Ludzie pragną czasami się rozstawać, żeby móc tęsknić, czekać i cieszyć się z powrotem.
On this occasion, or sometimes on some other festival,
it became customary for the guilds to present an extended series of the
plays, a series which together contained the essential substance of the
Christian story, and therefore of the Christian faith. The Church generally
still encouraged attendance, and not only did all the townspeople join
wholeheartedly, but from all the country round the peasants flocked in. On
one occasion the Pope promised the remission of a thousand days of
purgatory to all persons who should be present at the Chester plays, and to
this exemption the bishop of Chester added sixty days more.
The list of plays thus presented commonly included: The Fall of Lucifer;
the Creation of the World and the Fall of Adam; Noah and the Flood; Abraham
and Isaac and the promise of Christ's coming; a Procession of the Prophets,
also foretelling Christ; the main events of the Gospel story, with some
additions from Christian tradition; and the Day of Judgment. The longest
cycle now known, that at York, contained, when fully developed, fifty
plays, or perhaps even more. Generally each play was presented by a single
guild (though sometimes two or three guilds or two or three plays might be
combined), and sometimes, though not always, there was a special fitness in
the assignment, as when the watermen gave the play of Noah's Ark or the
bakers that of the Last Supper. In this connected form the plays are called
the Mystery or Miracle Cycles. [Footnote: 'Miracle' was the medieval word
in England; 'Mystery' has been taken by recent scholars from the medieval
French usage. It is not connected with our usual word 'mystery,' but
possibly is derived from the Latin 'ministerium,' 'function,' which was the
name applied to the trade-guild as an organization and from which our title
'Mr.' also comes.] In many places, however, detached plays, or groups of
plays smaller than the full cycles, continued to be presented at one season
or another.
Each cycle as a whole, it will be seen, has a natural epic unity, centering
about the majestic theme of the spiritual history and the final judgment of
all Mankind. But unity both of material and of atmosphere suffers not only
from the diversity among the separate plays but also from the violent
intrusion of the comedy and the farce which the coarse taste of the
audience demanded. Sometimes, in the later period, altogether original and
very realistic scenes from actual English life were added, like the very
clever but very coarse parody on the Nativity play in the 'Towneley' cycle.
More often comic treatment was given to the Bible scenes and characters
themselves. Noah's wife, for example, came regularly to be presented as a
shrew, who would not enter the ark until she had been beaten into
submission; and Herod always appears as a blustering tyrant, whose fame
still survives in a proverb of Shakspere's coinage--'to out-Herod Herod.'
The manner of presentation of the cycles varied much in different towns.
Sometimes the entire cycle was still given, like the detached plays, at a
single spot, the market-place or some other central square; but often, to
accommodate the great crowds, there were several 'stations' at convenient
intervals. In the latter case each play might remain all day at a
particular station and be continuously repeated as the crowd moved slowly
by; but more often it was the, spectators who remained, and the plays,
mounted on movable stages, the 'pageant'-wagons, were drawn in turn by the
guild-apprentices from one station to another. When the audience was
stationary, the common people stood in the square on all sides of the
stage, while persons of higher rank or greater means were seated on
temporary wooden scaffolds or looked down from the windows of the adjacent
houses. In the construction of the 'pageant' all the little that was
possible was done to meet the needs of the presentation. Below the main
floor, or stage, was the curtained dressing-room of the actors; and when
the play required, on one side was attached 'Hell-Mouth,' a great and
horrible human head, whence issued flames and fiendish cries, often the
fiends themselves, and into which lost sinners were violently hurled. On
the stage the scenery was necessarily very simple. A small raised platform
or pyramid might represent Heaven, where God the Father was seated, and
from which as the action required the angels came down; a single tree might
indicate the Garden of Eden; and a doorway an entire house. In partial
compensation the costumes were often elaborate, with all the finery of the
church wardrobe and much of those of the wealthy citizens. The expense
accounts of the guilds, sometimes luckily preserved, furnish many
picturesque and amusing items, such as these: 'Four pair of angels' wings,