Just to start a hare again, here's an essay associated with the REED project which helps us a little with why medieval drama isn't always easy to find. This is the bit I like ...

The Toronto project Records of Early English Drama (begun in 1977, ten volumes so far, out of a projected thirty-five) shows, however, that the surviving text corpus is completely unrepresentative of what was actually going on. After REED, every history of early English theater will have to be re-written. Between 1400 and 1650, virtually every town in Great Britain, and notably southern communities, had religious and folk festival theater of some kind. The same is true for continental Europe and Germany. Wherever archival records from this period survive, you will, if you care to look, find references to theater. The plays REED so richly documents for England were not cycles, but, as on the continent, single plays (Nativity, Ephiphany, Passion, Easter, Pentecost, Saint, May, Robin Hood, tournament, dance plays), not movable in performance, but stationary (scaffolds in open places). Between 1400 and 1650, theater was a church and civic mass medium of extraordinary importance. Movies play a similar role in our society. Much of the culture of these centuries (town, court, university) is theatrical. We only realized this when we started looking at unpublished archival sources.

And here's an interesting bit of a Doctor's speech from a play circa 1475.

All manar off men yt haue any syknes
To Mast Brentberecly loke that yow redresse
What dysease or syknesse that ever ye haue
He wyll nev leve yow tyll ye be i yow graue
Who hat ye canker ye collyke or ye laxe
The tercyan ye quartan or ye brynnyng axs
For wormys for gnawyg gryndyg i ye wombe or i ye boldyro
All man red eyn bleryd eyn & ye mydgrym also
For hedache bonache & therto ye tothache
The colt-evyll and the brostyn men he wyll undertak
All tho yt ye poose ye sneke or ye tyseke
Thowh a ma wre ryght heyle he cowd soone make hym sek
Inquyre to ye colkote for ther ys hys loggyng
A lytell besyde Babwell Myll yf ye wyll haue undstodyg


I'm getting near the first of a series of articles about origins of the mummers play, so watch this space ...

:-)