Medieval English Drama and Performance

Abstract

This chapter situates medieval English drama and performance in its European and local context, using the Croxton Play of the Sacrament as a test case. On the one hand, the Croxton play is part and parcel of a wider European tradition of veneration of the body of Christ and eucharistic miracles and, on the other hand, it is deeply engrained in its specific late fifteenth-century East Anglian context. Acknowledging both its European and its local context can therefore better help us understand this particular play and medieval drama and performance more generally.