Historians of medieval and Renaissance English drama have become so accustomed to successive volumes of The Records of Early English Drama (REED) rolling off the production line, as they have done since 1976, that they may by now take them for granted. But historians of the urban scene may not be as familiar with REED volumes as they might be. Anne Lancashire's ground-breaking collection of the dramatic records of civic London to 1558 serves as an emphatic reminder of what such volumes contain and how they may be used. Following on the heels of Mary C. Erler (ed.), Records of Early English Drama: Ecclesiastical London (Toronto and London, 2008), and Alan H. Nelson and John R. Elliott, Jr (eds.), Records of Early English Drama: Inns of Court (3 vols., Cambridge, 2010), this three-volume collection brings an impressively comprehensive picture of London's dramatic activities closer to completion.

Like its predecessors, REED: Civic London to 1558 identifies and publishes every retrievable record relating to mimetic performance within its geographic and chronological remit. Surviving civic records of London's mimetic activities begin 1286/87, becoming more abundant when both the livery companies and the City of London itself began more regularly to keep written records in the early fifteenth century. Those two sources, the City's administrative units and the London livery companies, 27 of which retain some records for this era, comprise the lion's share of these volumes. The accounts of the Southwark Bridge House administration make up the rest. Given those sources, records of royal entries, mayoral oath-takings and shrieval presentations, Midsummer watches, myriad pageants and plays, seasonal festivities, company feasts and drinkings, and secular musical entertainments as provided, e.g., by the City waits and minstrels, form the central themes. In addition to these activities themselves, this collection also provides, in full verbatim extent, the documentary evidence for all sorts of ancillary activities and subjects relating to performance itself: e.g., costume, music, ceremonial and civic regalia, material culture, art, performance spaces, patrons and sundry other related subjects.

Anne Lancashire, assistant editor David J. Parkinson and the rest of the REED editorial team have followed the familiar pattern of other REED volumes in producing the extensive editorial apparatus which facilitates linguistic access and both bibliographic and at least immediate historical context to the task. That is to say, the records are accompanied by a succinct historical summary for London and its mimetic traditions; a working bibliography of secondary sources; a comprehensive and generously annotated bibliography of primary sources extending here to 61 pages of smallish print; maps; nearly 200 pages of translations (by Dr Abigail Ann Young) of non-English texts; glossaries of unfamiliar terms in Latin, Anglo-English and English by Dr Young and William Cooke; copious endnotes and a finely detailed, double-column, 133-page index compiled by Arleane Ralph.

What this and other REED volumes do not do, save by implication, is to provide the more extended contextualization, analysis and interpretation characteristic of a traditional scholarly monograph. REED’s primary purpose has always been to establish as exhaustive an evidential base as possible for research into the mimetic activities themselves, leaving such additional refection to other undertakings. In some cases it has been REED editors themselves who have independently undertaken such secondary work, and that is also the case with this collection. Lancashire published her London Civic Theatre: City Drama and Pageantry from Roman times to 1558 (Cambridge, 2002) well before her REED collection appeared. Whether or not she would have had different things to say after the REED publication remains an open question.

Aside from the verbatim texts which are the chief preoccupation of all REED volumes, urban historians will find particularly useful the full description of each and every record employed herein. Though consulted here as sources for mimetic activity, they are also critically important for other aspects of London history, and thus to the working life of the civic bodies which produced them. The same may be said for the extensive glossary, which presents an enormously valuable guide to the general vernacular usage of the London region. Overall, the publication of this collection marks a substantial watershed for the study of London's mimetic activities and of London itself from the last years of the thirteenth century to the middle of the sixteenth. Even in its yet incomplete state, REED's ambitious overall plan to publish all of London's dramatic records to 1640 already make that City's dramatic activity by far the best documented of any city in early modern Europe.