Pleasing the Queen but Preserving Our Past
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municipalities to reach accommodations between their traditional, civicsponsored plays and Elizabeth’s religious settlement.
The city of Chester, whence County Cheshire derives its name, is the
principal municipality of the county. Located in northwestern England near
Wales, and bordering on Lancashire, the county was largely agricultural during
the Tudor era. Its main product for export was salt. The city of Chester, with a
population of about 5000 (Bower 141), was the county’s principal market town,
and an episcopal and royal administrative center. Chester’s walls and streets
preserved the form of the city’s Roman origins. The town wall was roughly
square and pierced on each side by a gate; the two main streets stretched from
gate to opposite gate intersecting at the middle of the city in the form of a cross.
According to David Mills, historian of the Chester Cycle, “ceremonial activities
concentrated upon these streets, and the central point, the Cross, became the
administrative centre of the medieval and Tudor town” (Mills 21).
Sources are contradictory regarding the antiquity of the Chester Cycle.
Antiquarians, writing in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, trace
the performance of the Whitsun Cycle back to 1268 or 1270. Chester records,
however, yield no references to the Whitsun plays before 1519, but do mention a
passion play performed on Corpus Christi Day as early as 1422 {REED Chester
3, 6-8). In August of 1498, Arthur, Prince of Wales, visited Chester, and “the
Story of the Assumption of our Lady was played at the abbey gates and at the
high cross” {REED Chester 21). Whether or not these plays were parts of, or
ancestors of the Whitsun plays is not clear, but plays of the same matter do
appear in the Whitsun Cycle. What is clear, however, is that before the religious
reforms of the sixteenth century Chester had a long-standing tradition of
performances tied to Corpus Christi Day, St. George’s Day, and Whitsun
(Pentecost) in which the city’s authorities, guilds, and clergy all were involved
{REED Chester li-liv).
According to the city’s proclamation of 1532, the Whitsun plays were
viewed as salutary “not only for the augmentation & increased faith in our
[Lord] Jesus Christ & to exhort the minds of the common people . . . but also for
the commonwealth & prosperity of this City” {REED Chester 27). The city’s
geography, and playing spaces, is probably alluded to in at least one of the cycle
plays. The Drapers Playe (the story of the Creation through Cain and Abel),
when portraying the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden
places four angels “with sharp swords one every side” to guard the approaches
to Eden. Genesis 3:24 only states that God “placed at the east of the garden of
Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way
of the tree of life.” But Chester, it must be remembered, had four gates piercing
its square walls, and one playing space for its plays was at the “Great Cross”
where the main streets leading from each gate intersected. Hence, with such
close identification made between Chester’s civic identity and its Whitsun cycle
plays, it is no wonder that city authorities sought to find ways to accommodate