English, Scottish, & Welsh Drama, Religious & Liturgical Drama, Literature, Christian
Log in to track your reading progress.
Overview
The Mary Play is a beautiful and engaging piece of late medieval stagecraft. It is the only English play which deals with the parents of the Virgin Mary and with her early life; the only play which centres on a prayer, the Ave Maria; the only play which in its devotional intensity reflects the central concerns of late fifteenth-century lay piety. It comes from Norfolk, and matches theatrically the elaborate paintings and carvings on the rood screens and bench ends, on the fonts and in the stained glass windows of that area. The Marian shrine of Walsingham is part of its local context. In the fifteenth century the play was incorporated into a series of pageants, the N. town plays. Fortunately the scribe left indications in the manuscript of most of the original play and it is possible to disentangle the one from the other almost completely. This edition presents the resulting play freed as far as possible from the accumulation of pageant material. The Introduction describes the manuscript, the sources of the play, its language, place and staging. There is an extensive commentary which seeks to place the play in its intellectual and theatrical contexts, and a complete glossary.Book Details
Published
February 2, 1987
Publisher
London ; Longman, 1987.
Pages
196
Format
Hardcover
ISBN
9780582490789