The History of Medieval Theatre / Theatre of Medieval History: Dramatic Documents and the Performance of the Past

Abstract

Theatre history has long been a sub-discipline of literary criticism or, more recently, performance studies; it is usually not the province of trained historians. While potentially problematic for the study of any period, this trend has had a particularly limiting effect on the study of medieval drama and its larger historical contexts. This article explains why, offers a brief overview of medieval theatre's modern history and the current state of intellectual inquiry, and then suggests some historical uses of dramatic texts and of performance itself as an analytical category.