Date and Composition of the Chester Cycle and the Chester Noah

• written text probably comes from the latest version of the Chester cycle, dating to the sixteenth century, after 1575
• author is unknown
• would have been performed on a pageant wagon, in a procession through the streets of Chester with other cycle plays
• primary sources include
  • the Bible (many quotations from the Latin Vulgate),
  • the apochryphal Gospels,
  • Comestor's Historia Scholastica, and
  • de Voragine's Legenda Aurea, among other common sources
• Noah exemplifies a number of typological relationships (i.e., the characters, themes, and events prefigure characters, themes, and events that appear later in bibilical tradition or figurally refer back to earlier ones.)
  • The Flood itself can be seen as prefiguring both Christ's Baptism and the destruction of the world by God at the Last Judgment.
    • "The story of Noah is thus both a continuation of the Fall of Man and a prelude to the coming of Christ" (Bevington, 290).
  • Noah is a type of Adam: both are acting on specific orders from God but are then deterred from their duty by disobedient wives. Noah, however, does not give in to his wife whereas Adam does.
  • Noah is also a type of Christ, saving true believers from destruction.
  • Mrs. Noah is a type of Eve and also represents recalcitrant sinners who refuse to follow Christ.
  • The Ark is the true church of believers, saved from destruction.
• The argument between Noah and his wife does not appear in Genesis. It is a medieval tradition related to fabliaux, such as The Miller's Tale.
  • The Shrewish Wife was a motif common to classical drama and native British literature drama. For example:
    • Roman playwright Plautus' Menaechmi has shrewish "Mrs. Menaechmus."
    • Chaucer's Wife of Bath (14th c.) might also be considered a shrew.
    • The English version of the shrewish wife appears in early drama as "Mrs. Noah," who refuses to board the ark with her husband in order to stay with her friends.
    • In the Tudor period, dramatic interludes and farces relied for comic effect on the stock character of the "violent, intractable, sharp-tongued" wives who cuckold husbands and order them around.
    • By Queen Elizabeth's reign, plays, which often relied on classical sources such as Plautus and Terence, had adapted classical shrews to English styles.
• The building of a prefabricated ark in front of the audience and the use of animal pictures on cards to symbolize the beast boarding the ark are examples of special effects in medieval drama that would have added to the audience's enjoyment of the play.

Other Noah Links

The Towneley Noah in ME text with glossary is online at the Towneley Plays Project Website, University of Calgary and at Harvard University's

• Geoffrey Chaucer Homepage. This text is from the lightly regularized, EETS 1897 edition of the plays.

Our class York Flood page

Link to photos of the 1997 PLS Toronto Fringe Festival production of the Towneley Noah

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