Tag Archives: medieval drama

Introducing the Gild of Freemen of the City of York

Posted on by under History, Mystery Plays, News, York Mystery Plays 2026

This #MysteryPlayMonday we’re excited to talk about our partnership with the Gild of Freemen of the City of York, a local civic organisation build on medieval foundations with more than three decades of involvement with the modern Mystery Plays.

As we’ve previously mentioned, the play “The Fall of the Angels”, which this year has been rename “The War in Heaven”, was owned, in the Middle Ages, by the Tanners’ Guild. This organisation, made up of those men who worked in the creation of leather, has ceased to exist in the city (as indeed has the industry itself), and so we “represent” them only in the theatrical and historical sense.

Modern York does, however, continue to have guilds- largely industry-based fraternal organisations today- as do several other cities around the UK. In York, there are seven: the Merchant Taylors, the Merchant Adventurers, the Guild of Building, the Cordwainers, the Butcher, the Scriveners, and the Gild of the Freemen of the City of York. This last is unique among them, in that it is not based on a particular industry in which its members work; rather, its origins lie in the citizens who occupied a unique niche in the social and governmental hierarchy of England. 

Medieval freemen were a sort of proto-middle class, men who were not among the nobility but were not tied to land or lords as serfs, nor under indenture to a trade master. They were, literally, free: to move around, to establish a career, to farm land that they might rent or own, but to which they were not permanently tied. In order to join any guild, or to trade within the city, one first had to have the status of freeman. And those who had such status also had privileges like being allowed to graze their animals on the common land, which in York we know as the Strays. They had responsibilities, too: freemen had to pay taxes, maintain the city’s infrastructure, defend it if needed, and help manage the city and its trade. In time, freemen became the only residents eligible to vote. This menu of privilege and responsibility meant that freemen were often the officeholders of the city, and the ones in charge of its various functions, both civic and economic. 

In the Middle Ages, “freeman” was a status, but it wasn’t a group, or organisation, or guild unto itself. Their precise role changed over the centuries, but they were never a coherent, unified body. In 1953, however, the freemen of York came together and decided that their shared status would have greater meaning and usefulness to the city if they formed a formal organisation. The Gild of Freemen was thus established: a modern society built on ancient roots. 

In 1994, the Mystery Plays, having been revived on a quadrennial basis since 1951 as large, staged productions, were shifted back to their historic performance method: processional waggons performing in open air throughout the city of York. The city guilds once again became involved in the event, which had been a key part of their civic responsibility during the Middle Ages. The Gild of Freemen, however, did not “own” a play from the medieval period, as all members of all the guilds were simply “free men”. But, civic-minded as the members were, the Gild got involved anyway, pairing, as the other guilds did, with organisations and dramatic groups keen to be part of this special, very York event. In 1998 and 2006 they were responsible for  “The Temptation of Christ”, in 2002 the Gild partnered to stage “The Conspiracy Against Jesus”, and from 2010-2022 they settled into working on “The Fall of Man”, the story of Adam & Eve, with “Cain & Abel” as well in 2010. 

With the Gild’s mission being focused on the “enhancement of the City of York and the furtherance of the interest of its citizens”, they couldn’t choose a better project than supporting the Mystery Plays! Although seemingly small in scale (none of the plays are longer than half an hour, and waggons are obviously quite petite as stages) they are an enormous undertaking, and there is nothing else in the world quite like them. Hundreds of York residents, York-born and those who have adopted the city as home, take part, reflecting the rich tapestry of a city that punches far above its weight in terms of theatre and performance. Even those who don’t participate or even watch the Mystery Plays on their quadrennial outing seem to be aware, and proud, of this event. Moreover, as one had first to hold the status of freeman in medieval York before one was permitted to join a guild or trade in the city, in a sense the Freemen may feel a special connection to the plays, since they were, if not as a formal entity but as an idea, the foundation for all of the plays and those involved with them. 

We’re so pleased to be working with the Gild this year! Their history as something new built upon the shoulders of something deeply historic feels very close to our own story, and we share their deep affection for the beautiful city of York, which is certainly the home of our hearts if not always our bodies. It really does add an extra layer of connection to our production! We look forward to having members of the Gild process with us and our waggon during the performance days, and to working with them to add another proud chapter to the history of York.

If you’d like to know more about the Gild of Freemen of the City of York, please visit their website at freemenofyork.co.uk

First Rehearsals! and the Questions They Bring Up

Posted on by under Drama, Musings, Mystery Plays, York Mystery Plays 2026

A report from the wilds of Mystery Plays! It’s #MysteryPlaysMonday and our director for “The War in Heaven” has finished the first in-person rehearsal with some of our cast….

