REMEMBER, WHILE ONLINE METS (TEAMS) EDITIONS ARE AVAILABLE FOR FREE CONSULTATION BY INDIVIDUAL SCHOLARS ONLINE, THEY ARE UNDER COPYRIGHT, AND NOT FREE FOR USE IN CLASSROOMS! BE SURE STUDENTS PURCHASE ANY VOLUMES FROM WHICH YOU DRAW MULTIPLE ASSIGNMENTS, WHILE MAKING ARRANGEMENTS WITH YOUR CAMPUS SYLLABUS SERVICE (OR WITH MEDIEVAL INSTITUTE PUBLICATIONS DIRECTLY) TO HANDLE COPYRIGHT CONCERNS.
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PART I: BEFORE 1485
THIRD-YEAR COURSE, SEMESTER 1

WEEK ONE

Reading 1:Robyn Hod and the Shryff off Notyngham, from Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Tales, eds. Stephen Knight and Thomas H. Ohlgren (METS edition — Medieval Institute Publications, 1997). I circulate the raw “manuscript version” as an in-class handout: we work through the Middle English together (and only later reveal Knight and Ohlgren’s “reconstruction of the dramatic fragment”).

Reading 2:The Pride of Life‡, in Two Moral Interludes: The Pride of Life and Wisdom, ed. David N. Klausner (METS edition — Medieval Institute Publications, 2009). I sometimes give students my own facing-page translation of this play (see 4.2, below).

WEEK TWO

Reading 3:Lydgate’s Disguising at Hertford* and Margaret of Anjou's Entry into London, both in John Lydgate, Mummings and Entertainments, ed. Claire Sponsler (METS edition — Medieval Institute Publications, 2010).

Reading 4: Plays from MS Digby 86 —Dame Sirith, The Fox and the Wolf, and Stand Wel, Moder, Under Rode. I give students my own facing-page translation of these texts, which points up the necessities and difficulties of identifying them as performance texts (see 4.1, below). In class, I circulate the Interludium de Clerico et Puella, from The Trials and Joys of Marriage, ed. Eve Salisbury (METS edition — Medieval Institute Publications, 2002); we work through its Middle English for language practice (and talk about why we should not assume that it ended the same way Dame Sirith does).

WEEK THREE

Reading 5: Towneley Killing of Abel and York Joseph’s Troubles about Mary*†, from The Towneley Plays, ed. Garrett P. J. Epp (METS edition — Medieval Institute Publications, 2018) and The York Corpus Christi Play: Selected Pageants, ed. Christina M. Fitzgerald (Broadview, 2018), respectively. I pair the Fitzgerald edition with the Davidson METS edition(Medieval Institute Publications, 2011), asking students to compare the two versions.

Reading 6: Mankind*†‡, lines 42-322, ed. Kathleen M. Ashley and Gerard NeCastro (METS edition — Medieval Institute Publications, 2010). In the class prior, the students work through the Middle English of lines 1-41; in the subsequent class, we work through lines 323-347 (hee hee).

WEEK FOUR

Reading 7: Mankind*†‡(through the end of the play).

Reading 8: York Crucifixion*†‡, from The York Corpus Christi Plays, ed. Clifford Davidson (METS edition — Medieval Institute Publications, 2011).

WEEK FIVE

Reading 9: Dux Moraud‡ and Shrewsbury Fragments A and C.I give my own facing-page translation of Dux Moraud (see 4.3, below).

Reading 10: Occupation and Idleness, ed. Richard Beadle (Leeds Studies in English, n.s. 32, 2001). Rather than a single pre-class reading, this day marks the deadline for a midterm assignment (click here for prompt): I assign the students a Middle English passage in Beadle’s O&I early on; they must work on their own over 3-4 weeks to create their own facing-page translation of that passage, which they turn in on the day of their midterm test (which also tests Middle English competence). Readings 8 (short) and 9 (in translation) are lighter than usual because of these impending deadlines; subsequent readings assume basic competence in Middle English.

WEEK SIX

Reading 11: The Castle of Perseverance, lines 157-1601, ed. David N. Klausner (METS edition — Medieval Institute Publications, 2010). From here, the students begin work on their final essay project, which centers on the Castle of Perseverance (to which class returns periodically throughout the remainder of term). Another long-form medieval play (perhaps the METS Digby Mary Magdalene, a combination of both N-Town Passions, or a series of York plays in a row) could be switched out for Castle.

Reading 12: Wisdom†‡, lines 1-324+SD, in Two Moral Interludes: The Pride of Life and Wisdom, ed. David N. Klausner (METS edition — Medieval Institute Publications, 2009).

WEEK SEVEN

Reading 13: Wisdom†‡ (through the end of the play).

Reading 14: Reynes Extract A‡ and the Durham Prologue, from Non-Cycle Plays and Fragments, ed. Norman Davis (EETS edition, s.s. 1 — OUP, 1970); continuing reading in The Castle of Perseverance, lines 1602-2556+SD.

