Finally, a bit of Heywood

After a few years of pootling along, we're finally getting around to attacking the work of John Heywood, an early Tudor playwright who created a selection of delightful interludes.  Using the opportunity of doing a completely separate live streamed comedy show (Live from the Get In), I'm recording Johan Johan - or A mery play between John Johan the husbande, Tyb his wyfe, and Syr Johan the preest (which is a bit of a mouthful and a bugger to tweet) - in front of a live studio audience.
Here's how it works - the final show will be edited and adapted for audio (the physical comedy doesn't come across well for obvious reasons) but I've been recording all the read through/rehearsals so that there are several recordings of these - including one of the full text, plus actor discussion and general thoughts on performance.  All this material will appear on the blog in the next few months.
We've had two full rehearsals so far, with another run to go - and so we've gone into this short interlude in some detail - for the moment here were some of our first impressions.
1. It's pretty rude.  I knew the play was about cuckolding, but I'd not appreciated the full weight of the innuendo present of hard phallic objects being vigorously worked in the corner of the room.  It's, sadly, something that will be lost in the audio recording, but the live audience will get it.
2. The opening speech has become very difficult to pull off.  There's nothing like a long speech to open a play, where the protagonist goes into a lengthy debate as to whether to beat his wife or not, to endear that character to the audience.  The joke is that he's obviously never going to actually do it, being too afraid of her, and that he keeps swapping between whether he should or not, what the neighbours will say, would it work etc.  In the Tudor world, where the chastising of a wife would be acceptable behaviour, this was probably very funny - to the modern audience, this is, to say the least, problematic.  We could argue that because he's never going to do it, there's no harm done - but that doesn't really hold much water and it will be interesting to see how the opening will read to the audience.  I couldn't let the audience come in cold to this, so to give the play some context I've got a narrator to set the scene, and have cut the speech down so that the appeal for wife beating doesn't go on too long.
3.  Pie making is a complicated business.  I'd not appreciated how complicated the business of the pie in the story was.  In the play, John John is cheated out of eating supper (a pie) by doing a pointless household chore.  But the story of the pie runs through the whole play - from arriving in the house at the start, to the back story of the commissioning and making of said pie prior.  The backstory of the making of the pie is used by Sir John the priest to get admittance to John John's house and the eating thereof.  I hope we'll make this clear to the audience.
4.  Having two characters called John is a bit odd and not very helpful - though not actually a problem.
5.  The play is, barring the opening (see above), really rather fun and we expect it to prove genuine laughter.

Assuming that the show I'm yoking this recording session to continues, I'm hoping to follow up the play with more from Heywood, recording versions of all his interludes - with the possible exception of The Play of the Weather, which is a bit too big for me at the moment, and which has been looked at in some detail elsewhere.

A (Mostly) Towneley Nativity

Merry Christmas Everyone!  Here's a little audio gift for you.
Many years ago I organised a little reading of some edited Mystery plays in the bar of the Quay Theatre - it was a heavily edited Nativity sequence, mostly from the Towneley Cycle (including most of the Second Shepherd Play), with an introduction from the Chester Banns.  Luckily I recorded the show on a mini disk player, so this very rough audio recording can now be heard.  With Christmas coming around again, here's the first half of Medieval Mysteries.  The second half, featuring the three Kings and Herod plays, follows below.

Medieval Mysteries - Part One

Narrator and Mak: Robert Crighton
Gabriel and Shepherd: Richard Fawcett
Mary and Gill: Sara Knight
Joseph and Shepherd: David Knight
Other Shepherd: Michael Harding

Medieval Mysteries - Part Two
Narrator and Soldier: Neil Arbon
Herod: Robert Crighton
Nuncius and Mother: Helen Arbon
King and Soldier: Joseph James
King and Mother:  Carole Hughes

Medieval Mysteries was edited and produced by Robert Crighton and performed in the bar at the Quay Theatre in December 2006.

The Nativity - A Nativity

It's happening - we're doing a Nativity in December.  We're calling it The Nativity.  Subtle, I know.  It's going to feature six complete 'pageants' from the N-Town play, plus a little bit from another.

Our Nativity Line Up -
Annunciation: a short passage
Joseph's Doubts
The Nativity
The Shepherds
The Kings
The Purification
Slaughter of the Innocents

Now there are a lot of other Nativity applicable pageants contained in the N-Town play and they're all  very interesting, but the N-Town play is very odd and there are lots of different ways of cutting the cloth.  It's all part of a longer term plan, so here's my thinking.
The N-Town play is a compilation - a composite of a number of different sources, edited together into the final manuscript.  So, you've got the original pageants, performed individually or in some order from a greater whole, but they've been cut up and rearranged and turned into another play - the N-Town play.  It's a bit like we've lost Shakespeare's history plays, but we've got a copy of the Barton/Hall script for The Wars of the Roses - though we don't know whether the text was created to be performed, or as a private document for an individual/family/institution, though most people tend towards for the latter.
The question is then, how do you perform it?  Attempt each play individually, putting the additions or cuts to one side and try to get at the original (whatever that means) text, or perform the final form of the play - which it may never have been meant to be?
The long term plan is this - perform sections of the play in some detail in a number of locations around East Anglia (from whence the plays came), recording, archiving and noting the way the text works (or doesn't) in an individual way.  We may go back to some plays and perform them with others.  The Nativity sequence I've chosen above could be done quite differently, we're sticking to the main thrust of the story in this selection, but we could mix in a number of other plays, perform the Kings and Slaughter as one text, without the addition of Simeon and the Purification in the middle etc.  So this isn't The Nativity, as such, in December we'll be performing A The Nativity.  We'll possibly perform another very different The Nativity in the future.
Once we've played around with all the texts in an individualistic way, curating the material in different ways, we'll look at a complete staging of the whole play.
To some degree this is a text I am coming back to.  I used the Passion Play 1 from N-Town as the primary text for a version of The Passion three years ago.  I'm rather looking forward to covering that text again in a more consistent way sometime soon.

