The
York Mystery Plays, more properly the
York Corpus Christi Plays, are a
Middle English cycle of 48
mystery plays or pageants covering sacred history from the
creation to the
Last Judgment. They were traditionally presented on the feast day of
Corpus Christi (a movable feast on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday, between 23 May and 24 June) and were performed in the city of
York, from the mid-14th century until 1569. The plays are one of four virtually complete surviving English mystery play cycles, along with the
Chester Mystery Plays, the
Towneley/Wakefield plays and the
N-Town plays. Two long, composite, and late mystery pageants have survived from the
Coventry cycle and there are records and fragments from other similar productions that took place elsewhere. A
manuscript of the plays, probably dating from between 1463 and 1477, survives at the
British Library.