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Wakefield Cycle

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The Wakefield Cycle or Towneley Cycle refers to a series of thirty-two mystery plays based on the Bible performed around Corpus Christi day in the town of Wakefield, England during the late Middle Ages until 1576. It is one of only four surviving English mystery play cycles.

The unique manuscript, now housed at Huntington Library, San Marino, California, originated in the mid-fifteenth century. The manuscript came into the possession of the Towneley family in 1814, who lent their name it. Although almost the entire manuscript is in a fifteenth-century hand, the cycle was performed as early as the fourteenth century in an earlier form.

The Wakefield Cycle is most reknown for the inculsion of "The Second Shepherds' Play," one of the jewels of medieval theatre.

Contents

[edit] Authorship

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It has been suggested that Wakefield master be merged into this article or section. (Discuss)

The cycle is the work of multiple authors over the course of approximately two centuries. In fact, some plays are shared with the cycle at nearby York. The most notable plays (including) "The Second Shepherd's Play" were written by an anonymous author dubbed the Wakefield Master, who also wrote "Noah," "The First Shepherds' Play," "Herod the Great," and "The Buffeting," and may have revised "The Killing of Abel."

[edit] Staging

There is widespread disagreement among scholars concerning the staging of the Wakefield Cycle, and of mystery plays in general. It is known that the cycle at York was staged on mobile wagons that moved from place to place in the city, with multiple plays being staged simultaneously in different locales in the city. However, there is disagreement as to whether the Wakefield plays were performed in a similar manner.

One problem is that the population of Wakefield in 1377 (approximately the date of the first performance of the cycle) consisted of 567 people aged sixteen or older. Assuming that half of these were male, that leaves only about 280 men to play the 243 roles in the plays. This leaves many to believe that multiple plays were performed by the same cast during most of the lifetime of the cycle.

Another way in which the Wakefield cycle differed in its staging from other cycles is that lack of association with the guilds. In other towns (such as York and Coventry) certain plays were staged by various guilds, according to their specialty (such as the shipwrights staging the Noah play). Although the names of four guilds are found on the manuscript (the barkers, glovers, litsters, and fishers), they are found in a later hand than most of the manuscript. This has led some to believe that for its entire lifetime, the Wakefield Cycle was sponsered and produced by other associations, either governmental or religious. Either way, it was surely performed by non-professional actors found in the community, as were all the cycles.

[edit] Protestant Censorship

In its later performances, the cycle was subject of censorship by the Protestant authorities before being discontinued completely. The play about John the Baptist had been "corrected" to conform to Protestant doctrines about the sacraments. The word "pope" was excised from "Herod the Great," and twelve leaves are completely missing, which scholars suspect contained plays about the death, assumption, and coronation of the Virgin Mary.

[edit] Sources of the plays

The majority of the plays that make up the Wakefield Cycle are based (some rather tenuously) on the Bible, while the others are taken from either Roman Catholic or folk tradition.

[edit] Sources

Rose, Martial. (1963). "An Introduction to the Wakefield Plays," in The Wakefield Mystery Plays, Anchor Books.

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