Civic theater (drama and pageantry sponsored by city and town governing bodies) is prominently featured in histories of early English provincial drama, but largely ignored in those of pre-Elizabethan London. Anne Lancashire explodes the widely-held notion that significant London theater arose jnly in Shakespeare's era, when the first commercial playhouses were built. She presents a rich panorama of civic theatrical life in London before 1558 that includes Roman amphitheater shows, medieval and Tudor mummings, street pjgeantry and plays.

The variety and richness of early London's dramatic activity are extensively revealed here: both from the records of its civic government and livery companies, 1287 to 1558, and in a chronological appendix of information from other sources, such as national and local chronicles (written in Anglo-French, Latin, and English). Civic London to 1558 adds substantially to the amount of published evidence of early drama in London. After the demise of the multi-day biblical play performed, regularly or occasionally, in the late fourteenth century at Clerkenwell, on the edge of the city, records begin...