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Dating back to the period between c. 1480 and c. 1620 are some ninety plays in the Low Countries dealing with biblical topics. Twenty-six of them figure in the play collection assembled, by the turn of the seventeenth century, by members of the two Haarlem Chambers of Rhetoric, Trou Moet Blijcken (Loyalty Needs to be Proven) and Lieft Boven Al (Love Above All). Plays staging New Testament topics, including parable plays, dominate this collection with no less than twenty items. Only six plays stage stories taken from the Old Testament: Abraham’s Sacrifice, Saul and David, The Prophet Elisha, The Prophet Jonah, Old Tobias (or Tobit), and The Maccabees, the latter two based on apocryphal writings. In this essay I will attempt to answer the question why a late sixteenth- or early seventeenth-century audience took an interest in these topics.
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