Books by Louise M. Burkhart

Presents seven dramas from the first truly American theater. Composed in Nahuatl during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, most of these plays survive only in later copies. Five are morality plays. The other two plays dramatize biblical narratives: the stories of Abraham and Isaac and of the three wise men.

Identified only in 1986, the Nahuatl Holy Week play is the earliest known dramatic script in any Native American language. In Holy Wednesday, Louise Burkhart presents side-by-side English translations of the Nahuatl play and its Spanish source. An accompanying commentary analyzes the differences between the two versions to reveal how the native author altered the Spanish text to fit his own aesthetic sensibility and the broader discursive universe of the Nahua church. A richly detailed introduction places both works and their creators within the cultural and political contexts of late sixteenth-century Mexico and Spain.