The Chester Plays 5 & 6 - Balaam and Balak & The Nativity

We explored these plays in a slightly fraught way this last Sunday - having been banished from our usual space to the public theatre bar - so the recording is a little more frazzled this week and, in my confusion, I make a few statements that are completely and utterly wrong - helped by the confusing nature of play five.
[The Chester recordings have now been archived and are below - I have edited out any howlers in terms of my general confusion.  Credits and photos at the bottom of the post.]

Two distinctly odd plays were looked at this week, following on from the increasingly fragmented play structures of last time - where the Abraham play danced around three episodes, interspersed with exposition.
There is an important question that has to be asked about the dramaturgy - are the jump cuts between scenes and locations an artistic decision or part of the later post-reformation general buggering about of the plays - or a bizarre mixture of the two.  It seems to me, as a dramatist and actor, that a lot of the material is very brief, like excerpts of a completer play - and the additions of an expositor do not aide the flow of the storytelling - in fact, it shows up how disjointed the plays seem to be.  Compared with the first play - the fall of Lucifer - the following five are, increasingly, a mess.  The first is self contained, clear in purpose and shows what it is about through the drama on the stage, not through exposition.  The second play follows suit, but has a few odd jumps in time and hints at the truly weird storytelling of plays 4 and 5.
To add to the confusion Play 5 survives in two distinct versions (there are more than one, but only two distinct ones, as it were).  I've been following one surviving text of the plays for our live explorations up to this point, but have jumped to another for this play for purely practical reasons - it's shorter and has fewer characters.  This is the version which doesn't have a scene at the end with the prophets, which (again, odd chopping up of plays) is usually a play in itself in other cycles and sudo-cycles.
The prophet play is usually fairly static, a long line of prophets making prophecies about the coming Christ.  It acts as a buffer between the old and New Testament sections and as almost an in breath dramatically.  The audience will have had several fairly dramatic episodes so far - a nice sedate play is welcome before the action begins again.  But, in the context of an already crowded and disjointed play, I wasn't sad to miss it here.
What play 5 does have is a brief Moses section, mostly speeches between Moses and God, without any of the plagues of Egypt business which we get in other plays.  It is incredibly brief and almost an afterthought, as the Moses plays often feel to be.  There are several reasons for this, one is the problematic relationship between the Old Testament stories and those of the New, but also practical ones.  The story of Moses isn't a neat episode in itself, it's a whole mini-cycle.  To make it function dramatically you need to treat it over a number of episodes.  There is plenty of evidence that this was done with Abraham - for, though we are mostly familiar with the sacrifice of Issac as an episode in it's own right, the Townley Cycle continues the story onwards into two other plays.  The Chester Cycle may have done something similar, even if the final texts to reach us are truncated versions of those plays.  It would explain the odd structure.
But there doesn't seem to be a corresponding multi-episode Moses narrative.  He's a bridge between the Old and New Testament passages, sometimes, as here, truncated with a Prophets play.  And so the dramatist has to find a way to make the Moses play have enough weight in it's own right.  Plus there's a question of the scale of the stories.  It's easy enough to enact Moses coming down from the mountain and telling everyone about the ten commandments, it's a bitch to stage the plagues of Egypt and the parting of the Red Sea - though other cycles do have a go.
Also, there's a problem of theme.  The first four plays of this cycle, except for elements of the Abraham play, all link together very well - there are the repeated themes of pride vs obedience to God's will and the prefiguring of Christ in the characters of Abel and Isaac.  The Moses story, so large and so complex, doesn't fit into the template, doesn't fit into the larger story being told.  And yet these halfway house plays appear, made worse in Chester by the aforementioned general buggering about with the text in the later stages of it's life.  This mention of Moses feels like an appendix to me, like a cutaway of a larger play, or the insertion of a later hand with the accompanying narration by a Doctor to explain why it's there. My professional instinct, as a theatrical man, would be to cut the whole play from performance in a cycle - an instinct largely followed by every modern version of the cycles that have been staged in modern times.

Having dispensed with a brief cameo from Moses the dramatist (I should probably say dramatists) moves swiftly onto the Balaam and Balak episode, where King Balak (a heathen) calls the prophet Balaam (similarly moderately heathen) to him, for to curse the people of Israel.  God tells Balaam not to go, but on he goes and on the road an Angel appears before him and the ass he is riding (no sniggering at the back there) refuses to go on.  Unable to see the Angel himself, Balaam beats the ass, which is given the power of speech to remonstrate with his master.