WEEK EIGHT

Reading 15: Six short versions of the Resurrection — [1,2] St. Æthelwold’s Quem Quaeritis Ceremony (translated from the Latin, in two editions for comparison), [3] the Anglo-Norman Seinte Resurreccion (with facing-page translation), [4] The Liturgical Dramas forHoly Week at Barking Abbey (with facing-page translation), [5] Shrewsbury Fragment B, and [6] N-Town’s Announcement to the Marys and Appearance to Mary Magdalene, from [1] Christina M. Fitzgerald and John T. Sebastian, eds., The Broadview Anthology of Medieval Drama (Broadview, 2012); [2] James M. Gibson, ed., Records of Early English Drama: Kent — Diocese of Canterbury, Volume 3 (British Library and U Toronto Press, 2002); [3] David Bevington, ed. and trans., Medieval Drama (Houghton Mifflin, 1975); [4] Anne Bagnall Yardley and Jesse D. Mann, ed. and trans (Medieval Feminist Forum, Subsidia Series 3, Medieval Texts in Translation 1, 2014); [5] Non-Cycle Plays and Fragments, ed. Norman Davis (EETS edition, s.s. 1 — OUP, 1970); [6] Douglas Sugano, ed., The N-Town Plays (METS edition — Medieval Institute Publications, 2007).

Reading 16:Reynes Extract B‡ and the Ashmole Fragment, from Non-Cycle Plays and Fragments, ed. Norman Davis (EETS edition, s.s. 1 — OUP, 1970); continuing reading in The Castle of Perseverance, lines 2557-3378.

WEEK NINE

Reading 17: Croxton Play of the Sacrament*†‡, ed. John T. Sebastian (METS edition — Medieval Institute Publications, 2012).

Reading 18: Seven Short Pieces from before 1350 — [1] The Harley Harrowing of Hell, [2] The Cambridge Prologue, [3] The Rickinghall Fragment, [4] The Anglo-Norman Play of Adam (Ordo Representacionis Adae), [5] Babio , [6] Deor, [7] Wulf and Eadwacer, from [1] The Complete Harley 2253 Manuscript, Volume 2, ed. Susanna Greer Fein (METS edition — Medieval Institute Publications, 2014); [2,3] Non-Cycle Plays and Fragments, ed. Norman Davis (EETS edition, s.s. 1 — OUP, 1970); [4,5] Christina M. Fitzgerald and John T. Sebastian, eds., The Broadview Anthology of Medieval Drama (Broadview, 2012); [6,7] Old and Middle English c.890-c.1450: An Anthology (3rd Edition), ed. and trans. Elaine Treharne (Blackwell Anthologies / Wiley-Blackwell, 2009). This assignment seems overwhelming, but other than Babio and the Play of Adam, all the pieces are supershort (and they work well together)!

WEEK TEN

Reading 19: Three Contemporaneous(-ish) Pieces — Lydgate’s Disguising at London*, Chester Trial (lines 327-394 only) and Passion; The Castle of Perseverance (through the end of the play), from Mummings and Entertainments, ed. Claire Sponsler (METS edition — Medieval Institute Publications, 2010), The Chester Mystery Cycle, Volume 1, R.M. Lumiansky and David Mills, eds. (EETS edition, s.s. 3 — OUP, 1974), and The Castle of Perseverance, ed. David N. Klausner (METS edition — Medieval Institute Publications, 2010), respectively. I bring these three texts together to show how very different English drama could be within the same decade, opening up the discussion of a pluricentric map of medieval drama; I have published arguments elsewhere on the likelihood (though not surety, of course) that the Trial-Passion sequence at Chester, especially in MS H, preserves some of the oldest material in that cycle.

Reading 20: Lydgate’s Mumming at Eltham*, Mumming at Windsor*, Mumming for the Goldsmiths*, and Mumming for the Mercers*, from Mummings and Entertainments, ed. Claire Sponsler (METS edition — Medieval Institute Publications, 2010).

WEEK ELEVEN

Reading 21: Introduction to Jacqueline Jenkins’s Guest Appearance — A Lamentation of Our Lady for Swearing (with Two Fragments) and The Northampton Abraham and Isaac, from Jenkins’s pre-publication work and Non-Cycle Plays and Fragments, ed. Norman Davis (EETS edition, s.s. 1 — OUP, 1970), respectively. [If neither Jacqueline Jenkins nor her pre-publication material is available, swap out A Lamentation for the Chester and/or Brome Abraham and Isaac, or see Alternate Readings below.]

Reading 22: The Chester Antichrist (I prefer to use the old, difficult Greg edition, linked here, which shows the late-fifteenth-century version alongside a later version, as an advanced challenge to students: Greg, W. W., ed. The Play of Antichrist from the Chester Cycle. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1935).

WEEK TWELVE

No readings due. Students present on their Castle of Perseverance essays in progress, then we stage some of their more successful translations of Occupation and Idleness.

