One of the four extant compilations of late medieval MYSTERY PLAYS, the N-Town Plays survive in
a single manuscript, British Library MS Cotton
Vespasian D.viii. Richard James, librarian to the
antiquarian book collector Sir Robert Bruce Cotton, obtained the manuscript from Robert Hegge
of Corpus Christi College in Oxford in about
1630, and therefore the plays are sometimes referred to as the “Hegge Cycle.” James labeled the
manuscript Ludus Coventriae on its flyleaf, which
led early scholars to consider it the cycle performed at Coventry on the festival of CORPUS
CHRISTI. While that identification was debunked
in the 19th century, it is not clear where the plays
were actually performed. Scholars agree that it was
somewhere in East Anglia, but the manuscript’s
introductory “Proclamation” claims that the plays
were performed in “N [nomen] town” on a Sunday. The name of the town, in other words, is left
as a generic nomen or “name.” But the fact that
the festival of Corpus Christi always fell on a
Thursday indicates that this was not a Corpus
Christi cycle.
Thus it is not even clear that the N-Town plays
are truly a cycle in the same sense as the CHESTER
CYCLE or the YORK CYCLE—that is, a group of discrete plays telling a coherent salvation history from
Creation until Doomsday, produced for the festival
of Corpus Christi by the craft guilds of a major English city. The “Proclamation” declares that the plays
will be performed at six o’clock on the following
Sunday, and for some time it was believed that the
manuscript represented the repertory for a troupe
of touring players. But more recent scholars look at
the possibility that the proclamation was simply intended to alert the townspeople to come to a particular location for the performance. Copious stage
directions in the text suggest that some of these
plays (later additions to the manuscript) were performed at a fixed place on a scaffold, and some may
have been performed with wagons. It does appear
that the main compiler behind the manuscript may
have been a cleric, possibly a monk or friar: The
plays make use of liturgical music, and several of the
plays emphasize preaching (as in the Woman Taken
in Adultery) or scholarly learning (such as Christ
and the Doctors). Thus scholars have suggested that
the manuscript originated in the Benedictine
monastery at Bury St. Edmunds. Other suggestions
include the Thetford Priory in East Anglia, the
towns of Great Yarmouth or Bishops Lynn (where
plays are known to have been performed), and the
great cathedral city of Norwich. But it is impossible
to know precisely where the manuscript was produced, or where the plays were performed.
The collection in the manuscript seems to have
been compiled from several different sources, and
the plan of the manuscript seems to have changed
over time. The motives of the main scribe are a
matter of some scholarly dispute: It may be that he
was collecting plays to deliberately create something along the lines of civic cycles like the York
plays. It may be that he was collecting plays for
something he hoped to turn into a printed text.
Whatever its maker’s intent, the manuscript consists of a basic cycle and five additions to the original collection. The plays of the cycle portion are all
written in 13-line stanzas, and they begin with
seven Old Testament plays or episodes (the Creation, the Fall, Cain and Abel, Noah’s Ark, Abraham
and Isaac, Moses, and a “Tree of Jesse” play focusing
on the prophets). Two unusual plays dealing with
apocryphal legends of Mary are included (Joseph’s
Trouble about Mary and the Trial of Mary and
Joseph), followed by four traditional Nativity plays
(the Nativity, the Shepherds, the Magi, and Herod’s
Slaughter of the Innocents). Five plays deal with the
life and ministry of Christ (Christ and the Doctors,
The Baptism, The Temptation, The Woman Taken
in Adultery, and The Raising of Lazarus), and six
plays concern Christ’s passion and the end of the
world (concerning the Marys at the Tomb, Christ’s
appearance to Mary Magdalene and a later appearance play, a play of the Ascension, of Pentecost, and
an incomplete play of Doomsday). Later plays of
Lamech, the Burning Bush, and the Cherry Tree
Miracle were added to this cycle.
To this basic cycle, the original scribe seems to
have added five more plays in eight-line stanzas
concerning Saint Anne and the Virgin Mary, four
of which are not mentioned in the manuscript’s
“Proclamation.” These plays (concerning the Conception of Mary, the Presentation of Mary at the
Temple, the Parliament of Heaven, the Annunciation, and Mary’s visit to Elizabeth) appear to have
been performed together on scaffold stages on a
single day (perhaps on St. Anne’s Day, July 26).
Subsequently a play on the purification of Mary
was added to the manuscript. Later was added a
Passion play, focusing on Judas’s betrayal of Christ;
and later still a second Passion play was included,
beginning with the trial of Christ before Caiaphas
and ending with the Resurrection. It seems likely
these plays were added to fill in the gaps of the
original cycle, or were included to replace the passion narrative that the manuscript originally contained. Finally, a substantial play concerning the
Assumption of the Virgin was inserted.
The sources of the N-Town plays were, of course,
the Christian Bible (particularly the Gospel of
Matthew), and some apocryphal gospels, including
the Nativity of Mary, as well as Marian stories from
the GOLDEN LEGEND and the Meditationes of PseudoBonaventure. More than any other cycle, the NTown plays focus on the Virgin Mary. Several of its
Marian plays are unique in English drama, including the scene of Christ’s post-Resurrection appear-
ance to his mother (a Franciscan tradition) and the
trial of Joseph and Mary, depicting the couple before a late medieval ecclesiastical court challenging
Mary’s virtue because of her premarital pregnancy.
One explanation for such unusual content is the relationship of the N-Town plays to the continental
dramatic tradition: Emphases on the Virgin, plays
concerning Lamech, the Parliament in Heaven, and
the Jesse Tree, and the use of the fixed stage, all are
more typically found in Continental drama than in
the English tradition. The close economic ties that
East Anglia shared with northern Europe (especially
Flanders) because of its cloth industry may explain
the cultural context that would account for such
similarities.
Certainly the most unusual and the most eclectic of the extant collections of mystery plays, the
N-Town cycle has in recent years become a favorite
manuscript for postmodern critics interested in resisting the idea of a text as a finished product, preferring to think of it rather as a continuing process.
In that way, this text is certainly the most contemporary of the mystery cycle codices.
Bibliography
Coletti, Theresa. “Devotional Iconography and the NTown Marian Plays,” Comparative Drama 11
(1977): 22–44.
———.“Sacrament and Sacrifice in the N-Town Passion,” Mediaevalia 7 (1981): 239–264.
The Corpus Christi Play of the English Middle Ages.
Edited by R. T. Davies. Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and
Littlefield, 1972.
Forrest, M. Patricia. “Apocryphal Sources of the St.
Anne’s Day Plays in the Hegge Cycle,” Medievalia
et Humanistica 17 (1966): 38–50.
———. “The Role of the Expositor Contemplacio in
the St. Anne’s Day Plays of the Hegge Cycle,” Medieval Studies 28 (1966): 60–76.
Gibson, Gail McMurray. “Bury St. Edmunds, Lydgate,
and the N-Town Cycle,”Speculum 56 (1981): 56–90.
Meredith, Peter. The Passion Play from the N-Town
Manuscript. London: Longman, 1990.
The N-Town Play: Cotton MS Vespasian D.8. Edited
by Stephen Spector. 2 vols. EETS, ss 11 and 12. Oxford: Published for the Early English Text Society
by the Oxford University Press, 1991.
Steven, Martin. Four Middle English Mystery Cycles:
Textual, Contextual and Critical Interpretations.
Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,
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