Past scholarship in folk drama has tended to concentrate its attention on plays performed mainly in rural areas. However, there are many instances in the last 150 years of plays being performed not only in villages and small towns, but also in cities and large industrial towns. This paper intends to examine these urban plays and attempts to show that both urban and rural plays are of equal importance in folk drama scholarship.
This will involve, for example, studying the relationship between urban folk drama and chapbooks containing traditional play texts. These chapbooks were published predominantly in towns and cities and they are generally thought to have had a considerable influence on the play traditions in such areas. This study attempts to determine exactly how influential these chapbooks have been. Specific reference will be made throughout to the play traditions in two of our largest cities – London and Manchester.