ABSTRACT
In the summer of 1987, the Joculatores Lancastrienses took their production of the York Doomsday to its original setting in the city's medieval streets. The official civic Ordo Paginarum of the York Mystery plays, written down in 1415, lists among the characters of the Mercers' Doomsday play 'iiijor spiritus boni & iiijor spiritus maligni'. Moreover, the Coventry Doomsday play was the responsibility of their Drapers' Guild, whose earliest surviving pageant accounts date from 1534, a century after the York Mercers' Indenture. The Coventry souls turn up regularly in the accounts between 1537 and 1573. The earliest entry is 'for mendyng the white & the blake soules cots viij d'. In 1543, the 'whyte Sollskotts', were mended with two skins, which suggests that while the black souls were dressed in canvas, the white souls were dressed in tawed leather, like the Adam and Eve or Christ figures of many accounts.
