This chapter attempts to reconstruct the textual history of the Latin–Greek glossary known as Hermeneumata Celtis, from antiquity to the year 1495, when the Humanist Conrad Celtis transcribed the work from a medieval antigraph that was subsequently lost. The thematic glossary of Hermeneumata Celtis is unique among other extant bilingual glossaries because it was supplemented, at some time in Late Antiquity, with the inclusion of Greek words and definitions culled from a Greek alphabetical lexicon similar to Hesychius (but possibly earlier). Other increments came from contamination with other thematic glossaries; the most recognisable points of contact are with what modern scholars call the Hermeneumata Montepessulana.

The author’s introduction includes a general introduction to the period, that is, the era from the middle to later Republic (roughly the late fourth, early third, centuries BCE) through to the end of the Pax Romana (the end of the second century CE). The main regions ied will be the western regions of the Empire, although there will be discussion of Rome’s involvement with the Greek East, and how Greek culture came to play an important influence in Roman culture; Rome’s involvement with Egypt will also be included, especially as Julius Caesar and Mark Antony’s adventures with Cleopatra are popular topics with authors and screenwriters. The introduction discusses which aspects of Roman culture are discussed in subsequent chapters.

Chapter 18 introduces the theory of natural law to be found in Plotinus and in Proclus in connection with the interpretation of Plato’s Timaeus. Natural law derives from the ‘law of being’ which is divine Intellect and from souls which, in their nature, are laws unto themselves (autonomous). Divine and natural law are considered as paradigmatic for human law. I explore this relationship as it is presented in Proclus and as exemplified in the idea of rulership for women. Appropriate knowledge in metaphysics and physics is required of the legislator in formulating corresponding human law.

The initial editions and, more importantly, the first reproductions of the few extant Latin papyri introduced a novel approach to our understanding of writing and provided new interpretative tools that generally remain relevant well beyond the Roman period. This brief reflection discusses several technical terms used to describe significant graphic features from the Roman era. The author maintains that a specialised vocabulary – essential in any discipline aspiring to scientific rigour, such as palaeography – is both a fundamental tool and a product of a systematic methodology and critical analysis.

Chapter 20 presents the way in which Proclus interpreted the figure of the tyrant in Plato’s dialogues. Tyranny is based on force, violates law, both cosmic and human, and is motivated by a misled desire for power, power divorced from goodness and knowledge. I argue that Proclus and other Platonists, Damascius and Simplicius, could use this interpretation of Plato to describe the political regimes of their period, in particular the rule of Emperor Justinian, as tyrannies. These tyrannies, in their metaphysical ignorance and moral turpitude, violated divine order and law in destroying pagan temples and statues. I consider finally the cases of two authors, John Lydus and Procopius of Caesarea, who describe Justinian’s rule in terms of kingship or tyranny.

Theresa Coletti reflects on what the findings of this volume mean for future discussions of theatre history. She argues that the chapters of this volume challenge the normative boundaries upon which early English drama’s periodization narrative long depended, and looks forward to the continuation of this work as more evidence emerges from the REED drama project and the work of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century antiquarians and recusants in preserving early drama is recognised. The Afterword also looks at how these translations of medieval stages, characters, and tropes to early modern English texts and venues anticipate the deliberate and frequent reinvention and adaptation of medieval dramatic traditions that continue to this day.

Between the middle of the fourteenth century and the 1642 closing of the theatres, performance activity in England underwent significant change. At the beginning of this period, there were no dedicated playhouses, nor was there a profitable business in the publishing of plays. Yet England had thriving and durable performance traditions, encompassing pageantry, games, tournaments, street theatre, folk plays, festivals, royal entries, civic biblical cycles, and liturgical church drama. These theatrical practices were not only local and regional but were also carried across much of the island by touring companies before and after the emergence of professional theatres. Without these deeply ingrained, vibrant customs of playing, the professional theatres would have had little chance of success. Over the past twenty years, advances in research have increasingly demonstrated that the diachronic, teleological approach implied by the conventional period categories limits our understanding of the complex theatrical landscape in England during this time. Work by repertory companies, Records of Early English Drama (REED), and scholarship on the Digby, Towneley, and Hegge manuscripts shows these traditions were ‘synchronic’, as earlier practices of touring, staging, and performance continued, and in some cases increased after the advent of London’s professional playhouses. These traditions were also bound in complex ways to the religious alliances of their patrons. The chapters in this volume explore how later dramatists employed earlier modes of staging, costuming, props, characterization, dramaturgy, and tropes which variously performed commemoration, made political and religious statements, pushed the limits of genre, parodying and reforming earlier performance traditions.

The forest in the medieval and early modern imaginary comprised a rich palimpsest of various layers, intersecting and often contradictory. Forests were threatening spaces yet also offered rich resources for use and exploitation. Forested space was linked to royal bodies and subject to the King’s control, yet it was also the sphere of the outlaw and exile. In the forest, nature could be readable as divine text or present an indecipherable labyrinth, a zone of disguise and invisibility, of inversion and confusion. As Robert Pogue Harrison has demonstrated, civilization defined itself against the forest, carving out its identity by ‘opening’ up the forest, yet wild nature haunted civilized humanity, holding up a mirror to human nature. In Shakespeare’s As You Like It (1603), the forest is a silent yet resonant character that facilitates exile, disguise, gender role reversal, pastoral impulses, meditative contemplation, eco-empathy, and an alternative centre of political power. All of these factors, this chapter argues, are indebted to a complex medieval inheritance that encompassed constructions of the forest in diverse literary genres, performance, art, and folklore, one that included the figures of Robin Hood, the Green Man, and the iconography of the Tree of Life. Our reading of Shakespeare’s forest is rendered more nuanced and less opaque when placed in dialogue with the medieval arboreal imaginary.

Part of what is involved in tracing the tropological and dramaturgical traditions of early English theatre is the challenge of identifying so-called native traditions from classical ones in works that involve both. While it is not unusual for scholars to describe Hermione’s resurrection, the restoration of Marina to Pericles, and the many reunions of Cymbeline as moments of recognition in the vein of classical anagnorisis, Smith demonstrates the influence of an earlier English variety of recognition. As seen in the Chester, York, and N-Town plays, civic performances of the episodes following Christ’s resurrection – particularly Cleophas and Luke on the Emmaus road and Jesus’ appearance to Thomas – establish a thematic pattern of recognition, portraying it as the subject's response to the revelation of the other. Someone with strong faith, such as St Mary and Luke, is more responsive to obscure signs of God’s revelation; while someone of lesser faith, like Thomas or the midwife at the Nativity, only grasps the conspicuous signs. This form of faith-as-sensitivity, Smith argues, also characterizes the recognition scenes of Shakespeare’s late plays. In both the civic and commercial theatrical contexts, such early English recognition blends the religious with the social, representative of Peter Berger’s concept of ‘alienation’. Such scenes present characters whose recognition of the other involves a suspension of socially destructive acts like betrayal and distrust and a corresponding openness to the other’s benevolence – a self-conscious interpretive focus that performs faith in the other.