Urban Drama, Part 9

The Cosmic Symbolism of the City Streets

When we talk about pre-modern theatres, meaning during the late Middle Ages and early reanissance, we find that there are certain features that distinguish it from the formalities neo-classical perceptions of time and space.  The ideal of the three unities does not seem to be considered at all : that is, the paradigmatic notions (1) that a performance should take place on a platform that represents one relatively contained area of representational space nearly coincident with the rerality that it prertends to imitate ; (2) that the actual  performance time again nearly approximates the fictional or historical period in which the action occurs, if not three hours then perhaps no more than a single day ; and (3) that the action ikitated on the stage in this place and over this period time should move from a marked beginning to a fixed closure and have no extraneous plot elements, allegorical divergences or enacted flashbacks or consequent effects.   Moreover, there should be a unity of tone—either comic or tragic—and not mixed, with a due decorum observed, an appropriate matching of characters, events, setting and theme.  Clearly, those familiar with the popular stage on which most of Shakespeare’s dramas are imagined to take place are well aware that these rules are not observed.  We have to rememebr that at the same time as these well-known Elizabethan plays were being performed in the Globe, the Rose and other large public theatres, processional and festival urban spectacles continued and even flourished.  It was not well into the Jacobean (James I’s reign) period, and especially after the Caroline (Charles I’s reign) period when most public theatres were closed down and drama moved into the much smaller private buildings, performances occurring indoors and in the evenings with artificial lights, and thus much more restricted in mimetic effects, that the Three Unites became the normal theory and practice.  A complete break with the medieval past happened following the Restoration under Charles II, following nearly twenty years without public theatricality of any sort thankls to the Puritan regime of Oliver Cromwell.  When  Charles II returned to England, his courtiers and many of the landed gentry had either no experience with professional performances at all or had grown up experiencing Continental, especially French and Italian traditions.  We thus have to set out the theory and practices of the pre-modern stage.

This kind of stage is multiple and simultaneous: somewhere, several places, everywhere, nowhere, outside of space, deep and thick, at one time, in several times, outside of time, in touch with eternity and the end of time.  By this we mean that the central area, the platea (or simply « the place ») is what the characters say it is and it may contain several different locales at one time, simultaneously, sequentially or through alluision ; it also may represent the non-place of spectacular symbol formation, within the mind of anyone or more characters, the everywhere of spaceless eternity and infinitude, or pure theatricality.  The passage of time may be speeded up, slowed down, reversed, and negated, representing a full lifetime, the long history from Creation to Apocalypse, various moments in someone’s life, some nation’s voyage through myth, legend and chronicled time : a split second may play itself out for hours on end, a generation may take the twinkling of an eye.  Thus a journey from England to Israel is made in the course of three paces : a child passes from infancy to maturity and then into death in less than an hour.  Aspects of a person’s mind discourse amongst each other back and forth across the platea and a whole generation of war and disaster turn on the spin of a toe.  The same pillar, fountain or arch can be The Temple in Jerusalem and then the Church of St Peter in Rome, the English Channel or the sea of Gallilee, and the Inn where Jesus was born or the King’s Palace in London.  Any domus (house in the sense of a permanent structure, such as a painted wall of the guildhouse or a temporary prop, such as rowboat standing for any ship, sea-creature or heavenly vehicle) may be identified by the characters on stage for as long as they speak of it by name and then, when they have walked away and been replaced by other players, given a new symbolic or representational name and function. 

Hence the Second Shepherds’ Play is performed by a stage that begins with a pageant procession on Corpus Christi Day somewhere in the north of England and gradually widens its way through the fate of the walled town, through the maze-like narrow winding streets, into the heart of the city, its central square which is then at one and the same time The Land of Israel on the verge of the Incarnation and Yorkshire in the present day, existentially, fictionally and symbolically as though there had as yet been no Virgin Birth, no Passion and no Redemption.  The crowds along with way of the wagons passage ans then filling up the town square are ordinary Englishmen, citizens of the town, members of the corporate guild bodies, local clerics, monks, nuns and friars, royal and ecclesiastical visitors, country folk come in for the holiday, and secret Jews lurking amongst them.  It is always then and now, as well as there and here. 

City Streets: Maze of the Mutable World

Pageant Wagon Stage

Israel and England

Platea (Place) and Domus (House)

Cathedral and Guild Hall: Body Politic

Crowds: Corpus Christi

Walled City: Marker between Inside and Outside