The Civic Cycles: Artisan Drama and Identity by Nicole R. Rice and Margaret Aziza Pappano (review)

This is an important book. For the first time, we have a well-researched and helpful study of the place of the artisan class in the production of the civic religious drama. The authors make clear that the civic cycle is a uniquely English form of drama writing: 'Though many aspects of premodern artisan identity are pan-European, the cycle drama produced by craftsmen, as an artisan centered enterprise, is a distinctly English urban phenomenon' (19). In fact, it is a northern English phenomenon. The artisans whose activities form the heart of this study are clearly distinguished as the master craftsmen who formed the 'middle rank' between the merchants on the one hand, who were the political elite (especially in York), and the unfranchised artisans who 'worked as servants, waged laborers, or pieceworkers either under or in competition with master craftsmen' (4–5) on the other. This study adds much to our understanding of the social and commercial structures of York and Chester during the years the plays in those cities flourished and supplements the work of scholars who 'in emphasizing the role of the merchants in shaping the plays ha[ve] not fully analysed the plays in artisanal terms' (4). The authors have drawn widely from the work of social and commercial historians and the surviving records of York and Chester to show the place of the master craftsmen and their skills in the production of the plays.

Although they rely heavily on the records contained in REED: York and REED: Cheshire, the authors have gone beyond those records, finding other aspects of the interaction of the crafts in other original material in the records of both cities that they feel helped determine the way the plays were performed. A good example is in the first chapter, 'New Beginnings', where the authors analyse the strained relationships between some of the closely related guilds in York that led to the unseemly brawls that marred the annual Corpus Christi Procession that, for the first sixty years of the civic celebration of the feast, preceded the play. They argue that the disputes between the good and bad angels in the first pageant, 'The Creation and Fall of Lucifer', reflect actual guild animosity and that the plays that follow in both cycles depicting the creation of the world introduce us to the 'master craftsman', God the Father, who throughout the plays, is the model of all 'makers'. The true beginning of the artisanal 'cycle' for the authors seems not to be the dramatization of the apocryphal story of the Fall of Lucifer but the creation story from Genesis.

Chapter 3, 'Fair Trade: Masters, Servants and Local Identity in the York Cycle', discusses how specific episodes, particularly in the York Plays, dramatize the relationship of 'servants' — that is, unfranchised workers — to their masters. They focus on Judas in the York Passion sequence and Cain in the fragmentary York Cain and Abel episode. Both discussions are marred by the tight focus of the authors on the artisanal theme without reference to the textual issues in both passages. The argument about Judas, as an unruly servant, works well as part of their artisanal concerns, but they do not mention that this characterization of Judas appears only in the complex sequence of pageants revised in the 1420s and presents the consistent view of the reviser about the character of Judas. The discussion of the Cain and Abel episode does not make clear to the reader that two folios — more than half the pageant — are missing, although the authors do make it clear how the surviving sixteenth century addition of the character 'Brew-barret' as a 'bad servant, echoing the bad example of his master' (154) reflects the deterioration of relationships among the lower classes in the later period.

Chapter 3 offers much of social and commercial interest but it also demonstrates what, to me, is the major disappointment of this...