Saints and heroes were often central characters in Middle English biblical plays, although scholarship has tended to focus more on the villainous than the virtuous. In this study, Chester Scoville examines how medieval playwrights portrayed saints and how they used them to convey feelings of social virtue, devotion, compassion and community in the audience. Although looking also at performance practices, costume, gesture and scenert, the main emphasis is on language and rhetoric in biblical drama and the position of saints lying between the earthly and ultimate community. Four `role models' are jeld up for close examination: Thomas the Doubter, Mary Magdalene, Jospeh and Paul.

Much past criticism of character in Middle English drama has fallen into one of two roughly defined positions: either that early drama was to be valued as an example of burgeoning realism as demonstrated by its villains and rascals, or that it was didactic and stylized, meant primarily to teach doctrine to the faithful. This thesis argues, however, that the primary purpose of Middle English biblical plays was neither of these. This thesis is both an argument for and a demonstration of the proposition that the saints in Middle English biblical plays serve as rhetors whose task is to persuade the audience to see itself as a community of faith. Using concepts from classical and medieval rhetoric, and certain ideas from modern reader-response theory, this thesis explores the methods of characterization and persuasion used in portrayals of Thomas the apostle, Mary Magdalene, Joseph the foster-father of Christ, and Paul the apostle. This series of case studies shows that the authors of the plays, though aware of the morally ambiguous nature of their dramatic and linguistic tools, nonetheless used all the means of persuasion at their disposal to create a compelling, interactive, and affective experience for their audiences, with the purpose of moving the audience to a position of sympathy and communion with the saints and with the god they serve.

The drama of the English Middle Ages is perennially popular with students and theatre audiences alike, and this is an updated edition of a book which has established itself as a standard guide to the field. The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre, second edition continues to provide an authoritative introduction and an up-to-date, illustrated guide to the mystery cycles, morality drama and saints' plays which flourished from the late fourteenth to the mid-sixteenth centuries. The book emphasises regional diversity in the period and engages with the literary and particularly the theatrical values of the plays. Existing chapters have been revised and updated where necessary, and there are three entirely new chapters, including one on the cultural significance of early drama. A thoroughly revised reference section includes a guide to scholarship and criticism, an enlarged classified bibliography and a chronological table.

The thirteen chapters in this collection open up new horizons for the study of biblical drama by putting special emphasis on multitemporality, the intersections of biblical narrative and performance, and the strategies employed by playwrights to rework and adapt the biblical source material in Catholic, Protestant and Jewish culture. Aspects under scrutiny include dramatic traditions, confessional and religious rites, dogmas and debates, conceptualisations of performance, and audience response. The contributors stress the co-presence of biblical and contemporary concerns in the periods under discussion, conceiving of biblical drama as a central participant in the dynamic struggle to both interpret and translate the Bible.

Pathos in Late-Medieval Religious Drama and Art explores the connections between the language of European late-medieval drama and co-temporary themes and motifs in visual communication, focussing on the triggering of emotional reactions in the viewers as a persuasive device.

This collection explores some of the many ways in which sanctity was closely intertwined with the development of literary strategies across a range of writings in late medieval Britain. Rather than looking for clues in religious practices in order to explain such changes, or reading literature for information about sanctity, these essays consider the ways in which sanctity - as concept and as theme - allowed writers to articulate and to develop further their 'craft' in specific ways. While scholars in recent years have turned once more to questions of literary form and technique, the kinds of writings considered in this collection - writings that were immensely popular in their own time - have not attracted the same amount of attention as more secular forms. The collection as a whole offers new insights for scholars interested in form, style, poetics, literary history and aesthetics, by considering sanctity first and foremost as literature

This reprint (with updated 'Suggestions for Further Reading') of the Houghton Mifflin edition makes David Bevington's classic anthology of medieval drama available again at an affordable price.