When does a production begin? It’s not like sports, where there’s a buzzer or a whistle or a bell, something to tell you, “They’re off!” Maybe it’s the moment the first idea arrives in someone’s head, or the first meeting where two people planning it sit down to swop ideas. Is it the first creative team meeting? The first call for auditions? There are many metrics you could use to help define it, and in almost all cases the beginning isn’t really when the work starts- certainly, by the time the actors walk through the door the first time, scripts in hand, ready to rehearse, a hell of a lot of work has already gone happened.

But emotionally, the first rehearsal still feels like a starting point. I won’t say it’s true of all productions, but in most cases the performers are the centre of the event. There’s that old line about drama, that all it takes is two planks and a passion, but you don’t even really need the planks: the passionate people who make up a performance are what you can’t do without.

Our Mystery Plays journey with “The War in Heaven” thus began with our reading, online, with everyone involved, just to get a sense of the text and the characters, just to dip our toes in the water. Online wouldn’t normally be the ideal way to do things, but it made it possible for several people to be “there” who couldn’t have been otherwise, and ideally everyone is involved from the very beginning and given a chance to feel welcome and a part of things. The truth is that not all parts of the Mystery Plays are equally involved- waggon crew comes in quite near the end, for example, and costume or prop makers may toil behind the scenes and rarely get to spend time with the cast, and yet we absolutely could not do this project without them. There may be small parts, but there are no expendable parts; even the smallest role in terms of time and effort is crucial. That’s the upside to starting online and easily accessible, it gives more people a chance to start from the same place.

The down side is that it is inevitably less dynamic, and getting to a rehearsal room is… well, there’s just nothing else like it! As we finally got to do today, when our Heavenly cast arrived (we’ll get to meet our Hellish denizens next week). We started off by talking a bit about our characters, brainstorming some different questions to ask of them, so that our angels in particular can start seeing their characters as individual, rather than generic.

If the angels have to work to create unique personalities in relatively few lines, Lucifer is almost too well-known, because it’s hard for us to forget what we know about him: that he winds up as God’s greatest adversary. He can’t start out that way, though, he has to begin virtuous and holy, like his brethren. We have to start by liking Lucifer, as we might any other angel; while the pace of the play means that the rot sets in quickly, we have to remember that it wasn’t always there, and that’s difficult when, culturally, we have the baggage of foreknowledge. Lucifer therefore has to really seduce the audience- not in the “sexy daemon” trope that I know exists, that’s not the choice we’ve made in this case- but convince them against their knowledge that he’s a normal angel, until he isn’t.

God’s character is, I think, quite clear in the text, and obvious in who he needs to be. His challenge is more about theology. I don’t want our play to become about theology, for although the story is Biblical the goal is not to preach but simply to tell a story about some characters, but it’s hard to avoid some of those thorny questions in imagining God. Why doesn’t he smite Lucifer down the very second he gets out of hand? Why does God pick Lucifer in the first place? (“God made a bad call” was one  brilliantly blunt answer that came out of rehearsal today.) If God is all-seeing, all-knowing, how does he miss the obvious point that Lucifer is going to go off the rails? There’s no way to answer these questions for our  character, without also acknowledging that these are questions that scholarly theologians have struggled with for centuries. If they haven’t been able to agree upon the answers to our questions, we’re unlike to do so in the short course of our rehearsals! And yet answers which make sense within the context of our play have to be found.

I’m sure everyone had been thinking about these things, but they really surface at early rehearsals, because they can make a difference in material ways. One of the things we toyed with was the question of where God is, while Lucifer is growing in arrogance. Surely, if God is sitting right there, next to him, he might tap Lucifer on the shoulder with a swift, “Hey, knock it off! Too far!” But he doesn’t… so at least from the standpoint of visual narration, God can’t directly see what’s going on, or else his inaction makes no sense. So where is God? When does he leave, and where does he go? This is a real, physical issue we have to solve because the audience has to understand what’s going, but the core of the question- why does God let Lucifer fall?- is also a pretty deep matter of theology and faith.

All these questions are swirling around in my brain after our first rehearsal- and we’ve only worked on half the play! The Hell cast will be in next, which will make for an interesting contrast; Hell is less of a theological thicket and more of a pure staging challenge for us. But, as just shown, that’s what I’m saying now. I may have many different thoughts and questions about Hell and its inhabitants once they’ve leaped off of the page! And those questions are how I know: we’ve officially, really and truly, begun.

Farces, Finale

Posted on by under Farces, Musings

It’s our final #FarcesFriday because the event is this Saturday night! (You can still get tickets, or get them at the door!) So today our farces’ director sums up the experience of preparing for them.

It’s so hard to believe we’ve arrived at the time when the farces will be performed, and put to bed, at least for now. They’ve been quite a journey, from an idea just being thrown around, through an incredible amount of preparation, to tomorrow evening!

