King 0 Pamela King –
[email protected] – www.bristol.ac.uk/medievalcentre University of Bristol, Bristol Thème/Topic Renaissance of Medieval Theatre Titre/Title The Renaissance of Medieval Theatre and the Growth of University Drama in England Résumé/Abstract The battle to be permitted to impersonate the deity on the stage in Britain is well documented, as is the role of theatrical impresarios such as William Poel, Nugent Monck and E. Martin Browne, the Religious Drama Society and the British Drama League. What has received less attention is the role of the universities in the latter part of this process, and in experimental productions of medieval plays. Oxford University Drama Society provided the test bed, but it was at Bristol, in the first department at a British University dedicated to the study of Drama in performance, that the renaissance of medieval religious drama found its first academic home under the aegis of Glynne Wickham and his colleagues. This paper will draw on many unpublished archive holdings from the Bristol University Theatre Collection. It will investigate the intersection between the movement which resulted in drama being accepted as a legitimate and autonomous university subject and the parallel campaign against the established conventions of censoring religious theatre in the United Kingdom. As well as charting this history, it will discuss the emergent understandings of the nature of medieval religious drama in the middle of the twentieth century in church, state and academy. King 1 The Renaissance of Medieval Theatre and the Growth of University Drama in England Pamela King The slim journal Theatre in Education, issue 5, number 25, for April 1951 carried three interestingly linked articles.