English Mystery Plays: A Selection

by Peter Happé (Editor)

Humour, pathos and suffering, and the culminating drama of the Crucifixion and Resurrection, give these plays a wonderful immediacy. Their action was conceived on a cosmic scale and all the enthusiasm and vitality of their writing is retained to this day. The energies of whole communities, notably at Chester, York and Wakefield, were devoted to their production and they were to influence later dramatists significantly. The grand design of the mystery plays was to celebrate the Christian story from 'The Fall of Lucifer' to the 'Judgement Day', and this volume contains thirty-eight plays, forming in itself a composite cycle and including almost all the incidents common to the extant cycles.

Genres: Plays, Classics, Drama, Anthologies, Poetry, Medieval, British Literature

724 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 27, 1975

About the author

Dr Peter Happé is a Visiting Fellow in English at the University of Southampton.

His first degree was in English at Queens' College, Cambridge (1955); after a Certificate in Education, he gained an MA in English at Birkbeck College, London, followed by a London PhD. He has taught English at a variety of schools and colleges, and was appointed Principal of Rutland Sixth Form College and then later of Barton Peveril Sixth Form College.

He has been a Tutor and Associate Lecturer of the Open University since 1983, as well as teaching undergraduate courses at the Universities of Cambridge, Southampton, and Tours. He has supervised PhD students at both Southampton and Tours. He was a visiting professor of the University of Tours in 1994, and was later awarded the Medal of Honour of the City of Tours in 2002. In 1995-6 he held a Hartley Fellowship at the University of Southampton, and was then a Research Associate at the Open University between 1996 and 1999.

He has published extensively on medieval and early Renaissance drama.

Reviews

[Yorgos]

[spring cleaning my "currently reading"]
God I read a fucking lot of these. Maybe 2/3. And they're really fun. But once we get to the NT we're just doing TOO MANY heresies, so I had to stop. fucking Happe inconsistent-ass editor. Still it's the best non-scholarly old spelling edition on the market, & it did make me but and read a bunch of these in the EETS

[Simon Mcleish · Rating 3 out of 5]

I felt that this collection of English Mystery Plays fails to be sufficiently detailed for the academic, but too comprehensive for someone who is interested but not an expert. I'd like more of the social background and context, rather less of the texts, especially where there is the full text of more than one play on the same subject.

[Robert Muir · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Mystery Plays cover a lot of the main events of The Bible in an expository way. Beginning with fall of lucifer through the Old Testament to the New Testament and Christ's life, finally ending with the Judgement Day, they were performed on 'carts' outdoors by various guilds of the time. This book is no doubt a real treasure to those interested in the religion and language of the fifteenth century. To others it may require a bit more work. The text is in middle English and one constantly has to resort to the footnotes, the end notes and the glossary for the meaning of a word in about every other sentence. The spelling is printed unchanged from the original and can be challenging to decipher. Eg. 'tyyse' means twice and 'the' means thee. Maybe best for those who like a reading challenge.

[Jeremy · Rating 4 out of 5]

What gifys God the, to rose hym so?
Me gifys he noght bot soro and wo.