John Lydgate's "Mumming at Windsor": Clothilda, Women's Steadfastness, and Lancastrian Rule
Lydgate’s “Mumming at Windsor,” performed before Henry VI and his household in 1429, is not the straightforward work of propaganda that it has been taken to be. Lydgate interjects ironic observations about women into his ostensibly earnest propaganda celebrating Henry’s Gallic roots. These observations may have awakened Lydgate’s audience from complacent spectatorship and invited them to question his sincerity throughout. Lydgate conveys a complex message, consonant with the troubled politics that emerge elsewhere in his writings, even as he trumpets his support for the English claim to France.
The Bedford Hours
The Bedford Hours, an outstanding example of late medieval manuscript art, was written and illuminated in the early 15th century for the brother of King Henry V. The author examines the overall design of the Hours, discussing the technical and historical background to its production and ownership.
The Towneley plays
This new edition of The Towneley Plays (c. 1500) replaces the edition by George England and Alfred W. Pollard published nearly one hundred years ago by the Early English Text Society. Apart from the corrections of errors in the transcription of the text, the new edition offers a comprehensive introduction, body of notes, and glossary. It also presents the text in a new format, based on an examination of the manuscript, by expanding stanzas attributed to the so-called "Wakefield Master" from nine lines (with some internal rhyme) to thirteen lines.