The topic of my paper hovers between two different types of dramatic performance, and yet I should like to suggest that by considering them together we might come closer to some aspects of the dynamics of processions and how these enhance the nature of dramatic experience. It seems apparent that processions by their very nature make statements about values and attitudes, especially as they are often an urban phenomenon, and also that these are enhanced by their construction and scope. This comprises people within the procession together with their physical appearance and the circumstances in which they are located, and the way in which the procession is arranged and conducted in terms of spectacle. There may have been carts or floats, and equally the procession may have contained people walking, sometimes in association with these set pieces, sometimes not. The order in which items are presented within the procession is a major factor. This may be hierarchical, or perhaps reflect a narrative. From a dramatic point of view one particularly important aspect is that processions imply viewers from many different angles, each one differently perceiving what is presented. There is also the context of the procession, and its relationship to other processional activities, which may lie outside the one under observation. In medieval societies processions were frequent and varied, and their primary intentions more than a little complicated. Indeed the historical recovery of such contexts seems a monumentally difficult task. However it is not an overstatement to suggest that there might be a kind of intertextuality between different examples at the same place. This is most likely for example in the relationship between the York Plays and the Corpus Christi procession which took place on the same day or on adjacent ones for more than a century.

However, in order to isolate some dramatic aspects of processions, I should like to concentrate here upon two different types of dramatic performance. The first is typified by the York cycle which operates by containing all its plays within a processional framework. The second is exemplified by the third day of Arnoul Gréban’s Passion where there is more than one procession, but they are entirely circumscribed by the dramatic fiction of the cycle as a whole: this is not a processional performance, but a performance which contains processions. Though these types may seem to be rather different – as indeed they are – I should like to suggest that the dynamics of procession make significant impact nevertheless in both types. Nor should they be considered as mutually exclusive. Before coming to some details of these principal examples of moving and fixed frameworks, however, I should like to review a number of variants. In doing so we may fill in some contextual detail about a variety of effects which processional cycles may engender.

It is apparent that processions played a large part in medieval German drama, and what I have to say here about them owes much to the seminal article by N. Brooks in which he listed eight ways in which procession and dramatic performance may be interlocked (142-4). These included a procession through the town followed by a performance derived from it at a terminal location, often a market place. For Corpus Christi there could be fixed locations, perhaps having some apposite religious potency for the celebrations embodied in the day’s ritual, at which short performances might occur as the procession came by. The dramatic performance might occur at first, and the procession could follow. At one point in Frankfurt in 1498, there was a special arrangement made because the performers asked for specific permission to walk in the procession after they had performed the play. They walked in costume, but there were five ‘versions’ of Christ derived from different moments of the Passion, each registering a different moment in it, such as one carrying a column (Brooks, 156-8). The mode adopted might consist of a procession to a place of performance, and another after the performance was complete. Local customs have to be observed integrating with, and taking account of topography. At Chester there is an interesting feature in that the plays performed on pageant carts generally needed to find a downhill route (Marshall, 107). Such aspects are also affected by the social and religious significance of particular places on the route such as the Abbey gates at Chester or the Pavement at York, which was also used for public executions.¹ Where the procession relied less upon speaking parts and more upon spectacle, there arise questions about what actually went on upon the carts or floats. In the Ommegang at Brussels, which featured a series of pageants on the joys of Our Lady, the eyewitness account of 1556 suggests that what was perceived had the potential of movement. The wagon celebrating the Nativity, besides showing the Shepherds and having angels singing, revealed Mary as if in bed with the Infant -

…while Joseph carried out his carpenter’s trade. From time to time

he stopped his work, as though delighted by the gladness of the sound

of the heavenly concert of angels and the song of the shepherds. (Transl. from Leendertz, 494)

Brooks also notes that in some processions the performers did speak while on the move – ‘en cheminant sans que personne du jeu s’areste’ - for the performance at Draguignan (142). In these examples it seems that there is a double time in operation in that the time involved in passing by is interrelated with the dramatic time within the procession upon the float. The latter in itself also follows its own repeating dynamic as the fixed spectacle or the potential for movement must have been actually repetitive, or it must have seemed to be so. For several of these varieties of performance there is a further aspect in the behaviour of the audience at processional events. In some cases, one might suppose for wealthier ranks of society, seats were provided, and the process of performance consisted in the passing of items before such a fixed place of observation. However there must have been occasions when audiences moved with the procession, fixing attention, at least for a time, upon a limited part of it. This later may have been the case at Künzelsau, as we shall see later, and at York it seems that some spectators followed the progress of the guild pageant to which they belonged around the route (Meredith, 1996, 102).