The Fall of Lucifer (Chester) - Full Audio Recording

In the dim and distant past of 2013 we started a real in depth look at the Chester Plays - launching the Exploring the Chester Plays series as well as recording fuller audio productions for future release.  We've nearly caught up with ourselves.  The first five Explorings, covering plays 1 to 10, have now been archived and the first audio production has been edited.  It's not perfect, but considering how rushed the sessions were, it's turned out quite well.  Beyond a minor edit to bypass the issue of the Angels singing (sorry Mat, you ended up on the cutting room floor - we so can't do music of the period yet) it's a full recording of the text we used for Exploring in 2013 - though with more considered performances and sound to help tell the story.  It is hopefully a good introduction to the play for the student who's never seen or heard the play in full before - i.e. almost everyone on the planet.
We've recorded play two which will follow in a similar fashion, and some bits from plays 3,4 & 5 - which may be completed at a later date.
And that'll be it for a while - we're moving on from Chester for the present (though we hope to finish the Exploring sessions at some point).  We're based in East Anglia, so the N-Town play is a much more important 'cycle' to be looking at at in the future.

So, please enjoy our version of Play One of the Chester Plays - The Tanners Play covering the Fall of Lucifer.


God: Robert Crighton
Lucifer: Trevor Laver
Lightbourne: Richard Fawcett
Angels and Archangels: Helen Arbon, Neil Arbon, Adam Webster, Kevin Roychowdhury, AM Barrett, Annie Eddington.
Recorded at the Quay Theatre, Sudbury
Produced and edited by Robert Crighton

Music and Sound Effects all come from the lovely people of freesfx - http://www.freesfx.co.uk

The Pride of Life - A Reconstruction

Just what is The Pride of Life?

What is the text even?  We don't have the original manuscript, which is conjectured to be a rushed copy of an original play.  It was copied by two men, one by sight, one by dictation.  It is written on the back of something else.  It sits, unremarked and unstaged, for hundreds of years, is copied and then is lost in fire.  We have this copy of a copy.
It was copied in Ireland, but was it a script from a touring company?  A script from England or Ireland?  A few English place names in the text suggest England, but it isn't absolute.  The copying of the text may have altered the original, disguising any linguistic clues as to provenance.

It's old, it's about as old as drama gets in English (1350ish) and, even in its damaged state it is still performable.  The story is simple.  The King of Life boasts his mastery over all things.  His soldiers, Strength and Health agree with him, his Queen does not, and warns him that death will take him.  He rejects her and calls on his messenger Mirth (or Solace) to cheer him up, which Mirth does and is rewarded for his pains.  The King then leaves with his knights and the Queen sends Mirth to the Bishop, hoping that the Bishop will change the King's mind.  The Bishop laments the loss of faith in the kingdom and goes to the King, exorting him to turn to God and prepare for death.  The King rejects him as well, and sends Mirth out to with a challenge to anyone who might try to best him - even Death himself - that he is King over all.  There the text ends, but we know from the prologue that the King is then visited by Death who kills him.
The dramaturgy is deceptively simple.  Characters enter, state who they are, state where they stand in the play and then, by and large, shut up.  There are two set piece dialogues - exchanges between the King and Queen and the King and Bishop.  The Bishop also gets a long set piece monologue.  There the text ends and though we know broadly how the play ends, we don't know how the action would have been treated.  The play could be viewed as a fairly simple demonstration of an argument.
Prologue - this is what will happen.
Main Body of Play - it happens.
Probable Epilogue - it happened.
It is unlikely that the play developed themes beyond the main - that man will die and should prepare for death/Death.  The play was written not long after the Black Death had swept across Europe and reached England - preparing for death was a very pressing matter.  The play doesn't engage in debate.  The Queen warns the King he will die, his rebuttal is all bluster.  He has no counter argument.  Rather than engage with the issue he insults her, saying she wants him dead so she can marry another.  The King leaves her to engage in more play and distraction from his end, possibly more than he would have done had she not spoken.  She sends for the Bishop, who similarly warns the King to look to God.  Again, the rebuttal is the same - he just insults the Bishop as a 'babbler' and questions his motives for speaking up.  The King acts up even more and directly sends his messenger out to challenge Death - with predictable results.  The argument lost, all that remains is for the King to die.
However, I used the word deceptively above for good purpose.  The dialogue - repetitive though it is - is heartfelt.  The King maybe a type, but he isn't a cardboard cutout.  He rejects the Queen by having a temper tantrum, calling her a 'whore'.  His speeches are emotive, violent and unfair, but in performance suggests fear.  If he were really confident in his position he might laugh off the suggestion that Death would get him.  As he isn't, he blusters.
When the Bishop enters he makes a long speech which is the only time that the outside world is expressly referenced.  He talks of how the land is corrupt, the rich eating the poor.  Again, though the text is corrupt, and very long, the speech is brilliantly constructed.  A general lament about rich and poor, the unbalance in the land bleeds into anger - as his ire gets more direct and more pointed.  The speech pulls back and he looks to God, offering a final prayer, at which point the King enters.  The Bishop is now in the right frame of mind to make a reasonable, yet impassioned plea to the King, which is rebuffed.
Of the other characters, the King's knights have no inner life, they speak when commanded to and are yes men to the King.  Mirth, the messenger, is different.  It's a double role as a fool who sings and generally amuses, as well as serving the practical purpose of being the messenger sent after Death.  He has two speeches that survive and possibly more that don't.  Firstly the King calls him up, asking him to generally cheer him up - he appears to the King and gives a fairly grovelly speech saying how wonderful the King is - and, in passing, how great a servant he is as well.  The King rewards his sycophancy with a title and lands and then leaves.  I would suggest that possibly there is something missing in the text at this point - something lost during the initial copying - perhaps a song from Mirth, something more for which he deserves reward.  It follows the rejection of the Queen by the King, who demands something to change his mood, but nothing in the text shows this to actually happen, beyond a fairly short bit of grovelling.
Mirth is then sent by the Queen to the Bishop.  Questions arise as to loyalty of Mirth - he is clearly the Kings servant, but he goes to take the message for the Queen anyway.  He is presumably mostly in it for the money, following whoever pays him.  He sings as he goes - though no song is in evidence - the song helpfully covering a scene/location change.  The beginning of Mirth's scene with the Bishop is missing, so we can only speculate how this might have run.  A speech reiterating the words of the Queen, or some kind of back and forth?
Mirth reappears when the King has dismissed the Bishop - he is tasked with calling out Death and his speech to the people is not dissimilar to other messengers in Herod plays.  The relationship between the King of Life and Herod and their messengers is marked.  Though the King is nowhere near as violent or prone to ranting as a Herod, he is as proud and as changeable in his mood.  Mirth clearly isn't keen on the message and I would like to image a scene where, having made the speech to the people, Death approaches Mirth and has a conversation with him - leading to the first death of the play.  But I doubt that would have actually have been in the original play.

