ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the staging of the Last Supper to understand how the great civic dramas of medieval Western Europe, which were intended to dramatize civic order, in practice simultaneously upheld and destabilized it. The Last Supper plays emphasize the communal nature of Christ's sacrifice and the materiality of the foodstuffs he used to communicate that sacrifice. The chapter discusses the York Cycle, Chester, Cycle, and N-Town plays from England as well as representative Passion plays from France, Germany, and Italy. In order to analyze the multiple interpretations the presence of a prop Eucharist onstage could generate, it is first necessary to understand the context in which the Eucharist existed. Interestingly, women perhaps managed to manipulate the food imagery of the Eucharist to greater effect than any other group (Bynum), and it is worth noting that the feast of Corpus Christi, the feast of the body of Christ, was founded by a woman: Juliana of Mt. Cornillon.
