Original (Medieval) Staging Conditions

Something new and exciting this year is that the company will perform The Second Shepherds' Play in a church, which sort of makes sense if you keep in mind that churches were where the play would have been originally performed. At the home of the world's only re-creation of the Blackfriars Playhouse.... oh... wait... no.... something isn't right about that first sentence. Like mostly all of it.

The truth is that we know very little about early modern stage-craft, and while the Blackfriars Playhouse is the worlds only re-creation of Shakespeare's original indoor playhouse, a lot more guesswork went into that than most are comfortable thinking about. Keep in mind we have some very detailed paperwork describing the space (Burbage's original lease), and yet we still don't really and for truly know what the theatre looked like.

Of course, we know even less about medieval stagecraft.

While it is possibly true that plays in the medieval period sometimes performed in churches, by the time you get The Second Shepherds' Play (c. 1400-1450), we're pretty sure that the plays were elaborate affairs sponsored by guilds and presented on wagons or scaffolds, or perhaps in front of them, or maybe some combination of both. It's possible these plays were performed as part of a cycle annually, but it's also possible they were performed individually at certain times of the year. Possibly inside guild halls, parish halls, or any building with a hall large enough to accommodate players and an audience.

Based on our touring experience to Philly last year with Merry Devil, really, you don't need that much space at all. Have you ever been to one of those bars/cafes with a small stage for open mic nights? You could probably perform one of these plays there. But I digress....

It's a little bit hard to talk about original medieval staging conditions because even fewer people were literate in the medieval period than in the early modern period, and the first permanent playhouses weren't constructed in London until the 1560s ("The Red Lion," for those who are curious). That means that, at the latest scholarly estimate of composition, The Second Shepherds' Play was written a hundred years before playhouses were permanent structures in the capital of England.

Through the miracle of Google Maps, I can easily show you how far away Wakefield is from London:
View Larger Map

According to Google Maps, that's a two and a half day walk, and that's accounting for paved roads. Lets just say that there's a reason why all those rebellions you read about in Shakespeare started in northern England: it was too far away for the crown to exert much direct authority. By the by, all of those rebellions and insurrections that Shakespeare writes about in his history plays take place during the time period that The Second Shepherds' Play was probably written.

But, again, I digress....

Any playing space the original performance of The Second Shepherds' Play would have used would have been temporary, and while we cannot preclude performance in a church, churches tended to be used more regularly for other things. Likewise with guild halls, or any other indoor or outdoor space. Since plays were basically a trivial form of entertainment for the great unwashed, illiterate masses, no one with the ability to write much about them paid much attention to them.

Essentially, the anonymous monk who wrote The Second Shepherds' Play was writing the medieval equivalent of Cliff Notes.

Of course, we have sophisticated sensibilities, and can appreciate The Second Shepherds' Play as the work of art it truly is.

Yeah....

Anyhow, one of the reasons I'm writing this is that I have been asked to talk a little bit about how our church-performance at Emmanuel Episcopal is reminiscent of the Wakefield Master's original staging conditions, and the truth is that, for all I know, that is 100% true. And for all I know, the Wakefield Master imagined that, someday, someone like me would be able to write this brilliant commentary and share it with the entire world through a magical, glowing rectangle.

Tom Berger, the Shakespeare and Performance Scholar in Residence, has a saying I'm very fond of: "I don't know." I think, in this case, I'm going to have to go with that; with the addendum that I also don't think it necessarily matters as long as we all have a good time.

The Second Shepherds' Play in Poetic Context

The Second Shepherds' Play is quasi-anonymous. We don't know the name of the writer, but we can make a few educated guesses about him. First of all, it was probably a him. While there were some female writers in the medieval period (you've probably heard of Hildegard of Bingen), the monasteries tended to be the primary centers of learning, with the first universities being established to train clergymen. Sorry, no women allowed in those days. Something else we know about the Wakefield Master: his five original works were not his only contribution to the Wakefield Cycle.

The Wakefield Master wrote verse in a signature form aaaabcccb, with an internal line about halfway through each a-rhyme line, the c-rhyme lines being roughly half the length of an a-rhyme line, and a b-rhyme line being half the length of a c-rhyme line. Confused? Let's take a look at some of his text. Through the miracle of the internet, I will color code the rhyming words for you:

Lord what these weders are cold : and I am yll happyd
I am nere hand dold : so long haue I nappyd
My legys thay fold : my fyngers ar chappyd 
It is not as I wold : for I am al lappyd
----------In sorow In stormes and tempest
Now in the eest now in the west
Wo is hym has neuer rest
----------Myd day nor morow

Red text is the a-rhyme, green the b-rhyme, purple the c-rhyme, and orange the internal rhyme. Make sense? The plays of the Wakefield Master was written exclusively in this verse pattern, which is how we are able to identify these plays as being the work of a different dramatist than other plays in the cycle. That said, the Wakefield Master's plays are not the only one's that demonstrate this signature. Here's a link to the full text of The Second Shepherds' Play in middle English, for your reading pleasure.

The last play of the cycle, The Last Judgment, plods along a fairly regular and comparatively unimaginative rhythm for several stanzas before the First Demon speaks (sorry, can't find an e-text of this one, so we'll have to go with Martial Rose's translation):

Out, harrow, out, out! Hearken to this lord,
I was never in doubt ere now at this morn;
So sturdy a shout, since that I was born
Heard I never hereabout in earnest nor scorn;
  A wonder!
I was bound full fast
In irons for to last,
My bonds broke with that blast
  And shook all in sunder.

Look familiar. I take some issue with Rose's translation of the text, but he does fairly faithfully re-create the Wakefield Master's verse pattern. The demons continue to talk in this signature verse for several stanzas before the verse of the play changes back to it's previous pattern. Care to take a guess when it does?

If you said "when the demons stop speaking," you're right! Care to guess what happens when the demons start speaking again?

1st Demon
Do now forth go, bustle and rush again!
Unto endless woe, everlasting pain;
Nay tarry not so, not here is our domain

2nd Demon
Hie hitherward, ho, hurry this mob amain!
  Look out!
Nibble the alto shall ye,
Then the treble falls to me,
Now to the devil go we,
  With this whole rout.

Speech prefixes (here in bold) don't count as lines of verse, for the uninitiated among you. That's right! When the demons start talking, we see the Wakefield Master's verse pattern again. They'll continue on through the close of the play. Traces of the Wakefield Master's work permeate the whole cycle, and scholars will note that they seem especially likely to appear when comic villains enter the scene. From this, it might be fair to postulate that, in the 1400s, the good citizens of Wakefield started finding their old cycle plays a little too preachy, and so they turned to the most logical person possible to spice them up a bit: the Wakefield Master.

Anything else about this master playwright would be mere supposition, but his distinctive verse pattern alone adds spice to an otherwise extremely regular rhythmic structure. He may not have authored as many plays as Shakespeare, but he certainly knew how to make an existing play more interesting in much the same way that the later playwright did.