Part 8 Summary

"The York Pageant of the Pinners and Painters - The Crucifixion" The editor introduces this pageant by commenting on how non-liturgical dramatists of the period generally avoid portraying the Crucifixion (see "Objects/Places") and how the creator of this particular pageant (whom he says is known to scholars as the "York Realist") emphasize the intensity of the experience in order to "make a direct assault on the feelings of the audience".

The Pageant - Four Soldiers, ordered to punish the arrested Jesus for heresy, agree that he should be crucified. They bicker among themselves and order each other about as they nail him to the cross, stretch his limbs so the "nails large and long" can be properly hammered through flesh and bone into the holes prepared for them, struggle to lift the cross upright, and set it into its base. The whole...