Mystery Plays - History of Performances

York’s Mystery Plays

Copy Supplied By the York Guilds

The Passion Plays of England are some of the oldest pieces of English literature. They were performed on the streets of our medieval cities on the church Feast Day of Corpus Christi, around midsummer.

The best preserved of these religious pageant performances are those of York which were staged by members of the City Guilds and performed on carts or wagons drawn through the streets. Each craft guild or 'mysterie' would perform its own play as part of an agreed cycle which would take a full day to view at various stations throughout the City.

The first recorded performance was in 1376. Performances continued every year for 200 years until suppressed by the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century.

Revived in 1951 as part of the Festival of Britain, they were performed for many years in the Museum Gardens, with the last production there in the 1980s. Productions took place in the Theatre Royal and the Minster Production in 2000 was a ‘one-off’ highly successful event organised for the Millennium and was specially written for the occasion.

Since 1992 there have been performances of the Plays in the streets of York, both on wagons and as ‘processional’ plays.

In 1994 the seven York Guilds and Companies funded and took part in a production on wagons and began to establish a four-yearly cycle of Plays. In 1998 the Guilds again helped fund and facilitate a much larger event.

In 2002, to much popular, academic and critical acclaim, the Guilds took full control of a large scale production of the plays on wagons performed on various locations throughout the City, which involved people from a wide cross-section of the community and the open-air performances harked back to the original spectacle of the medieval Corpus Christi day festivities.

The Guilds again raised substantial sponsorship for the 2006 production. Without question, the Mystery Plays are integral to the culture and of historic significance in the City of York. This is an important event in the city’s overall calendar and it is the Guilds’ intention to continue with a four yearly cycle of productions.

The York Evening Press ran a campaign to revive a static production which unfortunately did not succeed, however, there is hope that there may be another production in York Minster in 2010. Meanwhile the Guilds of York are the only active group producing York Mystery Plays in the City.

The Plays are steeped in history, have a Christian message, are full of pageantry, have great educational value, and are part of the tourism product of the City of York. The plays benefit the residents of the City and visitors alike with their drama and costume, plus the bringing together of people from many walks of life in their planning and production. The Plays presented in this traditional manner have received considerable acclaim from overseas.

The Guilds’ production is truer in spirit to both the medieval original and the 1950s revival. No-one owns the York Mystery Plays, but the Guilds have the greatest claim to be their guardians. The last Mystery Plays were staged in July 2006 - the next quadrennial performance will be in 2010.