Para1Since their initial printings, there have been only a handful of efforts to edit the mayoral shows for contemporary readers. Most of those efforts have produced old-spelling texts, such as Fredson Bowers’ editions of Dekker’s shows (in Vol. 4 of The Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker 1964). David Bergeron has edited old-spelling texts of Anthony Munday’s civic pageants and entertainments (Pageants and Entertainments of Anthony Munday 1985) and of Thomas Heywood’s mayoral shows (Thomas Heywood’s Pageants 1986), as well as modern-spelling editions of Thomas Middleton’s shows for Gary Taylor and John Lavagnino’s Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works (2007). There have been other efforts to compile the shows in recent years, such as David Carnegie’s edition of John Webster’s show for The Cambridge Webster (Gunby, Carnegie, and Jackson 2007) and J. Caitlin Finlayson’s editions of John Squire’s and John Taylor’s shows for the Malone Society (Finlayson 2015). There are other individual editions (see MoMS Sources), but the only substantial effort to assemble all the mayoral shows together was Fairholt’s nineteenth-century volume for the Percy Society; Fairholt was unaware at the time of the existence of several shows and the collection was necessarily incomplete (Lord Mayors’ Pageants 1843).

Para2This anthology therefore represents the first full anthology of mayoral shows published in 180 years. In many cases, the MoMS edition will offer the first ever modern-spelling edition of the pageant book. The modern-spelling editions in the MoMS anthology are complemented by the old-spelling diplomatic transcriptions on the Map of Early Modern London (MoEML), which are in turn complemented by links to facsimiles from EEBO or to open-access facsimiles kindly donated by libraries. The MoMS editions offer up-to-date critical and textual introductions to each show, with new perspectives based upon current research in early modern studies. The general editors have assembled leading and new voices in civic pageantry and mayoral shows to edit and advise on the production of these texts. The MoMS Editorial Guidelines (informally known as The Triumphs of Editing) are available under the Resources menu of this site.

Para3By offering scholars a centralized location to research these texts and by offering teachers texts suitable for upper-level undergraduate course reading lists, we hope that this resource will usher in a new understanding of mayoral shows. With a recent volume on civic pageantry, a special issue of The London Journal on London civic drama, and regular articles appearing on the subject, now is the time to provide this comprehensive and collective editorial venture that like the shows themselves is built through collaboration as much as possible.