ABSTRACT
In the Wakefield mystery play Offering of the Magi, entry into language is just such a godsend. The Offering of the Magi is a predominantly joyful treatment of the story of entry into language: the acquisition of self and language told in images of ecstasy, delight, desire, and the promise of expanding horizons of agency. In the Wakefield cycle, the play of the magi gains much of its force and meaning from its position after the staging of the cycle’s two shepherd plays. Since the Wakefield cycle as a whole and many of the individual plays themselves are written in a variety of stanza forms, and since many stanza forms themselves are blocked in more than one way, the visual impact of the Towneley manuscript is stunning. Syllables rhyme, chime, and echo within as well as across whole stanzas, and whole clusters of rhymes recur in different stanzas in different orders.
