red demons carrying souls to hell’s mouth created merriment rather than terror, and though realism was carried to such a pitch that Adam and Eve appeared in a state of nature, yet many of the spectators would carry away with them pious thoughts and some grasp of the facts of Scripture history, and of the mysteries of the faith.  Originally the plays were performed in churches, but owing to the gradually increased size of the stage and the more elaborate stage effects, the sacred buildings were abandoned as the scenes of mediaeval drama.  Then the churchyard was utilised for the purpose.  The clergy no longer took part in the pageants, and in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the people liked to act their plays in the highways and public places as at Clerkenwell.  The guilds and fraternities in many places provided the chief actors, and in towns where there were many guilds and companies, each company performed part of the great drama, the movable stage being drawn about from street to street.  Thus at York the story of the Creation and the Redemption was divided into forty-eight parts, each part being acted by a guild, or group of companies.  The Tanners represented God the Father creating the heavens, angels and archangels, and the fall of Lucifer and the disobedient angels.  Then the Plasterers showed the Creation of the Earth, and the work of the first five days.  The Card-makers exhibited the Creation of Adam of the clay of the earth, and the making of Eve of Adam’s rib, thus inspiring them with the breath of life.  The Fall, the story of Cain and Abel, of Noah and the Flood, of Moses, the Annunciation and all Gospel history, ending with the Coronation of the Virgin and the Final Judgment.

The stage upon which the clerks performed their plays, according to Strutt, consisted of three platforms, one above another.  On the uppermost sat God the Father surrounded by His angels.  He was represented in a white robe, and until it was discovered how injurious the process was, the actor who played the part used to have his face gilded.  On the second platform were the glorified saints, and on the lowest men who had not yet passed from life.  On one side of the lowest platform was hell’s mouth, a dark pitchy cavern, whence issued the appearance of fire and flames, and sometimes hideous yellings and noises in imitation of the howlings and cries of wretched souls tormented by relentless demons.  From this yawning cave the devils constantly ascended to delight the spectators and afford comic relief to the more serious drama.  The three stages were not always used.  Archdeacon Rogers, who died in 1595, left an account of the Chester play which he himself saw, and he wrote that the stage was a high scaffold with two rooms, a higher and a lower, upon four wheels.  In the lower the actors apparelled themselves, and in the higher they played.  But this was a movable stage on wheels.  The clerks’ stage would, doubtless, be a fixed structure, and of a more elaborate construction.