English Mystery Plays

The English mystery plays of the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries depicted short biblical or apocryphal episodes of Christianity’s salvation history. For generations, scholars believed that the standard format for the mysteries was the all-day (or multi-day) “cycle” of performances, produced by local craft guilds, on moving, one- or two-story “pageant wagons” at different stations throughout a city. The spectacle of wagons rumbling down narrow cobblestone streets, with actors embodying angels, demons, and members of the Trinity, would have captivated the town’s inhabitants. Many scholars rightly hold these performances as parts of the “popular culture” of the late-medieval city. While this conception of the mystery plays in performance likely remains accurate for the plays that survive from the northern cities of York and Chester, we now know it does not represent the majority of the plays that survive from this period. It may, in fact, have been the exception, rather than the norm. Some of the surviving texts that follow cyclical form may have been assembled for private reading and devotion, or even for governmental oversight of popular expressions of devotion. Our uncertainties about these plays’ creation and how audiences experienced them extends to the use of the term “mystery” itself. Scholars disagree on the term’s origins as well as its appropriateness for the texts that survive. “Mystery” may have come to us through one of several Old French or Middle English terms and may derive from the Latin mysterium (rite, worship) or from ministerium (occupation). Many scholars avoid the word mystery altogether and prefer “biblical,” “miracle,” “craft,” or “civic” in its place. Some of the sources in the General Overviews section take up this debate directly, and readers will see many of these variations in the following citations. However, since none of them serves as a one-size-fits-all label for the texts under discussion, these annotations alternate their use as deemed appropriate. This bibliography’s multiple sections attempt to provide the reader with a sense of the major scholarly conversations surrounding these texts. After a series of General Overviews about the subject, the reader will find sections on each of the main play collections, generally known as the York Cycle, the Towneley Plays, the N-Town Plays, and the Chester Cycle. Subsequent sections focus on particular lines of critical or theoretical inquiry, on the manuscripts themselves, and on how scholars prepare and present these texts for study.