ALTERNATE PRE-1485 READINGS

The University of Toronto has 12-week terms; for longer terms (or to replace any of the above readings), I recommend drawing on the following, which really should be on my own syllabus, but I can’t currently find room for them.

Alternate Reading A: N-Town Mary Play*†, from Douglas Sugano, ed., The N-Town Plays (METS edition — Medieval Institute Publications, 2007).

Alternate Reading B (ideally taught alongside Alternate Reading A):York Death of Mary, Assumption of Mary, and Coronation of Mary, whether in the Broadview edition [The York Corpus Christi Play: Selected Pageants, ed. Christina M. Fitzgerald (Broadview, 2018)] or the METS edition[The York Corpus Christi Plays, ed. Clifford Davidson (TEAMS edition — Medieval Institute Publications, 2011)], or both.

Alternate Reading C:Mumming of the Seven Philosophers, in Mummings and Entertainments, ed. Claire Sponsler (METS edition — Medieval Institute Publications, 2010). I’ve tried many times to fit this fascinating text in, but haven’t yet succeeded.

Alternate Reading D: Excerpts from the Cornish Ordinalia and the Welsh Biblical Plays, in Christina M. Fitzgerald and John T. Sebastian, eds., The Broadview Anthology of Medieval Drama (Broadview, 2012).

Alternate Reading E: Chaundler’s A Defence of Human Nature in Every State (Liber apologeticus de omni statu humanae naturae), ed. and trans. (from the Latin) Doris Enright-Clark Shoukri (London: Modern Humanities Research Association, 1974). Thanks to the work of Thomas Meacham, we should all be adding Chaundler to our pre-1485 syllabi of English drama; I’ve dragged my feet on this but will hopefully figure out where to fit Chaundler soon.

Alternate Reading F: Excerpts from the Cornish Ordinalia and the Welsh Biblical Plays, in Christina M. Fitzgerald and John T. Sebastian, eds., The Broadview Anthology of Medieval Drama (Broadview, 2012).

Alternate reading G: The Life of St Kea (English translation only), lines 1-662+SD, from Graham Thomas and Nicholas Williams, eds. and trans., Bewnans Ke / The Life of St Kea: A Critical Edition with Translation (U Exeter Press, 2016). This is a newly discovered and translated Arthurian play in Cornish; I’m still figuring through the best way to assign it to students.

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PART II: 1485-1603
THIRD-YEAR COURSE, SEMESTER 2
(This class meets semi-weekly with one long session, then one short session; in practice, I usually chunk together the below readings in pairs, all due at the longer session, while the shorter session is set aside for group readings of selected scenes or for set lectures on local contexts, based in REED.)

WEEK THIRTEEN (ACROSS ENGLAND)

Reading 23: Robin Hood and the Friar and Robin Hood and the Potter, from Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Tales, eds. Stephen Knight and Thomas H. Ohlgren (METS edition — Medieval Institute Publications, 1997). As at the beginning of last term, we work through these texts using an in-class handout.

Reading 24: Digby Killing of the Children, from John C. Coldewey, ed., Early English Drama: An Anthology (Routledge, 1993).

WEEK FOURTEEN (COVENTRY)

Reading 25: Coventry Shearmen and Taylors’ Pageant , Chester Innocents, and York Purification. I provide an informal modern English edition of the Coventry play here. When last I updated this website, I was dissatisfied with my class editions of the Chester and York items for this reading; check my most recent ENG 331 schedule to see what is in use now.

Reading 26: Digby Mary Magdalene‡, ed. Chester Scoville (Broadview, 2017), through line 571+SD.

WEEK FIFTEEN (EAST ANGLIA)

Reading 27: Digby Mary Magdalene‡ (through the end of the play).

Reading 28: Medwall’s Fulgens and Lucres†, Part I, lines 1-687, in Christina M. Fitzgerald and John T. Sebastian, eds., The Broadview Anthology of Medieval Drama (Broadview, 2012). Students begin work this week on their midterm project, in which they critique some element of the class edition of any of the plays we read in Weeks 13-15, referring to alternate editions (including early print) I introduce in class.

WEEK SIXTEEN (LONDON I)

Reading 29:Medwall’s Fulgens and Lucres† (through the end of the play).

Reading 30 (rotating): The first few scenes of any play printed or produced in London before 1559, usually in Christina M. Fitzgerald and John T. Sebastian, eds., The Broadview Anthology of Medieval Drama (Broadview, 2012) or Alan Stewart, ed., The Broadview Anthology of Tudor Drama (Broadview, 2021). Think Rastell, Skelton, Heywood, Bale, Redford, Udall, etc., each of whose work casts the medieval-modern transition into a different light.

WEEK SEVENTEEN (LONDON II)

Readings 31 and 32 (rotating): The remainder of any two short plays, or one long, printed or produced in London before 1559. So, across readings 30-32, students might read Four Elements followed by Wit and Science, or might read the whole of Magnyfycence. The Interlude of Youth is a nice choice here, too, as long as its location of origin is not confined reductively to London.

