The Practicalities of Early English Performance: Manuscripts, Records, and Staging by Meredith, Peter; Marshall, John;

Short description:

The essays selected for this volume reflect Peter Meredith’s major contribution to the revival and revision of academic and public interest in medieval English drama and theatre. A number of coinciding factors in the last quarter of the twentieth century brought together a group of scholars, represented here in the Shifting Paradigms seri

Long description:

Collected Studies CS1069

The essays selected for this volume reflect Peter Meredith’s major contribution to the revival and revision of academic and public interest in medieval English drama and theatre. A number of coinciding factors in the last quarter of the twentieth century brought together a group of scholars, represented here in the Shifting Paradigms series, determined to place the study of medieval drama in a broader context than that of solely reading texts. The publication of Records of Early English Drama, the University of Leeds facsimiles of medieval drama manuscripts, the establishment of the journal and annual meetings of Medieval English Theatre, brought a wider perspective to the discipline. And, by no means least, the bringing to bear of all these ground-breaking developments to the mammoth tasks of recreating in the public domain the original-staging of medieval plays. Peter Meredith had a hand in the formation and lasting influence of all these crucial innovations. The variety and depth of his comprehensive approach to the study of medieval drama and theatre is clearly evinced in each of the essays chosen for this volume.

Table of Contents:

Introduction Part I: Matters of Manuscript and Text1. ‘"Nolo Mortem" and the Ludus Coventriae Play of the Woman Taken in Adultery’, M¿, 38 (1969), pp. 38-542. ‘A Reconsideration of Some Textual Problems in the N-Town Manuscript (BL MS Cotton Vespasian D viii)’, LSE, n.s. 9 (1976-77), pp. 35-503. ‘John Clerke’s Hand in the York Register’, Essays in Honour of A.C. Cawley, ed. by Peter Meredith, LSE, n.s. 12 for 1980-81 (1981), pp. 245-714. ‘The York Millers’ Pageant and the Towneley Processus Talentorum’ METh, 4.2 (1982), pp. 104-145. ‘Scribes, Texts and Performances’ in Aspects of Early English Drama, ed. by Paula Neuss (Cambridge: Boydell & Brewer, 1984), pp. 13-296. ‘The Towneley cycle’ in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre, ed. by Richard Beadle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994, second edition, 2008), pp. 134-62, 2nd edn, pp.152-82.7. ‘Establishing an Expositor’s Role: Contemplacio and the N. Town Manuscript’ in The Narrator, the Expositor, and the Prompter in European Medieval Theatre, ed. by Philip Butterworth (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), pp. 289-306Part II: Resuscitating Records8. ‘The Development of the Mercers’ Pageant Waggon’, METh, 1.1 (1979), pp. 5-189. ‘"Item for a grone – ijd" – Records and Performances’ in Proceedings of the First Colloquium at Ernindale College, University of Toronto, 31 Aug.-3 Sept. 1978, ed. by JoAnna Dutka (Toronto: Records of Early English Drama, University of Toronto, 1979), pp. 26-6010. ‘The Ordo Paginarum and the Development of the York Tilemakers’ Pageant’, LSE, n.s. 11 for 1979 (1980), pp. 59-7311. ‘"Make the asse to speake" or Staging the Chester Plays’ in Staging the Chester Cycle, ed. by David Mills, Leeds Texts and Monographs, ns 9 (Leeds).