The farces started even more embryonic than most of our productions, because I had no real familiarity with either French medieval drama or comedy in general in a historic context. We knew we wanted to start moving outside of the English medieval niche, but not going too far: something with a small cast, at a small scale, seemed a good way to get back on the metaphorical horse. Going through my bookshelves and pulling one of Jody Enders’ volumes off the shelf, I realised what a treasure-trove existed in French farces, and they ticked all the boxes: small casts, short skits, comedy, and not a deity in sight. 

Once we had settled on farces in general, and chosen our pair in particular, the academic excavation began. I liked these plays, but what did we know about them that might change how we approached them? There’s an irony in there somewhere, because these are not deep, intellectual plays that require a heavy academic hand; they’re pieces of fun and fluff, largely, pure entertainment for its own sake.

And yet working on these plays, I have learned so much, which I have hopefully distilled into smaller bites to share with you in these weekly posts! French medieval theatre is so remarkably different from English, more than I would have expected. I have still not ascertained why there doesn’t seem to be any visible exchange across the Atlantic, at a time when the two countries were interacting quite a lot (albeit not necessarily very pleasantly), or why culturally the French valued humour, and secular humour at that, in a way that doesn’t quite seem to have been the case in England.

It was dismaying to read through many farces, only to discover how violent they were. Perhaps it shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did- it was so prevalent that I rather struggled to find plays where that wasn’t a dominant feature. Violence often features in English plays, as well, but not so relentlessly. I think it’s still possible to perform those plays if they’re handled very delicately, but it isn’t something I personally wanted to do, so we moved on and kept digging to find the plays that we have, which are also, in my opinion, two of the best anyway. And that’s another thing worth noting about medieval French farces: with so many of them surviving, their quality is uneven, and not all of them are necessarily worth performing today. (Just because it’s old doesn’t always mean it’s good is sometimes a hard thing for a history lover to say! But it remains true.)

Women came off as poorly as you might expect from something written in the 14th century, and yet we have Guillemette, who accurately points out her husband Pierre Pathelin’s flaws, but who seems to have a marriage largely based on mutual aims and a degree of respect. Jacquinot and Jacquinette, our Washtub couple, could learn some lessons from them. And it could be argued that for them, as well as marriages in other farces, nobody comes out ahead- the women may be stereotyped as cranky nags or adulteresses, but the men are often stereotyped as lumpen idiots, who deserve what they get. It’s a negative egalitarianism, but it’s arguably present.

Indeed, one of the hallmarks of the farces writ large is that very nearly everyone is a bit scandalous- the moral universe of the farces is indeed a perverse one, where everyone is cheating, failing, or flailing. True success and decency just don’t exist here; moral ambiguity is as good as it gets. But perhaps that’s one of the attractive things about them: even as stereotypical, stock characters, the better among the farces know that their characters can’t simply be hateful or saintly, we have to sympathise with their plights even when they handle them badly, because they’re only funny if there is just enough humanity in them to be recognisable. In its way, this comes closer to modern characters, with motivations and nuances, than some of the more reverent religious dramas.

One of things we haven’t learned yet, but hope to this weekend, is how well they stand up as text. Many of the farces really do need a lot of zany, antic staging to make sense. We suspect, and hope, that the two we’ve chosen have enough narrative heft within the dialogue to prove entertaining. I don’t think you need to lard lots of extra sight gags on to them, and in fact I think you may detract from the core of these plays and their characters if you go overboard on staging jokes. We’ll see if this is the right approach or not when we get the plays in the mouths of actors this weekend!

I’m so excited to see what people will do with these wonderful characters! They may not be as deeply written a something out of a modern drama, but they’re fun and they’re funny and they’re sympathetic in their own strange way. While I don’t believe that all stories or characters need to be “relatable” there is something quite charming about realising that some things don’t change. Spouses still bicker over petty things like laundry. Lawyers still have shady reputations- maybe sometimes with good reason! People still try to see what they can get away with on a regular basis, flattery can still be pretty successful in running a scheme and a cheat, in-laws can still stick their noses in and make things awkward. All of this could have been written last week and have been just as amusing.

I’ll miss the farces. I won’t miss wrestling through my limited, struggling French… but I can read a lot more of it than I could a year ago! I’ll miss working on plays that make me laugh more than, despite evidence to the contrary, they make me think. They have been a bit of a vacation into a celebration of laughter and the ridiculous, which is not a place where I spent much time, and it’s been a breath of fresh air. Maybe someday we’ll come back and revisit a more fully staged version, but until that happens, it is indeed a bit sad to say au revoir to the Pathelins and the Jacquinots. But I want to bring this in with a smile… so I think I’ll go read the plays again once more. Then I’ll be sure to end this with a laugh.

