A Study Guide for Anonymous's "The Second Shepherds' Play"
()
About this ebook
Read more from Gale
A Study Guide for S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for James Clavell's "Shogun" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA study guide for Frank Herbert's "Dune" Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A Study Guide for Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Louis Sachar's "Holes" Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Study Guide for Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for William Shakespeare's Macbeth Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for James Joyce's "James Joyce's Ulysses" Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Study Guide for Arthur Miller's "The Crucible" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for George Orwell's 1984 Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Business Plans Handbook: Bakery Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for George Orwell's Animal Farm Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Study Guide for John Rawls's "A Theory of Justice" Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Study Guide for Psychologists and Their Theories for Students: JEAN PIAGET Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Octavia Butler's "Parable of the Sower" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Virginia Woolf's "Mrs. Dalloway" Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Study Guide for Psychologists and Their Theories for Students: ALBERT BANDURA Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Umberto Eco's "The Name of the Rose" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide (New Edition) for F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Lois Lowry's The Giver Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Business Plans Handbook: Furniture Businesses Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Study Guide for Marjane Satrapi's "Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Wole Soyinka's "Death and the King's Horsemen" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBusiness Plans Handbook: Auto Detailing Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Study Guide for T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Shirley Jackson's The Lottery Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for "Postmodernism" Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Related to A Study Guide for Anonymous's "The Second Shepherds' Play"
Related ebooks
A Study Guide for William Congreve's "Way of the World" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Lord Alfred Tennyson's "The Eagle" Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5A Study Guide for Anonymous's "Everyman" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsShe Stoops to Conquer Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Streetcar Named Desire (SparkNotes Literature Guide) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Aristophanes's "Lysistrata" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsShakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Poems of Thomas Hardy: A New Selection Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Did Hamlet Love Ophelia?: and Other Thoughts on the Play Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAs You Like It (MAXNotes Literature Guides) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDelphi Complete Works of Matthew Lewis (Illustrated) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGale Researcher Guide for: Comedy of Manners: The Restoration Wits Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTaming of the Shrew, The (MAXNotes Literature Guides) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Jack London's To Build a Fire Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Henry Fielding's "Joseph Andrews" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Plough and the Stars Classroom Questions Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFrankenstein: The 1818 Text Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe English Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRomeo and Juliet Annotated Best Edition Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Alfred Lord Tennyson's The Charge of the Light Brigade Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGale Researcher Guide for: Mrs. Dalloway: Virginia Woolf's Modernist Breakthrough Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Thomas Wyatt's "Whoso List to Hunt" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Samuel Taylor Coleridge's “Kubla Khan” Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAntigone Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Theory of the Theatre, and Other Principles of Dramatic Criticism Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Jane Austen's Emma Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Metamorphoses of Ovid (MAXNotes Literature Guides) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCharacters of Shakespeare's Plays, Lectures on the English Poets and Three Other Books Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Study Guide for Sarah Orne Jewett's "White Heron" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Christopher Marlowe's "Edward II" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Literary Criticism For You
A Reader’s Companion to J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Man's Search for Meaning: by Viktor E. Frankl | Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5As I Lay Dying Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Oscar Wilde: The Unrepentant Years Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The 48 Laws of Power: by Robert Greene | Conversation Starters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/512 Rules For Life: by Jordan Peterson | Conversation Starters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Killers of the Flower Moon: by David Grann | Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Letters to a Young Poet Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Book of Virtues Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5SUMMARY Of The Plant Paradox: The Hidden Dangers in Healthy Foods That Cause Disease and Weight Gain Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself by Michael A. Singer | Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Just Kids: A National Book Award Winner Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Art of Seduction: by Robert Greene | Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Lincoln Lawyer: A Mysterious Profile Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBetween the World and Me: by Ta-Nehisi Coates | Conversation Starters Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5The Great Alone: by Kristin Hannah | Conversation Starters Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Court of Thorns and Roses: A Novel by Sarah J. Maas | Conversation Starters Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Gulag Archipelago [Volume 1]: An Experiment in Literary Investigation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain | Conversation Starters Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Power of Habit: by Charles Duhigg | Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
Reviews for A Study Guide for Anonymous's "The Second Shepherds' Play"
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
A Study Guide for Anonymous's "The Second Shepherds' Play" - Gale
08
The Second Shepherds' Play
Anonymous
C. 1450
Introduction
The Second Shepherds' Play is part of the Wakefield mystery play cycle. It is play number thirteen of thirty-two contained in the only surviving manuscript, currently held at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California. The Second Shepherds' Play dates from the latter half of the fifteenth century. No exact date can be determined, but studies in handwriting analysis of the manuscript suggest an approximate date of mid to late fifteenth century as a composition date. The play was written in Middle English, which is the vernacular (everyday) language that was used in England between about 1100 and 1500. The ascendancy of King Henry VII to the throne marks the end of the medieval period and generally signifies the shift from Middle English to Modern English (the basic predecessor of English as we know it today). Authorship of The Second Shepherds' Play is unknown, and the play is simply attributed to the Wakefield Master, whose real identity was also unknown, although a local cleric or monk was probably the author. The Second Shepherds' Play is included in The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume 1 (1993) and in The Towneley Plays (2001), Volume 1, edited by Martin Stevens and A. C. Cawley.
The title refers not to a second shepherd but to the fact that this play was the second of two plays that dealt with the biblical Nativity story. Mystery plays, which are so named because they refer to the spiritual mystery of Christ's birth and death, combine comic elements with biblical stories. For example, in The Second Shepherds' Play, the author combines the Shepherds' story of stolen sheep and a swindle involving the birth of a nonexistent infant with the biblical story of Jesus' birth in Bethlehem. The dual plot is designed to remind the audience of the two-fold nature of man's existence—the real world on earth and the spiritual world of the afterlife. The play, itself, contains no divisions of act or scene, but there are three distinct scenes: the Shepherds' soliloquies in which they lament their poverty, the oppressive natures of their lives, and the terrible weather; the scene with Mak and Gil in which they try to disguise the stolen lamb as their newborn child; and the adoration of the Christ-child in Bethlehem. The text shifts both time and place, referring to Christian saints