Medieval Drama

We know little about the nature of medieval performance and have generally been content to think of it in relation to more modern productions, not least because of the sparsity of existing evidence. Consequently, whilst much research has been undertaken into its contexts, there has been relatively little scholarly investigation into the conditions of perfomance itself. This book seeks to address this omission. It looks at such questions as the nature of performance in theatre/dance/puppetry/automata; the performed qualities of such events; the conventions of performed work; what took place in the act of performing; and the relationships between performers and witnesses, and what conditioned them.

The study of saints in medieval biblical drama has often been neglected in favour of the study of sinners ? the villains and the rogues. In "Saints and the Audience in Middle English Biblical Drama," Scoville contends that the plays focus attention on the interaction between the divine realm and the human realm, that the saintly characters are key to seeing this interaction, and that the overall function of the plays is to instill in the audience a shared point of view defined both by doctrine and by experience. By placing the rhetoric of the plays at the centre of his study, Scoville incorporates performative practices and historical contexts into the argument. Language, text, and persuasion are central in the rhetorical experience, as are non-verbal elements such as costume, movement, gesture, and scenery.

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.

Medieval drama based on the Bible commonly directs its audiences toward a Christian interpretation, but equally interesting, and less frequently investigated by scholars, are the plays' modes of resistance to Christian authority. Through a reading informed by the recent temporal turn in queer theory, Robert S. Sturges revitalizes discussions of medieval drama by focusing on how these plays depict the dissemination of power throughout medieval culture. As Sturges shows, power and ultimatelyresistance were typically enacted through the human body, objects, gender, politics, economics, law, and theater itself, as well as religion. Through these nuanced readings, medieval Biblical drama emerges as more relevant to modern, secular, and multicultural audiences.

The book provides an introduction to site specific theories as well as a review of the recent 'geographical turn' in medieval and early modern scholarship that frames the studies for both novice and expert readers. Individual chapters explore both theatrical performances and paratheatrical events through the lens of site specificity; together they not only interrogate the role and impact of place on experiences of production and reception, but also demonstrate how genealogies of performance might challenge more conventional literary periodization.

The civic religious drama of late medieval England--financed, produced, and performed by craftspeople--offers one of the earliest forms of written literature by a non-elite group in Europe. In this innovative study, Nicole R. Rice and Margaret Aziza Pappano trace an artisanal perspective on medieval and early modern civic relations, analyzing selected plays from the cities of York and Chester individually and from a comparative perspective, in dialogue with civic records.