A Farce Bibliography, Part 2

Posted on by under Academic Curiosity, Farces, French Farces, Musings

Continuing from our last #FridayFarces, here is the second installation of our farce director’s lengthy reading list!

If last week wasn’t enough book list for you, here is the second half, which includes most, though possibly not all, of the editions which I consulted in trying to carve out our translation. I don’t assume you’d want to read all of these, or possibly any, but I have once again put asterisks by those books that were especially helpful in getting my head around this project, and at the bottom you’ll find a list of editions that were consulted in preparing our translation. I sincerely hope that our plays will have a similar effect on you that they did on us: a kindling of curiosity, a window that beckons towards you and whispers, “I want to know more about this.”

Jacob, P.L. Recueil de Farces, Soties et Moralites du Quinzieme Siecle. (1859) Adolphe Delahays: Paris.

** Knight, Alan E. Aspects of Genre in the Late Medieval French Drama. (1983) Manchester University Press: Manchester. 

Knight, Alan E. “The Condemnation of Pleasure in Late Medieval French Morality Plays”, The French Review, Vol. 57 No. 1 (1983), pp. 1-9.

Knight, Alan E. “The Medieval Theatre of the Absurd”, PMLA, Vol. 86, No. 2 (1971), pp. 183-189.

Koopmans, Jelle & Darwin Smith. “Un Théâtre ‘Français’ du Moyen Âge?”, Mèdièvales, No. 59 (2010), pp. 5-16.

Koopmans, Jelle. “La farce, genre noble aux prises avec la facètie?”, Cahiers de recherches médiévales et humanistes, Vol. 32 (2016), pp. 147-163.

Kramer, Femke. “How to Deal With Farces?” Medieval English Theatre, Vol. 21 (1999), pp. 66-78.

Langle, Paul Fleuriot de. Les sources du comique dan “Maître pathelin”. (1926), Librairie du Roi René: Angers, France.

Lejeune, Rita. “Pour Quel Public ‘La Farce de Maistre Pierre Pathelin’ A-T-Elle Été Rédigée?”, Romania Vol. 82 No. 328 (1961), pp. 482-521.

Lemercier, P. “Les Éléments Juridiques de ‘Pathelin’ et la Localisation de l’oeuvre”, Romania vol. 73 No. 290 (2) (1952), pp. 200-226.

Lewicka, H. “Pour la Localisation de la Farce de M e Pathelin”, Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance, T. 24 No. 2 (1962), pp. 273-281.

Maddox, Donald. “The Morphology of Mischief in ‘Maistre Pierre Pathelin'”, L’Esprit Créateur, Vol. 18 No. 3 (1978), pp. 55-68.

Maddox, Donald. The Semiotics of Deceit: the Pathelin Era. (1984) Associated University Presses: Lewisburg, PA and London.

Manzour, Charles. “Vingt ans de recherches sur le théâtre du xvie siècle: deuxième partie: le théâtre comique, les genres nouveaux, les spectacles de cour, le théâtre scolaire”, Nouvelle Revue du XVIe Siécle, Vol. 17 No. 2 (1999), pp. 301-318.

Maskett, David. “The Aesthetics of Farce: ‘La Jalousie du Barbouillé”, The Modern Language review, Vol. 29 No. 3 (1997), pp. 581-589.

Meyerhold, Vsevolod & Nora Beeson. “Farce”, The Tulane Drama Review, Vol. 4 No. 1 (1959), pp. 139-149.

Nitzie, William A. & Preston Dargan. A History of French Literature. (1938) Holt, Rinehart & Winston: New York.

Norland, Howard B. “Formalizing English Farce: Johan Johan & Its French Connection”, Comparative Drama (1983), pp. 141-152.

Oliver, Thomas Edward. “Some Analogues of Maistre Pierre Pathelin”, The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 22 No. 86 (1909), pp. 395-430.

Peters, Edward et al. “A Feast of Law: A Symposium on the Teaching of Medieval Legal History”, The History Teacher, Vol. 22 No. 1 (1988), pp. 7-31.

Philipot, Emmanuel. “Remarques et Conjectures sur le Texte de ‘Maistre Pierre Pathelin'”, Romania, Vol. 56 No. 224 (1930), pp. 558-584.

Picot, Émile. Recueil Général des Sotties (3 vols.). (1968) Librairie de Firmin Didot et Cie: Paris.

Pinet, Christopher. “French Farce: Printing, Dissemination and Readership from 1500-1560”, Renaissance and Reformation, Vol. 3 No. 2 (1979), pp. 111-132.

Redmond, James, ed. Farce. (1988) Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.

Roques, Mario. “Notes sur ‘Maistre Pierre Pathelin’: I: Manger de l’Oie”, Romania, Vol. 57 No. 228 (1931), pp. 548-560.

