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Essays on the York Mystery Plays, uniting voices from the scholarly world with the York community that has assumed responsibility for their production today. The York Play of Corpus Christi, also known as the York Cycle, has been central to the study of early English theatre for over a century and a touchstone for the revival of medieval dramatic practice for over fifty years. But these two endeavours... have often found little common ground. This volume therefore accomplishes something very important. It brings together scholars of medieval English drama and places them in dialogue with experienced practtitioners from the community. Together, they share a common commitment to understanding ...
Between the beginning of the tenth and the end of the sixteenth centuries, in all parts of Great Britain from Aberdeen to Cornwall, performances of liturgical and mystery plays are on record. This book, first published in 1909, is a collection of early-English religious plays with a detailed introduction written by the editor Osborn Waterhouse. The Non-Cycle Mystery Plays will be of interest to students of drama, performance and theatre studies.
This volume is the only paperback to offer the main body of the plays which make up York's famous Corpus Christi cycle. The selection here emphasises the scope of the oldest and best-preserved of the English Mystery cycles, and the modern spelling, detailed notes, and general introduction make the volume particularly useful for both readers and actors.
The Wakefield or Towneley Mystery Plays are a series of thirty-two mystery plays based on the Bible most likely performed around Corpus Christi day in (again, most likely) the town of Wakefield, England during the late Middle Ages until 1576. It is one of only four surviving English mystery play cycles.The unique manuscript, now housed at the Huntington Library, San Marino, California, originated in the mid-fifteenth century. The manuscript came into the possession of the Towneley family in 1814, who lent their name it. Although almost the entire manuscript is in a fifteenth-century hand, the cycle was performed as early as the fourteenth century in an earlier form.The Wakefield Cycle is most renowned for the inclusion of "The Second Shepherds' Play," one of the jewels of medieval theatre.
Humour, pathos and suffering, and the culminating drama of the Crucifixion and Resurrection, give these plays a wonderful immediacy. Their action was conceived on a cosmic scale and all the enthusiasm and vitality of their writing is retained to this day. The energies of whole communities, notably at Chester, York and Wakefield, were devoted to their production and they were to influence later dramatists significantly. The grand design of the mystery plays was to celebrate the Christian story from 'The Fall of Lucifer' to the 'Judgement Day', and this volume contains thirty-eight plays, forming in itself a composite cycle and including almost all the incidents common to the extant cycles.
This important new study of the English mystery plays has a twofold purpose. It is concerned to investigate the antecedents of the four extant cycles and to demonstrate the dramatic value of the plays themselves The opening and concluding chapters place the plays in their historical context by discussing on the one hand the emergence and achievements of genuine religious drama (as opposed to liturgical drama) in the twelfth century and on the other the changes in taste that threw the plays into disrepute in the sixteenth century. The man part of the book analyzes the plays in detail, considering the iconographic and theological traditions that guided the dramatists in their treatment of biblical subject-matter, and also looking at the Continental drama of the time to find out what other dramatic possibilities were open to writers in the Middle Ages. -- From publisher's description.
A lively account of the modern staging of the medieval mystery plays, richly illustrated with stills and other photographs. The turn of the last millennium saw a sudden flourishing in the revival of the medieval mystery plays, with a number of different productions being staged across the country and further afield. But why were they staged? What features of the plays attracted the modern-day director? What can the mystery plays offer today's producers, directors, participants and audiences? This book seeks to answer these questions. Beginning with an exploration of the original staging conditions, the study goes on to examine the reasons why the plays are produced today, and through a serie...