[Illustration:  ARCHERY.]

F. ENTERTAINMENTS

In the Middle Ages holidays were taken at festivals marked in the Church calendar.  Some feasts, like that of Whitsuntide, were universally observed.  The ordinary length of a festival was eight days, that is, the full week—­the octave.  Apart from pilgrimages, the ordinary people travelled little.  Moreover the life and property of travellers were not altogether secure in the forest land, with the result that treasure and distinguished people travelled under the care of an armed escort.  A large city like York was practically self-supporting in public amusements.  The fifteenth century saw the full development of the religious mystery plays, and the allegorical morality plays, which with their comic interludes had become popular from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.  The feast of Corpus Christi (instituted about 1263) was the most important time in the year for the playing of these typically mediaeval dramas.  Begun more than three centuries earlier within the Church and performed by the clergy, as a dramatic reinforcement of the services and preaching, the mediaeval drama owed its origin mainly to the Church which maintained its influence as long as this drama continued.  It soon came into the care of laymen, who took part in the productions.  In the fifteenth century, these plays, which were produced almost entirely by laymen, were so numerous that they were formed in cycles or groups.  The texts of some of the most famous cycles, those of York, Chester, Wakefield, and Coventry, have survived.  The various trade-guilds made themselves responsible for the production of one pageant of the local cycle, or two or three guilds joined to produce a pageant, so that the whole city produced a large number of plays to celebrate the feast of Corpus Christi.  Among its officers a guild had its pageant-master, whose duty it was to supervise the guild’s dramatic work.

The York plays, the texts dating from the middle of the fourteenth century, are extant.  In 1415 fifty-seven pageant plays were produced.  Productions were made in York down to 1579.  The following are examples taken from among the fifty-seven plays and guilds:—­

The Shipwrights          produced the Building of the Ark,
the Fishers and Mariners     "        Noah and the Flood,
the Spicers                  "     "  Annunciation,
the Tilers                   "     "  Birth of Christ,
the Goldsmiths               "     "  Adoration,
the Vintners                 "     "  Wedding in Cana,
the Skinners                 "     "  entry into Jerusalem,
the Baxters                  "     "  Last Supper,
the Tapiters and Couchers    "        Christ before Pilate,
the Saucemakers              "     "  Death of Judas,
the Bouchers                 "     "  Death of Christ,
the Carpenters               "     "  Resurrection,
the Scriveners               "     "  Incredulity of Thomas,
the Tailors                  "     "  Ascension,
the Mercers                  "     "  Day of Judgment.

The full cycle gave in dramatic form the leading episodes of the Scriptures from the Creation to the Last Day.