York plays

York plays, a cycle of 48 plays, dating from the 14th century, of unknown authorship, which were performed during the Middle Ages by craft guilds in the city of York, in the north of England, on the summer feast day of Corpus Christi. Some of the York plays are almost identical with corresponding plays in the Wakefield cycle, and it has been suggested that there was an original (now lost) from which both cycles descended. It is more likely, however, that the York cycle was transferred bodily to Wakefield some time during the later 14th century and there established as a Corpus Christi cycle.

The plays were given in York on one day, in chronological order, on pageant wagons proceeding from one selected place to another. The cycle covers the story of man’s fall and redemption, from the creation of the angels to the Last Judgment; six plays are peculiar to York (the play of Herod’s son, of the Transfiguration, of Pilate’s wife, of Pilate’s majordomo, of the high priests’ purchase of the field of blood, and of the appearance of the Virgin to the Apostle Thomas).

In the last revision of the York plays, about 14 plays (mainly those concerning Christ’s Passion) were redacted into alliterative verse. These are powerful and the work of a dramatic genius, often referred to as the York Realist.

The York plays have been preserved in the Ashburnham Manuscript, in the British Library.