The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English TheatreRichard Beadle The drama of the English Middle Ages is perennially popular with students and theatre audiences alike. This book provides an authoritative introduction and an up-to-date, illustrated guide to the mystery cycles, morality drama and saints' plays which flourished from the late fourteenth to the mid-sixteenth centuries. The book emphasises regional diversity in the period and engages with the literary, and particularly the theatrical values of the plays. After a general introduction there are chapters devoted to each of the major regional cycles, the less-well known East Anglian and Cornish traditions, the morality drama and saints' plays. Two illustrated chapters are devoted to the performance of medieval plays, in their own time and in recent modern revivals. A full reference section includes a guide to scholarship and criticism, an extensive classified bibliography and a chronological table. |
Contents
An introduction to medieval English plays | 1 |
The theatrically of medieval English plays | 37 |
The York cycle | 85 |
The Chester cycle | 109 |
The Towneley cycle | 134 |
The NTown plays | 163 |
The noncycle plays and the East Anglian tradition | 189 |
The Cornish medieval drama | 211 |
Morality plays | 240 |
Saints plays | 265 |
Modern productions of medieval English plays | 290 |
A guide to criticism of medieval English theatre | 312 |
Select Bibliography | 344 |
365 | |
368 | |
Other editions - View all
The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre Richard Beadle,Alan J. Fletcher Limited preview - 2008 |
The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre Richard Beadle,Alan J. Fletcher No preview available - 2008 |
The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre Richard Beadle,Alan J. Fletcher No preview available - 2008 |
Common terms and phrases
A. C. Cawley action actors allegorical angels appear audience banns Beunans Meriasek biblical Bury St Edmunds Cambridge Companion Castle of Perseverance centre characters Chester Christ church civic context Conversion of St copy Cornish Corpus Christi play costume Coventry critical cycle plays dance death devils Digby dramatised East Anglia edited episode Everyman evidence extant fifteenth century Fulgens God's guilds Gwreans Herod Jesus John Judgement King later Latin legend lines literary liturgical Mankind manuscript Mary Magdalen material medieval drama medieval English medieval plays medieval theatre miracles modern morality play mystery plays N-Town plays narrative Ordinalia original pageant wagon Passion Play performance Pilate place-and-scaffold play texts play's presented processional Proclamation Play production records reference religious Resurrection saints scaffolds scribe-compiler sequence Shepherds sixteenth speech St Meriasek St Paul stage directions stanza station structure suggested surviving textual theatre theatrical town Towneley tradition Virgin Wakefield Wakefield Master Wisdom York cycle York pageant