Wakefield Mystery Plays

The Wakefield Mystery Plays  (also known as the Towneley Mystery Plays) are a series of thirty-two mystery plays based on the Bible most likely performed around the Feast of Corpus Christi probably in the town of Wakefield, England, during the late Middle Ages until 1576.  It is one of only four surviving English mystery play cycles.  Some scholars argue that the Wakefield cycle is not a cycle at all, but a mid-sixteenth-century compilation, formed by a scribe bringing together three separate groups of plays.  Although almost the entire manuscript is in a fifteenth-century hand, the cycle was performed as early as the fourteenth century in an earlier form.  The Wakefield Cycle is most renowned for the inclusion of "The Second Shepherds' Play," one of the jewels of medieval theatre.  (More from Wikipedia)