Making absolute conclusions about the play is difficult because of the half state it reaches us.  The original copy was incomplete and difficult to read, and even this is now lost, so it is difficult to do more analysis of the text than was done when it was first transcribed.  I've suggested that there may be other minor absences from the text, beyond those we know about.  The King and Queen suffer from the first missing passage, where the Queen swears some kind of fealty to the King.  We have the last four lines of this and this loss is felt.  Here they are -

QUEEN:  Baldly thou art my boot, [remedy]

Trusty and full true -
Of all my rest thou art root,
I nill change for no new.

Interestingly this promise, that she wouldn't change him for another (i.e. remarry should he die) is one of the first things he will throw back at her when she defies his pride later - perhaps a clue to what the rest of her speech would have said lies in what he turns against her later?  In so formal a play it is likely that repetition would be used throughout.

The next lost passage, as discussed above, is the relaying of the message to the Bishop.  I suspect this would have told us more about Mirth than the Bishop and is no where near as keenly felt a loss as the earlier section.
The final lost passage is the death of the King.  It is difficult to know precisely how this would have worked - the prologue speaks of the King dreaming about Death coming for him, slaying both father and mother and then him.  Were we to be treated to a dream sequence?  Or do we think this is beyond the dramaturgy of the play?  More plausibly the King would enter having awoken from the dream, telling his court what he saw.  Perhaps reports would come of the death of his family?  Would Death come for him alone or kill the whole court?  And then what?  Death says goodbye or an Angel appears?  A full trial for the King's soul in Heaven a la Castle of Perseverance seems unlikely, I would suspect it would be something reported.  But all of the above is speculation, we don't know.

Staging Pride:
I was asked to produce a community production of something medieval for the Magna Carta in Clare celebrations for 2015 and I suggested Pride as the earliest example of its kind.  This approved, I started to produce a text.
Firstly there were questions of clarity - it's an early play, so the incidence of unusual words was great.  Then there were questions of distortion to the text - inferred lines and what to do with them.  Then there was the question of what to do with the lost passages.
The last was the most pressing (and I've covered the earlier textual issues in an earlier post).  For the first gap I decided to do next to nothing - I looked through passages of medieval verse and comparably lines of love, but decided to just use the remaining lines of the Queen - using a gesture from the King to indicted she come to him, her four lines being a neat and short summary of her feelings.  All that was needed to tidy up the exchange was to compose the concluding two lines of the King's opening speech, so that the pattern of the stanza and the rhyming scheme remained intact - I cribbed from similar commonplaces in other texts to create a reasonable approximation.

Lords of land beith at my leading,
All men shall a-bow in hall and in bower.
No man shall ever dismiss my heeding
Not of field, village, town or tower.

The second absence was trickier - I could have changed the action so that Mirth delivered a note to the Bishop - this would scan well enough.  Instead I simply adjusted the Queen's lines to Mirth and made them into reported speech for Mirth to say on.  This way the transaction felt more natural and less rushed.
Finally we come to the lost ending.  How to deal with that?  The BBC Radio version from the 1950's used the prologue to great effect, using it as a running narration throughout the play, taking up the storytelling for the end when the text ran out.  This worked on radio where words and music are the complete world.  But on stage it would feel half formed and also would make the play far too short.  (Also, I hate just stealing someone else's idea - it's lazy.)
Using the prologue as a guide I looked for suitable substitutions in medieval drama - rather than writing a cod medieval text of my own.  There are two good possibles.  One is from The Castle of Perseverance, where we had the appearance of Death and the option of the soul in an afterlife.  But I felt it didn't follow the theme of the punishment of pride enough and I dismissed it quickly.  The other possible was from The Death of Herod of the N Town plays.  A prideful King acclaims victory over a foe (Jesus in this case) and Death arrives to ruin the party.  With a few adjustments to the King's line about who his foe was and some moving around of dialogue the scene runs well, ending with a repeat of the King's first lines defiantly claiming he is King over all, just as he is about to die.  We then repeated the final lines of the prologue about his soul and ended the play with an Epilogue from a lost play, which deserves an airing - it is possible this is the first performance of this Epilogue in a production since the middle ages.
It was surprising how well the two texts flowed together, specially when, formally, they are very different.  The Herod play is later, has a more sophisticated verse structure and longer lines, but the sentiments were very similar, so it worked well.  The only real failure was joining the new ending to the older play.  Mirth makes his speech to the audience, relating the King's challenge.  He is then killed by Death - but I should have made that clearer, using a different approach to break into the new ending.  There was a sense of losing the flow of the play at this point - especially as I was using a chorus of actors to play Death, rather than a clearer more traditional figure in a big cloak.
My initial staging decisions didn't help the staging either.  The acting area was narrow and long and this cat walk style thrust made the play function in a very different way to it's original outdoor scaffold performance.  I made a benefit of this by using the length of the space to create long 'walks of shame' whenever a character was made to choose who they supported.  The Queen goes to the King at the start, joining him at his throne, taking a long walk to get to him.  When she questions him she ends up the other end of the room to him and his two knights choose to move from her and walk to the King's end.  This pattern was repeated with the Bishop.  He was found in the centre of the room and the King's knights again decide to walk the length of the room, past the Bishop, to show loyalty with the King.  Death's approach to the King was similarly long, killing his court one by one as Death processed down towards him.
Additional I tried to repeat these images several times in the course of the play - both during the action but also before hand, during the prologue.  I broke the prologue up into sections for the whole company to say, and as they spoke, the action of the play were demonstrated - not quite a full dumb show, but near enough.  This way the audience had some chance of following the story should the ancient dialogue be a bit much for them.
I'll be posting video and audio of the production online - though the quality of these recordings varies.  The space had a difficult echo and the shape of the staging made it very difficult to document.  The configuration of the play made it next to impossible to film or record a good audio copy.  What I have will be online as soon as possible - I will also make available my version of the text so that others can plunder what is good and what is bad.