Roy, Bruno. “Quand les Pathelin Achètent du Drap”, Médiévales, No. 29 (1995), pp. 9-22.

Schaumburg, K., et al. La Farce de Patelin et Ses Imitations. (1889) C. Klincksieck: Paris.

Schoell, Konrad. “Humour in Farce, Sotie and Fastnachtspiel“, European Medieval Drama, No. 4 (2000), pp. 9-22.

Schreiber, Cècile. “L’Univers compartimenté du théâtre médiéval”, The French Review, Vol. 41 No. 4 (1968), pp. 468-478.

Schumacher, Joseph. Studien Zur Farce Pathelin. (1911) C. Hinstorff: Rostock, Germany.

Segre, Cesare & John Meddemmen. “Maistre Pathelin: Manipulation of Topics and Epistemic Lability”, Poetics Today, Vol. 5 No. 3 (1984), pp. 563-583.

Small, Graeme. Late Medieval France. (2009) Palgrave Macmillan: New York.

Smith, Darwin. “About French Vernacular Traditions: Medieval Roots of Modern Theatre Practices”, Journal of Early Modern Studies, No. 8 (2019), pp. 33-67.

Smith, Darwin. Maistre Pierre Pathelin: Le Miroir d’Orgueil. (2002) Tarabuste: Saint-Benoit-du-Sault.

Stephenson, Robert C. “Farce as Method”, The Tulane Drama Review, Vol. 5 No. 2 (1960), pp. 85-93.

Symes, Carol. “The Appearance of Early Vernacular Plays: Forms, Functions, and the Future of Medieval Theatre”, Speculum Vol. 77 No. 3 (2002), pp. 778-831.

Urwin, Kenneth. “Pathelin ‘Pendable'”, The Modern Language Review, Vol. 42 No. 3 (1947), pp. 359-361.

Watkins, John H. “The Date of the ‘Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles'”, The Modern Language Review, Vol. 37, No. 4 (1942), pp. 485-487.

EDITIONS

Allen, John. Three Medieval Plays. (1953) Heinemann Educational Books: London.

Bowen, Barbara C. Four Farces. (1967) Basil Blackwell: Oxford.

Champion, Richard T. Maistre Pierre Pathelin. (1970) Librairie Honore Champion: Paris.

Coustelier, Antoine Urbain. La farce de maistre Pierre Pathelin. (1723) Antoine-Urbain Coustelier: Paris.

Dondo, Mathurin. Pathelin et Autres Pièces. (1924) D.C. Heath & Company: Boston.

Dufournet, Jean. La Farce de Maître Pierre. (1986) Flammarion: Paris.

Eliot, Samuel A. (ed.). Little Theatre Classics, Vol. 2. (1920) Little, Brown & Company: Boston.

Enders, Jody. Trial by Farce. (2023) University of Michigan Press: Ann Arbor.

Faivre, Bernard. Les Farces Moyen Age et Renaissance, Vol. 1. (1997) Imprimerie Nationale: [unknown].

Fournier, Edouard. La Vraie Farce de Matire Pathelin. (1881) E. Dentu: Paris.

Frappier, Jean & A.M. Gossart. Le Theatre Comique au Moyen Age. (1935) Larousse: Paris.

Gassies, G. Anthologie du Théatre Français du Moyen Age. (1925) Librairie Delagrave: Paris.

Hankiss, János. Farce Nouvelle. (1925) JHE Heitz, GE Stechert & Co.: New York.

Harden, A. Robert. Trois Pièces Médiévales. (1967) Meredith Publishing Co.: New York.

Holbrook, Richard T. Master Pierre Pathelin. (1914) Walter H. Baker & Co: Boston.

Holbrook, Richard. The Farce of Master Pierre Patelin. (1905) Riverside Press: Cambridge, MA.

Jacob, P.L. La Farce de Maitre Pathelin. (1876) Librairie des Bibliophiles: Paris.

Jagendorf, Moritz. The Farce of the Worthy Master Pierre Patelin. (1949) Walter H. Baker Co.: Boston, MA. 

Jodogne, Omer. Maître Pierre Pathelin. (1983) Peeters: Louvain, Belgium.

Leteissier, Anne. La Farce de Maître Pierre Pathelin. (2001) Magnard: Paris.

Malaunoy, Marion de. Maistre Pierre Pathelin: Hystorie, Reproduction en Fac-smile. (1904) Librairie de Firmin Didot Etc.: Paris.

Marin, Fanny. La Farce de Maître Pathelin. (2000) Hachette Livre: Paris.

Pickford, C.E. La Farce de Maistre Pierre Pathelin. (1967) Bordas: Paris.

Picot, Guillaume. La Farce de Maistre Pathelin. (1972) Librairie Larousse: Paris.