At York, if Margaret Dorrell’s reconstruction is correct, it seems that for some years the procession and the play started at about the same time – by 4.30 a.m. on Corpus Christi - and that the procession made more rapid progress to the Minster while the play, following the same route, stopped to perform at a sequence of five or six stations (Dorrell, 76). Because of this difference of pace, the Mayor was probably able to proceed with the Corpus Christi procession as far as the Minster, and then return along the route in reverse to the Common Hall in good time to view the plays as they arrived there later in the morning. Such a reconstruction, however, reminds us that even at York, where we are dealing with a span of up to two hundred years, it was not always so: we have to be alert to the processes of change and modification which are sometimes apparent, and always potentially significant in the surviving examples. At York it appears that by 1468 the procession was moved to the next day, Friday, after Corpus Christi (Johnston, 1974, 56-7). Such changes may also have contributed to the reaction of those taking part in the procession and those watching it, both being affected by memory.

The variety of the content of processions also deserves our attention, and this too has a developmental feature. To take an example, the procession at Dresden in the early fifteenth century consisted of a series of figures including bible scenes and other items, but these scenes were not necessarily the same as the St John Play which was performed in the market place at the end of the processing (Brooks, 167; Neumann, 186-9). The interrelationship between such narratives is clearly a matter for interpretation and bears directly upon the kind of dramatic experience which may have arisen.

In the surviving information about some German and Spanish processions there is also the question of how and when the spoken word came to be incorporated into the processional material. At Valencia in Spain there was an early processional tradition discernible by 1373, and by 1425 there were stopping places where some sort of performance or demonstration was given. The staging was ambitious with many striking physical effects, including men disguised as animals, but gradually dialogue was introduced. This process did not, however, mean that the tableaux vivants disappeared (Parker, 144). The characteristic effects of such items were thus retained for a very long while, and may still be encountered in Spanish processions today. The presence of dialogue in processions will probably remain very difficult to determine. The surviving documentation often gives us a few speeches, and the treatment of various episodes can be seen to vary remarkably in depth and subtlety. But here we are dealing with what is after all only documentation: the complexity of what actually happened, changing perhaps from year to year, remains hard to determine. Moreover custom dictated that things were not necessarily the same each year, and indeed this might have some practical or economic implications. At Freiburg the Passion was performed in an interval of the Corpus Christi procession in the sixteenth century. But it appears that the Butchers only inserted this at its proper place in the procession every seven years (Brooks, 155).

In spite of the many uncertainties in this review, we can assume that the interrelationship between play and procession gave rise to a range of effects which can be described as dramatic. The interrelationship of parts of the processions, the capacity to involve the audiences in a sequence of events and the integration of visual effects depending upon impersonation, and spectacular features of costume, and setting, and the possibility of dialogue, as well as one aspect I have hardly mentioned so far, the use of music - all these seem to me to be essentially dramatic features even though the primary context is processional. The fact that many processions also interrelated to spoken words must have enhanced this experience immeasurably. Perhaps this all boils down to the notion that both plays and processions were in a large measure performed events, whatever the local conventions surrounding them.

As an example of the complexity of processional drama I should like now to consider the Corpus Christi play from Künzelsau which has survived in a manuscript dated 1479.² The text contains 5872 lines and is divided into over sixty episodes, some of them containing only a few lines of speech. This cycle is unusual in that its narrative ranges from Creation to the Last Judgement. The closing sections of the cycle actually depart from a narrative sequence and contain a Creed play, a procession of Saints, a dispute between Ecclesia and Synagogus, and a play about Antichrist. Each episode is introduced by the Rector Processionis, an office which it is difficult to evaluate, but which clearly has an expository function, and has parallels in other German cycles, such as the role of Augustinus in the Frankfurter Passionsspiel.³ The evidence for the mode of production at Künzelsau poses some problems. There seems to be no doubt that a procession was involved with this cycle as the words Registrum processionis corporis Christi are at the head of the text. At the beginning there is this stage direction:

This implies that the sacrament is present, presumably as part of the Corpus Christi ritual embodied in the procession, and following this movement the Rector prays. A few lines later he is directed to turn ad populum (l. 26sd). However, the most interesting aspect of staging comes in two later directions:

In secunda staccione Angeli cantant: Silete. (l. 685sd)

In tercia staccione Angeli cantant: Silete ut supra. (l. 2139sd)

These are the only two specific mentions of stations. The first is not designated, but presumably it was the place of the Rector’s first address as noted above. It will be seen that the mentions of the two stations occur after disproportionate numbers of lines and this has led to uncertainty about whether the whole play was done at each of the three stations, and to speculation that there were more stations which are not mentioned in the text. Perhaps the most likely explanation, without disturbing the pointers in the text, is that the full play was done only when the procession was over, but at each of the three stations a special effect was inserted: at the first the Rector’s prayer and initial address to the people, and at the other two the musical set pieces by the angels. The word ‘silete’, occurring at the two named stations, is interesting as it often means in other cycles in France and the Low Countries that there was a significant pause, a kind of change of mood or underlining of significance, marked by a musical item, sung or instrumental. It is worth noting that after the music for the second station there follows a longish episode (188 lines) concerned with the exposition of the Ten Commandments; after the third there follow the five episodes about John the Baptist (365 lines).

