We have dealt with the work of the townsfolk in the fifteenth century, but what of their amusements? Here they were certainly nothing like so well off as their descendants of the twentieth century. Of theatres and kinematograph shows they had none. Football matches they had occasionally. But it was with this difference—that a football match then was not one in which thirty men played while thirty thousand looked on and yelled their applause or disapproval. A football match in those days meant one in which the ‘field’ was the main street of the town, the ‘goals’ were the town wall or moat at either end of the street, and the ‘players’ were the whole body of townsfolk. Such a match is still played annually in at least one town of Northern England.
For the rest the people had their Church-Ales, their Miracle Plays, and their Fairs. Church-Ales were parish feasts held in and around the church on the eve of the church’s saint’s-day; and to them each parishioner contributed his share—a dozen loaves, a cheese, or a few gallons of ale—the whole being then sold as required, while all present made merry. Church-Ales were, in other words, the ‘Parish-Teas’ and the ‘Knife-and-Fork Suppers’ of our own degenerate days.
As has been said, there were in mediæval towns no theatres. Still the townsfolk had their plays. In very early times the play-house was the church, the plays were representations of events recorded in the Scriptures, and the performers were the clergy.
In the thirteenth century, however, it became the custom for these Miracle-Plays, as they were called, to be performed no longer in the church, but on moveable platforms, known as ‘pageants,’ in streets and market-places, or on village greens, at the different fairs and festivals throughout the country. Yorkshire seems to have taken a prominent share in their creation; for we have to-day a manuscript of forty-eight plays performed regularly at York for two hundred years, and another of thirty plays performed at Wakefield. We know also that at Beverley such plays were produced each year on the festival of Corpus Christi—the Thursday after Trinity Sunday—from 1407 to 1604, and that at Hull the play of Noah was performed in the streets once each year for a space of three centuries.
A Miracle Play in the Olden Time.
What the performance of a Miracle Play was like may be judged pretty well from the accompanying illustration. The pageant was a large ‘two-decker’ vehicle, which could be drawn by men or horses from one ‘station’ to another.
Noah’s Ark.
(From an old French Miracle Play).
It was the custom at York for the first play in the series—God the Father Almighty Creating and Forming the Heavens—to begin on Corpus Christi morning at 5 o’clock. This was at the gates of the Priory of Holy Trinity. When this part of the Creation had been satisfactorily got through, its pageant passed on to take up its second station ‘at the door of Robert Harpham’; while another play showing God the Father Creating the Earth took its place. And so on through the whole series, each play being thus performed at twelve different stations during the course of the day.