‘The “Now” of “Then”’
METh 22 (2000) 3–12.

The paper addresses attitudes to the past in the play-cycles. Cycles such as York, like medieval literary texts, re-create the past in the image of the present, using ‘anachronism’. In contrast, Chester emphasises the ‘pastness’ of both its biblical material and the cycle itself in relation to present beliefs and expectations. Its Antichrist play, with its contemporary allusions and insistence upon faith and the sacraments, exemplifies Chester's transformation of the medieval cycle play into something akin to a history play.

‘“Fail Nocht to Teme your Bleddir”: Passing Time in Sir David Lindsay’s Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis’
METh 22 (2000) 52–58.

The text and banns of Lindsay’s Satyre stress the practical implications of the play’s long duration, enjoining spectators to attend carefully to the filling and emptying of their bladders. It is also concerned with different timeframes: immediate, historical, and eschatological. This paper teases out the treatment of these timeframes, and the interrelated motifs of communal drinking, drunkenness, and urination.

‘Drama and Entertainment in Peebles in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries’
METh 22 (2000) 127–144.

This article examines drama and entertainment in Peebles as evidenced by the fifteenth and sixteenth century burgh records together with literary evidence.  Particular focus is directed to the career of John Morchoson, 'abbot of unrest', and to the poem 'Peblis to the Play'.