The common word for these craft-plays is pageants, a word of uncertain origin, which is also applied to the vehicle or movable stage whereon the acting took place. These pageants[670] were divided into two parts; the actors dressed--and no doubt waited also, when their presence was not required on the stage--in the under part, where they were concealed by hanging cloths; the play was set forth on the upper part, which was open to the view, and furnished with suitable scenery, and the floor strewn with rushes. Journeymen and other hirelings dragged the pageants from place to place, the play being repeated at convenient points within the city, beginning with Gosford Street. The second and third stations appear to have been at the end of Much Park Street, most likely the corner of Jordan Well, and at the New Gate respectively. Dr Craig thinks that there were ten stations, which would accord well with the number of pageants and of wards within the city, though I cannot think that each of the plays was performed ten times over. Flesh is weak, and it is difficult to see how either actors or spectators could have borne the strain.[671] Moreover even the long light days of May or June would hardly have sufficed for such a stupendous task: when it was once essayed, all the pageants being first played before Richard Wood's door to pleasure Queen Margaret, in 1457, daylight failed, and the performance of "Doomsday" was perforce abandoned. Indeed it seems that this particular play, which naturally concluded the series, was but thrice acted, since the drapers regularly order three "worldys"--for which in 1556 they paid Croo two shillings--one to be destroyed, it appears, in each performance.[672] [Illustration: OLD HOUSE IN COX STREET] No doubt this mobility of the theatre, and the simultaneous acting of various pageants at different stations was necessitated by the lack of an open space within the city sufficient to contain the throng of spectators. The acting of single plays, not belonging to the traditional cycle, such as the play of S. Catherine acted in 1491, or that of S. Crytyan or Christian, "magnus ludus vocatus seynt Xpeans pley,"[673] performed at Whitsuntide in 1505, took place in the Little Park where space was ample. That a regular open-air amphitheatre was constructed--such as the _plân an guare_ which survives at S. Just in Cornwall, is improbable; the Park-Hollows, where later Lollard and Marian martyrs suffered death, would maybe serve aptly for the purpose. Such an indelible impression did S. Christian's play make on those that beheld it, that years later when divers neighbours and friends were asked to give proof of Walter Smith's age--it was the Walter Smith who was after strangled by means of Dorothy, his faithless wife--they recalled that his baptism took place the year S. Christian's play was played in the Little Park.