The N-Town Plays

The manuscript contains components of an independent Mary Play, parts one and two of an independent Passion Play and an independent Assumption of Mary Play, as well as ten play subjects that appear in no other English cycles.

Unlike many famous medieval English drama cycles such as the York and Chester Plays, the late fifteenth-century N-Town Plays are neither associated with a specific town nor offer any concrete information about who compiled them, where, why, or for whom. They instead owe their name to an introductory template intended for announcing future performances on “a Sunday next… / At six of the belle…/ In N. town.” Although these biblical plays were likely never performed as a complete sequence from Creation to Doomsday, substantial textual evidence indicates that individual plays were performed apart from the rest of the compilation. The present edition highlights not only the N-Town Plays’ value for studying regional collaboration in drama production across East Anglia, but also their uniqueness within medieval English drama as an evolving, eclectic compilation integrating outside plays into an existing play cycle, particularly material dedicated to the Virgin Mary.