The episode of the ass is presumably performed in a pantomime fashion and has room for physical humour - but it is incredibly brief.  Balaam is allowed to see the Angel, who lets him proceed - so warned - and tells him not to say what King Balak wants.  On Balaam goes to the King and they climb a mountain - the stage directions indicate it has different sides - and he is repeatedly asked to curse the people of Israel, which he refuses to do.  This he does looking out at different directions on the mountain and each time the King gets more angry.  Before the King gets so incensed as to do an injury to Balaam, he tells the King how to trick the Jews into wickedness and so bring their own destruction.  This plan - involving collecting beautiful women to entrap the people of Israel - is explained with aplomb and seems to go down well.  Re-enter Expositor to wrap things up.

There are so many questions raised by this text.  How familiar was it to the medieval audience?  It's immensely obscure now and I can't help but think it was even more so then - but stories go in and out of fashion and maybe it was a popular favourite?  It isn't reproduced in any of the other cycles or similar that survive, but that could be due to dumb luck.
So, the story is (possibly) obscure, the staging is brief and the exposition is very long.  What are the reasons for its existence?  It's hardly a central part of the narrative, especially as it jockeys out space for a longer Moses play.  The lengthy exposition suggests that in later years the narrative was considered very problematic.
The character of King Balak is interesting, as are the notes to business the actor would have performed; there are various references to business when he draws and sheaths his sword.  He is obviously not a nice chap, but he's nowhere near to a screaming Herod, there are levels to his dialogue.
The end of the play mentions that they'll get onto the Nativity tomorrow - which is odd, as the established pattern of playing has it that plays were presented either on one day, or over three - but the established split for the three day version comes later in the cycle.  Was this version of the play performed separately at some point, or were the plays performed in a completely different structure sometime in their lives?  History gives no answer.

Onto play 6 and the Nativity - which is similarly a difficult text to interpret.  We start off sedately enough with the annunciation.

But rather than sticking with a straightforward story of a journey and birth, the play is inter-cut with scenes involving Octavian (Augustus) Caesar and a Sybil.  The purpose of Octavian in the play is not immediately apparent, but there are several good reasons for the approach.  Firstly, it neatly sets the action in a world similar to ours - a ruler sets taxes, what could be more modern?  This is a different world from the ancient days of the Old Testament.  Octavian is an historically, as well as Bibically, extant person and it's a nice detail from the gospels to enact.  The play could open with him, as a nice opening gambit, for context alone.  But he doesn't appear until after the opening scenes with Mary and Joseph.  A narrator - quite randomly - bursts onto the playing area almost mid action.

NUNTIUS:  Make room lordings and give us way
and let Octavian come and play

and Sybil the sage that well faire may

to tell you of prophecy.

That lord that died on Good Friday 

he save you all, both night and day.

Farewell lordings. I go my way,

I may no longer abide.

And off he goes again.  It's somewhat bathetic - something of the Mechanicals in A Midsummer Night's Dream.  Enter Octavian - he makes the usual boastful cries of a lesser Herod, commanding and prideful.  He calls his messenger to go out and announce his new tax and (in a scene similar to the King in The Pride of Life) offers this messenger great rewards for his pains - including a woman of his choice.
The Senators then offer to make Octavian a God - and here he displays un-Herod like qualities, pointing out he is but a man and no God.  But this could be strategy - as with Julius Caesar in Shakespeare's play - as he does relent to ask the Sybil first what she thinks of the idea.

So instructed, she prays.

Jump cut to Preco, the messenger, out and about - making his announcement of the new tax.  Joseph hears and we remain with him.  We see in the play a chain of command, from the highest in the land, eventually down to the lowest - Joseph (and Joseph, a semi-comic figure, is always pretty low, prone to self pity).  This is in contrast with the earlier thread - the messenger from Rome is contrasted with Gabriel, the messenger from God.
A purpose for the secondary plot is possibly revealed.  Not only have we two threads of contrasting action, between various strata of society, the dramatist can move the action along by jumping between them.  Action is telescoped and scenes inter-cut swiftly.  The action of the first half of the play has moved along with great speed - a brief appearance of an angel to Mary - Mary's journey to Elizabeth - somehow already visibly pregnant (for the moment Joseph appears he can see she has obviously, to him, been busy in his absence) - then, without any indication of how, the two ladies are ignored and Joseph is talking to the audience and leaving her behind - where the Angel reassures him and he returns to her.  Jump-cut - and my continued analogy of film is appropriate - to Octavian and his plans for a general poll tax - this scene ends with his tax gatherer making a general speech to 'the people' - one of which is a very unhappy Joseph, who comments on the unfairness of a poll tax as opposed to an income based system.

