A study of the Joseph Play with six illustrations of scenes. Few biblical figures have inspired more extensive and more universal literary treatment than Joseph. He appears in most of the medieval mystery cycles, and in the early 13th-century Iacob and Iosep, where the biblical account is conveyed in lively English paraphrase. By 1560 there were 12 English plays on the subject and dozens more in French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, and German. Of all the Genesis narratives, those about Joseph are the longest and most detailed. They are not a collection of isolated and fragmentary incidents, but a continuous biography, novelistic in complexion, the artistic creation of a consummate storyteller.