Presents examples of folk drama, and morality plays, and the early tragedies and comedies following classical models

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.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1954.

Representing the largest expansion between editions, this updated volume of Ottemiller's Index to Plays in Collections is the standard location tool for full-length plays published in collections and anthologies in England and the United States throughout the 20th century and beyond. This new volume lists more than 3,500 new plays and 2,000 new authors, as well as birth and/or death information for hundreds of authors.

Newest research into drama and performance from the Middle Ages and the Tudor period. Medieval English Theatre is the premier journal in early theatre studies. Its name belies its wide range of interest: it publishes articles on theatre and pageantry from across the British Isles up to the opening of the London playhouses and the suppression of the civic religious plays, and also includes contributions on European and Latin drama, together with analyses of modern survivals or equivalents, and of research productions of medieval plays. This volume offers new perspectives in three important areas. It opens with an investigation of the tantalising image of the Black Tudor trumpeter, John Blanke, in the Westminster Tournament Roll. Complementing the assessment of the documentary evidence for his employment in our last volume, it uncovers the surprising complexity of how Islamic dress was represented at the court of Henry VIII. Two essays engage with the challenging Croxton Play of the Sacrament, discussing very different issues of bodily integrity. The first revealingly brings together medieval and posthumanist theory, proposing how in performance the play can move to obliterate the distinction between Jewish and Christian bodies. The second considers the play in the light of modern disability theory, before examining the often contrasting evidence of lives lived, and performances informed, by actual disabled performers. The final contributions focus on twentieth- and twenty-first-century performances of medieval material, and how it can be adapted for later times and sensibilities. Investigation of an almost unknown 1924 London performance of a fifteenth-century French nativity play reveals much about early twentieth-century views of medieval drama. Meanwhile, the 2023 coronation of King Charles III prompts an analysis of a spectacular ceremony balanced between asserting its medieval origins and demonstrating its modern relevance. Finally, a review of a story-telling performance assesses how the problematic material of The Seven Sages of Rome might be addressed to modern audiences and preoccupations.

Darryll Grantley has created a comprehensive guide to the interlude: the extant non-cycle drama in English from the late fourteenth century up to the period in which the London commercial theatre began. As precursors of seventeenth-century drama, not only do these interludes shed important light on the technical and literary development of Shakespearean theatre, but many are also works of considerable theatrical or cultural interest in themselves. This accessible reference guide provides an entry for each of the extant interludes and fragments (c.100) typically containing an account of early editions or manuscripts; authorship and sources; modern editions; plot summary and dramatis personae; list of social issues present in the plays; verbal and dramaturgical features; songs and music; allusions and place names; stage directions and comments on staging; and modern productions, among other valuable and informative details. There are full bibliographies, indexes of characters and songs, and appendices.