He decides to take an ox with him to Bethlehem, so that he can sell it there to pay the tax - which is both practical and helps set up the image of the baby being laid between the ox and the ass in the stable - possibly the only account that explains how the ox came to also be in the stable in the first place.
Another interesting addition to the birth of Jesus is the appearance of two midwives - who the, somewhat feckless Joseph, rushes off to get for his wife.  The birth itself is side stepped in the text as something that between two lines of dialogue just happens.  No mention how - though it is suggested the midwives have little to do with it.  Mary claims the birth was doubly miraculous because she felt no pain.  One midwife (Tebell) praises God for the arrival of the Christ, the other (Salome) is doubtful.

Salome is punished for disbelieving that this was a virgin birth - so that when she reaches down to examine Mary's 'sex secret' (i.e. vagina - translation of the Latin courtesy of Google translate!) for proof of her virginity (as if after giving birth this will prove anything) the midwife's hand withers.  An Angel then appears to explain that only by asking the baby Jesus' forgiveness does it heal.  (Nobody thinks to ask if Mary wanted her 'secret sex' touched, or what she thinks - but the baby is ready to do the healing and everything turns out fine. I am reading too much into this by suggesting that the author considers a male infant more important than a woman?  I know he's the baby Jesus, but come on!)

The scene breaks and there is then a lengthy story told by the expositor.

EXPOSITOR:  Loe, lordings, of this miracle here

friar Bartholomew, in good manner,

beareth witness without were

as played is you beforne.

And other miracles if I may

I shall rehearse, or I go away,

that befell that ilke day

that Jesus Christ was born.

It's a story that a temple with an equestrian statue was build in Rome to honour Peace - and that the devil had a hand in its creation.  The devil is asked when the temple will fall and he says (with future echoes of the prophecies of the three witches in Macbeth) that it will stand until a child is born of a virgin.

They heard and believed therefore

it should endure for evermore,

but that time that Christ was bore

it fell down soon in hie.

So giving a miracle to the birth of this particular prince.
I go into a little detail of this passage, a. because it's an interesting little story and b. because it asks an interesting question.  The Expositor bridges the end of the birth of Jesus section with the final appearance of Octavian - does this mean that the Expositor moves from one space to another to draw the eye of the spectators to the next area of action, or is his appearance to allow some change of scenery in a single space.  The indications of the stage craft of the first five plays is that there is room for manoevuer between a variety of playing areas - that the plays are not expected to obey strict rules of performance.  There is much made of travelling between places - is this another instance?
Additionally there is the line: "beareth witness without were / as played is you beforne." Was the Expositor narrating some sort of dumb show?  Should we adjust our view of the figure, which unadorned is rather dry, as a storyteller working with the rest of the team of players - rather than a jumped up know-it-all who keeps getting in the way.  In the event that we get round to fully staging these plays, this is definitely an area for exploration.
Upon this note we return to Octavian who seems to go through a conversion - seeing the star of Bethlehem in the sky - which has, in a stage direction, just been displayed.  As he sees the star, he has a vision.

OCTAVIAN: Ah Sybil, this is a wondrous sight

for yonder I see a maiden bright

a young child in her arms clight
a bright cross in his head.

The first reference in the plays so far to the ultimate fate of Jesus (not including Expositors or outside narrators).  He then offers thanks to the new God, does a u-turn on any suggestion that as Caesar he is a God on earth and is rewarded with the singing of an Angel.  He then tells his senators to spread the word of Jesus' coming.  It's quite a sweet, if completely impossible, scene.
The Expositor returns to claim that a temple to Mary was dedicated at this time and is still standing to this day.  This is also a bizarre nonsense.
Only one interesting anachronism of note this time - Preco, all purpose servant, announcer etc to Octavian says:

PRECO:  All ready my lord, by Mahound.

Yup, that would be our first use to the corrupted name Mohammed, founder of another religion, not to be born for another six hundred years.  It won't be the last time this name will be used as an oath in these plays - and by considerably worse people.
Play 6 is in many ways as confusing a text as play 5, except that on the whole, there is a far greater sense of deliberation to the structure.  It isn't a matter of random scenes being strung together - there is design to the text.  Whereas I could believe that play 5 is a condensed, cut down version of two or even three separate pieces, play 6 is designed as a unified whole.  That said, it isn't wholly satisfying as a play.  It feels cut, the scenes are very brief, the action - for all the benefits of a fast cutting structure - undeveloped.

Next time - the Shepherds and the meeting of the Magi and Herod.  [This was explored at the Quay Theatre, Sudbury, two weeks later - full posting to follow.]

Exploring the Chester Mystery Plays - Plays 5 & 6 Featured Liz Cole, Robert Crighton, Michael Harding, Kevin Roychowdhury, Alan Scott and Adam Webster.
Live Streaming by Tim Regester, Autocue by Marion Tuke, photos by Mark Pavelin - with Bex Johnson in dictionary corner.

