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Staging the York Creation, and Fall of Lucifer
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 July 2009
Extract
The Creation, and Fall of Lucifer by the York Realist was intended to provide a spectacular opening for the Corpus Christi cycle, of which the city of York felt very proud in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Since the York Realist appears to have been particularly sensitive to the conditions of production, this opening play provides a useful focus for attention to the staging used in the York cycle. The internal evidence of the Realist's Creation, and Fall of Lucifer demonstrates that he was not writing a mere literary exercise, but kept in mind the specifics of stage production.
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- Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 1976
References
1 See Davidson, Clifford, “The Realism of the York Realist and the York Passion,” Speculum, 50 (1975), 270–283CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hardison, O. B. Jr., Christian Rite and Christian Drama in the Middle Ages (Baltimore, 1965), pp. 1–34Google Scholar. On the York Realist, wsee also Robinson, J. W., “The Art of the York Realist,” Modern Philology, 60 (1962–1963), 241–251CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Davidson, Clifford, “Civic Concern and Iconography in the York Passion,” Annuale Mediaevale, 15 (1974), 125–149Google Scholar. Quotations from the York plays in this paper are from the edition of Lucy Toulmin Smith (1885).
2 See especially Stevens, Martin, “The York Cycle: From Procession to Play,” Leeds Studies in English, n.s. 6 (1972), 37–61Google Scholar; Kahrl, Stanley J., Traditions of Medieval English Drama (London, 1974), pp. 31–52Google Scholar; Nelson, Alan H., The Medieval English Stage (Chicago, 1974), passimGoogle Scholar. For earlier studies, see Davidson, Charles, Studies in the Early Mystery Plays (New Haven, 1892)Google Scholar, and Pierson, Merle, “The Relation of the Corpus Christi Procession to the Corpus Christi Play in England,” Transactions of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters, 18 (1916), 110–160Google Scholar. Our understanding of the origin of the York plays may, however, be modified by the publication of the York records by the University of Toronto Press next year.
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4 Richard Rastell of the University of Leeds has suggested to us'that the portion of the Te Deum utilized in the play might have involved “instant polyphony” achieved through the use of English discant, which could have been easily provided by musicians from the cathedral. Such practice would have cut down the performance time for the angels' music to a minimum—i.e., to approximately one minute for both segments of the Te Deum.
5 Stevens, pp. 52–55.
6 Nelson, pp. 65–78. Nevertheless, we are very much indebted to Professor Nelson since he has forced us to examine every facet of production with regard to the York plays.
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41 An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Tenth Annual Conference on Medieval Studies, sponsored by the Medieval Institute of Western Michigan University. Research for this paper was supported in part by a Faculty Research Fellowship from Western Michigan University.