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The Barbers' Play: The Baptism performed from a wagon in the street in York in 2014. The York Mystery Plays, more properly the York Corpus Christi Plays, are a Middle English cycle of 48 mystery plays or pageants covering sacred history from the creation to the Last Judgment.
A pageant wagon is a movable stage or wagon used to accommodate the mystery and miracle play cycles of the 10th through the 16th century. These religious plays were developed from biblical texts; at the height of their popularity, they were allowed to stay within the churches, and special stages were erected for them.
A medieval pageant is a form of procession traditionally associated with both secular and religious rituals, often with a narrative structure. Pageantry was an important aspect of medieval European seasonal festivals, in particular around the celebration of Corpus Christi , which began after the thirteenth century.
A collection is the York cycle of forty-eight pageants; there are also the Towneley plays of thirty-two pageants; the Ludus Coventriae; and the Chester cycle of twenty-four pageants, now generally agreed to be an Elizabethan reconstruction of older medieval traditions. Also extant are two pageants from a New Testament cycle acted at Coventry.
Medieval theatre encompasses theatrical in the period between the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century and the beginning of the Renaissance in approximately the 15th century. The category of "medieval theatre" is vast, covering dramatic performance in Europe over a thousand-year period.
Other pageants included the story of Moses, the Procession of the Prophets, Christ's Baptism, the Temptation in the Wilderness, and the Assumption and Coronation of the Virgin. In given cycles, the plays came to be sponsored by the newly emerging Medieval craft guilds. The York mercers, for example, sponsored the Doomsday pageant.
The cycle is the work of many authors, some sourced from the York Cycle. However, the most significant contribution has been attributed to an anonymous author known as the "Wakefield Master." It is believed that his additions include Noah, The First Shepherds' Play, The Second Shepherds' Play, Herod the Great and The Buffeting of Christ.
"The Shambles," a medieval street in York. The later years of the 14th and the earlier years of the 15th centuries were characterised by particular prosperity. It is in this period that the York Mystery Plays, a regular cycle of religious pageants (or plays) associated with the Corpus Christi cycle and performed by the various craft guilds grew up.