Two Typefaces

If you've been keeping up with our most recent posters, you've probably noticed that our Second Shepherds' Play poster uses a different type face than some of our others....

That moderately fancy, and somewhat hard to read typeface in The Second Shepherds' Play title is what we refer to as "black letter," which differs from the more familiar typeface that you find in The Cronicle Historie of Henry the V the The Taming of a Shrew titles on their posters. And, yes, there is a reason for it.

The written word has been around a lot longer than the printed page, and around 1450, when Gutenberg introduced mechanical movable type printing to Europe, the earliest type faces were designed to emulate the letters of written script. We actually do this today all the time, and the number of typefaces (aka fonts) that come with whatever word processor you use: not only will your word processor simulate manuscript letters (think of your signature typefaces), but it will also simulate other forms of type, including the descendant of the type face on the Henry V and A Shrew titles above... Times New Roman.

The roman type face was a later development, and in its earliest applications was used for books printed in Latin (most schooling after the age of 6 would have been in Latin and Greek in early modern London). By the end of the 16th century, you can almost judge a book by it's typeface: books printed in roman typefaces catered to the more educated reader (who would have been accustomed to the typeface from their studies), and books designed for those without a formal education were printed in the blackletter typefaces that were reminiscent of the texts used in the most rudimentary levels of schooling.

The Wakefield manuscript, opened to the first page of
The Second Shepherds' Play

The use of a typeface that simulates those found in early modern printshops is one of the ways we set the tone for the type of performances you'll see at Bad Quarto Productions, and so we offer the blackletter font for our Second Shepherds' Play poster this year as a gesture to the manuscript writing that The Second Shepherds' Play survives in.

If you're interested in learning more about these fonts, or using them yourself, they are produced and distributed by Jeff Lee, and they are freely downloadable (and licensed for use) from his website.

Second Shepherds' Play: Director's Notes

Character transformation makes for good drama, and while you might expect a medieval Christmas play to present characters as two-dimensional cartoons, the characters we meet in The Second Shepherds' Play are remarkably human. We all have a unique perspective of the universe that shapes our distinct points of view, and the characters in this play are no different: each clearly defines their point of view on their first entrance. These perspectives shift and evolve in only a few short pages as we see these characters transform and respond to the world around them.

These transformations anchor the action of the play and set the stage for the biggest transformation of all: The birth of Christ and the salvation of humanity. A transformation of this magnitude was made possible only by the goodwill the Shepherds show Mak after the theft of their sheep. The shepherds' act of grace and forgiveness was proof for God that the world could change for the better, and that such a change would start at the lowest rungs of society. This was why the Shepherds were chosen to witness the birth of Jesus.

I, too, transformed while directing this play. I began my process believing this production worked best as a farce, full of simple characters and base jokes. But while a clownish interpretation of the text is possible, working with the cast individually revealed support in the text for the deeper, more significant character transformations mentioned above. By the time I started working with the cast, many of their ideas and choices were already firmly rooted in the text and I took on the role of gardener, cultivating and curating these ideas into a cohesive production: they helped me see that what I had taken for a simple comedy was a far cry from simple, and the intrinsic humanity of the people of mid-15th century Wakefield speak to us across barriers of time and language.

Christmas is not only a season of joy and miracles, it's also a time of transformation. As you take part in tonight's performance, consider your own unique perspective of the universe and how three shepherds and a couple of thieves might reshape that distinct point of view.

Holidays 2015

Exciting things always seem to be in the works here at Bad Quarto Productions! As disappointed as we were to learn that we were unable to bring The SantaLand Diaries to Burlington for another year of grown up holiday fun, I'm very excited to say that Bad Quarto will be revisiting our original Christmas classic, The Second Shepherds' Play in New York City this year.

The Second Shepherds' Play has a special place in my heart for a lot of personal reasons, but one ofthe strongest is the number of self-professed cynics who have told me that the play made them believe in Christmas over the years. The play possesses a child-like simplicity that invites you to set aside your grown up feelings about the commercialization of the Christmas season, And then it reminds you what it's all supposed to be about.

I have written previously on the similarity in structure between Second Shepherds' Play and The SantaLand Diaries; despite the differences in the comic tone, that structure is what most of us need right around this time of year. As we all get caught up in travel plans, work plans, family plans, &c, the best of Christmas plays give us a chance to escape from the cacophony of the holidays, and take a moment to think about what it's all about.

I hope you'll join director Derek Peruo and his excellent cast of The Second Shepherds' Play for our December 12th opening!

