Fulgens and Lucrece

[2] The play is based on a Latin novella by Buonaccorso da Montemagno that had been translated into English by John Tiptoft, 1st Earl of Worcester and published in 1481 by William Caxton.

[7] The source of the play is the Latin treatise De Vera Nobilitate (On True Nobility) by the Italian humanist Bonaccorso or Buonaccorso da Montemagno of Pistoia, written in 1438.

[8] De Vera Nobilitate tells how Lucretia, the daughter of the Roman senator Fulgentius, is wooed by the idle patrician Publius Cornelius and the studious plebeian Gaius Flaminius.

[9] The plot is set in ancient Rome and deals with the wooing of Lucrece, daughter of the Roman senator Fulgens, by Publius Cornelius, a patrician, and Gaius Flaminius, a plebeian.

It disrupts the flow of the story as the mischievous comic relief characters A and B steal the audience's attention with their gags and breaking of the fourth wall.

[11]§ There have since been several productions, including one in 1984 by the Joculatores Lancastrienses during a Medieval English Theatre conference dinner in Christ's College Hall, Cambridge, directed by Meg Twycross.