The York Corpus Christi Plays
Department
Medieval Studies
Document Type
Book
Files
Description
The feast of Corpus Christi, celebrated annually on Thursday after Trinity Sunday, was devoted to the Eucharist, and the normal practice was to have solemn processions through the city with the Host, the consecrated wafer that was believed to have been transformed into the true body and blood of Jesus. In this way the “cultus Dei” thus celebrated allowed the people to venerate the Eucharistic bread in order that they might be stimulated to devotion and brought symbolically, even mystically into a relationship with the central moments of salvation history. Perhaps it is logical, therefore, that pageants and plays were introduced in order to access yet another way of visualizing and participating in those events of times past that were believed to matter most for the lives of the citizens as well as of other residents and visitors in cities such as York. Thus the “invisible things” of the divine order “from the creation of the world” might be displayed, and this might be done in order to bring these events into the orbit of the collective memory. There are, however, problems with the popular view that would take York as typical of an entire genre of early civic drama that was supposed to have been generated by the religious feast.
The York Corpus Christi plays, contained in London, British Library, MS. Add. 35290 and comprising more than thirteen thousand lines of verse, actually represent a unique survival of medieval theater. They form the only complete play cycle verifiably associated with the feast of Corpus Christi that is extant and was performed at a specific location in England.
From the introduction to the book.
Call number in WMU's library
PR1261 .Y67 2011 (WMU Authors Collection; Archives and Regional History)
ISBN
9781580441629
Publication Date
2011
Publisher
Medieval Institute Publications
City
Kalamazoo, MI
Keywords
York plays, English drama, Bible plays
Disciplines
Medieval Studies | Theatre History
Recommended Citation
Davidson, Clifford, "The York Corpus Christi Plays" (2011). All Books and Monographs by WMU Authors. 77.
https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/books/77
Comments
Clifford Davidson is the editor.