Welcome to SPACE, our adult continuing education program which offers interactive monthly courses for personal enrichment! Learn more here.

December 2024  Candidate  Standard Module
Discussion-based • Low intensity
Late medieval English drama brought episodes from The Bible to life in days-long festivals of pomp and pageantry—but what these plays really show us is the day-to-day lives of ordinary men and women of the Middle Ages. With a mixture of lavish spectacle, slapstick comedy, and intimate poignancy, these plays populate the biblical world with familiar figures of the medieval city-life: shrewd workmen and cunning criminals; disgruntled wives and worried husbands; the friends, family, and neighbors of the playwrights and performers.

This course looks at a sampling of plays from the great civic drama cycles of York, Chester, Coventry, and elsewhere, including Noah’s Flood, The Second Shepherd’s Play, Herod’s Slaughter of the Innocents, The Crucifixion, The Harrowing of Hell, and The Last Judgement. The works presented here offer both a grand history of the world from Creation to Doomsday, and locally-rooted, vernacular versions of a text then otherwise available only in Latin. Knowledge of Middle English is not required since this course will use the modern-spelling edition by Prof. A. C. Cawley. Scholarly online Middle English versions, however, will also be made available for students wishing to practice their skills in that area.

Required Texts

Everyman and Medieval Miracle Plays ed. A. C. Cawley (Everyman Library edition)

This is a candidate for December 2024 which means it will only run if there is enough interest. Token holders can vote on candidate modules.

Log in or Sign up to VOTE!
Check out Current and Upcoming offerings from:

Days and Times

Meeting Mondays & Wednesdays at 6:00 PM Eastern for six 80-minute sessions on December 2, 4, 9, 11, 16, 18

Signum Time
US/Eastern
Your Time
unknown
Mon, Dec 2
6:00 PM
Wed, Dec 4
6:00 PM
Mon, Dec 9
6:00 PM
Wed, Dec 11
6:00 PM
Mon, Dec 16
6:00 PM
Wed, Dec 18
6:00 PM
If you have any questions about the SPACE program, please reach out to [email protected].