The story of the York Mystery Plays begins with the procession of the Corpus Christi wagon plays which took place every year from the mid 14th to the mid 16th century. Since 1951 this great dramatic tradition has been revived and the Mystery Plays have once again become something for the city to be proud of. This trail takes you through the heart of the historic city along the route taken by the wagons. We even pass some of the surviving medieval buildings from which the people of York watched the Mystery Plays all those years ago. The trail highlights a number of the stations originally part of the medieval Mystery Plays circuit.

Religious Fervour
Traditionally, the Mystery Plays were performed at Corpus Christi, a major religious holiday, which took place in mid-summer and was as important then as Christmas is today. English society was deeply religious at that time and The Mystery Plays were an excellent means of communicating tales from the Bible to the masses, many of whom could not read. Using the colourful language of medieval Yorkshire, the plays presented the ‘history of the world’, from its Creation, through the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, to the Last Judgement. Not only were the Mystery Plays written to appeal to all sections of the community, but they were performed on mobile wagons which went in procession, one after the other, through the packed streets stirring religious passions around the city.

A Marathon Performance
In the only surviving medieval copy of the Mystery Plays text, there are over 14,000 lines of rhyming verse and 300 speaking / singing parts, as well as roles for other performers. Fifty plays in total and fifty ornate wagons filled with actors were pushed and pulled through the streets not by animals but by teams of men. By the close of the fourteenth century there were twelve designated places (known as stations) along the route where each wagon stopped for the actors to perform their play. The wagon was then pushed on to the next station for the actors to perform again and this was repeated at every station until the actors’ last performance at the twelfth and final station. To perform all fifty plays, and to do so twelve times over, made for a very long day. Despite an early start at 4.30am (just before sunrise in midsummer) it could have been around midnight before this small army of exhausted actors finished their last performance by the light of torches.

The Mysteries
In medieval English the word "mystery" means a "craft" and the Mystery Plays were so called because each play was presented by one of the city's craft guilds. Different guilds often presented highly appropriate stories; for example, the Shipwrights were responsible for ‘The Building of the Ark’, while the Butchers played ‘The Death of Christ’. That tradition has continued in recent revivals of the wagon plays; in 2002, for example, ‘The Creation of the World’ was presented by the York Guild of Building. York’s guilds still play an important role in the city (the Merchant Adventurers Hall on Fossgate is one of the Guildhalls open to the public).

Reviving the Tradition
After a break of over 400 years a selection of the plays was produced in 1951 on a fixed stage in the grounds of St Mary’s Abbey (with a teenage Judi Dench playing the part of an angel). They were hailed as a remarkable literary and dramatic ‘discovery’ and there have been several subsequent productions. A number of the new productions have been done in the original way on wagons and in 2002, York’s seven present guilds undertook to produce wagon plays every four years.