Overview

Playful pleasure or devout piety? Why did Florentines invest so much effort in the performance of sacre rappresentazioni, their dramatizations of the life of Christ and the saints, the history of Man’s Salvation from the Creation to the Last Judgement, Old and New Testament stories, and miracles of the Virgin?

Drawing on manuscript and printed plays, confraternal and communal archives, chronicles and letters, this study explores in fine detail and with careful attention to chronology the performance groups and their motives, and the financing, staging, and reception of their plays. Woven into this exploration is an account of the transmission of the plays first in manuscript and later in print, with woodcuts that have guaranteed their survival to the present day.

Nerida Newbigin is an Emeritus Professor in Italian Studies at the University of Sydney. Since retirement, she has published, with Barbara Wisch, Acting on Faith: The Confraternity of the Gonfalone in Renaissance Rome (2013) and, with Kathleen Olive, a critical edition of the Codice Rustici (2015).

1039 pp. + 194 ill.
ISBN: 978-0-7727-2493-9 softcover, 2 vols. set
Published: 2021

Contents

Volume 1

Acknowledgements
Transcriptions and Other Essentials
Illustrations

Introduction
1. The Manuscript Evidence of Florentine Sacre Rappresentazioni
2. Plays in Churches
3. Youth Confraternities and Their Plays
4. Edifici for the Feast of St. John the Baptist
5. Playing Outdoors
6. Antonia Pulci, Antonio Miscomini, and the Transition to Print

Volume 2

7. Defying Anonymity: Belcari, Poliziano, Bellincioni, and Lorenzo de’ Medici
8. Bartolomeo de’ Libri, Antonio Miscomini, and the Illustrated Editions
9. Savonarola and Beyond: Castellano Castellani
10. The Afterlife of the Plays

Tables
1 Rappresentazioni and Frottole in Manuscript
2 Printed Rappresentazioni
3 Major Collectors and Sales
Appendix
Cited Works
Index

Praise

Winner of the 2022 David Bevington Award from the Medieval and Renaissance Drama Society for best new book in early drama studies.

“This volume is the summa studiorum of Italian sacred theatre. Newbigin has assembled a vast array of sources (archival, textual, and iconographic) that allow the reader to appreciate the beauty and complexity of the sacre rappresentazioni of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Florence.” — Gianni Cicali, Georgetown University

“Making a Play for God is an innovative study that offers the most comprehensive treatment of all the known Florentine mystery and miracle plays and playwrights, the performances, and their reception and editorial history. The research is impec- cable, much is new, and it is a pleasure to read. The author’s knowledge of the field is unmatched, her accomplishment unrivaled.” — Elissa Weaver, University of Chicago

Reviews

"The two-volume set is encyclopedic, in many ways definitive, and consequently of broad interest not only to theater historians, but also to scholars of premodern religious art, literary studies, and codicology in manuscript and early print, as well as gender, patronage, and political economy. This review cannot do justice to the riches of the volumes, which include a comprehensive set of supplementary tables."  — Alison Frazier, University of Texas at Austin, in Church History (92, Issue 2).

"Ultimately, the greatest merit of these two volumes is perhaps that of recapitulating the state of the art of studies on the subject at the moment, not acting as an endpoint, but rather as a beginning: the author herself often indicates the theories that should be rediscussed and those that would need more evidence, drawn from studies as broad as possible and not limited to the written text, and which may also involve 'a new generation of scholars in Italy and abroad'”— Andrea Quaini, University of Wisconsin – Madison, in Quaderni d’italianistica 43.2 (2022), pp. 247-249.

“Thanks to the author’s multidisciplinary research, these two volumes stand out for their absolute wealth of content, which ranges simultaneously across socio-cultural, political, literary, historical-bibliographical and historical-bibliographical and historical-artistic levels, and their very useful paratextual tools.” (Translated from the Italian original). — Stefano Cassini, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, in L’almanacco bibliografico 66 (June 2023), pp. 9-10. 

“This work is a treasure trove for anyone wishing to understand the richness of the Florentine sacred representations: a milestone both from a methodological point of view and for the information gathered. Useful finally, for scholars and theatres that would like to stage them again.” (translated from the Italian original). — Francesca Fantappiè, Università degli Studi di Milano, in Archivio Storico Italiano 180.4 (2022): 773-779. 

“No scholar in the field can afford to ignore this study. The riches that are unhistrionically revealed here make the Florentine tradition accessible to a much wider audience than heretofore, such that the tradition’s inclusion in even undergraduate courses becomes a real possibility.” — Pamela M. King, University of Glasgow, in Comparative Drama, 56.4 (2022): 428-434.

“In Making a Play for God, Nerida Newbigin draws together her extensive research over almost five decades, and a century of scholarship by others, to provide a definitive new understanding of the evolution of Florentine sacre rappresentazioni over the course of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.” — Carolyn James, Monash University, in Spunti e Ricerche 36 (2021): 107-110.