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Influenced by Coventry Cycle?

ON SHAKESPEARE - by G.L. Horton (3/30/02)

On the humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare newsgroup list, AJ writes: Have you considered, very speculatively, whether there may be some influence from the Mystery Plays? The Coventry Cycle apparently survived the Reformation for some years, and could have been part of Shakespeare's boyhood experience. Certainly he would have found there a workable pattern of high seriousness and broad comedy within a large-scale structure with a single over-arching theme.

This seems so clear to me (as a playwright/actor who has directed multiple productions of the Cycles) that I almost wish I had the skills and access to scholarly material to try to demonstrate it!

Just today a theatre friend and I were talking about how the official ending of the Cycle festivals can't have meant that all those wonderful exciting beloved bits and speeches, memorized by 100's of actors, just disappeared. People must have urged their friends and neighbors to reprise their theatrical triumphs privately, at home, and when gathered among kin or guildmembers. Children with their aptitude for rapid memorization surely must have learned the most spectacular speeches and imitated well-known actions -- such as "Killing the Calf".

I performed the St Chrispin's day speech from H5 in church last week (in connection with the choir's "Agincourt Carol" and "Non Nobis") and ever since my grandson has been requesting me to "Do King Harry" for him. I imagine after a few more times through, he'll be able to "Do King Harry" himself.

 

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