Can you create your own?
To help you get started, a modern-spelling script of this play can be downloaded by clicking here. *** The seventeenth play from the York Corpus Christi Plays combines Mary's purification (a ritual following childbirth), and the offering of Jesus at the temple. Whilst this was traditionally celebrated at Candlemas, this was not performed by the Candle-makers (as might be expected) but by St Leonard's Hospice in the early years, and then by the Hatmakers, the Masons, and Laborers. Perhaps due to this, the play's focus is on Simeon's old age, and his inability to labour for longer. There is also a gentle comedy in Joseph and Mary's concern over the appropriate sacrifice. Much as Jesus is presented in the plays as a sacrificial bait-and-switch against the devil, here he can be used as a sacrificial lamb since Joseph cannot afford a real one. As the change in guilds suggests, the play may not have been popular to perform, and it was rarely included in the modern revivals. However, in 2000 and 2016 it was used to conjoin York and Jerusalem- with Anna welcoming Jesus not to "this hall", but "this Minster". The play is based on Luke 2, v22-38. As this takes place forty days after the Nativity, and the Visit of the Kings and the Massacre of the Innocents occur two years after Jesus's birth, the play does not follow the biblical timeline precisely. As such, a modern adaptor can use the events as a precursor to Mary's sorrow in the Flight to Egypt, or to bring back a sense of calm and purity in the wake of Herod's genocide. *** 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. |