WEEK EIGHTEEN (WALES)

Reading 33: The Strong Man (English translation only), translated from the Welsh. As of my posting of this page, Morgan Moore is at work on a new translation of this play for PLS; I’ll likely use this for my classes henceforth. Contact me or Morgan for the text.The reading in Week 18 is relatively thin because the midterm project is due halfway through Week 18.

WEEK NINETEEN (CAMBRIDGE)

Reading 34: Gammer Gurton’s Needle, in Christina M. Fitzgerald and John T. Sebastian, eds., The Broadview Anthology of Medieval Drama (Broadview, 2012). In this week students begin work on their final essay, which requires them to develop a research question from, and search for evidence in, REED.

Reading 35: York Doubting Thomas, comparing the c. 1525-50 Sykes Manuscript to other editions.

WEEK TWENTY (YORKSHIRE)

Reading 36: Towneley Creation or Judgment, in Christina M. Fitzgerald and John T. Sebastian, eds., The Broadview Anthology of Medieval Drama (Broadview, 2012).

Reading 37 (rotating): Act I of any non-Shakespearean Elizabethan play. I prefer, from year to year, to alternate the various Marlowe plays (Faustus is a particularly good fit) with the seven latest selections in the new Broadview Tudor Drama anthology.

WEEK TWENTY-ONE (LONDON III)

Reading 38 (rotating): The remainder of any non-Shakespearean Elizabethan play

Reading 39: Lindsay’s Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estatis, Proclamation through line 1033+SD, in Greg Walker, ed., Medieval Drama: An Anthology (Blackwell Anthologies / Wiley-Blackwell, 2000). This play is a mammoth and the edition can be difficult for students to read, but it’s an essential part of the curriculum; in practice, I usually offer only excerpts.

WEEK TWENTY-TWO (SCOTLAND)

Reading 40:Lindsay’s Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estatis(through the end of the play, except the interlude, which we attempt in class).

Reading 41 (rotating): Act I of any Shakespeare play produced before 1603. I used to stick strictly to R3 (very useful, because it depicts the transition from administrative chaos into Tudor power — students realize powerfully that Queen Margaret was once the Princess Margaret of Week 2), but in the coming years, I plan to cycle through Midsummer, Shrew, Titus, Two Gentlemen, Comedy of Errors, Love’s Labour’s, R&J, King John, Merchant, Much Ado, As You Like It, Julius Caesar, and all the various Henrys. But R3 and Midsummer are really the best fits for this syllabus.

WEEK TWENTY-THREE (LONDON IV)

Reading 42 (rotating):The remainder of any Shakespeare play produced before 1603

Reading 43:Towneley Second Shepherds, in Christina M. Fitzgerald and John T. Sebastian, eds., The Broadview Anthology of Medieval Drama (Broadview, 2012).

WEEK TWENTY-FOUR (CHESHIRE)

Reading 44:Chester Shepherds, in Christina M. Fitzgerald and John T. Sebastian, eds., The Broadview Anthology of Medieval Drama (Broadview, 2012). In the long session this week, students present on their REED essays in progress; lecture and discussion of Cheshire (which was already introduced in Week 13) focuses here on prohibitions and afterlives.

ALTERNATE READINGS OUTSIDE LONDON, 1485-1603

The University of Toronto has 12-week terms; for longer terms (or to replace any of the above readings), I recommend drawing on the following, which really should be on my own syllabus, but I can’t currently find room for them.

Alternate Reading A (Oxford): Gager’s Meleager, ed. and trans. Dana F. Sutton (Routledge, 1994). Any similar Latin school drama would do quite well, if you can find a place to fit it.

Alternate Reading B (Newcastle): Newcastle Noah, in Non-Cycle Plays and Fragments, ed. Norman Davis (EETS edition, s.s. 1 — OUP, 1970). A text with an early history but in a very late copy — short and delightfully weird, an object lesson in textual transmission and afterlives (be sure to read Davis’s introductory matter here).

Alternate Reading C (Norwich): Norwich Grocers’ Play (A and B texts), in Non-Cycle Plays and Fragments, ed. Norman Davis (EETS edition, s.s. 1 — OUP, 1970). If you can squeeze in more time for East Anglia, this would be a reasonable possibility.

Alternate Reading D (Northern): The Bodley Burial and Resurrection (MS e Museo160), in The Late Religious Plays Non-Cycle Plays and Fragments, ed. Norman Davis (EETS edition, s.s. 1 — OUP, 1970).

Alternate Reading E: Everyman†‡ (if you must) in Christina M. Fitzgerald and John T. Sebastian, eds., The Broadview Anthology of Medieval Drama (Broadview, 2012).

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PART III:
PERFORMANCE TEXTS INCLUDED IN SECOND-YEAR SURVEY
(Student volunteers, who rehearse outside class in lieu of traditional essay assignments, present staged readings of these texts in class; the other students’ first introduction to these texts is via live performance, then — I provide optional access to the rehearsal texts only after the performance.)

