1. As you are reading, remember that these are texts of plays meant to be performed not read. Try to imagine the sorts of voices (serious, funny, dumb, scholarly, pious, impious, etc.) the actors should use. Try to visualize the gestures and props and scenery these plays call for or imply. Be on the look out for the comic elements of these plays. Don’t assume that all of the characters are meant to be taken seriously!

If you are having a hard time imagining that people ever found it easy to understand the poetry of these plays, think of rap music. It’s all a matter of what you are accustomed to.

If you are having trouble "getting into" this reading, start with a short play first. If possible, start with a play about a Biblical story with which you are already familiar, so you’ll know what it is about and can appreciate the ways the story has been adapted.

2. Look (on the back of this page) at the list of guilds responsible for mounting the cycle plays in York, Chester, and Towneley. Note the range of professions represented. What does this suggest about the plays, their subject matter, their appeal, their audience?

Note: The director of a modern production has said that when he cast his production, he set out to "find beer actors, not champagne actors" (Richard Eyre, quoted in The Mysteries: Creation. Eds. Nicholas Rudall and Bernard Sahlins, 4).

3. Notice how working class people make their way into these plays. How does this re-shape the Biblical stories?

4. There are two ways we should think of these plays: first, as religious events, second, as popular entertainment. Apparently these two aspects of the plays were not incompatible. What does that suggest about medieval culture and about the plays?

5. What religious points do these plays wish to make? (about God, about humans, about death, about evil, about daily life, etc.) What seem to be the key issues facing medieval Christians?

6. Would the act of performing or watching these plays have been "sacred"?

7. The cycle plays were civic events, sponsored by the guilds rather than by the Church (though the clergy may well have been enlisted as playwrights and were no doubt present at the performances). Two questions:

Do the cycle plays re-enforce or challenge the authority of the Church? (Why would the Church have allowed these plays to continue? After all, the Church could have pronounced them heretical and shut them down, but it didn’t.)

In what ways do these plays support the secular authority of city officials and the guilds? Do you see anything in the plays that undercuts the prestige or credibility of secular authorities? (Why would civic authorities support the annual production of these plays? What was in it for them?)

8. What types of people and what groups come in for ridicule in these plays? What attitudes about women do we see in these plays?

9. Why do we study the literature of such a long-past age? What does it have to say to us? What does it say about us that we pay attention to such stuff?

10. Here in 21^st-century America, do we have any art/literature/entertainment comparable to these plays?