As the growing quantity of records in the Records of Early English Drama series attests, medieval moralities and cycle plays were not only the occasion for many different kinds of play but were also economically significant enterprises. Morality plays often required large place and scaffold structures, costuming, and sometimes large casts while, most notably, town… Continue reading Pageants
Month: October 2012
Pestilence
Pestilence The pestilence (not called the Black Death until the sixteenth century) arrived on England’s southwestern shores in the summer of 1348 and quickly spread so that by the following summer it had reached London and beyond. It recurred in 1361–2, 1368–9, and 1375, then at irregular intervals thereafter, but the first outbreak was the… Continue reading Pestilence
Wole Soyinka’s Art of Characterization in the Play The Swamp Dwellers
The characters in The Swamp Dwellers fell into three groups: the parents Makuri and Alo-conservative, the corrupt priest Kadiye, who beguiles his superstitious followers; and the two positive individuals Igwezu and the Beggar, moving, wondering, seeking and then uncertain what they have found. It is a play of mood and atmosphere, constructed so as to… Continue reading Wole Soyinka’s Art of Characterization in the Play The Swamp Dwellers
Revolt: Jean Froissart, Chroniques
London, British Library, MS Royal 18 E.1, fol. 175r Language: French Manuscript date: 1460–80 Jean Froissart’s narrative of the revolt is valuable for several details it provides of the revolt, including, for instance, a sermon by John Ball, the priest from Kent and rebel leader. Manuscript Royal 18 E.1 was made in Flanders for William… Continue reading Revolt: Jean Froissart, Chroniques
Royal Benefactors
London, British Library, MS Cotton Nero D.vii, fols. 6v–7r (Golden Book of St. Albans) Language: Latin Manuscript date: 1380 The Golden Book of St. Albans (also known as the Liber Benefactorum, Book of Benefactors) is a record of the names of benefactors and their contributions to the Benedictine abbey of St. Albans (for more on… Continue reading Royal Benefactors
Regiment of Princes
Chaucer portrait: Thomas Hoccleve, Regiment of Princes British Library MS Harley 4866, fol. 88r Language: English (Southeast Midland) Manuscript date: ca. 1411 Portraits of Geoffrey Chaucer appear in the Ellesmere Canterbury Tales and in a few other Thomas Hoccleve Regiment manuscripts (see the image of an Ellesmere page, “Geoffrey Chaucer, Canterbury Tales,” p. 137). Hoccleve… Continue reading Regiment of Princes
Geoffrey Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde
Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 61, fol. 1v Language: English (Southeast Midland) Manuscript date: ca. 1420 Chaucer wrote his “book of Troilus” about 1381–6; it survives in 16 manuscripts and the same number of fragments; Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, MS 61 is one of the earliest manuscripts. Only two others and an early Caxton print… Continue reading Geoffrey Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde