SWITZERLAND'S SELF ERCEPTION IN relation to Europe is richly paradoxical. On the one hand, the Swiss have repeatedly voted to remain independent of the European Union, claiming instead a special “Associated” status and pegging the Swiss Franc to the Euro rather than embracing the Euro themselves. On the other hand, Switzerland is geographically positioned at the heart of Europe, and the Swiss consider themselves thoroughly European, mixing, as they do, various major European languages, cultural forms, religious orthodoxies, and cuisines in a tiny national space. Switzerland has four official languages—French, German, Italian and Rumantsch; Swiss German exists in numerous distinct dialects, and even Rumantsch, which is spoken by only 60,000 people worldwide, is divided into five distinct varieties and one newly created standard. In addition, like most European countries, Switzerland has substantial immigrant communities who preserve their own non Swiss language among themselves while accommodating to French or German as the situation requires. On the border between the two largest linguistic communities, Fribourg is a French German bilingual canton with Switzerland's only bilingual university—an institution which also attracts large numbers of Italian speaking Swiss. While the status of English as ubiquitous but not officially ‘Swiss’ is hotly contested by national politicians, journalists, and academics, English is nonetheless often embraced when Francophone and German-speaking students, for example, have to communicate—rather than speak the other's language, they can often be observed speaking English. Belonging, historically, to none of the different Swiss language groups, English seems strangely uncontroversial, to many students at least.

Like the English language in which he writes, Shakespeare may also occupy an unusually “neutral” position, identified with no group and therefore open to all. Less confident than my students in this perhaps naively optimistic view, I was hesitant when they asked me to direct them in a Shakespeare play for the University of Fribourg's Jubilee celebrations: I expressed to them my reservations about an English director staging in English the work of the iconic English playwright to celebrate the anniversary of a University which is proudly French German.

The forty-fourth meeting of Medieval English Theatre in 2022 was the third held online, as COVID restrictions continued. The conference took the theme of Editing and Adapting, being held in memory of Peter Happé and Martial Rose, two recently lost eminent scholars of medieval theatre, especially in the fields of editing and modern performance. Hosted by Jodi-Anne George from Dundee, the meeting was generously enabled by Clare Egan when the pandemic struck down its host. A tribute having been offered to Peter Happé last year, the day opened with a memorial from Phil Butterworth, recalling Martial Rose's influential and ground-breaking production of ‘The Wakefield Plays’ at Bretton Hall (1958) and at the Mermaid Theatre in London in the early 1960s, and sharing vivid extracts from his correspondence.

Several papers addressed early and recent issues in the editing of texts of medieval theatre. Meg Twycross gave a wide-ranging account of the problems confronting would-be editors in the late seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries, from lack of access to the manuscripts to an anti-Catholic mindset that inevitably distorted their narrative. Garrett Epp brought home the importance of modern editors’ sensitivity to performance, as well as text, in supplying stage directions for early playscripts, while Diana Wyatt opened up the very different editorial techniques needed to unpack the theatrical implications of the record evidence gathered by the REED project. Pamela King offered an insight into the importance of detail in editing as she explored the potentially revealing meanings in just two words of the Towneley Noah.

On adaptation, Bart Ramakers and Elsa Strietman reported on a major project to stage a fascinating Dutch tafelspel, and the fundamental questions it poses about engaging modern audiences with historically based performance. Eleanor Bloomfield and Tom Straszewski each considered modern adaptations of York plays, Eleanor addressing the revivals since 1951 that engage the plays with contemporary concerns, and Strasz the bricolage shaping of a site-specific production of the plays of Our Lady for the church of All Saints, North Street, York. Hilariously visual – and thought-provoking – entertainment was provided by Jeffery Stoyanoff's ‘TikTok-ing The Fall’.

The papers in this volume take forward a number of rich, often interlocking, strands and themes that have been developing in recent Medieval English Theatre issues and conference meetings.

In March 2020 the COVID pandemic closed shops and pubs and restaurants, libraries, cinemas, gyms and theatres, and churches across Europe. As everyone learnt to shop online and technologically baffled academics tried to teach via Zoom, many churches also started to broadcast their services, in variously adapted forms, so that people could listen along at home, but, though the prayers and sermons continued, the singing stopped and, crucially for many believers, the sharing of the Eucharist became impossible. For Catholics in particular it became imperative to find creative ways in which the faithful could receive the consecrated Host, the Body of Christ. In Chalons-en-Champagne, France, the ‘drive through Mass’ became the unlikely solution at the height of lockdown. Priests, having performed the Elevation and Consecration of the Host in a newly choreographed ceremony in a large car park, protected by masks and with their hands sanitised, delivered wafers through the car windows of attendees.

In England, the churches cautiously reopened as summer began, but government guidelines allowed only a single cantor – no choirs or congregational singing – and clergy had to find ways to administer the Eucharist that observed social distancing and appropriate hygienic practices. Communion was administered in one kind – wafers only – and, as the communicant inevitably had to remove his/her mask to receive the wafer, the priest had to be masked and silent. No ‘The Body of Christ’ whispered to each participant. Priests and worshippers sanitised their hands before Communion, and members of the congregation followed one-way systems around churches to avoid close contact with others in narrow aisles. It was all a rather sad inversion of what the Eucharist is meant to be: rather than bringing the community together into one body – ‘Though we are many, we are one body, because we all share in one bread’ – the participants in a COVID Communion were reminded that they must keep their bodies separate from the bodies of others, that it might bring them disease if they share one bread. For the devout who believe in the Real Presence, it was perhaps particularly distressing to see hand sanitising before receiving the Host, not out of reverence for the Body of Christ, but because it was a material health hazard.