Meg Twycross Research Articles

The Best Pairt of Our Play. Essays Presented to John J. McGavin. Part Two ed. by Sarah Carpenter et al.

Reviewed by: The Best Pairt of Our Play. Essays Presented to John J. McGavin. Part Two ed. by Sarah Carpenter et al. Eleanor Bloomfield Carpenter, Sarah, Pamela M. King, Meg Twycross, and Greg Walker, eds, The Best Pairt of Our Play. Essays Presented to John J. McGavin. Part Two (Medieval English Theatre, 38), Cambridge, D. S. Brewer, 2017; paperback; pp. 183; R.R.P. £25.00; ISBN 9781843844518. Lively and engaging, this collection of essays is the second half of an affectionate tribute to John McGavin, presented at the 2015 Medieval English Theatre Meeting (METh) in Southampton. Written by McGavin’s friends, colleagues, and former students, the essays ‘celebrat[e] the breadth and influence of John’s interests’ (p. 1). Each essay is in its own right a valued contribution to the field of medieval drama. But the high esteem in which McGavin is clearly held within that field, and the sense of the close METh community which binds the individual essays, are infectious. The reader is immediately drawn in, making the volume a delight to read. The various papers (eleven in total and including the late David Mills’s last article) are loosely linked by being generally concerned with issues of performance, ceremonial and spectatorship. The first two—by Eila Williamson and Alice Hunt—also have a decidedly Scottish flavour, referencing McGavin’s long interest and expertise in the field of Scottish medieval and early modern drama. Williamson’s is an analysis of the funeral of Walter Scott, Earl of Buccleuch, seeking ‘insight into what the onlookers would have seen and what message the participants in the procession, or “actors”, intended to communicate through their performance’ (p. 3). Hunt explores the coronation of James VI of Scotland (later James I of England), focusing on the ‘coronation ritual [as] a complex, and necessary, act of representation—in short, a valuable kind of theatre’ (p. 24). From Scotland, the focus shifts to Wales. Sue Niebrzydowski ‘examines the cultural appropriation and adaptation of Chaucer’s version of Troilus and Creseyde […] in an anonymous, late sixteenth-century, Welsh-language play, Troelus a Chresyd’ (p. 38). She convincingly argues that ‘the very existence of this play is testimony to a continued interest in medieval English literature, and to dramatic performance in early modern Wales’ (p. 39). David N. Klausner explores with wit and vigour the Abergavenny Crucifixion play, which greatly upset the fourteenth-century Bishop of Hereford. But, as Klausner points out, it ‘suggest[s] that plays in some form were a significant part of the life of Abergavenny, its parish and its priory’ (p. 66). Of the remaining essays, two prove—for this reviewer at least—particularly fecund: Elisabeth Dutton’s on the St John’s College Narcissus, and Pamela King’s on the soundscape of medieval outdoor performance. Dutton compares the little-known Narcissus play with Filippo Lippi’s 1442 Annunciation painting—a slightly unusual approach, but one which leads into a rewarding ‘study of staging, of spectatorship, and indeed of staging spectatorship’ (p. 68). King considers the importance of sound of all kinds—‘vocal art, audience noise, and the “political in produced noise”’(p. 131)—to medieval performance, suggesting in conclusion that ‘a consideration of the materiality of early dramatic performance could fruitfully [End Page 201] re-orientate itself away from its near transfixion with visual effects and turn up the sound’ (p. 141). Also of interest for its unusual subject matter is Clare Egan’s ‘tackl[ing of] an unexpected form of performance, the publication of libels, using the rich but underexplored resource of reports of Star Chamber cases from Devon’ (p. 1). Contributions from Charlotte Steenbrugge (on audience address in medieval sermons and morality plays and the differences between the two genres), Nadia Thérèse van Pelt (on spectatorship, metatheatricality, and cognitive theory), Mishtooni Bose (on the medieval ‘drama of performed thought’ (p. 125)), and David Mills (on the 1550 play Abraham sacrifiant) round out a volume that is a forceful and thought-provoking meeting of complementary minds. Eleanor Bloomfield University of Auckland Copyright © 2018 Eleanor Bloomfield

A History of ‘The Mysteries’