Robert addressing the microphone
- Tim Regester (background) doing the live streaming -
Marion Tuke running the autocue

Kevin Roychowdhury at the microphone

Michael Harding at the microphone

Marion Tuke at the autocue

Liz Cole as the Sybil

Alan Scott - prepping for his turn at the microphone

Adam Webster with Kevin, following the script

The Chester Plays 3 & 4 - Noah & Abraham

This week in Exploring the Chester Mystery Plays we looked at plays 3 & 4, which cover Noah and Abraham.  The team gathered with autocued script and a live link up and off we went.
[All our Chester recordings are currently being archived and are being added, piece by piece, to this blog.]

It is in these plays that we start to encounter some of the more severe forms of the general buggering about that the Chester texts have seen (see blog about plays 1 & 2).  Chester has come to us, unlike the other 'cycles', in a number of texts, and there are some big differences between them for the Noah play.  The latter part of the play has differing endings, with the business of sending out birds to hunt for land cut in some.  It's patently a difficult play to stage and the ark must have been big, as hinted at in the stage directions.  There's a direction that the animals would appear as painted boards on the ark, for when the Noah family go through and list all the animals on board - of which there are a fair old number listed. 

And here are bears, wolves set,

Apes, owls, marmoset,

Weasels, squirrels and ferret...  (Note the assumed pronunciation of ferret, lovely!)

With a future echo to the Nativity, the family speak in wonder that the animals are content to live side by side, that cats and mice do not get up to any Tom and Jerry activity, let alone the lions.
Early on we get a return of the misogyny of the earlier plays - the dialogue of the unnamed women (only named as wives of the men) largely point out how useless they are:

And we shall bring timber too

For we mon nothing ells do;

Women be weak to underfoe

Any great travail.

And, as in other 'cycle' plays, Noe has a go at his wife for not getting on board the ark.  She refuses to go without her friends, her gossips, and has to be bodily carried on board, where the text suggests she gives Noe one hell of a slap.  

NOE:  Welcome wife into this boat.

NOES WIFE:  And have thou that for thy mote! 

We have our first anachronisms, as both Noa and his wife calls by Saint John - but we've yet to have anyone call out by God's wounds and the like.  Yet.

Noe's wife's refusal to board is the only note of disharmony in the play, and in comparison with other plays, her stand isn't so dominant a part of the narrative - it's fairly half-hearted.  Noe's wife helps build the ark and is swiftly part of the family unit again - the play uses music to suggest the ultimate harmony of the family, for they sing when they set sail.  There is a speech by Noah that covers a lot of time jumps - between stanzas he indicates that forty days have passed and that he's sent out two birds.  How these time jumps were staged (and as they were cut in some versions, perhaps they were never satisfactorily staged) we do not know.  There is also the telling detail of offering sacrifice to God and asking him whether they should leave the ark - the issue of sacrifice comes up in the next play - which is missing from some versions.

The Noah play is a more expansive piece of theatre - the set/setting for the play was obviously large and there are many effects that could and probably were used.  It is in a contrast to the more contained dramas of the previous two plays which, though they included a lot of music and occasional spectacle, are focused on the pride and fall of individuals.  Noa and his wife are not as deeply drawn here - they, and their many family members - are concerned with a grand project and life changing events.  The flood and the ark are the major players in the action and the amount of plot and detail to the actions of the family limits how much time the play has in looking at the characters inner lives.  At no point do the characters really question what is happening or even comment on how horrible it is to see the whole of humanity slaughtered.  The action of the play leaves the author/s no time.  It is only in plays which deal with simpler shorter stories where interior thoughts can come to the surface.  Which brings us to play 4.

The Abraham play is a very different kettle of fish - unlike other versions it is split into three separate parts of Abraham's life.  A gift giving section featuring himself, Lot and Melchysidech - a section dealing with God giving he and his wife a child and the usually staged story of the sacrifice of Isaac.  Each episode is flanked by the figure of the Expositor, who is presumably a post-reformation addition to the text who is there to explain to the audience what these episodes mean, theologically that is.