The SantaLand Diaries and the Formula of Christmas Comedy

Ladies and gentlemen, Bad Quarto Productions is back! This Christmas season, we're presenting David Sedaris' SantaLand Diaries, and I couldn't be more excited. We'll file this one under the performing modern plays using early modern rehearsal practices part of Bad Quarto's mission, but we're also going to be engaging in some early modern touring conditions with this one, which I'll be excited to tell you all about as it develops.

For now, I want to share my excitement when I discovered that SantaLand Diaries and our more traditional Christmas piece, the medieval Second Shepherds' Play actually have a lot in common. Both plays consist primarily of cynical appraisals of the world and the people in it, followed by, in the final moment, a realization of true meaning that elevates the characters and the audience from the dimension of cras slapstick.

We're all pretty familiar with the Second Shepherds' Play antics by now, and The SantaLand Diaries is likewise pretty well known through it's holiday air-play on NPR, but both present the actor with the challenge of embodying both the ridiculousness of living in a world filled with miserable people where nothing but bad things happen, and then turning to a realization that the Good we are given in the world is far greater than the slings and arrows that we suffer. Looking at some other popular pieces of Christmas entertainment, the pattern isn't hard to see: The Best Christmas Pageant Ever (which I stage managed for the Catalyst Theatre Co. in Burlington back in 2007), The Charlie Brown Christmas special (the only one of the network holiday specials I still go out of my way to watch), and probably every other piece of Christmas entertainment, too.

The difference between the pieces that we've been watching for centuries, decades, or even just annually in recent memory, and the ones that we never look at again are the former category find ways to be more than just quick slapstick entertainment with a happy ending tacked on. Though are rehearsals are still in an early stage, Joseph Grabon, who will be performing in our SantaLand Diaries, told me that he found himself tearing up at the conclusion of Sedaris' play. It's not a guarantee of anything, of course, but I'll take it as a good omen that SantaLand Diaries will prove a worthy successor to The Second Shepherds' Play.

Wrapping The Second Shepherds' Play

With our closing performance at Emmanuel Episcopal Church, I've finally been able to answer the question about what it would be like to perform The Second Shepherds' Play in a church. This one has been on my mind since my first production of it back in 2000, when I noticed that a priest and a few nuns were in attendance.

While we can't say with much certainty when, where, or how The Second Shepherds' Play was performed, we are fairly certain that theatre, along with most of the other liberal arts and sciences, was preserved within the church through the dark ages. Even if it had moved out of doors to Corpus Christi Festival pageant wagons and scaffolds by the early/mid 1400s, I think it quite likely that some tradition of seasonal plays within churches (or church halls) was maintained. While I have no historical or scholarly evidence, I am prepared to offer some sociological evidence:

1) Look at all the Christmas programming we have on television right now. Then remember that they didn't have television in the 1400s. Granted, they also didn't have Christmas (as we know it), but to my mind that only gave the Church (this was before the reformation) more reason to try to tempt the proletariat away from their pagan holiday of choice: Yule. A Christmas pageant at Christmas time gives people something less damnable to focus their energies on.

2) Everyone loves dressing kids up as things and putting them on stage. I've never been able to pull this off, but I was chatting with Kelly about the possibility of bringing 5 or 10 kids into the cast. They could play sheep (giving the shepherds a flock to leave), Mak and Gil's houseful of brood (giving Mak and Gil reason to complain), a choir of angels backing up the one named angel (because... that's why), and they could serve as tha "ass," "ox" and other barnyard animals at the manger (because those animals are described in the text). Granted, this reading is somewhat inspired by my work on Catalyst's production of The Best Christmas Pageant Ever a few years back, but I don't have much difficulty finding textual support for it, and parents always like to see their kids on stage.

So what I'm getting at is that there's still places for us to take Second Shepherds' Play in future years, and judging by the number of kids we had seeking autographs from the cast, and grown-ups who thought we should perform more often during December, we probably will.

Something I take particular joy in was the broad strokes with which Kelly, Ben, Dane, and Jessica painted the shepherds this year. They are clearly written as caricatures of  old-age, middle-age, and youth, and I've never quite managed to find the broad strokes needed within those types to bring the shepherds to the same level as Mak and Gil. The years shepherds (a rapper, a pirate, and Little Bo Peep) were constructed with broad enough strokes that they were very clearly inhabitants of the same fallen work Mak and Gil inhabit, and despite their empathetic rise above their conditions, they still need Christ's promised salvation to be greater than what they are.

I love when I get to learn something new about a play. Especially one I've been working on for so long, and will likely continue to work on for years to come.

Almost there!

