Towneley-Wakefield ‘Secunda Pastorum’

Abstract

The precise location for the complete cycle of Mystery plays known generally as the Towneley Cycle is not certain. Unlike the nonlocalised N-Town Cycle, however, there is every indication that the Towneley Cycle was fixed in one town rather than being a touring cycle. The dialect of the plays is quite clearly that of the north-east of England and headings on two of the plays in the cycle, as well as references to local Wakefield places in three others, suggest very strongly indeed that this cycle belonged to the north Yorkshire town of Wakefield.1 That Wakefield was the home of a complete cycle of Corpus Christi plays is evident from a letter from the Church Commissioners in 1576 which, in response to news that ‘in the towne of Wakefeld in Whitsun weke next or therabouts’ there was the intention to play ‘a plaie commonlie called Corpus Christi plaie which hath been heretofore used there’, sets out a firm warning that any material which ‘tende to the maintenaunce of superstition and idolatrie or which be contrarie to the lawes of god or of the realme’, in other words to the tenets of the new Protestant state religion, will not be countenanced.