But before we even get to the rather irritating figure of the Expositor we get an even odder opening speech by someone calling the audience to order and generally turning their attention to this play, rather than the Noah play which, perhaps because it involved a lot of set, was stillin the way.  He comes across rather like a representative of the county council popping in at the start of the village production.  He feels added on, like he is just there to mark time as the Ark is got out of sight.  He calls himself Gobet-on-the-Green and is never heard of again, unless the last speech of the play, a messenger, is the same person.
The first part features the gift giving between Abraham and Melchysidech, which is interesting but feels incomplete - like we've walked in the end of a story.  It's supposed to follow pitched battles - and I wonder whether something of this was originally in the play.  We know that there were other Abraham plays, in the Towneley cycle for example, which dealt with acts after Abraham with Isaac and his sons after the sacrifice play, so why not have a play that tells us more about his life prior to that episode?  Either way, the continued existence of this brief episode is explained to us by the Expositor - who is, perhaps deliberately, patronising to the audience.

Lordings, what may this signify

I will expound apertly

that lewed standing hereby [unlearned]

may know what this may be. 

The Expositor claims that this episode, where gifts are given in thanks, rather than sacrifices, prefiguring the gift of the body and blood of Christ.  This explanation of the parallels between this Old Testament episode with the New, as presented, is not very convincing.  Much of what the Expositor says smacks of really desperate revisionism in a hope of keeping the plays alive in the new world order - even if there is a reasonable case in the text for the argument.  This opening could be seen as a parallel to the tithes offered by Cain and Abel - just reversed.  After the battle and the bloodshed, gifts are given to cement relations - rather than tithes are offered to God leading to murder.  It is, perhaps, a sign of an advance in culture - leading, as the Expositor argues - to the ceremony central to Christian worship.  If so, it is an advance not fully heeded, as animal sacrifice is central to the close of this play.

The second episode is extremely brief, a short chat Abraham has with God to have a son.  That is, a legitimate one - as Abraham points out he still has his 'nurry', his illegitimate child, and that it doesn't count.  This is mentioned almost in passing.  God tells Abraham that he'll have a child, so long as he's circumcised - where follows an appeal to the joys of circumcision, which Abraham and all his fellows must take on. 
The Expositor suggests that the circumcision of the Old Testament has been replaced by Baptism - a comment I am not theologically qualified to confirm or deny.  Finally he points out that the seed of Abraham will one day beget Jesus, which is fair enough.
Neither of these episodes appear in any other cycle - and as presented here it's not surprising really.  Until the arrival of Isaac there is little sense of a complete play - the episodes are brief and feel really random, not dramatically or theatrically well linked to the plays so far presented or as an individual play in itself.  How they ended up in this state - especially as there are other versions with the prophets as well - is largely lost to history.  Oh, to have an earlier version of the text to answer a few questions of dramaturgy - because these opening sections could function in a clear way.  There is a good dramatic reason to see Abraham pray for a son - so that you feel the more when he is asked by God to kill him.  However, as presented here, after the rather odd gift giving scene, it's too brief and somewhat jarring.
Anyway, now we reach the final and most effective part of the play, the meat, if you will.  Here there is something at stake and Abraham is genuinely torn between his love of God and Isaac.  When we were reading this section I stopped interjecting unless it was really necessary - and let the actors and the text speak and the play really held us, the first time since the first and second plays of the sequence.
Abraham plays the innocent to his son, asking him to carry the implements of his own death to the place of sacrifice.  There are echos of Cain in Play 1, guiding his brother away to his death.  I love the slow realisation of Isaac, as he starts to twig that something isn't right.  Going to the place of sacrifice he asks:

Father, if it be your will
where is the beast that we shall kill?

It takes a little bit more questioning before the truth comes out.  The scene is long, the longest individual scene in the cycle so far, and it just gets worse and worse for father and son.  When Abraham confesses what he is doing, his dialogue is almost bathetic.  It is an understatement and a half to say...

ABRAHAM:  O my son, I am sorry

to do to thee this great annoy.

Gods commandment do must I

his works are aye full mild.

The last statement being patently untrue.

By slow stages the boy is tied up, blindfolded and placed on the altar, all the while telling his father to not mention what he's done to mother.  Eventually the Angels arrive and the test ends - a sheep is provided for sacrifice and God appears 

DEUS: Abraham, by myself I swear...

Well, by who else can he swear?

And we have our first proper anachronism of the cycle - 

ABRAHAM: Jesu, on me thou have pity.  

But time is not linear in the medieval world, so it's not an error.

Next time we look at the unique play 5, Balaam and Balak, and the more universally known play 6, The Nativity.

The Exploring the Chester Mystery Plays Team:
Readers - Michael Harding, Kevin Roychowdhruy, Peter Drew, Liz Cole, Claire Lawrence and Mark Holtom
Tech Team - Tim Regester on live link, Marion Tuke on autocue, Mark Pavelin for photography and

Bexy Lou Johnston in Dictionary Corner

Host - Robert Crighton

This event was live streamed from the Quay Theatre in late 2013.

Claire Lawrence, Mark Holtom and Liz Cole preparing to go...

