Corpus Christi & Cycles

There are three basic types of liturgical dramas prevalent in the Medieval world:
1. Mystery play: presents an event or series of events from the Bible, "mystery" in this context referring to the spiritual mystery of Christ's redemption of mankind (or perhaps from the French mystère compare métier). In France, they were produced by amateur groups called confréries on multiple stages... In England they were generally in cycles…
2. Miracle play: presents an event or legend from some source other than the Bible, e.g. Acta Sanctorum
3. Morality play: an allegory (Webster's Encyclopedic Dictionary of the English Language: a narrative in which abstract ideas are personified) intended to teach a religious of moral lesson e.g. Everyman and The Castle of Perseverance.

Cycles are almost always mystery plays, though at the time in England they were called Corpus Christi plays. In 1264 Pope Urban IV declared the need for a new holy day to celebrate the Last supper and the Eucharist. He argued that while the Last Supper was a major part of Holy week, it was overshadowed by the Crucifixion and other events of the hectic week. The joyous event of the gift of Christ's body and blood deserved its own observance. The Feast of Corpus Christi (finally formally instituted in 1311 by Clement V) falls the Thursday after Trinity Sunday: sometime between May 23 and June 24. Because of inaccuracies in the Medieval calendar, the actual original date fell between modern June 4 and July 6, when the weather would be pleasant and conducive to outdoor gatherings.

Four English cycles are mostly extant:
1. York (48 plays);
2. Chester (25 plays);
3. Wakefield (or more properly Towneley after the family who owned the manuscript--32 plays);
4. N-Town (mistakenly called Ludus Conventriae--42 plays).
In addition, parts of cycles exist from a great many other towns: Beverly, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, London (which may be the source of the Brome Abraham and Isaac). Cycles were most popular beginning in the late 13th Century thought the 15th Century and into the 16th.

The Subject matter and structure of all four existing cycles is always the same: Divine history from the Fall of the Angels through the Last Judgment. The most important episodes are:
1. the Fall of Lucifer, 2. the Creation and Fall of Man, 3. Cain and Abel, 4. Noah and the Food,
5. Abraham and Isaac, 6. the Nativity sequence, 7. the Raising of Lazarus, 8. the Passion and Resurrection sequences, and 9. Doomsday.
Only slightly less important are: 1. the story of Moses, 2. the Procession of Prophets, 3. Christ's Baptism, 4. the Temptation in the Wilderness, and 5. the Assumption and Coronation of the Virgin.

Kolve finds these central episodes to be linked to one another by an elaborate series of foreshadowing, or figural relationships. Adam's fall, for example, both confirms the earlier even (or 'antetype') of Lucifer's fall and prefigures the temptation of Christ through which the original wrong will be righted." Unlike morality plays, the cycle plays did not try to influence people to alter their behavior in any way to achieve salvation, but rather they were a celebration of the "Good News" of the salvation preached by the apostles that had been granted to all through the Passion and Resurrection of Christ.

The Cycles were produced by the individual cities with the responsibility of each particular play going to an appropriate guild: the shipwright's guild would do Noah and the Ark, the bakers guild would do the Loaves and the Fishes, the carpenters and plasterers might do the Creation of the World, the butchers might do the Slaughter of the Innocents, etc.

The York Cycle has 48 plays in its 1475 version, which would take fifteen hours in performance-by far the most extensive of the extant cycles. Eleven of the plays are based on Old Testament material; eight on the Nativity; nearly all the rest are on the Life, Death, and Resurrection of Christ. The York cycle has been performed in the 20th Century, though some changes were necessary as the level of realism in the Crucifixion section, written as it was for an audience accustomed to public executions, was more graphic than 20th sensibilities could suffer. But now that Mel Gibson has brought graphic realism to the telling of the crucifixion, they may want to rethink their scrupulousness. The York Crucifixion was originally the responsibility of the Pinneres (makers of pins or pegs used to hold boards together) and Painters. The four soldiers assigned to carry out the execution of Christ are very professional and take relish and satisfaction in their work, the first being very well pleased with the well-driven nail in the right hand. At that point they discover mistakes in the construction of the cross: the holes for the left hand and feet are too far out. The solution is to pull the offending members into place with ropes, which they proceed to do, tearing sinews and veins. They have great difficulty raising the cross, having several false starts and when they finally succeed, they drop the Cross into the mortice, or slot in the ground, with a horrible jolt, all the while commenting on the difficulty of their macabre task. They are still performed periodically in York in the old City and in Toronto, Canada. To read any or all of these plays, go to http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/AnoYork.html

The Chester Cycle, like the York, was performed using Pageant wagons. The earliest reference to a Chester play performed by the guilds occurs in a document of 1422. The document is a judgement in a case in which both the Ironmongers' and Carpenters' companies had sought assistance in putting on the Corpus Christi play. There is no reference to a Corpus Christi play after 1472 and by the early 16th century it had been replaced by a Whitsun play. In the 20th century, the play Noye's Fludde (Noah's Flood), featuring poor Noah's wife carping about having to cope with a boatload of animals, was set operatically by both Igor Stravinsky and Benjamin Britten. Revived at roughly five year intervals since 1951 as a tourist attraction, perhaps in response to the success of the Oberammergau Passion Play, the next production will take place June 28 - July 19, 2008 in the grounds of Chester Cathedral.

The Wakefield Cycle is found in the Towneley Manuscript, written between 1440-1485. The manuscript was a "register" or master book in which each play was copied together with at least some of the production information etc. The manuscript has been edited at least once, and an attempt was made to "correct" at least one of the plays to conform to Reformation standards: the full annotation reads, "corectyd & not playd." Five of the plays are clearly the product of an unknown genius whom we call The Wakefield Master:

The N-Town Cycle formerly (and mistakenly) called the Ludus Coventriae, is filled with stage directions in a mix of Latin and English which describe costuming or actions (e.g., Jews dancing around the cross). While many of the biblical history plays in N-Town can be performed on pageant-wagons, the text indicates that they were not performed processionally in the manner of York’s plays, but rather with the use of mansion staging. The Mary Play and the Passion Plays are best suited to ‘place and scaffold’, which uses raised stages (‘scaffolds’) and the ‘platea’ (‘place’) between the stages.