English Mystery Plays

One of the chief glories of late medieval literature, the Mystery Play cycles were created by town guilds to mark the Feast of Corpus Christi, with an annual performance of short religious plays covering the entire range of scriptural history from 'The Fall of Lucifer' to 'The Resurrection' and 'judgement day'. This volume contains thirty-eight plays taken from the four surviving cycles, produced in Chester, Coventry, Wakefield and York. Intended both for teaching and worship, these plays were among the first written English works, and had immense influence upon the work of later dramatists. Although suppressed at the height of their popularity during the Reformation, the Mystery Plays remain works of beauty, reverence and wonder, and are among the key founding texts of English literature.Happe, Peter is the author of 'English Mystery Plays', published 1976 under ISBN 9780140430936 and ISBN 0140430938.