UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY

The City Speaks: Site-Specificity and Performance in the York Corpus Christi Play

by

Tamara Haddad

A THESIS

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CALGARY, ALBERTA

AUGUST, 2011

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1+1 Canada Abstract

The basis of this study is to examine the relationship between the York Corpus

Christi Play and its medieval performance sites in York, focusing on how the place memory of particular locales can enrich the audiences' reception of the pageants. After tracing through the medieval performance history of the Play, the thesis explores the concept of site-specific performance which is followed by two case studies that articulate how place and memory can inform a viewing of two pageants: The Entry into Jerusalem and The Last Judgement. The final section takes up the modern reproductions of the Play in York and how relocating the performances to sites in the city that are not on the medieval cycle route can conjure place memories that emphasize the coterminous realities of the pageants.

11 Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Dr. Jacqueline Jenkins for her immeasurable patience during the course of my research, and especially for her invaluable feedback throughout the writing process. Without her support this project would not be where it is today. I would also like to thank Dr. Susan Bennett for her critique of a very preliminary version of this project. Many thanks go to Joy Cann, the York City Archivist, who uncomplainingly extracted hundreds of records from the York City Archives during my research travel in

July 2010, and to the Department of English and the University Research Grants

Committee for providing me with a travel grant to supplement my expenses in York.

An unsuccessful effort was made to determine the copyright holder of the map included in Appendix A in order to request permission to reproduce the map. Any information on the copyright holder should be directed to me.

in TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract ii

Acknowledgements iii

Table of Contents iv

Epigraph v

Chapter One: Critical and Theoretical Foundations 1

The Documentary Evidence 2

The Social History 10

The Mechanics of Performance 19

Defining Place 28

Placeness and the Memory Process 29

Chapter Two: Locating the Drama 43

Micklegate Bar and the Skinners' Entry into Jerusalem 43

Pavement and the Mercers' Last Judgement 64

Chapter Three: Relocating the Drama: York's modern Revivals 84

Bibliography 105

Appendix A 113

iv We do not live in an abstract framework of geometric spatial relationships; we live in a world of meaning. We exist in and are surrounded by places - centers of meaning. Places are neither totally material nor completely mental; they are combinations of the material and mental and cannot be reduced to either.

Tim Cresswell, In Place/Out of Place1

'Pg. 13 V 1

Critical and Theoretical Foundations

Since its first complete publication by Lucy Toulmin Smith in 1885, the York

Corpus Christi Play has been the major focus of the research on medieval English drama and, since the revival of its performances in the mid-twentieth century, has been a vehicle through which literature and performance studies scholars have sought to understand how such a play might have been produced in its time. With reference to specific pageants, this study will take up the relationship between the stations on the cycle route in the city of York and the Play1, focusing on the possibilities of audience response to the performance through the lens of human geography and, briefly, memory. Because the pageants were performed in an urban context outside of a traditional proscenium arch theatre, the places of performance - important in day-to-day civic life in York - provided medieval audiences with a rich palimpsest of history and daily practices that are brought out through the performance of the Play. In particular, I will discuss the relationship between two pageants and two sites: The Entry into Jerusalem and Micklegate Bar, the first station on the cycle route; and The Last Judgement2 and Pavement, the final station.

In this chapter, I will provide a review of some of the most important avenues of scholarship on the Play in order to contextualize my own work within such a vast field of research. First, I will examine the work done on the textual and documentary evidence of the Play beginning with the editions of the play-text, followed by a brief overview of how theatre historians have situated York within the context of its performance history by

11 will be following the standard convention of referring to the whole cycle as the 'play' and to the individual skits within the cycle as 'pageants' (see Walker 5). 2 Scholars have also referred to this pageant as Doomsday, as Richard Beadle does in his most recent edition of the Play. 2 using archival evidence. I will then discuss the social history of medieval York and the role of the Play in civic and guild culture throughout the duration of its medieval performance history, taking into account the multifaceted audience of the production through an examination of scholarship on gender, identity, the religious context and the politics of a secular performance of a religious text. Lastly, I will look at the research on the mechanics of the performance that has become popular in recent years as a result of the modern reconstructions by performance studies scholars. I will then take these explorations of the Play one step further by discussing the concept of site-specific performance and its potential for informing audience reception of the Play.

The Documentary Evidence

The surviving text of the Play is found in two separate manuscripts: London

British Library Additional MS 35290 (also known as the Register) which contains the text of 47 pageants from the cycle; and York City Archives Ace. 104/G.l (the Sykes

Manuscript), which consists of what is believed to be a prompt copy of the Scrivener's

Incredulity of Thomas (pageant 41).3 Scholars have dated the early history of the Register to sometime between 1463 and 1477 from internal markings and external evidence based on the ownership of certain pageants by various craft guilds in the city (Beadle, 2009

31 only intend to provide the reader with a brief outline of some of the important features of these two documents; Beadle's discussion of both in his introduction to the most recent edition of the Play provides a more detailed exploration (Beadle, 2009 xi-xxxiv) while the introduction by Beadle and Meredith to the facsimile of the Register provides an intensive study of the Register. Lucy Toulmin Smith also discusses the Register in the introduction to her edition of the Play (Smith xi-lx). Research by Smith, Beadle and others has shown similarities between some of the pageants in these copies and San Marino, California Henry E. Huntington Library HM 1 (the Towneley Manuscript), which contains the text of the Wakefield cycle. Five pageants from Towneley have been closely associated with the York cycle (pageants 1, 20, 37, 38, and 47; Beadle, 2009 xi). For further details on the Towneley manuscript see Beadle, 2009 xxxiii - xxxiv. 3 xii).4 The Sykes Manuscript was completed sometime between 1525 and 1575 and might have been copied from the same source as the Register's version of the pageant (Beadle,

2009 xxxii).

An official order for the compilation of the Register is not known to have survived but Richard Beadle's examination of the ordinance of 3 April 1476 in York

House Book I suggests that the Play was compiled in its present form during the last quarter of the fifteenth century. The text of the ordinance addresses a filtering process by which pageants and actors would be chosen for performance each year: "bat yerely in be tyme of lentyn there shall be called afore the Maire for be tyme beyng iiij of be moste

Cownyng discrete and able players within bis Citie to serche here and examen all be plaiers and plaies pagentes thrughoute all be artificers belonging to corpus chr/sri Plaie"

(Johnston and Rogerson 109). Beadle rightly points out that without a complete text of the pageants, this process of examining the Play before a performance would be difficult to accomplish; he thus takes this ordinance to imply that the compilation of the whole text by the city's Common Clerk - the most senior official after the mayor - began during or shortly after 1476 (Beadle, 2009 xvii).

Additional work done by Beadle on the scribal hand and provenance of the

Register shows that the pageants were not copied in the same sequence as they would have been performed, but rather that they were assembled in the proper order in the last half of the sixteenth century (Beadle, 2009 xviii and xxi). Not every pageant from the cycle was added to the Register and in some cases pages with the name of the guild that

4 Because of the similarity in the titles, to distinguish between the most recent edition of Beadle's transcription and his earlier transcription I will be referring to the former as "Beadle, 2009" and the latter as "Beadle, 1982". 4 had not provided a prompt copy were left blank in the appropriate space to allow a scribe to add the text at a later date (Beadle, 2009 xxi). This is true of the pageants belonging to the Fullers (no. 4-Adam and Eve in Eden), the Vintners (no. 22 A - The Marriage at

Cand) and the Ironmongers (no. 23 A - Jesus in the House of Simon the Leper); spaces were not left for the Hatmakers, Masons and Laborers (no. 17 - The Purification of the

Virgin), or the Linenweavers (no. 44A - The Funeral of the Virgin) since, Beadle argues, these pageants "were either defunct or only in process of revival when the time came to assemble the manuscript" (2009 xxi).

The Records of Early English Drama for the city of York were compiled by

Alexandra Johnston and Margaret Rogerson from external documentary evidence of dramatic activity found in several sources at the York City Archives: the city council

House Books (or minute books); civic memorandum books (which also contain guild documents); civic accounts (the Chamberlains' Account Rolls, Account Books and the accounts of the Ouse Bridge Bridgemaster); documents belonging to the craft guilds, religious guilds and hospitals; wills and a few miscellaneous items.5 With a few exceptions, these records are composed of any references made to dramatic and ceremonial activity in medieval York including, but not limited to, the York Play, the

Creed Play, the Pater Noster Play, civic processions including royal entries to the city, and minstrel activity.6 The publication of these volumes of raw, uninterpreted material

5 Johnston and Rogerson provide a more detailed description of the documents used to collect the records in their introduction to the two REED volumes (ix-xlvi). 6 One document that was not included in the REED volumes is a note from Richard Ill's secretary dated 23 August 1483 that asks Nicholas Lancaster to stage manage the pageants for royal entry and has been reprinted by Lorraine Attreed in The York House Books 1461-1490. (Bath: Alan Sutton Publishing Limited, 1991)713. 5 from the archives in the last quarter of the twentieth century has given modern scholars the opportunity to access a host of documents that lay out the performance history of the

Play. This documentary history begins in 1377 with a reference to "one building in which three Corpus Christi pageants are housed per annum" (Johnston and Rogerson

689),8 indicating that rent was paid for the storage of pageant wagons by their owners.

There is nothing to indicate, however, that the Play that was performed using these wagons in 1377 (or indeed earlier) was in any way similar to the text that survives from a century later.

The Play is comprised of a series of short performances, or pageants, based on

Biblical events highlighting major episodes such as the Creation, the Flood, the Exodus, the life of Christ, and the Last Judgement. Each of these pageants was assigned to a craft or trade guild, often so that a guild's craft or trade would be related to the subject of the pageant, such as the Shipwrights' association with The Building of the Ark. Each year these pageants were performed on wagons that processed through different locations around the city during Corpus Christi (between May 21st and June 24th), stopping at different stations along the route to perform a portion of a Christian history.

Stations were leased by York's prominent citizens along the cycle route and were used as stopping places for the Play where each pageant was performed before moving on to the next station.9 The performance began at Micklegate Bar, the main city gate, and crossed the river Ouse before turning left at Spurriergate and on to Coney Street. When

7 This date has been mis-cited in the REED volumes as 1376; see Meredith, "The City of York and its 'Play of Pageants'" 40-41 for a discussion of this dating. 81 will be referring to translations of the documents from the REED volumes when available. 9 This is the commonly held belief among scholars of the Play but in a later section I will take up some of the different perspectives of scholars who do not agree with this scheme (see Pg. 20). the Play reached the Guildhall (built c. 1449-59) it turned right at Stonegate, turning onto

Low Petergate in front of the Minster until it became Colliergate, and then finally on to

Pavement.10 A chart of the station leases has been compiled by Meg Twycross that shows

the locations, names of the leasees, and the number of stops on the route from 1398 to

1572 (Twycross, "Places" 28-33). The stopping places were normally twelve in number

but range from ten stations in 1462 to sixteen in 1542 and 1554. An ordinance from 1399

lays out the pageant stations and restricts the stopping places to only those locations that were paid for by lease-holders with the threat of fines for those who did not obey

(Johnston and Rogerson 697-698); in the previous year the Play was not completed because of the large number of stopping places that were at sites that were not leased to

the public.

Another document that is important for situating the Play historically is the 1415

Ordo Paginarum and the subsequent list of torch bearers for the procession (Johnston and

Rogerson 16-26 and 702-711). The document lists, in order, the names of the guilds with

a description of the corresponding pageant that each guild was responsible for performing

and was updated, according to research by Twycross, for the next twenty years

(Twycross, "Forget" 108).11 This list shows the development of the ownership of each pageant as the medieval performances progressed, and in some sense is a textual indicator

of the rise and fall of certain guilds during the Middle Ages. The Ordo also describes the process of how each guild was asked to perform its pageant: "the billets of pageants must be delivered in succession in the subscribed form to the craftsmen by six sergeants-at-

10 See Appendix A for a map of the city of York and the cycle route. 11 Twycross has examined the document using UV and computer imaging technology to recover lost text in the Ordo ("Forget"). 7

arms of the mayor in the first or second week of Lent, yearly, (and) are to be written by

the common clerk" (Johnston and Rogerson 703). Once the billets were received by the

craftsmen, rehearsals would presumably begin, at which time - at least during the last

quarter of the fifteenth century - the players would be evaluated on their acting.

In its early history, the Play was performed on Corpus Christi day - a moveable

feast that falls between 21 May and 24 June on the liturgical calendar that was

proclaimed in York in 1325 (Beadle and King x) - followed by a procession of the Host.

The procession followed the same route as the Play but when it reached the Minster Gate

at the intersection of Stonegate and Petergate it turned left towards Bootham Bar. In

1426, William Melton, a Friar Minor, complained that

the citizens of the aforesaid city [York] and the other foreigners coming in

to it during the said festival [Corpus Christi], attend not only to the play on

the same feast, but also greatly to feastings, drunkenness, clamours,

gossipings, and other wantonness, engaging the least in the divine service

of the office of that day and that, alas, for that cause, they lose the

indulgences granted to them in that manner by Pope Urban IV. (Johnston

and Rogerson 718)

Melton's concern that the procession was not receiving the full attention of York's

citizens because it came after the Play is certainly justified - there are several ordinances

in the surviving records that caution against lewd behaviour during the feast - and it was proposed that the Play be moved to the eve of the feast day and that the procession remain on Corpus Christi day to avoid the possibility of losing the Pope's indulgences. 8

Following this entry in the A/Y Memorandum Book, however, there is no indication that this plan was definitively in place during future performances until 1476, when an ordinance mentions the procession as taking place the day after Corpus Christi (Johnston and Rogerson 776-777), signalling the ascendance of civic power over Church authority since the Play would, from this date, fall on the feast day rather than the night before.

An entry in the City Chamberlain's book from 1535 provides some interesting evidence as to how the pageants would have been performed and, although the Play was pushed aside in favour of the Creed Play that year, the document seems to suggest that the majority if not all of the pageants were performed every year. The entry lists payments made by guilds to the City for the performance of their pageants, totalling about 35, and is the only record in the REED volumes that denotes how many of the pageants may have been produced each year.12 Given that the July 2010 production of twelve pageants from the Play in York took just under five hours and only had four stopping places, it is no wonder that the procession was eventually moved to the day after the performances.

The last known surviving record that refers to the Register in its official capacity is 1579 when it was agreed that prior to performing the Play the Register would be

"caried to my Lord Archebisshop and Mr Deane to correcte, if that my Lord

Archebisshop doo well like theron" (Johnston and Rogerson 390). Aside from an

12 One entry in the list notes "Richard mertyn potecary for [ha] his parte" (Johnston and Rogerson 258) and it is unclear if this indicates that Mertyn paid the city on behalf of a guild (perhaps the Apothecary's guild, if there was one in medieval York) or if this amount was intended for the lease of a station and was entered in the wrong list. Beadle notes that at least a dozen of the pageants are not present in this list, including major Biblical episodes such as the Tilethatchers' Nativity and the Cooks and Waterleaders' Remorse of Judas which leads him to assume that every pageant from the Play would have been performed each year (Beadle, 1982 28). 9 unsuccessful attempt at reviving the Play in the following year, no surviving evidence in the city archives mentions performances of the cycle or the Register after this date

(Beadle xxii). The general assumption by scholars is that the rise of the Anglican Church during the last half of the sixteenth century made such a performance difficult. The

Register's provenance following this unsuccessful revival is unknown until the last decade of the seventeenth century and the text was not identified as the York Play until

1844 by Sir Frederic Madden (Beadle, 2009 xxiii).13 In 1847, Lord Ashburnham acquired the manuscript and in 1885 he gave Lucy Toulmin Smith permission to publish the manuscript before its final move to the British Museum in 1899. Until Beadle's 1982 edition of the Play, Smith's was the only complete edition of the surviving text - between

1885 and 1982, only select pageants were reprinted in anthologies. Beadle and Meredith have since produced a facsimile of the Register, complete with an introduction that provides a detailed history of the manuscript.14 Beadle's most recent publication of the

Play text by the Early English Text Society (2009) replaces his earlier edition, which has fallen out of print, and this new version has become the standard edition used by scholars to refer to the text. The first volume of Beadle's revised edition includes an introduction to the text through an examination of the manuscripts, a copy of the pageants as they appear in the Register and a copy of the Sykes text; the second volume is due for publication in late 2011 and will include commentary on the pageants with notes and a glossary.

13 Beadle gives a brief overview of the ownership of the Register beginning in the late seventeenth century (2009 xxii-xxiii) 14 Beadle, Richard and Peter Meredith, eds. The York Play: A Facsimile of British Library MS Additional 35290, together with a Facsimile of the Ordo Paginarum Section of the A/Y Memorandum Book. Leeds: The University of Leeds School of English, 1983. Print. 10

The Social History

In recent years, numerous scholars have emphasized the importance of

iconography as a didactic tool in medieval society, one that articulates a form of literacy

that is dependent on images rather than texts. This is especially clear when one visits a

Gothic cathedral such as York Minster (begun in the late twelfth century) and sees the

depiction of the Last Judgement in the east window of the Lady Chapel. This window -

the largest surviving piece of painted glass from the medieval period - depicts a neo-

platonic hierarchy of God above the angels, prophets and saints in the tracery lights

followed by twenty-seven images from the Book of Genesis and eighty-one from the

Book of Revelation. The images in this and other instances of iconography were meant to

teach the laity through the use of visual rather than textual means since literacy in Latin -

the language of the Church - and, indeed, Middle English, was scarce outside of religious

and aristocratic houses. French was also the language of the aristocracy in England well

into the thirteenth century, further limiting literacy in Middle English.

It is thus appropriate that Clifford Davidson's influential study of the Play looks

at the relationship between drama and visual iconography {From Creation). Davidson

examines much of the stained glass found in the Minster and some of the smaller parish

churches in York as a way of understanding how the spatial arrangement of these images

might have influenced the spatial arrangement of the staging. The gestures of the figures

in the images, Davidson suggests, might have been reproduced in the Play since they would have at least been familiar to audiences from these external sources. This visual 11 culture is also reminiscent of the affective piety practiced during this period and how one's relationship with the tangible, visual image could aid in a religious experience.