Peter Drew, Liz Cole and Mark Holtom - watch Bex in Dictionary Corner

Robert checking where the hell he is on Marion's autocue

Mark Holtom - occasional God

Foreground, Marion and Tim, working the tech...

The Chester Plays 1 & 2 - Lucifer, Adam, Cain

I've just finished the first exploration of The Chester Mystery cycle.  It was an open event, first of many, where the plays were read and discussed.  [The original recordings have since been edited and are available on the Beyond Shakespeare podcast - two early audio adaptations of the first two Chester plays can also be found on the player below - they are very rough, coming from our early days, but maybe instructive. Follow the link here.]  The text appeared on an auto-cue so that we could dispense with paper.  Set before the screen there was a microphone for the live streaming of the event, behind which the readers sat, facing the audience.  To one side of the readers were various texts of the plays, which acted as our dictionary corner, where we could look up words and make notes for future use.  There was also a bell on the table which could be rung to pause the reading to add notes or ask questions, which I, as the sort of expert (a term that could only be loosely applied to me) attempted to answer - or admit ignore and point them to dictionary corner.

Dictionary corner - plus product placement.

We've started at the beginning (skipping the Banns) with the first two plays, which I've already recorded and an currently editing for online 'broadcast' in about a months time - but before any of those things happened I had to start with a text, had to create a version that was close enough to the original wording, but readable for the average person.  And, I have to admit, I really like editing.  This makes me very sad.  Though I'm not editing for the page, I'm editing for actors.  I'm not trying to remove words, simply clarify them, deciding how odd we want the words to sound.  Mostly I'm removing punctuation - there is much too much punctuation in all the versions of the plays we have.  I have probably removed too much.
Chester is a cycle they used to think was really old.  Now they think the version is an altered version of an older text.  I could have told the titular they that - it is a cycle which has clear signs of having been severely buggered about with.  And anything that has been severely buggered with about must, by having been severely buggered about with, must be a younger text than the original which was, as we have established, severely buggered about with.
Severely buggered about with is a technical term common in theatre parlance and any director or actor who's been about the block a bit can smell it a mile off - the dialogue doesn't flow right, there are weird gear changes in the middle of scenes, narrators turn up to protest too much methinks about the message of the play in question.

Our paper saving auto-cue

So, I've been editing The Chester Cycle for recording and exploration - it is both an easy and a difficult task.  Easy, because there is plenty of scholarship to fall upon, hard, because there are always lots of choices.  But, luckily, I'm not editing for publication, just for actors, so I don't have to be perfect or make some choices until rehearsal - the odd odd spelling will be ironed out by the actor saying hggh?!  So, having recorded the first two plays I was able to remove many errors for the exploration/read through.  Obviously, any mistakes are my own.

Play 1.  The Fall of Lucifer

The theme of the play - in fact of both opening plays - is Pride, especially overweening pride.  Lucifer falls because of his pride, luxuriating in his beauty and power.  Pride comes before his, literal, fall.  But I couldn't help but find God was not a little proud of himself as well, but then, he is God.  His opening lines set the scene, suggesting his own importance by speaking occasional bursts of Latin (a habit he gets out of, thankfully) which was a conventional way of denoting high status, as only the upper strata of society could.  The suggestion is of quite a spectacular setting, God on his throne, surrounded by nine angels, who boost the speaking parts up rather a lot (for the reading we alternated between just two readers - life is too short) - but then again it is possible the angels were not chosen for their acting skill, but as singers, for the text refers to them singing to praise God, and music cues for minstrels is mentioned throughout the play.  Perhaps they were primarily singers, given a few lines because they were there.  Who knows.

God then plays a game which he will repeat in the next play - he leaves his angels, with the instruction that no one sits on his throne.  The moment his back is turned, Lucifer can't resist a go.  

And Lucifer gets very worked up about his own beauty, he loves himself and his power.  But he isn't inherently evil.  He hints at evil, just before he sits he orders everyone to kneel to him.  The Angels aren't impressed.  

Then God returns with some kind of burst of song and music and Lucifer and his assistant, Lightborne, 'shake and tremble'.  After being cast out they curse each other in a semi-comic vein, and it is only now that full on wickedness appears.  
God now begins to create the universe, pausing only to start play two.

Play Two.  The Creation, Fall of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel.

God completes the creation - and the odd jump between plays suggests some overlap between the staging of the individual plays.  The speech at the end of play one could, with a tiny cut, easily run through into two.  Not only that, but this second play would in other cycles be split, with the Cain play being separate.  The sudden time jump between the fall of Man and Cain and Abel coming up suggests there may have been a split, that this text is a slightly untidy edit of longer plays into a shorter form.  It feels, as I mentioned earlier, severely buggered about with.  

