The York Plays

The authoritative, standard text of this cycle of religious dramas, one of the great literary and theatrical monuments of the late Middle Ages in English. Volume 2 contains the Commentary and Glossary, incorporating the most recent scholarship.

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This is the second volume to complete this definitive scholarly edition of the York Plays. It supersedes this editor's previous edition (of the text only), published in the York Medieval Texts Series in 1982. Volume 2 offers an entirely new, full commentary and glossary to facilitate study of the revised and corrected text (published with the Introduction in volume 1), and incorporating the most recent scholarly views and discoveries. The York Plays, a cycle of religious dramas on Biblical subjects, ranging from the Creation through the life and Passion of Christ, to the Last Judgement, are one of the great literary and theatrical monuments of the later Middle Ages in English. They were financed by merchants and master craftsmen and their guilds, and expressed not only the essential theological land devotional beliefs of their time, but also the wealth, prestige, and economic vitality of medieval York.