Although her work on the relationship between iconography and drama pertains specifically to East Anglian texts, Gail McMurray Gibson's study of religious culture can be applied to medieval England more generally. Gibson has extended Davidson's discussion to include all religious iconography rather than just stained glass images, and she focuses on the incarnational aesthetic and its relationship to theatricality. Her emphasis on both the subject of specific icons and the gestures by which these icons are acquired by or given to parish churches - usually through a patron - allows Gibson to articulate the importance of theatricality in medieval religious culture. The act of giving an icon or providing the funds necessary to complete a chapel, even if done through a will bequest, is an act of devotion, and is a performance that is meant to secure one's place in heaven.

The social context of medieval York was such that guild culture dominated the citizens' daily practices from the lowest ranks of its society right to the head of its governing body, the mayor. Before becoming a member of office, one had to first become a freeman of the city and the most common method for accomplishing this was to complete an apprenticeship in a craft or trade.15 Martin Stevens outlines the steps a citizen could take to climb the ladder through the governing body after becoming a freeman:

15 For statistics of the number of freedoms granted to members of craft and trade guilds from 1272 to 1509 see P.M. Tillott's chart in A History of the County of York: the City of York (114-116). 12

the regular ladder of promotion for the potential officeholder was the

assumption of an accounting office like bridge- or muremaster, then

election to chamberlain, then advancement to the council of twenty-four,

and, finally, for the most successful, to alderman - a position that would

automatically lead to at least one term as mayor. (Stevens, Four 23-24)

This social climb from apprentice to mayor through the acquisition of the freedom of the

city as an apprentice of a trade or craft meant that out of the 106 aldermen in the

sixteenth-century records, 60 were merchants and the remainder belonged to other crafts

or trades (Stevens 24). In short, the government was primarily - if not completely -

composed of guildsmen.

The involvement of the guilds in every aspect of York's medieval society

extended also to the Play, where one of the most important festivals in the liturgical

calendar was controlled by a visible secular authority. The scholarship on guilds and their respective pageants has emphasized this importance of a guild's visibility through the performance of its pageant. Scholars like Stevens observe that the subject matter of

certain pageants was well suited to its performance by a certain guild in order to show off the skills of its craftsmen such as, for instance, the Pinners who could provide the nails for a rendition of the climactic act of The Crucifixion of Christ. In this way the pageants could be used as advertisements for the guild's products and services that would later be consumed by its citizens.

The vast quantity of guilds operating in medieval York is a testament to the variety of trades and crafts that were practiced and Stevens estimates the number of 13 guilds that were involved in the performances of the Play in one way or another to be ninety-three during the course of its performance history (31) - almost twice the number of pageants mentioned in the Ordo Paginarum. Beyond this involvement in the pageants, the structure of the York cycle itself suggests that the involvement of the guilds in the performances was encouraged even when certain guilds were unable to come up with the finances necessary to perform: on several occasions, more than one guild was assigned to a pageant to reduce the cost of performance. In one instance, five pageants were combined into one and assigned to the Saucemakers and the Tilemakers with additional help from other crafts (Stevens 22; see also Johnston and Rogerson 48). York's pageants are also relatively short when compared with other medieval mystery cycles, a characteristic that attests to the diversity of the guilds involved in the performances of the

Play.

The power of the guilds in York's daily activities might also suggest how the cycle route came to be the path for civic and liturgical processions through the city including the Play, royal entries and the Corpus Christi procession. Certain spaces in

York were associated strongly with particular guilds based on where shop-fronts or guildhalls were located: the area from Coney Street to the Common Hall (or Guildhall) was the centre of the mercantile and artisanal liberty (Higgins 83), the mercers and drapers were located in Fossgate (Beckwith 37), and the butchers at Shambles, to name a few. What is interesting to note in light of the relationship that some guilds had to particular areas of the city is that "craftsmen who lived in the districts of the Minster, St.

Mary's Abbey, Saint Leonard's Hospital, or any of the seven priories in the city.. .were 14 not obliged to join guilds, and were free to buy and sell without regard to city regulation"

(Stevens 82) because these districts were governed by the Church, not the civic government. The topography of the city was thus very much based on the boundaries between secular, or civic control, and liturgical, or Church authority. Anne Higgins

focuses on the complex jurisdiction of the city because of the large number of parishes in

its bounds and she explores Rogationtide, an annual practice in the city:

with crosses, banners, and bells, all parishioners joined together to beat the

bounds of their parish and religious community. This ritual was about

more than demarcation, however. It was also a ceremony of purification,

in which demons were exorcised from the parish and its animals and fields

cleansed and blessed. The Rogationtide procession was a powerful

assertion of parish identity and unity. (Higgins 83)

This demarcation of parish boundaries reinforces a parish's power over a certain portion of the city and thereby diminishes the power of the civic government in these areas, an interesting situation considering that many of these districts border the cycle route. The land surrounding York Minster belonged to one such parish, and was governed under

Church rather than secular authority - the city could not impose its laws within its bounds. Thus, the notion that the cycle route did not include entry to the Minster grounds,

Higgins suggests, might "have been constructed as an insult" (85) since the grounds were not a part of the land controlled by the civic authorities and therefore did not permit the entry of a civic procession (but, as I will show later, permitted the entrance of a procession for the royal entry of Henry VII in 1486). Although this is an interesting 15 hypothesis, it is important to note that bringing the pageant wagons onto the Minster grounds might have also been a time constraint issue since doing so would have added

even more time onto an already laborious performance.

The boundaries of power that are brought to light in an exploration of the city and the authority granted to the liturgical bodies within religious spaces necessarily leads us to the question of gender and its representation on the stage. The relations of power that

are ever present in a guild performance have increasingly been studied in relation to women, and how the subversion of female characters in the Play reflects both the low population of female guild members and the focus on Christ's male body as a figure of

absolution in the cycle. The pageants are composed of predominately male characters played by (presumably) male actors who belong to guilds that are predominately made up

of men.16 There has been a growing body of work on gender studies in the medieval period in the last thirty or so years and a few major critical approaches should be mentioned here. Ruth Evans' discussion of the Play deconstructs relations of power in medieval urban culture as a way of looking at the female in the performance of a cycle that takes as its focus the male body of Christ. Gender-specific power relations in the

Middle Ages were in favour of men since they could maintain economic control over women by being able to join a craft or trade guild, sometimes choosing to eventually become a member of office. Evans suggests that a threat to the social order began to emerge during the late medieval period when women were permitted to increase their

16 Twycross argues that the wording of the Ordo Paginarum ("bat he be redy in his pagent") suggests that the players were most likely male ("Forget" 41). Conversely, Katie Normington points out several instances of ambiguity in the surviving records of performances from other medieval plays (including the Chester Corpus Christi cycle) that could account for female performers (see Gender 39-44). participation in various socio-economic structures, and that as such it is not necessarily true that the Play subordinates the female characters. Rather, Evans argues that "female figures such as Mrs. Noah.. .have the potential to disrupt the discourses which construct women as either silent or sinful, and to suggest alternative historical understandings of female subjectivities" ("Body Politics" 124).

In Gender and Medieval Drama, Katie Normington expands Evans' reading of the Play by examining the iconography of Mary Magdalene and the Virgin in relation to the representation of women in the dramas and the social conditions they experienced.

Because the two most prominent and, arguably, recognizable female figures from the

Bible are Eve and the Virgin, the female characters in the Play are constantly struggling for a position between the glorified mother of Christ and the fallen woman. Normington discusses the constant juggling between these two roles as she also looks at the politics of cross-dressing in the performances and how this complicates the reception of female characters. In such a context, the actor is no longer portraying a figure that he can conceivably embody in a convincing way since the figure he is representing no longer exemplifies his physical characteristics.

Most recently, Christina Fitzgerald has explored the relationship between guild identity and masculinity, maintaining that the representation of masculinity in the Play is

"unstable, shifting, open to resignification, and therefore not innate or essential" (9).

Fitzgerald's reading of the Play asserts that the male body of Christ is a site of anxiety for viewers precisely because it is unstable and does not reflect a set of tangible characteristics that can be embodied by its male viewers. In this way, Fitzgerald suggests 17 that masculinity and guild culture become performative through the production of the

Play.

Claire Sponsler's work on identity politics in late medieval England sheds light on

some of the issues touched on by the studies of gender in the Play by suggesting that

identity is "the performance of the self through the medium of the socially interpreted body" {Drama and Resistance xvi). Sponsler examines the power structures within the

Play's social context - as the other scholars do - and how a resistance to power can result

in a refiguring of identity. The goal of Sponsler's study is to challenge the notion that medieval subjectivity is monolithic by looking at it as a heterogeneous one that embodies

several subjectivities simultaneously. This shift in thinking about the medieval subject

allows for the possibility that audience reception of the Play was multifaceted, and

articulates the need for approaching the text in new ways.

Heather Hill-Vasquez's discussion of the monastic reform that has come to

characterize the late medieval period articulates the emphasis on heterogeneity that

Sponsler is concerned with in her discussion of medieval subjectivity. Hill-Vasquez argues that since religious drama continued to function outside of a Catholic setting for most of the sixteenth century, we must consider the interesting results of the coterminous existence of Catholicism and Protestantism during the late medieval period. Hill-

Vasquez's exploration of the Play demonstrates how the Protestant use of a Catholic text eventually fell out of fashion because Protestantism depicts a masculine aesthetics of reception that designates the Catholic use of the texts as a "'feminine' form of worship"

(12). Even the two dominant types of Christianity that functioned in late-medieval 18

England became charged with a sexual identity, with the male subjectivity eventually taking control over the female and diffusing the need for liturgical practices that reflect the frivolous spending on iconography and the theatricality of practices like the Corpus

Christi festivities.

Before moving on to the scholarship on performance studies, I would like to pause for a moment to consider a final aspect of the Play that is important in a

consideration of its social context. The Play takes as its subject the religious history of

Christianity, tracing through the major Biblical episodes beginning with the Creation, the

Fall and the Flood, and then moving on to the Nativity, the Crucifixion and, finally,

Doomsday. This is not a history that is performed by the Church or the clergy; the clergy were forbidden to act on the stage during this period. This is, rather, a religious history

that is performed by a secular body and it is thus the guilds' version of "sacred history"

(Higgins 87) that is reflected in these texts.

What I mean to suggest here is not that the Play is invaluable as a drama meant to

celebrate a liturgical feast because it was performed by the laity. Rather, I mean to

emphasize that the influence of guild culture in late medieval England and the close ties that the Play maintained with the guilds for the duration of its performance history is part

of the larger pattern during this period of permitting active secular contact with religious practices. With the invention of movable type and the subsequent rise of the Anglican

Church in the mid-sixteenth century, religious documents - most importantly, the Bible - became increasingly available to the laity and allowed for an interaction with a faith based on more than just sermons and visual iconography. Although the Play's 19 performance history dates to a century before Caxton's first press arrived in England, the guilds' active involvement with dramatic activity that is based in religious history suggests a growth in the engagement with and eventual surpassing of Church authority by secular power. It is not just, then, the gender or guild politics that must be emphasized in the Play's social context, but rather the shifting power between the two most important governing bodies in medieval England: Church and State.

The Mechanics of Performance

Since its first modern reproduction for the Festival of Britain in 1951, scholars have sought to construct a performance of the Play that is true to its medieval roots by looking at how the guilds might have presented it on the streets of York. Comparatively, the documentary evidence that survives for the York cycle is far greater than any other medieval English drama but even so there is very little evidence that explains exactly how the wagons were designed, how the cycle route came to be designated as such, which direction the wagons faced during the performance, and, finally, how many pageants were produced each year. Drawings of the wagons have not survived (if, indeed, they were ever made in the first place) so it is difficult to even imagine how the staging of the Play would affect audience reception. These seemingly insignificant factors raise a number of important questions for scholars of the Play because it was, after all, meant to be performed by a troop of actors rather than read aloud by a minstrel or in the privacy of one's home. As such, I will look at some of the critical avenues of inquiry for the mechanics of staging the Play as a way of looking at how the relationship between the city and the performance becomes dependent on issues of space and site-specificity. 20

We know from documentary evidence and research done by Twycross that the cycle route usually consisted of twelve stations that were leased to various citizens in

York for the duration of the medieval performances. What has not been proven, however,

is whether every single pageant that was produced in a given year stopped at each station to perform. This has been the generally accepted perspective for some time and Twycross has timed such a production at around nineteen hours which means that a performance that began around 4:30am would not be complete until around midnight ("Forget" 142).

Asuncion Salvador-Rabaza suggests, however, that a different scheme could have taken place when she proposes that each pageant was performed once on one of the first eleven

stations and then again at Pavement, the last stop on the route - a proposition that takes

seventeen hours to run with only two hours of performance time for each actor. This meant that some of the pageants "would have been mimed out in a processional performance" (Salvador-Rabaza 187) on the route and that the lease holders would only

see these processional pageants and five complete performances from the cycle.

A performance in the fashion proposed by Salvador-Rabaza would allow the citizens to see the entire Play at Pavement, the most open space on the route, and could also be the reason why it became difficult for the city to lease that station in the sixteenth century (Twycross 18) - it was more of a public rather than a private performance space.

This also heightens the importance of which stations would be leased by which families

since the pageants that were meant to be performed at the stations were limited to less than a quarter of the cycle. Regardless of which of these propositions is correct, both critics seem to be in agreement that all of the pageants from the cycle were performed - if 21 the respective guild could afford to pay the fee - every year. As I have already shown, an entry in the City Chamberlain's Book from 1535 lists all but about a dozen of the pageants from the cycle whose guilds had paid a fee to perform their pageant so it is certainly possible that the Play in its entirety was produced every year.

The only surviving document that describes what a pageant wagon might have looked like is the Mercer's indenture dated 11 June 1433 though it does not lay out exactly how it was constructed nor is it accompanied by a drawing. We are told that a

"Pagent With iiij wheles [and] helle mouthe" and pieces of cloth for the back and sides of the wagon in addition to a series of "faces" or masks and other costumes were ordered

(Johnston and Rogerson 55). Beyond the four wheels, it is unclear if the wagon was enclosed on one or more sides (in the way a proscenium stage might look) or if the pieces of cloth were used to cover the wheels; it is also impossible to say whether this was the usual design of a pageant wagon. However, it is well known that the Mercers were one of the richest guilds in York during the medieval period, so the vast expense of these props would surely exceed the amount spent on the production by other guilds.

The topography of the performance space is especially interesting, considering that the pageants moved through the urban landscape rather than performing on a fixed- place stage. This brings us to Eileen White's study of York's topography and the cycle route, beginning first with her observation that if the city had wanted to have the Play performed at a static location a site such as Knavesmire, a grazing pasture open to freemen located outside the city, would have been optimal (51). Spaces such as Holy

Trinity Priory (at the first station) and the Minster would have been unavailable since 22 both of these locations were under the jurisdiction of liturgical power and the Play was

organized by the city. In any case, performing the pageants on wagons around the city would have been the best way to guarantee a large audience since throughout the day portions of the Play could be viewed in varying parts of the city. White notes that certain

areas of the city would have been difficult to manoeuvre or even inaccessible on pageant wagons which is perhaps one reason why the route has been laid out on certain streets.

One such location is Ouse Bridge, at the main entrance to city and the only way to get

from Micklegate Bar to the rest of the route, a very narrow bridge at just over 18ft wide that follows a steep slope towards the river, making it difficult for the wagons to stop at

each station (White 59). This suggests that the wagons would have either been outfitted with some type of braking system or that stopping blocks would have been used to ensure that the wagons did not roll during a performance.17 Another street in York, Shambles, was too narrow to allow the pageant wagons to pass through so CoUiergate had to be used to get the wagons to Pavement.

Needless to say, York's narrow streets would have made a difficult staging space

since audiences would have had to crowd around the wagons during the performances while still allowing for enough space for the actors and the wagons themselves.

Twycross' study of the station leases emphasizes that the stopping places along the route were on the left-hand side of the street which meant that the wagons did not have to be turned each time a pageant arrived at a station ("Places" 18-19). This observation of the wagons' alignment is an important feature of the performance since the pageants could be

17 White also points out that because the bridge had to be rebuilt in 1564-65 the Play was cancelled because of the interruption to the cycle route (59). 23 played facing the Minster and the Dean when performed in front of the station at the

Minster Gates (White 74). Higgins also points out that a performance to the left-hand side meant that the pageants were "presented not inward, toward the heart of the artisanal city, but outward, toward the rival franchises" (87, emphasis in original) which would show the competitors in the surrounding areas how the York guilds constituted themselves as

freemen (Higgins 87). White has also suggested the possibility of end-on staging, in which the audience would stand in the area in front of the wagon to see the performance,

a suggestion that allows for a larger audience than the left-hand side theory. Either of

these options are certainly possible and have been tested in modern reproductions of the

Play by Alexandra Johnston, who notes that the most successful wagon designs were, regardless of which direction they faced, open on all sides ("York Cycle 1998" 200) like the wagons used by The Crucifixion and The Massacre of the Innocents in the most recent production in York.18 Johnston also suggests that the pageant wagons could have been designed based on the time of day at which the pageant would have been performed

since pageants at the end of the cycle would have had to consider how much light was available ("York Cycle 1998" 201). A wagon that was enclosed on two or three sides and that was used to perform a pageant close to the end of the cycle, while the sun was

setting, means that the actors would be less visible to the audience than on a wagon that was open on all sides.

The argument for platea staging has been made by many scholars and when considering the size of York's streets and the possible size of the pageant wagons it would be difficult to envision a performance of the Play that only used the wagon as a

18 See Appendix for images of these performances. 24 performance space. For instance, Higgins argues convincingly thatplatea staging for the

Last Judgement would have been essential because of the large number of characters and the positional symbolism that would have been possible at certain sites such as Pavement

(90).19 The visual significance of constructing images in a conscious hierarchy of left and right was very common in medieval images and architecture and, in her study of gender and medieval churches, Corine Schleif notes that women were often associated with the left-hand side of the nave of a church for one important reason: at his crucifixion, Christ is placed at the centre between two thieves (Luke 23: 32-43); the thief who joins Christ in

Paradise was believed to be on his right, though there is no biblical evidence to suggest that this was the case, and thus followed Christ in the visual hierarchy of holiness.

Because of this association with placement, Schleif argues, women - considered to be the downfall of humanity because of the Fall - were often expected to occupy the left-hand side of the nave in a church. This visual hierarchy expanded to images of undesirable landscapes on the left-hand side of an image and Higgins suggests that this dichotomy between left and right would have been especially powerful in a staging of the Last

Judgement at Pavement since hell could have been positioned at stage left - where the

Shambles is - and paradise at stage right, at the site of All Saints Pavement (91).

