The casual reader of academic journals given over to medieval matters could be forgiven for thinking that more medieval drama has been produced in the twentieth century than was in its own time. Notices of future and reviews of past productions occupy a significant section of journals such as Medieval English Theatre (METh) and Research Opportunities in Renaissance Drama (RORD) in proper recognition of the current academic and theatrical interest in the performance of medieval plays. Although the casual reader's impression is almost certainly false, created as much by the modern exercise of practical criticism as by the limited number of surviving medieval texts and records of performance, it is true that this century has seen an unprecedented interest in the revival of medieval drama. Indeed, the committed theatre-goer, as opposed to the casual reader, could probably have seen, within the last decade or two, a performance of almost every extant medieval English play text.

The occurrence of medieval drama revivals in the twentieth century may seem an historical phenomenon that encapsulates in time a single purpose, but it would be misleading to assume that the motives of revivalists were always the same, even though it may be possible to detect three generally distinct phases within the movement. The earliest productions of William Poel and Nugent Monck owed much to the antiquarian spirit of the time and the desire of these two actor/producers to extend their practical exploration of Elizabethan theatre texts and conventions of staging into what they and scholars of the time saw as the period of Shakespearean ancestry.