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Staging the York Plays: Varying the Plays

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2-2: Accounting for the 1535 Play List

The second new detail not yet fully applied to time table studies comes from Rogerson's "Table of Contents for the York Corpus Christi Play." That list of 32 plays, taken from a ledger entry regarding the guilds whose participation the city officials had cleared for that year. By matching the guilds with the plays they traditionally sponsored, Rogerson speculates "that the 1535 evidence represents the table of contents for the Corpus Christi Play the council would have authorized if the Creed Play had not been performed" instead that year.

Recall that from first light at 4:30 a.m. to last light at 11:00 covers a span of 18-1/2 hours. Based on PSim results for up to 16 performance stations (see Table 4 below), performance of these 32 plays would not run into darkness; at any rate, a torch-lit Doomsday pageant would make a spectacular finish to the day's event.


 
Table 4: 
PSim Results
Num
Stations		 Estimated
Run Times
8 13:47
10 14:45
12 15:51
14 16:57
16 18:03

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