ROMARD is an academic journal devoted to the study and promotion of Medieval and Renaissance drama in Europe. Previously published under the title of Research Opportunities in Renaissance Drama (RORD), the journal has been in publication since 1956. ROMARD is published annually at the University of Western Ontario. Manuscripts are submitted to the Editor, Mario Longtin, via email at [email protected]. For further details, please visit the ROMARD website at www.romard.org.

ROMARD: Research on Medieval and Renaissance Drama is an academic journal devoted to the study of Medieval and Renaissance drama in Europe. Previously published under the title of Research Opportunities in Renaissance Drama (RORD), the journal has been in publication since 1956. ROMARD is published annually at Western University (www.uwo.ca). For further details, please visit the ROMARD website at www.romard.org. The Ritual Life of Medieval Europe: Papers By and For C. Clifford Flanigan Guest Editor: Robert L. A. Clark Chief Editor: Mario B. Longtin Volume 52-53 is a double issue honouring the memory of C. Clifford Flanigan. It consists of the unpublished articles of Professor Flanigan, and articles in tribute by his friends and colleagues in the field.

ROMARD is an academic journal devoted to the study and promotion of Medieval and Renaissance drama in Europe. Previously published under the title of Research Opportunities in Renaissance Drama (RORD), the journal has been in publication since 1956. ROMARD is published annually at the University of Western Ontario. Manuscripts are submitted to the Editor, Mario Longtin, via email at [email protected]. For further details, please visit the ROMARD website at www.romard.org. Special Issue: Showcasing Opportunities Co-Edited by Jill Stevenson and Mario Longtin This volume consists of fourteen short essays, all tackling different aspects of drama observed through a variety of disciplines, theoretical perspectives, and/or methodologies. We asked contributors to begin their pieces by introducing a new critical approach, a new methodology, a specific problem in the field, or an operative link between disciplines that fosters productive connections. In some cases, this framing concept introduces a new concept, methodology, or theoretical approach to the field of early drama studies. In other instances, authors invite readers to reconsider an existing topic or theme from a new perspective. We further asked contributors to select one specific example from early drama and to analyze it critically, but briefly, in order to illustrate their framing concept. We encouraged authors to be bold and, in some cases, to leave questions unresolved. Consequently, this special issue of ROMARD aims to advance the study of early drama by capturing research and ideas in the making.

The Digby Play of Mary Magdalene is a rare, surviving example of the Middle English saint play. It provides a window on the deep embedding of biblical drama and performance in late medieval devotional practices, social aspiration and critique, and religious discourses. Fully annotated and extensively glossed, this edition adds to the METS Drama series an essential resource for the study of late medieval English religious drama.

Did you hear the one about the Mother Superior who was so busy casting the first stone that she got caught in flagrante delicto with her lover? What about the drunk with a Savior complex who was fool enough to believe himself to be the Second Coming? And that's nothing compared to what happens when comedy gets its grubby paws on the confessional. Enter fifteenth- and sixteenth-century French farce, the "bestseller" of a world that stands to tell us a lot about the enduring influence of a Shakespeare or a Molière. It's the sacrilegious world of Immaculate Deception, the third volume in a series of stage-friendly translations from the Middle French. Brought to you through the wonders of Open Access, these twelve engagingly funny satires target religious hypocrisy in that in-your-face way that only true slapstick can muster. There is literally nothing sacred. Why this repertoire and why now? The current political climate has had dire consequences for the pleasures of satire at a cultural moment when we have never needed it more. It turns out that the proverbial Dark Ages had a lighter side; and France's over 200 rollicking, frolicking, singing, and dancing comedies—more extant than in any other vernacular—have waited long enough for their moment in the spotlight. They are seriously funny: funny enough to reclaim their place in cultural history, and serious enough to participate in the larger conversation about what it means to be a social influencer, then and now. Rather than relegate medieval texts to the dustbin of history, an unabashedly feminist translation can reframe and reject the sexism of bygone days by doing what theater always invites us to do: interpret, inflect, and adapt.

Did you hear the one about the newlywed who rushes off for legal advice before the honeymoon is over? Or the husbands who arrange for an enormous tub in which to cure their sugary wives with a pinch of salt? How about a participatory processional toward marriage so sacrilegious that it puts Chaucer's pilgrimage to shame? And who could have imagined a medieval series of plays devoted to spouse-swapping? Jody Enders has heard and seen all this and more, and shares it in her second volume of performance-friendly translations of medieval French farces. Carefully culled from more than two hundred extant farces, and crafted with a wit and contemporary sensibility that make them playable half a millennium later, these dozen bawdy plays take on the hilariously depressing and depressingly hilarious state of holy wedlock. In fifteenth- and sixteenth-century comedy, love and marriage do not exactly go together like a horse and carriage. What with all the arranged matches of child brides to doddering geezers, the frustration, fear, anxiety, jealousy, disappointment, and despair are matched only by the eagerness with which everybody sings, dances, and cavorts in the pursuit of deception, trickery, and adultery. Easily recognizable stock characters come vividly to life, struggling to negotiate the limits of power, class, and gender, each embodying the distinctive blend of wit, social critique, and breathless boisterousness that is farce. Whether the antics play out on the fifteenth-century stage or the twenty-first-century screen, Enders notes, comedy revels in shining its brightest spotlight on the social and legal questions of what makes a family. Her volume defines and redefines love and marriage with a message that no passage of time can tear asunder: social change finds its start where comedy itself begins—at home.

A major new study piecing together the intriguing but fragmentary evidence surrounding the lives of minstrels to highlight how these seemingly peripheral figures were keenly involved with all aspects of late medieval communities. Minstrels were a common sight and sound in the late Middle Ages. Aristocrats, knights and ladies heard them on great occasions (such as Edward I's wedding feast for his daughter Elizabeth in 1296) and in quieter moments in their chambers; town-dwellers heard and saw them in civic processions (when their sound drew attention to the spectacle); and even in the countryside people heard them at weddings, church-ales and other parish celebrations. But who were the minstrels, and what did they do? How did they live, and how easily did they make a living? How did they perform, and in what conditions? The evidence is intriguing but fragmentary, including literary and iconographic sources and, most importantly, the financial records of royal and aristocratic households and of towns. These offer many insights, although they are often hard to fit into any coherent picture of the minstrels' lives and their place in society. It is easy to see the minstrels as peripheral figures, entertainers who had no central place in the medieval world. Yet they were full members of it, interacting with the ordinary people around them, as well as with the ruling classes: carrying letters and important verbal messages, some lending huge sums of money to the king (to finance Henry V's Agincourt campaign in 1415, for instance), some regular and necessary civic servants, some committing crimes or suffering the crimes of others. In this book Rastall and Taylor bring to bear the available evidence to enlarge and enrich our view of the minstrel in late medieval society.