Liturgical trope: Short dramatic presentation within medieval worship service. The Quem Queritis play was part of the Easter liturgy. The Second Shepherds' Play includes speeches of prophecy common to Christmas tropes.
Mystery Play: Part of a cycle of plays representing the events of Christian salvation history from Creation through Old Testament events and the life of Christ to the Last Judgment. Performed in England on the mid-summer Feast of Corpus Christi. The main English cycles belonged to the cities of York, Chester, Wakefield, and N-Town. Our course studied:
Cycle Play: Another term for mystery play that emphasizes the sense of the sequence of salvation history in these dramas.
Corpus Christi pageant: Term for mystery play that recognizes the importance of the Feast of Corpus Christi as the day for their performance. Corpus Christi was an open feast without the special focuses of other days in the medieval litrugical year, such as Christmas and Easter seasons.
Wakefield Master: Writer of the Second Shepherds' Play and some other mystery plays in the Wakefield or Townley Cycle known for his colloquial humor and idiom and a characteristic 13-line stanza (Middle Ages 391).
York Realist: Writer of the York Crucifixion with "its gruesomely humorous" dialog and business by the soldiers and the contrastingly "serene" actions by Christ (Bevington 569).
Morality play: Allegorical drama representing the spiritual events in the life of an individual. Personification allegory is an important device of this genre. Example: Everyman.
Close audience participation: The "playing" of the mysteries was not simply entertainment or instruction, but included a kind of reenactment of conversion and participation in sacred history in contemporary time.