The Pride of Life: Surviving Text - from rehearsals of the reconstruction, this recording features only the surviving text, with white noise to indicate the breaks in the original manuscript.

The Pride of Life: Annotated Video Version



The Pride of Life: A Reconstruction (Single shot video of the performance, including additions)



Additional links: The Pride of Life is available in a number of editions and collections.  I haven't come across any text that is ever less than massively intimidating to the general reader, but persevere and it will reward.  Hopefully our flawed recordings will help - I've always found listening to the version of an early play whilst looking at the text immensely helpful to understanding, if only to reject the decisions of producers or editors.  For an e-edition there is a fully edited text online on the University of Rochester website - and an introduction here.

The Pride of Life by Anonymous - Edited and reconstructed by Robert Crighton

Cast:
King of Life - Haydn McCabe
Queen of Life - Esme Stanway
Bishop - Robert Myson
Mirth - Clarissa Seeley
Strength - Michelle Allen
Health - Pat Curtis
Chorus - Katie Landon, Beth Norris & Kate Terry
Costumes by Mary Denton

Ian McCabe as the King of Life, at the dress rehearsal.

Backstage Photographs from Pride & Dame

To accompany the back stage photos for the medieval drama from the Magna Carta in Clare celebrations we include the programme notes for Pride and Dame Sirith.

THE PRIDE OF LIFE:

The Pride of Life is one of the oldest, if not the oldest, surviving play in the English language. 

There are many caveats to the above sentence.

Firstly, there are other surviving texts which come from about the same period in time, though it’s very difficult to put an exact date to these things.  Pride comes somewhere around 1350. 

Secondly, it doesn’t quite survive - not fully.  There are big gaps in the text we have and the second half / third is completely lost, so it can’t be classed as an extant play. 

Thirdly, though in English, the text is Irish in origin – at the very least by adoption, as this is where the manuscript was copied in the form which has come down to us.

So, on the face of it, not a very appropriate entertainment for a medieval banquet in 1215.

But what else is there?  When I was first approached to do something for the Magna Carta celebrations I racked my brains as to what was most appropriate.  We haven’t got any surviving plays in English prior to 1350 – and I didn’t think that the average persons knowledge of Latin would be up to it.  Thinking a little sideways I considered some later plays about King John.  But all three King John plays from the early modern period have one major deficiency. 

They don’t mention Magna Carta.  At all.

So I made a compromise – the earliest play that was doable and which features at least a thematic link to the story of King John.  The Pride of Life is, as the title suggests, about pride and a prideful King at that.  It resonates nicely.

For all the incompleteness of the text, it is performable thanks to the detail afforded by the banns that open the play – a prologue that tells the whole of the plot, including the ending.  To make the play more whole I have added a section of another early English play – from an East Anglian Mystery play about the death of Herod – to round off the story dramatically, as well as a playless Epilogue that has survived as a fragment.  It is possible this Epilogue has never been performed as part of a production for six hundred years as, being without a play to perform before it, why would anyone use it?  One can never be certain of such things, someone else might have had the idea before me, but it’s an exciting thought.

The Pride of Life has been performed more recently than the mid 14^th Century, though I haven’t had a chance to hunt out any specific productions – either student or professional.  The BBC produced a reasonably accurate version for the Third Programme in the 1950’s as part of their The First Stage series.  It used the prologue throughout the play (which, short as it was, was cut down and heavily modernised) to cover the gaps in the text.  Sadly this recording is only currently available if you can find the LP release of the series (which thanks to ebay I have) – which I doubt will get a wider airing.  I have therefore recorded our cast performing our text of the play and this audio recording (and video footage we hope to make of the last rehearsals and performance) will be put online for free to introduce interested people to the play.

As part of this production I have endeavoured to retain as much of the original text as possible and not overly modernise it.  We have only cut four lines from the extant play and altered some readings where the corrupted text gave me some license to be bolder with changing lines.  I have written two additional lines to one speech where a gap in the text doesn’t complete the rhyming scheme – though this reconstruction is based on patterns found in other plays of the period.  For those who are interested the original play ends with the final lines of Mirth, just as Death kills him.  Sadly none of the original dialogue for Death survived, which is a shame as he’s a marvellous conversationalist in most medieval texts.

I would like to thank the Magna Carta in Clare committee for hosting this Before Shakespeare* production and for producing such a welcoming atmosphere.
[*Our original incarnation - Ed]

Some rehearsal shots for Pride of Life - first full tryout with costumes.

Adam reading from his medieval mobile phone...

