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'.