The Use of Architectural Space in Medieval Music-Drama

The Use of Architectural Space in Medieval Music-Drama Dunbar H. Ogden Certain basic principles of medieval staging have their origin in the employment of the chancel and the nave as theatrical spaces. Fortunately, in a limited number of instances it is pos­ sible to bring together play text and the precise area for which it was conceived. Here we can reconstruct rather accurate pat­ terns of movement by the actors, and we can determine the placement of scenic elements. Of some eight hundred texts of the music-drama which I have examined, approximately a dozen texts or groups of texts can be assigned on internal evidence to a particular church where medieval architectural details are known. 1 The rubrics of these special dramas name specifically such features as altars, tombs, or chapels, the locations of which we can ascertain. This identifi­ cation of features is possible because we possess pertinent archi­ tectural information from the same period as the dramatic text. In most cases, the given church structure is still extant, or was extant until fairly recent times. This study will therefore focus on three examples of liturgi­ cal drama which can be identified with specific locations—the early Visitatio Sepulchri from the Regularis Concordia identified with Winchester and Canterbury, a fifteenth-century Visitatio Sepulchri identified with Magdeburg Cathedral, and plays from the Church of St. John at Besançon—where we can examine in each case the architectural groundplan, and where we can begin to trace on it the blocking indicated by the textual rubrics of a drama performed there. I We can be rather certain that the Visitatio Sepulchri as found in the Regularis Concordia was performed from c. 970 63 64 Dunbar H. Ogden to at least c. 1100 in two churches: in the Old Minster of Win­ chester, considerably enlarged by Ethelwold, and in Christ Church Canterbury, where Dunstan served as Archbishop. The Regularis Concordia was drawn up for Benedictine monasteries throughout England, but nowhere else can we locate with as­ surance a production of this text. The association with the Old Minster at Winchester appears obvious when we note Bishop Ethelwold’s significant roles in writing the Regularis Concordia and in building on that church, while a connection with Canterbury can be confidently posited because of Archbishop Dunstan’s function there and in the Win­ chester Council and, equally important, because both early manuscripts of the Regularis Concordia have an association with Canterbury. Dom Thomas Symons, a recent editor of the docu­ ment, says that the tenth-century manuscript was “written for, or at least adapted to, the use of Christ Church Canterbury,” and that the eleventh-century manuscript, not a copy of the former, is part of a volume “intimately connected” with that cathedral.2 Augustine’s church in Canterbury, apparently erected on Roman foundations, burned in 1067. That is the church that interests us. A hasty but too small reconstruction by Archbishop Lanfranc c. 1070 then led to the building of a structure, begun Fig. A—Conjectural plan of the Saxon Cathedral Church of Canterbury, prior to 1067. The Use of Architectural Space 65 in 1096, with nearly twice the area of the original. A recon­ struction by William Hope,3 based on a contemporary descrip­ tion and on some archeological evidence as to Lanfranc’s struc­ ture, furnishes us grounds for speculation as to the staging area of the Visitatio Sepulchri in the cathedral prior to 1067. The oriented church had a double apse. Its main altar was located beneath the arch of the raised, eastern apse, near steps which led up to this area elevated over a crypt. Entrances to the crypt may have opened on either side of the steps. From these steps, according to the contemporary description, “towards the west the quire of the singers extended into the body [nave] of the church, shut off by a seemly enclosure from the resort of the crowd.”4 No mention is made of a transept. The church, ac­ cording to Hope, was about sixty-five feet wide and the nave was about 150 feet long. Towers on the north and south aisles are recorded. The text of the play does...