What was the name of the guild play about the Nativity?
The Second Shepherds’ Play (also known as The Second Shepherds’ Pageant) is a famous medieval mystery play which is contained in the manuscript HM1, the unique manuscript of the Wakefield Cycle. These plays are also referred to as the Towneley Plays, on account of the manuscript residing at Towneley Hall.
What is the Wakefield stanza?
Wakefield Stanza. a nine-line stanza containing one quatrain with internal rhyme and a tail-rhymed cauda, rhyming AAAABCCCB; or, a thirteen-line stanza containing a cross-rhymed octet frons, a tercet cauda with tail-rhymes, the whole rhyming ABABABABCDDDC.
What is a cycle play in Theatre?
A phrase used by scholars of medieval theatre to refer to the sequences of episodes that dramatize the sweep of Christian salvation history from Creation to Judgement.
What cycle makes 24 mystery plays?
Two long, composite, and late mystery pageants have survived from the Coventry cycle and there are records and fragments from other similar productions that took place elsewhere. A manuscript of the plays, probably dating from between 1463 and 1477, is still intact and stored at the British Library.
How do the shepherds punish Mak for stealing their sheep?
After being initially fooled, the shepherds discover the sheep in the cradle. They decide to humiliate Mak by wrapping him in a blanket and tossing him up and down. Later, while resting, an angel appears to the shepherds and tells them of the birth of Jesus, prompting them to go to Bethlehem and visit him.
What does the second shepherd complain about?
The next shepherd who appears is Gyb. He, too, complains about the bitter cold and the harsh conditions. Besides the weather, Gyb feels oppressed by his marriage and he openly (and aggressively) wishes his wife were dead.
Who was the Wakefield Master?
The Wakefield Master was an anonymous playwright who wrote in the fifteenth century. Early scholars suggested that a man by the name of Gilbert Pilkington was the author, but this idea has been disproved by Craig and others.
How were the cycle plays presented?
Performances occurred out-of-doors on pageant-wagons, and audiences traveled from wagon to wagon to see a particular living story, or wagons moved to meet the crowd. The plays were linked thematically and typo-logically.
When were cycle plays performed?
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.
What is the difference between a miracle play and a mystery play?
Mystery plays told stories from the Bible and gave way to large mystery cycles in which many stories were told sequentially on the same day. And finally, miracle plays told the stories of the saint’s lives, sometimes true and sometimes fictional.