollard Language in the Croxton Play of the Sacrament’, Notes and Queries, 234 (1989), 23–25; Michael Jones, ‘Theatrical History in the Croxton Play of the Sacrament’, ELH, 66.2 (Summer,1999), 223–60; Elisabeth Dutton, ‘The Croxton Play of the Sacrament’ in The Oxford Handbook of Tudor Drama, ed. by Thomas Betteridge and Greg Walker, pp. 55–71 (p. 68).

47. Davis, Non-Cycle Plays and Fragments, p. 90, ll. 5–7, p. 93, ll. 109–12, p. 115, l. 8, p. 118, ll. 1–5, p. 123, ll. 23–25; Albertus Way Promptorium Parvelorum sive Clericorum, 3 vols (London: Camden Society, 1843), I, p. 185; Richard Huloet, Abecedarivm Anglico Latinvm (London: Gulielmi Riddel, 1552): ‘Game. locus. ci, Ludus. di. Vide in Playes’; V. A. Kolve, The Play Called Corpus Christi (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1966), p. 14; Spector, The N-Town Play, I, p. 6, ll. 47–48, p. 21, ll. 516–21; Medwall, Fulgens and Lucrece, sig. gii^r; Eccles, The Castle of Perseverance in The Macro Plays, p. 111, l. 3645; David Galloway and John Wasson, eds, Malone Society Collections XI (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), pp. 142, 185, 186.

48. Davis, Non-Cycle Plays and Fragments, p. 118.

49. Thorough discussions of the Chester banns occur in F. M. Salter, ‘The Banns of the Chester Plays’, The Review of English Studies, 15.60 (Oct. 1939), 432–57: this work was continued in ‘The Banns of the Chester Plays’, The Review of English Studies, 16.61 (Jan. 1940), 1–17, and 16.62 (Apr. 1940), 137–48; Lawrence M. Clopper, ‘The History and Development of the Chester Cycle’, Modern Philology, 75.3 (Feb. 1978), 219–46; Lumiansky and Mills, The Chester Mystery Cycle: Essays and Documents, pp. 185, 263, 272–95; Mills, Recycling the Cycle, pp. 112–18.

50. OED Online announce, v. 1. ‘To make known as an official messenger; to deliver news; to make public or official intimation of, to proclaim (something of the nature of news)’; The miroure of mans saluacionne: a fifteenth century translation into English of the Speculum humanae salvationis & now for the first time printed from a manuscript in the possession of Alfred Henry Huth, ed. by A. H. Huth (London: priv. pr. [Spottiswoode & Co.], 1888), p. 119: ‘ffor he shalle informe ȝowe / certeinly of alle thinge / And also to ȝowe announce / the thinges y^t ere commyng’.

51. Baldwin, Clopper and Mills, REED: Cheshire including Chester, I, p. 95.

52. Baldwin, Clopper and Mills, REED: Cheshire including Chester, I, p. 106.

53. Baldwin, Clopper and Mills, REED: Cheshire including Chester, I, p. 118.

54. Baldwin, Clopper and Mills, REED: Cheshire including Chester, I, p. 122.

55. Baldwin, Clopper and Mills, REED: Cheshire including Chester, I, p. 129.

56. Baldwin, Clopper and Mills, REED: Cheshire including Chester, I, p. xxxiv; Matthew Sergi makes out a case for the purpose of riding the banns in Kent, Sussex and Lincolnshire as ones that not only announce the forthcoming plays in local towns but also use the occasion to attract funding. Such pre- and post-performance attempts to extract money from townsfolk are not different from those involved in Church Ales and Robin Hood Plays. See Matthew Sergi, ‘Beyond Theatrical Marketing: Play Banns in the Records of Kent, Sussex, and Lincolnshire’, Medieval English Theatre, 36 (2014), 3–23; Bruce Moore, suggests that payment for delivering banns is standard practice in places where they occur: Bruce Moore, ‘The Banns in Medieval English Drama’, Leeds Studies in English, n.s. 24, School of English, University of Leeds (1993), 91–122 (99); John Marshall, ‘Gathering in the Name of the Outlaw: REED and Robin Hood’, in REED in Review: Essays in Celebration of the First Twenty-Five Years, ed. by Audrey Douglas and Sally-Beth MacLean (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006), pp. 65–84; John Marshall, ‘Comyth in Robyn Hode: Paying and Playing the Outlaw in Croscombe’, in Porci ante Margaritam, pp. 345–68: both these articles by Marshall have been reprinted in Early English Performance: Medieval Plays and Robin Hood Games, ed. by Philip Butterworth, Shifting Paradigms in Early English Drama Studies, Variorum Collected Studies (London, New York: Routledge, 2020), pp. 248–70, 271–92.

57. Baldwin, Clopper and Mills, REED: Cheshire including Chester, I, p. 331; Lumiansky and Mills, The Chester Mystery Cycle: Essays and Documents, p. 263; MED publishen v. 1. (a) ‘To make (sth.) publicly known, reveal, divulge, announce’.

58. Baldwin, Clopper and Mills, REED: Cheshire including Chester, I, pp. 139, 166.

59. Baldwin, Clopper and Mills, REED: Cheshire including Chester, I, p. 141.

60. Baldwin, Clopper and Mills, REED: Cheshire including Chester, p. 166; John Marshall, ‘ “Walking in the Air”: The Chester Shepherds on Stilts’, in According to the Ancient Custom: Essays presented to David Mills, ed. by Philip Butterworth, Pamela M. King, and Meg Twycross, Medieval English Theatre, 29, 2 parts (Lancaster: Lancaster University, 2007), I, pp. 27–41; for a reprint of this article, see John Marshall, ‘ “Walking in the Air”: The Chester Shepherds on Stilts’, in Early English Performance: Medieval Plays and Robin Hood Games, pp. 62–74.