1. In the background material we read about the context in which plays like the York Crucifixion were originally staged. Write, in your own words, what this context was like… try to pain a picture of both what was happening around the production itself and what a typical audience member’s experience would have been like. How do you think this context influenced the play’s particular take on the crucifixion story?
2. The climatic moment of the play is probably Jesus’s second speech, in which he states, “Forgive these men that do me pine. / What they work wot they nought” (in other words, “forgive these men, for they know not what they do”). Most of us are probably familiar with this quotation, but this play seem to re-contextualize those words in a fairly radical way. How do you interpret those words within the context of this play versus how you did or do interpreted these words when they are presented out of context?
3. The introductory note for this play argues that the four soldiers behave less like authentic Roman soldiers and more like normal, everyday medieval people. In other words, the audience is meant to identify with these characters and probably, to some extent at least, so consider themselves in their place. if this is true, then how does this impact the play’s moral message? What does the play have to say to this audience?
4. As you have hopefully noticed by now, this text is absolutely dripping with dramatic irony. Why do you think that the author chose to portray the crucifixion story in this heavily ironic fashion? Do you think that this undermines the standard moral message of the crucifixion story, and if so to what degree?
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