Were almost to the weekend and therefore performances!

Because of the lateness of the metaphorical hour, we had to cut a couple of bits because there just wasn't enough time to work them properly. Next year...next year. But the actors are doing a wonderful job and it will still be silly and fun this year!

The singing is beautiful (well most of it). The baby sheep is wooly(ish). And the tennis ball is shined (not at all).

I get to go to Emmanuel Episcopal today to see that space and we'll squeeze in a quick walk through of the space on Saturday morning. Then a final dress run through at Stuart Hall and perform!

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.

From one production to another

Since I have some prior experience with The Second Shepherd's Play through another college, I have been asked to blog a bit about the two experiences. I directed a staged reading of the play my sophomore year at Waldorf College in Forest City, Iowa as part of our Classical Theatre History class.

Once the professor informed me he would like me to direct the reading, the class divided up production duties: those who wanted to act picked their parts, and we chose who would work on costuming, props, publicity, set building, etc. If I remember correctly we used a script from an an anthology of Renaissance and Restoration plays, and kept the original Middle English.

The main struggle we encountered was that of the actors being able to portray what they were saying to the audience. Besides the slight language barrier, the class enjoyed working on the production. The final performance was a riot complete with hair ratting, dirty faces, butt scratching, and a very tall Joseph. I have attached a picture of the cast as well.

I'll be writing again to insert my thoughts on this rehearsal process and how I think the end product will compare and contrast to my first experience.

Jessica, 3rd Shepherd

Third rehearsal

Oh my. It just keeps getting sillier. And I keep adding props.

I am not a props actor/director. But I keep adding props.

Last night I worked with the three shepherds, played by Ben, Jessica and Dane. As Rachel (Mak/Angel) said, one will be a Little Bo Peep type character, but with combat boots. The other will be a pirate - for the sake of one joke at the end. (I can't resist a good pirate joke - Ok, I can't resist a bad pirate joke.) Last night we also decided to make the first shepherd a rapper. Because, again, for one line. And because we can. It's kind of awesome.

Today, Rachel, Celi, and I took a look at Mak and Gill's moments to establish their relationship and home life. It has been decided Mak has a twirly mustache and Gill is an actress with a soft spot for sheep.

We also looked at the Angel and Mary moments. I've never been able to give this direction before and I'm so proud of it: I told Rachel to turn the awesomeness of what the Angel says up to 11. Once I learned about her opera background, of course, that had to add to the awesome. Celi's Mary was beautiful, sincere, and gave both Rachel and I a chill with it's simplicity. These two moments will be lovely around the ridiculousness that is the rest of the play.

Tony, I hope you don't regret asking me to do this...

Kelly

The director speaks - I mean, writes.

What a curious little play! I'm not much of a passion play person, but if more are like this one, I will become one!

We've started our adventure into the world of these shepherds with a read through and a blocking rehearsal with the shepherds. So far so good! The read through was hysterical - much funnier than what I heard in my head reading it by myself. It completely helps that the talents of Rachel Quagliariello, Celi Oliveto, Dane Leasure, Jessica Shiermeister, and Ben Ratkowski are being facilitated for it! (I think I spelled everyone's names right...)

At this point, the actors ideas are flying fast and furious. This is going to be quite a trip!

First Read-Through

Yesterday evening we had our first read-through of the Second Shepherd’s Play (2SP) for this year. I remembered why I love this show so very much. It may, in fact, be one of my favorite theater things I’ve ever done. Why, you ask? Well…

First there’s the language. I remembered yesterday, hearing the other actors read it for the first time through, that this language is hard. It’s medieval, and the entire show is in verse. It can be hard to understand, and some of the words and phrases don’t really flow off the tongue, at least at first. Last year I had to work really hard on understanding all my lines and communicating the meaning of them, not to mention getting the text in my mouth so I didn’t trip over it. But I was surprised yesterday by how much I remembered, and once you get it in your tongue, it does flow (or at least most of it does). It’s actually a beautifully written play—just in language that is pretty archaic. But I think challenging language is actually more enjoyable and rewarding for both the actors and the audience in the end. (I guess that’s why I like to perform Shakespeare, his contemporaries, and also OPERA. You know, like in Italian. And German. And French.) 

