The Materials of Early Theatre: Sources, Images, and Performance: Shifting Paradigms in Early English Drama Studies

468 Pages·2017·7.891 MB·English

by  Meg Twycross, Sarah Carpenter (editor), Pamela King (editor)

Also in the Variorum Collected Studies Series:
MEG TWYCROSS, EDITED BY SARAH CARPENTER AND
PAMELA KING
The Materials of Early Theatre: Sources, Images, and Performance
Shifting Paradigms in Early English Drama Studies
SEYMOUR DRESCHER
Pathways from Slavery
British and Colonial Mobilizations in Global Perspective
DAVID JACOBY
Medieval Trade in the Eastern Mediterranean and Beyond
GILES CONSTABLE
Medieval Thought and Historiography
GILES CONSTABLE
Medieval Monasticism
MICHAEL J.B. ALLEN
Studies in the Platonism of Marsilio Ficino and Giovanni Pico
ALEXANDRA F. JOHNSTON, EDITED BY DAVID N.
KLAUSNER
The City and the Parish: Drama in York and Beyond
Shifting Paradigms in Early English Drama Studies
BENJAMIN Z. KEDAR
Crusaders and Franks
Studies in the History of the Crusaders and the Frankish Levant
DAVID MILLS, EDITED BY PHILIP BUTTERWORTH
To Chester and Beyond: Meaning, Text and Context in Early English Drama
Shifting Paradigms in Early English Drama Studies
NELSON H. MINNICH
The Decrees of the Fifth Lateran Council (1512–17)
Their Legitimacy, Origins, Contents, and Implementation
JOHN MONFASANI
Greek Scholars between East and West in the Fifteenth Century
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VARIORUM COLLECTED STUDIES SERIES
The Materials of Early Theatre:
Sources, Images, and Performance

