1. Sepet's discussion of Adam takes place on 81–147; he considers the play ‘semi-liturgique’ (147). The transitional nature of the play is asserted also by those who reject Sepet's larger hypothesis: for example Grace Frank, ‘The Genesis and Staging of the Jeu d'Adam,’ Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 59 (1944) 9. Hardin Craig postulates that Adam ‘was caught in the very act of leaving the church’ and ‘may be an early and incomplete attempt at cycle-building’: English Religious Drama of the Middle Ages (Oxford 1955) 64, 68. A criticism of this view of the play is set forth by O. B. Hardison, Jr., in Christian Rite and Christian Drama in the Middle Ages: Essays in the Origin and Early History of Modern Drama (Baltimore 1965) 258–61, 281–83. A more sympathetic assessment of Sepet's contributions, with a particular emphasis on the prophets’ plays and the Adam, is to be found in E. Catherine Dunn, ‘Voice Structure in the Liturgical Drama: Sepet Reconsidered,’ in Medieval English Drama: Essays Critical and Contextual, edd. Jerome Taylor and Alan H. Nelson (Chicago 1972) 44–63.
2. 126 note 10. Robert Brawer makes the very useful distinction between the three liturgical plays which follow the Sermon very closely and two more complex works (the Benediktbeuern Christmas play and Adam) in each of which ‘the structure is only superficially like that in the independent sermon and liturgical plays; the new shape of the prophetic recital is intimately related to the way the over-all action of the play is framed and to the way individual incidents are developed’: ‘Form and Function’ 104. He goes so far as to call them ‘two dramatic traditions.’
3. Jeremiah's text in the Sermon comes from Baruch 3.36–38; I quote from Young's text in ‘Ordo Prophetarum’ (p. 5): ‘Hic est, inquit, Deus noster, et non estimabitur alius absque illo qui inuenit omnem viam scientie et dedit eam Iacob puero suo et Israel dilecto suo. Post hec in terris uisus est, et cum hominibus conuersatus.’ In modern editions of Baruch the last two verbs have a feminine subject, namely, scientia. Verse 38 is given a distinctly Resurrectional exegesis by Honorius, Gemma animae 3.108 (PL 172.671).
4. See Muir , Liturgy 98–100.
5. Adam would not be an unsatisfactory means of catechizing those preparing for Easter Baptism. Ordo L directs that such catechesis take place specifically during the Vigil lections: ‘Interim autem dum lectiones leguntur, presbiteri catecizent infantes qui non sunt catecizati et praeparent ad baptizandum’ (Andrieu, Ordines 5.275–76). Furthermore, the questions addressed to those requesting Baptism correspond quite strikingly with the range of topics treated in Adam — even to the point of excluding any mention of Jesus’ Resurrection: ‘Abrenuntias Satanae? … Et omnibus operibus eius? … Et omnibus pompis eius? … Credis in Deum patrem omnipotentem, creatorem caeli et terrae? … Credis et in Iesum Christum filium eius unicum dominum nostrum, natum et passum ? …’ (Andrieu, Ordines 5.283).