'Bring furth the pagants':
Essays in Early English Drama presented to Alexandra F. Johnston.
Edited by David N. Klausner and Karen Sawyer Marsalek. Toronto: Toronto
University Press, 2007. Pp. vi + 330; 12 illustrations. $60.
The Corpus Christi cycle in England does not exist, except in York, and
the innyard was not the performance location of choice for any known troupe
of travelling medieval or early modern players. this volume, presented to
the founder of the Records of Early English Drama (hereinafter REED) project,
Alexandra F. Johnston, offers multifarious commentary on the shifted landscape
of early English drama, much of it occasioned by that project. It is thus
locally diverting for the specialist in the field, but also required reading
as a whole for the non-specialist who has not followed the cumulative implications
of the REED project closely. Like many Festschriften, the volume has some
unevenness in the scope, scale, and ambition of individual contributions.
Like the REED volumes too, the whole, as a demonstration of new orders of
evidence for the study of early drama, is greater than the parts.
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