Secondly, I think this is possibly the funniest Christmas play of any kind that I have ever seen or heard about. I realize that’s a pretty bold claim to make, but I’ve rarely laughed so much in 45 minutes of theater. Christmas plays are usually so predictable—everyone knows what’s going to happen. This one is not. For one thing, there is the general absurdity of the entire story (which I summarized in my previous post). It’s just silly. Then there are the anachronisms. Although we are supposed to be in Israel before the birth of Christ, and the shepherds of the title are the ones to whom the angel appeared to announce Jesus’ birth, everyone in the show makes continuous references to Catholicism. As in, hardly a stanza of the play goes by without someone making an exclamation that refers to Jesus’ death, or Mary, or one of the Catholic saints. It’s constant. At one point a shepherd says, “I dreamed we were in England!” (Which is funny, of course, because the shepherds are supposed to be in Palestine, but the play was originally performed in England during Advent.) So it’s not really a play about the shepherds who first greeted Christ. It’s about how the shepherds might have reacted if Christ had been born to medieval England, at least if medieval England were already Catholic when He was born…time machine, anyone? But I wonder whether the Catholic references are deliberately funny anachronisms, or whether references to Mary, Jesus, and the saints were just such a normal part of speech at the time that it only made sense for the shepherds to talk that way. Or maybe general education was really so poor that most people didn’t know enough history to recognize the incongruity of swearing by St. Steven when he wouldn’t exist yet for hundreds of years. I hope our modern audiences will recognize it, but many of the references are so archaic that not many people know them unless they are medieval scholars. 

The third reason I love this play is that it’s really a cartoon. I have a big personality, and I love to overact. This is why I enjoy theater for children: it’s ok to overact. In fact, you pretty much can’t be too ridiculous. This is also true of 2SP. Last year I deliberately modeled my character, Mac, after Wile E. Coyote. In yesterday’s rehearsal I was inspired to add an Evil Villain Laugh…once, twice, thrice, maybe four or five times. I warned Kelly, our director, that I’ll probably keep adding it to more moments in the show until she orders me to stop. We also decided last night that the third and second shepherd will be, respectively, Little Bo Peep and a PIRATE. Yes, that’s right: a Pirate Shepherd. It probably won’t make sense until he says his very last line of the show…then you’ll say, Oh, of course he’s a pirate!. 

Curious yet? I mean, how many times in your life have you seen a Pirate Shepherd robbed by Wile E. Coyote? Maybe Tony will be sorry he’s passed on the torch of directing this show when he sees what a crazy cartoon we’re making of it. But I think it will be a lot of fun, for us and for everyone who comes to see it.

Return to the Second Shepherd's Play

About a year ago, Tony, the heart and mind of Bad Quarto Productions, IM'ed me on facebook and asked me whether I was interested in acting in his upcoming production of the Second Shepherd's Play.

Me: What's it about?

Tony: Complaining about work, complaining about wives, complaining about husbands...

Me: That sounds like real life.

Tony: ...Stealing a sheep, disguising the sheep as a baby, birth of Christ, angelic harmony.

Me: You had me at angelic harmony.

Tony: Oh, and we'll dress you up as a Christmas tree.

Me: Even better.

This year I get to reprise my role as Mak the Sheep-Thief-Turned-Christmas-Tree, and also I will music direct (which I suppose means I'm responsible for making the "angelic harmony" part of the show actually happen). I hope this year to be a little more organized, focused, and simple in our approach to the music. Last year for the pre-show music we tried to do some things that were a little ambitious for the time we had to rehearse and the amount of energy everyone involved in the show usually has at this point in the semester. I have yet to meet with this year's director to discuss her ideas regarding music, but I'm thinking it will be pretty simple and fun...mostly, of course, Christmas carols. Who doesn't love Christmas carols?

"O Tannenbaum, o tannenbaum, how lovely are your branches...."

The Second Shepherds' Play - Cast/Crew/Poster

Hi gang! Now that we've all had way too much turkey, I wanted to share that The Second Shepherds' Play has a new cast, crew, and poster for 2011: 

Rachel Quagliariello as Mak/Angel
Celi Oliveto as Gil/Mary
Ben Ratkowski as Col, the First Shepherd
Dane Leasure as Gib, the Second Shepherd
Jessica Schiermeister as Daw, the Third Shepherd

Directed by Kelly Elliot, with Musical Direction by Rachel Quagliariello

 That's right, sports fans, I won't be at the helm this time. Seeing as how I'm in my last year of graduate studies in Shakespeare and Performance, and that I would like this collaboration to continue as a tradition into the future, I've managed to convince Kelly Elliot to take up the mantle direct the show. I won't lie, it's a little bit weird letting go, but two years in a row is long enough for anyone to direct the same show, and I can't wait to see what Kelly and her cast do with this most excellent piece of medieval pageantry.

