The volume contains papers on religious and secular drama in the Middle Ages and the early modern age presented at a symposium in Cologne and centering on plays in Latin, Middle High German, Early New German, Middle Low German, and Middle Dutch. A number of papers are devoted to forms of ritualization in pre-modern drama, others examine its relative proximity to liturgy and the (culturally and liturgically determined) sequence of the seasons, while others again engage with the staging of the plays in terms of their ambivalent attempts to appeal to the responsibility of the individual against the background of an ultimate authority, and to arouse and instrumentalize emotions. All in all, the papers discuss the proliferation of early forms of theatricality and in so doing resume a long overdue theoretical discussion initiated by Rainer Warning and centering on the genesis, function, and structure of medieval plays.