Chester ‘Last Judgement Play’

Abstract

From the text of the plays and the details of organisation and performance which remain in civic and trade records, the Chester Cycle seems to have developed, flourished and continued later than the other three surviving complete cycles. Whereas York and Towneley-Wakefield have clear documentary evidence to support a developed cycle and staging in the fifteenth century, Chester details come mainly from the sixteenth century.1 From the few details which can be gleaned from fifteenth-century records it would appear that up until c. 1519–20 Chester had a play performed after the Corpus Christi Procession, produced by various guilds of the city in one place, in front of St John’s Church at the end of the procession route. The play was possibly only a Passion Play and not a complete cycle. As rents for pageant houses are recorded during the fifteenth century, it would appear that the plays were staged on wagons. After 1519–20, the term used to describe the plays changes from ‘Corpus Christi Play’ to ‘the Whitsun plays’ and remains as this until the last recorded performance in 1575. It would seem that once the plays were removed from Corpus Christi Day to the Whitsun period they underwent considerable elaboration and development to spread to a complete cycle performed processionally on wagons by the trade guilds over a three-day period.