If you missed out on last year's fun, here are some pictures that should remind you just how awesome it is to try stealing a sheep, disguising it as your newborn son, sing Christmas songs while doing so, and totally get away with it. 

As much as we like to make fun of Mak and Gil and their mildly hair brained scheme, you have to give them credit, they totally manage to pull it off. The problem is that they pull it off too well, and actually make our three heros feel like massive tools for casting wicked aspersions on a couple that has been "blessed" with a newborn. That's one of the things I've always loved about this show; the good guys are too good to just walk away without trying to make the world a little bit better. 

Anyway, the album I promised: 

The Second Shepherds' Play Returns!

I'm pleased to announce that Bad Quarto will once again perform The Second Shepherds' Play to benefit the Virginia Haiti Collaborative. We will perform at Stuart Hall School on December 10th at 2 PM, and at Emmanuel Episcopal Church as part of their 10:30 AM service on December 11th. Please check back soon for more details!

Burying the Second Shepherds' Play

I wanted to take a moment to thank everyone who came out to see The Second Shepherds' Play this weekend, and especially those of you who contributed to the Virginia Haiti Collaborative! I don't like to toot my own horn, so I'll only say that the audience has made it clear they enjoyed this show, and I'm glad we can lend a helping hand to a great cause.

Stay tuned for updates about more Bad Quarto shows after the new year; in the mean time, I hope you all have a happy holiday, a happy new year, and safe travels to your destinations.

Opening Night!

In case you forgot to mark your calendars, The Second Shepherds' Play will open tonight (Saturday, Dec. 11) at 7 PM at Stuart Hall's King Theatre in Staunton, VA. If you can't see it tonight, please come by tomorrow (Sunday, Dec. 12) at 2 PM for our second and final performance this season.

The house opens a half hour before each show, and there will be plenty of Christmas music to help get you in the spirit for the show. It runs just over an hour, too, so you'll be able to go caroling after wards. We hope to see you there!

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.

Podcast - The Music of the Second Shepherds' Play

I talk a little bit about the Wakefield Master's use of music in The Second Shepherds Play, and offer some samples from productions past and present in this podcast episode.

The Second Shepherds' Play in Historical Context

No one really knows when The Second Shepherds' Play was written, but popular estimates place it somewhere between 1400 and 1450. For those keeping score, that means anywhere between the reign of Henry IV through Henry VI, and possibly as early as the reign of Richard II. This was a particularly tumultuous period in English history, and it closely follows one of the most devastating times Europe has ever known.

In the mid 1300s, the Black Death ravaged Europe, killing roughly 1/3 of the population. The bulk of these were from the peasant classes, which created a severe labor shortage. Appalled by the sudden power of the peasantry to demand higher wages, Parliament passed the "Ordinance of Labourers"in 1349, and then the "Statute of Labourers" two years later. These laws set a maximum wage at pre-plague levels, and required able body individuals under the age of 60 to work. Hugely unpopular, these laws helped fuel Wat Tyler's Peasant Revolt of 1381, and possibly Jack Cade's Kentish rebellion in 1450 (Shakespeare conflates the two in 2 Henry VI, and there was a significant amount of literature from the 1380s on both sides of the Peasant Revolt.

The complaints of the shepherds are grounded in the sorts of complaints the peasants revolted over, in both 1381 and 1450. The laws of England provided severe restrictions on their daily lives, and minimal social protections. Those with even a little bit of land or money held enormous sway over those who had little or none.

One of the reasons why I really like The Second Shepherds' Play is that the birth of Christ doesn't make things better. They are still cold and hungry, but now also have hope of something better in the life to come. The shepherds begin to see the pains of this world as transient things in the face of a promise of greater equity than they could ever hope for in this world, and a life in a land of plenty governed by a greater king than this world has known.

Peace, stability, and prosperity were meaningful promises for men who lived at the subsistence level in medieval Yorkshire. Even if the world isn't perfect, faith and right religion at least gives the shepherds a glimmer of hope for something better. In a world thick with disease, hunger, rebellion, and poverty, a little bit of hope can go a long way.

The Second Shepherds' Play Underway

Welcome to the new Bad Quarto Productions blog everyone. Those of you tuning in from our old merryfringe blog know that we'll be presenting that masterwork of medieval comedy, The Second Shepherds' Play this December 11th at 7 PM and December 12th at 2 PM at Staunton, Virginia's Stuart Hall School. This is a pay what you will performance, with proceeds benefitting the Virginia Haiti Collaborative, an organization trying to fund the construction and operation of a school in Haiti. If anything could make The Second Shepherds' Play better, it's a great cause to present it for. I hope to see you there!