ABSTRACT
An orderly succession of plays at all playing stops and the means of achieving it belong to a recognized area of mathematics: "queueing theory". But queueing theory has not until very recently dealt with the kind of queueing that was in effect with the "carriages" of the Chester Cycle, according to the description in the "Breviary of Chester". Three of these cycles—Chester, York, and Wakefield—have survived sufficiently intact to support time studies of their possible scheduling. A fourth cycle, N-Town, is unsuitable because it has survived as a composite of disparate elements whose division into plays is often problematical. In this chapter, the author presents a Chester Cycle table that is the basis for re-creating both the cycle time and the playing pattern and includes the significant variations between the manuscripts, as well as significant changes that occurred in the composition of the cycle.