But, anyway, after a long speech - throughout which my instinct feels there would have been some theatrical business going on - God gets round to making Adam.  Who then says nothing but listens to God for another page.  And the themes of the story are the same from the last play - pride and disobedience will not be tolerated.  

God, not learning from his previous mistake, plays the same game with man as with Lucifer - only don't sit on my throne is changed to don't eat that fruit.  Lucifer promptly arrives to make sure he does exactly the same thing, that his sin of pride is repeated.  Lucifer appears in the form of a serpent - described as having wings and clearly stating it was upright - the serpent will have a fall similar to Lucifer, being stripped of its wings and feathers and forced to crawl on its belly.  I don't know if this fantastical creature has a precedent beyond the crawling on the belly part - it speaks of something from a medieval bestiary   Lucifer is given good motivation for his actions, he can't stand that others have taken his place - he wants man to fall like he, partly through envy at not being given governance of the garden himself.  

The serpent talks Eve into eating the fruit, not so much through pride, as ambition, the promise to be a god - not that she thinks she already is one. She doesn't even have to talk Adam into eating the apple, after four lines of encouragement he just eats it.
God returns and is angry - and, after forcing the serpent to live on it's belly, immediately the woman bating begins. Earlier in the play - some of the first lines Adam says - upon seeing Eve - how wonderful she is because she's made of his body. Now he says...

ADAM. Yea, sooth said I in prophecy
When thou wast taken of my body
Mans woe thou would be witterly
Therefore thou was so named.

That's quite a U-turn and the first bit of misogyny in the play, which develops now as one of the major themes - God taking it up in his turn.

And enmity between you two
Hence forth I will make.

And...

And, woman, I warn thee witterly,
Thy mischief I shall multiply
With penance, sorrow and great annoy
Thy children thou shall bear.
And for that thou haste done so today
Man shall master thee alway
And under his power thou shalt be aye
Thee for to drive and deere.

And here's a bit more of Adam being a gentleman...

My liccorous wife hath been my foe
The devils envy shent me also
They twain together well may go
The sister and the brother.
His wrath hath done me much woe
Her gluttony grieved me also.
God let never man trust them two
The one more than the other.

Adam is saying that women and the devil are just as bad as each other - which coming from a lying, two timing sod like him is a bit rich.
The last part of the play jumps thirty years and suddenly we are listening to Adam talking to his children, Cain and Abel, telling them how to obey God. 

Cain, again, is a prideful man - not wanting to share his best crops with God and, when God rewards his brother over him - to some degree God actively taunts him into action - Cain kills Abel. It is pride and jealously, again, running through the text. Cain, banished, completes the play.

Two little notes: no anachronisms yet. Normally you have characters swearing by Christ at least once in a play, preferably before he was born - part of the whole circular nature of time thing that people went in for. However, the demon Lucifer sort of swears by himself (By Belzabub!) though this might be a name for another demon, so it doesn't quite count. And I'll leave you with a line or four that I rather liked...

EVE: Adam, husband, I rede we take
These fig-leaves for shames sake
And to our members a hilling make
Of them for thee and me.

Love the 'a hilling'.

The Summoning of Everyman - Archive Recordings

From 2013 till 2017, when we were still in our earlier incarnation (as Before Shakespeare), we toured a solo performer version of The Summoning of Everyman.  We recorded a few of the bigger speeches, as well as a few compare and contrast material from other plays. Due to the archive nature of these recordings, quality will vary.

A Few Ground (not really) Rules

The moment you start rehearsing a production (or in our case record one) from any distant epoch, you have to start making decisions.  How slavishly do you stick to the text?  And, for that matter, which text?
Where the texts are as old as ours the questions mount up.

1. How closely do you stick to older word forms?
I like old words.  I like old words that are almost exactly the same as their modern equivalent but are a bit not, as it were.  However, I appreciate I'm in a minority here - some people would find slavish following of basically modern words said funny quite annoying.  So, there will be a balancing act between keeping the sense of the power of the original words, their rhythms, their purely sonic power, and clarity and understanding.  We may get it wrong.  Where there are rhymes we will tend to stick to the original...

2. Do you use original spelling to guide pronunciation?
Covers similar ground to above and also overlaps with accent below.  Broadly speaking, yes, though we're not here to create recordings of funny voices speaking funny words - we've got to balance the interests of drama and history.

3. Do you update/change names from history?
I've just been recording/editing Act Seven of John Bale's God's Promises, in which John the Baptist lists many characters from the Bible, sometimes with variant spelling to the modern.  On the one hand there was something nice about the sound of some changes, others were just unclear.  Where it was still clear who he was talking about we left it as writ, where the name was substantially different we allowed a change.

