Festivals and Plays in Late Medieval Britain

What was playing on stage at a medieval or early modern festival was not always a matching accessory. Its content may not reflect the appropriate feast day, for example, or its manner of presentation may include unexpected or untraditional elements, such as local history. Further, documentation of such plays as presented is hard to come by and sometimes ambiguous. However, Davidson (English and medieval studies emeritus, Western Michigan U.) produces fascinating insights from lean material, explaining why such anomalies and ambiguities, resulting from tenets of faith and sheer practicality, became essential to communication of secular power and belief. In doing so he reviews the "landscape" of playing at such festivals and then focuses on two examples of medieval drama, the symbolic engagement with the suffering of the Christ in the York Corpus Christi plays and the mystical and meditative traditions invoked by the Bodley Christ's Burial and Christ's Resurrection. Annotation c2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Clifford Davidson is Professor of English and Medieval Studies Emeritus at Western Michigan University, USA. For many years he was a co-editor of Comparative Drama, and from 1976 to 2003 he directed the Early Drama, Art, and Music project in the Medieval Institute. He is the author of numerous books and articles, including History, Religion, and Violence: Cultural Contexts for Medieval and Renaissance English Drama (Ashgate, 2002).