Adam
Adam,the name given to a 12th-cent. Anglo-Norman play (also called the Jeu d'Adam and the Mystère d'Adam) in octosyllabics, surviving in one 13th-cent. manuscript from Tours. There are three scenes: the Fall and expulsion of Adam and Eve from paradise; Cain and Abel; and a Prophets' Play (Ordo Prophetarum). It is generally thought that it was written in England c. 1140 (though Bédier doubted it), and it is regarded as important for the evolution of the medieval mystery plays in England. Although it contains Latin as well as the vernacular, and is enacted with rudimentary staging at the church door, the play is not good evidence for the evolution from liturgical to profane staging, displaying as it does a theatrical sophistication far beyond most of the later mystery plays. There is an English edition, ed. Paul Studer ( 1918 ); see also M. D. Legge , Anglo-Norman Literature and Its Background ( 1963 ),...
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