Relonde, Maurice. The Farce of the Worthy Master Pierre Patelin, the Lawyer. (1917) R.G. Badger: Boston.

Robert-Busquet, L. Farces du Moyen Age. (1942) Lanore: Paris.

Snook, Lee Owen. The Fourth Yearbook of Short Plays. (1938) Row, Peterson & Co.: Evanston, IL.

Tissier, André. Farces du Moyen Age. (1984) Flammarion: Paris.

Unknown. The Village Lawyer. (1809) D. Longworth: New York. 

A Farce Bibliography, Part 1

Posted on by under Academic Curiosity, Farces, French Farces

If you’re wondering what we’ve read behind the scenes for the French farces and for our #FarcesFriday writings, here’s the first part of the director’s bibliography.

I went into this project knowing extremely little about farce from any era, so this is a longer reading list than usual (and it actually isn’t totally comprehensive; many other things were read as well). I don’t assume you’d ever want to read quite this much about them- though I hope you’ll find something that intrigues you!- so I’ve put asterisks by those titles which were particularly helpful. I’d especially like to highlight the wonderful anthologies by Jody Enders, which even the most casual reader will find entertaining rather than academic, though they have a deeply erudite foundation. They were the inspiration for this project, and while we have taken a different approach to adapting and translating the plays, they show a unique approach to bringing plays which were very much a reflection of their own time, into our own era. On to the books…..

Arden, Heather. Fools’ Plays. (1980) Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.

Badawi, Abdurrahman. “Influences Islamiques sur la littérature française a l’époque classique”, Studia Islamica, No. 45 (1977), pp. 5-25.

Bazin, François Emmanuel Joseph. Matire Pathelin, opéra comique en un acte. (1879) Léon Escudier: Paris.

Beam, Sara. Laughing Matters. (2007) Cornell University Press: Ithaca & London.

Beck, Jonathan. Théatre et propagande aux débuts de la Réforme. (1986) Editions Slatkine: Geneva, Paris. 

Bentley, Eric. The Life of The Drama. (1964) Applause Theatre Books: NY.

Bermel, Albert. Farce: a History from Aristophanes to Woody Allen. (1990) Southern Illinois University Press: Carbondale & Edwardsville.

Bloch, Marc. French Rural History. (1966) University of California Press: Berkeley & Los Angeles.

Bloch, R. Howard. “Medieval Misogyny”, Representations, No. 20 (1987), pp. 1-24

Bowen, Barbara C. “Metaphorical Obscenity in French Farce, 1460-1560”, Comparative Drama, 1977, pp. 331-344.

Brown, Arthur. “Folklore Elements in the Medieval Drama”, Folklore, Vol. 63 No. 2, (1952), pp. 65-78.

Brun, Laurent. “French Studies: Late Medieval Literature”, The Year’s Work in Modern Language Studies, Vol. 76 (2016), pp. 14-34.

Campbell, Josie P. “Farce as Function in the Wakefield Shepherds’ Plays”, The Chaucer Review Vol. 14 No. 4 (1980), pp. 336-343.

Cannings, Barbara. “Towards a Definition of Farces as a Literary ‘Genre’”, The Modern Language Review, Vol. 56 No. 4 (1961), pp. 558-560.

Caputi, Anthony. Buffo: the Genius of Vulgar Comedy. (1978) Wayne State Detroit Press: Detroit.

Cazalas, E. “Où et Quand se Passe l’Action de ‘Maistre Pierre Pathelin’?”, Romania Vol. 57 No. 228 (1931), pp. 573-577.

Chase, Carol J. & Marie-Sol Ortolá. “The Ideology of Deception in ‘La Farce de Maistre Pathelin'”, Modern Language Studies, Vol. 16 No. 3 (1986), pp. 134-148.

Chevaldin, L.E. Les jargons de la farce de Pathelin. (1903) A. Fontemoing: Paris.

Conroy, Peter. “Old and New in French Medieval Farce”, Romance Notes, Vol. 13 No. 2 (1971), pp. 336-343.

Cons, Louis. “L’Auteur de la Farce de Maistre Pathelin”, Revue du Seizième siècle, (1913), pp. 473-476.

Cons, Louis. “L’ L’Auteur de la Farce de Maistre Pathelin”. (1926) Princeton University Press: Princeton, New Jersey.

Crist, Larry S. “Pathelinian Semiotics: Elements for an Analysis of ‘Maistre Pierre Pathelin'”, L’Esprit Créaeur, Vol. 18 No. 3, (1978), pp. 69-81.

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Dean, Joan F. “Joe Orton and the Redefinition of Farce”, Theatre Journal, Vol. 34 No. 4 (1982), pp. 481-492.

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Frank, Grace. “Pathelin”, Modern Language Notes, Vol. 56 No. 1 (1941), pp. 42-47.

