In large part, the religious plays of the Middle Ages have often been ignored by scholars of the later sixteenth century, eclipsed by the rise of Elizabethan drama and William Shakespeare. However, Hill-Vásquez's new work, Sacred Players, calls attention to the continued performances of these “medieval” texts well past the Reformation period and into the Renaissance. Hill-Vásquez investigates the seeming reformation of these religious plays and the role of audience response to expose how these plays were used for religious education. Instead of studying these plays as artifacts of the medieval period, a dying form of theater that was eventually stamped out by the end of the 1500s, the author situates these works within the events and concerns of the period in the late sixteenth century, identifying these pieces as living texts that were adaptable to the concerns of the religious entities. Sacred Players makes use of the reception theories of Hans Robert Jauss, new historicism, and feminist criticism. The book is divided into three parts and makes use of a variety of source material, most often the plays themselves.

The first part of Sacred Players develops the idea of reforming audience response by modeling and correcting responses to the Chester cycle and the Digby Saint Paul play. Through the use of transitional narrators/commentators in the scripts, Hill-Vásquez argues that these plays, possibly revised post-reformation, use these characters and changes in scenic interpretation to model and correct audience response to these works. Hill-Vásquez challenges the scholar of late sixteenth-century religious drama to consider these plays as examples of the old religion. For instance, she suggests that the Digby Saint Paul could have been performed using old vestments that were widely sold off during the various waves of reformation across England. She suggests that these vestments would have added a layer of interpretation to the scenes of the play showing the “old religion” quite clearly and visually, allowing the new religious ideas to shape the interpretation of this play.

Part 2 of Sacred Players uses evidence from a Tretise of Miraclis Pleyinge [sic] and the Croxton Play of the Sacrament to show how Catholic authorities viewed religious plays in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. In another chapter for this section, Hill-Vásquez uses the York cycle as an example of overt audience involvement in a devotional practice. She argues that the audience members of the York cycle were encouraged to become active worship participants in the Eucharistic drama. Hill-Vásquez uses this example to show how pervasive Protestant leaders would have found these plays and to further argue that they would have actively sought a revision of active audience response associated with these works. Using the Treatise, she demonstrates that Catholic leaders considered these works dangerous with regards to their ability to incite certain responses from the audience even in the fifteenth century.

Finally, in Part 3, Hill-Vásquez turns to gender roles and the potential responses audiences may have had to certain elements displayed in the Digby Candlemas Day and the Killing of the Children of Israel. She argues that the pairing of these two stories involving Herod and Mary forces the medieval audience watching to blur the boundaries between masculine and feminine behavior. In the final chapter of the book and this section, the author returns to Protestant responses to these plays, arguing that the Protestant reactions encouraged audiences to see Catholicism as effeminate. She adds Lewis Wager's play The Life and Repentaunce of Marie Magdalene [sic] to the discussion in this final chapter to further exhibit the gendered description of Catholicism to the Protestant audiences.

Hill-Vásquez asserts some interesting and unique arguments in this book. She introduces new ways of looking at some of these plays and certainly proposes a strong theory on how these plays may have functioned past the various reformation years of England. However, much of this book is conjecture. As anyone who has studied this period of drama knows, the records are not always what scholars would hope for. Most often the records consist of set and costume purchases for these plays but include little on how they were performed and perceived. Thus, it is difficult to determine whether these plays were truly perceived in the way Hill-Vásquez argues. For example, she argues that some of these plays may have been used to show the inaccuracy of Catholic doctrine through example, a claim that cannot really be challenged or proved due to the lack of evidence.

However, this work is a great addition to the current scholarly body on medieval religious plays as it studies the reincarnated life of these works well past their original time period. Furthermore, Hill-Vásquez does not ignore the performative nature of these works. Often, scholars of this period fail to show that these plays could be interpreted very differently simply through the way they were performed. Sacred Players reminds the reader that these are living documents that would have played quite differently every time they were produced. Ultimately, Hill-Vásquez argues that these plays were “a shaping force of religious cultural discourse whose impact extended well beyond its medieval boundaries … [and] discloses a multiplicity of sacred players, themselves shifting incarnations of response, reception, and belief” (208).

Sacred Players is a well-written, intriguing work that introduces a new way of viewing these plays. Hill-Vásquez's work is well-researched and contains some intriguing theories on how these plays may have been used by both Catholic and Protestant leaders. She challenges the reader to recognize the powerful nature of these dramas, which continued well into the sixteenth century and well past the English reformations, and continued to provide a means of religious and communal discourse well past their original inception.