The importance of positioning in the Play has been studied by Pamela King, who discusses the visual arrangement of the characters in the Butchers' Death of Christ as a way of determining the symbolic placement of Christ in the performance in relation to the other characters:

19 Ralph Blasting also argues for the use of the platea in The Flood, Abraham and Isaac, The Nativity, The Entry into Jerusalem, The Crucifixion and other pageants in "The Pageant Wagon as Iconic Site in the York Cycle". 25

When the morally compromised characters Pilate, Annas, and Caiaphas

are speaking, the verbal field of attention has to compete with the visual

because Christ is central and certainly more highly situated in the visual

plane of the street audience than the speakers. In all visual fields we know

that the eye is naturally drawn toward points of central balance, of focus,

generally centre-stage. Action which takes place at the very edges of the

stage, as far as is possible from the centre, exerts a competing attraction

precisely because it is far enough away from the centre to assert

independence, and lies outside the peripheral visual ambit of anyone

focused on stage-centre. ("Seeing" 159)

King's study assumes that Christ was raised high above the other characters, perhaps on a

pageant wagon similar to the one used in the most recent production in York20, with the

other characters in the peripheries in order to focus the audience's attention toward

Christ's suffering. The other characters are likely on theplatea, since the wagon would

have had to have some sort of foldable stage if Christ and both of the thieves were on the

wagon, perhaps at the foot of the central cross. Among the other infinite possibilities for

staging this pageant, there is also a chance that the left versus right dichotomy was

employed. If the Death of Christ was staged with this scheme in mind, then there is the possibility that the entire action of the pageant could have been performed on the wagon with Christ occupying the right-hand side and Pilate, Annas and Caiphas on the left,

signalling their place in the visual hierarchy. The thieves would have to be relocated to the platea on either side or even behind the wagon, but the strategic use of the platea is

20 See Appendix for images of this wagon. without a doubt an important feature of the visual symbolism that could be harnessed for the performance.

Peter Holding also posits that some of the pageants could have been performed without a wagon to preserve continuity and have the performance move faster since time to set up the stage was not required. Christ Led up to Calvary is the most obvious choice since the figure of Christ could remain on the ground and the other characters could surround him, with the audience on one or both sides of the street leaving an aisle for the actors' movement to the next station (Holding 56). This is certainly a feasible possibility

- there is no evidence to suggest otherwise - and another instance where this might have been an option is in the portion of the Masons' Herod and the Goldsmiths' Magi where both guilds came together to create a scene (see Stevens, Four 39-41; and Beadle, 2009

107). The portion of the pageant that was shared by both guilds could have been presented on the street while the Masons' wagon was moved forward to make room for the Goldsmiths. Holding also suggests that some of the guilds might have used live animals in their pageants - most likely in the platea space - since the Ordo Paginarum lists an ox and an ass for The Nativity (Holding 54-55).

Lastly, I should note here King's observation about the relationship between the topographical layout of the route and the auditory aspects of the performance in her study of the Play. Because the Play was intended to be performed and not, as I mentioned previously, read, it is important for scholars to continually reproduce the pageants in order to gain the benefit of interacting with the performance space so as to discern how

21 The Ordo Paginarum also lists animals in The Flood and The Entry into Jerusalem (see Johnston and Rogerson 702-711). 27 that space might affect one's reception of the production. The positions of the stopping places on the cycle route in relation to one another is one key element of this reproduction and King observes that this close positioning allows for an interesting occurrence in which "sound inevitably 'leaks' from one station to another so that the audience watching The Flight into Egypt can hear Herod raging at the next station"

("Seeing" 157).

The close proximity of the different stations is perhaps one of the factors that led lease-holders to choose certain stations to view the performances but might also be interesting in light of performing in an outdoor urban context. With the development of indoor theatres and cinemas we have become accustomed to the notion of viewing a play or a film in the dark, without the visual distractions that arise when watching a drama like the Play in an urban setting. It is, of course, much easier to suspend one's disbelief of the action on stage if fewer distractions in our direct environment are present, but in the case of the Play it would be naive to suggest that there would have been very few visual or auditory distractions, as King has shown. Perhaps, however, we can see the auditory distractions as anachronistic in a sense since they would have either reminded the audience of the pageants that had just passed or warned of what is to come. In a consideration of the mechanics of the Play's performance, I would argue that these distractions - visual and auditory - are precisely what warrant a study of the architectural spaces that they occupied and the relationship that these spaces had with a medieval audience's reception of the Play. 28

Defining Place

In his introduction to human geography, Tim Cresswell describes three different

approaches to the study of places that have recurred in scholarship about how we interact

with our environment. The first is the descriptive approach, which is characterised by a

study of the physical features of a place and how these details differ from one place to

another. One might study how the altitude, landscape or even the style of architecture used to construct the infrastructure in a particular site differs from another. The second is

the social constructionist method, which takes the descriptive approach a step further by

looking at how these particularities might be considered "instances of more general underlying social processes" (Cresswell, Place 51) such as how the style of architecture

at a place might reflect a certain social demographic. Lastly, the phenomenological

approach "seeks to define the essence of human existence as one that is necessarily and

importantly 'in-place'" (Cresswell, Place 51), emphasizing the importance of places in

our daily practices.

As Cresswell argues, these three methods are meant to complement each other

and, indeed, it would be unfair to suggest that one of these approaches is more important than the other. I will be employing the descriptive method in a later section to examine two of the medieval stopping places from the Play and will be looking at how these sites

are important because of their social function in the daily practices of medieval York. I will be discussing the importance of the relationship between place and memory in light

of the performance, focusing on how a performance of the Play at these locations triggers memories of York's daily practices. In other words, the Play is site-specific since the locations along the cycle route trigger particular memories of York that are brought out in the performance and thus enrich the audiences' reception of the Play (if the performance space changed, then so, too, would the meaning). I am not concerned here with employing the phenomenological approach in relation to the Play, but I would like to argue that the centrality of places in human interactions that this approach emphasizes is precisely what warrants a study of the Play as a performance that is influenced by its architectural surroundings.

In the following section, I will outline some of the scholarship that takes as its focus the relationship between place and memory, beginning with Michel de Certeau's discussion of how places are created. I will then take up the work of Paul Connerton, who lays out the relationship between place and memory, and then close with Pierre Nora's study of lieux de memoire. Lastly, I will discuss some of the implications that this approach has for a study of the Play.

Placeness and the Memory Process

Exact localization is one of the first elements of reality. The speaking or

acting characters are not the only ones who engrave on the minds of the

spectators a faithful representation of the facts. The place where this or

that catastrophe took place becomes a terrible and inseparable witness

thereof; and the absence of silent characters of this sort would make the

greatest scenes of history incomplete in the drama. Would the poet dare to

murder Rizzio elsewhere than in Mary Stuart's chamber? to stab Henri IV

elsewhere than in Rue de la Ferronerie, all blocked with drays and carriages? to burn Jeanne d Arc elsewhere than in the Vieux-Marche? to

despatch the Due de Guise elsewhere than in that chateau of Blois where

his ambition roused a popular assemblage to frenzy? to behead Charles I

and Louis XVI elsewhere than in those ill-omened localities whence

Whitehall or the Tuileries may be seen, as if their scaffolds were

appurtenances of their palaces? (Hugo 377-378)

Victor Hugo's description of pivotal moments in history and how places become witnesses to such events is precisely what attracts us to the set of a performance. We want to have a place, a tangible location, at which we can situate the events on stage, even if the locality is a fictional construction in a theatre. The setting also functions as a kind of mnemonic device, "placing" the characters within a certain spatial aesthetics, so that the audience can connect the characters and the events with their environments. This association of events with places is true of sites within and outside of the theatre for one simple, and yet significant, reason: memory is dependent on topography. We can recall events or activities more easily if we can align them with an architectural space, and vice- versa; the places can store an event that can be retrieved by others who visit the site. In the case of the York Corpus Christi Play, the playing stations are the sites where such pivotal moments in history are located: the city space is where the history of a Christian past begins and where Doomsday will take place in the Christian future.

Before exploring de Certeau's discussion of place I must first explain how some of the terminology that I will be using has been traditionally employed by the scholars I will be citing. Michel de Certeau posits that "haunted places are the only ones people can 31 live in" (108) because it is through experience - regardless of whether that experience belongs to the current occupant or one of his predecessors - that space is transformed into place. We cannot exist, according to de Certeau, in spaces because they are both void of meaning and are transformed into places when occupied or experienced by others. It is through memory that place is constructed - that is, through the memory of experience - and thus place functions as a "profound centre.. .of human existence" (Cresswell, Place

23). I will thus be using "place" to denote a locale that has been experienced and has meaning for its occupants while "space" will indicate an area that is devoid of meaning.

The terms "architectural space" and "spatial aesthetics" will refer to the material area that is occupied by an audience or performance space, and neither implies that the site or location is void of meaning.

Similarly, Cresswell posits that one important aspect of how we perceive place and how it is constructed is through the "hauntings of past inhabitation" {Place 2). These hauntings are the physical markers perceived by the current occupant - such as a chip in the paint or the odorous remnants of a broken perfume bottle - that denote the place's connection with a previous occupant and his or her possessions and experiences. Each of these physical markers, according to Cresswell, shapes the place and affects our experience of it. In turn, the physical markers and other spiritual hauntings we leave behind relay our own experience of that place to the next occupant. Incidentally, de

Certeau argues that even though it is through the experience of spaces that city streets and buildings are constructed, the tangible infrastructure is the only visible evidence of the creation of a place: "surveys of routes miss what was: the act itself of passing by...[and] 32 the trace left behind is substituted for the practice" (de Certeau 97). The raising of buildings and the paving of streets thus become symbolic of the practice of experience, of seeing a space and transforming it into a meaningful location.

This process of transforming a space into a place was much slower during the medieval period than it is today. Today, it is possible to begin and complete the construction of a high-rise building in less than one year, provided that the materials and labour have been ordered and organized efficiently, and that there are no major issues with the structural design. During the medieval period, however, the building of the city walls or a cathedral could take several decades or even centuries, as was the case with

York Minster, begun during the last two decades of the eleventh century and re-dedicated when it was completed in 1472. Connerton emphasizes that this slow course of construction meant that "the construction of the city walls and the cathedral were the main events in the city's history for generations.. .just as a house is part of the biography of a family, so a great civic building project was part of the collective biography of the inhabitants of a city" (Modernity 30). The length of the building process of a project of this magnitude attests to its handmade nature and these places became sites of workmanship and labour, too, since countless masons, sculptors and other artisans were a major part of the construction. For Connerton, this is important since "in a handmade world the term 'building' would apply as much to the memory of the continuing transitive activity of construction as to that of the eventual product'" {Modernity 31, emphasis in original). In some sense, then, the large scale buildings constructed in the medieval and early modern period could function for a few decades as loci of 33 workmanship for citizens and visitors but, de Certeau argues, any form of infrastructure - even if its process of construction remains within the memory of the citizens - subverts the practice of walking in favour of a material object.

Connerton notes that there are two important facets of memory that are important in a consideration of places: first, that memory "depends essentially upon a stable system of places", and second, that "remembering relates implicitly to the human body and that acts of memory are envisaged as taking place on a human scale" (Modernity 5). That places must be stable suggests that their physical features must to some extent remain unchanged over a period of time, owing to the notion that if a certain topography appears continuous over decades or even centuries then it will perhaps be remembered in the same spatial manner across time (since memory is eye-dependent).22 For Connerton, this consistency in the spatial aesthetics of a place over time is important to memory since

"what is visible is also stable" (Modernity 117); the act of walking, then, is unstable.

Memory also relies on a "scale of emplacement" (Connerton, Modernity 99), with an emphasis on the relation of scale between pedestrians and the surrounding infrastructure. The features of a Gothic cathedral within a cathedral city exploit this sense of scale, according to Philip Sheldrake, for the purpose of depicting "the limitless quantities of an infinite God through the soaring verticality of arches and vaults which

[are].. .a deliberate antithesis to human scale" (52). Connerton discusses how the urban space in a medieval community was and in many cases still is easily accessible to pedestrians and thus allows for a sense of "spatial memorability" (Modernity 101). He

22 This is a recurring statement in studies of memory and is mentioned, for example, in Carruthers (31) and Nora (17). contends that the perimeter of these sites - in some cases articulated by an outer wall -

and the central focal point - the Gothic cathedral - contributes to the memorability of the urban layout because the clearly marked perimeter both prevents outsiders from entering

and encloses its inhabitants within while the sheer size of the cathedral makes it visible

from any part of the walled city:

Enclosed within their clearly demarcated perimeter, this orientation of the

city towards one single building created an effect of spatial cohesion, and

hence of memorability, which remained in force whether the cathedral was

viewed from a distance or whether it was viewed from close up, and the

sense of cohesion persisted from every vantage point. (Connerton,

Modernity 101)

By looming above every other building in the urban landscape the grand architecture of

the cathedral would represent the unlimited power of an omnipotent God and thus becomes a physical reminder - an aid to memory - of the Church's doctrine. Also, much

of the infrastructure in the surrounding area of a cathedral during the medieval and early modern period did not exceed two stories, allowing the cathedral to loom high above its

architectural environment.

In the case of medieval York, a map of the modern city can be superimposed on

one from the Middle Ages with very little alterations to the cycle route appearing on the map aside from the replacement of buildings or the narrowing of some streets. The city is

still very much pedestrian-friendly, allowing one to walk from one corner of the walled

city to the other in half an hour and the spatial memorability of the urban design allows 35 one to do so without the danger of getting lost since the Minster remains visible from much of the surroundings and the majority of the city walls remain intact.

This relationship between memory and places can also be used to store events and information in one's memory, by using an imagined architectural space to store data. The method of ordering objects within mental architectural loci to allow for an efficient retrieval system was proposed as early as Cicero and operates on the premise that the things that must be remembered can be easily recalled if they are stored systematically.

Using this system, one can move through the locus to retrieve the information that is required, revisiting certain rooms or landscapes that are filled with facts, objects, dates, and other data.

Pierre Nora's study of place and memory leads us to a way of labelling places that depend on memory for their significance but that are no longer real environments of memory: lieux de memoire, or sites of memory. These sites recall experiences or events since "it is the exclusion of the event that defines the lieu de memoire" (Nora 22); nobody who is currently alive can recall seeing a medieval production of the York Play but the place memory of the sites along the cycle route can remember the uses of the sites in the

Middle Ages. As a twenty-first century audience, we rely on our cultural memories to recall medieval events, such as the use of Shambles as the street of butchers in medieval

York, and the places that are associated with these cultural memories are the lieux de memoire.

23 Mary Carruthers discusses the use of architectural loci and other influences on memory practices in the medieval period in The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990. See especially 25-26 and 38-39. 36

The places along the route are significant because of their recollection of the Play and many are also important sites for the citizens and audiences of the performance, such as a number of churches, like York Minster, and a few important civic locations including the Common Hall (or Guildhall), and Pavement. These places and others on the route played important roles in York's everyday practices: York Minster is the city's cathedral and the seat of the archbishop but was ruled by liturgical rather than secular authority; the

Common Hall was the centre of the civic government and in the mercantile and artisanal liberty of the city, and was also one of the locations where trade and craft guilds who did not have a guild hall could meet; and Pavement was the market place and site where civic proclamations and public hangings took place. These locations and others functioned as mnemonic devices for audiences of the pageants since they would remind the viewers of day-to-day practices within the city: York Minster was an oversized monument to

Christianity where religious services were conducted and was the centre of the Church's power in York; merchants sold goods and artisans manufactured their products on these streets; and grain and food were purchased at the same location where criminals were hung. When read in this way, the locations on the cycle route can easily become important in the context of the Play because certain pageants could resonate with particular sites such as, for instance, the Last Judgement and Pavement.

Sarah Beckwith employs Nora's terminology in her study of the Play when she discusses the cycle route, but she problematizes the importance of the route in the performance when she suggests that the body of the actor, and not the performance space, is the lieu de memoire because "that the acting area had no inherent symbolic 37 significance" (Beckwith 31). In Beckwith's reading, the actor's body is a site of memory because it recalls the body of Christ or the other characters, and the daily practices and memories of the performance space is subverted. Although her study of the Play is convincing, Beckwith does not leave room for a secondary reading of the sites along the cycle route as lieux de memoire after the performance act itself: even if the body of the actor - mostly Christ - is the lieu de memoire during the performance, it is, as Nora points out, the exclusion of the event that makes the location a site of memory. So for the

Play, the exclusion of York's daily practices - the closure of shops and the market during the Corpus Christi festivities - is what allows the sites along the route to function as lieux de memoire during the performance.

Before discussing how a site's memory can be recalled, I would like to point out two readings of the Play by medieval scholars that examine the notion of topography and place studies in their reading of the Play. Several scholars note that a performance of the

Play on York's streets involves the act of superimposing a biblical Jerusalem atop a medieval locale so as to equate York with the importance of its biblical counterpart.24

King argues that various inflections - having women played by men, and the anachronistic practice of having Jews played by Christians, to name a few - are what allows York to be equated with Jerusalem ("Seeing" 161). Stevens' study provides a unique perspective of the performance, suggesting that the movement through York during the Play mimics a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, simulating the popular practice of travel to the Holy City during medieval and later periods {Four 65-67). This perspective

24 See Beckwith (26), Evans ("Signs" 32), King ("Seeing" 61-64), and Stevens (Four 57) for some examples. 38

seems to suggest that those who could not afford to travel as far as Jerusalem could

engage with the Play as a substitute, engaging with the performance as a rite of worship

synonymous with a liturgical mass. Stevens also argues that York's topography and the

Play's movement through the cycle route resembles, like the overall layout of the Play

itself, a progression from good to bad: from Holy Trinity Priory to Pavement, where

public punishments were carried out, and the Creation to the Last Judgement.

Ruth Evans' study of the Play begins with de Certeau's distinction between the

tour and the map, the two different ways of describing a location: place "oscillates

between the terms of an alternative: either seeing (the knowledge of an order of places) or going (spatializing actions)" (de Certeau 119). The first description of place is analogous

to one based on a map, in which the occupant has a top-down view of the architectural

space he inhabits, while the second description is based on a tour - that which is

dependent upon the movement and thus the experience of the subject through the place.

In this second method of describing a site the subject knowingly privileges operation

over observation and limits his or her vision to only one particular section of a place,

ignoring its overall composition or construction. In Evans' reading of the Play, she

focuses on the language in the Fall of Lucifer and how it describes a tour and not a map because it "marks out a series of spatializing actions that not only conjure up places but

also make available their history, by not effacing - as maps do - the operations that brought those places into being" ("Signs" 32). This reading of the Play's, language

suggests that its performance along the cycle route is meant to function as a kind of tour 39 through the city, privileging its movement through rather than the architectural aesthetics of York.

