Can you create your own?
To help you get started, a modern-spelling script can be downloaded by clicking here. *** The ninth play from the York Corpus Christi Plays deals with the Flood. It is based on the sixth Chapter of Genesis. Appropriately, the play was originally performed by the Guild of Fishers and Mariners. The play has been popular in recent productions for its spectacle- including a host of animals, the raven and the dove, and the rainbow. And yet the animals are not included in the original script- presumably collected between the previous play (the Building of Noah's Ark) and the beginning of this. There are also no directions on how the raven, dove and rainbow would have been staged- perhaps as puppets, or- as in one performance in 2012- using live animals. The comic interplay between Noah and his wife, and her stubborn refusal to abandon her wider community, also lends itself to performance. Her comic type lives on in the form of the northern battle-axe or fishwife- or even the pantomime dame. As in the middle ages, York continues to be hit hard by flooding. Audiences then and now would be familiar with both the alarm of rising waters and the silty aftermath. And yet the Guild of Fishers and Mariners depended on the rivers Foss and Ouse, from which the floods came. It is possible that the lament of Mrs Noah for her lost family and friend was a familiar refrain. The original script, in 15th Century Middle English, can be found here, courtesy of Prof. Clifford Davidson and the University of Rochester's TEAMS Middle English Text Series. Watch an adaptation by Tom Straszewski: |
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