<p>This study explores the history of the term ‘mystery’ in its theatrical sense. Victorian scholar (and forger) J.P. Collier was the first to question the term’s legitimacy, accusing the eighteenth-century publisher Robert Dodsley of having invented it. Collier’s condemnation has held sway ever since; ‘mystery’ is nearly bankrupt in the field of early English drama studies. I reconsider the authenticity, utility, etymology, and history of ‘mystery’, fact-checking the arguments made for and against it by Collier, E.K. Chambers, J.M. Salter, and Meg Twycross (amongst others) to show that reports of the term’s illegitimacy have been greatly exaggerated.</p><p> </p>

The Early English Passion Play

This discussion challenges the common understanding that biblical drama in England was dominated by ‘mystery plays’, narrowly understood to be cycles of short pageants, by drawing attention to the evidence for large-scale Passion Plays comparable with those better known from France and Burgundy. In so doing, it makes no apology for standing on the shoulders of Peter Meredith's work on the N-Town manuscript, and with John Tailby on the texts and documents illustrating the variety of staging of religious drama across Europe, as well as Meg Twycross's work on devisor Felsted of London, all of which demonstrate that this material has been available in the public domain for some years. Just as the N-Town Plays were still believed in some quarters to come from Coventry as late as the mid-twentieth century, although Francis Douce knew they did not almost 150 years earlier, so too the domination of modern understandings about English mystery plays has remained wedded to the model of four ‘cycles’ promulgated in the 1970s, despite the accumulation of evidence to the contrary. Peter Meredith's edition of The ‘Passion Play’ from the N. Town Manuscript is now all but unobtainable, and the volumes of Records of Early English Drama are the chosen bedtime reading of few, so here we revisit some texts and records to explore afresh one aspect of an already shifted paradigm.

<i>The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre</i> (review)

Reviewed by: The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre Claire Sponsler The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre. Edited by Richard Beadle and Alan J. Fletcher. 2d ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Pp. xxii + 400; 38 illustrations. $90 (cloth); $29.99 (paper). A glance at the Index to the second edition of The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatrehighlights some of the changes that have taken place in the field of early English drama studies since 1994, the year in which the original edition was published. Newly added entries covering such topics as animals in plays, audience, Boy Bishop, church ales, Clerkenwell, Lord of Misrule, suppression and decay of plays, transvestism, traveling companies, and Yiimimimangaliso—The Mysteries, chart a broadened field that includes more paratheatrical material, a wider geographic scope, and new areas of scholarly inquiry. These changes extend to other parts of the volume as well. The revised edition still contains twelve chapters, but there is an additional editor (Alan Fletcher, joining Richard Beadle), three new authors, one topic dropped and another added, several changed titles that reflect currently preferred terminology in the field, and updated and expanded discussions and bibliographies. Fresh content is provided for the introduction; a chapter on the Cornish drama has disappeared, replaced by one on "The Cultural Work of Early Drama"; and chapters on "The York Cycle," "The Towneley Cycle," and "Saints' Plays" are now renamed "The York Corpus Christi Play," "The Towneley Pageants," and "Saints and Miracles." The volume also includes a number of new illustrations, especially of modern productions, and a map of East Anglia showing places mentioned in the text. The bibliography and notes to individual chapters have been brought up-to-date, while new subheadings have been added throughout for easier reading. These deletions, additions, and expansions mirror recent work on medieval English theatre. The scholarly activity of the past decade and a half has led to a rethinking of the kinds of performances the extant dramatic texts represent (hence the change from "The Towneley Cycle" to "The Towneley Pageants"), has pushed beyond the well-known scripts of the Biblical plays to embrace texts that today look non-dramatic but may well have been performed, and has discovered performances for which no play-texts survive. At the same time, inquiry has shifted away from the two critical modes that dominated medieval drama studies in the 1990s—archival research and modern reenactments—and toward cultural studies approaches that are attuned to the complex relations linking past and present. Like its predecessor, this revised edition presents itself as a standard guide to [End Page 234]the field of English drama from the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries. Its chapters cover the major kinds of plays in the period—especially Biblical cycles and pageants, moralities, and saints' plays—while providing an introduction to key interpretive issues, extensive discussion of modern performances or medieval plays, and a guide to criticism. As we might expect from a volume that envisions itself as an authoritative handbook of the field, there is little that's cutting edge in this revised edition, but the material has been updated and accurately reflects current scholarship. Thus the wealth of new material that has been discovered about early theatrical conditions is for the most part adequately represented in this revised volume. The reediting of many texts of early English plays, work that has yielded important bibliographic information about the textual corpus, is frequently noted. Also making an appearance are results from the archival evidence that continues to be published (particularly under the auspices of the Records of Early English Drama [REED] project) and interpreted, as well as findings about original performance occasions that have been gleaned from modern revivals of early plays. To accommodate this fresh material, individual chapters from the first edition have been revised, some more extensively than others. These include "The Theatricality of Medieval English Plays" (Meg Twycross), "The York Corpus Christi Play" (Richard Beadle), "The Chester Cycle" (David Mills), "The Towneley Pageants" (Peter Meredith), "The N-Town Plays" (Alan Fletcher), "The Non-Cycle Plays and the East Anglian Tradition" (John Coldewey), "Morality Plays" (Pamela King), "Saints and Miracles" (Darryll Grantley), and "A Guide to Criticism...