Although a reading of the Play as a site-specific text articulates the significance of the places along the cycle route as sites of memory, how is it that one retrieves these memories? In her study of site-specific productions, Gay McAuley asserts that "in order for such memories to be triggered, some kind of performance act is also needed"

("Remembering" 151). The Play is, in every sense of the word, a performance but it is not necessarily a theatre production that is required to surface memories; the act walking, of feeling, and of seeing - all performance acts - can conjure up memories that belong to the sites. These can be our own memories of our previous encounters with a place, such as a school we revisit after graduating years before, or memories that correspond to historical events that are recalled by a name and thus designate a practice, such as

"hospital" or "church." Even if one does not know the history of a site, our previous experiences with other places and the simple recognition of a name is enough to allow the memory process to begin, even if the memories that surface are not true or correct, but rather imagined.

The editors of Performance and the City ask two questions about how citizens of an urban space negotiate their surrounding environment: "what roles do theatre and performance play in the development, negotiation, and renewal of urban space? and how does our interaction with a performance event shape our individual and collective interactions with the city at large?" (Hopkins 2). In response to these questions I would suggest that theatre and performance can articulate the place memory of a site, negotiating between past and present, and allow new memories or events to superimpose themselves on the performance space. Our interaction with a performance event allows us to, integrate our memories of a performance with a site and potentially re-impose this memory on another locale that reminds us of the place used in the performance event; collectively, the performance has the potential to be recalled years after it has been performed, and reflects the collective practices of experiencing places as a way of renewing the urban environment.

In applying the term 'site-specific' to the Play, I am following McAuley's definition that a site-specific production is a work that "emerges from a particular place and engages with the history and politics of that place, and with the resonance of these in the present" ("Site-specific" 32). I have already shown how the larger historical and cultural context of medieval York contributed to the production and performance of its

Play, including that the cycle route was employed for several purposes besides the performance itself. Within its medieval context, the biblical past of the Play also resonates with York's medieval present, highlighting both the guilds' various crafts and trades while also triggering memories of the everyday uses of sites along the cycle route.

I am not suggesting, however, that the Play cannot be relocated to other sites, as has been done in several modern reproductions,26 but rather that specific locations along the original route enrich the performance by conjuring up a site's place memory.

25 See also "Mapping the Terrain: A Survey of Site-specific Performance in Britain", where Fiona Wilkie has constructed a scale that lays out a variety of terms that can be applied to performances that are concerned with issues of place (150). 26 For instance the July 2010 production that employed five sites that were not on the cycle route. 41

In "Can the City Speak? Site-specific Art After Postructuralism," Laura Levin contends that "to be specific to a site is thus to demonstrate a sense of responsibility toward it and to perceive all of its inhabitants as potential collaborators" (244), articulating the audience's responsibility in the act of invoking the place memory; the inhabitants also include the architectural surroundings, the buildings and infrastructure that contribute their own place memories to the performance. Though Levin's engagement with the notion of place is in relation to a contemporary context, her argument can be expanded to include historical theatre. Levin argues that an audience's disorientation during a production - shifting attention between the performance, its locale and distractions of the urban surroundings - is what allows the city to speak, because this disorientation articulates the importance of the site for the text since the site cannot be dislocated from the performance (252). This is true of the medieval productions of the

Play, where one could be distracted by the chatter of a nearby audience member, the ringing of church bells or the clattering of hoofs from a horse in a nearby street; distractions in modern reproductions could include ones similar to the medieval performances, with the addition of the roar of a motorcycle or a ringing mobile phone to the list of possible disruptions. The Play is precisely the type of performance that promotes the importance of the site that arises from sensory disorientation, and is located in a setting that engages with place memories that are conjured by the pageants as they appear before the audience.

In my own study of the Play, I have examined two of the medieval performance sites and their relationship with two of the pageants: Micklegate Bar with the Skinners' 42

Entry into Jerusalem, and Pavement with the Mercers' Last Judgement. In the following

section I will explore the particularities of each location through its physical

characteristics and uses in York's medieval context, employing Angelo Raine's Medieval

York: A Topographical Survey Based on Original Sources. This will be followed by an

examination of the pageant text and an explanation of how each pageant is enriched by

the place memory at the site, focusing on the medieval rather than the twenty-first

century uses of the each locale. Following this exploration of the medieval performances,

by way of conclusion I will examine some of the important modern revivals of the Play,

focusing on the most recent wagon production in York in July 2010. In particular, I will

explore how the relocation of the performance to sites that are not on the original

medieval cycle route can still provide an interesting reading for audiences of the Play,

focusing on the modern revivals as performance laboratories for how the medieval

productions might have been presented.

271 have been unable to find a recent publication that traces through York's medieval topography as thoroughly as Raine's, though journals such as Yorkshire Archaeological Journal (published by Yorkshire Archaeological and Topographical Association) and Yorkshire History Quarterly continue to publish articles about archaeological findings throughout the city. These articles of findings have not, however, been compiled in a database that organizes the material geographically, making it difficult to find material that pertains to specific sites. 43

Locating the Drama

Micklegate Bar and the Skinners' Entry into Jerusalem

Located in the south-west area of the city walls, Micklegate Bar was the main

entrance to medieval York and began as a Norman archway that was eventually

reconstructed in stone during the fourteenth century (Raine 26). Above the archway -

which once contained a portcullis and barbican to protect the city from invaders - is a

three-storied structure used by the watchman and currently housing the Micklegate Bar

Museum. Raine notes that after the structure above the archway was completed, the rent

at Micklegate was higher than the other bars in the city (27). The size of the wall and the

strength of the portcullis were two major reasons why an invasion from the south-west

would be unadvisable, while the positioning of Micklegate in reference to the remainder

of the medieval city also made it an undesirable point of attack: if the bar was breached,

the invaders would still have to brave the Ouse or make it across the bridge in order to get

to the main part of York. During the Roman period, the Micklegate area of York was

composed of the civilian city, though the earliest occurrence of the name is "Myglagata"

from the late twelfth century (Raine 226).

One major location in this section of the city is Toft Green, often referred to as

"Pageant Green," where the pageant wagons assembled before the Play moved through

the city streets. In 1307, this was the last section of open space within York's walls and was used for a variety of purposes:

it was in that place and nowhere else in the city that the musters of armed

men for the defence of York were held; it was a public marketplace for citizens and non-citizens; it was the ground on which judicial duels were

fought in pleas of felons, homicides, etc., and it was the only place where

military machines could be erected. Cattle-markets were held at Toft

Green and ... a horse-market. (Raine 243)

Toft Green was also the location of Ratton Rawe and Pageant House, where the pageant

wagons and other props were stored during the year. Records from the Ouse

Bridgemaster's Rolls show that rent was paid for the storage of wagons by the Skinners,

Merchants, Wrights, Tapiters, Cordwainers, Tanners and Bakers in 1428 and 1565,

suggesting that these guilds chose to employ wagons in their performances if only a few

times during the Play's medieval history (Johnston and Rogerson 730 and 344,

respectively). Eileen White points out that if the civic authorities had wanted to have the

Play produced in an open space and not in the city streets, Toft Green would have been

an optimal location but there is no surviving evidence that suggests such an endeavour

was ever considered (White 51). Toft Green also contained a dung heap in the sixteenth

century, which might suggest that this portion of the city was an undesirable place to live

during this period and perhaps implies that citizens would have wished to view the pageants at another location.

The Benedictine Priory of Holy Trinity, located just inside the city walls on the

east side of Micklegate, was the first stopping place for the pageants and although the

conventual buildings have not survived, a portion of the nave from the church has been

integrated with the present Holy Trinity Church (Raine 227). In 1551 the central tower of the Priory Church collapsed as a result of high winds and the building was slowly 45 demolished when the parishioners began to sell the stones for use at other sites - the

Transitional doorway in Ingram Hospital in Bootham came from this location (Raine

229). A century before, when the tower of St. Nicholas' Church nearby was deemed unsafe and had to be rebuilt in 1453, it was moved to Holy Trinity and remains at the north wall of the present building (Raine 230). The church of St. Mary's Bishophill

Senior also suffered major structural damage when the stone tower was struck during a thunderstorm in 1378 and was destroyed only to be rebuilt from brick in 1659 (Raine

234).

The history of the buildings near Holy Trinity reflects what appears to be a common practice in York and, indeed, other medieval cities, where stone was scarce and constantly relocated from one building to another to reinforce the city's infrastructure. As a result, much of what survives in these cities today is a series of buildings that are constructed from a hodgepodge of materials and artistic styles that makes it difficult to locate a particular building within a certain time-period. Instead, many of these buildings were constantly changing structurally and visually depending on the economic situation of the parish, faulty architectural design or forces of nature. What is certain, however, is that the building process continued in the centuries after the infrastructure would be deemed complete, articulating Connerton's suggestion that the term "building" would refer to both the structure itself as well as the activity of construction {Modernity 31). The multiplicity of each building's history - relocating its materials from one area of York to another - is also reminiscent of the various place memories that are conjured up by the performance of the Entry into Jerusalem at the first location on the cycle route. 46

Although much of the infrastructure in York has undergone countless architectural alterations, the urban outline and major streets remain fairly close in design and location to those in the medieval period. Micklegate Bar still stands in the modern city, though the barbican and portcullis have not survived, and the original pageant route remains in its place except for alterations to its width over the last eight centuries. When

Pamela King argues that we must, as scholars of a dramatic text, experiment with the performance as it would have taken place in the medieval city, we can immediately see the effects of such an experiment: Micklegate Bar is visible from the first station which, given its importance as a major entrance to the city, requires further interrogation.

As I have previously noted, a major portion of the cycle route was the course used by other liturgical and civic processions: the Corpus Christi Procession - when the host was carried through the city - came through Micklegate, though rather than turning right at the Minster it went left towards St. Leonard's Hospital and Bootham Bar; the entrance of Henry VII to York in 1486 also began here, ending at the Minster. Although in the case of the procession of the Host the participants would already be within the city walls and thus did not have to gain entry through Micklegate, there is still a question of permission and authority since the liturgical procession would be moving through a portion of the city controlled by civic power. The complex boundaries of power between parishes and the civic authorities would be at play as the ecclesiastical procession moved through the city while the secular space became sacred for the duration of the practice.

Higgins discusses Henry VII's entry into York when she describes that "the city, not the king, permitted entry" (77) since the king was given a key to the city upon reaching the gate which allowed, rather than invited, his entrance. The key was given to the king by

York's legendary founder, Ebraucus, who greeted the royal procession at the city gate.1

Henry's entry into York was especially symbolic for its citizens since his accession to the throne came as a result of Richard Ill's defeat, a member of the House of York.

In light of the Skinners' Entry into Jerusalem, Henry VII's entry into York in

some ways mimics the pageant: like Jesus' reception in Jerusalem, the king is greeted by

York's citizens and, like the king, Christ is also a ruler ("Jesus, of Jewes kyng" (Beadle,

2009 80)). The document that outlines the king's progress through York states that

several civic figures, including the mayor, sheriff, and several aldermen of the city

greeted the procession, as well as important ecclesiastical figures including the abbot of

St. Mary's Abbey (Johnston and Rogerson 146-47). This is reminiscent of the Burgesses

(chief citizens) from the pageant, who greet Jesus along with the other citizens as he

enters Jerusalem, like the "merveolous great nombr of men women And Childern on

foote... [who] criden king henry king henry" as the king entered York (Johnston and

Rogerson 147). In this way, the spectators of Henry's entry would associate the royal procession with the entry of Christ into Jerusalem, aligning the former's power with the latter's status as the son of God, and reinforcing the king's claim to the throne. With

Micklegate Bar hovering in the background of both performances, York's city gate becomes the gate of the Holy City, and they are superimposed on one another for the duration of the pageant and the royal procession.

1 A complete description of Henry VII's entry into York has been represented in the REED volume (Johnston and Rogerson 146-152). The pageant itself is at the centre of the Play, number twenty-five in a list of 50 pageants that appear to have been performed at one time or another for the period of the medieval productions, and is the final pageant before the events that lead to the Passion are acted out. Christ and his disciples are just outside Jerusalem when he tells Peter and

Philip that they must seek out "an asse.../ With hir foole" (20-22) so that he may use it to ride into the city. When Peter and Philip untie the ass, they are met by the Janitor (a civic official) who asks what they intend to do with it (63-65). They reply that Jesus will be using the ass to ride into the city, so the Janitor allows them to take the animal and proceeds to spread the news of Jesus' arrival to the other citizens (80-103). Eight

Burgesses (or chief citizens of the city) then appear on the scene and the Janitor tells them of Christ's entry into the city (120-26); the Burgesses recall news of Christ's miracles just before the procession begins, and decide to greet him at the city gate (126-

75). During the entry into Jerusalem, Christ heals Cesus - a blind man - and Claudus - a cripple - before the chief tax-collector, Zacheus, appears in the crowd to ask for absolution for cheating the citizens (349-50; 376-77; and 446, respectively). After

Zacheus is forgiven, the resounding "Hayll" (488) is repeated several times by the

Burgesses as Christ passes through the crowd.

Unlike with Henry VII's entry into York and the required acquisition of a key to the city before entering, there is no question that Christ's foreignness would impede his entry into Jerusalem. Given that the pageant varies so much from the original narrative, it is surprising that Christ's character does not have to gain permission from a magistrate or the mayor in order to enter the city. Rather, he sends Peter and Philip in advance to get the ass and warn the citizens, while he waits for them to return. Both Christ and the king are foreigners - the former a Nazarene and the latter a Lancastrian of Welsh decent - but

Christ can enter or leave Jerusalem as he chooses (until, of course, he is captured by the authorities) while Henry must receive the key to the city before entering York even though he is the king. As the son of God, Christ does not have to gain permission in order to enter the city, while the king - though he is the ruler of the country - must gain the permission of the civic authorities before processing through York. It would be interesting to know if, following his exit from York, the king was required to return the key to the city or whether his first formal entry resulted in an open invitation of return.

I turn for a moment to some of the possibilities for staging the Entry based on the evidence that survives in the REED documents and the text itself. We know that the

Skinners paid to have their pageant wagon stored at Pageant House in Toft Green at least twice (1428 and 1565) which suggests that, even if only for a few performances, there was a wagon associated with the pageant. Surely the Skinners would have tried different staging techniques for the duration of the pageant's nearly two-hundred years of history, not the least of which would be the inclusion or exclusion of a wagon. Given that the first station was situated nearby Toft Green, the action between Peter, Philip and the Janitor could take place on the street with a donkey tied to west side of the street, near where the cattle market took place during the week, and which, based on the left-hand side theory or the use of end-on staging,2 would be visible to the audience. In the Ordo Paginarum the entry for the Skinners describes the inclusion of an ass for the performance, suggesting that a live animal was used (Johnston and Rogerson 706). Jesus could then

2 See Twycross, "Places" 20 for left-hand side staging and White 74 for end-on staging. 50 ride into the street using the ass - very slowly - with Micklegate Bar visible in the background, while the Pauper, Cesus and Zacheus could be situated near the crowd of spectators, in the direct path of Jesus' entry, to complete their lines. The Burgesses would be situated further down, reciting their lines and waving palm branches while the action moved to the next station. Interestingly enough, it is not until the very end of the pageant

- nearly two hundred lines after "Tunc cantanf ("then they sing" (where the procession begins); between 287 and 288) - that Jesus is greeted by the Burgesses with the anaphoric "Hayll" (489-543), which attests to the possibility that the audience could join in as the pageant passed through the crowd. In the years when a wagon was used, the action between the disciples and the Janitor could conversely take place on the wagon and, when the scene ended, could move through the crowd to the next station while the remaining action took place on the street. The wagon could also contain a model of a sycamore tree that could be used by Zacheus when he is speaking to Christ.3

Clifford Davidson suggests another method of staging the pageant, using the wagon as the main stage and depicting an image of the gates of Jerusalem with a sycamore tree (From Creation 89). Positioning the tree on the wagon is simple and in some ways essential, since the tree would have to support Zacheus as he greets Christ.

However, the addition of the gates of Jerusalem onto the wagon would be difficult since

Davidson also suggests that the gates would have to support the weight of several actors who were positioned there to greet Christ as he entered the city (From Creation 89). Not

3 The Ordo Paginarum mentions a sycamore tree in the Skinners' entry but it is unclear if this refers to a prop used by the players or if it is used to remind the reader who Zacheus is. The entry reads, in full: "Jesus on the ass with her colt, the twelve two apostles following Jesus, six rich men and six poor men, eight boys with palm branches singing Benedictus, etc and Zacheus climbing the sycamore tree" (Johnston and Rogerson 706). 51

only would such an addition to the wagon be very expensive, but such a contraption would have had to be of sufficient size to hold at least two or three actors, which would presumably mean that it was over six-feet high and at least that wide. If the platform of

the wagon itself was three feet from the ground, that would mean that the total height of

the wagon was at least nine feet, a height that would surely impede with any

infrastructure that cantilevered from the surrounding buildings as was often the case. This

version does not account for the positioning of Christ on the ass as he rides through the

street, which might take place in front of the wagon. Furthermore, Davidson's staging

would only allow for a performance that followed the left-hand side theory, cutting the

audience down to half of the possible viewers from an end-on stage. In a performance at

the first station, Micklegate Bar would remain in the background as the gates of

Jerusalem, rendering the addition of gates on the wagon unnecessary.

Asuncion Salvador-Rabaza and Martin Stevens have both argued that the

pageants were performed as tableau vivant, or moving tableaus on the city streets and

that, in the former's case, only performed once at the first eleven stations and then again

at Pavement, or, in the latter's case, only acted out fully at the last station. The Entry

could easily be adopted for such an endeavour given that a major portion of the action

takes place with Christ riding the ass. The pageant could have moved processionally,

with the Burgesses and the Janitor near the front of the procession, followed by the blind man, the cripple and Zacheus on the wagon (perhaps pulled by some of the Burgesses), with the disciples and Christ on the ass at the end. Some additional actors could move

ahead of the Burgesses to wave the palm branches, and the depiction of Christ on the ass 52 would allow the audience to easily recognize which pageant was passing through the

streets. Mechanically, the movement would not have been impossible though the varied

topography of the city would have made control of the wagon difficult at the best of

times, especially when moving through a narrow street like Ouse Bridge or approaching a

corner. However, the readings that Salvador-Rabaza and Stevens suggest lose too much

in the face of the rich topographical history that a production at the first station would

conjure, especially in light of the Entry pageant.

