The World and the Child

Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox playThe World and the Child (Template:Langx) is an anonymous English morality play. Its source is a late 14th-century or 15th-century poem The Mirror of the Periods of Man's Life, from which the play borrows significantly while reducing the number of characters.<ref>Lester (1981, xix-xx) and MacCracken (1908, 486-496).</ref> It is thought to have influenced William Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part 1.

Date

The earliest surviving edition (printed by Wynkyn de Worde) is dated 17 July 1522, although the play is believed to have been written earlier than that and to have circulated in manuscript form.<ref name="l">Lester (1981, xv).</ref> A bookseller in Oxford records the sale of "mundus a play" in 1520.<ref name="l"/> T. W. Craik suggests a date of 1508 while MacCracken offers sometime in the late 15th century.<ref name="l"/>

Sources

• Craik, Thomas Wallace. 1958. The Tudor Interlude: Stage, Costume and Acting. Leicester: Leicester UP.
• Lester, G. A., ed. 1981. Three Late Medieval Morality Plays. The New Mermaids ser. London: A&C Black. Template:ISBN.
• MacCracken, Henry Noble. 1908. "A Source of Mundus et Infans." PMLA 23.3: 486-496.
• Southern, Richard. 1973. The Staging of Plays Before Shakespeare. London: Faber. Template:ISBN.
• Wickham, Glynne, ed. 1976. English Moral Interludes. London: Dent. Template:ISBN.

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