Wakefield Stanza

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The Wakefield Stanza is, in literary studies, a unique stanza appearing in the medieval English religious drama called the Towneley Plays (or Towneley Cycle). Because the Towneley Cycle comes to us from a single unique manuscript that writes the verses in ways that are more convenient to the scribe than they are regular, the stanza is variously described. It may be described as:

-- A nine-line stanza containing one quatrain with internal rhyme and a tail-rhymed cauda, rhyming AAAABCCCB; or

-- A thirteen-line stanza containing a cross-rhymed octet frons, a tercet cauda with tail-rhymes, the whole rhyming ABABABABCDDDC.

The former description was based upon the earliest editions of the play that, following the space-saving habits of the medieval scribe, often wrote two verse-lines on a single manuscript line. Thus, depending upon how one interprets the manuscript, a stanza (from Processus Noe) might appear in either of the following forms:

 The thryd tyme wille I prufe what depnes we bere
 Now long shalle thou hufe, lay in thy lyne there.
 I may towch with my hufe the grownd evyn here.
 Then begynnys to grufe to us mery chere;
   Bot, husband,
      What grownd may this be?
      The hyllys of Armonye. 
      Now blissid be he
   That thus for us can ordand.

 The thryd tyme wille I prufe 
 what depnes we bere
 Now long shalle thou hufe,
 lay in thy lyne there.
 I may towch with my hufe 
 the grownd evyn here.
 Then begynnys to grufe 
 to us mery chere;
    Bot, husband,
      What grownd may this be?
      The hyllys of Armonye.
      Now blissid be he
    That thus for us can ordand.

In the first case above, the first four lines contain internal rhyme (i.e., "prufe," "hufe," "hufe," and "grufe"); but the second example arranges the same verses in shorter lines, which in the manuscript are separated from one another by apparently random use of the obelus (division-sign), virgules [/], double-virgules[//], and line-breaks. In the second example, it is readily seen that the poet uses a cross-rhymed octet frons with a five-line tail-rhymed cauda. It is this innovative use of the cauda that is most unique in the stanza.

The most recent edition of the entire Towneley Cycle, Cawley and Stevens' The Towneley Plays (Oxford UP, 1994, elects to to present the stanza as a thirteener, that is, the latter example above. Before that, most editions (most notably England and Pollard's 1897 edition and A. C. Cawley's 1958 Wakefield Pageants in the Towneley Cycle) presented the stanza as a nine-line stanza. It is therefore not surprising that much of the critical literature on the Towneley Cycle treats the stanza as a nine-liner before the end of the twentieth century, in spite of the occasional observation that it might as well be a thirteener.

In any case, the number of syllables in the lines is variable, and the number of stressed syllables can usually be counted at two or three per line in the thirteen-line version.

(It should be noted that all the punctuation and indentations are editorial and not part of the original manuscript.)

Since the Towneley Play was a drama and therefore spoken rather than read silently, to some degree this presentation of the poetic units in graphical form is somewhat arbitrary and inconsequential. But it does provide insights into the poetic influences and innovations of the playwright known as the Wakefield Master.

The stanza is used in five of the pageants of the Towneley Plays: Processus Noe; the two Shepherds' Plays; Magnus Herodes; and Coliphizacio.