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The Wakefield or 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.〔The Cambridge Introduction to Early English Theatre, Janette Dillon (2006)〕 The unique manuscript, now housed at the Huntington Library, San Marino, California, originated in the mid-fifteenth century. The Towneley family who lent their name to the manuscript, sold it at auction in 1814, but it was probably part of their library at a much earlier date.〔The Tudor Origins of Mediaeval Drama, Theresa Coletti and Gail McNurray Gibson, Chapter 14, A Companion to Tudor Literature, Wiley-Blackwell, 2010〕 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. ==Authorship== The cycle is the work of many authors, some sourced from the York Cycle. However, the most significant contribution has been attributed to an anonymous author known as the "Wakefield Master." It is believed that his additions include ''Noah, The First Shepherds' Play, The Second Shepherds' Play, Herod the Great and The Buffeting of Christ.'' This common authorship is suspected due to a unique thirteen-line rhymed stanza, which is evident in all five texts.〔The Broadview Anthology of Medieval Drama, Fitzgerald (2012)〕 The term "Wakefield Master" emerged from a need to distinguish some material in the Towneley manuscript from a mass of unexceptional material, and was first coined by Charles Mills Gayley. In 1903, Gayley and Alwin Thaler published an anthology of criticism and dramatic selections entitled ''Representative English Comedies''. It had long been believed that the Towneley Play was a mediocre work that showed extensive borrowing from other sources but containing vibrant and exciting material, apparently by one author, who was responsible for four or five complete pageants and extensive revisions. Gayley refers to this person as the "master" (with a lowercase ''m'') in the book.〔Representative English comedies with introductory essays and notes, an historical view of our earlier comedy, and other monographs by various writers, Charles Mills Gayley〕 Then in a 1907 article, Gayley emended this to "The Wakefield Master," the name which is still frequently used. Within the Broadview Anthology of Medieval Drama, Christina M. Fitzgerald and John T. Sebastian find it important to note, "the quotation marks placed around the name 'Wakefield Master' are thus to be taken to indicate that the ascription of authorship is the product of convention, rather than proven fact. All that can be said with confidence is that there seems clearly to have been a common force involved in the shaping of all five of these plays.〔The Broadview Anthology of Medieval Drama, Fitzgerald (2012)〕" The most obvious of these characteristics is that several of the pageants use a distinctive stanza, sometimes called the Wakefield Stanza (see below). The pageants that manifest the Wakefield Stanza are noted for comedy, social satire, and intense psychological realism. These qualities also show up throughout the Towneley Cycle, most often where it seems to depart from its presumed sources. Some question the existence of one "Wakefield Master", and propose that multiple authors could have written in the Wakefield Stanza. Barbara Palmer suggests that the story of the Wakefield Master and the suggestion that the Second Shepherd's Play was performed as part of the Wakefield Cycle were both inventions of an amateur historian named J. M. W. Walker. However, scholars and literary critics find it useful to hypothesize a single talent behind them, due to the unique poetic qualities of the works ascribed to him.〔“Recycling ‘The Wakefield Cycle’,” Research Opportunities in Renaissance Drama" (vol 41) 2002〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Wakefield Mystery Plays」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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