Today we had the first full fitting of the costumes, allowing us for the first time to see the magnificent work of Hilary Lewis and her team. The courtly costumes are sumptuous, and the vices, with their scaly legs and huge tufted ears both comic and slightly sinister in their animalism. Correction’s wings were again a highlight, as was the Abbott’s strikingly oversized mitre. Special work was spent in the morning on the tricky scenes in which the clergy were disrobed, which need to be swift and comic.

The seating in parliament for part two was rearranged to have the three estates alone sitting alongside Rex and Correction, with the other clergy placed behind Spirituality and the Courtiers and Good Counsel behind the secular estates. This made the power politics of the session more starkly evident, giving graphic evidence for Temporality’s defiant claim to Spirituality that ‘ye are but ane estate and we are twa’.

We also worked on the final lines, and the singing that will accompany Folly’s sermon and provide the play with a resounding climax and the cast with a curtain call.