Today is the last day of this season of the York Mystery Plays, they won't be performed again until 2016. Over 30,000 tickets were sold making it a great success for everyone involved. It also means notices like this one in the Museum Gardens will be removed, a shame as this makes me smile every time I walk past it.
The musicians leading this troupe of players are the York Waits. Despite over 500 years service the Waits were abolished in 1836 as their mediaeval revelries did not match the Victorian ideals of public behaviour. Recently revived the Waits play the instruments of their
predecessors such as shawm, cornett, saggbut, curtal, flutes, crumhorns, bagpipes, hurdy-gurdies, lute and
cittern. Here they serenade one of the the Mystery Play wagons through the city.
Taking part in Ruby Tuesday
These 'extras' were waiting for their cue to feature on stage in the Mystery Plays in the Museum Gardens. I am guessing they are in the big flood scene.
Today is the first day of the 2012 cycle of Mystery Plays in the city. Each guild used to perform a particular play and in the 1909 Mystery Pageant the guilds paraded their Guild Banner through the streets of York. These same banners are now on display in the Merchant Adventurers Hall. This is the banner of the Weavers Guild. It shows three leopards' heads facing forwards, each with a shuttle in its mouth. The shuttle was used to run the weft yarn through the open warp yarns when weaving. The Weavers Mystery was the Appearance of Mary to Thomas.
Construction continues on the Mystery Play set. See the tree on the left amongst the scaffolding? Planted in 1989 by the Duchess of York it is now causing no end of problems for the builders as it is growing just where the seating needs to go. A little difficult to identify at the moment but I seem to recall it is a Cedar of Lebanon. Rumour has it the tree is schedule for the chop before too long, wonder if that would be the case if it had been planted by Princess Diana?
The ruins of St Mary's Abbey in the Museum Gardens seen here and here previously, have all but disappeared behind scaffolding, seating, railings and all the paraphernalia of a temporary outdoor event venue. This stage is set for the 2012 York Mystery Plays, a four yearly cycle of 48 plays covering Creation through to the Last Judgement.
York Corpus Christi Plays to give them their official title, were originally performed on carts and wagons around the city by the local Craft Guilds (Coopers, Bakers, Masons etc). Mystery can be taken to mean a religious truth or in Middle English it means a trade or craft. First recorded as performed in York in the middle of the 14th century, each Guild would be responsible for a particular play, stopping at 12 'play stations' around the city to do their turn. Some were obvious choices, the Shipwrights would stage 'Building of the Ark' for example. I would love to have seen the Hosiers perform Departure of the Israelites from Egypt; Ten Plagues; Crossing of the Red Sea!