The unevenness in the size of the episodes in the Künzelsau manuscript is intriguing. For example a larger number of lines than usual is allocated to the debate of the Daughters of God (1099-1345), and the Three Kings (1664-1997). In these the dialogue is complex, and for the Kings, at least, there is a rich texture of speech and action. A remarkable compression of events occurs in the stage direction following the kiss by Judas in the scene of the Arrest:

Tunc accedunt Judei et capiunt, ligent et percutient Jhesum cum magno strepitu. (3271sd)

This probably took some time when acted: it is essentially a visual sequence, and it is difficult to see how it could be integrated into processional time. It points again to a concluding presentation of the action of the whole cycle at the end.

However, the crucifixion is handled quite differently. The events are accomplished in only 46 lines of dialogue (3670-3715), but the stage directions indicate that the action is portentous and symbolic. Though there is very little dialogue, the musical element is strong, and may well have accompanied the movement of the actors. We should notice particularly how close these directions are to one another in the text.

Accedat Salvator cum corona cum duobus armigeris sew militibus. Rector Processionis legat. (3671sd)

Accedat Salvator cum statua et cum duobus militibus. Rector Processionis legat. (3679sd)

Accedat Salvator cum cruce cum duobus militibus. Rector Processionis legat ad populum: ulna se portans crucem legat. (3689sd)

Accedat unus sacerdos de sacerdotibus, Et laycus unus cum eo portans signum crucis. Tunc idem sacerdos tenens crucem in manu, Et cantat. Ecce lignum crucis… [&c.] Chorus respondeat Beati [&c.]

Tunc idem sacerdos legat ad populum. (3697sd)

Tunc accedat Johannes apostolus cum Maria portans glaudium, Et cum ea tres Marie sine pixide. Rector Processions legat ad populum.

Because there is so little space between these directions it seems certain that there must have been three actors playing Salvator at this time. It looks as though the sacerdos was performing a significant ceremonial climax to the sequence, holding the cross and speaking to the people.

If we interpret the arrangements for performance in this way, it follows that the concept of the performance was that the playing of all the text took place after the procession was over, and that there were inserted three moments of anticipation as the procession left the first station and as it passed by the other two. There would thus be an impact which was processional, one visual and possibly musical episode following another, and the culmination would be the spoken performance heavily embellished with music and spectacle. This arrangement seems to follow clearly the implications of the text as it has come down to us. It would be furthered if the proposal that the audience went with the procession so that the whole experience developed through the procession to the performance. One intriguing item is the word accedat (or accedant) which is here the standard formula throughout the text for introducing the movement required by stage directions. I think this means ‘comes’ or ‘arrives’ and if so, it would be very fitting for the beginning of each episode as the actors reach the place of performance. There are also hints that some of the characters have places (loci) of their own suggesting that during the performance they had a base to which they returned, or at which they were ‘parked’. Such loci would seem to make it more likely that the performance itself was based in one location with specific places associated with individual characters. Such seems likely with this stage direction:

Accedunt Salvator in creacione sedens in locum patris, Et Salvator in resurreccione, sedens in locum fily. (1098sd)

The overall interest in this cycle is that it offers a consciousness of the interest in procession which anticipates the culminating performance.

In turning to the York Plays we find that the evidence points unmistakably to a performance comprising about 50 plays whose texts appear in the Register, which has been dated at 1463-1477 (Meredith, 2000, 29-32). These were done on a procession of pageant wagons which moved through the city from Holy Trinity Church to the Pavement, along a route which passed the Guildhall and the Minster Gates. For a substantial period there was an attempt to do the plays annually, but for various reasons, including the incidence of plague, this was not always achieved. White notes up to 27 performances between 1399 and 1572 (53 and 76 note 23). This route had special status because much of it was used regularly for the processional entry into the city of important persons in the realm, including monarchs. Significantly it passed both the Guildhall and close to the Minster. For the plays, there were usually twelve stops at which each play was performed in turn: some of them were fixed, but there were changes to a few, and the number was sometimes higher. The effect of this method was to extend the total playing time to many hours – from dawn to well into the June darkness after midnight.

