Abstract
Of the four surviving complete cycles of Mystery plays, the N-Town Cycle is in many ways the most problematical and the least typical. Whereas the other cycles and indeed the single plays can be confidently ascribed to a particular geographical location and can supply indications of their manner of performance, this cycle reveals no certain details about either provenance or staging. It is in addition a structurally complex cycle which shows layers of compilation of very diverse material so that most analytical hypotheses will prove contradictory when applied to the entire cycle. For this very reason, it is perhaps the most challenging of the four great cycles and offers interesting possibilities for hypothetical reconstructions of the performance conditions and for discovering a variety of medieval staging techniques and dramatic solutions.
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Notes
N-Town Plays, published as Ludas Coventriae ed. K. S. Block, EETS, ES 120 (London, 1922, repr. 1960/1974), 11. 525–7.
The true Coventry Cycle is published as Two Coventry Corpus Christi Plays ed. Hardin Craig, EETS, ES 87, 2nd edn (London, 1957, repr. 1967).
Hardin Craig, in his English Religious Drama (Oxford, 1955), pp. 265–80 and ‘The Lincoln Cordwainers’ Pageant’, PMLA xxxII (1917), 605–15, assembled evidence for Lincoln as the home of the N-Town Cycle and since then Kenneth Cameron and Stanley J. Kahrl have argued the case with more evidence and carefully worked out staging possibilities for the cycle in
Lincoln in ‘The N-Town Plays at Lincoln’, Theatre Notebook, xx (ii) (1965), 61–9 and ‘Staging the N-Town Cycle’, Theatre Notebook xxi (1967), 122–38, 152–65.
N-Town Cain and Abel Play, in A. C. Cawley (ed.), Everyman and Medieval Miracle Plays (London, 1956, repr. 1974), pp. 25–33, 11. 75–8. Henceforth referred to as Cain and Abel.
Cf. Eleanor Prosser, Drama and Religion in the English Mystery Plays (Stanford, 1961), pp. 67–88. Prosser’s discussion of the role of comedy in the Mystery plays is very useful.
For the possibilities of masks being used in the Mystery plays, cf. Meg Twycross and Sarah Carpenter, ‘Masks in the Medieval Theatre’, Medieval English Theatre 3.1 (1981), 29–36, reprinted as ‘Purposes and Effects of Masking’ in
Peter Happé (ed.), Medieval English Drama (London, 1986), pp. 171–9. Cf. also the details of the properties of the York Last Judgement Play, Chapter 5 below and also Happé, pp. 29–30.
For other uses of this routine, cf. Gustave Cohen, ‘La scène de l’Aveugle et de son valet dans le théâtre français du moyen âge’, Romania xLi (1912), 345–72.
Cf. Oliver F. Emerson, ‘Legends of Cain, especially in Old and Middle English’, PMLA, xxi (1906), 831–929.
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© 1991 Christine Richardson and Jackie Johnston
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Richardson, C., Johnston, J. (1991). N-Town ‘Cain and Abel’. In: Medieval Drama. English Dramatists. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-21180-7_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-21180-7_3
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