The York Mystery Plays, more properly called the York Corpus Christi Plays, are a Middle English cycle of forty-eight mystery plays, or pageants, which cover sacred history from the creation to the Last Judgement. These were traditionally presented on the feast day of Corpus Christi (a movable feast occurring the Thursday after Trinity Sunday, between May 23 and June 24). They were performed in the city of York, from the middle of the fourteenth century until 1569. It is one of only four virtually complete surviving English mystery play cycles, with the others known as the Chester Mystery Plays, the Towneley/Wakefield plays and N-Town plays. In addition to these, two long, composite, and late mystery pageants have survived from the Coventry cycle, and there are records and fragments from other similar productions which took place elsewhere. A manuscript of the York plays, probably dating from some time between 1463 and 1477, survives at the British Library.
Read more about York Mystery Plays: The Plays, The York Realist, Modern Revival, The York Millennium Mystery Plays, 2012 Production, The Waggon Plays, Adaptations and Related Plays
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—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)
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For hes the master criminal who can defy the Law.”
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“Better to be despised and have a servant, than to be self-important and lack food.”
—Bible: Hebrew, Proverbs 12:9.
RSV translation reads, Better is a man of humble standing who works for himself than one who plays the great man but lacks bread.