The Judgement Day
The Forty-Eighth and Final Play
of the York Cycle of Mystery Plays
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The Judgement Day The Forty-Eighth and Final Play
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The cast is drawn from Archbishop Holgate's School, York, by permission of the Headmaster, Mr D A Frith, MA, JP. We wish to thank the many members of staff and pupils who have helped in one capacity or another, particularly to Brenda Major, Elsie Robinson and Joan Skidmore for help with costumes and curtains. We should also remember the workers in the Festival Wardrobe over the years, particularly Phyllis Bytheway, Kay De Little and Eileen Severs. The Minister authorities have been most kind in accommodating our wagon, as have the Merchant Adventurers Company of the City of York in giving permission for their Seal to be used as the cover design. Finally. we would like to extend particular thanks to Stewart Lack for his practical help and advice throughout all stages of the production.
This play was originally performed by the Mercers' Guild, who were rich, prestigious and influential. In the fifteenth century, virtually the rulers of York. In the fifteenth century over eighty of the city's mayors were Mercers. It is tempting to speculate whether this religious play, mounted on the final and most lavish pageant in the procession, might have functioned as a civil Juggernaut as well. Certainly, this play, with its temporal scheme spanning past, present and future, is, by its very nature, to be distinguished from the remaining forty-seven.
As befits it solemn subject, it is one of the most formal plays in the York Cycle and it is certainly the play with the most clear-cut didactic purpose.
It opens with a magnificent speech which recapitulates the rest of the cycle. God, with righteous anger, rehearses his creation of the world and man's initial disobedience. Man's sin in Paradise is compounded by his rejection and crucifixion of his Saviour. God determines to make an ending and dispatches his angels to sound their trumpets to summon the quick and the dead to judgement. The souls arise; the good praising God and imploring his forgiveness; the bad lamenting and too late repenting. The angels separate them. Christ descends in the flesh 'this body will I bear with me'. He declares to his apostles that he will fulfil his promises and they go together to the judgement seat. In a short interlude, Devils creep from Hell, relishing the prospect of their share of souls. Christ rehearses his agony in an extended sequence which culminates in one of the most breathtaking moments of the plays: the simple. unanswerable, question 'Say, Man, what suffered thou for me?' From this point the play follows Matthew 25 very closely, as Christ extends forgiveness to those who have performed the Corporal Acts of Mercy. The good souls' surprised reaction is answered by a clear statement of the ideal of love to every man. This theme is reinforced in a 'mirror passage' arising from the bad souls petulant protests. (The wording of this sequence is reminiscent of Dives and Lazarus). Christ calls his chosen ones to him, while the rejected are dragged through Hell-mouth. The play ends with ‘a melody of angels passing from place to place'. It is helpful to realise that the play is built upon the principle of reverse symmetry-. up/down, left/right, far/near.
The Mercers seem to have been unusually interested in maintaining their play. Their accounts, beginning in 1432 and surviving almost unbroken through their lineal descendants the Merchant Adventurers to the present day, contain a wealth of information. They reveal, for example, that the wagon had a substantial superstructure ('iiij Irens to bere vppe heuen') and many other properties, including a Hell-mouth so large it could be set up in the street and, from 1463, a coffin 'mayd for the sallys (souls) to ryse out of'. In addition a mechanism, probably block and tackles linked to a sort of bosun's chair, 'that god sail sitte vppon when he sall fly vppe to heuen'. We abandoned this feature, wisely, I think, at an early stage of planning
The present version of the play follows Toulmin Smith in punctuation and verse division and the excellent editorial policy of Purvis 'to alter nothing that could possibly be retained' in principle. I have retained certain features of language and versification which Purvis, in 1951, smoothed over. It is thanks to his edition and the magnificent series of triennial productions that we are finding the work of our forefathers increasingly accessible.
KD