Saints at Play

In the introduction to her study of twenty-eight French nonbiblical hagiographic mystery plays from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Hamblin notes that "this approach is intended to strengthen a comparative analysis of relatively similar texts created within a particular cultural setting. [The plays'] somewhat parallel narrative and performative structures facilitate their comparison as performance remnants ... To that end, the first three chapters of this study will investigate the cultural contexts in which these plays were produced and performed, as well as the cultural content that spoke to and for the communities that created them. In two subsequent chapters, the performance features of these remnants, verbal and nonverbal, textual and supratextual, will be compared in search of evidence of a collective performance history ... My hope is ... to suggest a more performative reading of the works within recognized cultural parameters by examining a set number of saints' plays across cultural, thematic, and performance lines."