Lynette Muir's study presents a detailed survey and analysis of the surviving corpus of Biblical drama from all parts of medieval Christian Europe. It examines over five hundred plays from the tenth to the sixteenth centuries, in a wide-ranging discussion that makes available the full scope of this important part of theater history. Organized to provide a complete overview of major aspects of medieval Biblical theater, it includes valuable appendices that give information on the liturgical calendar, processions, the Mass and the Bible.

This book provides a detailed survey of the hundreds of non-biblical serious plays which survive from the tenth to the sixteenth centuries. The performers vary from civic groups and literary societies to courts and convents: mainly amateurs, but they left a legacy of stories that was drawn upon by the writers for the professional theatre companies of Elizabethan England, Golden Age Spain and the rich baroque theatre of France. Stories from the Golden Legend and collections of Marian miracles appear side by side with folk tales and traditional stories brought from the Middle East by merchants,...