Doctrinal Orthodoxy and the Dramatic in Liturgical and Secular English Drama

This article considers the representation of Christ’s Resurrection in two very different dramatic forms: liturgical and secular. The point in time at which both performances were initially crafted situates them in two very different moments of Christian worship, and throughout this article I demonstrate that the eucharistic controversies which raged from the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries had a significant impact on how the moment of Resurrection was or was not staged in English drama. The doctrinal changes are particularly notable in the case of the Easter celebration of the Resurrection, as not only does the moment of Resurrection come to be staged, but the body of Christ, so necessarily absent in earlier forms of worship, becomes a central feature of the late medieval mode of celebration. This corporeal insertion is furthermore contextualised in terms of its wider resonance within secular English drama, with its connection to the eucharist elicited