'The Vice’s missing book in Heywood’s Play of Love'
METh 33 (2011) 3–18.

John Heywood’s plays contain surprisingly few references to books as physical objects and so it is perhaps fitting that the most significant instance refers to a book that is notably absent. This paper explores the implications of the Vice’s missing book to consider how it relates to textual authority both within the play and among its probable audience.

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'Books of Accounts in Everyman and Elckerlijc'
METh 33 (2011) 19–44.

Takes a closer look at the accounting imagery in Everyman and Elckerlijc and its links with the social background of the plays. Argues that this imagery is too conventional to allow us to determine the social standing and mindset of the authors and intended audiences.

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‘Texts in Plays: the case of Mankynde’
METh 33 (2011) 45–57.

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‘Verity’s Bible: books, texts and reading in Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis’
METh 32 (2011) 58–74.

Explores the range of texts that feature prominently in Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis, whether as physical books, in the memory, or on the tongue. Demonstrates how these texts become a focus in the play for strong and conflicting positions not only on religious belief but also on theatrical practice, at this heightened transitional moment on the eve of the Scottish Reformation.

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‘“Say thy lesson, fool”: Idleness tries to teach Ignorance to read (Part One)’
METh 33 (2011) 75–121.

In a play (John Redford’s Wit and Science) written by a teacher for schoolboys to perform, one scene presents the complete failure of a very elementary reading lesson. This paper looks in detail at Tudor early-years classroom practice and its curriculum, and attempts to analyse what is going on and how and why it fails. This is the first part of the argument: the second, which also speculates on the nature of Ignorance's disability, will appear in Volume 34 of METh.

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‘Composing Music for the Feast of Fools: the case of the Kyrie Asini’   METh 33 (2011) 122–134.

Argues that the Kyrie Asini, often included on recordings of ‘music from the Feast of Fools’, was not composed in ‘the thirteenth century’ as many musicians and scholars assume, but for a long-playing record issued in 1980.

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