Towneley Plays | Martial Rose (essay date 1961)
Martial Rose (essay date 1961)
SOURCE: An introduction to The Wakefield Mystery Plays, edited by Martial Rose, 1961. Reprint by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1969, pp. 19-55.
[Below, Rose discusses the staging of the Wakefield plays, elaborating on his theory of the use of a circular set and the combined staging of several of the plays.]
THE STAGING OF THE WAKEFIELD PLAYS
The reference concerning the suppression of the Wakefield Plays in the records of the Diocesan Court of High Commission at York is one of the very few pieces of external evidence that Wakefield possessed a cycle of mystery plays. The document tells us that the plays were planned for 'Whitsonweke…or thereaboutes', that the bailiff and burgesses of Wakefield were responsible for their organization, and that in the plays, …as, for instance, in John the Baptist and The Resurrection, certain references were made to the sacraments which were...
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