Hecastus

Performed by The Lords of Misrule

When: Wednesday 05 July, 18.30-19.30
Where: University Square
This event is free of charge.

The Lords of Misrule are an amateur dramatic society first established nearly 50 years ago at the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of York. Over the years we have performed a range of medieval, and occasionally early modern, drama, sometimes in modernised form and sometimes in the original language. We aways aim to bring out the spirit of the plays, never oversimplifying them, but always making them accessible to a wide audience. We have also taken part in the York Mystery Plays, most recently in the summer of 2022, performing the ‘The Last Supper’ play on the waggons for the first time since the Mystery Plays were revived in the 20th century.

This year we are performing Hecastus, a morality play written in Latin in 1539 by the Dutch author Macropedius. The Lords were approached by the Hecastus Theatre Project to join other drama groups elsewhere in Europe performing Hecastus in the spring of 2023, so what you will see stems from our contribution to this project.

Hecastus is very similar in many ways to Everyman, a well-known medieval morality play. Widely performed and widely translated in its day, Macropedius’ version follows the story of Hecastus (Greek for ‘everyman’), who is faced with the prospect of death, but can find no one to accompany him to the grave.