Masks and Masking in Medieval and Early Tudor England. Meg Twycross , Sarah Carpenter

<i>Masks and Masking in Medieval and Early Tudor England</i>. Meg Twycross , Sarah Carpenter

Meg Twycross and Sarah Carpenter, Masks and Masking in Medieval and Early Tudor England

Meg Twycross and Sarah Carpenter, Masks and Masking in Medieval and Early Tudor England

London Civic Theatre: City Drama and Pageantry from Roman Times to 1558 , and: Masks and Masking in Medieval and Early Tudor England (review)

Anne Lancashire. London Civic Theatre: City Drama and Pageantry from Roman Times 1558. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Pp. xix + 355. $65.00. Meg Twycross and Sarah Carpenter. Masks and Masking in Medieval and Early Tudor England. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2002. Pp. [x] + 418. 47.50 [pounds sterling]. The two books under review represent important contributions the study of early English drama. Each is firmly based on the evidence of records of early performance, and neither engages in theoretical flights of fancy. Speculation, which is sometimes necessary, is always linked possible options rather than preconceived constructs. As Meg Twycross and Sarah Carpenter remark in relation their study, to adopt any single theoretical approach is run the risk of imposing rather than elucidating meaning (3). Anne Lancashire's survey of the civic theater in London begins with the Roman period, which has received interest recently following the find in 1987-88 of a Roman amphitheater in the city's center--indeed, underneath the yard of the Guildhall. Following the removal of the Roman legions from Britain in A.D. 410, there is circumstantial evidence that in London theatrical activity, broadly defined, continued. With the coming of the Anglo-Saxons, perhaps some of it might have been related the types of performers described in Terry Gunnell's The Origins of Scandinavian Drama (1995). After c.980 monasteries had the option of presenting rudimentary liturgical drama like the Visitatio Sepulchri included in the Regularis Concordia. Then, in the twelfth century, William FitzStephen's Description of London boasts that, in comparison with the drama of Roman times, the City was famed for holier plays, wherein are shown forth the miracles wrought by Holy Confessors or the sufferings which glorified the constancy of Martyrs (31). Dated c. 1170-82, FitzStephen's comments indicate already a tradition of saint plays, a genre that again would emerge most visibly in the St. Thomas Becket pageant borrowed by the Skinners' guild in 1519 from the parish of St. Giles for the City's Midsummer festivities. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, antitheatrical complaints in ecclesiastical and civic documents emerged, specifically in opposition inhonesti ludi in churchyards and the participation of clergy in or their presence at plays, and then against masking, especially during Christmas festivities. These of course do not suggest public rejection of drama but rather the opposite, for they would appear be indicative of widespread dramatic activity even though we do not have playtexts or full descriptions of performances. While the activities of the London puy, though discussed in Lancashire's book, might not be designated as dramatic entertainment, mummings and disguisings were also being presented. She gives the example of a mumming for Prince (later King) Richard in which 130 mummers in costume, some of them wearing black masks [visers nayrs] like devils (42), passed through the London streets a meeting with the young nobleman, who was allowed win at dice. More generous information is available about the sumptuous entries with which London formally greeted their kings and queens as well as high-ranking visiting dignitaries. These entries included adornment with amazing devices as early as 1207 and 1236 (44). At the entry of Edward II in 1308, London, with its hangings of gold, was intended resemble the New Jerusalem (44). The routes used for royal and other entries through the City are usefully listed in appendix A. But the most spectacular of the civic dramas may well have been the Clerkenwell plays, organized by the clerks of the City and performed during the summer over a three- five-day period. These included a play of the Passion of our Lord and Creation of the World as designated in 1390 when King Richard II and his queen Anne of Bohemia were in attendance (55). …

Meg Twycross and Sarah Carpenter. Masks and Masking in Medieval and Early Tudor England. (Studies in Performance and Early Modern Drama.) Aldershot and Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2002. x + 418 pp. index. illus. bibl. $84.95. ISBN: 0-7546-0230-3.