The Skinners could associate their craft with the pageant in a number of ways, not

the least of which could include the attire of the characters and the placement of a cloth

on the animal's back before Jesus climbs the ass. The Skinners

are the makers of furred garments, and they are particularly associated

with the making of civic ceremonial costumes.. .We can assume that the

actors playing the Aldermen [Burgesses] were splendidly bedecked for

their procession. It is also likely that, as in the Gospels, the Skinners

strewed the way for Jesus with furred gowns. (Stevens, Four 60)

The audience could thus see, in practice no less, the Skinners' craft through the performance.

It is unclear whether the Skinners' guildhall was near Micklegate, though guild

services were held just outside the northwest walls of the city, at St. Giles' Church - which did not survive the Reformation - near St. Mary's Abbey (Raine 269-270). Raine mentions a street called "Skinners' Lane" that is in St. Martin's parish in Coney Street

(between the sixth and eighth stations), but the exact location of the street is unknown 53

(Raine 154). Yet how can this particular site in the city be connected with the Skinners'

craft? The most obvious response is that the Skinners worked with furred garments and,

at Toft Green, a public marketplace and weekly cattle market would presumably provide

the Skinners with a local source for acquiring the furs necessary for creating apparel and

other goods. We know that the wool industry was one of the most successful businesses

in medieval Yorkshire (Gusick 70) and, since the Skinners employed various furs and

textiles in order to produce ceremonial garments (though they were not responsible for

caring for livestock), we can posit that their active role in garment manufacturing

contributed to the success of the wool industry.

The appearance of the ass in this pageant is significant when considering its

relationship to its surroundings at this station since in the text we are told that the ass is

"comen" (57) and thus could be used by any of the citizens. Toft Green was not a

common space but rather was owned by the king (Raine 243); however, on the Mount, just outside of Micklegate, were Knavesmire, Scarcroft and Hob Moor, the common

grazing pastures for York's citizens (Raine 303) , and this first station on the cycle route

is very near to these locations. Common land could be used by the citizens to graze cattle

and other animals, allowing those who could not afford to buy land the opportunity to

raise their own animals for sustenance. Even though grazing one's cattle on common

ground did not mean that the cattle was common, inserting a common animal into the pageant is important for two reasons: first, Christ would be free to use the ass for his

entry into the city, and second, Christ's use of a common animal for his entry meant that

4 Raine suggests that Knavemire was later restricted to freemen in Micklegate Ward but he does not give a date for this change (304). 54 he himself did not have the means to acquire his own animal, much like many of York's citizens. Peter and Philip do not have to get permission from the owner of the ass in order to use it, which allows the focus of the dramatic action to be placed elsewhere, such as on the Burgesses' discussion of Christ's qualities, the healings and Zacheus' transformation.

The need to borrow the animal for the duration of his entry into the city also meant that

Christ did not have his own, echoing Zacheus' choice to give his possessions to the poor

(448-50) - Christ returns the animal so that others who are in need may make use of it

(467-68).

Barabara Gusick's analysis of the pageant addresses the appearance of Zacheus on the sycamore tree in such a way that provides an opportunity to explore the notion of space in the performance. Gusick suggests that the tree is reminiscent of the Christ's genealogy and the tree of Jesse that Christ is said to be descended from (74), a notion that is made explicit by one of the Burgesses:

He [David] saide be frutte of his corse clene

Shulde royally regne upon his trone

And berfore he

Of David kyn and obir none

Oure kyng schal be. (164-68)

The tracing of Christ's lineage back to King David spans across hundreds of years, situating him in both Old and New Testament space, while reinforcing his right to be called the "Kyng of Juuys" (224) because of his ability to coexist in both spaces through his ancestry. Gusick also points out that the tree provides Zacheus with a high vantage- 55 point from which he can both observe the action during the entry while standing out from the crowd of spectators (74). Zacheus has a top-down view of Christ's Entry which both contrasts his short stature and signals to the audience his high status as a chief tax collector. By the time Zacheus descends from the tree, he has chosen to return any excess taxes back to the citizens and now occupies a vantage point from the ground where he can join the citizens who welcome Christ into Jerusalem / York.

Zacheus's status as a tax collector does not necessarily appear to resonate with this first station during the everyday practices in York since the civic muniments were kept at the Council Chamber - where the mayor, the aldermen and the Common Clerk met on a regular basis - on the north side of Ouse Bridge until it was moved to the secularized St. William's Chapel later in the period (Raine 211-216). The mayoral party does appear in the lists of station leases late in the medieval period (1516 is the earliest appearance) but the lease varies in location though is usually at the sixth or eighth station

- along Spurriergate and Coney Street, across the bridge from the Council Chambers. In

1501, however, the Common Clerk - the mayor's right-hand and the person responsible for compiling the Register - appears as the lease-holder for the first station, and from

1520 until the last of the medieval performances is said to let the first station on the route

(Johnston and Rogerson 801; see 817-35 for instances where the Common Clerk is named as the lease-holder for the first station). The Common Clerk would, from this position, check the Register against the performance and ensure that the players did not alter the pageants. As a member of the civic government, the Common Clerk would have been seen as representative of the office that he participated in during York's daily 56 practices, and by extension would resonate with Zachaeus's status as a civil servant: one of the duties of the Common Clerk was to record the funds collected by the city, funds that were, presumably, collected by figures much like Zacheus the tax collector. I am not suggesting that the Common Clerk would have been treated with the same hostility by his contemporaries as Zacheus was treated by his biblical peers, but merely that both operated as agents of the civic government and were responsible for dealing with the monetary aspects of their respective offices. Zacheus's presence at the first station, within viewing distance of the Common Clerk, could be associated with his medieval counterpart during the performances of the pageant at the first station.

The eight burgesses, or chief citizens of the city, are importantly civic and not clerical figures in the pageant since they represent a biblical version of a civic official.

The only appearances of figures that are similar to the burgesses in the biblical narrative are the Pharisees, found in only two of the four gospels (Luke 19:39 and John 12:19), who are Jewish officials that were necessarily interested in religious issues in addition to civic ones. The biblical Pharisees are infamous for condemning Christ's actions and his claim to the kingdom of Israel; their medieval counterparts are, however, supportive of

Christ's claim to the Jewish kingdom and provide a list of seven reasons why such a claim is valid. Christ is revered because "he helys be seke" (130) and for performing miracles such as turning water into wine (135) and raising Lazarus from the dead (140).

Christ advocates for the implementation of new laws (143), teaches his contemporaries in ways that they can understand him (presumably this refers to his use of parables) (150-

152), is a prophet (156), through his lineage belongs to the House of David (166-168) 57 and, by reason, must be the king of the Jews (176). These seven aspects of Christ - healer, miracle-worker, challenger of laws, teacher, prophet, descendent of kings, and king - are symbolic because of their quantity, a number that recurs in Christian iconography: the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, the seven sorrows of Mary, and the seven wounds of Christ.5

Because these seven qualities are reminiscent of a recurring number in Christian doctrine, we can suggest that the quantity would have reminded audiences of particular images of the seven gifts, the seven sorrows, or the seven wounds that may have been housed at one or several of the churches nearby on Micklegate. Raine does not specify whether such explicit images of these popular iconographic subjects were housed at any of the churches in the Micklegate area, but there are several mentions in wills that refer to altars dedicated to Mary and to Easter sepulchres that may have contained such images.

Perhaps the most obvious location for an image of Our Lady of Sorrows - a depiction of

Mary with the seven sorrows - would be at an altar dedicated to Mary, though it is not impossible that such a depiction was present elsewhere. Based on the wills that Raine mentions, there were at least ten altars or images dedicated to Mary in the Micklegate area in addition to two churches (St. Mary, Bishophill Junior and Senior) (Raine 226-

255). Images of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit could have been present in various locations within a church, but none are explicitly mentioned by Raine.

5 The seven gifts of the Holy Spirit are wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of God. Mary's sorrows are the prophecy of Simeon (Luke 2:34-35; sometimes referred to as the circumcision of Christ), the Flight into Egypt (Matthew 2:13), the loss of Jesus in the temple (Luke 2:43- 45), meeting Jesus on the way to Calvary (Luke 23:26), Jesus dying on the cross (John 19:25), receiving the body of Jesus in her arms (Matthew 27:57-59), and placing the body of Christ in the tomb (John 19:40-42). Lastly, the seven wounds of Christ are the wounds received during the Passion: on both of his hands, both of his feet, the wound in his side, the crowning with thorns and the scourging (or whipping). 58

Interestingly, the plot components of the text are largely a conglomeration of different biblical narratives all combined together to create the action of the pageant. The biblical source for the Entry appears in all four gospels (Matthew 21, Mark 11, Luke 19 and John 12) though the addition of Christ healing the blind man and the cripple and the story of Zacheus appear in the bible outside of the Palm Sunday narrative. Christ's healing of the blind man and the cripple are both found in Mark (10:1-12 and 2:2-12, respectively), earlier than the Entry narrative, while the story of Zacheus is found only in

Luke and appears just before Christ leaves Jericho (19:2-10).

There are a number of reasons why this is significant, the first of which requires the attention of a brief gender-based reading of the text since all of the characters in the pageant are male. In the cases of Christ's healing, both of the characters are male even though there is a second biblical incident in which a crippled woman is healed at the synagogue (Luke 13:10-17). This begs the question of why a man rather than a woman was represented in the pageant and how the text would have differed if a woman rather than a man was healed. If a woman had been healed in place of the male character, it is possible that her physical deformity could be associated with her need for spiritual healing, emphasizing her status as a fallen woman. Perhaps the audience would view a female character who is physically deformed as one whose physical ailments could only be cured by Christ's spiritual healing, a healing simultaneously representing his prevention of another Fall. If a woman was healed of her spiritual wrongdoings, then

Christ could prevent her from unleashing more sin; the omniscient God of the Old

Testament who chose not to stop Eve from eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge is, 59

in a reading of the pageant with a female cripple, replaced by his son who prevents

further sin. By having a male cripple, however, the physical deformity is treated as just

that - a bodily ailment that is cured by the physical touch of Christ's hands. The

association with the Fall that is so strong in a pageant that includes a crippled woman is

lost, the male cripple standing in for the desire for physical healing of the sick.

The acts of healing in the Entry are enriched by the place memory at Micklegate

since a number of hospitals are within a short distance from the city gate. Just outside of

Micklegate Bar stood two of York's several hospitals: St. Katherine's Hospital, a leper

hospital, and St. Thomas's Hospital, dedicated to St. Thomas of Canterbury. St.

Katherine's was located just outside of Micklegate on the west side of Blossom Street

and had separate quarters for men and women, and is first mentioned in 1333 (Raine

310). By 1580, the building was greatly decayed but it was not until 1648 that the

building was deemed uninhabitable and the inmates were moved to St. Thomas's

Hospital nearby (Raine 310). St. Thomas's stood on the east side of Blossom Street and

was most likely begun in 1389 and housed permanent residents - men and women - and

poor travellers who could spend the night. In 1428, the Corpus Christi guild constructed a

number of buildings in the direct vicinity of St. Thomas's, and in 1478 the hospital and

its possessions were transferred to the guild (Raine 314). The hospital came into the possession of the city when the Corpus Christi guild was suppressed in 1547, but it

continued to house residents and provide space for travellers (Raine 315).

In the pageant text as in the gospel story, as Christ enters Jerusalem he is met with

a blind man whom he heals. Although St. Katherine's was a house for lepers - presumably a place that one only left after death - and medieval medicine was not advanced beyond the practice of blood-letting, both hospitals would have been associated with the care of patients (if not healing) in much the same way that Christ is associated with the care and healing of the blind man and the cripple. Though not visible from the first stopping place, York's citizens would be familiar with the presence of both hospitals since they were located at the main entrance to the city and near to the common pastures.

Also, both were being constructed during the medieval period which meant that the ongoing process of construction would have been a cause for notice over a lengthy period of time. Visitors to York from the south who would have come to participate in the

Corpus Christi festivities would have seen both buildings as they entered the city, and perhaps even stayed at St. Thomas's if they could not afford to rent a room elsewhere.

These places are thus important in the Entry narrative since they recall the act of healing that Christ performs on the blind man and the cripple, enriching the audience's reception of the pageant from this first location on the cycle route.

In the case of Zacheus, it is especially interesting that the original narrative takes place in Jericho and not Jerusalem: both become associated with one another in the same way that York and Jerusalem become superimposed on one another for the duration of the performance. In this case, there is the suggestion that it is immaterial whether the story of Zacheus takes place in Jericho or Jerusalem - all biblical places are the same, so the story of Zacheus can be relocated to Jerusalem without any difficulty. Relocating

Zacheus to Jerusalem also articulates the importance of his narrative in relation to the upcoming Passion sequence since he is included in the same space which will later be the 61 site of Christ's Passion. By having Zacheus occupy this space, his cry for absolution and desire to follow Christ carries with it - in the same space - the imminent threat that

Christ might be crucified before Zacheus is able to ask for forgiveness for cheating the taxpayers. The occurrence of the Zacheus narrative in the Entry - to someone who is familiar the Old Testament through iconography or access to the text - could also remind the viewers of the Battle of Jericho (Joshua 6:1-27) and how the Israelites were able to bring down the walls of the city. Jericho and Jerusalem, both important biblical sites, coexist with York during the performance of the Entry at the first stopping place because of the inherent association with the city gate that Micklegate Bar is able to provide, while

articulating how relocating a biblical incident from one site to another can conjure place memories that would otherwise be absent.

I have already mentioned Salvador-Rabaza's work with the Play and, following her proposal for how the pageants may have been performed, it appears that her reading of the Play would situate a performance of the Skinners' pageant at the fifth station, out of sight of Micklegate Bar. Neither this site nor Pavement - the other location suggested by both Salvador-Rabaza and Stevens - positions the pageant within an area of the city that would resonate with the performance as well as Micklegate Bar, since even the fifth station is still a distance from Coney Street and none of the stations along the pageant route are even within viewing range of St. Giles' Church. Only the first stopping place is within viewing distance of the city's main entrance - the tenth station is out of visual range of Bootham Bar, another gated entrance to the city, owing to the curvature of High

Petergate. 62

A rendition of their pageant at the first station would allow the Skinners to exploit the relationship between site and performance that Salvador-Rabaza's contention does not, since the pageant would be situated at a location that is visually significant to the performance: the inclusion of Micklegate Bar allows the Entry to function as a vehicle through which Jerusalem is superimposed on York, and the performance recalls the biblical event through the spectators' interaction with the site's place memory. The audiences' reception of the site following Henry VII's 1486 entry into York is also brought to the surface during the performance, where York's citizens would align the king with Christ, and inversely, where Jesus' entry in the following century would be associated with the royal procession.

Although the inaccurate translation of the biblical narrative into a dramatic performance is frustrating, the reality is that the Play was performed by a group of secular citizens and not the clergy, so access to a biblical source - let alone the ability to read and understand that source - would have been difficult at best. The person or persons who compiled the Entry and the other pageants would have likely done so based on their own reception of readings and practices from liturgical masses and ceremonies, perhaps even from sources such as iconography and interpretive texts like The Golden

Legend.6 Yet, the presentation of an account that employs such varied biblical sources to tell the story of Christ's entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday becomes reminiscent of the varied place memories that co-exist at the first stopping place on the pageant route. The audiences would have experienced various churches, each with its own iconography and

6 The story of Christ's entry into Jerusalem is not presented'in The Golden Legend, and neither is the story of Zacheus. Pamela King explores the relationship between the Entry into Jerusalem and various liturgical practices in The York Mystery Cycle and the Worship of the City (137-141). 63

cultural demographic; the gated entrance to the city nearby would be visible, and reminiscent of the route used by the royal procession; the hospitals just outside of

Micklegate Bar provided a residence for the sick and for poor travellers; Toft Green, where a weekly market took place, where the pageant wagons were stored, and where the wagons assembled before the performances - all are important for creating meaning for

the pageant.

The place memory of these locations are anachronistic, conjuring up events from

different pasts - medieval and biblical - and thus provide more opportunities for analysis

than a performance of the Entry at another site. The audience could see the surroundings

that would articulate the anachronistic practice of performing a pre-Christian narrative -

that of Christ entering Jerusalem - in a setting that is surrounded by Christian places of

worship, and the depiction of a biblical culture within a setting that is heavily influenced by medieval guild culture. At this station, the Entry into Jerusalem is enriched by both the architectural surroundings and the inclusion of the Common Clerk since Zacheus,

one of the most important characters in the pageant, is invested with the status of a medieval civic official, keeping track of the civic muniments and helping run the city.

The pageant could be performed at any of the other stopping places on the cycle route, but all of these external opportunities for analysis of the performance space would be

lost, relying less on the performance space and more on the text and the actors to carry

out the pageant. 64

Pavement and the Mercers' Last Judgement

At the geographical centre of medieval York lies Pavement, the final stopping place of the Play's medieval performances, which receives its name from being the first paved open space in the city (Raine 177). In the medieval period, Pavement was the site

of York's second main market after Thursday Market at St. Sampson's Square, and was the city's main business centre - the street was "lined with houses, shops and storehouses

of rich York Merchants" (Raine 177). In addition to its weekly use as a marketplace,

Pavement was an important site in York's daily practices since it was at this site that the population would gather to listen to civic declarations, including proclamations of kings

and queens, as well as to watch public punishments of criminals. Directly opposite

Shambles, as I will describe below, prisoners convicted of treason were publically

executed at Pavement, and it is here that in 1572 the Earl of Northumberland was beheaded for his role in the Rising of the North (Raine 178). At the edge of Pavement near Hosier Row - the street where the hosiers had their shops - stood the pillory, a large post where an offender's neck and sometimes other limbs were affixed, used for humiliating offenders by way of spectacle (Raine 178). The stocks on Pavement were used for the same purpose, as well as a cage, though these were used for those who committed lesser crimes (Raine 179). In short, there were multiple ways one could be made a spectacle - in the busiest part of town, no less - if he or she was caught in an offence.

