Covering a period of nearly 40 years’ work by the author this collection of essays brings the perspective of a Drama academic and practitioner of early English plays to the understanding of how medieval plays and Robin Hood games of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were performed.

Introduction by Philip ButterworthPart I: Dating, staging, and playing the Chester Whitsun Plays1. 'The Chester Whitsun Plays: Dating of post-Reformation performances from the Smiths' accounts', Leeds Studies in English, n.s 9 (1977)2. 'Players of the Coopers' pageant from the Chester Plays in 1572 and 1575', Theatre Notebook, 33 (1979)3. '"The Manner of these Playes": The Chester pageant carriages and the places where they played', Staging the Chester Cycle, ed. by David Mills (Leeds, Leeds Texts and Monographs, 1985)4. 'Nailing the six-wheeled waggon: A sideview', Medieval English Theatre, 12 (1985)5. '"Walking in the air": The Chester shepherds on stilts', According to the Ancient Custom: Essays presented to David Mills, ed. by Philip Butterworth, Pamela M. King and Meg Twycross, Medieval English Theatre, 29 (2009 for 2007)Part II: Who, where, when, and why: Non-cycle and single episode plays in performance6. 'Marginal staging marks in the Macro manuscript of Wisdom', Medieval English Theatre, 7 (1985)7. '"Her virgynes, as many as a man wylle": Dance and provenance in three late medieval plays; Wisdom/The Killing of the Children/The Conversion of St Paul', Leeds Studies in English, n.s. 25 (1994)8. '"Fortune in worldys worschyppe": The satirising of the Suffolks in Wisdom', Medieval English Theatre, 14 (1994 for 1992)9. '"O ye souerens that sytt and ye brothern that stonde right wppe", Addressing the audience of Mankind', in European Medieval Drama, 1 (1997), ed. by Sydney Higgins (Turnhout; Brepols)Part III: Archiving the ephemeral: Contemporary depictions of performance and modern productions of medieval plays10. 'The medieval English stage: A graffito of a hell-mouth.../part contents

‘...rich detail and searching analysis [are] offered by this valuable collection of the essays of a major medieval scholar’ – Stephen Knight, International Association for Robin Hood Studies‘... the insightfulness of the essays here collected is due in no large part to the fact that Marshall has had repeated success as an actor, director, teacher, literary critic, cultural observer, and theater historian... The nineteen essays here collected are a tribute to John Marshall's invaluable contributions to our ever-expanding understanding of early English dramatic performance and make possible future contributions to a variety of fields of cultural and theater studies’ – Kevin J. Harty, Arthuriana (Volume 30, Number 2)