ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the traditional medieval-Renaissance divide and addresses current efforts to elide it altogether by suggesting that people look to the surviving texts of the Chester Banns for their perspective on pre-Reformation and post-Reformation drama. Considering the theatrical genealogies offered by Goodman, Crashaw, and Heywood, the current scholarly push for historical continuity in early English drama seems less straightforward than it first appears. Recent scholarship, on the other hand, seems to have reached a consensus in its search for continuities rather than disjunctions between the professional London companies, especially Shakespeare's, and the earlier drama and culture of the sixteenth century. The Late Banns divide the history of the Chester mysteries into periods for a strategic purpose. Taking Richard Emmerson's suggestion, then, the goal for scholars of early English drama is 'to discover the similar as well as the dissimilar and to highlight continuities as well as discontinuities'.
