Newest research into drama and performance of the middle ages. Medieval English Theatre is the premier journal in early theatre studies. Its name belies its wide range of interest: it publishes articles on theatre and pageantry from across the British Isles up to the opening of the London playhouses and the suppression of the civic mystery cycles, and also includes contributions on European and Latin drama, together with analyses of modern survivals or equivalents, and of research productions of medieval plays. This volume features essays on stagecraft, performance, and reception across a wide range of theatrical genres. Overlapping themes include a return to the York Corpus Christi Play, the practicalities of pageant waggon construction and maintenance, mechanical stage effects, international influences, East Anglian theatre and "folk" happenings, academic Latin drama, and private gentry festivities. Contributors include Jamie Beckett, Phil Butterworth, Peter Happe, James McBain, Tom Pettitt, James Stokes, and Diana Wyatt.

The economic and political roles of towns in the Nordic late Middle Ages - with Lubeck as the major hub in an extensive network - have long been recognized and studied, be it in histories of nations, the Hanse, or individual towns. In such accounts, however, the regional web of urban culture has not always been given its due. And, as most manifestations of urban culture were anchored in the social and business corporations generally designated as guilds, these provided the natural point of departure for an attempt to appreciate this dynamic segment of northern Europe's cultural history. In this collection, leading specialists in Nordic urban history examine towns from the whole region, as distant and different from one another, such as Tallinn, Bergen, Lubeck, Oslo, and Stockholm, among others. The contributions discuss central and significant topics, including means of communication, social identities, pageantry and feasting, and the religious role of guilds. The book's Introduction locates these studies, individually and collectively, in relation to recent developments in the exploration of a late-medieval field whose potential is increasingly appreciated.