Herod the Great (play)

The pageant of Magnus Herodes (Herod the Great) is the sixteenth of the pageants of the Towneley Cycle of medieval mystery plays. It occupies folios 55-60 of the unique manuscript of the cycle, Huntington MS HM 1. It is composed in the distinctive stanza-style rhyming associated by scholars with a putative poet known as the 'Wakefield Master'.^[1] In the assessment of A. C. Cawley, 'the Wakefield playwright's skill in characterisation is nowhere better shown than in this pageant'.^[2] Like other tyrant characters in medieval drama, the protagonist of Herod the Great fictionalises the audience as his own subjects, and this pageant 'presents one of the most extended displays of this figure's interactive antics'.^[3]

^ Garrett P. J. Epp, 'The Towneley Plays: Introduction', in The Towneley Plays, ed. by Garrett P. J. Epp (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2018).
^ Everyman and Medieval Miracle Plays, ed. by A. C. Cawley (London: Dent, 1974) [first publ. 1956], p. 105.
^ Peter Ramey, 'The Audience-Interactive Games of the Middle English Religious Drama', Comparative Drama, 47.1 (Spring 2013), 55-83 doi:10.1353/cdr.2013.000 (p. 59).

[1] Garrett P. J. Epp, 'The Towneley Plays: Introduction', in The Towneley Plays, ed. by Garrett P. J. Epp (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2018).

[2] Everyman and Medieval Miracle Plays, ed. by A. C. Cawley (London: Dent, 1974) [first publ. 1956], p. 105.

[3] Peter Ramey, 'The Audience-Interactive Games of the Middle English Religious Drama', Comparative Drama, 47.1 (Spring 2013), 55-83 doi:10.1353/cdr.2013.000 (p. 59).

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