ABSTRACT
Seeing the Last Supper onstage provided one of the few opportunities medieval spectators had to hear the words and see the moment of transubstantiation reenacted in front of them without the hindrance of a roodscreen, the turning of the priest’s back, or the lowering of the priest’s voice.1 This alone provided the audience with a remarkable degree of participation in an event from which they were normally excluded. In addition, Cycle and Passion plays were designed to recreate sacred events in such a way that the spectators became involved in sacred history. No matter how carefully the producers might have attempted to control the audience response, however, there was never any way to guarantee that spectators saw only the appropriate social order supposedly instilled through Christ’s life and sacrice and continually renewed through his body. By examining the staging of the Last Supper, it is possible 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. In this essay, I will discuss the York Cycle, Chester, Cycle, and N-Town plays from England as well as representative Passion plays from France, Germany, and Italy.2
