The Second Shepherd’s Play Study Guide

Known to modern literary scholars as the Wakefield Master, the anonymous author of The Second Shepherd’s Play was likely a cleric who lived in or around Wakefield in York. The Wakefield Master was active during the last quarter of the fifteenth century and likely worked on several other Wakefield plays. He is known for his skillful combination of lighthearted farce with solemn religious content, making his mystery plays entertaining, relatable, and impactful.

The Second Shepherd’s Play reveals the tumultuous social, political, and economic climate of late-fifteenth-century England. Deeply impoverished laypeople—just like Coll, Gyb, and Daw in the play—were oppressed by wealthy landowners, being forced to work long hours for very little pay. In addition, the staging of The Second Shepherd’s Play is also an indication of Medieval England’s social and political fabric. Like all mystery plays, The Second Shepherd’s Play was put on by a local guild, a sort of medieval trade union that also had political and religious objectives and was comprised of middle-class skilled workers. Guilds were a product of the increasing power and prosperity of cities.

The Second Shepherd’s Play is meant to follow The First Shepherd’s Play in the mystery cycle, a play also attributed to the Wakefield Master. The Second Shepherd’s Play is also similar in tone and content to the morality play, Everyman, which was also composed during the late fifteenth century. Like The Second Shepherd’s Play, Everyman is marked by Christian themes and events, as well as a similar brand of slapstick humor, but Everyman differs in its treatment of characters as allegorical representations of good and evil.