Coventry Mystery Plays

[1] Another, separate manuscript (BL MS Cotton Vespasian D.8) was initially titled the Ludus Coventriae[2] by a 17th-century librarian who erroneously assumed it was a copy of the Coventry mystery plays.

Richard III visited Coventry and saw the plays there on Corpus Christi day in 1485, just a couple of months before he was killed at the Battle of Bosworth.

[5] The antiquarian William Dugdale, writing in the mid-17th century, gives an idea of the scale of audiences based on memories of those who had attended the plays in their youth: …I have been told by some old people, who in their younger years were eye-witnesses of these Pageants so acted, that the yearly confluence of people to see that show was so extraordinary great, and yielded no small advantage to this City.

[7] The only ancient manuscript of the Shearmen and Tailors' Pageant was destroyed by fire in 1879; fortunately it had been transcribed and published by Thomas Sharp, first in a limited run of twelve copies in 1817, and then again in 1825.

[8] A leather mask thought to be a surviving example of those worn by some performers in the Coventry Plays is held in the collections of the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum.