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.