Week 3:Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. I use Gretchen E. Minton, ed., Twelfth Night: Arden Performance Edition (Bloomsbury, 2020), which students can access electronically through our campus library.

Week 6: York Noah and Judgment; Chester Noah and Shepherds. I use my own parallel-text translations for these.

Week 9: The Pride of Life andPlays from MS Digby 86 — Dame Sirith, The Fox and the Wolf, and Stand Wel, Moder, Under Rode.Identical to Readings 2 and 4 above.

Week 11: Beowulf, lines 836-1724a. Students read the other lines of Beowulf (on their own, without live performance) in other weeks; I assign them two different translations simultaneously (usually the Heaney and Headley), so the student performers mix and match between those two (with a few lines required to be performed in Old English).

As part of their unit on Robin Hood in Weeks 4 and 5, my second-year survey students also read excerpts from The Downfall of Robert, Earle of Huntington (with no in-class performance); like most of their other Robin Hood readings, those excerpts come from Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Tales, eds. Stephen Knight and Thomas H. Ohlgren (METS edition — Medieval Institute Publications, 1997).

*I teach these texts in the rawer Middle English of METS/TEAMS editions (because ENG 330 focuses on Middle English skills in the first five weeks), but these readings are also available in Christina M. Fitzgerald and John T. Sebastian, eds., The Broadview Anthology of Medieval Drama (Broadview, 2012). I assign the Fitzgerald-Sebastian anthology as a required text in ENG 331, the second half of this curriculum.

†I teach these texts either in the rawer Middle English of TEAMS editions (because ENG 330 focuses on Middle English skills in the first five weeks), or in Broadview editions (which are required reading for ENG 331), but these readings are also available in Greg Walker, ed., Medieval Drama: An Anthology (Blackwell Anthologies / Wiley-Blackwell, 2000).

‡I teach these texts in the rawer Middle English of EETS or TEAMS editions (because ENG 330 focuses on Middle English skills in the first five weeks), or in Broadview editions (which are required reading for ENG 331), but these readings are also available in John C. Coldewey, ed., Early English Drama: An Anthology (Routledge, 1993).

If you’ve got one full term of Medieval Drama to work with, one option might be just to restrict the class to pre-1485 texts entirely — if you’d like a reading list for such a class, just look at my full two-semester third-year curriculum, at 2.4.0 above, and ignore the second semester! But that would, in my opinion, elide the important medieval drama that happened in the sixteenth century (that is, contemporaneously with the emergence of modernity).

So, below, I compress both my third-year courses together for a 12-week Medieval Drama course (that’s the length of terms at the University of Toronto) that still maintains the crucial break between periods, placing the temporal dividing line in the middle of Week 7 (rather than in the break between terms), between reading 13 and reading 14 (of 24), with less time on the post-1485 side because such a course need not make room for the fully early modern (as opposed to early modern-leaning) plays of the Elizabethan London theatres. Adapting the 12-week version to a longer semester is easy — just borrow readings from 2.4.0 (making sure to put the borrowed reading on the appropriate side of the temporal divide).

My full curriculum uses METS and EETS editions to train students in Middle English in term 1, with an emphasis on language comprehension in the first five weeks (during which readings are quite short), so that they can read pre-1485 texts (first term only) with as little editorial mediation as possible. Below, since a single semester may not leave time for much language training, I use student anthology editions where available (and so the readings are of relatively consistent length across the term). I use Broadview editions as the base required texts for this hypothetical version of the curriculum (they offer a service in which material from various editions can be combined into a single custom-made electronic volume), under the assumption that readings outside of Broadview’s catalogue can be readily excerpted into a separate course reader (be sure to make arrangements with your campus syllabus or course reader service, or with a copy shop that provides similar services, to handle copyright concerns).

Many of the readings I’ve chosen here could easily be switched out for readings of similar length from the same region (say, switching out any of Lydgate’s other pieces for the two I name below), but note that for the most part I’ve selected those pieces whose aesthetics, staging logic, structure, and form differ most provocatively from modern norms, and from each other (though choosing Mankind over Wisdom and Croxton was a very tough call in that regard). I’ve also done my best to choose texts that will unsettle assumptions that medieval drama was primarily doctrinal in subject matter (i.e., that what survives is proportionately representative of what was).
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WEEK ONE: ACROSS ENGLAND

Reading 1:Robyn Hod and the Shryff off Notyngham, from Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Tales, eds. Stephen Knight and Thomas H. Ohlgren METS edition — Medieval Institute Publications, 1997). I circulate the raw “manuscript version” as an in-class handout: we work through the Middle English together (and only later reveal Knight and Ohlgren’s “reconstruction of the dramatic fragment”).

