The Story of the East Riding of Yorkshire by Horace B. (Horace Baker) Browne

Author:Horace B. (Horace Baker) Browne [Browne, Horace B.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction, History
ISBN: 4064066233051
Google: 63sfAQAAMAAJ
Publisher: Good Press
Published: 2019-12-06T05:00:00+00:00

It was the custom at York for the first play in the series—God the Father Almighty Creating and Forming the Heavens—to begin on Corpus Christi morning at 5 o’clock. This was at the gates of the Priory of Holy Trinity. When this part of the Creation had been satisfactorily got through, its pageant passed on to take up its second station ‘at the door of Robert Harpham’; while another play showing God the Father Creating the Earth took its place. And so on through the whole series, each play being thus performed at twelve different stations during the course of the day.

The performers of these plays were the members of the various Trade Gilds of a town. So far as the number of plays allowed, each Gild might have its own play, and the plays were as far as possible appropriately distributed. Thus at York the Goldsmiths had allotted to them The Three Kings Coming from the East, the Vintners had The Turning of Water into Wine, and the Butchers had The Crucifixion. At both York and Hull the Shipmen, or Mariners, had the play of Noah.

Stage properties were well looked after. The ‘ark’ used in a French performance of The Deluge is here shown, while that used in the corresponding play produced each ‘Plough Monday’[41] by the Hull Shipmen was equally elaborate though built more in resemblance to an ordinary ship. It had mast and rigging, and pictures of the animals that ‘went in two by two’ hung round its sides painted on boards. From one festival to another it remained suspended from the roof of Holy Trinity Church.

Some curious items occur in the old accounts of the Hull Trinity House in this connection:—

To Robert Brown, playing God 6d.

To Noah and his wife 1s. 6d.

To a shipwright for clinking Noah’s ship, one day 7d.

For three skins for Noah’s coat, making it, and a rope to hang the ship in the kirk 2s. 5d.

When, in 1494, the Gild of the Holy Trinity had to purchase a new Ark, the accounts show also that the cost amounted to the tremendous sum of £7 4s. 11d.

The lower stage of the pageant is, in the illustration, shown to be curtained off. This lower stage was the actors’ dressing-room, and also served very conveniently as the ‘lower regions’ from which through a trap-door the Devil would emerge with horns and tail complete. God was stationed on a raised platform at the back of the upper stage, and appeared in the full dress of a Pope, saints had gilded hair and beards, and angels were dressed in white surplices through which their gilded wings projected.

Most impressive and realistic these must have seemed in the eyes of the beholders. But there were also ‘realistic effects’ to be seen—lightning, earthquakes, and the destruction of the world by fire—as the following items show:—

Payd for the baryll for the yerthequake iiijd.

Payd for starche to make the storm vjd.

Payd for settynge the world of fyer vd.

How realistic also must have

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