Theatre in the Round: The Staging of Cornish Medieval Drama by Sydney Higgins (review)

This study recreates the process of production for plays that were once performed in Cornwall over a period of five sequential days. On each of the first three days, a full-length play of approximately three thousand words was performed. Together they formed a cycle of Biblical plays. All three were written in the Cornish language, but later became known by Medieval Latin descriptive titles respectively as Ordinale de Origine Mundi, Passio Domini Nostri Jhesu Christi, and Ordinale de Resurrexione Domini Nostri Jhesu Christi. Over the next two days the story of a saint’s life, Beunans Meriasek, translated as The Life of St Meriasek, was performed.

There is some surviving archaeological evidence for the distinguishing feature of medieval Cornish drama: it was performed in the round. According to Sydney Higgins, there were numerous rounds, of differing construction, in Cornwall. He offers a comparative account of the round at St Just and the Piran round to indicate the features of each. While the ceremonial or ritual origin of the rounds in Cornwall probably antedates the performance of drama in them, their use for drama was important for a substantial period. He suggests that in medieval drama, the rounds may have encompassed cosmological significances. There is some discussion of the extent to which The Castle of Perseverance offers an analogue.

There are five surviving plans for the performance area, one for each of the original manuscripts. These are discussed in relation to remaining verbal traces in the text. Of particular interest is the set of performance locations outside the central arena. Higgins argues that the Cornish rounds were not simply regional oddities and that they had analogues on the continent of Europe, going back in concept and construction to the amphitheatres of Roman times. Collateral evidence is adduced from the visual arts of the later Middle Ages, particularly the frescoes of Giotto on Biblical themes. In asking why some aspects of Giotto’s representation seem unrealistic, Higgins replies:

‘For me, the answer to these questions is not that Giotto had no understanding of perspective but that he was depicting the life of Francis, using the stations, special effects and costumes used in plays at the time’

(p. 61).

Two chapters are devoted to the St Meriasek plays. The name of Meriasek is discussed as being evidence for pan-Brythonic Celtic relations between Cornwall and north Wales in one direction and Cornwall and Brittany in the other. Higgins says that as very little of the saint’s life was spent in Cornwall, ‘it is necessary to consider why a Breton saint was the subject of a Cornish play’ and he points out that ‘Both people spoke a common Celtic language … and until the fifteenth century, many of the town-dwellers in Cornwall came from Brittany’ (p. 75). There follows a very detailed discussion of the complex staging for the Cornish plays, accompanied by a number of diagrams for use of the sunken central space and the surrounding raised spaces. There is a surprising amount of action too, with some startling effects and some elaborate stage properties: for example, there is a very substantial ship on wheels. On the first day audiences will have seen ‘a rock that moved, a magic spring and a tree that caught fire’ (p. 102). They will also have witnessed ‘a dozen miracles, the hanging of two Christians and a battle between two armies’ (p. 102). All this on the first of the two days, so very few spectators would wish to reject the Duke of Cornwall’s invitation to come to the second day.

After a chapter devoted to the staging of the Creation play, the Ordinale de Origine Mundi, Higgins sums up with a chapter on ‘The Medieval Audience and its Theatre’. The long-standing controversy between Richard Southern and Glynne Wickham is countered with a convincing argument for a third way. Reviewing in detail the sequence...