Apart from the morality play Everyman this volume contains a selection of biblical pageants, some of which ultimately go back to the Latin liturgical drama of the medieval Church. They are no less religious in origin and inspiration than the church architecture, painting and sculpture of the Middle Ages.
Most of them are Corpus Christi pageants or guild pageants, i.e. short plays acted by the trade guilds as episodes of the whole Corpus Christi cycle. They have been chosen for their intrinsic merit from the cycles of York, Chester, Wakefield, Coventry and 'N. town', with the addition of a translation of the Cornish Death of Pilate to represent this unique branch of Celtic literature.
Professor Cawley has preserved most of the original words of the plays, but for the convenience of the general reader many archaic forms and spellings are modernized or normalized both within the line and in rhyme. Original stage directions are given and those in Latin are translated; difficult words and short phrases are glossed in the margin, while longer wordgroups needing explanation are paraphrased in footnotes.