The origin of this method of production is obscure, but, as with other performance developments in cycle plays through several continental countries, it probably had something to do with the development of Corpus Christi processions which started early in the fourteenth century.⁴ The idea of a procession was developed creatively by the playmakers at York in certain directions, but the result just described seems to be unique. Much of the material in this paper shows that the York method was not a strictly isolated phenomenon: its development over a period must have owed much to a more general awareness of cycle plays. Yet neither in England, nor on the continent, were the arrangements made as they were at York at the same period of development as far as I am aware. I do not propose to debate that point here, but ask for at least provisional concurrence.⁵ The effect upon the exposition of the narrative of salvation in the York manner was enormous, and, in dramatic terms, richly successful. It meant that the narrative had to be broken up into short manageable sections, and that, though there could be cross reference, each episode was potentially different. This was an opportunity, not a handicap. Even though this is a religious and social activity, there are distinct aesthetic issues involved in making the most of limitations of a tight timetable, narrow streets and the difficulty if manoeuvring pageants wagons round the city. But, as Wordsworth said of the sonnet, ‘nuns fret not at their convent’s narrow room’. These constraints became opportunities (‘twas pastime to be bound’), and I will here briefly address some of them.

The authors are unknown, and many critics have thought the plays to be the result of a long and frequently modified process of collaboration and development. Perhaps some of the latter was ‘on the hoof’ so to speak, something which might account for John Clerke’s meticulous correction of the Register, apparently as he tried to keep it up to date with changes which had occurred.⁶ Even if the so-called York Realist is an ascertainable entity, his work is definable at least in part because it is differentiated from much of the text which is not attributed to him. Differing approaches to individual plays can certainly be perceived as between the six short plays concerned with Creation and Fall, and those in the Passion sequence which are much longer and show different styles of language and theatrical imagination.⁷ It seems unlikely that all the pageant wagons were constructed in the same way, but there are also remarkably ingenious and versatile ways of managing the theatrical space which was created in the street once the wagon arrived at a place of performance. For the Dream of Pilate’s Wife (Play 30) the manipulation of areas of action is richly complex. It begins with Pilate in his place of audience. After Percula, his wife, has visited him and left, they are both seen retiring to their beds in separate places. When Diabolus terrifies the sleeping Percula in a dream, she sends her son to warn Pilate. Meanwhile Annas and Caiaphas are leading Christ, bound, in a sort of procession to Pilate’s house. When they arrive there is an elaborate procedure before they are admitted. Pilate is seen again in his place of audience, and the procession arrives, followed by Percula’s son with his mother’s warning and there follows the extended scene of the Examination of Christ by Pilate. This last sequence takes 281 lines out of 546.

The sheer physical intimacy of the processional performance at York also demands our attention. Modern reconstructions of performances in a streetscape, which is still remarkably close to that of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, has led to the conclusion that although the actors had to project in the open air, the closeness of the audience, its rather limited size at each station, and the effect of the buildings which could be used as sounding boards meant that the characteristic experience of watching the cycle was a great deal more intimate than the huge public arena spectacle we shall shortly be considering in Gréban’s Passion. Many of the plays also used quite limited casts.

But the processional mode encouraged features particularly related to frequent changes of actors, and presumably in the differing shapes of the wagons. For each of these aspects a new start could be made at each station. This shows itself in the boasts which begin some of the plays. For example plays 29 (Examination by Caiaphas) and 30 (Pilate’s Wife’s Dream) begin respectively with boasts by Caiaphas and Pilate. Both quickly give identifying features which would bear out the significance implied by the visual effect of their costumes: Caiaphas boasts his ‘connyng of clergy’ (29/5), and Pilate claims the Emperor is his father (30/10-11). These two characters had appeared play 26 (The Conspiracy), but played by different actors. It is an intriguing problem whether their costumes would be similar: most likely there would have been links. We might also notice the contrast between the conclusion of The Baptism of Christ (Play 22), and the beginning of The Temptation which follows. The former is a blessing of the audience by John the Baptist:

Now sirs, that barne that Marie bare,

Be with you all. (21/174-5)⁸

As the next play begins, a few moments later, Diabolus thrusts his way through the crowd:

Make rome be-lyve, and late me gang,

Who makes here all this thrang?

High you hense! High myght you hang

right with a roppe. (22/1-4)

Perhaps the wagon would not yet be in place and the first sign of the change of mood would be this terrible voice, issuing, one might suppose, from behind a grotesque and two-faced mask. He speaks for 54 lines before he approaches Christ in the desert.

The point has been made that there is a strong possibility that for two sections of the performance, if not for more, two wagons were used in tandem. These occur in the Nativity sequence, where a link is discernible between Plays 14 (The Nativity) and 15 (Shepherds); and in the two closely associated texts for the play about the Three Kings and Herod which is numbered 16 in Beadle’s edition but which had been previously numbered 16 (Masons) and 17 (Goldsmiths) by Toulmin Smith. The codicological situation is different for these two cases, and it also true that the times when there may have been productions involving two wagons differ.

At the end of Play 14 there are two notes in different hands ‘Here take care for the shepherds’ and ‘it follows after’.⁹ Next to this there is also erased the first line of Play 15. When the latter begins the Shepherds are in the fields where they receive the message from the angel. They set off to Bethlehem, where they find the Child;

Loo! Here is the house and here is hee. (25/91).