Meg Twycross
Edited by Sarah Carpenter and Pamela King
The Materials of Early Theatre:
Sources, Images, and Performance
Shifting Paradigms in Early English Drama Studies
First published 2018
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2018 selection and editorial matter, Sarah Carpenter and Pamela King; individual chapters,
Meg Twycross
The right of Sarah Carpenter and Pamela King to be identified as the authors of the editorial
material, and of Meg Twycross for the individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with
sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form
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writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are
used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Names: Twycross, Meg, author. | Carpenter, Sarah, editor. | King, Pamela M., editor.
Title: The materials of early theatre: sources, images, and performance : shifting paradigms in early
English drama studies / Meg Twycross ; edited by Sarah Carpenter and Pamela King.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2018. | Series: Variorum collected
studies series | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017030229| ISBN 9781472488084 (hardback : alk. paper) |
ISBN 9781315123004 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Theater--England--History--Medieval, 500-1500. | Theater--Production and
direction--England--History. | English drama--To 1500--History and criticism. | Mysteries and
miracle-plays, English--History and criticism.
Classification: LCC PN2587 .T87 2018 | DDC 792.0942/0902--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017030229
ISBN: 978-1-4724-8808-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-12300-4 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire
VARIORUM COLLECTED STUDIES SERIES CS1068
CONTENTS
Introduction by Sarah Carpenter and Pamela King ix
Part I: York
1. ‘“Places to hear the play”: pageant stations at York 1398–1572’,
Records of Early English Drama Newsletter, (1978:2), pp. 10–33 3
2. ‘The left-hand-side theory: a retraction’, Medieval English
Theatre, 14 (1992), pp. 77–94 27
3. ‘Some aliens in York and their overseas connections up to 1470’,
Leeds Studies in English, n.s. 29 (1998), pp. 359–80 45
4. ‘The King’s Peace and the play: the York Corpus Christi Eve
Proclamation’, Medieval English Theatre, 29 (2007), pp. 121–50 63
5. ‘The Ordo paginarum revisited, with a digital camera’, ‘Bring
Furth the Pagants’: Essays in Early English Drama presented to
Alexandra F. Johnston, ed. by David N. Klausner and Karen
Sawyer Marsalek (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007),
pp. 105–31 89
Part II: Performance
6. ‘Playing the Resurrection’, Medieval Studies for J.A.W. Bennett
Aetatis Suae LXX, ed. by Peter Heyworth (Oxford: Clarendon,
1981), pp. 273–96 115
7. ‘Books for the unlearned’, Drama and Religion, ed. by James
Redmond (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983),
pp. 65–110 135
vii
contents
8. ‘“Transvestism” in the mystery plays’, Medieval English Theatre,
5:2 (1983), pp. 123–80 185
Part III: Theology
9. ‘“As the sun with his beams when he is most bright”’, Medieval
English Theatre, 12:1 (1990), pp. 34–79 239
10. ‘“With what body shall they come?”: black and white souls in the
mystery plays’, Langland, the Mystics, and the Medieval Religious
Tradition, ed. by Helen Phillips (Cambridge: Brewer, 1990),
pp. 271–86 281
11. ‘Kissing cousins: the Four Daughters of God and the Visitation
in the N. Town Mary Play’, Medieval English Theatre, 18 (1998
for 1996), pp. 99–141 299
Part IV: Processions and the wider culture
12. ‘The Flemish ommegang and its pageant cars’, Medieval English
Theatre, 2:1 (1980), pp. 15–41, and 2:2 (1980), pp. 80–98 337
13. ‘Felsted of London: silk-dyer and theatrical entrepreneur’,
Medieval English Theatre, 10:1 (1988), pp. 4–16 391
14. ‘The York Mercers’ Lewent Brede and the Hanseatic trade’,
Medieval English Theatre, 17 (1995), pp. 96–119 403
15. ‘The Leuven ommegang and Leuven City Archives: report on
work in progress’, European Drama 4: Selected Papers from
the Fourth International Conference on ‘Aspects of European
Medieval Drama’, Camerino, 5–8 August 1999, ed. by André
Lascombes (Turnhout: Brepols, 2001), pp. 77–90 423
Meg Twycross’ bibliography 437
Index 441
viii
INTRODUCTION
In bringing together the volumes in this series the General Editors are
attempting to bring to a wider scholarly and student readership the most
important twentieth- and early twenty-first-century scholarship on English
medieval drama/theatre. In the second half of the twentieth century there
were some fundamental shifts in our knowledge of medieval theatre and its
practice. The authors in this series, Professor Alexandra Johnston (Toronto),
Professor Peter Meredith, (Leeds), Professor David Mills (Liverpool) and
Professor Meg Twycross, (Lancaster), have between them been respons-
ible for some of the most important research in this field. The purpose of the
series is to widen the readership for their work and make it more accessible
to scholars in related areas. There are also many young scholars of medi-
eval drama/theatre who are not aware of the depth of investigation that has
already been carried out in their field. It is important, therefore, that they do
not feel the need to ‘reinvent the wheel’ when the ‘wheel’ has already been
invented.
The essays selected for this volume are chosen to reflect the important and
intersecting ways in which over the last forty years Meg Twycross has shifted
paradigms for people reading early English religious drama. From her earli-
est engagement with late medieval theatre, in innovative productions of rarely
performed plays, her focus has been on performance in its many aspects.
Striking out from the close focus on texts which characterised scholarship
until the early 1970s, she explored the processes of staging, acting and organi-
sation, and the theological and civic contexts that shaped the ways in which
drama engaged its audiences. Her work was based in experimental produc-
tion, in pioneering work in archival records alongside the Records of Early
English Drama project, in sensitive readings of devotional and theological
sources, in the rich field of visual imagery and analogues, and in meticulous
and innovative manuscript scholarship. These all contributed to new ways of
understanding the theatricality of medieval religious drama, and the com-
plexity with which it engaged with its social and spiritual contexts.
This volume chooses four of the most important strands of Meg Twycross’
work, concentrating especially on essays that are not easily available today.
ix