A Magna Carta Mumming

The first part of the evening is a completely true account of the story of Magna Carta – told in the fashion of a Mumming.  Mumming is a slippery term, it can mean a lot of different things depending when it was produced and who it was for.  It could involve song, dance or drama.  We’ve used a loose folk ritual to create something new, something special for this event.  It isn’t an historical re-enactment; it is a reimagining of a form designed to illicit a few cheap laughs, created in the spirit of the medieval entertainments of the day, not in absolute fact.

The Mummers Are: Michelle Allen, Robert Crighton, Pat Curtis, Katie Landon, Beth Norris, Clarissa Seeley, Alban Smith-Adams & Kate Terry.  Costumes by Mary Denton.

Dame Sirith

Edited and performed by Robert Crighton

Dame Sirith isn’t quite a fable, if only because it doesn’t have a moral.  It tells the story of a monk, Wilekin, who takes a fancy to the wife of a merchant, one Dame Margery.  When the merchant is away the monk tries to woo Margery but she’s having none of it and sends him away with a flea in his ear.  About to give into despair he meets a friend who recommends Dame Sirith the hend (wise) to help him. 

He goes to her and, after a little bartering, she agrees to get Margery to relent.  To do this she uses a small dog and a jar of mustard... but we wouldn’t want to ruin the ending for you by saying anymore. 

Unlike our very fake Mumming, Dame Sirith is genuinely medieval, appearing towards the end of the 12^th Century, and so is something that would have been about at the time of King John.

This version is only lightly modernised, so features many old words (gange is one of our favourites) and unfamiliar phrasing – but hopefully through the modern day translation service of the storyteller’s backchat it will be both clear and amusing.

And a few shots from backstage during the Mumming - and our strange array of Mummers!

Pride and a Dame

I'm putting the final touches to the rehearsal script for The Pride of Life and a new project Dame Sirith. Both are being produced for the Magna Carta celebrations in Clare and we had our first read through on Sunday.
They are two very different pieces and editing them has been incredibly difficult.  The Pride of Life is the easier because it is later (mid-fourteenth Century) but even so is one of the earliest dramatic texts we have in English.  The read through was a testing ground for legibility.  Using a projector to save printing a script that was inevitably going to change, we tentatively attempted the play, stopping occasionally for clarification.  There was a certain amount of fear - many of the people in the room didn't know each other and the text was difficult - but we got to the end and nobody had died.  (Except the King of Life, of course.)  Then I mixed up the readers and we had another crack - and this time it flowed better, people had started to click into the medieval mind.  That isn't to say I was going to leave it there.  My pad was covered in notes for areas of text that weren't working, words that might need changing, sentences that we just too obscure.
I have rules for editing a play of this type, but they're not hard and fast.  The play, ultimately, is the thing - if it doesn't work, then we will make changes.  But we start with as light an edit as possible.  Broadly the rules are these.
1. Modernise and standardise the spelling where possible.  Much of the text will be clearer once the common words that exist today have been given normalised spelling.  We're not attempting original pronunciation, so the only words which might cause problems will be the rhymes at the end of lines - generally I choose the most obvious rhyme sound and follow that, but sometimes you have to put your hands up in despair and say, it just doesn't work or it will need to be changed.
2. Do not change sentence structure, syntax or grammar - unless meaning is completely mangled.  An audience will tune into the unfamiliar structure after a few minutes and the actors, through their own skill and expert understanding of the text, can signpost most confusions.  However, there are always a few exceptions to this rule - in The Pride of Life there are several references to eyes, which seem to be commonplace tropes from the time, a truncated version of a cliched turn of phrase, which has fallen out of use.  Even reading my notes on what the lines mean (the same reference is used I think twice) I'm at a loss as to what they really mean.  If you need a minute to explain a three second sentiment, then you're on a loosing wicket and might as well draw stumps and walk back to the pavilion.  I.e. Change or cut the line.
3. Sounds matter.  Try not to lose too much of the texture of the sound of the text when striving for sense.  Sometimes intent and the pure power of the sound is enough.  Which brings us to...
4. The Teen and Tray rule.  Where possible retain words which have no modern equivalent - so long as there is enough context for the meaning to carry.  This is exemplified by teen and tray (spelling various) which have appeared in the Chester Plays and again in The Pride of Life.  Broadly they mean sorrow and care, but there are no close modern equivalents.  To change them steps the editor into the role of translator.  The context in which these words appear make their meaning clear, the sentences often repeat the sentiment in other still used words and the actor make make the meaning of the words apparent.  Say them out loud and they sound like they mean - they represent the essence of what can be preserved in a modern production of an ancient play.  The Teen and Tray rule is the line this project tries not to cross to avoid throwing the baby out with the bathwater - because if you're just going to rewrite the play, what's the point of staging it in the first place?

Producing Dame Sirith is another matter entirely.  As a much earlier text (late 12th/early 13th Century - i.e. relatively contemporaneous with King John) it flits between complete clarity, to dangerous obscurantism.  The version that appears in the Penguin Classics edition is a translation, and I can understand why.  It's not an easy read.
However, my approach to Dame Sirith is not to translate, but to commentate.  Whereas in The Pride of Life we will play the final edit with a straight bat (to continue my cricket metaphor), for this piece of storytelling, we'll muck about a lot around the text.  We'll probably have one or two 'medieval' storytellers, telling it as it is writ (my edit follows the above rules on the strict side), we'll then have other/s simultaneously translating the story, commenting on it, insulting the other storytellers and generally throwing bad jokes around.  This will be a work in progress for the next couple of months - I don't know precisely how it will shape up in the end.
More on these projects soon - hopefully you'll start getting a taste of the texts with some audio/visual soon.
Popped round to our venue for the shows this morning and took a few snaps...

Clare Town Hall - we're mostly not using the stage itself - the performers will be among the audience

A mini minstrel gallery - where music will pour forth...