The possibility is that they then worship the Child, who is situated within the wagon of Play 14. Beadle makes it clear that the revisions to the Register occurred after 1477 and that if this close association was developed in this way it too occurred after that date (425-7).

The interrelationship between the plays attributed to the Masons and the Goldsmiths is rather different in the manuscript. The first begins with a boasting Herod who expresses his power, flattered and abetted by his son. He is then warned by a messenger about the arrival of the Kings, who follow into his presence. They are received cunningly by Herod, who encourages them to return to him when they have found the Child, so that, as he claims, he too may worship it. The play ends with Herod anticipating the result of his plot. The Goldsmiths’ play begins with the Kings’ meeting before their visit to Herod exchanging their anticipation of the new God. The text then continues with their visit to Herod couched in the same words and action as the Masons’, but it goes on to the Kings’ visit to the Child with their gifts, and the Angel’s warning to avoid Herod on their return. The most satisfactory explanation seems to be that before 1432 the Goldsmiths used two wagons, but that after that date the action switched through a sequence containing all four episodes (boast, Kings’ meeting, visit to Herod, adoration), but with the Kings visiting Herod on the Masons’ wagon (Jerusalem), followed by their visit to the Child for their offering on the Goldsmiths’ (Bethlehem). Such a move could have been on foot, but Beadle raises the possibility that they travelled from one to the other on horseback. If this were so the performance at each station would require a remarkable exploitation of the space available. It appears that after 1477 the Masons were assigned the Purification (Play 17).¹⁰

Though these cases are manifestly different, their value for our discussion is to illustrate that the processional performance could be adapted at different times to accommodate changes in methods of performance, and that one of the devices which might be called upon was the combinations of two wagons making a different kind of theatrical milieu. This is not only a matter of having two locations available, it also implies that the action and language of each separate play might be associated as part of the dramatic experience.

Another configuration presents itself in the Entry to Jerusalem (Play 25). From outside the city Christ sends two disciples to fetch the ass. While he waits at Bephage (88) they approach ‘yone castell’, though this is not very specific, and there they are greeted sympathetically. The Janitor gives them the ass and he himself goes off to warn the Citizens ‘wher thei stande,’ (110) of the good news. The eight Citizens discuss the importance of the visitor, including prophecies and lineage, and they decide to meet Christ:

Go we than with processioune

To mete that comely as us awe

With braunches, floures and unysoune;

With myghtfull songes her on a rawe

Our childir schall

Go synge before, that men may knawe

To this graunte we all. (25/260-266)

This procession, then, has some descriptive detail and a purpose, and it also hints at an order, with the children in front. In the action which follows Christ is lifted upon the ass and rides towards Jerusalem, with his followers:

For ryde I will

Unto yone cyte ye se so nere,

Ye shall me folowe, sam and still. (25/282-4)

On the way he encounters the blind man and the lame man, and then Zacheus, the publican, who, being short, climbs a sycamore to look down upon Christ (427). For the blind man the Pauper describes the encounter:

Jesu, the prophite full of grace,

Comys here at hande.

And all the cetezens thay are bowne

Gose hym to mete with melodye

With the fayrest processioune

That ever was sene in this Jury.

He is right nere. (25/306-13)

These circumstantial details, embedded in the text, may be only ‘imaginative’, but it is equally likely that they represent the physical relationships in the episode and its encounters.¹¹ As Christ reaches Jerusalem, he dismounts and performs the scriptural lamentation for the city (472-82). His sombre mood is changed however by the welcome from the Citizens who, as they encounter him, hail his virtues in anaphoric verses. At the end of the text the direction Tunc cantent has been added, but this is clearly not the only indication that music was part of this scene. It is likely that the miraculous cures performed by Christ during his procession were symbolic of his healing of the ills of mankind. The encounter with the Citizens, which is required to be a meeting of two moving groups, is an opportunity for a significant change of mood.

Christ led up to Calvary (Play 34) adds to our sense of the richness and flexibility of the processional mode of performance. One might almost ask why a pageant cart is needed for this particular episode - except of course that even if it were somewhat superfluous to the staging, it might still have other uses and meanings in its place in the procession of wagons. At this point the recent debate at Toronto, as reflected in Early Theatre 3, about how far off wagon playing was a medieval practice needs to be mentioned. Margaret Rogerson has queried it in theory on the grounds that there is sparse evidence in its favour, and that the famous raging Herod at Coventry was anomalous. Many modern directors, however, including Meg Twcross in her remarkable 1992 production of the Resurrection at York, have relied heavily upon using the street level, and most of us who have witnessed this have found it theatrically effective.¹² The following analysis if Play 34 favours the concept of off wagon playing, but the issue hardly permits a dogmatic approach. The play begins with the Soldiers’ preparing for the crucifixion. The First impresses his own importance upon the audience as the leader sent by Pilate. The people (standing in the street) are to make room that the Soldiers may wend their way (16-18). Wymond (one of the Soldiers) has already been sent for the cross, one to be made from ‘the king’s tree’. When he returns, they examine it - it must have been quite large, so they might not have put it on the wagon - and, anticipating their tasks further in sending for nails, they go off to make further preparation. John then appears with Mary: he too anticipates, but in a different mood. He suggests that they sit together sighing (34/129) and perhaps here they actually sit upon the wagon. In the leaf that is missing they are joined by the other Marys and these are still speaking as Christ is led on by the Soldiers. There is a heated exchange between the Soldiers and the sympathetic onlookers, the latter being driven off by threats. Attention turns to Christ and the cross, Simon being forced to help in the carrying. Christ is stripped of his clothes, which are stuck with blood to his body. He is tied again ‘as beeste in bande’ and led off, possibly along the street. It is quite conceivable that some of this action took place upon the wagon, but it seems just as likely that the presence of the audience close to the acting space would be used to enhance the effect that this is an episode on the move. The last words by the Third Soldier lead inexorably to the crucifixion, already in our minds from the thoughts of the Soldiers and of the supporters, and about to appear on the next wagon. He says:

If anye aske aftir us,

Kenne thame to Calvarie. (34/349-59)

So where is Calvary? In front where this procession is now headed; or do the characters leave the space, moving towards what is coming behind, in the next wagon? Its physical location has become ambivalent under the pressure of theatrical invention, and anticipation has created it in our minds. Earlier I spoke of double time in the Ommegang procession, and now we have something which we might well call double space.

In the last part of my essay I should like to consider how the other dominant convention for cycle plays, the place and scaffold configuration, could make use of processions to create dramatic effect.

First I should like to refer briefly to the N Town cycle. Recent studies of the text have made it clear that the Passion sequence is separable from the rest of the cycle, and that its performance – if it ever was performed, and not merely designed for performance – follows a different principle from that at York. In this text it is a matter of separate locations, and traffic between them which has varying dramatic importance. The Passion sequences are very rich in stage directions. Sometimes these show a vivid theatrical imagination as though someone was able to conceive in great detail exactly how the play’s performance was to be organised. I have to admit, though, that this vividness at times seems a bit like a text for reading, rather literary, so to speak. However, there are two points to be made. One is that the method of production allowed elaborate movement about the playing area, and these could have very striking visual effects. This is the action following the arrest:

Here the Jewys lede Cryst outh of the place with gret cry and noyse, some drawing Cryst forward, and some bakward, and so ledyng forth with here weponys alofte and lytys brennyng. (1204sd)

There can be no doubt that this procession is closely adapted to the dramatic significance of the scene.

The second point is about timing. Herod has Christ beaten ‘tyl he is all blody’ (30/244sd), and sends him back to Pilate. The Doctor complies:

We xal lede Jesus at youre comawnde.

The following stage direction draws attention not only to the idea of exhibiting Christ, which we shall again encounter in Gréban’s Passion, it also shows that the action is considered in terms of the timing of each section. It reads:

Here entryth Satan into the place in the most orryble wyse. And qwyl that he pleyth, thei xal don on Jesus clothis and ouyrest a white clothe, and ledyn hym abowth the place, and than to Pylat be the tyme that hese wyf has pleyd. (31/1sd: my emphasis)

This means that Christ is visible throughout the following sequences (Satan’s angry speech and his appearance to Pilate’s wife to warn her against the crucifixion), and it suggests, too, that some of the actions against Christ continue simultaneously. The procession about the place ends thus:

Here the Jewys bring Jesus agen to Pilate. (77sd)

I suspect that this awareness of the potential of processional movement about the acting area in the N Town Passion sequences may well have been influenced by continental practice.¹³

The ten manuscripts of Arnoul Gréban’s Passion, complemented by a formidable number of adaptations and amalgamations of his work with extensive material from other sources, indicate that we can hardly regard this cycle as having one essential version. It was performed in many locations having different configurations. While it is possible that some of these were in the round, others may have been based in a playing place that was curved or one that stood in a straight line.¹⁴ But the text does at least demand that the form of presentation depended upon having a number of fixed locations, designated as being of common reference, like the Temple or Hell, or being used as the base of one particular character, like that of Pilate, which apparently had a number of subdivisions as required by the action. The importance of this for processional purposes is that characters had to leave these locations, and arrive at them, and that these movements became the opportunity for processions within the structure of the drama. We have already noted that this may have happened with the York Entry to Jerusalem, but in the case of Gréban’s Passion, and indeed for many other French versions, the effects of these movements were far more extensive. There seems little doubt that there was a convention of processional episodes within the most frequently used form of production for the Passions in France. No doubt some of the movements from one site to another were purely functional: there is little in the dialogue or in the stage directions to elaborate them. However, some were undoubtedly on a much grander scale, and could draw upon the semiotics of processions. It is my contention that these served to enrich the dramatic texture of these plays.

