Abstract
This article explores the York Corpus Christi Cycle in relation to the city’s curfew law, showing how theatrical performance in late-medieval York was deeply shaped by the city’s juridical regulations. Each night, curfew unfolded as a civic performance: bells rang across the city, gates closed, and citizens were confined indoors. This nightly curfew practice structured urban time and space, shaping the very conditions for the city’s ambitious public theatrical enterprise. The Corpus Christi Plays, staged within this legal regime, began only after the morning bell and ended before curfew’s return. Pageants dramatized these very concerns, from the control of gates to the regulation of timing. Theater and law thus appear as mutually constitutive, forming a civic dramaturgy in which the city of York emerged as both stage and actor, binding theatrical festivity to the rhythms of legal time.
Recommended Citation
Skinner, Jordan K.
(2026)
"Legal Time: Curfew and the York Corpus Christi Cycle,"
ROMARD: Vol. 62, Article 5.
Available at:
https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/romard/vol62/iss1/5