The Rickinghall Fragment

A short extract from a place not a million miles away from where I'm recording - Bury St Edmunds.  It was found on the back of a scrap of paper with details of Rickinghall in Suffolk, at one time owned by the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds - hence it's name.
There are two extracts, dating from the early fourteenth century, in theory of the same speech by a King, one in Latin and Anglo-Norman and the other in English.  The two speeches are similar in content, but not direct translations of each other.  The Anglo-Norman version is slightly longer than the English, and gives more context and stage direction.  The King is a tyrant, a Herod figure or something similar, who is speaking to this court and there is a direction for a messenger, who doesn't speak.
I've recorded just the English version, for obvious reasons, using this slightly modernised version of the text below.  I've tried not to change too much, leaving words that have no easy modern equivalent as writ.  I hope this makes the speech more understandable, without losing too much of the original.

Lordings 
Withouten lessing [falsehood]
Ye witten well that I am King
Here of all this land.

Therefore I will that mine baronage
Ye that been of great parage [parentage – high birth]
That he come in to mine will;
For all that arn in burw [burgh] or town
I will he witten my resoun [understands my account]
And that is right and schil. [reasonable]

listen to ‘The Rickinghall Fragment’ on audioBoom

For this recording the King was played by Malcolm Hollister, with thanks.

God's Promises by John Bale - Act 7

Discussing the play with John the Baptist

In late 2013 I started to record God's Promises but quickly got very behind.  Since those first tentative steps I have upgraded my equipment and, to some degree, feel I want to start all over again.  However, we did record the introduction, the final scene and the closing speech and these are now available to listen - in a rough edit.  There were several textual issues which I don't think we have succeeded in clearing.  Firstly, the text is very dense.  It features a lot of argument, the kind you might expect from a theologian, especially one such as Bale who had the Protestant axe to grind.

The Prologue: Baleus Prolocutor
So, the opening and closing speeches are to be spoken by Bale or someone as him.  (We decided to ignore this in the recording, so that there was at least one female part in the production.  It also meant we could use the same actor to read stage directions without them being confused as another character.)  They are outside the text, the author directly addressing his audience, or perhaps more appropriately, his flock.  Making this Tudor text clear was a challenge and one which, in the short time span available, I don't know has succeeded.  But you may judge for yourself.  Hopefully anyone thinking of reading the play can use the recording to help guide them into the text.

listen to ‘God's Promises - by John Bale. Baleus Procolutor’ on Audioboo

Act Seven:  John the Baptist
We spent a little longer recording the completed scene seven.  The play is a running argument, starting with Adam and ending with John, encountering various Biblical figures along the way.  All argue with God to forgive mankind, and only with John does God relent - though, of course, he has already relented, having already sent Jesus into the world.

Cecil Qadir as John the Baptist

John begins by pleading with God that the worst excesses of man are past - this is a long list of people and names from the Bible, showing up the virtue of many good men.  When God reveals his plan, and that John will be Jesus' messenger to the world, John says he won't be of any use, he is as a child.  God then gifts him a golden tongue (this is a literal stage direction) and he then ends the play with a speech about his mission, ending in a song of praise.  We couldn't think of a way of turning the golden tongue into an audio event and used a narrator, and as we have no budget for music at this time, this is also indicated by the narrator.
Again, as we rehearsed this scene we had a long discussion about clarity.  The final recording is clearer than the opening and closing speeches, as it is a dialogue.  If you read the precis first, I suspect what is being said is clear.  However, out of context, without reading the above, I suspect most people will struggle.
This isn't, I hope, just because of our performances.  I suspect that the text, its very denseness, will always make this play a difficult proposition.  It is, oddly, harder to follow than an earlier play - it is caught between the more rigid rhyming verse of the medieval street theatre and the later public theatre voice.  That doesn't make the play uninteresting, just difficult, and I hope listening will reward your effort.

listen to ‘God's Promises by John Bale - Act 7’ on Audioboo

The Epilogue: Baleus Prolocutor
I find, listening back, that the closing speech is much clearer - but that could just be me.  It's possibly tempered by the fact that I've gone through the play before listening to it and am more attuned - which would also be the case for the audience.  It's a reminder of the message of the play and the importance of the Protestant interpretation of Christianity.

The light of our faith makes this thing evident,
And not the practice of other experiment.

The other being the Catholic interpretation.  This is a polemical work, designed to reference the Catholic drama of the middle ages but retooled for Protestant ears.  This kind of religious propaganda is short lived, lasting from the reformation to the reign of Elizabeth, with both sides of the divide flinging drama of this sort at each other.  It was divisive, dangerous and could not last.  Perhaps the reason why these plays have fallen out of favour is this lack of context.  The play doesn't need to involve inner conflict, because the conflict was off stage, the danger is in the existence of the play, not necessarily in the dramaturgy.  The challenge for a modern producer is to find a way of making these stakes evident.

listen to ‘God's Promises - by John Bale. Baleus Procolutor (Epilogue) ’ on Audioboo

The Reynes Extracts - An Epilogue

Here is the second of the Reynes extracts – I have previously blogged about the other A Speech of Delight.  This second fragment is an epilogue – perhaps to the same play, but it could easily be for any play of the period – a generic plea to the audience to forgive the players if they weren’t any good and not report them if they’d fluffed their lines – and some productions had strict rules over the players of plays, with fines exacted for being incompetent.  This short epilogue also mentions a church ale, which follows on from the production, suggesting both play and the ale were fundraisers for the local church.  One of the things we see with small scale medieval playing was it was often done to raise money for specific causes – the church roof for example.  Times don’t change.  I'm planning to use this speech in a production next year, popping it onto a play that doesn't have a proper ending.  That way this little speech will get to live in the real world once again - possibly the first time in a production for many hundreds of years.

listen to ‘An Epilogue - A Medieval Fragment’ on Audioboo

An Epilogue

Now worshipful sovereigns that sittyn here in sith

Lords and ladies and Franklins in fay

With all manner of obeisance we recommend us right

Pleasantly to your persons that present be in play.