Reading 2:Four short early performances (in translation) — [1] St. Æthelwold’s Quem Quaeritis Ceremony (translated from the Latin, in two editions for comparison), [2] the Anglo-Norman Seinte Resurreccion (with facing-page translation), [3] Deor, and [4] Wulf and Eadwacer, from [1] Christina M. Fitzgerald and John T. Sebastian, eds., The Broadview Anthology of Medieval Drama (Broadview, 2012) and James M. Gibson, ed., Records of Early English Drama: Kent — Diocese of Canterbury, Volume 3 (British Library and U Toronto Press, 2002); [2] David Bevington, ed. and trans., Medieval Drama (Houghton Mifflin, 1975); [3,4] The Broadview Anthology of British Literature Volume 1: The Medieval Period – Revised Third Edition, ed. Don LePan et. al (Broadview, 2023). It would be reasonable to switch out Seinte Resurreccion for the Anglo-Norman Play of Adam, but I find SR more, intimate, collaborative, and provocative of discussions about premodern staging possibilities (as opposed to the Play of Adam’s overbearing after-the-fact stage directions, which Carol Symes has argued may be after-the-fact restrictions anyway).

WEEK TWO: EAST ANGLIA/CAMBRIDGE I

Reading 3:Mankind†‡, in Christina M. Fitzgerald and John T. Sebastian, eds., The Broadview Anthology of Medieval Drama (Broadview, 2012).

Reading 4: Dux Moraud,Reynes Extract A, and the Cambridge Prologue, from John C. Coldewey, ed., Early English Drama: An Anthology (Routledge, 1993) and Non-Cycle Plays and Fragments, ed. Norman Davis (EETS edition, s.s. 1 — OUP, 1970). Or you can use my own parallel-text translation of Dux Moraud, at 4.3 below.

WEEK THREE: SOUTHEAST (LONDON I)

Reading 5: Occupation and Idleness, ed. Richard Beadle (Leeds Studies in English, n.s. 32, 2001), alongside Babio, in Christina M. Fitzgerald and John T. Sebastian, eds., The Broadview Anthology of Medieval Drama (Broadview, 2012). Babio isn’t associated with the southeast in particular as far as I know, but it’s a great pairing with O&I, another likely school piece, attached to Winchester.

Reading 6: Lydgate’s Disguising at Hertford and Mumming at Windsor, in Christina M. Fitzgerald and John T. Sebastian, eds., The Broadview Anthology of Medieval Drama (Broadview, 2012).

WEEK FOUR: NORTHAMPTON, DURHAM, YORKSHIRE I

Reading 7: York Joseph’s Troubles about Mary, Crucifixion*†‡, and Death of Mary, in The York Corpus Christi Play: Selected Pageants, ed. Christina M. Fitzgerald (Broadview, 2018), and the Durham Prologue, from Non-Cycle Plays and Fragments, ed. Norman Davis (EETS edition, s.s. 1 — OUP, 1970).

Reading 8: Northampton Abraham and Isaac, from Non-Cycle Plays and Fragments, ed. Norman Davis (EETS edition, s.s. 1 — OUP, 1970) and, if you can get it (hopefully it will be published soon!), Jenkins’s forthcoming edition of A Lamentation of Our Lady for Swearing. The A&I isn’t currently available in a student edition, but its unique handling of Sarah’s position in the attempted sacrifice is an essential part of the curriculum (resonating well with depictions of Mary from York and Durham).

WEEK FIVE: WEST MIDLANDS (CHESHIRE I)

Reading 9: Chester Trial (lines 327-394 only), Passion, and Antichrist, from The Chester Mystery Cycle, Volume 1, R.M. Lumiansky and David Mills, eds. (EETS edition, s.s. 3 — OUP, 1974). No passage in any Chester play except the Antichrist can be dated to any narrower range of time than c. 1421-1575, so any Chester plays are fair game here (including those more readily available in various student anthologies), but these selections are the most strongly datable to the fifteenth century (and are eminently teachable!).

Reading 10: Dame Sirith, the fragmentaryInterludium de Clerico et Puella, and one or two Shrewsbury Fragments, from The Trials and Joys of Marriage, ed. Eve Salisbury (METS edition — Medieval Institute Publications, 2002) and Non-Cycle Plays and Fragments, ed. Norman Davis (EETS edition, s.s. 1 — OUP, 1970). Or you can use my own parallel-text translation of Dame Sirith, at 4.1 below. The Middle English of the fragments is tough but short enough to be doable.

WEEK SIX: IRELAND, WALES, CORNWALL

Reading 11: The Pride of Life, from John C. Coldewey, ed., Early English Drama: An Anthology (Routledge, 1993). Or you can use my own parallel-text translation of Pride, at 4.2 below.

Reading 12: Welsh Three Kings of Cologne, the Cornish Noah, and/or the Cornish Death of Pilate, all in Christina M. Fitzgerald and John T. Sebastian, eds., The Broadview Anthology of Medieval Drama (Broadview, 2012). Assumedly, there would be a midterm assignment due this week, so readings this week are short; the Welsh and Cornish play excerpts are quite short and I’ve found they work well as in-person cold reads (rather than read-at-home assignments).

