Almost certainly the most anthologised of all medieval English dramatic pieces is the so-called Second Shepherds' Play, containing the double story of Mak the sheep-stealer and the visit of the shepherds to Bethlehem. Through this public exposure, not only the play but the ‘name’ of the author also has become familiar – ‘The Wakefield Master’. Not everyone who knows of the Second Shepherds', however, will automatically connect it with the thirty-two short plays (better called ‘pageants’) that together make up the Towneley manuscript, or realise that it is not so much the ‘second’ as an alternative Shepherds’ pageant: Alia eorundem (Another of the same). Even knowing the relationship between the pageant, the Wakefield Master and the Towneley manuscript does not, however, take you very far; why, for example Wakefield Master, but Towneley Mysteries or Plays – the titles of the earliest editions?

‘Wakefield’ refers to the industrial town in what used to be known as the West Riding of Yorkshire. In the Middle Ages, Wakefield was the centre of the extensive manor of Wakefield, and it later became the county town of the West Riding. Since early in this century it has been claimed, with varying degrees of certainty, as the original home and place of performance of this series of pageants (113, p. xxxv). As the York play was to York, so, it was said, the Towneley pageants were to Wakefield. The name ‘Wakefield Master’ was hence created as a convenient reference name for the anonymous author of a strikingly original group of pageants within the collection.