We started off by running Act 2.  It was really interesting to see the political space materialised with so many of the cast members inhabiting it.  Particularly striking was the relationship between the Pauper, parliament and audience, with David McKay speaking upstage but frequently taking in the crowd as the poor ‘commoun’, speaking as and for them.  There was an enlightening change marked between John and Pauper assuming they will not be listened to when they first approach the parliament, followed by their surprise when they realise that Divine Correction has their back – it is the movement from their oppression to their enfranchisement in the play.   Also interesting was the ‘rounding’ together of the Spirituality in the Parliament to take advisement on the laws being proposed – their secret conversations seemed in stark contrast to the transparency of the rest of the political space.  There seemed to be so many members of the Spirituality on the stage – Bishop, Abbot and Parson, as well as the  Friar and Prioress just behind them – as opposed to the self-representing Merchant and Temporality.

We also charted the various responses to John and Pauper’s assertions of ‘Were I ane King’ and ‘Were I ane pape’ with the parliament finding these challenging statements.  Most important though was Rex’s reaction- he stands  in some sort of defiance against Pauper but also listens thoughtfully.  During the Parliament we are witnessing Rex’s bettering as a monarch.

The staging of the Parliament continued into the afternoon – this is definitely one of the most complex parts to realise given the complexities of political access and space in the play.  There is also the question of finding the appropriate reactions.  The Parliament, for instance, stand in sequence when John the Commonwealth shows forth his true faith (the Spirituality reluctantly) – their honorific response demonstrates the verity of John’s words.  The reactions of the Parliament help to mark the various episodes of this long scene, while mitigating against the action becoming static.

Today we concentrated on the entry of the Three Estates ‘gangand backwart’ and John the Commonweal’s appearance.  We read through the whole of the second half of the play to the hanging of the Vices, and broke the Parliament down into its constituent parts.

The Director, Gregory Thompson worked with the actors playing the Estates and their vices on the practicalities and principles of their backward entry. It was decided that the Estates, with the exception of Spirituality, had no sense that they were being led like puppets by the Vices Covetise, Flattery, Deceit, Falsehood and Sensuality. As Spirituality would later say, they see nothing wrong with what they are doing. They think they ‘gang right wonder pleasantly’. So we saw the Estates waving obliviously to the audience as they are dragged backwards by capering Vices who are to them invisible.  (A lot of time was spent on getting the movements right, to music provided by John Kielty with Annie Grace and Kern Falconer.)

It is only when John exposes the Vices ‘lurking’ behind them that Merchand and Temporality see to their horror how they have been deceived by their worst instincts. The Vices are then dragged off to the stocks. We then worked on the impact of John’s address to parliament – how the members react to this bold intrusion, and what the Spirituality make of the ominous references to ‘reformation’ which start to echo around the stage.

We began by looking at the trick by which Oppression manages to get Common Thift to take his place in the stocks.  Once again, the theme of rehearsals, ensuring that the actors stuck to the regular meter and rhyme of the verse, proved key to the scene.   The dialogue was thus run repeatedly until the rhythm began to ‘stick’, and then the action was mapped on top of this.

We had moved into a massive hall at the Pearce Institute and were able to mark it up to show exactly how big the platea, the field, and the various loci of the playing space were.   The actors began the afternoon by exploring this space.  They then read from the opening of the parliament through to the reading of the acts – to get a sense of how this whole section is going to work.  We worked through the characters’ response to the new laws, with Greg saying that the members of the parliament should be waiting to hear whether what they’ve asked for will happen, so that they have to be engaged in an “active listening” during Diligence’s proclamations. The third law about setting the lands in feu seems to be the really radical one, although many are years ahead of their time – such as priests being able to marry, and nunneries being abolished.  The rest of the afternoon was devoted to staging the parliament.

We began the day by looking at the relationship between Diligence, Rex and Folly at the end of the play and considered whether Folly was known to the court.  Perhaps Folly, given his centrality to Scottish political discourse (shown by his privileged place in the architecture of Stirling, and the craftsmanship devoted to this particular Stirling Head) is the final piece of the jigsaw of Rex’s court.  Gregory Thompson noted how Folly’s sermon repeats and inverts the two ‘legitimate’ sermons the audience has just witnessed taking place in parliament.

When Folly calls all King’s ‘fools’, is this a moment at which he goes too far, or is Diligence playing the straight man by saying  Folly has gone mad at this point – creating the space for the king himself to decide whether this is the case or not.  This will be heightened in performance by having Folly whisper some of his criticisms of political power to Diligence, only to have Rex urge the fool to speak to him as well.  Perhaps the weak king seems to have learnt how to be a true Renaissance monarch by the end of the play.

We looked at the hanging sections in the afternoon, and found that once again, paramount was the rhythm – they are the tides on which meaning is carried. It is notable that when a part of the text doesn’t ring true aurally for the actors, it is usually a problem with editing or anglicising and that the ears of the company are able to detect it.