The bibliography is intended to serve two purposes: first, to support the system of brief reference used in the text and in many of the notes to the chapters; and second, to give a classified overview of the more important current work in the field of medieval English theatre. The arrangement of the bibliography is determined largely by the structure of the book and the likely needs of the majority of its users. Systematic bibliographies of medieval drama, general surveys, listings of documentary materials, editions and ancillary research works, such as facsimiles and concordances, are followed by a series of sections which reflect the bibliographical underpinning of the chapters on the plays themselves, in the order in which they appear. A series of special sections towards the end, such as 'Folk drama', Staging, Music and drama, Art and drama, and so on, answer to the topics discussed in chapter 12.

The bibliography includes all the works cited by bracketed serial number within the text, together with many other significant items, most of them published since around 1970. The detailed bibliographies in the first section provide ample reference to earlier work. For the editions of the plays cited within the text see pp. xviii-xix.