Corpus Christi Plays at York: A Context for Religious Drama by Clifford Davidson (review)

Abstract

Clifford Davidson. Corpus Christi Plays at York: A Context for Religious Drama, with contribution collaboration with Sheila White. AMS Studies the Middle Ages, No. 30. New York: AMS Press, 2013. Pp. xii + 242. $84.50. English medieval drama, which has come down us only small body texts, has produced stunning amount research into its contexts. Clifford Davidson, who established the EDAM (Early Drama, Art, and Music) Project at the Medieval Institute Western Michigan University the 1970s (1) (and for long time was editor Comparative Drama) is one the most prominent pioneers this truly interdisciplinary approach. The very first sentence the book review states that the importance the local in historical time and (ix), for the study the Corpus Christi plays was brought home him more than forty years ago, on his first visit St. Michael-le-Belfry near York Minster. The title modestly promises a context, but with equal justice one could distinguish five or six contexts. These do not strictly coincide with the subject matter one chapter each, but there certainly is distribution emphases. Chapter 1 (York Guilds and the Corpus Christi Plays) concentrates on the social and administrative context and offers important insights into local conflicts surrounding the production the pageants. Guilds often pleaded poverty that prevented them from participating. After the Reformation there was also reluctance on the part individuals, as the four drapers who refused support their guild's Death the Virgin 1554. The Corporation York harshly rebuked this great encoragyng suche lyke wilfull persones and disordre the sayed craftes (11; after REED York 1:313). The wording suggests that the refusal reflected more general mood, but it also shows that the Corporation felt strongly about continuing the plays. In 1569, year after Elizabeth's succession the throne, they were banned under pressure from the ecclesiastical authorities (16), but against, apparently, the wishes most York's citizens (167). Chapter 2 (The York Plays and Visual Piety) concentrates on an aspect religious mentality and devotes considerable space the effect playing out the Passion scenes. While allowing that the spectators were not necessarily uniformly reverent (49), Davidson concludes that Bakhtinian spirit blasphemous Schadenfreude about Christ's suffering at the hands the Torturers is most unlikely. Strong support for this view comes from the antitheatrical, Wycliffite Tretise Miraclis Pleyinge, which admits that the Passion plays often move spectators to compassion and devocion, wepinge bitere teris (50). The subject is also touched on chapter 3 section (67-69) called Blood, Suffering, and Devotion, and the book returns it the final, collaborative chapter. In the main, chapter 3 (The Color Devotion) deals with the painters' contribution the overall effect the pageants; it benefits particularly from Davidson's earlier work on the material culture medieval York. Chapter 4 (The Pageant Route, the City as Stage, and the Sacred), which treats the physical context the pageants, is special interest that it touches on the relationship between the Corpus Christi procession and the Corpus Christi play or pageant. The traditional view that the play or plays somehow evolved from the procession is almost certainly untenable. In the York records, which are far from providing complete picture, however, the first mention the play antedates that the procession, if only by year. (2) Plays growing out of the procession have created logistical problems that seem impossible overcome. As Davidson puts it, instead ever having been joined, it is more likely that the pageants and the procession had always been separate (87). But even this arrangement would have involved logistical complication (87). …