And for your suffering silence that ye have kept this day

In playing of our play without any resistance

Dearly we thank you with might as we may

And for your laudable listening in good audience

That we have had this day.

And if we have passed any point in our playing

Or moved any matters in our saying

That should be to your persons displeasing

We beseech you report it not away.

For truly our intent was well to do

And if any fault be there found in it is our negligency

And short time advisement cause it also

For little time of learning we have had sickerly

And every man is not expert in eloquency

To utteryn his matter gaily unto your audience.

Wherefore we beseech you of your great gentry

The best to report of us in our absence

In every ilke a place.

Sovereigns all insame [in company]

Ye that are come to see our game

We pray you all in Gods name

To drink ere ye pass.

For an ale is here ordained by a comely assent

For all manner of people that appearyn here this day

Unto holy church to the increasement

All that exceedeth the costs of our play.

The Ashmole Fragment

The Ashmole Fragment is a tiny little scrap left over from a play now lost.  It really is blink and you’ll miss it.  It features one character - Secundus Miles (second soldier) – who speaks his loyalty to his Emperor – to defend him from any gedling (rascal) and then to a high priest – offering his dagger to Mahound (or in modern terms Mohammed – a name generally used as an oath in medieval drama, ironically, by anyone who was a bit pagan).  It isn’t clear what the surrounding play was – something with a tyrant and priests, and whilst Herod springs to mind, there are plenty of other biblical stories that could use the same motif.

listen to ‘The Ashmole Fragment’ on Audioboo

SECUNDUS MILES:

Sure Emperor, dread ye no thing!

If there be any fresh gedling [rascal]

That would you grieve with any thing,

In word or in deed,

By the beard I shall him shake

That his skull shall all to crake [crack]

And his soul from him take

And roast him over a glede. [fire]

To the high priest

O Mahound, thou great God and true,

Lowuely [handsome] and also meek of hue,

Offer to thee I will new

A dagger that is good and fine.

And all else is lost.

The Chester Plays 7 & 8 - The Shepherds & Magi and Herod

Play 7 - The Shepherds Play.  After a couple of weeks looking at some distinctly odd plays, which seem to suffer from that terrible disease being-severely-buggered-about-with, we're back into open territory again and we get down to a more straightforward kind of storytelling.  The Shepherds play is idiosyncratic, as each of the many Shepherds plays are, but it is a complete whole, it has only one hint at obvious alteration and nothing so invasive as with some of the earlier plays.  There was a palpable sense of relief for the readers at the event that this time we were doing a play with a neat beginning, middle and end, not a play which dances around and is interrupted by an Expositor, whose arguments were not necessarily convincing.  (See previous Chester blogs.)

listen to ‘Chester Plays 7.1: Shepherds’ on audioBoom

The Chester Shepherds play does have marked similarities with plays from the other cycles.  There is the sense of realism of their life, the complaints and difficulties of raising sheep - an important animal in late medieval England.  The first shepherd - who, like all his fellows is named (though for ease of use I will stick to numbers here) - speaks first about the practical vetting of sheep, of the herbs and simples used in keeping them healthy.  It is quite detailed and suggests specialist knowledge.  Two other shepherds gather and they start to arrange their food and here hit a question the text didn't quite answer.  The foods they describe are ridiculous in their excess - it is a comic list of delicious foods, which they seem to pull out of bags and coats for theatrical effect, different dishes appearing from different folds of coats and bags in an amusingly impossible way.  The audience is invited to ask themselves, 'where's the next food stuff going to come from next?'  It is a grotesque spectacle and presumably designed to show that they're actually relatively wealthy - less Shepherds and more landowners, as opposed to the man they use to look after the sheep and the various boys they also exploit (more on them later).
[But there's an alternative way of staging the scene.  Perhaps the food they talk about is mimed - a non-display of everything a relatively poor Shepherd can't have.  Bigger and bigger mimes of bigger and bigger plates of food, ending, finally, in their actual food, which could be quite meager fare.  But I seem to be a minority of one on this suggestion.]

listen to ‘Chester Plays 7.2: Shepherds’ on audioBoom

They settle down to eat something and call their herdsman to them - they blow a horn and presumably use the note to then sing - which the stage direction states they do.  Garcius then joins them and there is a clear social difference between them.  It is this sense of a hierarchy - that the Shepherds are top of a relative heap in the social world that opens the possibility that they DO have vast amounts of food on their person, for they are proved, shortly, to be a bit mean.
Their herdsman is a comic ruffian, who states clearly that he'll sleep where he falls and piss where he stands, and who refuses their offer of food, demanding instead (not unreasonably) to be paid.  He is willing to fight for his rights and wrestles with the shepherds for his due - and he wins.  The other Shepherds grumble about being bested and sit down to a grumble.

TERTIUS PASTOR. Though we be weary no wonder

what between wrastling and waking.

Oft we may be in thought we be now under
God amend it with his making.

listen to ‘Chester Plays 7.3: Shepherds’ on audioBoom

And it is with this mention of God that the star appears and they are shocked at its brightness.  They then turn even further from their earthly distractions and kneel and pray.  More music now, as the Angel sings of the coming Christ and they listen in wonder.  Once this concert is complete they struggle to agree what was sung.  They take it in turns singing chunks of text, comically and rather sweetly, getting it wrong and yet teasing out the meaning as they go - often responding emotionally to what was sung.

"He sang also of a 'Deo’ [Deus - in this context, Jesus]
me thought that healed my heart."

They then sing a song in response - 'troly loly loly loo' - and decide to visit the child - which means they have understood what the Angel was singing, because they decide to go before the Angel appears to speak with them in dialogue.  They travel towards the star and are in the general area of Bethlehem - the Angel is waiting for them and moves them on.  Though there isn't a stage direction for it these lines suggest as they make their final way they sing again.

