The Growth of English Drama - Arnold Wynne

Скачать книгу

plays given in the towns, however natural it may have been to villages. Training and expense were not spared by rival guilds. As we saw in the directions for the acting of the old play of Adam, propriety in diction and behaviour on the part of the actors was insisted upon as early as the tenth century. An interesting record (dated 1462) in the Beverley archives states that a certain member of the Weavers' Guild was fined for not knowing his part. It would be quite a mistake, therefore, to suppose that fifteenth-century acting was an unstudied art. Similarly, caution must be used in ridiculing the stage-properties of that day. One has only to peruse intelligently one of the bald lists of items of expenditure to discover that a placard bearing such an inscription as 'The Ark' or 'Hell' was not the accepted means of giving reality to a scene. The Ark was an elaborate structure demanding a team of horses for its entrance and exit; while Hell-mouth, copying the traditional representations in mediaeval sculpture, was a most ingenious contrivance, designed in the likeness of gaping jaws which opened and shut in fearful style, emitting volumes of sulphurous smoke, not to mention awesome noises. The 'make-ups' too were far from being the arbitrary fancies of the wearers. True, they possibly bore no great resemblance to the originals. But that was due to an ignorance of history rather than to carelessness about truth. The probability is that in many cases the images and paintings in the churches were imitated, as being faithful likenesses. One has merely to call to mind certain stained-glass windows to guess what sort of realism was reached and to understand how it came about that Herod appeared in blue satin, Pilate and Judas respectively in green and yellow, Peter in a wig of solid gilt (with beard to match), and Angels in white surplices.

      For the stage a high platform was used, beneath which, curtained off from sight, the actors could dress or await their cues. Above the stage (open on all four sides) was a roof, on which presumably an 'angel' might lie concealed until the moment arrived for him to descend, when a convenient rope lent aid to too flimsy wings. Contrariwise, the devil would lurk in the dressing-room, if Hell-mouth were out of repair, until the word came for him to thrust the curtains aside, dart out, pull his victim off the stage and bear him away to torment. The street itself was quite freely used whenever conditions seemed to require it: messengers, for example, pushed their way realistically through the crowd; devils ran merrily about in its open space; and when Herod felt the whole stage too narrow to contain his fury he sought the ampler bounds of the market-place to rage in. Sometimes two or more stages were placed in proximity to accommodate actions that must take place at the same time. Thus we read in Scene 25 ('The Council of the Jews') of the Coventry Play, 'Here xal Annas, shewyn hymself in his stage, be seyn after a busshop of the hoold lawe, in a skarlet gowne, and over that a blew tabbard furryd with whyte, and a mytere on his hed, after the hoold lawe' (the dress is interesting); and a little further on, 'Here goth the masangere forth, and in the mene tyme Cayphas shewyth himself in his skafhald arayd lyche to Annas'; while yet a little later appears this, 'Here the buschopys with here (their) clerkes and the Phariseus mett, and (? in) the myd place, and ther xal be a lytil oratory with stolys and cusshonys clenly be-seyn, lyche as it were a cownsel-hous'. Again, in Scene 27 ('The Last Supper') will be found this direction: 'Here Cryst enteryth into the hoûs with his disciplis and ete the Paschal lomb; and in the mene tyme the cownsel-hous beforn-seyd xal sodeynly onclose, schewyng the buschopys, prestys, and jewgys syttyng in here astat, lyche as it were a convocacyon.' This last is quoted for the additional inference that the Coventry stage remained in one place throughout the play; for the previous reference to the 'cownsel-hous' is that quoted, two scenes earlier. There was another custom, practised in Chester, and probably in other towns where the crowd was great. There the whole stage, dressing-room and all, was mounted on wheels and drawn round the town, pausing at appointed stations to present its scene. By this means the crowd could be widely scattered (to the more equitable advantage of shopkeepers), for a spectator had only to remain at one of these stations to behold, in due order of procession, the whole play acted. Thus mounted on wheels the stage took the name of a pageant (or pagond, in ruder spelling)—a name soon extended to include not only a stage without wheels but even the stage itself. It is used with the latter meaning in the Prologue to the Coventry Play.

      With regard to the time occupied by the play, it is not possible to do much more than guess, since plays varied considerably in the number of their scenes. In one town, as we have said, the whole performance was crowded into a single day, starting as early as 4.30 a.m. Chester, on the other hand, devoted three days to its festival, while at Newcastle acting was confined to the afternoons. Humane consideration for the actors forbade that they should be required to act more than twice a day. They were well paid, as much as fourpence being given for a good cock-crower (in 'The Trial of Christ'), while the part of God was worth three and fourpence: no contemptible sums at a time when a quart of wine cost twopence and a goose threepence. A little uncertainty exists as to the professional character of the actors, but the generally approved opinion seems to be that they were merely members of the Guilds, probably selected afresh each year and carefully trained for their parts. The more professional class, the so-called minstrels or vagrant performers (descendants of the Norman jongleurs), possibly provided the music, which appears to have filled a large and useful part in the plays.

      The Saint-plays, the original miracle-plays, continued, and doubtless were staged in the same way as the Bible-plays. But the latter so completely eclipsed them in popularity that they appear never to have attained to more than a haphazard existence. Their nature was all against a dramatic subordination of the different plays to each other. Their subject was fundamentally the same; placed in a series, they could unroll no larger theme, as could the individual scenes of a Bible-play. For ambitious town festivals, therefore, they were too short. Few public bodies considered it worth their while to adopt them; and as a consequence only one or two have been preserved for our reading.

      Those that remain with us, however, contain qualities which may make us wonder why they did not receive greater recognition. It may be that we misjudge the extent of their popularity, though survival is usually a fairly good guide. Certainly they shared, or borrowed, some of the 'attractive' features of their rivals: there was not lacking a liberal flavour of the horrible, the satanic, the coarse and the comical. Moreover, they possessed much greater possibilities for purely dramatic effect. The cohesion of incidents was firmer, the evolution of the plot more vigorous, the crisis more surprising, the opportunities for originality more plentiful. The very fact that they could not easily be welded together as scenes in a larger play is a testimonial to their art. They are more complete in themselves. They are, that is to say, a further stage on the way to that Elizabethan drama which only became possible when all idea of a day-long play had been discarded in favour of scenes more single and self-contained. The sacredness, also, of the saintly narrative was less binding than that of the Bible story. Those who had a compunction in caricaturing or coarsening the unholy or nameless people of the Scriptures would feel their liberty immensely widened in a representation of the secular and heathen world which surrounded their saint. This is clearly seen in the Miracle of the Sacrament, where the figure of Jonathas the Jew is portrayed with distinct originality. His long recital of his wealth in costly jewels, and the equally lengthy statement by Aristorius, the corruptible Christian merchant, of his numerous argosies and profitable ventures, are early exercises in the style perfected by Marlowe's Barabas. The whole story, from the stealing of the Sacred Host by Aristorius and its sale to Jonathas, right on through the villainous assaults, by the Jew and his confederates, upon its sanctity, and the miraculous manifestations of its power, to Jonathas's final conversion and the restoration of the sacrament, is a very fair example of the power which these Saint Plays possessed in the structure of plots.

       Table of Contents

       Table of Contents

      Miracle (Bible) Plays had three serious faults, not accidental, but inherent in them. They were far too long. Their story was well known and strictly confined by the two covers of the Bible. Their characters were all provided by the familiar narrative. It is true

Скачать книгу