n o t e s introduction 1. The making of this history has been well described by Fisher, “A Language Policy for Lancastrian England”; Knapp, Bureaucratic Muse, esp. 1–9; Lerer, “William Caxton”; Lindenbaum, “London Texts and Literate Practice”; and Strohm, “Chaucer’s FifteenthCentury Audience and the Narrowing of the ‘Chaucer Tradition.’” Summit, Lost Property , 12, notes that the making of this history began as early as John Skelton, one of the first English writers “to conceive of English literature as a body of texts linked by a common national and linguistic identity” and centered on Chaucer, Gower, and Lydgate. See Coletti, Mary Magdalene and the Drama of Saints, esp. 6–7, for a compelling critique of this standard history through analysis of the impact of a female-centric religious and dramatic culture. 2. For a broader conception of vernacular writing that considers popular and female audiences as well as the impact of Lollardy, see Aers and Staley, Powers of the Holy; Somerset , Clerical Discourse and Lay Audience; and Watson, “The Politics of Middle English Writing,” esp. 342–45. 3. For a history of the REED project along with a critique of its assumptions, see Coletti, “Reading REED”; for similar archival work in Germany, see Linke, “A Survey of Medieval Drama and Theater in Germany,” esp. 39 n1; and for continental archival recovery efforts with an emphasis on France, see Symes, “The Medieval Archive and the History of Theatre.” 4. The record containing the Lübeck play and its significance for early drama have been discussed by Simon, “Organizing and Staging Carnival Plays in Late Medieval Lübeck,” 71–72. 5. See Enders, “Spectacle of the Scaffolding,” 163. 6. Symes, “The Medieval Archive and the History of Theatre.” 7. Clopper, for one, has cautioned against too readily assuming that every reference to performance in the documentary record points to a play; see his “Miracula and The Tretise of Miraclis Pleyinge.” 8. Jauss, “Literary History as a Challenge to Literary Theory.” 9. Hanna, “Miscellaneity and Vernacularity,” in The Whole Book, ed. Nichols and Wenzel, 47. 218 notes to pages 4–9 10. For recent studies of the rise of the vernacular, three useful collections of essays are Kullmann, ed., The Church and Vernacular Literature in Medieval France; Somerset and Watson, eds., The Vulgar Tongue; and Salter and Wicker, eds., Vernacularity in England and Wales, c. 1300–1550. 11. Lerer, “The Chaucerian Critique of Medieval Theatricality.” 12. Middleton, “The Idea of Public Poetry in the Reign of Richard II”; Lawton, “Dullness and the Fifteenth Century.” 13. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record, 285. 14. Important contributions to the field of material philology have been made by Cerquiglini, In Praise of the Variant; Nichols, “Why Material Philology”; and Nichols and Wenzel, eds., The Whole Book. 15. Brantley, Reading in the Wilderness; Clark and Sheingorn, “Performative Reading ”; and Coleman, Public Reading and the Reading Public in Late Medieval England and France. 16. Coletti, Mary Magdalene and the Drama of Saints. 17. See, among others, Cole, Literature and Heresy in the Age of Chaucer, who examines the literary impact of Wyclif’s ideas and argues for the centrality of Wycliffism to the English literary canon. 18. Watson, “The Politics of Middle English Writing.” 19. For work on regionalism in England, see Barrett, Against All England, on Chester ; Gibson, The Theater of Devotion, on East Anglia; the extensive scholarship on York, including most recently King, The York Mystery Cycle and the Worship of the City; and the essays in Rogerson, ed., The York Mystery Plays. 20. Nichols and Wenzel, eds., The Whole Book, 1. 21. See, for example, Coletti and Gibson, “The Tudor Origins of Medieval Drama,” which discusses recent reassessments of the Chester and Towneley cycle plays. 22. For an example of work on performance as a means of dispersing and increasing access to written texts, see the essays in Vitz, Regalado, and Lawrence, eds., Performing Medieval Narrative. 23. The most widely used anthologies of medieval plays, Bevington’s Medieval Drama and Walker’s Medieval Drama: An Anthology, include no works by Lydgate; similarly, most collections of scholarly essays on medieval performance, such as Simon’s Theatre of Medieval Europe, omit Lydgate or offer only passing mention of his dramatic writings. 24. See MPJL; Clopper, Drama, Play, and Game, 163; and Lerer, Boethius and Dialogue , 7, in which Lerer discusses a Lydgatean echo of Boethius’s tendencies. 25. Symes, “Appearance of Early Vernacular Plays,” has demonstrated how slowly scribal conventions...