Reading Texts for Performance and Performances as Texts Shifting Paradigms in Early English Drama Studies Variorum Collected Studies Series

This volume brings together nineteen important articles by Pamela M. King, one of the foremost British scholars working on Early English Drama. Unique to this collection are five articles on the ?living? traditions of performances in Spain, discussing their origins and the modes of production that are used. Several articles use modern literary theory on aspects of early drama, whilst others consider drama in the context of late medieval poetry. The volume also includes a rich collection of articles on English scriptural plays from surviving manuscripts.

Introduction Part 1. English Scriptural Plays 1. Faith, Reason and the Prophets’ dialogue in the Coventry Pageant of the Shearmen and Taylors 2. Playing Pentecost: Transformation and Texts 3. Lament and Elegy in Scriptural Drama: Englishing the Planctus Mariae 4. The End of the World in Medieval English Religious Drama 5. The Early English Passion Play 6. Medieval English Religious Plays as Early Fifteenth-Century Vernacular Theology: the Case Against Part 2. Drama and Poetry 7. Dunbar’s The Golden Targe: A Chaucerian Masque 8.‘He pleyeth Herodes upon a scaffold hye’? 9. Drama: Sacred and Secular Part 3. Revivals, Survivals and Audiences – Mostly about Spain 10. La Festa D’Elx: The Festival of the Assumption of the Virgin, Elche (Alicante) 11. Elche Again: The Venida and the Semana Santa 12. The Festa d’Elx: Civic Devotion, Display and Identity 13. Corpus Christi, Valencia, 1993 14. Corpus Christi: Valencia 15 Confraternities and Civic Ceremonial: the Siena Palio 16. Twentieth Century Medieval Drama Revivals and the UniversitiesPart 4. Ideology and Performance 17. Spatial semantics and the medieval theatre 18. MINORITY PLAYS: Two Interludes for Edward VI 19. Rules of Exchange in Medieval Plays and Play Manuscripts

Pamela M. King was one of the founding members of Medieval English Theatre. She has held chairs in Medieval Studies at St Martin’s College, Lancashire (now the University of Cumbria) and the University of Bristol, and is currently the holder of a fractional chair at the University of Glasgow. Her 2006 monograph The York Mystery Cycle and the Worship of the City won both the David Bevington Award for Best New Book in Early Drama Studies, and the Beatrice White Prize from the English Association.

Alexandra F. Johnston is a professor emeritus of the Department of English, University of Toronto. She was the founding director of Records of Early English Drama in 1976. She co-edited the first edition of the REED series, York, with Dr Margaret Rogerson (née Dorrell) in 1979 and the second on-line edition in the REED series, Berkshire, in 2018. Many of her articles have appeared in journals and collections of essays. Her volume of selected articles was the fourth to appear in this series