ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Lincoln Mystery Plays

Okay kiddo, have you ever heard of a play before? It’s like a story that people act out on a stage in front of other people.

Well, a long time ago in the town of Lincoln in England, people started putting on these plays called “mystery plays.” These plays were all about stories from the Bible, like Noah’s Ark or the story of Adam and Eve.

The people in the plays were not professional actors, they were just regular townspeople who wanted to tell the stories to other people. So, they would dress up in costumes and act out the stories on wagons that would be pulled around the town so everyone could see them.

Now, the thing is, nobody knows exactly how these mystery plays started or why they stopped being performed. But people think they were first performed around the year 1350 and were popular for about 250 years.

Even though we don’t have the exact answers, people still talk about the Lincoln mystery plays today because they were an important part of English history and helped spread stories from the Bible to many people.