Considering that this area of the city was used for making such a spectacle of criminals, it is worth mentioning a few examples of punishments that some of York's 65 citizens received here. Angelo Raine notes that in 1536 a man and his wife were punished for posting allegations against an alderman: "each of them was set on a horse facing its tail, with a paper round their heads and another in their hands, on which were the words:

'For settyng up of sclaunderous bylls and wylful perjury, thus to be punysshed deservyd have F" (Raine 178). They were taken through several streets in York and finally paraded around the pillory at Pavement three times (Raine 179). Raine mentions an occurrence in which a drunkard was brought to the stocks (with his coat pulled over his head) as well as an instance when a cheating toll collector was put in the cage at Pavement on three market days as punishment (179). Needless to say, this area of York was, because of its daily use as a site for punishing wrongdoers, a site riddled with examples of how one should not act in order to avoid judgement. Posting slanderous bills against an alderman, drinking heavily, and cheating citizens of their money are only a few reasons for being made a spectacle at Pavement, and even though sometimes fines were given out to wrongdoers, the theatricality of the punishment was often enough to shame one into behaving appropriately in the future.

This is precisely the message portrayed in the Mercers' Last Judgement, where all of the bad souls are prevented from joining Christ in heaven and are made a spectacle during the performance, making Pavement an especially interesting location for viewing the pageant. The Mercers' Last Judgement opens with God1 complaining that even though he created humankind in his image (6) and gave it the opportunity to seek forgiveness for its follies through Christ's passion, he rarely finds "a man bat will his

1 The manuscript calls this character Deus but I am following Greg Walker's reading of the pageant that attributes the opening lines spoken by Deus to God (the Father) and the later lines (from 177 to the end) to Christ (the Son) (see Walker 160). 66 misse amende" (60). He thus decides to have his angels blow their trumpets as a way of calling forward all of humankind so that he can separate the Good Souls from the Bad

Souls, sending the former to heaven and the latter to hell. Following Christ's biblical account of the Last Judgement (Matthew 25:31-46), the pageant recounts how the Good

Souls will be placed at the right hand of Christ's throne and the Bad Souls at the left hand. The Bad Souls in both the pageant and the biblical narrative are not accused of committing sins as they appear in the Old Testament commandments - they are not accused of idol worship, stealing, adultery or even murder; rather, the Souls are judged based on their inability to follow Christ's commandment to treat others as they wish to be treated, following the lesson from his parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30-37).

The Bad Souls are banished to hell by Christ for not feeding, clothing or helping those who "askid in [his] My name" (358), and in so doing refused Christ the same help. The

Good Souls are rewarded for their kindness to their neighbours by being taken to heaven and, after the Bad Souls are sent to hell, "endid is all erthely thing" (374).

The importance of charity and aiding others as a part of the responsibility of guild members to their colleagues is one aspect of guild culture that is interesting to explore in light of the Mercers' pageant. In Christina Fitzgerald's study of drama and guild culture, she explains that "the 'guild' was not a tightly organized community, club, or secret society, but a loose bureaucratic and civic designation deployed by mechanisms of power" (29). Guild ordinances from Lincoln occasionally speak of helping members that cannot support themselves or even paying for members' funerals, embodying Christ's commandment for charity (Fitzgerald 29). In her study of the York guild records, however, Fitzgerald points out that the ordinances from York do not mention such acts of charity, but rather that these records are "largely contracts of responsibility and duty with the city, rather than with the membership as a corporate body" (29), regulating trade and distribution of goods rather than showing payments to less fortunate guild members.

Interestingly, Fitzgerald explains that half of the money collected by crafts went to the city council while the other half initially went to the guild "for spiritual and fraternal purposes (poverty relief, funeral services, feast days, etc.)" (33); in the lifetime of the

Play, however, this other half became the pageant money that was used to support the production of a guild's pageant (Fitzgerald 33). The shift from using half of the guild's income to support its impoverished members and to pay for funerals in favour of funding the performance of the Play is curious in light of the emphasis on acts of charity that the

Mercers' pageant so clearly articulates. Even though the acts of charity are the central premise for dismissing the Bad Souls into hell, based on the surviving guild records we know that the acts of charity that were once an integral part of guild culture before the early fifteenth century were fading in favour of a performance of biblical pageants.

Rather than practice the acts of charity that would allow them entrance to heaven, the

Mercers instead chose to (dutifully) employ half of the guild's income in order to inform their fellow neighbours of how to acquire Christ's favour.

In their study of the Last Judgement, Alexandra Johnston and Margaret Dorrell discuss a note included in the Mercers' account rolls from 1451-2 that states payment to players, suggesting that actors from outside the guild were hired to perform the pageant

2 Payment was made by "comon siluere to Wrangle for plaiyng of our pageante by assent of be feliship" (Johnston and Rogerson 82). 68

(12). This is the first time in the Mercers' records that we are told of payment to actors

(this continues in the later records) though Johnston and Dorrell note that the most likely reason for hiring outsiders to perform the pageant would not have been for lack of skill.

Rather, Johnston and Dorrell speculate that because "many of the Mercers were aldermen or councillors, they would not therefore be available to take an active part in the production of their pageant because the mayor and the city council regularly saw the pageants at the Common Hall station along with any visiting dignitaries" (13). The pageant requires at least thirteen actors (fourteen if Deus was played by two actors) which would mean that a large number of the guild members would be missing the main

festivities at the Common Hall station. Perhaps, also, the Mercers were cautious about engaging with the pageant as performers considering their status within the civic government and their wealth - by hiring actors, the Mercers would avoid appearing on the stage (especially when it came to playing the Bad Souls or the Devils) and they could

show off their prosperity by hiring others to perform their pageant. The pageant-tax levied yearly on guild members would have covered the cost of these actors and any necessary properties for the performance, and based on the list of properties from the

1433 indenture the Mercers were not lacking in funds.

In her discussion of the Mercers' pageant, Anne Higgins argues that use of the platea "would seem to have been especially vital for the representation of the Last

Judgement, in which sinners and the saved of all time are dispatched to their fates" (90).

Without considering the positional symbolism of the characters and the surrounding environment, one can easily note that the number of characters in the pageant alone would warrant the use of the platea. It would perhaps be characteristic to place Christ's throne on the wagon so as to raise it above the audience and conceivable to have a position for God - perhaps wearing one of the masks listed in the 1433 ordinance - on an

elevated riser on the wagon as well. The Apostles, Angels and Good Souls (after they were separated from the Bad Souls) could position themselves on the right-hand side of the throne while the Devils and the Bad Souls were placed to the left-hand side,

surrounding the wagon on the platea.

Johnston and Dorrell have constructed a possible description of the Mercers' wagon based on the 1433 indenture:

it seems to have been a platform set on wheels ("a Pagent with iiij

wheles") with a superstructure consisting of four iron poles ("iiij Irens to

bere vppe heuen"), probably sunk into sockets in the four corners of the

platform, to which was bolted a roof made of wood set in an iron frame

("A heuen of lren with a naffe of tre"). The roof may have tilted slightly

towards the back to allow for perspective and also to conceal the

mechanism for drawing Christ up to heaven ("A brandreth of lren pat god

sail sitte vppon when he sail fly vppe to heuen with iiij rapes at iiij

corners"). There were three large curtains for the back and sides of the

wagon, a smaller one for the '"bakke of god," and various painted clouds.

(Johnston and Dorrell 16)

The roof might have contained some sort of hole in the top so that when Christ was raised the actor would be put through the space, allowing the roof to be low enough so as not to 70 impede with the surrounding architecture. Also, there is nothing in the original document to suggest whether the cloth for the back and sides of the wagon were used to create a proscenium-style stage with only the front of the wagon in view or if the cloth was draped along the base of the wagon to cover the wheels. Because of the questionable position of the textiles on the wagon, this early version of the Mercers' stage could have been used for either end-on or side-on staging, or perhaps both depending on the year.

In 1501 the Mercers had another wagon built for the pageant, this one designed by

Thomas Drawswerd, a carver who was given membership to the fraternity of the Holy

Trinity in Fossgate as partial payment for designing and building a new pageant wagon.

The acceptance of membership to the guild as partial payment for constructing a wagon was surely a sign that membership to the Mercers' guild was coveted by other craftsmen, articulating the hierarchy between the guilds. Johnston and Dorrell have examined an inventory from 1526 that lays out a list of the Mercers' properties and interestingly this list does not include any mention of textiles, perhaps because Drawswerd's profession would have allowed him to use carvings to decorate the wagon rather than the textiles that were used in the earlier design (19).4 As a carver, Drawswerd could have etched images pertaining to the pageant on the wagon's wooden panels - eliminating the need for the hanging clouds mentioned in 1433 - and indeed altered the design of the wagon by using windows (likely frames without glazing as there is no mention of glass).

Drawswerd could have also carved the "trenette" (Johnston and Rogerson 242), perhaps a

3 Admittance to the brotherhood as partial payment for constructing the wagon was approved by the mayor, several aldermen and other members of the Mercers' guild (see Johnston and Rogerson 188-189 for the complete record). 4 This inventory list is included in Johnston and Rogerson 241-242. 71 carved wood or alabaster insignia of the fraternity, that may have been placed in a prominent position on the wagon (Johnston and Dorrell 19). Johnston and Dorrell also contend that the "chartt" mentioned in the 1526 list refers to a small cart: "possibly

Drawswerd's design included a large wagon and two smaller ones each provided with a lid or "dure", one depicting hell mouth and the other a coffin for the souls to rise from"

(19). Another possibility is that the lids could have opened to reveal carvings of heaven and hell where the actors could climb in after their judgement.

Though the Mercers' records of the Corpus Christi performances are the most complete of the surviving guild records, it is important to note that their extensive expenditures on properties, actors and their pageant wagon would not have been comparable to other guilds. It is well known that the Mercers' was the most wealthy guild in York during the medieval period and their prestigious position in civic government attests to their political sway (indeed, that Drawswerd was given membership to the guild as partial payment for building a pageant wagon articulates the value of membership to the guild for himself and the value of the wagon to the Mercers). We cannot, then, take the Mercers' inventory lists as exemplary of expenses spent by other guilds on their performances, nor can we suggest that the wagons would have been as elaborate as those mentioned in the 1433 and 1526 records (indeed, the wagon built by Drawswerd was considered elaborate enough to be employed in Henry VIII's entry into York in

1541).However, the fact that the Mercers took care to record properties belonging to the pageant and offered guild membership as partial payment for the building of a wagon might reflect how some of the other guilds conducted their productions. These records 72 might not have survived but perhaps this is worth considering in light of the records that have surfaced from the Mercers' guild.

The scenarios for staging using these wagons, too, would not have been the only possibilities for how the performance was conducted. It is likely that each year (or perhaps each time a new guild master was appointed) the pageant was staged differently, sometimes using the mechanical windlass on the later wagon to raise Christ above the other actors, and other times using the same mechanism to suspend God at the beginning of the pageant. It would, also, be easy to perform the Last Judgement pageant as a tableau vivant by having the actors process through the cycle route in order of appearance with God at the front followed by the Angels, Apostles, Christ, the Good souls and then the Bad Souls. The Good Souls could have pulled the cart with heaven etched on it - perhaps with the lid opened - and the Bad Souls could have done the same with the hell cart. The guild's insignia would be visible as the large wagon was pulled behind the actors, and since this was the final pageant there would be no doubt as to its subject.

Though most scholars have argued that the pageants performed continuously at each station on the cycle route, performing as many times in the day as there were stopping places, Salvador-Rabaza and Stevens contend otherwise. Salvador-Rabaza's contention is that the pageant would have been performed at one of the first eleven stations and then again at Pavement, situating the first performance at the sixth station at the intersection of Spurriergate and Market Street (or Jubbergate). Stevens argues that the pageants were only performed at Pavement and processed through the city before that, only to be performed fully one time. By suggesting that the pageants were only 73 performed twice at most, Stevens and Salvador-Rabaza do not account for the possibility that the pageants could have been enriched by the performance's surroundings at other locations. One instance, performing the Last Judgement at the station in front of the

Common Hall (station eight), would have been especially interesting since the records show many occurrences of the mayoral party - most of whom belonged to the Mercers' guild - leasing that station during the Corpus Christi festivities. The Mercers' would have thus been able to view the production from a site that resonated with their political status in York, and for the other audiences of the pageant at this locale could articulate the relationship between the Mercers' and the civic government. Because Stevens and

Salvador-Rabaza do not allow for a performance of this pageant at this particular location, it seems that an opportunity would be lost in a consideration of the place memory of this site. Furthermore, a considerable population of the Mercers' guild - those who were a part of the mayoral party and participated in the festivities at the Common

Hall - would not get a chance to view its own pageant.

Though the importance of the place memories of other stations are suppressed by a reading of the Play that does not allow for several performances along the cycle route, the place memories that surface during a performance at Pavement are especially meaningful in a consideration of the pageant's recurring theme of positional symbolism. I have already mentioned that Pavement was the site of a weekly market and was the chosen location of rich York merchants - in this way the site's place memory was strongly associated with the Mercers' guild and its activities. The Merchant Adventurers'

Hall - originally built by the Fossgate guild of the Blessed Virgin Mary in 1357 - became 74 the Mercers' headquarters in 1420 (Raine 75) and stands just beyond Pavement, perhaps even visible to the pageant's audience from that location.5 There is no doubt, then, that the Mercers' legacy would resound at Pavement for spectators of the Last Judgement, though interestingly the positional relationship between the architectural spaces nearby lends itself well to the articulation of spatial symbolism in the pageant. Christ deliberately separates the Good Souls from the Bad Souls by having the former occupy his right-hand

side and the latter his left, a division that is important since it denotes the privileged position of those on his right, and is a way of creating a visual hierarchy common in medieval images and architecture. Corine Schleif s exploration of the right-left subject position shows various examples of how a hierarchy is constructed within this scheme, not the least of which includes images of Christ, God and Mary with Mary positioned at

God's left-hand side and Christ on his right (217). In his exploration of medieval drama,

Clifford Davidson asserts that "such symbolism is rooted in medieval and pre-

Reformation behavior and habits of seeing, and ... is critical to the establishment of patterns necessary to the logic of the drama" ("Positional Symbolism" 68). Because medieval audiences of the Play would have been familiar with the significance of placement within an image, it would not be far-fetched to suggest that they would have understood the significance of Christ's positioning of the Good Souls on his right-hand side. Pavement, however, in addition to being an interesting location for the Last

Judgement because of its use as a site for civic proclamations and making a spectacle of criminals, presents audiences of the pageant with its own interesting positional

5 Raine's map does not include a full survey of all of the buildings in medieval York (residential or otherwise) so it is difficult to tell exactly which buildings could have been seen from Pavement. 75 symbolism that mimics the character placement: the nearby locations of the Shambles and All Saints' (Pavement)6 replicate the right / left positioning within the pageant.

At the north end of Pavement lies Shambles, the only York street that is mentioned in the Doomsday Book and the street where the butchers had their shops

(Raine 185). This street was often referred to as the Flesh Shambles so as not to be confused with the Fish Shambles on Foss Bridge, and the name Shambles derives from shamel, "a bench on which the meat was placed for sale" (Raine 185). Some of these benches are still visible today (though they are less benches than they are shelves that extend from the shop fronts) and Raine notes that the size of these displays were heavily regulated owing to the narrowness of the street (185). Shambles has also been called

Haymongergate (after the haymongers) since cattle food would have been stored behind the butchers' shops so that it could be transported to the butchers' cattle that was pastured outside the city walls (Raine 186). Because needles were made from the bones of animals

- easily accessible from the butchers - Shambles was also referred to as Nedlergate

(Raine 186), though today the street continues to be called Shambles.

Although the pageant route passed near the Shambles and would have made a shorter course than travelling through Colliergate to get to Pavement, the narrowness of the street has led Eileen White to posit that the pageant wagons would have been too large to pass through the Shambles (67) since the street is less than twenty feet wide.

The second storey of the buildings here often overhang one foot or more beyond the

6 There were three other churches in York called All Saints (sometimes referred to as All Hallows): Fishergate (Raine 300-301), North Street (Raine 253-254) and Peaseholme Green (Raine 87-88). Unless otherwise indicated, I will be referring to All Saints, Pavement. 7 See Appendix for an image of Shambles. 76 ground floor - to the degree that one could touch the extended arm of a neighbour from across the street - for two reasons: the second storey could be extended without concern for the increased expense of a ground tax since the second storey does not take up additional land, and the overhanging storeys would provide a cooler environment for the hanging meat below owing to the shade. In addition to the narrowness of the street, the overhang of the second storeys at Shambles would also be a valid reason why the wagons were taken through CoUiergate since any contraptions attached to a wagon would have to be low enough to avoid damaging the buildings. It is thus more plausible that the wagons were taken through CoUiergate, at just over twenty-two feet wide (White 67), because of the dimensional restriction of both performing on a pageant wagon and maintaining an audience that would be able to view the production more comfortably than in the restricted confines of the Shambles.

The south-east side of the Little Shambles once held the butchers' guild hall though nothing of the building survives today. There is evidence to show that the guild hall was begun at the end of the fourteenth century and Raine's examination of Benedict

Horsley's 1694 map of the city reveals that the guild hall was similar in size to the

Merchant Adventurers' Hall (Raine 187).8 Considering that the Shambles was the main location where the butchers kept their shops and that the meat would be hanging outside on the displays for the duration of the workday, there is no reason to doubt that an unpleasant scent would have reverberated through the entire street. The street was also likely to be visibly unpleasant, perhaps with unsold carcasses and other unwanted waste laying in walkways resembling the carnage one might expect to see in hell.

81 have been unable to access this map and Raine does not indicate where it is held. 77

At the south-west end of Pavement where the street intersects with Coppergate lies All Saints, where 39 of York's mayors were buried - more than in any other church in the city (Raine 177). Local folklore claims that the original church at this location was built in 685 for St. Cuthbert though the present building dates from the fourteenth century and has an ornate octagonal lantern tower dating from the early fifteenth century that contains a light used in the medieval and later period as a guide for travellers (today it is the church's war memorial) {Parish). Other parts of the building have been restored in later years though much of the medieval stained glass remains on display there. Raine notes that in the fourteenth century All Saints' was in the possession of an important holy relic, the dish used for the head of John the Baptist after it was cut off, and in 1386 this was given to the king as payment for trespassing (Raine 181-182). Among the most valuable artefacts in All Saints' is the twelfth-century ringed head attached to the north door - a doom knocker - that is composed of "a gaping dragon's mouth and.. .the face of a woman" (Raine 181) inside the mouth representing the mouth of hell. This is interesting in light of the Last Judgement's narrative since the knocker is a reminder of where the

Bad Souls are sent on doomsday for denying their neighbours - and by extension, Christ

- food and other aid. Among the properties included in the Mercers' 1433 indenture is

"helle mouthe" (Johnston and Dorrell 55) and although there is no description of what this may have looked like, the doom knocker at All Saints' is perhaps an accurate representation of how hell mouth might have been portrayed in the pageant. Even though the presence of a doom knocker at the north door would warn parishioners of a terrible fate if they did not follow Christ's commandment, All Saints' is nonetheless a church, a 78

sacred space filled with iconography reminding its occupants of Christ's sacrifice to

humanity and heavenly reward if his commandments are obeyed. In some ways, then, All

Saints' association with Christ is meant to mimic heaven, showing its parishioners what

they will receive if they obey Christ's commandments and, like the light in the lantern

tower used to guide travellers to York, the church was meant to be a guide for Christians

seeking heavenly reward.

