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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. Positing a complex view of relations among merchants, established artisans, wage laborers, and women, the two authors show how artisans used the cycle plays to not only represent but also perform their interests, suggesting that the plays were the major means by which the artisans participated in civic polity.
In addition to examining selected plays in the context of artisanal social and economic practices, Rice and Pappano also address relations between performance and historical transformation, considering how these plays, staged for nearly two centuries, responded to changes in historical conditions. In particular, they pay attention to how the pressures of Reformist governments influenced the meaning and performance of the civic religious drama in both towns. Ultimately, the authors provide a new perspective on how artisans can be viewed as social actors and agents in England in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
“For the first time, we have a well-researched and helpful study of the place of the artisan class in the production of the civic religious drama.” —Early Theatre
Nicole R. Rice is associate professor of English at St. John's University. She is the author of Lay Piety and Religious Discipline in Middle English Literature.
Margaret Aziza Pappano is associate professor of English at Queen's University.
List of Figures
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Craft Communities and Artisan Drama
- New Beginnings: Processions, Plays, and Civic Politics in York and Chester
- “Whom Seek Ye, Sirs?”: Searching and Salvation in York’s Herod and the Magi
- Fair Trade: Masters, Servants, and Local Identity in the York Cycle
- Spinsters, Laborers, and Alewives: The Regulation of Women’s Work in Chester
- Last Judgment in York and Chester: Artisans, Merchants, and the Performance of Civic Charity
Epilogue
List of Abbreviations
Notes
Bibliography
Index