The Civic Cycles, livre ebook

The civic religious drama of late medieval England—financed, produced, and performed by craftspeople—offers one of the earliest forms of written literature by a non-elite group in Europe. In this innovative study, Nicole R. Rice and Margaret Aziza Pappano trace an artisanal perspective on medieval and early modern civic relations, analyzing selected plays from the cities of York and Chester individually and from a comparative perspective, in dialogue with civic records. Positing a complex view of relations among merchants, established artisans, wage laborers, and women, the two authors show how artisans used the cycle plays to not only represent but also perform their interests, suggesting that the plays were the major means by which the artisans participated in civic polity.

In addition to examining selected plays in the context of artisanal social and economic practices, Rice and Pappano also address relations between performance and historical transformation, considering how these plays, staged for nearly two centuries, responded to changes in historical conditions. In particular, they pay attention to how the pressures of Reformist governments influenced the meaning and performance of the civic religious drama in both towns. Ultimately, the authors provide a new perspective on how artisans can be viewed as social actors and agents in England in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

The Chester cycle’s fourth pageant, produced by the Barbers and Chandlers, depicts several episodes from the life of Abraham. At the outset, well before God orders the sacrifice of Isaac, Abraham rescues Lot, his nephew, from the king of Sodom. However, when he addresses “thou high God” to give thanks for success in battle, Abraham refers to Lot as his brother, announcing, “Lothe, my brother, that taken was, / I have restored him in this case / and brought him home in this place / through thy might and masterye” (21– 24). In a further gesture of thanksgiving, Abraham institutes the tithe: “Therefore of all that I have wonne / to give the teath [tithe] I will begynne” (29). On cue, Lot thanks Abraham and imitates his piety: “Abraham, brother, I thanke thee / that this day haste delyvered mee / of enimyes hands and ther postee, / and saved me from woo. / Therfore I will give teathinge / of my good wille I am living” (41– 46).

This opening performance of gracious, mimetic brotherhood by two men who are actually uncle and nephew is notable in a play produced by an artisan company, itself a voluntary brotherhood. From the outset the pageant shapes Abraham’s story to consolidate fraternal values of cooperation and obedience also enshrined in the charter of the Barbers and Chandlers. This craft company, which existed by 1475 and received a city charter in 1540, carefully defined the conditions of brotherhood for its members, emphasizing financial responsibility, cooperation, and quality control.3 The 1540 charter’s first item requires each brother to make a monthly payment of one penny “to the use of the said Occupacon and for the Comonwealth of the said City as long as they shall be able to pay the same,” positing a visible connection between craft fellowship and civic responsibility. Brothers are to cooperate rather than compete in the employment of apprentices and servants, and they may not poach customers from each other.5 Because the value of fraternal harmony is paramount, order is to be overseen by the guild’s officers and even the city’s mayor if necessary: “Every brother shalbe ordered amongst themselves by the Aldermen and Stewards for all causes of the said Occupacon. And if they cannot agree, then to complaine to the Mayor of the said Cittie for the tyme beinge and to be ordered by him therin.” The quality of products, for those members who make candles, stems from and reflects on the brotherhood. The updated 1550 charter directs company stewards to go “to every brothers howse which seleth any tallow Candles to vyew and see that theyr be good and lawfull stuff, bothe of weeke and tallow, putt in the said Candles.” When each member swore in his oath to “keep, execute, and fulfill to the best of my power” all of these ordinances, he committed himself to a comprehensive observance of artisan brotherhood, embodying cooperation, order, and good workmanship.

Performed sporadically throughout the sixteenth century, the Barbers’ and Chandlers’ Abraham pageant consolidated the company’s membership and sacralized its values even as members changed and disputes arose, rending the fabric of brotherly unity. In 1570, we find one Thomas Poole, a self-identified “painter & barbar,” now a member of the prestigious Painters’ and Glaziers’ company, petitioning Chester’s mayor for relief from harassment by barber Thomas Mercer. Though he was no longer Mercer’s craft brother, Poole appealed to the mayor in terms that highlighted Mercer’s deviation from the Barbers’ and Chandlers’ standards, claiming that Mercer “hath done unto youre sayd orature [Poole] at sundri times muche expresse wronge and ponesshed youre pore orature at hys pleasure, contrary to the orders of the sayd ocupacon.” Although the conflict should have been resolved after Mercer was fined by the Barbers’ company, Poole’s formal petition to the mayor indicates an ongoing animosity, perhaps related to or even the cause of his change of association.

One very striking element of this vivid petition is its testimony to a persistent tension between the competing demands of craft regulation and personal fellowship. The rancor of Mercer and his two accomplices in slander, both chandlers, stems from a history of poor craftsmanship and bad faith, Poole suggests. It seems that when he was steward of the Barbers’ and Chandlers’ company, Poole exposed faulty candles to the mayor, perhaps engendering resentment that has followed him. He argues, “Yt ys but the fawllsse reporte of one Hughe Bylldon, tallo chandelar, and of the sayd bretheren, whom when I was stuarte made fawllsse candells myxte with resen [false candles mixed with resin], the whyche candells I broghte in to the Pentis of Chester [city court]\ before Master Mayor for ten pounds that there where sene and proven*. Where upon the former pretensed malyce, and thys the[y] haue moste fawllssely and untrewly be lyed me and sworne contrary to all trewthe.” Here we can perceive the potential conflict between regulating product quality and maintaining guild harmony: Hugh Bylldon’s allegation of “malyce” demonstrates how an accusation of faulty workmanship affected a craftsman’s personal honor.

Even as such conflicts revealed lapses in product quality and in failure to follow company “orders,” the Barbers’ and Chandlers’ play continued to be performed, testifying in performance to the renewal of brotherly bonds, an unchanging God-given standard of “mastery,” and consistent obedience, demonstrated most palpably in Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac. While there may have been frequent strife among craft fellows in Chester, the pageant’s attention to, even fabrication of, brotherly respect and obedient performance suggests that artisan life and dramatic expression existed in complex, dialogic relationship to each other.

In this book we show how the phenomenon of civic religious drama evolved in tandem with artisanal organization and status in the urban centers of premodern Chester and York. We read documents and play texts together to argue that the civic cycles represented collaborative enterprises in which artisans, though neither fully authors nor scribes, created and revised their own self-representations in regular theatrical events that endured for two centuries. In doing so we demonstrate how, in Richard Emmerson’s words, dramatic texts “participate in, rather than just ‘reflect,’ history” in these two towns.

(Excerpted from Introduction)

List of Figures

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Craft Communities and Artisan Drama

1. New Beginnings: Processions, Plays, and Civic Politics in York and Chester
2. “Whom Seek Ye, Sirs?”: Searching and Salvation in York’s Herod and the Magi
3. Fair Trade: Masters, Servants, and Local Identity in the York Cycle
4. Spinsters, Laborers, and Alewives: The Regulation of Women’s Work in Chester
5. Last Judgment in York and Chester: Artisans, Merchants, and the Performance of Civic Charity

Epilogue

List of Abbreviations

Notes

Bibliography

Index