Meg Twycross and Sarah Carpenter. Masks and Masking in Medieval and Early Tudor England. (Studies in Performance and Early Modern Drama.) Aldershot and Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2002. x + 418 pp. index. illus. bibl. $84.95. ISBN: 0-7546-0230-3.

The "Garbage Heap" of Memory: At Play in Pope's Archives of Dulness

This article is a regular feature of Fifteenth-Century Studies. Our intent is to catalogue, survey, and assess scholarship on the staging and textual configuration of dramatic presentations in the late Middle Ages. Like all such dated material, this assessment remains incomplete. We shall therefore include 2007 again in the next listing. Our readers are encouraged to bring new items to our attention, including their own work. Monographs and collections selected for detailed review will appear in the third section of this article and will be marked by an asterisk in the pages below. On late-medieval in general we report that the periodical European Medieval Drama* in its seventh, eighth, and ninth volumes, highlights the thespian activities of many countries. Also, on a more theoretic note, an article in Comparative Drama and a monograph are devoted to the origins of theater. Steven F. Walker probes India and Greece before Christ and muses whether staging was a global phenomenon then, where actors performed scenic events in ritual or entertainment, watched by (passive) spectators. The monograph of Eli Rozik rethinks similar origins, where fictional human beings were imprinted upon real persons, a process beginning in rituals. Spontaneous image-making exploited the actors' mimetic faculties - in Rozik's book Roots of Theater. While Donnalee Dox studies the in Latin Christian times, beginning with Augustine's, Isidore of Seville's, and Rabanus Maurus's objections against the stage, she also considers attempts reworking pagan into Christian drama. William Egginton tells us how the world became a stage. In another articleJody Enders reviews rape and the violent foundations of medieval theater, and Kim Solga reports (on the same topic) that rapes are rarely seen on the stage but told (epically) by a person, at a safe distance. As for English stages, eight monographs were devoted to general aspects. Pamela A. Brown wrote on women, drama, and the culture of jest, and found that mostly lower-class women submitted to drunken husbands but gained a social validity within their communities. Alehouses became theater stages for dramas of sexuality, commerce, and violence. Sarah Carpenter and Meg Twycross viewed masks and masking, while Clifford Davidson pondered the subjects of history, religion, and violence on the stage in a collection of his past articles, showing several genres of English plays in their cultural settings. Peter Happe investigated the cyclic form of mystery plays, comparing them to continental and iconic counterparts - but holding new research in abeyance. His bibliography focused mostly on English scholarship. Furthermore, volume two of Minstrels Playing (Music) was brought out by Richard Rastall; critics discovered serious shortcomings in both volumes. John Elliott et al. brought out the Oxford Records of Early English Drama, the seventeenth volume of the Records series, covering 360 years from 1284 to 1642/43, while Peter Holland and Stephen Orgel studied From Script to Stage in early modern drama (methodology). Gender and Medieval Drama was probed by Kate Normington: women's roles in Corpus Christi plays were held by cross-dressed males, except for those of vulgar parts, i.e., the Chester ale wife and Mrs. Noah. Signifying Godby Sarah Beckwith viewed medieval York stagings (Corpus Christi plays) and their contemporary revival, complete with communal struggles and problems. In the Middle Ages, these festivities did not unify the citizens, she emphasized; and chief divisions between the merchants and the manufacturing guilds persisted, as did the tension between performers and ruling elites. However, sacramental thus made present the absence of Christ's body. Natalie Crohn Schmitt pondered numerology in York's creation sequence, with the first numerologist being God. She discussed the number five as structural symbol (to be compared, perhaps, to that number in the Old French Lfe fSt. …

Festive Drama: Papers from the Sixth Triennial Colloquium of the International Society for the Study of Medieval Theatre, Lancaster, 13-19 July, 1989

