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> Suzanne S Webb wrote: > > As a long-time textbook author (though in a different field), I know that > the best way to get things changed is to get in touch with the > developmental editor for the publishers of the big Brit Lit anthologies > like Norton and complain, complain, complain and threaten to drop an > adoption. > > The intro to the 2nd Play of the Shepherds in the Longman anthology > (which is the one I use for this very reason) is not as offensive as the > one in Norton. It says in the general intro to medieval lit, "The > fifteenth century sees the flowering of the great dramatic "mystery > cycles," sets of plays on religious themes produced and in part performed > by craft guilds of larger towns in the Midlands and North. Included here > is a brilliant sample, the Second Play of the Shepherds from the > Wakefield Plays. Probably written by clerics, these plays are nonetheless > dense with the preoccupations of contemporary working people and enriched > by implicit analgies between the lives of their actors and the biblical > events they portray." > > In the intro to the 2 Shep, it says, "It [medieval drama] developed not > from classical drama, which virtually died out in the Middle Ages, but > from the church liturgy." The rest of the intro to the play seems to be > based in large part on Kolve. > > Sue Webb > Texas Woman's University -- Abigail Ann Young (Dr), Associate Editor/Records of Early English Drama/ Victoria College/ 150 Charles Street W/ Toronto Ontario Canada M5S 1K9 Phone (416) 585-4504/ FAX (416) 813-4093/ [log in to unmask] List-owner of REED-L <http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~reed/reed-l.html> <http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~reed/reed.html> REED's home page <http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~reed/stage.html> our theatre resource page <http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~young> my home page