This essay reconsiders what made late-medieval British drama distinct from that of other periods and what it shared with those dramas. It argues for a form of afterlife for the medieval and early Tudor stage in the dramaturgy of postmodern performance. Responding to Hans-Thies Lehmann’s claims for a post-dramatic theatre, it suggests that we should also think about a pre-dramatic theatre, or rather a pre-theatrical drama, existing, not in the tragic theatre of ancient Greece, but in late medieval England and Scotland, and that the postdramatic and the pre-theatrical have much in common in their radical approaches to stagecraft.

Keywords: Postdramatic theatre, playhouses, pre-theatrical drama, interludes, morality drama