Introduction

In the previous chapter I examined the liturgical content of the N-Town Play in detail, and established that liturgy plays a significant role in all parts of its text. This justifies the use of the word ‘liturgical’ in respect of the play. The question still to be answered is whether the deployment of liturgy in N-Town also justifies the view that it is the most liturgical of all the extant late-medieval vernacular drama. So this chapter addresses that question, beginning with a brief survey of the liturgical content of the three extant northern cycle plays.

A further consideration is whether the liturgicality I have found in the N-Town Play may be said – as far as can be judged from surviving evidence – to be a particular feature of work produced in East Anglia. This I propose to test in three ways, by examining other East Anglian plays; a non-dramatic verse text, John Lydgate's Life of Our Lady; and parts of a Marian cycle play in Middle Dutch from the neighbouring Low Countries.

A complete assessment of all the liturgical material in each of the types of drama mentioned above would unbalance and alter the focus of this investigation. So I have looked at representative samples of both cycle and separate plays in Middle English. However, all the Latin liturgical material that appears both in the N-Town Play and in other plays (northern cycles, individual East Anglian plays, and the Middle Dutch cycle) is tabulated in appendix 2.