The Medieval European Stage, 500–1550. Edited by William Tydeman et al. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Pp. lxii + 720; 49 illustrations. $155.

William Tydeman and the eight associate editors of The Medieval European Stage, 500–1550 announce that their intention is "to provide a comprehensive collection of primary source materials for teachers and students on which their own critical appraisal of theatrical history and dramatic literature may safely be grounded" (p. xxxv). The claim for intended audience may be too modest. Because of its expansive chronological reach ("much of what we think of as the drama of the Middle Ages," Tydeman writes, "is in fact sixteenth-century in provenance" [p. 15]) and especially because of its extraordinarily wide-ranging collection of translated documents whose aim is nothing less than to illustrate early theater history from Byzantium to the Iberian Peninsula, this anthology is not only a teaching tool but also a useful resource for all scholars of premodern drama. This book is useful, too, for the editorial decision to privilege unfamiliar documents over familiar ones and to provide precise details of source and location of all these documents.

Gail McMurray Gibson
Davidson College