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"This is an edition of the six complete pageants which together form the major part of the Wakefield Group in the Towneley cycle. Although they were probably written by the same playwright and are certainly among the best pageants written for the religious stage in medieval England, they have not been edited before as a group. Two, Magnus Herodes and the Coliphizacio, have not been reprinted since 1897, except by the Early English Text Society in its reprints of the Towneley Plays which it first published in that year. Furthermore, every edition of a Towneley pageant published since 1897 has been based on the EETS text, without reference to the manuscript itself which is in the Huntington Library, San Marino, California. The text of the edition presented here is newly transcribed from photographs of the manuscripts, and this transcription has resulted in several improved readings. This is the first book in the Series of Old and Middle English Texts under
The Wakefield or Towneley Mystery Plays are a series of thirty-two mystery plays based on the Bible most likely performed around Corpus Christi day in (again, most likely) the town of Wakefield, England during the late Middle Ages until 1576. It is one of only four surviving English mystery play cycles.The unique manuscript, now housed at the Huntington Library, San Marino, California, originated in the mid-fifteenth century. The manuscript came into the possession of the Towneley family in 1814, who lent their name it. 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.
The Towneley plays are a collection of biblical plays in the Huntington Library's MS HM 1, a manuscript once owned by the Towneley family of Towneley Hall, Lancashire. Once thought to constitute a cycle of plays from the town of Wakefield in Yorkshire's West Riding, the collection includes some of the best-known examples of medieval English drama, including the much-anthologized Second Shepherds Play.