The mediaeval stage, volume 2 (of 2)Chambers, E. K. (Edmund Kerchever)
History
The mediaeval stage, volume 2 (of 2)
Chambers, E. K. (Edmund Kerchever)
Drama, Medieval -- History and criticism; Theater -- History -- Medieval, 500-1500
Where there were craft-plays, social and religious guilds sometimes
gave supplementary performances. The ‘schaft’ or parochial guild of St.
Dunstan’s, Canterbury, owned a play of Abraham and Isaac in 1491. This
may have been merely a contribution towards the craft-cycle on Corpus
Christi day. On the other hand, the play of St. George, contemplated
by the guild of that saint at New Romney in 1490, was probably an
independent undertaking. The town play here was a Passion play. At
York there were two rivals to the Corpus Christi plays. One was the
_Paternoster_ play, for the production of which a guild of the Lord’s
Prayer was in existence at least as early as 1378. By 1488 this guild
was absorbed into the Holy Trinity guild of the mercers, and in the year
named the play was given, apparently at the charges of the mercers,
instead of the ordinary cycle. All the crafts contributed to similar
performances in 1558 and 1572. But by this time the supervision, under
the corporation, of the play had passed to one of the few religious
guilds in York which had escaped suppression, that of St. Anthony. The
other extraordinary York play was a Creed play, bequeathed to the guild
of Corpus Christi in 1446. This was stationary, and was acted decennially
about Lammas-tide (August 1) at the common hall. In 1483, it was ‘apon
the cost of the most onest men of every parish,’ who were, it may be
supposed, members of the guild. In 1535 the crafts paid for it instead
of their usual cycle. Upon the suppression of the guild, the play-book
passed into the custody of the hospital of St. Thomas.
In the same way there are instances in which the clergy, who elsewhere
lent help to the craft-plays, gave independent exhibitions of their own.
At Chester, before the Reformation, they eked out the Whitsun cycle by a
supplementary performance on Corpus Christi day. The priors of St. John
of Jerusalem, Holy Trinity, and All Saints contributed their share to
the somewhat incongruous blend of religious and secular entertainments
provided by the traders of Dublin for the earl of Kildare in 1528. The
so-called _Ludus Coventriae_ has often been supposed to be the play-book
of a cycle acted by the Grey Friars or Franciscans of Coventry. This
theory hardly survives critical examination. But in 1557, during the
Marian reaction, a Passion play was given at the Grey Friars in London,
and the actors were possibly restored brethren. Miracle-plays must often
have been performed in choir schools, especially upon their traditional
feast-days of St. Nicholas, St. Catherine, and the Holy Innocents.
But there are only two examples, besides that of St. Paul’s in 1378,
actually upon record. In 1430 the _pueri eleemosynae_ of Maxstoke acted
on Candlemas day in the hall of Lord Clinton’s castle; and in 1486 those
of St. Swithin’s and Hyde abbeys combined to entertain Henry VII with the
Harrowing of Hell as he sat at dinner in Winchester.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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