Full Description
First published in 1993. Part of a series on medieval casebooks, this volume six looks at the Chester Mystery Cycle Play manuscripts and comparisons of the York and Chester Cycle. Theologically a product of the Middle Ages, historically a product of the Renaissance, what we today call the Chester Mystery Cycle is a series of twenty-four plays dramatizing the events of salvation history from Creation until Doomsday. One of four surviving English mystery cycles, the Chester Cycle, which originally included a twenty-fifth play of the Assumption surpressed sometime in the mid-sixteenth century, was, until more modern times, last performed in 1575.
Contents
Introduction 1. Theories and Practices in the Editing of the Chester Cycle Play-manuscripts. 2. The York Cycle and the Chester Cycle. What Do the Records Tell Us? 3. The Chester Cycle. 4. Divine Power in Chester Cycle and Late Medieval Thought. 5. The Unity and Structure of The Chester Mystery Cycle. 6. The Principle of Selection of the Chester Old Testament Plays. 7. Cain and Abel in the Chester Creation: Narrative Tradition and Dramatic Potential. 8. The Two Versions of Chester Play V: Balaam and Balak. 9. The Composition of the Chester Adoration of the Shepherds. 10. The Dramatic Strategies of Chester's Passion Pagina. 11. Comedy and Theme in the Chester Harrowing of Hell 12. Nowe ys common this daye: Enoch and Elias, Antichrist, and the Structure of the Chester Cycle. 13. The Staging of the Chester Cycle: An Alternate Theory. 14. The Scheduling of the Chester Cycle Plays. 15. The Chester Mystery Cycle: A Comprehensive Bibliography.
