This book shows how early drama traditions were transformed, re-used and reformed across time to form new relationships with their audiences. Medieval Afterlives offers insight into how sixteenth-century people understood and adapted performance spaces, stage technologies, characterisation, and popular dramatic tropes.

Introduction – Daisy Black and Katharine Goodland Prolegomena1 ‘Where the peaze is, shee shalbe Queene’: REED and the continuing life of medieval dramatic traditions – Peter H. Greenfield Part I: Transforming space2 The Lathom screen and the Magian plays of the Derby companies – Lawrence Manley 3 Promising a storm: anticipation, spectacle, and the ship in the Digby Mary Magdalene and Shakespeare and Wilkins' Pericles, Prince of Tyre – Daisy Black 4 ‘Ay, these were spectacles to please my soul’: satirising schadenfreude in Thomas Kyd’sThe Spanish Tragedy – Katharine Goodland Part II: Transforming character5 Shakespeare’s priests – Jay Zysk 6 Transforming Saint Dunstan on the Elizabethan stage – Gina M. Di Salvo 7 ‘Fals conjecture’: how costume transformed ‘player’ to ‘disguiser’ in late medieval and Renaissance drama – Katie Normington Part III: Transforming tropes 8 Transforming recognition: The Winter’s Tale, Pericles, and the Elevation of the Host – Matthew J. Smith 9 Under the castle, inside the counting house: shelter and exposure on the deathbed in The Castle of Perseverance and The Jew of Malta – Devin Byker 10 The forest palimpsest in As You Like It and the medieval imaginary – Victoria Bladen Afterword – Theresa Coletti Index

Medieval afterlives examines the ways that traditions of early drama were transformed over time, and the inherent capability of the traditions themselves to transform space, audience, time and belief. The collection is unique in its focus on the dramaturgical and cultural traditions that shaped and were shaped by early English drama until the closing of the theatres in 1642. Framing its argument in terms of traditions, the book moves beyond the biases imposed by period categories, thereby addressing the continuities of early English drama that persisted in the face of cultural and religious change. The essays collected here demonstrate that, alongside textual records, it is also crucial to look at other physical traces of past theatre traditions, including evidence of embodied memory, non-literary sources and the acknowledgement of audience memory. In so doing, the book seeks to refine and deepen our understanding of the richness of early English drama: its copiousness, versatility and playfulness.