The Wakefield or Towneley Mystery Plays are a series of thirty-two mystery plays based on the Bible most likely performed around the Feast of Corpus Christi probably in the town of Wakefield, England during the Late Middle Ages until 1576. It is one of only four surviving English mystery play cycles. Some scholars argue that the Wakefield cycle is not a cycle at all, but a mid-sixteenth-century compilation, formed by a scribe bringing together three separate groups of plays.[1]
The unique manuscript, now housed at the Huntington Library, San Marino, California, originated in the mid-fifteenth century. The Towneley family who lent their name to the manuscript, sold it at an auction in 1814, but it was probably part of their library at a much earlier date.[2] Although almost the entire manuscript is in a fifteenth-century hand, the cycle was performed as early as the fourteenth century in an earlier form.
The Wakefield Cycle is most renowned for the inclusion of The Second Shepherds' Play, one of the jewels of medieval theatre. It also contains The Talents, a macaronic poem in Middle English and Latin.
Theatre Royal Wakefield (formerly Wakefield Theatre Royal & Opera House) produced a modern-day version of the plays in Wakefield Cathedral with a young community cast from 11–20 August 2016.[citation needed]
^Janette Dillon (2006). The Cambridge Introduction to Early English Theatre.
^Theresa Coletti and Gail McNurray Gibson (2010). "Chapter 14: The Tudor Origins of Mediaeval Drama". In Kent Cartwright (ed.). A Companion to Tudor Literature. Wiley-Blackwell. doi:10.1002/9781444317213.ch14. ISBN 9781405154772.
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