1.2 Medieval Religious Drama

English (Drama)

1.2 MEDIEVAL RELIGIOUS DRAMA

In the Medieval England, drama was primarily religious in nature as the plays were written and performed under the purview of the church. For example, the Mystery plays were presented on the porch of the cathedrals or by strolling players on feast days. Miracle and mystery plays, along with moralities and interludes, later evolved into more elaborate forms of drama. Mystery plays and miracle plays are among the earliest forms of medieval plays where the medieval mystery plays focused on the representation of Bible stories in churches as tableaux. They developed from the 10th to the 16th century, reaching the height of their popularity in the 15th century before being rendered obsolete by the rise of professional theatre in England.

The name derives from mystery used in its sense of miracle, but an occasionally quoted derivation is from misterium, meaning craft, a play performed by the craft guilds. There are four collections of medieval plays, which are sometimes known as "cycles." The most complete is the York cycle of forty-eight pageants. They were performed in the city of York, from the middle of the fourteenth century until 1569. There are also the Towneley plays of thirty-two pageants, once thought to have been a true 'cycle' of plays and most likely performed around the Feast of Corpus Christi probably in the town of Wakefield, England during the late Middle Ages until 1576. The Ludus Coventriae (also called the N Town plays" or Hegge cycle), now generally agreed to be a redacted compilation of at least three older, unrelated plays, and the Chester cycle of twenty-four pageants, now generally agreed to be an Elizabethan reconstruction of older medieval traditions. Besides the Middle English drama, there are three surviving plays in Cornish known as the Ordinalia.

These biblical plays differ widely in content. Most contain episodes such as the Fall of Lucifer, the Creation and Fall of Man, Cain and Abel, Noah and the Flood, Abraham and Isaac, the Nativity, the Raising of Lazarus, the Passion, and the Resurrection. Other pageants included the story of Moses, the Procession of the Prophets, Christ's Baptism, the Temptation in the Wilderness, and the Assumption and Coronation of the Virgin. In given cycles, the plays came to be sponsored by the newly emerging Medieval craft guilds.

Having grown out of the religiously based mystery plays of the Middle Ages, the morality play is a genre of Medieval and early Tudor theatrical entertainment, which represented a shift towards a more secular base for European theatre. In their own time, these plays were known as "interludes", a broader term given to dramas with or without a moral theme. Morality plays are a type of allegorical drama where the protagonist is met by personifications of different moral aspects who try to lead him to choose a Godly life over one of evil. The morality plays were most popular throughout Europe during the 15th and 16th centuries. The Somonyng of Everyman (The Summoning of Everyman, c.1509-19), usually referred to simply as Everyman, is a late 15th-century English morality play which was the most popular amongst all the morality plays. Like John Bunyan's allegorical poem Pilgrim's Progress, Everyman (1678) deals with the question of Christian salvation using allegorical characters. The play is the allegorical accounting of the life of Everyman, who is a representative of all mankind. In the course of the action of the play, all the characters are also presented allegorically, where each character personifies an abstract idea such as Fellowship, (material) Goods, Knowledge, etc.; and the conflict between good and evil is dramatized by the interactions between the characters, etc.

Miracle Plays : A miracle play, or a saint's play presents a real or fictitious account of the life, miracles, or martyrdom of a saint. Almost all surviving miracle plays concern either the Virgin Mary or St. Nicholas, the 4th-century bishop of Myra in Asia Minor.

Mystery Plays : The mystery plays, usually represent biblical subjects such as the Creation, Adam and Eve, the murder of Abel, and the Last Judgment.

Morality Plays : An allegorical drama popular in Europe especially during the 15th and 16th centuries, in which the characters personify moral qualities (such as charity or vice) or abstractions (as death or youth) and in which moral lessons are taught.

Interlude : An early form of early English Dramatic theatre, interludes were performed at court or at "great houses" by professional minstrels or amateurs at intervals between some other entertainment, such as a banquet, or preceding or following a play, or between acts. Some plays were called interludes that are today classed as morality plays. John Heywood, one of the most famous interlude writers, brought the genre to perfection in his The Play of the Wether (1533) and The Playe Called the Foure Ps.

First Comedy and Tragedy

The first true play in English with a regular plot divided into acts and scenes, is probable the comedy, "Ralph Roister Doyster" that was penned by Nicholar Udall and was first acted by his schoolboys sometime before 1556. The story is that of a conceited fop in love with a widow who is already engaged to another man. The play is an adaptation of the Miles Gloriosus, a classic comedy by Plautus. The next play by the anonymous author, Gammer Gurton's Needle is a domestic comedy, a true bit of English realism representing the life of peasant class.

The first English tragedy Gorboduc or Ferrex and Porrex was written by Thomas Sackville and Thomas Norton and was acted in 1562 only two years before the birth of Shakespeare. It was the first play, a verse drama to be written in blank verse and also based on the political theme that was anew to the Elizabethan realm. The chain of slaughter and revenge was written in direct imitation of Seneca, a Roman dramatist. Senecan influence is also evident in Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy, and in Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus and Hamlet.