Practical Cues and Social Spectacle in the Chester Plays by Matthew Sergi (review)

Abstract

In this distinctive study of the Chester Plays, one of whose strengths lies in its minutely detailed observation of text, Matthew Sergi recommends that readers have a copy of the text at their elbows. The book is, however, much more than a “companion” to the plays. Sergi approaches criticism from the point of view of one familiar with the practical realization of early play texts in performance. His study focuses on the extra-verbal cues for action which singularly abound in the Chester Plays, and he opens by contending that these cues are “crucial symbols in themselves, around which the texts’ verbal meaning is often organised” (1), that is “the primary bearers of meaning framed by (and evidently fossilized in) insubstantial poetry” (2). The declared approach has far-reaching implications for reading the plays beyond what-happened-on-stage. Notably also Sergi convincingly proposes new ways of approaching the extant manuscripts, all of which post-date the final performance, that can cut through simple chronology via Cestrian cultural memory, including that of the scribes—Bourdieu’s theory of “habitus”—to authenticate records of actual performance. In the fifth chapter Sergi offers a reprise of the work’s agenda: