The Guilds and the Cycles

Once the plays were in the hands of the Guilds, rather than the Church, there were a number of upgrades performed on them. Not only did they start performing many more plays, ranging from Creation to the end of days, but they started adding elements that weren't there before. They added costumes, stages, music, vernacular text, spectacle, non-clergy actors and directors.
According to Brockett, "Most of the extant English works are parts of four cycles: York (48 plays), Chester (24), Wakefield (sometimes called the Towneley Plays; 32), and the N____ town Plays (place unknown, 42)" (Brockett pg. 86). Many of these plays had the same subject matter as other plays in other, or even the same, cycle, but they were still separate plays, written differently with different things left out of them and other parts left in. Therefore, each play that was about a specific part of the Bible was not the hard and fast rule on the subject, but rather a rendition dependent upon what the specific Guild's views were and what they wanted to get across to the audience; think of it as Medieval advertising like what we do in movies today.