Description
Book SynopsisMedieval Arras was a thriving town on the frontier between the kingdom of France and the county of Flanders, and home to Europe''s earliest surviving vernacular plays: The Play of St. Nicholas, The Courtly Lad of Arras, The Boy and the Blind Man, The Play of the Bower, and The Play about Robin and about Marion. In A Common Stage, Carol Symes undertakes a cultural archeology of these artifacts, analyzing the processes by which a handful of entertainments were conceived, transmitted, received, and recorded during the thirteenth century. She then places the resulting scripts alongside other documented performances with which plays shared a common space and vocabulary: the crying of news, publication of law, preaching of sermons, telling of stories, celebration of liturgies, and arrangement of civic spectacles. She thereby shows how groups and individuals gained access to various means of publicity, participated in public life, and shaped public
Trade Review
Carol Symes analyzes five of Europe's earliest vernacular plays created in the medieval town of Arras.... She entertains and educates in this most revealing book, making interesting connections between the public sphere and the creation and performance of plays.... Symes seamlessly melds multiple disciplines, utilizing text analysis as well as drawing upon the historical record to create a unique English-language interpretation of the role and meaning of theater in medieval life.
-- Mihaela Luiza Florescu * Comitatus *
