This volume gathers together thirteen papers reporting on medieval drama research since the 1960s prepared for a conference convened by the Committee on Medieval Studies of Harvard University, 9–11 October 1986. The scholars participating were kind enough to read the papers in advance. At the meeting they were then joined by some local medievalists to discuss each report in detail. The discussion was taped so that the editor might use it in devising instructions for revision. As they enter the present volume, then, as a guide to research, the papers bear the imprint not of one but of a team of editors for whose help I am most grateful.

Although five of the chapters are devoted to English drama, it was not this field that prompted the editor to persuade a reluctant Committee to sponsor a conference. Scholars of English drama have been talking to each other since the 1950s, not only in seminars at MLA meetings and the Kalamazoo International Congresses but in journals such as Research Opportunities in Renaissance Drama and Medieval English Theatre. It seemed to me, however, that they have done this largely without the rest of us. This conference, then, was intended to help scholars of continental drama to join the conversation and to encourage all of us to begin looking over national fences.