And sing we all I rede

some mirth to his majesty

for certain now see we it indeed:
the king Son of heaven is he.

listen to ‘Chester Plays 7.4: Shepherds’ on audioBoom

Upon visiting the stable they speak in wonder at Joseph and Mary and their age difference, (his beard gets quite a mention).  Mary and Joseph explain how worthy and chaste the birth was - as per the previous play.  The shepherds all give their humble gifts, after swiftly emptying their pockets and deciding who should go first - by order of age it seems.

PRIMUS PASTOR. Who shall go first? The page?  [Garcius]

SECUNDUS PASTOR. Nay you be father of age
Therefore must you first offer.

And here's where some probable later interference comes in.  After the four men have had their bit, suddenly four boys, never referenced before - except possibly obliquely - appear and give homage as well, fighting between themselves as to who has the right to go first.  They suggest a later addition, where an opportunity for some young boys has been crow-barred in, rather like additional cute kids being added to an amateur pantomime cast to help get more mums and dads along to watch.  It has little to do with what came before or after and doesn't add much, just a repetition.
The shepherds then part, humbler and wiser, to devote themselves to holy orders or prayer.  It's quite a sad, moving ending to a play that is fun and knockabout for most of the text.

The next play (eight) is the meeting of the Magi with Herod and is a shorter affair.

listen to ‘Chester Plays 8.1: Magi & Herod’ on audioBoom

The Three Kings meet to recount the prophecies of Balaam, justifying the inclusion of play five in the cycle - it's the last of the Old Testament plays and directly links the prophesies with the coming of Jesus.  There is none of the business in other versions of the Kings meeting each other for the first time and going through a range of introductions.  They are already a unit and they know they're task - they frequently make this pilgrimage to look for a sign that the Christ child is coming.  The Kings, riding on horse back, go to pray at a mountain - literally the same mountain as in the Balaam and Balak play - both in terms of stage property/setting and location within the text - returning the scene of the original prophesy for guidance.  Once there they kneel and an Angel shows them the star.  Given the general direction, which must be to desert terrain as they now mount camels, they head off in earnest.
It's worth going over this action again.  In the space of a few minutes, we've met the three Kings, travelled with them to a mountain on horseback, seen a star and then watched them ride off on camels to the land of Herod.  This asks a lot of questions about how this play and the others were staged - because there seem to be a number of playing areas - pageant wagons/scaffolds, with journeying between them among the audience.  The horses could literally be horses that they ride into the space with - a dramatic entrance to the play.  They discourse on why they're there - but what they're saying isn't as important as their appearance - the audience will be busy adjusting to their appearance, watching them enter and pick their way to the mountain.  They either have servants with them, or ask the audience to help with the horses (something not completely implausible in a horse driven society) with this line:

Say fellow take this courser

and abide me right here.

Once on the mountain - quite possibly the same mountain as in play five - they ask God for direction.  A star then appears and they are so surprised at the appearance that they start speaking in French (an indication of their status) - luckily they repeat the sentiment in English.  Then an Angel appears to them and they kneel.  The Angel tells them to get up and follow the star to Jude - which suggests the Angel carries the star away with it, as there are numerous references to the star doing different things it's difficult to tell.  But if the Angel takes the star then they must follow and so they move onto camels.

Now, even if they had real horses for their entrance (for which we cannot be sure) they definitely didn't have camels - so these are probably comic - hobbyhorses for a bit of fun.  The text is quite light on the subject.

TERTIUS REX. A dromodarye in good fay

will go lightly on his way

an hundreth miles upon a day

such corsers now take we.

There is a stage direction saying they go about, 'riding' among the audience and perhaps following the Angel with the star, leading them a merry dance.  

Then the star disappears and the Kings are left (presumably in the audience) with no direction to follow.  And it is now they meet a messenger of Herod.  They tell him what they're looking for and he tells them that if they go to Herod with their tale of a rival they won't be thanked.

EXPLORATER. Hold your peace sirs I you pray!

For if King Herod heard you so say

he would go wood* by my fay     *[mad]

and fly out of his skin.

But they decide to go anyway, in the blinking of a stage direction.  Explorater, the messenger, goes ahead to the pageant wagon/scaffold to announce them where, with the aide of music, Herod makes his entrance.  They greet each other in Norman French, as Kings should do and Herod makes his usual boasts of power, as all Herods tend to do.  

listen to ‘Chester Plays 8.2: Magi & Herod’ on audioBoom

Again we see crossover with the Balaam and Balak play - as Herod has similarities to King Balaam in terms of stage craft.  He shifts between general boasting to rage in the turn of a stanza and there are stage directions for physical business, where he gestures with a staff or sword - though in what way this stage business worked isn't clear.  It maybe that when he's trying to be Kingly he uses his staff, and when he's enraged he uses his sword - but that's just a suggestion on my part, because he may only have one or the other, not both.  

On hearing of Jesus he consults his learned Doctor (though there could be more than one of them) to confirm the three Kings story and in his increasing rage at the number of prophesies he breaks his sword.  It isn't clear how much or well this Herod hides his anger from the three Kings - his first outburst would have been in their present, though he might have consulted the Doctor in a separate part of the stage.  Though his manner changes as he speaks to the Kings there isn't the sense that he's actively trying to fool them that he is overjoyed at the appearance of a rival King.  There is almost no exchange with the Kings afterward as he sends them on their way, asking them to pop in later with news.  The turn around is very shift, though not impossible, and you could hardly expect the Kings to witness him breaking his sword and need an Angel later to warn them not to return.

The Kings go and Herod has a drink to drown his sorrows, making the final speech to close the play, a speech drowned in self pity.  You can see him waving his staff and his broken sword and railing at the child who has passed him the drink.  Already in this play the plan for the slaughter of the innocents has been touched upon and the audience will know it won't be long till they see it.

Exploring the Chester Mystery Plays - Plays 7 & 8 - featured Liz Cole, Robert Crighton, Annie Eddington, 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.  Thanks to the Quay Theatre for hosting the event and the use of their broadband!