The York Plays: The Text

The definitive scholarly edition of The York Plays, first published in 1982, and now reissued with significant additional material, revised and updated in two volumes. Volume 1 contains the Introduction and Text, with an appendix containing the musical; Volume 2 (to be published in 2010) will contain the Explanatory Notes and Glossary. The cycle of the York Mystery Plays: the cycle of religious dramas on biblical subjects, ranging from the creation through the life and passion of Jesus Christ to the Last Judgement, is one of the great literary and theatrical monuments of the later Middle Ages in English. The plays were financed by merchants and master craftsmen and their guilds, and they express not only the essential theological and devotional beliefs of the time, but also the wealth, prestige, and economic vitality of the medieval city of York.