WEEK SEVEN: LONDON II

Reading 13:Margaret of Anjou's Entry into London and The Liturgical Dramas for Holy Week at Barking Abbey, from Mummings and Entertainments, ed. Claire Sponsler (METS edition — Medieval Institute Publications, 2010) and Anne Bagnall Yardley and Jesse D. Mann, ed. and trans. (Medieval Feminist Forum, Subsidia Series 3, Medieval Texts in Translation 1, 2014), respectively.

Everything above this dividing line is datable before 1485 (or close enough). At least some reasonable date for composition, first performance, or extant manuscript falls before 1485.

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Everything below this dividing line is datable between 1485 and 1575 (or close enough). At least some reasonable date for composition, first performance, or extant manuscript falls after 1485.

Reading 14: Medwall’s Fulgens and Lucres†, Part I, lines 1-687, in Christina M. Fitzgerald and John T. Sebastian, eds., The Broadview Anthology of Medieval Drama (Broadview, 2012).

WEEK EIGHT (YORKSHIRE II)

Reading 15:Medwall’s Fulgens and Lucres† (through the end of the play). We’re still talking about London in this Yorkshire week, but Towneley gets its lost time back at the end of term.

Reading 16: Towneley Killing of Abel and Judgment, in The Towneley Plays, ed. Garrett P. J. Epp (TEAMS edition — Medieval Institute Publications, 2018) and Christina M. Fitzgerald and John T. Sebastian, eds., The Broadview Anthology of Medieval Drama (Broadview, 2012), respectively. The Abel is short enough that it should be pretty manageable in Middle English even to new eyes; Jeff Stoyanoff’s new readings of this play make it a priority for the curriculum as far as I’m concerned, but it could also be switched out for one of the Towneley selections already in the Broadview.

WEEK NINE: EASTANGLIA/CAMBRIDGE II

Reading 17: Gammer Gurton’s Needle, in Christina M. Fitzgerald and John T. Sebastian, eds., The Broadview Anthology of Medieval Drama (Broadview, 2012). In this week students begin work on their final essay, which requires them to develop a research question from, and search for evidence in, REED.

Reading 18: Digby Killing of the Children, from John C. Coldewey, ed., Early English Drama: An Anthology (Routledge, 1993). Short enough to read as a representative of this crucial manuscript, and especially useful given its internal cues for multi-gender casting, blending of performance/ritual genres, and ongoing yearly performance.

WEEK TEN: SCOTLAND

Reading 19: Lindsay’s Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estatis, Proclamation through line 1033+SD, in Greg Walker, ed., Medieval Drama: An Anthology (Blackwell Anthologies / Wiley-Blackwell, 2000). This play is a mammoth and the edition can be difficult for students to read, but it’s an essential part of the curriculum; it may be better to use excerpts rather than assigning the whole thing.

Reading 20:Lindsay’s Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estatis(through the end of the play, except the interlude, which we attempt in class).

WEEK ELEVEN: LONDON III

Reading 21: Redford’s Play of Wit and Science, in Christina M. Fitzgerald and John T. Sebastian, eds., The Broadview Anthology of Medieval Drama (Broadview, 2012).

Reading 22: Towneley Second Shepherds†‡, in Christina M. Fitzgerald and John T. Sebastian, eds., The Broadview Anthology of Medieval Drama (Broadview, 2012).

WEEK TWELVE: CHESHIRE II

Reading 23: Chester Shepherds, in Christina M. Fitzgerald and John T. Sebastian, eds., The Broadview Anthology of Medieval Drama (Broadview, 2012).

Reading 24: Robin Hood and the Friar and/or Robin Hood and the Potter, from Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Tales, eds. Stephen Knight and Thomas H. Ohlgren (TEAMS edition — Medieval Institute Publications, 1997). Same in-class reading assignment as at the beginning of term — short plays read from handouts in class — making room for an end-of-term assignment.

†I suggest these readings in Broadview editions, but they are also available in Greg Walker, ed., Medieval Drama: An Anthology (Blackwell Anthologies / Wiley-Blackwell, 2000).

‡I suggest these readings in Broadview editions, but they are also available in John C. Coldewey, ed., Early English Drama: An Anthology (Routledge, 1993).

My full two-semester third-year curriculum, at 2.4.0 above, uses METS (TEAMS) editions and EETS editions to train students in Middle English, with an emphasis on language comprehension in the first five weeks (during which readings are quite short), so that they can read pre-1485 texts (first term only) with as little editorial mediation as possible. Below, since a four-week curriculum leaves no time for language training, I use student anthology editions where available (and so the readings are of relatively consistent length across the term).