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Guynn, Noah D. “A Justice to Come: The Role of Ethics in la Farce de Maistre Pierre Pathelin”, Theatre Survey, pp. 13-31.

Guynn, Noah D. Pure Filth: Ethics, Politics, & Religion in Early French Farce. (2020) University of Pennsylvania Press: Philadelphia.

Haug, Hélène. “‘Maistre Pierre de Hurion, Agille Imitateur’: Bilan sur les Auteurs Actifs á la Cour de René d’Anjou (1434-1480)”, Romania, Vol. 131 No. 521 (2013), pp. 130-151.

*** Harvey, Howard Graham. The Theatre of the Basoche. (1969) Harvard University Press: NY

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On the Joys of Auditions

Posted on by under Musings, Mystery Plays, York Mystery Plays 2026

After a busy week of auditions, it’s #MysteryPlayMonday! Our show’s director looks back on what made this such an enjoyable process.

It was auditions week here at HIDden, a time of equal parts stress and delight. This week, it’s been more the delight than the stress.

I’ve written previously about the fact that auditions are one of my least favourite parts of directing, because it’s such an imperfect process, but one where a casting mistake can lead to real problems for a production, not to mention distress to all involved. But auditions can also be really brilliant, and I thought today would be a good chance to talk about what’s been so amazing about them.

First of all, new people! Despite being a very shy person by nature, I actually really love getting to know new people, and actors are some of the most delightful folks in the world. They bring such diverse backgrounds and interests to a project, gifts which shape a production in large and small ways that you can’t imagine until they’re there in front of you. No two people will approach a character in the same way. Actors’ interests tend to be wide-ranging, maybe because you never know what aspect you’ll need to portray a character somewhere down the road; this also tends to make them natural psychologists or sociologists, interested in people and their quirks, the way their minds work, the way that small and large decisions can impact a character. That makes them fascinating people to talk to, and I come away from auditions feeling unusually positive about humanity in general, that if everyone is like the actors I’ve spent the week meeting, then people are more intelligent and insightful than I generally admit. 

I learn from them in a way that can change the shape of how I see the characters and the play. I’m not saying even the most brilliant audition would make me radically overturn the basic concept of the show, but in almost every individual audition, there was a moment where a lightbulb went off in my head. Maybe it was “oh, that line, that emphasis really gives God an extra nuance that’s fascinating!” or a particular small gesture that makes a demon seem particularly creepy and menacing that would be worth incorporating into their choreography. Not all ideas will make it into the final production, and not all interpretations will fit into the overall vision for the play, but the ideas that come to the table get considered and played with and that process refines it as a whole. My auditions notes have lots of scribbling in the margins about ideas that have been generated by the way audition pieces were presented.

The actors are the engine that drives the play in a very literal sense, but this is also true in a more subtle way. Actors at auditions give the process an injection of enthusiasm and excitement. This is even more pronounced with something like the Mystery Plays, which is a passion project for everyone involved. With all that goes on behind the scenes from a production end, it’s easy to get exhausted- endless rounds of design and re-design, meeting after meeting after meeting, hiring things and sourcing material and filling out paperwork and policy and and and… Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy 99% of the whole theatrical process, but even what you love can be exhausting. Meeting the actors in auditions is like a delightful caffeine injection, a much-needed influx of pure joy, and a reminder of how fortunate we are to be involved in a production that is almost entirely unique in the world. 

Enthusiasm and delight are emotional factors that auditions reintroduce at a much-needed juncture, but there is also an intellectual component to this. They appreciate the historicity of the Mystery Plays just as much as we do, and that in turn reminds me: this is their moment of immortality, of being a part of a tradition that started more than six hundred years ago. I owe it to them to give them the best circumstances for performing, to help them creature a performance worthy of that place in history. I often ponder- many of them will have heard me pose the question- what people will write about ourmystery plays in five hundred years, just the way I spend time thinking about the experience for our fifteenth-century forebearers. (“They won’t be able to say much, everything will have been digital and lost,” is a response I hear quite often, which is a conversation my friends in academia often entertain as well.) I am never unaware that we are, as the title of Margaret Rogerson’s book about the modern York plays says, “playing a part in history”, but at auditions I become extra conscious that what I owe to history comes through the actors, so those actors need the very best work that I can give, so that they in turn can do theirs.

In writing this and reflecting on the week, and what comes next, I realise that it’s not actually auditions I dislike at all, it’s casting. Making decisions about who will play what, knowing that I have more good people than big roles, and that some people will inevitably not get the part they would have preferred. That’s the part that’s stressful, both because it doesn’t feel great to disappoint anyone, and because it’s where mistakes are costly. But the auditions themselves? They were pretty damn fun! And now we have a whole team of new people to get to know, work with, and share in the process of creating something exciting for our contribution to the history of York. Yeah, that’s a pretty good week in the office, by any measure.

