SOURCE: "After the Fall," in From Creation to Doom: The York Cycle of Mystery Plays, AMS Press, 1984, pp. 39-59.

In the following essay, Davidson calls attention to the traditional dialectical pattern of hope and despair in the York plays that are based on episodes from the Old Testament. He also traces this pattern in medieval English pictorial art, including windows in York Minster and other churches, ecclesiastical sculpture, and illuminated manuscripts.

A comparative method involving study of the York plays and analogous representations of subjects in the visual arts may suggest some new ways of approaching the vexed question of the selection of episodes in the portion of the cycle based on the Old Testament. Agreement seems fairly general that all theories which purport to explain the choice of episodes as determined by liturgical readings, by typology, or by the medieval understanding of the seven ages of man...