The passage from the third day which interests me concerns the managing of Christ’s examination up to his trial and also the movement to Calvary. In the first of these there is a strong sense of the use of simultaneous time and space. In the action there is a scene at the house of Caiaphas where Christ is beaten, and which ends with the decision to send him to Pilate. Caiaphas takes the decision, and he sends his messenger, Maucourant, to the house of Annas to summon him to make his way Pilate’s. While this is going on, comprising a brief exchange of dialogue between Maucourant and Annas, who is more than willing to comply, Caiaphas sets up his procession. He tells his soldiers that they must lead Christ after him, and specifies by name those who are to follow him. His ambitions are plain in the speech after the list:

si vous plest, de vo courtoisie

venez moy tenir compaignie

a parfournir ceste besongne

car tres grandement je ressongne

qu’en venons a nostre honneur. (21045-9)

This choreography continues to the moment he gives the command to start on the way:

Seigneurs, mettons nous en arroy

allons nous en tousjours devant.

Sergens, faictes marcher avant

ce malfacteur, entendez vous,

et vous en venez après nous

sans plaidier: il n’est pas saison. (21082-7)

His concern is palpably for the order of the procession, and there are dramatic effects in his words to Christ and the inefficacy of complaint.

Meanwhile two other things are also happening in different locations. Judas is having second thoughts, and he decides to go to the Jews in the Temple to return the tainted money. It is not quite clear from where he must necessarily start, but his movement to meet the Jews in the Temple is quite apparent. John goes to Mary, who has her own place, and tells of Christ’s arrest, and the transference to Pilate’s. She decides to follow. The two movements are noted:

Icy s’en va Judas pour reporter l’argent; item vient Saint Jehan a Nostre Dame. (21181sd)

Icy s’en vont vers l’ostel Pilate. (21307sd)

Thus at one point there are four movements going on: the procession set up by Caiaphas; Judas en route for the Temple; Annas on the way to Pilate; and Mary and her supporters similarly, but, presumably from a different direction. Each of these has its distinctive significance which was no doubt manifest in the manner of each. This exploitation of movement continues after Pilate decides to send Christ back to Herod, and in Herod’s decision to return him to Pilate. For this procession Herod has him dressed in the white robe of a fool:

vous le menrez a vostre maistre

atout ceste roble blanchie. (22416-7)

But the culmination of this exhibiting of Christ and the interplay with the political significance of the relationship between the Jewish leaders and Pilate comes with the procession to Calvary. This occurs about half way through the third day, and it is redolent with dramatic significance and with theatrical elaboration. It is a spectacular turning point in the action of the day. From the interlocking of movements in the first part, highlighted by the procession of Caiaphas, the emphasis switches to the Cross placed centrally in the action. The journey to Calvary is pivotal to this, and one need hardly add that there is a further reinforcement of its potency in the ritual procession of the Way to the Cross, practised widely then and now (Muir, 135). The preparations are elaborate, and they include the beating and mocking of Christ, and Pilate’s hints of pity for him in the Ecce homo sequence. The actions also show the preparation of the cross itself and the nails. But perhaps most significant is the attention which is given to the way Christ is dressed. His wounds have stained his garments, and now, after he is stripped, he is dressed in his former clothes at Pilate’s command (23900-1). Pilate’s persisting regrets form a poignant reservation:

Allez le meurtrir, affoller,

Je ne le pense ja deffendre. (23946-7)

But he orders the trumpet to sound:

affin que ceulx de la contree

officiers tout en general

montent prestement a cheval

Pour s’en venir a la justice. (23856-9)

The Trumpeter’s compliance suggests that this dramatic sound would be

heard far and wide, even outside the confines of the performance:

si haultement la sonneray

que par sonner esbairay

tous ceulx qui sont en la cite.

Icy sonne la trompete. (23961-3)

There can be no doubting the ceremonial, as the Centurion immediately brings together a group of knights to go to Calvary. Because this was an open stage the ultimate destination of the procession was presumably already visible and the procession would now be seen travelling towards it. On the way the cruel soldiers increase the suffering, and the entity of the procession is emphasised by the commentary provided by Mary, Veronica and other women of the city. There is even supernatural commentary from Dieu le Pere, situated in heaven, and from the devils in hell, as Sathan returns with the news.

In this paper I have touched upon some aspects of the drama of processions, these in themselves having a wide range of significance in the political and religious life of medieval communities. I hope I have also shown that they are especially theatrical in that they can work on an audience in such a way as to elaborate and diversify the concepts of time and space, which in themselves are an important ingredient of the experience of the drama. Moreover the placing of processions in a dramatic context can do much to extend the significance and the emotional range of what is presented. The evidence adduced here also points to the close relationship between words and visual effects which the presentation of processions does much to enhance. [8176]

Peter Happé

University of Southampton

1. For details of the Pavement site at York, see White, 69-72.

2. Das Künzelsauer Fronleichnamspiel, ed. P.K.Liebenow (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1969), p. 250.

