ABSTRACT
The audiences of the play were encouraged to identify with historical groups that persecuted Jews and annihilated entire communities and were implicated through the word ‘everybody’. While external information about the contributors to the play’s performance is extant, much less is known about who the actual audience of the Breda play would have comprised. The Breda playwright was challenged to represent dramatically a sequence of legends which, in order to look as miraculous and awe-inspiring on stage as they appeared in the records, needed some careful tweaking here and there. In fact, any kind of dramatisation of the Eucharist in Early Europe was potentially problematic, because of the way in which it was visualised on stage and perceived by its audience. One should not be misled by the omission of stereotypical representations of Jews in the Breda play.
