The Towneley
First Shepherds' Play
Detail from "The Annunciation to the Shepherds" in King’s 9 (f. 99v), an early sixteenth-century Dutch Book of Hours. The manuscript held at the British Library and is reproduced here thanks to the Creative Commons. You may view the entire illumination here.
Below is an edited clip of the event and performance, including the entrance and carving of the suckling pigs.
What is this play?
The Towneley First Shepherds’ Play is the first of two shepherds’ plays in the Towneley Manuscript, a collection of 32 plays dramatizing biblical episodes from creation to doomsday. At one time known as the Wakefield Mystery Plays, these plays appear to have been collected individually from Yorkshire, Lancashire, and Westmorland and then arranged in the form of a biblical cycle, perhaps on the model of the York cycle, from which several of the Towneley plays are derived. While performance evidence is lacking, some of the Towneley plays were possibly performed as stand-alone performances during the Christmas season—as is likely with this play—or on other holidays. It is possible, too, that the Towneley manuscript may have been created for a reading audience, without dramatic performance in mind.
The First Shepherds’ Play was written in the late fifteenth century in Middle English. For this performance, we have modernized the language while retaining much of the original verse structure. The “Back and Side” lyrics are adapted from an early 16th-century carol that appears in another play, Gammer Gurton’s Needle. The Angel’s Gloria is a festal chant from the Liber Usualis, an early-16th-century English liturgical manual.
Why this play?
The play stages an extravagant feast that includes boar, sausages, calf-liver, ox-tail, meat pies, hares, goose, partridge, roast chicken, and swine snouts. Many critics argue that this feast, in part because it is so extravagant, must have been staged as an imaginary feast, with the shepherds pretending to eat the items rather than have them at hand. Yet many--if not all--of these items were commonly served at Christmas feasts. We wanted to see whether we could perform the play at a feast that included the items included in the play, or at least as many of them as we could manage. More importantly, we wanted to explore how the diners would "share" their feast's food and drink with us and how their sharing of food would affect the play.
How did the feast and play work?
We arranged to play The First Shepherds' Play at Ristorante Verdicchio and Enoteca on December 6, 2017, with a menu designed to incorporate as many items from the Shepherds' menu as possible. In place of boar, the chefs prepared three roast suckling pigs (which supplied the "two swyne-gronys"), and the head chef carved one of these in the playing space before dinner. Calf-liver pate was served for an appetizer, as were roast duck skewers (in place of goose and partridge). Roast chicken was served along with the roast suckling pig. The feast didn't include sausages, ox-tail, meat pies, or hare, but the restaurant served a salad, a chickpea soup, and roasted root vegetables (items not on the shepherds' menu). And we substituted Saturday Night Cream Ale by Stack Brewery (located across the road from the restaurant) for the "good ayll of Hely."
We began our performance as guests finished their meals or served themselves post-dinner coffee or tea. We had arranged that the dishes from the main course (served on shared platters), would not be collected by servers. This meant that leftovers from the meal remained on the tables for the shepherds to appropriate when they made their feast. It also allowed the shepherds to "Geder vp" later the leftovers for "Ye hungre begers frerys," thus marking the end of the guests' and their own respective feasts.
We also costumed Jak Garcio as one of the restaurant's servers. When the shepherds make a mess on the restaurant floor, Jak--who had been refilling water glasses--chastizes the shepherds as though he had been keeping an eye on the play while he worked. When Slawpace orders Jak to set up a table, he does so as though serving a dinner guest.
Finally, the basket in which the shepherds collected dishes and leftovers doubled as baby Jesus' manger. Following the shepherds' adoration of Jesus, Mary (doubled by the actor who played Jak), shared the baby Jesus--played perfectly by the pastry dessert--with the guests.