An important re-theorisation of medieval gender and anti-Semitism, centring biblical drama as a source of evidence for lay attitudes towards scriptural time. Interrogating the Christian preoccupation with a superseded Jewish past, the book asks how this model is subverted by characters who experience time differently.

Introduction: what God was doing before he created the world1 The old man and the pregnant virgin: linear time and Jewish conversion in the N-Town plays2 Grave new world: fantasies of supersession and explosive questions in the York and Chester Flood plays3 Time out of joint: queering the Nativity in the Towneley Second Shepherds’ Play4 Passion meets Passover: temporal origami in the Towneley Herod the Great5 Conclusion: the spectator's God’s-eye viewEpilogueBibliographyIndex

Play time examines the relationship between time, gender and anti-Semitism in late-medieval biblical drama. It produces an important re-theorisation of the ways both gender and Judaism have been considered, as well as arguing that medieval drama provides a source for examining lay attitudes towards time in Hebrew and Christian narratives. The book charts the conflicts staged between dramatic personae in plays that represent theological transitions or ruptures, such as the Incarnation, Flood, Nativity and Bethlehem slaughter. Interrogating medieval models of supersession and typology, it asks how such models are subverted when placed in dialogue with characters who experience alternative readings of time. It employs various theoretical lenses to complicate readings of early theatre’s biblical matriarchs and patriarchs and argues that conflicts provide crucial evidence of the ways late-medieval lay producers, performers and audiences were themselves encouraged to experience and understand time. Dealing with plays often taught at undergraduate level, as well as less familiar material, Play time will be useful for students and scholars working on medieval performance, medieval gender and queer studies, Jewish-Christian studies and time and periodisation.

'This book was a pleasure to read. The writing is clear and accessible; the voice is engaging, with sections of lovely phrasing and surprising humour.'The Review of English Studies'Given Black’s clear and accessible handling of theory, and the ways in which she embeds her argument in the critical history of each play she addresses, I look forward to assigning her work to my graduate students. Overall, Daisy Black’s Play Time has much to offer scholars of early English drama and of literature and culture more broadly.'Studies in the Age of Chaucer'Given its focus on some of the greatest hits of the canon of early English drama and its fresh and insightful readings of familiar texts, Play Time will reward the attention of both scholars of medieval drama and those working in adjacent fields… Black demonstrates conclusively that multiple temporalities exist playfully side by side within medieval biblical drama and that the hegemony of Christian time is always under threat from history, which rarely is content to remain in the past.'The Medieval Review