ABSTRACT
There were medieval ‘plays’ in the churches of Europe from at least the ninth century and there were ‘medieval’ plays in places like Lucerne and York in the late sixteenth century. The most fruitful and varied period is the later one, from the fourteenth century to the sixteenth. York and Florence, which have impressive civic drama from this later period, are good starting points for a discussion of the medieval dramatic heaven. From the hazy beginnings of the Corpus Christi play at York in the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century to its welldocumented forced demise in 1569, the Mercers’ Company, one of the richest guilds in the City, provided the culminating moments of the performance of the play in the streets of York with its pageant of Doomsday. The pageant opens in heaven, before moving to earth for the Judgement itself, to hell for the final destination of the damned, and thence back to heaven. The text of the pageant provides no description of the settings but the archives of the Company contain extensive accounts referring to the refurbishing of the pageant wagon, and, most importantly, an indenture (1433), including an inventory, for the handing-over of the possessions of the Company at the change of pageant masters.1 The inventory provides the most detailed information about a pageant wagon that exists for English medieval drama and much of it is concerned with heaven. These are the relevant details in their order of appearance in the inventory:
ij paire aungell wynges, with iren in the endes; ij trumpes of white plate and ij redes; [. . .] a cloud and ij peces of rainbow of tymber; array for god (that is to say a sirke wounded, a diademe with a veserne gilted); [. . .] iiij irens to bere uppe heven; iiij smale coterelles and a iren pynne; a brandreth of iren that God sall sitte uppon when he sall sty uppe to heven, with iiij rapes at iiij corners; a heven of iren, with a naffe of tre; ij peces of rede cloudes and sternes of gold, langing to heven; ij peces of blu cloudes payntid on bothe sydes; iij peces of rede cloudes with sunne-bemes of golde and sternes, for the hiest of heven, with a lang small border of the same wurke; vij grete aungels, halding the passion of god (ane of thame has a fane of laton and a crosse of iren in his hede, giltid); iiij smaller aungels, giltid, holding the passion; ix smaler aungels payntid rede, to renne aboute in the heven; a lang small corde, to gerre the aungels renne aboute;2
I have underlined the visual aspects of heaven in the foregoing inventory and italicized the technical elements. Visually, heaven is dominated on the one hand by clouds, stars and sunbursts and on the other by angels. Only one action is referred to, God’s return to heaven (sty uppe or ‘ascend’), and the mechanisms of the wagon are dominated by this – the iron heaven, the windlass (a naffe of tre) and the raising device of ropes and iron seat (brandreth of iren or ‘iron grate or grid’). The inventory seems to have been used right through the fifteenth century (certainly there is no further copy of it or a replacement) and the nearest there is to a later one is a receipt given by the pageant masters for 1526 noting present and missing items. The ‘yren sett with iiij rappes’ and a ‘wendes with j repe’ are still there (if the ‘wendes’ is to be equated with the earlier ‘naffe’), and there is mention of ‘the clowd’ and ‘ij grett Angells’ and ‘iij lyttell angelles’, but the great host of heaven amidst a mass of brilliantly colourful clouds seems to have gone.
