Richard Aldington (1892−1962) was a prolific reviewer and translator in his time, though probably better known to later readers as an Imagist poet and author of the First-World-War novel Death of a Hero. In autumn 1924 he published The Mystery of the Nativity, his translation of a fifteenth-century text in Walloon French. In December 1924 there was a performance of his translation in the Church Room of St Mary the Virgin Primrose Hill, London. Neither this performance nor Aldington's translation itself have made their way into standard accounts of the revival of religious drama in England in the early twentieth century. This chapter will make a brief analysis of Aldington's handling of the text and consider what inferences can be drawn about the performance of it at St Mary's from materials preserved in the parish archive and in the archive of George Allen & Unwin Ltd, and from the brief press notices I have found to date.

Beyond the citation of his source text Aldington does not indicate in the published edition how the play first came to his notice or what in particular prompted him to undertake the translation. But correspondence preserved in the archive of his publishers, George Allen & Unwin Ltd, reveals that the initiative for the publication came from Aldington himself, who enclosed a copy of his translation in a letter dated 24 March 1924, in which he notes that he had permission from Gustave Cohen, the editor of the French text, to publish his translation of it without charge. Aldington's friendship with Cohen at a later stage of his life is documented by his most recent biographer. But the letter of 1924 indicates that he was already in correspondence with him at this point, and a batch of letters written in 1921 by Aldington to Cohen, published in 2003, shows that Aldington had sent his translation to Cohen for comment, and identifies Aldington as the author of an anonymous review of Cohen's edition in the Times Literary Supplement 31 March 1921. The choice of text reflects Aldington's deep interest in medieval French literature, amply attested in his translation and reviewing work. The particular subject matter of the play evidently attracted him for what he saw as its poetic power rather than for its ostensible doctrinal import.

Twain's archaic language in A Connecticut Yankee conflates features from several centuries, thus reflecting the novel's composite historical setting and its concern with cultural relativity.

In Mark Twain's satirical fantasy of time travel into a fictive Arthurian past, published in 1889, Malory's Morte Darthur figures conspicuously. Malory's style forms the staple of the language Twain invents for the inhabitants of his imaginary sixth century. Substantial passages of Malory's text are also quoted whole at different points of the story, in various narrative guises. The first of these is under Malory's own name, at the opening of the frame narrative. It forms the narrator's bedtime reading as he sits by his hotel fireside after a visit to Warwick Castle, where he had met a mysterious stranger who had confidentially claimed unaccountable personal knowledge of the sixth-century armour on display. The narrator's reading lulls him into a comfortable reverie: ‘All that evening I sat by my fire at the Warwick Arms, steeped in a dream of the olden time, while the rain beat upon the windows, and the wind roared about the eaves and corners. From time to time I dipped into old Sir Thomas Malory's enchanting book, and fed at its rich feast of prodigies and adventures, breathed-in the fragrance of its obsolete names, and dreamed again. Midnight being come at length, I read another tale, for a night-cap’ (p. 34). There follows a citation of Le Morte Darthur, Book VI, Chapter XI, recounting an adventure in which Sir Launcelot delivers a group of captive ladies from two giants, and rescues Sir Kay from an attack by three knights.