Early English Drama

An Anthology

John C. Coldewey, John C. Coldewey

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781135778897
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

This collection of plays from late-medieval England includes a rich selection of noncycle plays and morality plays along with some of the better-known pageants from the cycle plays and some theatrical fragments never before anthologized. These plays and fragments illustrate the most widespread early theatrical practices in England and represent drama that fed directly into the Elizabethan theatrical experience.

The Digby Mary Magdalene

The text of the Digby Mary Magdalene survives in Oxford at the Bodleian Library, in fols. 95^r–145^r of MS. Digby 133, the manuscript compilation briefly described in the introduction to the Digby Conversion of St. Paul. Like the Conversion, this play also bears the initials of Myles Blomefylde, its earliest known owner, on its first leaf (95^r). The handwriting of Mary Magdalene and other manuscript evidence point to the Digby copy being made around 1515–1525, although its language indicates a date of composition somewhat before then, probably late in the fifteenth century. The dialect suggests an East Anglian origin, perhaps in Norfolk. Myles Blomefylde’s ownership of the play introduces the real possibility that its theatrical career extended into Chelmsford, Essex, during the third quarter of the sixteenth century. Further particulars regarding the provenance of the Digby manuscript and its implications for the stage history of the Digby plays are discussed in the introduction to the Digby Conversion of St. Paul.

It is no exaggeration to say that the Digby Mary Magdalene is the most extravagant play in the whole of early English drama. Over 2100 lines long—almost twice as long any other non-cycle play except The Castle of Perseverance—it dramatizes the life and times of Mary Magdalene as described in The G...