Why write a book about the N-Town Play? In short, because it is fascinating and undervalued. This project began with a desire to explore some of my East Anglian cultural roots. To work on a play that brings together personal interests in drama, liturgy, and music, plus the excuse to look at some of the area's rich medieval iconography, seemed a golden opportunity. More important to the reader is that the N-Town Play tends to be written off by critics as didactic and conservative, the epitome of fifteenth-century dullness. Within cycle drama, the focus of interest tends to be the York Plays whose text, performance records, and civic context make it an obvious choice for those investigating the negotiations and contestations within and between communities. Of the single plays, the Play of the Sacrament negotiates a different kind of contestation, between orthodox and heretic, while Mary Magdalen has the most to offer in terms of spectacle, genres, and an on-stage ship. However, since the turn of the century critics have begun to shake off the dullness and rehabilitate the fifteenth century, so it seemed appropriate for the N-Town Play to be part of that reassessment.

Research into medieval drama in English has a certain provisionality about it. Texts are scarce. Records are random and mostly nonspecific. Much was not written down because it was not necessary: those involved knew what they were about and did not need to describe it. But there remains the tantalising possibility that one day something will turn up that answers some, maybe all, of the questions we would dearly love to ask about vernacular drama: who wrote it and took part in it; where did it happen and, most important, what did the audience make of it? Against this background the N-Town Play is a particular enigma: a hybrid assembly of dramatic material that is peculiarly difficult to categorise within the canon of medieval drama, and with no existing external records. It is a play whose sub-text or narrative is absent.