4. What about lines in Latin?
Do you leave them in / leave them and add a translation as repetition in the next line / translate?  We can assume that many in the original audiences, as today, would not understand Latin, so should what is clearly an artistic decision be ignored for ease of understanding?  In the case of God's Promises I erred on the side of clarity.  John the Baptist had a line 'as I am child' which sounded so much better in English - beautiful - that to not use it felt wrong.  A later line by God I've removed as it was repeated in English anyway and it sounded wrong - but I may put it back in at a later date.  Which brings us to...

5. Do we cut?
Any director likes the option of cutting, but part of the point of this project is to create a resource which has relatively 'clean' recordings of all the words.  It isn't difficult to find a recording or production of a Mystery play - it is difficult to find one that hasn't been substantially altered by an author or director.  (This isn't a judgement - for example, I love the version of The Mysteries Tony Harrison created in the late seventies/early eighties - but it is substantially his version.)  So, occasional minor cuts may happen, but they will be occasional and will be mentioned in any accompanying blog.

6. What about accent?
This shouldn't be tricky for me, as, though not a native or a speaker of the accent, I'm based in Suffolk and East Anglia was a centre for a lot of medieval and Tudor drama - in part compounded by the fact that a couple of collections survived in East Anglia and so survived East Anglian texts.  John Bale, who I'm looking at at the moment, was based in Suffolk and there are clues to accent in versions of the text.  However, I doubt we're going to have the time, resources or skill-set to comprehensively look at detailed work on accent at this time, so unless the text is incredibly forceful in its accent (the York Cycle for example) we will use an accent/s - but any text where the accent isn't overly defined, we're going to suck it and see.

7.  Music.
I'd love to use music throughout these recordings, especially where it is referenced in the text.  Two difficulties arise. One. we don't always know what the music was, or precisely how it was orchestrated when we do.  Two: at this stage I'm not in a position to commission or pay for music, so where music is indicated it will be referred to in any narration and maybe at a later date we will reedit with a music cue.  At the moment I'm focusing on the words.

All these are thoughts and artistic decisions that occur as the work begins.  Other questions will arise, other ways of dealing with them will occur, rapid u-turns may happen.  There is no reason why any of these recordings will stand on their own, or unaltered.  If something hasn't worked, we can go back and do it again.  Why not have several different versions of the same text, done differently?  And you out there could do your own.  I'll post a link, even host it for you if you don't have the facility.

Our Mission

Going Beyond Shakespeare – A (Revised) Mission Statement

Beyond Shakespeare there was a lot of stuff going on in the British Isles during the old days.  (For arbitrary neatness we have decided that the old days ended in 1642, when the theatres were closed.)  Apart from a few noble exceptions these plays are often passed over, ignored or simply unknown.  Much is simply lost.  This is a mouthpiece/online placeholder for the work of the Beyond Shakespeare Company, an holistic theatre company, who specialise in the repertory beyond Shakespeare, about the plays, fragmentary and extant, that shaped the theatrical world and our dramatic history – it will explore this world through the words and the sounds of those words.  Though these plays do get performed occasionally, they are often not recorded, they disappear from sight in a way that Shakespeare does not.  So, we are here to create, share, archive, and lobby for recordings of Not Shakespeare.  To put Shakespeare in his proper place - IN CONTEXT!

Accompanying these recordings will be additional material, discussion and talks on the plays and anything else that comes to mind at the time.  We’ll hopefully be joined by other actors, directors, academics, to help create new recordings and feed your interest.  We hope that others will join in, creating their own versions and sharing them for the world to hear - for anyone who’s interested in what isn't Shakespeare.
We're not rejecting Shakespeare totally either.  We do love his work, but he is eclipsing.  So much so that the only way to draw attention to his predecessors and contemporaries is to conjure up his name.  Shakespeare is a colossus, but that doesn’t render his co-workers pygmies.  We invoke his name so as to pull other playwrights from underneath his long shadow.

We are unapologetic in recording extracts or spending time on plays that are very obscure.  There are two reasons for this - 1. There is so very little material surviving from the medieval and early Tudor periods that every scrap is precious.  2.  Other people have or are already doing the obvious Not Shakespeare, so we don't need to.  You want a version of Doctor Faustus - try searching on Amazon, that'll get you where you need to go.

There's a whole heap of other stuff happening online and this blog may struggle to keep up - the best place to get up to speed will probably be our twitter feed @BeyondShakes
The Podcast can be found here.
Our Patreon can be found here.
You can make a one off donation to our work here.