First Published in 1992. Medieval Theatre in Context is the first systematic attempt to relate the development of medieval drama - both Christian and pagan - to contemporary society and the Christian church.

The drama of the English Middle Ages is perennially popular with students and theatre audiences alike, and this is an updated edition of a book which has established itself as a standard guide to the field. The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre, second edition continues to provide 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. Existing chapters have been revised and updated where necessary, and there are three entirely new chapters, including one on the cultural significance of early drama. A thoroughly revised reference section includes a guide to scholarship and criticism, an enlarged classified bibliography and a chronological table.

Examines staging conventions in the medieval English theatre and ways in which they conditioned the reactions of the audience.

The expression "liturgical drama" was formulated in 1834 as a metaphor and hardened into formal category only later in the nineteenth century. Prior to this invention, the medieval rites and representations that would forge the category were understood as distinct and unrelated classes: as liturgical rites no longer celebrated or as theatrical works of dubious quality. This ground-breaking work examines "liturgical drama" according to the contexts of their presentations within the manuscripts and books that preserve them.

This anthology of drama in English contains plays from the late 14th century to the onset of the Renaissance. It brings together selections from all the major dramatic genres to provide a sense of the breadth and depth of medieval dramatic activity.

This is a thoroughly revised edition of Glynne Wickham's important history of the development of dramatic art in Christian Europe. Professor Wickham surveys the foundations on which this dramatic art was built: the architecture, costumes and ceremonial of the imperial court at Byzantium, the liturgies of countires in the Eastern and Western Empires and the triumph of the Roman rite and the Romanesque style in Western art. Within this context Professor Wickham describes three major influences upon the drama: religion, recreation and commerce. The first produced the liturgical music drama rooted in praise of Christ the King, vernacular Corpus Christi drama, Saint Plays and Moralities centred on the humanity of Christ. The second gave rise to the secular theatres of social recreation based on the games and dances of village communities ad the more sophisticated sex and war games of the nobility. The section on commerce shows how the development of the drama was intimately related to questions of funding and management which led, during the sixteenth century, to the substitution of a professional for an amateur theatre, and to a growing emphasis on stage spectacle. For this third edition the author has added a substantial section on monastic reform and its effect on Biblical translation and the use of allegory; a final chapter charts the transition in different European countries from this medieval Gothic theatre to the neoclassical methods of play construction and representation which flourished for the next two hundred years. The book gorges a coherent pattern through a very large and complicated subject. It is an excellent introduction to medieval theatre for undergraduates and to the growing number of theatregoers who enjoy contemporary revivals of medieval plays. A large plate section gives a pictorial version of the story, using photographs of contemporary manuscript illuminations, mosaics, frescoes, paintings and sculptures.

Taking a fresh look at the interconnections between medieval images, texts, theater, and practices of viewing, reading and listening, this explicitly interdisciplinary volume explores various manifestations of performance and meanings of performativity in the Middle Ages. The contributors - from their various perspectives as scholars of art history, religion, history, literary studies, theater studies, music and dance - combine their resources to reassess the complexity of expressions and definitions of medieval performance in a variety of different media. Among the topics considered are interconnections between ritual and theater; dynamics of performative readings of illuminated manuscripts, buildings and sculptures; linguistic performances of identity; performative models of medieval spirituality; social and political spectacles encoded in ceremonies; junctures between spatial configurations of the medieval stage and mnemonic practices used for meditation; performances of late medieval music that raise questions about the issues of historicity, authenticity, and historical correctness in performance; and tensions inherent in the very notion of a medieval dance performance.

This book revives what was unique, strange and exciting about the variety of performances that took place in the realms of the French kings and Burgundian dukes. Laura Weigert brings together a wealth of visual artifacts and practices to explore this tradition of late medieval performance located not in 'theaters' but in churches, courts, and city streets and squares. By stressing the theatricality rather than the realism of fifteenth-century visual culture and the spectacular rather than the devotional nature of its effects, she offers a new way of thinking about late medieval representation and spectatorship. She shows how images that ostensibly document medieval performance instead revise its characteristic features to conform to a playgoing experience that was associated with classical antiquity. This retrospective vision of the late medieval performance tradition contributed to its demise in sixteenth-century France and promoted assumptions about medieval theater that continue to inform the contemporary disciplines of art and theater history.

This book presents a detailed survey and analysis of the surviving corpus of biblical drama from all parts of medieval Christian Europe. Over five hundred plays from the tenth to the sixteenth centuries are examined, in a wide-ranging discussion which makes available the full scope of this important part of theatre history. The volume is specially organised to provide a complete overview of major aspects of medieval biblical theatre, including the theatrical community of both audience and players; the major plays and cycles; and the legacy of medieval biblical theatre. The book also includes valuable appendices with information on the liturgical calendar, processions, and the Mass and the Bible.