It may look like The Cambridge Companion to Falling Asleep, but actually it has a pulse. The CUP hasn’t mucked around and has got the top people in each field to contribute. There’s a superb introduction; an essay each on the four big cycles and then one each for morality plays, etc etc. It also covers Cornish drama.

There’s really only one dud essay in the whole lot which, ironically, is on the subject that brought me here in the first place. I’m reading the Coventry cycle and it quickly became apparent that it’s not like other plays. The text is obviously a far smaller part of it than I’m used to and I needed something to make it accessible (I’m reading the EETS edition so there’s not the usual introduction you might get in a Penguin). The essays on the other cycles were very helpful, especially Beadle’s About the York cycle. Reading Coventry, it’s obviously a ritualised religious behaviour, but why go to all the effort when you’d think Catholicism would have enough ritual already. Beadle makes the interesting observation that the cycles began their life in the generation after the Black Death, so perhaps we’re seeing some sort of attempt at a massive communal magic spell. It didn’t work of course, but I certainly prefer this response to a pandemic than say, oh I don’t know, invading the Ukraine?

Most useful though is Meg Twycross’ essay on staging. This was exactly what I needed for the imagination. There’s also an essay on modern production which was helpful. ( )