The Book of the Seven Sages of Rome seems on the face of it an unlikely text to interest those who work on medieval theatre. But this engaging performance raised a number of fascinating questions about the methods and purposes of theatrical presentation of medieval material to modern audiences. It also proved a stimulating demonstration of the inherent theatricality of expert storytelling and its ability to mediate complex points of view to live audiences.

The Middle English and Middle Scots versions of the work generally known as The Seven Sages of Rome have a profound temporal and geographical hinterland. The framed story collection derives from the East with versions of 100 or more tales included in Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, Latin, Persian, and Syriac re-tellings. In the Middle Ages the work was translated and reworked in most of the languages of Europe, proving hugely popular. Its frame narrative tells the story of an Emperor, who on the death of his wife entrusts the education of his only son to seven Sages, away from the court. Some years later, the Emperor marries a second young wife who persuades him to bring the young man back to court where, when he rejects her advances, she falsely accuses him of rape and urges her husband to put him to death. This results in an extended storytelling contest: each day, one of the Sages tells a story, generally hinging on the untrustworthiness of women, that persuades the Emperor to doubt his wife and postpone the execution of his son; each night the Empress tells a counter tale that questions who and how one should believe, urging the young man's death. The situation is finally resolved when the son, who has remained silent throughout, finally tells a tale of his own that convinces the Emperor of his innocence, and the Empress is executed.

The blatant misogyny of many of the tales, along with the bare and undeveloped literary style of their re-tellings, have probably contributed to the lack of modern interest in the work. But this production, which dovetails with a research project on the Seven Sages at the University of St Andrews, succeeded in developing a suggestive performance that engaged with the first, and looked beyond the second.

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.