3. In a later part of the Künzelsau manuscript, written in a different hand, the part is designated Rector Ludi, Liebenow, 227; cf. l. 4902sd.

4. For the spread of the Corpus Christi Processions, see Rubin, pp. 243-67. There is very little evidence of a link between cycle plays and Corpus Christi celebrations in France.

5. For example, though the cycles at Chester and Coventry were processional, the scope and conjectured dates for productions point to substantial differences.

6. For consideration of John Clerke’s part on performance days, see Meredith, 1981.

7. Beadle has recently discussed the limited linguistic choices of the York dramatists and their closeness to one another (2000, 172-4).

8. Johnston (1985, 368) notes that many of the individual York plays end with a blessing.

9. On separate lines: Hic caret pastoribus. / Sequitur postea.

10. For a fuller consideration of the textual evidence see Beadle, 1982, 419-33.

11. Rogerson notes this possibility, calling it a ‘shorthand’ way of presentation (116).

12. See the directorial comments by Herold (232) and McKinnell (98) regarding the 1998 Toronto performance.

13. The N Town codex has been dated in the last quarter of the fifteenth century: Gréban’s Passion first comes in sight around 1452.

14. For a consideration of the mise-en-scène in a linear configuration for the 25 Day Passion at Valenciennes, see Konigson’s details for Day 20, pp. 127-30.

Gruyter, 1969.

Gréban, A., Le Mystère de la Passion D’Arnoul Gréban, ed. G.Paris and

G. Raynaud, Paris: Viewig, 1878.

----------------, ed. O.Jodogne, Brussels: Royal Belgian Academy, 1965.

The Chester Mystery Cycle, ed. R.M.Lumiansky and D.Mills, 2 vols,

EETS SS 3 and SS 9, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974 and 1986.

The N-Town Play, ed. S. Spector, EETS SS 11, 2 vols, Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 1991.

The York Plays, ed. R.Beadle, London: Edward Arnold, 1982.

The York Plays, ed. L.Toulmin Smith, 1885, repr. 1963.

Beadle, R., ‘Verbal Texture and Wordplay in the York Cycle’, Early

Theatre 3 (2000), 167-84.

Brooks, N., ‘Processional drama and dramatic processions in Germany in

the late Middle Ages’, Journal of English and Germanic Philology 32

(1933), 141-71.

Dorrell, M., ‘Two Studies of the York Corpus Christi Play’, Leeds

Studies in English 6 (1972), 63-111. See also M.Rogerson.

Herold, J., ‘"Kick Ass and Take Names": Christ before Pilate as a

Meditation on Power and Authority’, EarlyTheatre 3 (2000), 229-33.

Johnston, A.F., ‘The Procession and Play of Corpus Christi in York

after 1426’, Leeds Studies in English 7 (1974), 55-62.

------------------- ‘The York Corpus Christi Play: A Dramatic Structure

based upon Performance Practice’, in The Theatre in the Middle Ages,

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1985, 362-73.

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1907.

Marshall, J., ‘"The manner of these plays": the Chester Pageant Carriages

and the Places where they Played’, in D.Mills, (ed.), Staging the

Chester Cycle, Leeds: University of Leeds, 1985, 17-48.

McKinnell, J., ‘The Medieval Pageant Wagons at York: Their Orientation

and Height’, Early Theatre 3 (2000), 79-104.

Meredith, P., ‘John Clerke’s Hand in the York Register’, Leeds Studies

in English 12 (1981), 245-71.

----------------, ‘The fifteenth-century audience of the York Corpus Christi

play: records and speculation’, in ‘Divers toyes mingled’: Essays on

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----------------, ‘The City of York and its "Play of Pageants"’, Early

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Mills, D., Recycling the Cycle: The City of Chester and its Whitsun

Plays, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998.

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Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Neumann, B., Geistliches Schauspiel im Zeugnis der Zeit, 2 vols,

Munich, 1987.

Parker, A., ‘Notes on the Religious Drama in Medieval Spain and the

Origin of the Auto Sacramental’, Modern Language Review 30 (1935),

170-82.

Petit de Julleville, L., Les Mystères, 2 vols, Paris: Hachette, 1880.

Rogerson, M., ‘Raging in the Streets of Medieval York’, Early Theatre 3

(2000), 105-25. See also M.Dorrell.

Rubin, M., Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture,

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Tailby, J.E., ‘Drama and Community in South Tyrol’, in A. Hindley,

(ed.), Drama and Community: People and Plays in Medieval Europe,

Turnhout: Brepols, 1999, 148-60.

Twycross, M., ‘The Flemish Ommegang and its Pageant Cars’, Medieval

English Theatre 2 (1980), 15-41, 80-98.

White, E., ‘Places to Hear the Play in York’, Early Theatre 3 (2000), 49-

78.

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