Pageant Wagon

pageant wagon, wheeled vehicle used in the processional staging of medieval vernacular cycle plays. Processional staging is most closely associated with the English cycle plays performed from about 1375 until the mid-16th century in such cities as York and Chester as part of the Corpus Christi festival, but it was also common in Spain, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Each play in the cycle may have been mounted on an individual pageant wagon and performed at different locations throughout the vicinity. The pageant wagon may also have been drawn alongside a scaffold wagon, using the scaffold as a temporary stage, or been pulled up to a fixed platform stage for the duration of the play.

The pageant wagons, or large carts, each containing from one to three mansions, or scenic locales, were constructed by the trade guilds and were dismantled at the close of the season each year and stored. As no detailed description of English pageant wagons or the particulars of staging plays on the wagons had survived, there is considerable scholarly controversy both as to the actual appearance of the wagons and as to the method used for staging the plays.