Staging Faith: East Anglian Drama in the Later Middle Ages. By Victor L. Scherb. Madison, Wisc.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press; London: Associated University Presses, 2001. Pp. 273. $45.

The book opens with an introductory gloss on the title phrase staging faith, briefly surveying the range of types of raised platform denoted by Middle English "stage " and the types of public display for which such platforms were used. The project is defined as a performance-oriented study conducted with attention to "a specific configuration of historical, cultural and theatrical circumstances, " investigating how East Anglian plays of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries "give dramatic form to religious impulses. " The book is based on the author's Ph.D. dissertation, the date of which coincided with Gail MacMurray Gibson's important study The Theatre of Devotion: East Anglian Drama and Society in the Late Middle Ages(1989).

Janet Cowen
King's College London