Anonymous, N-Town Cycle of the Mystery Plays

Claire Sponsler (University of Iowa)

Ed. by Hugh Magennis, Queen's University Belfast
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.03: English Writing and Culture: Renaissance (Elizabethan and Jacobean periods) , 1485-1625.
Vol. editors: William M. Hamlin (Washington State University), J A Roe (University of York), Virginia Mason Vaughan (Clark University), Ema Vyroubalova (Trinity College Dublin)

Dates

First circulation or publication c. 1450 - c. 1520

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Masque
Morality

Resources

Like the York, Towneley, and Chester cycles, the N-Town plays tell the story of biblical history from Creation to Judgment Day, although N-Town adds some extra elements to that basic pattern. The N-Town plays survive in one manuscript, now in the British Library, which probably dates to the late fifteenth century. The date ‘1468’ written in the hand of the main scribe of the manuscript appears at the end of one play and so provides the earliest possible date for the copying of the manuscript. Scholars once thought that the N-Town plays were from Coventry and so called them the ‘Ludus Coventriae’, but linguistic evidence shows they come from East Anglia. The collection was also given the name ‘the Hegge Plays’ after the …

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

1034 words

Citation: Sponsler, Claire. "N-Town Cycle of the Mystery Plays". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 09 December 2004 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=3373, accessed 19 April 2024.]

Save this article