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wo modern theorists of medieval theater, Elie Konigson and Henri ReyFlaud ,have elaborated approaches for reconstructing the performance spaces and features of mystery plays in Europe. Both scholars base their respective proposals on textual and iconographic evidence from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries . That evidence included, on one hand, the financial records for a very few well-documented performances as well as clues provided by the dramatic texts themselves, and, on the other hand, several miniatures, paintings, and illustrations depicting what may have been performance venues. Having thoroughly analyzed the same available evidence, Konigson and Rey-Flaud nevertheless come to somewhat different conclusions, prompting Graham Runnalls to muse that it “seems that the richer the documentation about a given performance, the more tantalizingly ambiguous it is.”1 Even as the debate continues, modern scholars like Runnalls have relied on the contributions made by both of these proposed approaches to unlocking the secrets of medieval performance.2 Konigson’s work characterizing the spatial orientation, configuration, and cosmography of medieval theater places it squarely in an urban milieu as a function of those communities or classes who created these plays for a specific social context.3 For his part, Rey-Flaud defines mystery performance as a collective act typified by the reenactment of fundamental myths and, at the same time, “Une remise en question ou une confirmation du corps social; il est là pour donner un visage et des mots aux aspirations, aux angoisses et aux contradictions du groupe” (Either a reassessment or a confirmation of the social body; it is there to provide a face and words to the hopes, the fears, and the contradictions of the group itself).4 By linking contemporary concerns to a reassuring eternal plan,both definitions underscore the vital role of mystery play performances in the health of the communities in which they took place. Furthermore, both sidestep evangelical edification in favor of a mythic semblance or demonstration of what Rey-Flaud terms a “société de rêve”(a dream society).5 Creating onstage this double sphere of both cosmic and urban dimensions is, from Konigson’s perspective, the characteristic that ultimately distinguishes mystery plays from their liturgical counterparts.6 In this amalgamation of eternal and urban value systems an emblematic landscape of varying dimensions and of heterogeneous composition stood quite 4 “Vous pouez veoir en ce repaire”: Theatrical Spaces and Places 125 T literally at the crossroads of an eternal design. Framed by the cosmic opposites of heaven and hell,the urban bourgeois,whom Michel Rousse has described as being “en mal de glorification personnelle ou collective”(in need of personal or collective glorification), could play out onstage a drama aimed at preserving or celebrating the common good.7 Some urban sponsors collaborated with local religious leaders , as seems to have been the case in Langres and in Seurre; other plays, such as Grenoble’s S. Christofle C, are conspicuously worldly. In similar fashion, the confraternities and clerics who subsidized S. Crépin F, S. Didier, and other plays demonstrated their commitment to a common cause or cult.The same may be said for groups of merchants, students, or craftsmen who likewise banded together to create their own spectacle for public or internal consumption.The plays produced by these groups took place wherever crowds might gather in dense cityscapes: in public marketplaces, collegiate halls, courtyards, rectories, and cloister gardens . In the case of civic productions, a public monstre or parade through the city announced the upcoming performance to expectant crowds, while the calendar marked for confraternity members the reprisal of a traditional text, roles, and costumes in conjunction with a banquet open to family members. Sponsoring groups constructed towers, scaffolding, and elaborate mechanical devices. They laid out straw, set up rows of benches, or rented space in houses whose windows offered a clear view of the performance. Participants concocted, borrowed, or rented the costumes, accoutrements, and equipment of soldiers, priests, nobles, saints, devils , messengers, courtly women, and beggars. Musicians, guards, and shopkeepers were enlisted to provide their particular skills or wares.This was, in other words, a participatory event.8 Evidence of the physical nature of these assorted re-creations comes from the kinds of archival sources referenced in chapter 1. Of the twenty-eight production artifacts in this study-set, though, only two have been described by contemporaneous performance records. Romans’s production of Trois doms in 1509 is one of the best documented French mystery performances of the late medieval era.9...

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