Shepherds and Prophets: Religious Unity in the Towneley Secunda Pastorum

Abstract

The high dramatic quality of the Secunda Pastorum raises a recurrent interpretive question: does the play function as a unified religious statement in a traditional craft cycle, or does it function primarily as a secular farce with a Nativity scene added? Critics of this supremely sophisticated medieval play have moved from the early view that the long secular prologue was unrelated to, and detracted from, the Christ Nativity, to the more recent opinion that the stage business involving Mak is an artful parody of the true Nativity and is structurally adapted to the religious end for which the play was designed.