Some approaches to dramatic festivity, especially processions, Meg Twycross Households and fraternities: festive drama at Christmas in aristocratic households, Peter H. Greenfield Christmas at the inns of court, Olga Horner rituals of exclusion - feasts and plays of the English religious fraternities, Sheila Lindenbaum festive profit and ideological production - Le Jeu de Saint Nicolas, Claire Sponsler. Religious processions and plays: Palm Sunday prophets, Mary Erler masks in the medieval penninsula theatre, Ronald E. Surtz Holy Week performances of the passion in Spain - connections with medieval European drama, Rafael Portillo and Manuel J. Gomez Lara the festa d'elx - civic devotion, display and identity, Pamela M. King The Auto Da Fe as medival drama. Secular processions and shows: forms and their uses - the Antwerp Ommegangen 1550-1700, John Cartwright Chester's Midsummer show - creation and adaption The Wells show of 1607, James Stokes. Shrovetide and carnival - farce and fastnachtspeil: the bishop of fools and his feasts in Lille, Alan E. Knight battles and bottles - Shrovetide performances in the low countries c1350-c1550, Marjoke de Roos why a peasant is taught how to shoot: - rhetoricians, militiamen and a late medieval Dutch farce, Femke Kramer mankind - and English Fastnachtspeil?, Tom Pettitt two carnival plays from late-medieval Denmark, Leif Sondergaard analyzing French farce and Dutch pre-Renaissance comic drama Wim Husken Fastnachtspeil et recit bref - L'Interference de deux genres litteraires en Allemagne aux 15e et 16e siecles, Jean-Marc Pastre. Folk customs and characters: Hocktide - a reasessment of a popular pre-reformation drama, Sally-Beth MacLean Slawpase from the Myln-Whele - seeing between the lines, Malcolm Jones the medieval English and French Shepherd's plays, Christine Richardson The old Czech apothecary as clown and symbol, Jarmilla F. Veltrusky. Epilogue: carnival's end - puritan ideology and the decline of English provincial theatre, John Coldewey.

REVIEWS

Journal Article REVIEWS Get access MEG TWYCROSS (ed) Festive Drama Papers from the Sixth Triennial Colloquium of the International Society for the Study of Medieval Theatre, Lancaster, 13–19 July, 1989 Pp viii+286Cambridge D S Brewer, 1996 £35 LEEDS BARROLL. (ed) Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England Vol 8 Pp 286Madison and Teaneck, NJ Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, London Associated University Presses, 1996 £55 KARL TAMBURR KARL TAMBURR Sweet Briar College Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Review of English Studies, Volume 49, Issue 193, February 1998, Pages 78–80, https://doi.org/10.1093/res/49.193.78 Published: 01 February 1998

Meg Twycross, ed., Festive Drama. Papers from the Sixth Triennial Colloquium of the International Society for the Study of Medieval Theatre, Lancaster, 13-19 July, 1989. Woodbridge, Suffolk; and Rochester, N.Y.: Boydell and Brewer, 1996. Pp. viii, 286; 5 black-and-white figures. $63.

Meg Twycross, ed., Festive Drama. Papers from the Sixth Triennial Colloquium of the International Society for the Study of Medieval Theatre, Lancaster, 13-19 July, 1989. Woodbridge, Suffolk; and Rochester, N.Y.: Boydell and Brewer, 1996. Pp. viii, 286; 5 black-and-white figures. $63.

Festive Drama. Edited by Meg Twycross. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1996. Pp. viii + 286. £35

Festive Drama. Edited by Meg Twycross. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1996. Pp. viii + 286. £35

Clifford Davidson and John H. Stroupe, eds., Iconographic and Comparative Studies in Medieval Drama. Introduction by Meg Twycross. Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University, 1991. Paper. Pp. iii, 118; 14 black-and-white plates. $10.95.

Clifford Davidson and John H. Stroupe, eds., Iconographic and Comparative Studies in Medieval Drama. Introduction by Meg Twycross. Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University, 1991. Paper. Pp. iii, 118; 14 black-and-white plates. $10.95.

Beadle, R. and King, P. M. (eds), &lt;italic&gt;York Mystery Plays: a Selection in Modern Spelling&lt;/italic&gt;. Pp. xxxiv + 279. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984. Hardbound £17.50; paperbound £5.95

Journal Article Beadle, R. and King, P. M. (eds), York Mystery Plays: a Selection in Modern Spelling. Pp. xxxiv + 279. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984. Hardbound £17.50; paperbound £5.95 Get access Meg Twycross Meg Twycross University of Lancaster Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Notes and Queries, Volume 33, Issue 3, September 1986, Pages 404–405, https://doi.org/10.1093/notesj/33.3.404 Published: 01 September 1986