The Mercers' Pageant Documents

Trudging through these thick, heavy and very red books (the collection of all the extant records relating to medieval drama in York) is a daunting task... but can reveal such unexpectedly vibrant, colourful, crazy gems as angels running about in heaven and God ascending to heaven on a swing. Who says Middle English drama lacked special effects?!

The Mercers are beloved by students of the mystery plays because they kept detailed records - particularly in 1433, when they helpfully produced a list of all the scenery and props used in their play. These records are enormously helpful in working out how their play was staged and what it looked like. By extension, some of the information gleaned from the Mercers' pageant records can be tentatively applied to other plays as well. For example, the Mercers probably used a two-storey wagon, which modern productions (especially the groundbreaking 1998 York/Toronto production, which performed all forty-seven plays in order across a single day) have proved to be feasible and not necessarily dangerously top-heavy as was previously thought. Other guilds, therefore, may well have used these double-decker wagons as well, giving themselves more playing space - a pageant wagon is not very big, so all available space would have been utilised, as well as the area in the street around the wagon.

The Mercers' play was the Doomsday or Last Judgement, which gives lots of scope for show and spectacle. The most famous prop listed in the play records is the hell mouth, which would have been underneath the wagon top, allowing the Bad Souls to tumble symbolically from the playing space down into hell. The red-painted devils could also have come up through the mouth to drag off their victims.

The hell mouth (probably in the shape of a dragon's head and painted in fiery colours) would have been counterbalanced visually by heaven, which appears to have been a kind of canopy or balcony over the wagon floor. At any rate, "iiij Irens to bere vppe heuen" [four iron poles/bars to bear up heaven] are called for. Heaven itself is "of Iren With a naffe of tre ij peces of rede cloudes & sternes of gold langing to heuen ij peces of blu cloudes... iij peces of rede cloudes With sunne bemes of golde" [of iron with a roof (?) of wood (? possibly leafy branches), two pieces of red clouds and stars of gold hanging from heaven, two pieces of blue clouds and three pieces of red clouds with sunbeams of gold].

My favourite prop is the "brandeth of Iren þat god sall sitte vppon when he sall sty vppe to heuen" [a swing of iron that God shall sit upon when he shall ascend up to heaven]. Obviously there was some kind of pulley system that hauled the actor playing God up from the floor of the pageant wagon to heaven up above. Sadly, no one seems to have utilised such a wonderful piece of visual imagery in any modern production.

All that iron must have made the wagon incredibly heavy. How the poor people who had to push the wagon did it we have no way of knowing, as scenery in modern productions is made out of rather more practical materials!

The list of scenery and props is highly detailed, sometimes peculiarly so - the pageant wagon, for example, is listed with the specification that it must have four wheels! (Just in case someone got stingy and decided it would be cheaper to have only three, presumably...)

Among details of various props and costumes are such gems as "A lang small corde" [a long small cord] which was something to do with "þe Aungels" that "renne aboute in þe heuen" [the angels that run about (yes, that is the translation) in heaven]. What the cord (or rope) was actually used for is not specified. As a leash, perhaps, for God to control the angels in case their running about got a little too lively? What a glorious image!

Also listed are "vij grete Aungels halding þe passion of god" [seven great/big angels holding the instruments of the Passion]. This means that the angels would have been holding the Arma Christi to illustrate the speech where Christ calls on the audience to look at the wounds inflicted for their redemption:

Here may ye see my wounds wide,
The which I tholed for your misdeed.
Through heart and head, foot, hand, and hide,
Not for my guilt, but for your need.
Behold both body, back, and side,
How dear I bought your brotherhead.
These bitter pains would I abide - 
To you buy you bliss thus would I bleed.

My body was scourged without skill,
As thief full throly was I threat;
On cross they hanged me, on a hill,
Bloody and blo, as I was beat,
With crown of thorn thrusten full ill.
This spear unto my side was set - 
Mine heart-blood spared they not for to spill;
Man, for thy love would I not let.

The actor playing Christ wore "a Sirke wounded" - a shirt (probably more like a long robe-like garment) that had been torn or slashed and then spattered with red to represent Christ's wounds.

All quotes from Mercers' Pageant documents [1433] from Records of Early English Drama, edited by Alexandra Johnson and Margaret Rogerson (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1979), 55. Translations in square brackets my own. Christ's speech from the Last Judgment from The York Mystery Plays: A Selection in Modern Spelling, edited by Richard Beadle and Pamela King (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 275-6, l.245-60.