Both the Shambles and All Saints' conjure place memories of locations within the pageant, the former reminding audiences of hell and the latter of heaven, that are

interesting in a consideration ofthe Last Judgement. We know from the surviving records

that Pavement was consistently the final stopping place each time the Play was performed - likely because it was large enough to hold an audience of considerable size -

and even though the exact position of the pageant wagon at Pavement is unclear, the positional symbolism at this site is especially significant. Considering that the 1526

inventory of properties belonging to the performance lists several windows that were

attached to the wagon, we can speculate that this later design might have been enclosed at the back if not on three sides to allow for the placement of the windows and to provide

support for the windlass. If this was the case in the later performances, then it is more

likely that the pageant was performed side-on rather than end-on, performing to the left- hand side of the street. In such a scenario, the actors would perform with their backs to

Parliament Street, themselves facing the Merchant Adventurers' Hall and positioned so that Shambles would be to Christ's left and All Saints' to his right. When asked to take their positions in relation to Christ, the Bad Souls would position themselves in front of 79

Shambles - hell-like because of its association with slaughter and its pungent scents - while the Good Souls would stand before All Saints, in the shadow of the lantern tower used to guide travellers. In this way the architectural space surrounding Pavement is

especially symbolic for audiences of the Last Judgement.

Anne Higgins argues that such a scenario is very effective in a consideration of

the performance adding that "the episode's action calls for the crowd itself to be searched

and divided into souls damned and saved" (91) within the audience space. Positioning

oneself near All Saints' to the right-hand side of Christ would be more desirable than

near Shambles, not to mention the unpleasant scents that would be avoided in such a

scenario. This consideration of where to position oneself in relation to the performance is

important, since standing too near Shambles might align one with the Bad Souls that are

sent to hell.

The Mercers would have seen the performances at the Common Hall owing to

their extensive involvement in the civic government and because a dinner was held there

for visiting dignitaries and the aldermen, which explains their absence from Pavement. It

is therefore interesting to note that the Lady Mayoress (the wife of the city's mayor) is

often found in the records as the station holder at Pavement where she would host a

dinner for the wives of the aldermen - by extension, the wives of many of the members

of the Mercers' guild - during the Corpus Christi festivities. Considering the positional

symbolism of Pavement, it would be worth investigating where exactly the Lady

Mayoress' party was held, whether near the Shambles or closer to All Saints', and if,

following their dinner at the Common Hall, the Mayoral party joined their wives at Pavement to watch the performance of their pageant through a window facing the street.

Unfortunately, no surviving documents have mentioned whether this was the case, though we can speculate that the high status of the Mercers' guild would have conceivably situated the Lady Mayoresses party and the wives of the city's aldermen in a locale near to All Saints' and thus in the group that would be sent to heaven.

In her examination of the REED records for York, Meg Twycross points out that the station at Pavement was more difficult to sell later in the sixteenth century and she posits that this was the case because it was the final stopping place for the Play and, considering the length of a full performance of all of the pageants, meant that viewers would have to watch the performance well into the evening ("Places" 18). Also, watching at Pavement meant that the actors would likely be exhausted from performing their pageant throughout the day (not to mention slightly intoxicated from the festivities) and thus did not perform as enthusiastically as at some of the earlier stations. Higgins, however, argues that perhaps the lease at Pavement was more difficult to sell than at other stations because of the positional symbolism of the location in relation to the

Mercers' pageant (91). Because audiences were constantly reminded by the surrounding architecture and the pageant of where they would end up on doomsday, York's citizens were hesitant to lease the stopping place on the cycle route that most clearly articulated the tension between heaven and hell. The place memory of Pavement thus has an increased effect on the performance since even though the pageants continued to be performed there for the duration of the medieval productions, it was difficult to find a 81 single person or a syndicate who would attach their name to a location that so obviously contends with one's placement at the apocalypse.

The extent to which the audience would be involved with the performance of the

Last Judgement does not end with the arrangement of the spectators around the performance space. The Christ character that appears in the pageant to judge the souls attracts the audience's attention to his wounds just after he speaks to the three Devils

(lines 245-250) which may, in fact, be drawing attention to a costume worn by the actor or even some type of stage makeup that resembled the five wounds of Christ. Though the manuscript does not provide stage directions for how this portion of the pageant should be carried out, Davidson argues that these wounds were "intended to be felt by those in attendance as audience in order that they may have a direct aesthetic experience of these events which are believed to be so immediately significant for their own experience and their own hope of salvation" ("Positional Symbolism" 73). In the same way that Thomas in the Sciveners' pageant touches Christ's wounds, so too does part of the audience of the

Last Judgement, an act reminiscent of medieval affective piety and its reliance on physical experience for spiritual sustenance. As a way of maintaining the positional symbolism of the pageant, perhaps Christ moved through the crowd on his left-hand side as a way of offering forgiveness to those who sat near hell mouth and providing them with the opportunity to alter their actions so as to enter heaven.

The positioning of All Saints' to the right of Christ at Pavement begs the question of whether attempts were made by the performers to keep churches on the cycle route near the stopping places to the right-hand side of the performers, considering that this 82 was certainly an effective feature at Pavement. There are some locations where this would have been possible, such as at the first station, but others where this would have been too difficult to accomplish given political reasons. At the Minster Gate, for instance, positioning the Minster to the right of the actors would mean that the pageants were performed facing away from the building so that it would not be visible to the Dean and

Archbishop - certainly an insult to the Church. Yet the positioning of the Mercers'

pageant at the end of the Play is certainly worth considering in relation to Pavement as

well as to other guilds in York. I have repeatedly noted the Mercers' civic power in York,

not the least of which included involvement at all levels of government, and how

financially wealthy the guild was in relation to others. The fact that the Mercers were

given (or perhaps chose) the Last Judgement as their pageant is not obviously connected

to the guild in any way - there is nothing particular to the pageant that suggests it could

not have been performed by another guild except that the opulence that was made possible by ending the Play with the most wealthy guild. The placement of the Mercers at

the end of the procession could, however, articulate the high status of the guild since

Martin Stevens points out that "the end of a procession was, in fact, the place of greatest honour" {Four 33, emphasis in original). To have the Mercers' perform another pageant would be to place another guild in this position of honour, leaving the wealthiest and most powerful guild in a position not worthy of its high status.

Arguably, since Pavement is the final stopping place for each of the pageants, one

could contend that in some sense as a performance site it is perhaps the most important: this was the last place that the pageants were performed before the wagons were returned 83 to the storehouses in Toft Green, and the last time that the nearly complete biblical narrative would be acted out in one day for the whole year. As a site of civic importance

- the location of civic proclamations and public punishments of criminals - and as a space for buying and selling goods, Pavement resonates with the Mercers' position in civic government as well as their trade. The architectural surroundings at this site are also uniquely significant to the positional symbolism that is so emphasized in the pageant - nowhere else in the city is the contention between hell and heaven so blatant as in front of the Shambles and All Saints' at Pavement. From here, audiences would be constantly reminded of how powerful the Mercers' really were in York, noting both their final position in the Play and the use of a site so connected with their practices - the final performance site - that played such an important role in York's day to day practices. 84

Relocating the Drama: York's Modern Revivals

The extant records show that, following the last medieval performance of the York

Play in 1569, the guilds continued to collect the pageant tax and the Bridgemaster continued to collect payment for storage of the wagons at Pageant House for several years. This is evidence that the guilds were expecting the Play to be revived within the next few years, a revival that would not take place for many generations. The decline in the popularity of the performances for the Church was due in part to the Reformation and subsequent rise of the Anglican Church in the mid-sixteenth century. The Marian pageants (the death, funeral, assumption and coronation of the Virgin) especially became suspect between 1548 and 1554, reappearing for a short time under Mary's rule only to be supressed permanently in 1561 (Beadle, 1982 27). In 1579, a full decade after the last medieval performance, a notation in the York House Books states that the Play would be performed that year following an examination of the Register by the Dean and

Archbishop (Johnston and Rogerson 390); the Register thus disappeared into the hands of the Church and the Play would not reappear on the stage for several centuries.1

During the Second World War the Arts Council of Great Britain was established to promote British culture, supporting organizations that engaged in various musical and art forms including theatrical performances and the opera. The Arts Council was also responsible for organizing the 1951 Festival of Britain, a celebration of British culture marking the hundred-year anniversary of the Great Exhibition of 1851. Comprised of a number of cultural exhibits that attracted visitors from Europe and the rest of the world including shows on architecture, science, industrial power and pleasure gardens, the

1 For details of the later history of the Register see Beadle, 2009 xxii-xxiii. 85 festival was meant to instil a sense of progress and recovery in the British people following the Second World War. Stunning buildings were erected with various showcases of England's cultural advances since the Great Exhibition as a way of promoting urban design and the post-war rebuilding of London and other British towns.

Outside of London, this national project was celebrated in other major cities across

England through smaller displays of culture in places such as Bath, Oxford and

Shakespeare's Stratford-Upon-Avon. As one of the "twenty-two officially approved festival locations in the provinces" (Rogerson, Playing 32), York was given financial support from the Arts Council and represented Yorkshire and the north of England in the festival. One of the most important of these displays in York included, for the first time since the sixteenth century, a production of several pageants from the York Corpus

Christi Play that were compiled into a large-scale performance in front of the ruins of St.

Mary's Abbey in Museum Gardens.

Before this major production in 1951, the Play was little known to popular audiences which, as Margaret Rogerson points out, meant that the mysteries opened to

"an audience that had no cultural memory of them" (Rogerson, Playing 86).

Consequently, an interesting relationship to locale and performance techniques has developed that is important in a discussion of place memory in the medieval productions.

Fixed-place staging, an attempt at a promenade production and several wagon stages have made their way through the modern revivals, allowing production crews to experiment with the possibilities of performing a medieval cycle play. I will first lay out some of the major features of the recent productions since 1951, taking into account some 86 of the interesting alterations to the medieval tradition, followed by an examination of the most recent production in York in July 2010. Using the 2010 production as a case study, I will explore how some of the pageants in the performance - although not produced on the original medieval cycle route - provide an interesting reading of the relationship between the Play text and the place memories found at the stopping places. Using The Massacre of the Innocents and The Crucifixion (with The Death of Christ) as examples of how the performance was enhanced by the place memories at Dean's Park and Museum Gardens, respectively, I will argue that the performance's anachronistic features enriched the audience's reception of the Play. The various coterminous realities - the biblical spaces, medieval York and the modern city, among others - allow audiences of the modern revivals in York to incorporate a variety of visual characteristics of the performance spaces into the production, resulting in a performance that can still appeal to audiences who are increasingly less concerned with the religious nature of the Play but rather with the historical tradition of dramatic performance.

Although located in a space that would have been controlled by liturgical authorities in the medieval period, the Abbey ruins were chosen by E. Martin Browne, the director of the 1951 and several subsequent productions of the Play, for two reasons.

First, the Archbishops of York and Canterbury would only agree to a performance of the

Play if it took place on sacred ground, owing to the religious nature of the text. Ignoring the medieval tradition of performing the Play in the secular city space, the modern rendition was relocated to the consecrated ground of the Abbey. Secondly, the open space

2 The Crucifixion and The Death of Christ were performed together as one pageant in July 2010 so I will be referring to the collective pageant simply as The Crucifixion. 87 in Museum Gardens would allow the production crew to use the Abbey as a backdrop to the performance, providing a romantic setting for a medieval play as a way of articulating the "medievalness" of the Play, and to set up seating for the audiences who would flock to York for the Festival. In situating the performance in the bygone days of Catholicism, the place memory of this large open space was thus immediately at the forefront of the production, chosen for its religious affiliations, and at once a practical response to audience placement.

Browne's production of the Play at Museum Gardens was complimented by a transliteration of Lucy Toulmin Smith's 1885 edition of the text by Canon J.S. Purvis, who published a complete version of the whole cycle in 1957. The Purvis text was not published in Middle English, nor was it a modern translation; rather, his text was composed of a mishmash of archaic phrases and was characterized by the omission of rhyme in many places and the mistranslation of several Middle English words (Rogerson,

Playing 53). Purvis also declared a single medieval author of the Play, a monk from St.

Mary's Abbey, perhaps as an attempt to lend further credence to the use of Museum

Gardens as the chosen performance space (see Rogerson, Playing 41-44).

Browne's first attempt at staging the Play resulted in a performance that cut a significant portion of the text because of time constraints, with only twenty-nine out of the forty-eight medieval pageants represented. Of these, Rogerson notes that "the 'Fall of

Man' and the 'Temptation' were left reasonably intact, while the remaining twenty-seven suffered from heavy cuts" {Playing 54). Although the Crucifixion was included in the pageants performed in 1951, the archbishop cautioned against a performance of the 88

Passion plays, leading Browne to respond by "concealing the nailing of Christ and the raising of the cross behind the banners held by the Roman soldiers" (Rogerson, Playing

55). The Marian pageants were cut from this performance, harkening back to the original ban on these pageants in 1561.

There was concern with these early revivals of the Play that the Lord

Chamberlain's office would prevent the performances on the basis of the religious nature

of the text, since the Theatres Act was in place until 1968. In place since 1843, the

Theatres Act was enforced by the Lord Chamberlain's office and prevented the display of

indecent or taboo subjects on the stage, while also ensuring that only orthodox displays of

Christianity were shown. Any plays that were to be performed had to first be approved by

the censors, with directors and performers cautiously adjusting a production in order to

avoid being shut down; Browne was aware of the threat of the censors when he chose to block the audiences' view of the Crucifixion scene, avoiding the possibility of being shut

down because of the indecent display of violence. Although the script for the mysteries

did not have to gain the approval of the Lord Chamberlain's office because of the Play's medieval pedigree, there was still a fear from local organizers that the text would not be permitted to play (Rogerson, Playing 44-45). The York Play had the backing of the

Archbishops of Canterbury and York, however, and although Purvis's script contained numerous alterations to the text the Lord Chamberlain's office did not intervene. In

addition, it was not until the 1969 production that the program notes removed the warning to audiences that they should refrain from applauding for the performers because

of the religious nature of the Play (Rogerson, Playing 44). 89

Aside from the contention that the Mercers might have employed professional players for their pageant, based on the surviving records the consensus among scholars of the Play is that the performers were likely guild members who were not trained in acting.

Although amateur actors have become the norm with the modern revivals from the last decade, this was not always the case with the recent performances. Rogerson quotes

Browne as saying that that although the cycle '"belongs to, and reflects the characteristics of, its own location', he remained convinced that if this particular 'dramatic heritage' was

'to be kept fully alive, the amateurs cannot be left to do it unaided'" (qtd. in Rogerson,

Playing 71). He insisted on hiring professional actors for two or three of the roles as a way of guaranteeing that at least the Christ figure would be played well. It was not until

Edward Taylor's production in 1969 that the cast was entirely composed of amateur actors, a tradition that has, for the most part, held true for many of the revivals since then.

Interestingly, Browne also insisted that the actor playing Christ should be a Christian, even though he was willing to be flexible with the other actors (Rogerson, Playing 67), a question that perhaps would not have surfaced in a medieval production.

The ruins of St. Mary's Abbey continued to be a feature of the modern revivals although the formula for how the Play was produced has changed significantly since the mid-twentieth century. Until the last decade of the twentieth century, the Play was performed on a large fixed-place stage in front of the Abbey ruins, usually with a large cast of over two hundred and almost always to the dismay of medieval scholars who insisted on wagon stages. Wagons were used in renditions of one pageant near the site of the large-scale production - the Noah pageant was a popular choice - though these were 90 not part of the main attraction. Meg Twycross managed to mount two wagon productions in York along a portion of the original medieval route, using acting troops

from the Universities of Lancaster and York (among others), in 1988 and again in 1992.

The first of these productions consisted of four plays at four playing stations while the

second was composed of five plays at five playing stations, testing the feasibility of using wagons on the original route and the length of the full production.4 Before Twycross' productions, use of the city space as a performance locale and the employment of wagons

for the main stage production were only fantasies of medieval scholars who would have preferred to test whether such mechanics for the performance would be feasible.

Initially, the 1992 main stage production was meant to be led by director Margaret

Sheehy, who advocated a promenade-style performance (Rogerson, Playing 137-138).

Guided by stewards, the audience would move between six or seven stations set up in

Museum Gardens - fixed stations where particular pageants would be performed -

allowing the audience to view the production in a less restricted manner than Browne's

large main stage in front of the Abbey ruins. This was meant to be performed over two nights, allowing audiences a break in the midst of such an extended performance. After

some disagreements between Sheehy and the York Festival board, the promenade production was abandoned and then moved to York's Theatre Royal. This was partly due to the dwindling financial support and a way of avoiding the costs associated with

Rogerson provides a list of the various wagon pageants that were performed at Museum Gardens but were not a part of the large-scale productions {Playing 217). 4 Rogerson outlines the pageants performed in both of Twycross' productions along with the playing stations (Playing 218-219) 91

erecting the seating necessary to hold the audience, a choice that became a reality again when the Theatre Royal hosted the Play in 1996.

Jane Oakshott's 1994 and 1998 productions saw the implementation of a structure that has continued in recent years, whereby a number of pageants (anywhere between nine and twelve) are performed at four or five playing stations, usually large open spaces

that are not on the medieval cycle route (Rogerson, Playing 182-185). These performances were made up of a series of small acting troops that were each responsible

for one pageant and were directed by their own leaders, with Oakshott looking after the

overall production. The 1998 production saw the integration of some of York's modern

guilds, and since 2002 the wagon performances have been presented by these guilds

every four years.