Pathelin on the Web

Posted on by under Drama, Farces, Historic, Musings

It’s #FarcesFriday! This week our Farces’ director searches the internet for productions of Pathelin, to see how widely it has travelled and how many different ways the play has been performed.

I have a very strict rule about not watching productions of a play I’m working on- I don’t want my own ideas about it, and that of my collaborators, to get hung up by someone else’s concepts. Sometimes, once you’ve seen something, as the saying goes you can’t unsee it. But I’m still curious, and being so far down our farces rabbit hole, I decided it was okay to be at least a little bit nosy, so I started looking up Master Pierre Pathelin online. What kind of online presence did the play have?

In terms of images, book covers from various editions are what come up the most frequently, but a dive into Wikimedia Commons, of all places, yielded rather more interesting fruit. (I’m pinning these to a new Pinterest board, if you’re curious to see them.) The woodcut prints which accompany some editions of the text are the most frequent images that aren’t a volume cover. They portray moments such as Pierre talking to his wife Guillemette, “buying” cloth from Guillaume, and the trial scene before the Judge- in short, the major scenes from the play. There are a couple sketches of Victorian actors portraying some of the characters, which look as if they may have been intended for publication, perhaps in a magazine or newspaper devoted to the theatre, as well as an advertising cartoon for the same production. There are photos from a late Victorian production which remind one that the lines between melodrama, pantomime, and farce are blurry. Available for perusal, too, is the music and libretto for an operatic version of the play (as well as photographs which suggest it was translated and staged in other languages, outside of France). Pathelin, this tells us, didn’t just spawn sequels, but adaptation into other art forms as well.

As a beloved- and easy-to-stage- piece of French dramatic history, it’s not surprising to find Pathelin well represented on YouTube. You can watch primary school-aged children enacting scenes, which surprised me as I would have thought the comedy was a little bit more sophisticated than the average nine- or ten-year old would enjoy. High school drama groups also perform it, as do the more expected university students and professional companies. There’s one version where a family decided to have some fun with their video camera and record themselves doing scenes from the play in their own home! The majority of the online videos show performances in French, including performances from classes who are learning French as a second language. And not all those which are linguistically French are nationally French: the National Theatre of Senegal has performed Pathelin and put it online. I found at least one iteration in Portuguese, as well as a black-and-white film version, professionally made in 1961, translated into Danish, and another iteration which, while possibly still performed in French, was presented in what was then known as Yugoslavia. 

What is the takeaway from this online Pathelin blitz? Well, first, it’s simply evidence that those who know the play have always found it entirely entertaining and worth staging; it’s not simply a medieval relic known only to footnote-grubbing academics, it’s a play that has been performed, at least occasionally, across many centuries and in many countries. It’s also far better known to the French than the English, which is fair- the original is in their language- but also a bit of a shame, because there is nothing about the play that is so specific, culturally or linguistically, that it can’t be enjoyed equally in translation. (This is why it still felt right for us at HIDden- it’s a historic drama that in our wider culture isn’t especially well known, though it has every right to be!) And, indeed, the variety of countries where it appears in even these limited records indicate that its basic ideas and humour transcend borders and cultural differences.

Another interesting observation is that, if we may go by the costumes, it’s almost always staged very clearly as medieval. (The interesting exception is one illustration that places the characters in Georgian dress. Dating from the mid nineteenth century, their choice is unusual in terms of choosing to present a historical version of Pathelin, but one set in a different time than its origins.) What I find curious about this adherence to medieval dress is that the play isn’t socompletely grounded in medieval circumstances that it must be medieval to make sense. YouTube is, of course, a limited sample, and I feel very confident in assuming that there have been “modern dress” Pathelins, with the lawyers in suits and carrying briefcases. But it doesn’t seem to be a particularly common choice. Contrast this with productions of Shakespeare’s plays, which have probably spent more time out of their own period than in. Why do some plays get locked into a particular time period while others, with no more or less internal requirement for being period-specific, don’t? I don’t actually know! But I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Even the limited data set which is this brief internet search speaks to the durability of the play. Across centuries, languages, and borders, the tale of a trickster lawyer and the people who try to cheat him in turn is universally appealing. Do other cultures have lawyer jokes? Pathelin’s popularity says yes! The next question is why, when it’s made it to such diverse places as Denmark and Yugoslavia, it’s still relatively unknown in the UK. This is indeed a mystery. At least we can hope that, by the middle of May, at least a few more people in York will have “met” this delightful text (along with its far more obscure but equally funny farce sibling, The Washtub) and joined the many who, around the world and across the years, have found delight in the antics of Pierre and his fellows!