Pageant Wagon - Description

Description

Very little is known of the specifics of the construction of the pageant wagon. Currently there are no clear descriptions of a pageant wagon to survive from the time when they were used avidly. However we do have a few speculations on the construction of English wagons, but they are from a much later time than when pageant wagons would have been used.

One such description comes from a late sixteenth / early seventeenth century manuscript entitled A Breviarye or Some Few Recollections of the City of Chester by David Rogers. It states that the pageant wagons were wooden structures with two rooms. They contained both a higher room where the play was performed and a lower room where the players changed clothing. The whole structure was mounted on six wheels. The entire structure would be 15 feet tall with the playing space being 9 feet above the street.

This follows along with a description from the memory of an Archdeacon Robert Rogers who, in 1595, is quoted as saying

"..pagiants weare a high scafolde with two rowmes, a higher and a lower, upon four wheeles. In the lower they apparelled them selves, and in the higher rowme they played, beinge all open on the tope, that all behoulders mighte heare and see them."

It should be noted however that this description comes at a time when pageant wagons were seldom used anymore and is subject to reinterpretation by the author.

In opposition to these descriptions, Glynne Wickham argues in The Early English Stages, that the wagon was only a one level structure taken up entirely by off stage space used for a dressing room. This would provide the backdrop for the performance as well. The acting would then take place on a scaffold alongside the cart or on the street.

This description would testify towards how cumbersome it would’ve been for a multi-level cart to travel throughout the towns on such unwieldy streets. A cart closer to the ground would be significantly easier to manage yet might not have offered such a vantage point as a two story structure.

A Norwich Inventory from 1565 describes one such wagon as a house of wainscot painted and built on a cart with four wheels. A square top set over the house.

It also should be of note that in the majority of Europe, fixed stages were more common than wagons, and the sites of the fixed stages varied from place to place. In Rome the ancient amphitheatres were used, and in places like Mons, France and Frankfurt-am-Main in Germany, town squares were the primary auditorium.