I compress both my third-year courses together here for a 4-week unit on British Drama through 1575, which maintains the crucial breakage between periods, but which might be inserted into various other curricula. Since the key is to understand medieval drama as productive of an unstable multiplicity of modes, styles, and material for performance, I think the best bet for a compressed timeline is to play up fragments and short texts, which gesture so powerfully to the unknowable. As a result, for the reading assignmentss below I usually bundle together multiple items — particularly those items that might speak to each other well: bringing Dux Moraud into contact with the York Crucifixion, for instance, messes with the received generic dominance of biblical drama, while provoking questions about violence, revelation, and the unspoken in performance.

Most of the readings I’ve chosen here could easily be switched out for readings of similar length from the same region (say, switching out any of Lydgate’s other pieces for the two I name below), but note that for the most part I’ve selected those pieces whose aesthetics, staging logic, structure, and form differ most provocatively from modern norms, and from each other (though choosing Mankind over Wisdom and Croxton was a very tough call in that regard). I’ve also done my best to choose texts that will unsettle assumptions that medieval drama was primarily doctrinal in subject matter (i.e., that what survives is proportionately representative of what was).

In my other versions above, I avoid ordering texts chronologically (clumping them, instead, on either side of 1485) because such chronology can too easily give the false sense of a complete (if not evolutionary) narrative of dramatic development. Here, though, recognizing the likelihood that this module may be of use in courses with a broader historical scope, I do order the texts roughly by date.

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WEEK ONE

Reading 1 (long):Plays from MS Digby 86 — Dame Sirith, The Fox and the Wolf, and Stand Wel, Moder, Under Rode — with Babio. I give students my own facing-page translation of the Digby 86 texts (see 4.1, below), which points up the necessities and difficulties of identifying them as performance texts;Babio is in Christina M. Fitzgerald and John T. Sebastian, eds., The Broadview Anthology of Medieval Drama (Broadview, 2012).

Reading 2 (short): York Crucifixion, Dux Moraud, and the Cambridge Prologue, from John C. Coldewey, ed., Early English Drama: An Anthology (Routledge, 1993) and Non-Cycle Plays and Fragments, ed. Norman Davis (EETS edition, s.s. 1 — OUP, 1970), respectively. Or you can use my own parallel-text translation of Dux Moraud, at 4.3 below.

WEEK TWO

Reading 3 (long): Mankind, The Pride of Life, and Reynes Extract A,in Christina M. Fitzgerald and John T. Sebastian, eds., The Broadview Anthology of Medieval Drama (Broadview, 2012) and John C. Coldewey, ed., Early English Drama: An Anthology (Routledge, 1993).

Reading 4 (short): Margaret of Anjou's Entry into London and Lydgate’s Disguising at Hertford and Mumming at Windsor, from Mummings and Entertainments, ed. Claire Sponsler (METS edition — Medieval Institute Publications, 2010) in Christina M. Fitzgerald and John T. Sebastian, eds., The Broadview Anthology of Medieval Drama (Broadview, 2012).

Everything above this dividing line is datable before 1485 (or close enough). At least some reasonable date for composition, first performance, or extant manuscript falls before 1485.

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Except for one supplementary reading added for comparison, very reading below this dividing line is datable between 1485 and 1575 (or close enough). At least some reasonable date for composition, first performance, or extant manuscript falls after 1485.

WEEK THREE

Reading 5 (long): Medwall’s Fulgens and Lucres, in Christina M. Fitzgerald and John T. Sebastian, eds., The Broadview Anthology of Medieval Drama (Broadview, 2012).

Reading 6 (short): Robin Hood and the Friar and Robin Hood and the Potter, with the short Robyn Hod and the Shryff off Notyngham added for comparison, all from Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Tales, eds. Stephen Knight and Thomas H. Ohlgren (METS edition — Medieval Institute Publications, 1997).

WEEK FOUR

Reading 7 (long): Chester Shepherds and Towneley Second Shepherds, in Christina M. Fitzgerald and John T. Sebastian, eds., The Broadview Anthology of Medieval Drama (Broadview, 2012).

Reading 8 (short): Excerpts from Lindsay’s Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estatis — Proclamation, lines 214-985+SD, and Interlude, in Greg Walker, ed., Medieval Drama: An Anthology (Blackwell Anthologies / Wiley-Blackwell, 2000). This edition can be difficult for students to read, but it’s an essential part of the curriculum.

I have found that the year 1485, the crowning of Henry VII and the beginning of the Tudor dynasty, is the year best suited to my courses as a marker of the “beginning of the end of medieval English drama” — that is, it is safe to take all drama before 1485 as purely medieval and the drama following 1485 as part of a transitional period in which medieval and modern aesthetics and forms coexisted (and vied for primacy).

However, other years or decades could be equally defensible choices as markers of the “beginning of the end”. Here are a few possibilities:

1476: The emergence of print in London

1490s: The performance of Fulgens and Lucres

1500: The turn of the century

c. 1512: The publication of Fulgens and Lucres

1509: Henry VIII crowned

1529: The Reformation Parliament begins

A medieval drama curriculum oriented toward breakage could really use any of those dates as its dividing year (or decade).