The Nativity by Arnoul Greban is a fifteenth-century French Christmas play, based on an orthodox interpretation of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke that is part of Greban’s vast cyclic drama in verse, The Mystery of the Passion.
Greban’s masterpiece (circa 1450) calls for hundreds of characters and requires several days for its production as it covers the period from the Creation through the Resurrection. Shelley Sewall has extracted approximately five thousand lines of verse from the 35,000-line drama and divided them under the traditional titles: The Nativity of Our Lord and The Play of the Three Kings. She has added scene divisions and titles for clarity as well as relevant stage directions from the Mons Promptbook of 1501. The result is a producible English translation of a French medieval Christmas play. To aid in the performance of this remarkable achievement, the book is illustrated with contemporary miniatures from manuscripts of Passions clearly showing the details of polyscenic French staging.