Although wagon productions have become the norm since Twycross'

experimentation with wagons in the city streets, the Millennium production of the Play is

especially noteworthy because of its use of York Minster as a playing space. The

employment of a sacred site to perform a play that was originally meant to be performed

in the secular city space is somewhat charged, owing to the notion that secular rather than

clerical performers were used. Although a performance of the Play in the wake of the

Abbey ruins in Museum Gardens harkens back to the notion of performing on

consecrated ground - a necessary feature for the backing of the performance by the

archbishops - the emphasis on the Christianity, or sacredness, of the architectural space

in the Minster is infinitely greater owing to the religious iconography that has survived in the numerous stained glass windows. A performance in the Minster would exemplify 92

Clifford Davidson's contention that stained glass art and medieval drama are related in

their use of space and positioning, while allowing the audience to see a clear comparison between the iconography and the performance, encouraging the production crew to

exploit the surroundings so that such a comparison was impossible to avoid. Indeed, the

stage used in the Millennium production was the same colour as the surrounding

stonework and pillars, and the colour scheme of the glasswork was used for the costumes,

fusing site and performers together (see Rogerson, Playing 156).5

The most recent production of the Play in July 2010 consisted of twelve pageants

performed over two days at five different locations, none of which were on the original

cycle route: Dean's Park, College Green, St. Sampson's Square, the Eye of York and

Museum Gardens. The pageants were performed on wagons by amateur actors,

volunteers and theatre professionals from York, and the production was funded by the

York Guilds and Companies - in the same manner as the medieval performances. The

wagon designs differed among the pageants with some elaborately constructed to convey

medieval real-to-life settings and costumes, like The Dream of Pilate's Wife and its use of

a wagon enclosed on three sides by flowing drapes, while others were fairly simple: for

instance, the wagon for The Massacre of the Innocents consisted of only a rectangular wagon covered in a white sheet and a chair.

The simplicity of the wagon designs articulated the importance of the performance sites for The Massacre and The Crucifixion, the two pageants I will discuss here, so that the action of these pageants was enriched by the location of the performance

5 Fiona Wilkie's discussion of the Millennium production articulates the relationship between memory and site that a production in the Minster conjures (see Wilkie, "Poor"). 93 rather than by the constructed set and backdrop of the wagon. These choices gave viewers the opportunity to incorporate the anachronistic significance of the performance

sites into their reception of the production. The costumes in each of the twelve pageants

also varied in style as they would have in medieval performances where there was little

concern for historical accuracy. Contemporary costumes in pageants such as The

Massacre - Herod in a black suit and red tie with his guards dressed in military attire -

enriched the visual anachronism of the performance by aligning Herod with a twenty-first

century military leader as way of reimagining the performance within a social context

that is contemporary with the audience. The representation of Cain and Abel as

contemporary Yorkshire farmers in this recent production also achieved the effect of

aligning the biblical characters within a modern context.6

Located in Museum Gardens, St. Mary's Abbey is situated just outside the northwest walls of medieval York and was constructed in the last half of the eleventh century, operating as one of the wealthiest Benedictine abbeys in England until it was dissolved in the middle of the sixteenth century. A portion of the Abbey ruins remain

standing today, and the outlines of the Norman church are visible in the shadows of the fifteenth-century ruins, each section of the church named with a plaque so visitors to

York are able to walk through this previously prosperous space. Today the ruins are a part of the Yorkshire Museum Gardens in a green space of the modern city that has been used since the 1951 revival as a performance space for the Play, and is a daily site where

6 The Cain and Abel pageant that was performed in the 2010 production came from the Towneley manuscript since the text in the Register is incomplete. 94 locals visit to take walks on the paths and to sit on the benches in the shadow of the

Roman Multangular Tower near the Abbey ruins.

Though especially poignant in the Millennium production and its use of the

Minster colour scheme to enrich the relationship between the performance space and the production, the fusion of site and performance was greatly articulated in a viewing of the wagon production of The Crucifixion at Museum Gardens. The audience was situated with its back to the city, facing the largest section of the surviving ruins, and the wagons were set up in front of the audience with the decayed building serving as the backdrop.

The skilfully designed wagon, most of which was dedicated to the mechanism used to raise the cross, was especially effective in the absence of a constructed backdrop on the wagon: the ruins in the background were emphasized as the crucified Christ was raised on the cross before the audience. The two thieves, positioned on the ground on either side of Christ and further back so they were close to the ruins, blended into the backdrop, their positioning emphasizing their lower status in relation to Christ.7

Watching a performance that traces through a narrative about a Christian past in front of a building that promotes Christian practices articulates the notion that the outcome of the Biblical narrative is logically a Christian present. The visual anachronism of seeing both the performance and the architectural space promotes the commonality of the narrative that is performed - we at once watch the performance of a biblical past and experience a space that promotes Christian practices. So for audiences of the Millennium production - even for those who do not subscribe to Christianity - the locale articulates the consequences of Christ's death and the subsequent Christian history that proceeds

7 See Appendix A for an image of the performance. 95 from belief in his Resurrection. The ruins of St. Mary's Abbey, however, demonstrate the material decay of such prosperous houses as a result of the Dissolution and the decline in

Church authority since the medieval period. The Abbey fell into ruin after the

Dissolution, a process marked by the very small portion of the Abbey that remains visible today - a section of one wall and a portion of the foundation that has become overgrown with grass.

This decay signals the lack of desire to rebuild the Abbey and restore it to its former glory, and is an interesting choice for the 1951 performance of the Play that was part of a festival meant to encourage the post-war rebuilding of British cities. The ruins in the background stood in for the buildings that needed repairs following the Second World

War, with an interesting association with the large-scale buildings constructed in the medieval period, perhaps as a way of suggesting that such buildings would again be constructed in the rebuilding process. With the Abbey ruins in the background of

Browne's productions, the decayed buildings also lent a sense of authenticity to the performances, emphasizing the "medievalness" of the Play: situated in front of a medieval building, though decayed beyond repair, the Play would somehow come to life in its medieval setting.

The 2010 performance of The Crucifixion at Museum Gardens, however, rather than promote the urban rebuilding process that was so much a part of the 1951 Festival, served instead as a way of articulating the decline in Church authority since the Middle

Ages. The buildings have not just fallen into disrepair, but are now a part of the public city space rather than the originally Church controlled space - a location that in some ways has become secularized. The choice to use the Abbey ruins for the 2010 production is not at all concerned with the medieval tradition of performing the pageants on wagons in the secular urban space, but rather with the modern tradition of performing the Play in the wake of St. Mary's. A large, open space is required for such performances, ensuring that the audience would have ample room to sit in front of the wagons as then passed through, and preventing the congestion of modern traffic that would have inconvenienced motorists if the Play was performed on the original route. The lack of cultural memory that Rogerson notes with regard to the first modern revival has thus been reconfigured into the place memory of the ruins, reminding audiences of the process by which we are now viewers of the Play in a locale that is comprised of consecrated ground rather than in a secular city space. The ruins are invested with a rich religious history, through its name

- St. Mary's - recalling its everyday purpose in medieval York as a place where clerics led a life of prayer, and at once an architectural space controlled by liturgical power rather than the secular civic power that controlled the Play in the medieval period.

Dean's Park, another stopping place on the recent cycle route, is a large green space located on the northwest side of York Minster and has been featured in every wagon production since 1994. The Park circles around the whole Minster except the south side, and even though this is one of the largest open spaces within the medieval walls its size pales in comparison to the towering building that it surrounds. Constructed in the late eleventh century, the building was completed in the late fifteenth century and towers high above any other church in York: the interior height of the vault is 27 meters

(just over 88 feet), by many standards higher than a six-storey building, and the exterior 97 height of the lantern tower - the highest part of the cathedral - is 71 meters (just over 232

feet) {Structurae). In the Middle Ages, the towering Minster would have loomed above

every other building in the city, making it visible from almost anywhere within the city

walls. The wagons were brought through the park with the audience situated with its back

to the west side of the nave, with the players facing east.

The towering Minster, looming above the audience, almost immediately became a

part of the revival since the tower bells above were within audible distance of the

performance.8 The pageant that was perhaps most interesting to see at this particular

location was The Massacre of the Innocents, a rendition of Herod's attempts to kill the

Christ-child, performed using a minimal wagon covered in a white sheet and a wooden

chair for the set.9 The most striking feature of watching The Massacre at Dean's Park was

the coincidental sound of the Minster bells tolling as the pageant ended, articulating the

importance of the site's role in the performance. The auditory anachronism of a Christian present enriched the viewers' reception from outside of the performance space by

signalling Herod's failure to kill the Christ-child and foreshadowing the eventual rise of

Christianity that led to the raising of such architectural monuments as the Minster.

Although the ringing bells may have been unintentionally present in the performance, they served to remind the audience of the social context beyond the stage and how this

context has evolved as a result of Herod's failure. If Herod had successfully killed the

Christ-child in his effort to remain king, the Minster would not have been built and the

entire premise of the Corpus Christi pageants would not have been conceived.

8 See Appendix A for an image of the west tower of York Minster. 9 See Appendix A for an image of the performance. 98

It is important to note that members of the contemporary audience may not have

shared in the Christian beliefs that allowed the pageants to function as didactic texts in

the medieval period: for the contemporary audience, the presence of the Minster bells in

the pageant serves as a reminder of a Christian historical tradition of performing the Play

near other sacred sites on the route rather than as a testament to the Play as a tool for

disseminating Christianity and reinforcing Church dogma. This ringing of bells during

the performances would have been even more pronounced in the Middle Ages since there

were countless churches will bell towers on and near the route, certainly the case at

Pavement and the role of All Saints' in the positional symbolism of the Mercers' Last

Judgement. These ringing bells likely repeated their tolling every few hours and recurred

several times during the medieval performances, each time invading the performance by

reminding the audience of the Christian present. Although the Minster did not serve as a

backdrop to the performance in the same way that the Abbey becomes a part of the

production in Museum Gardens, the tower bells remain an auditory reminder of the

medieval tradition of performing on a route filled with sacred spaces and of the liturgical

boundaries of such sites. The fact that the medieval performances were controlled by

secular rather than liturgical authorities and that the Play was not brought into the sacred

spaces of the churches along the cycle route in order to perform is a testament to the

social culture that was so dependent on the strict separation of Church and civic

authority. Paradoxically, the civic authorities controlled the performances while the

Church was at the height of its power in the Middle Ages, and only when the Church's 99 power began to dwindle in the late sixteenth century was the Play suppressed by the religious authorities.

By viewing the modern revivals at locales that were constructed in the medieval period just prior to the height of the Play's popularity, we not only notice the interesting tensions that arise with performing the pageants on consecrated ground, as in Museum

Gardens, or near a monument to Christianity, as with York Minster; but also, the significance of performing at such sites becomes increasingly anachronistic, at once recalling the place memories of these locations that are triggered by the performance of the Play and the realities that the pageants themselves present to us. As audiences, we are subject to the place memories associated with an abbey that has fallen to ruin after the

Dissolution, a site that was once prosperous and that now is little more than a diminished wall of stonework in a green space. The performance recalls this prosperity as well as the degradation of the material building, and though these ruins remain on consecrated ground, besides a plaque with the name of the Abbey there is little to suggest the sacredness of this locale. The Minster, on the other hand, remains a prosperous sacred space, its architecture constantly repaired in order to maintain its grandeur. Both of these sites present audiences with a medieval reality that is several centuries removed and that only remains within our cultural memories.

The pageants themselves depict a biblical reality, whether Old or New Testament, and every pageant except the Last Judgement is meant to present a historical outline of how Christianity became a part of our cultural memory. The biblical reality of the Play, the medieval reality that is conjured by the provenance of the text and the use of medieval spaces, and the modernity that is reflected by the staging techniques, the use of contemporary costumes for some pageants and the sounds of vehicular traffic nearby, all suggest the influences of coterminous realities on the audience. The coterminous realities that are conjured by these sites and the Play's performances at these locations - biblical

Bethlehem and Calvary, medieval and modem York - are precisely what attracts modem

audiences to these pageants as they are performed in the urban locale. As modem

audiences, we benefit from hindsight: we can see how a performance at the ruins of St.

Mary's Abbey prompts us to remember its place memory - we can see another reality within the performance that recalls the Dissolution, the events of which has caused the

Abbey to fall to such ruin, and a reality that was not present until well after the last performance of the Play in the mid-sixteenth century. The Play's content, too, speaks to the performance sites: while Herod condemns all of the male children in biblical

Bethlehem to death, the Minster bells toll to remind us of his failure to kill Christ.

Other realities remain invisible, such as the foundations of the Roman headquarters building that remains buried beneath the Minster, and these realities, too, are important for the performances. These absences - as with the near disappearance of the Abbey - speak to the material decay of events that remain within our cultural memory. We cannot necessarily see the Roman headquarters but the presence of the cultural memories that are so much a part of York's history remain imbedded in the places used for the performances, and for those who are aware of this history, the performance of the Play conjures the place memories that the pageants rely on to remain relevant in a social context that is increasingly less concerned with the religious values of the Play than with the historical tradition of dramatic performance. This is, I would argue, achieved in two ways: first, the pageants must be performed outside, within the urban landscape, and second, they must be situated within a locale that can recall a narrative that has a relationship to the Play.

Arguably, performing the Play within an enclosed space such as the Theatre

Royal or York Minster allows the director and production crew more control over the environment, allowing them to focus on costuming, acting techniques, set and lighting, rather than the mechanics of an outdoor production. In an outdoor production, the weather is unstable at best, the mechanics of transporting the wagon and setting the stage very quickly are at the forefront, and noise from outside the performance space often makes its way into the production, distracting the audience. In an outdoor setting, the audience is left in anticipation of the weather, with concerns about viewing the actors and hearing the performance above the other visual and auditory distractions. But by relocating the Play to an indoor space the coterminous realities that are so evident in

York's urban landscape are supressed, and the audience is left to rely solely on the theatrical production for meaning, focusing on the acting, script, costuming and set that are so important in an indoor production.

Although the 1992 and 1996 productions were successfully executed within the walls of York's Theatre Royal, the movement to a proscenium arch theatre - in some ways a sanitary space with a generic design that can be used by any performance - undermines the medieval practice of performing in the streets, a practice that was so important because of the association that these streets had with the performers and with York's daily practices. The Millennium production in the Minster, perhaps more successful than those conducted at the Theatre Royal because of the fusion between site and performance that was so emphasized by the staging, still would not have the same value for contemporary scholars of medieval drama. Although a performance at the

Minster would be a spectacular sight for audiences and conjures the place memory of the building as a Christian setting while the Christian past is at play on stage, the Minster production privileges the sacred space that was inaccessible to the medieval performances. The places of the Play were in the secular spaces of the city, and recalled the social cultures of the streets that the guild members - the same people who were responsible for producing the Play - experienced in their day-to-day practices. The street is thus the locale where the impact on the content of the Play is greatest, since this locale is where the daily practices of York's citizens are carried out.

Using the city space allows us to explore the ways in which medieval drama could be performed and some of the effects of the performance choices. We can use wagons in a variety of different designs that may or may not be feasible in the streets, we can see how the area outside of the immediate performance space can affect the performance and the audience reception, while furthermore evaluating how and which place memories

surface during a performance. The 2010 stopping places - Museum Gardens and Dean's

Park - and their performances conjure different place memories from those used in other years, depending on how the wagons were designed, the placement of the stages and other environmental factors. In some sense, a consideration of the playing spaces in these modern revivals teaches us more about how the Play might have been performed in the Middle Ages than the surviving records since we know very little about exactly how the mechanics of the medieval performances were carried out. We can see which wagon designs work more effectively, how a particular performance space functions for the audience, and we can alter the performance space as a way of controlling how the audience receives the production. In short, these modern renditions are performance laboratories for how a medieval production could have been conducted, while at the same time reminding us that medieval performances would have changed over the years owing to alterations in the performers, to the set and to the wagons.

Twycross' wagon productions in the late twentieth century were meant to test the feasibility of performing in the streets, using both wagons and the platea to present the pageants, while some later productions performed some of the pageants without wagons at all.10 In some ways this experimentation with wagon performances has led to a return back to the medieval manner of performance: wagons have become the norm, amateur actors remain at the fore, the guilds have reclaimed many of the pageants, and the costumes vary greatly in style. The performances have taught us that perhaps not all of the pageants were viewed by everyone - the 2010 production of twelve pageants ran for just under five hours, so likely medieval audiences saw a few pageants throughout the day rather than the whole production at once.

There is no way to know whether the revivals of the York Play were meant to be repeated every few years following the 1951 rendition, but nevertheless these pageants have become an important part of York's modern cultural memory. Even though these

10 In 1994 The Entry into Jerusalem and The Way to Calvary were performed without wagons (Rogerson, Playing 220). modern renditions are not performed on the original cycle route in the medieval city, the place memories that a performance at Museum Gardens and Dean's Park conjures enrich a Viewing of the performance, begging the question of whether the Play should be relocated to another architectural setting for the next large-scale production. For instance, we might ask ourselves how the pageants might be enriched by a performance at St.

Helen's Square in the centre of the city, or in another open space facing the River Ouse.

Rather than merely using the original route - though a useful exercise in understanding the anachronistic significance of performing in front of Starbucks in Low Petergate, or

Marks and Spencer on Pavement - perhaps we should consider how the cultural significance of the Play as a social phenomenon in the medieval period could benefit from a relocation. 105

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Appendix A MEDIAEVAL YORK - I

SUPPOSED SIT£ „ OF ABBEY MILLS

BRICK PONDS I IAACHBHHOP

Fig. 1. A rendering of medieval York from Angelo Raine's Medieval York: A Topographical Survey Based on Original Sources (London: John Murray (Publishers) Ltd., 1955; print).

•&. 115

Fig. 2. A rendering of the medieval cycle route based on the folded map provided in Angelo Raine's Medieval York: A Topographical Survey Based on Original Sources (London: John Murray (Publishers) Ltd., 1955; print). 116

Fig. 3. An enlargement of York's main city centre reproduced from the folded map provided in Angelo Raine's Medieval York: A Topographical Survey Based on Original Sources (London: John Murray (Publishers) Ltd., 1955; print). 117

Fig. 4. Shambles (Tamara Haddad. 2009; digital photograph). Fig. 5. The Massacre of the Innocents as performed at Deans Park (Tamara Haddad. 2010; digital photograph). 00 " 3: ?

Fig. 6. 77ze Crucifixion as performed at Museum Gardens (Tamara Haddad. 2010; digital photograph). V£> 120

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Fig. 7. The west tower of York Minster (Tamara Haddad. 2009; digital photograph).