Medieval Drama

Medieval Drama Death of theatre after fall of Roman Empire Seeds of theatre kept alive only by street

players, jugglers, acrobats, storytellers and animal trainers who wandered across Europe

Christians forbidden from attending theatres so it’s ironic that Medieval Drama developed from Christian Liturgy (esp. Easter)

Medieval Churches Slowly it developed as an act of faith in a

ritual setting and developed into a full scale pageant on the life of Christ

Church needed to establish itself in the community

Began using drama to tell stories about religious holidays to a largely illiterate audience (Church still used Latin)

Liturgical Drama Rebirth of drama came through brief plays

acted by priests as part of the liturgy (worship service)

The Resurrection of Christ was first event dramatised

Church became theatre with the altar / crucifix as the central focus and scenes in the play were sited along the nave.

These sites (Bethlehem, Nazareth, Herod’s Palace etc) were called mansions, houses or booths and between them was the playing area. Heaven was on the Right, Hell on the Left.

VALENCIENNES PASSION PLAY 1547

In time these moved outdoors (overcrowding? links with the church?)

Pageant wagon became the setting Wagons drawn through city to various places

stopping to perform their play. The booths / mansions were set out in a

variety of ways … theatre in the round was invented!

Hrotsvita (10th c.), German nun, wrote plays about Christian martyrs using structure based on Terence’s Roman comediesLiturgical dramaMystery plays: Biblical storiesMiracle plays: Saints’ livesMorality plays: Allegories

MysteryPlays Written in verse

and taught Christian doctrine

Presented Biblical characters as if they lived in medieval times

Miracle Plays Based on lives of

saints rather than scripture

Became secular after short period of time

Morality Plays Religious performed “speeches” Taught meanings of Biblical passages other

than literal ones Dramatised the moral struggle Christianity

imagines universal in every individual Changed into plays called interludes

Interludes were created strictly for entertainment

Triumph of Isabella 1615

TradeGuilds

Around the 14th and 15th century, trade guilds took responsibility for individual plays

Shipwrights stages Noah’s ArtCarpenters staged the Tower of BabelFishmongers stages Jonah and the Whale

Cycles

York– 48 episodes Coventry – 42 episodes Wakefield – 32 episodes Chester– 25 episodes

The entire cycle from creation to the last judgement would be shown …

Comedy Plays still liturgical but

retained comic elements

These comic scenes led to use of the vernacular (native language of locality)

Comic scenes were embellishments of the original story

Plays grew in complexity – props, working machinery (trap doors for Hell, cranes for heaven, floods, fire, earthquakes, elaborate costume, jewels, animals music … a spectacle!

In 1501 17 men were needed to work the Hell Mouth which opened and closed and belched smoke.

Over several centuries (c.925 to 1575 A.D. - some six hundred years) medieval religious theatre developed, flourished, and finally declined. It has never died out.

Nativity plays are performed all over the world at Christmas time, the Passion Play at Oberammergau survives, and the play of Everyman is frequently produced.

The legacy The Cycles covered a gamut of emotions

and audiences were conditioned to accept anything and everything in Drama.

The Reformation (and the fall of Constantinople) brought about the end of this type of Drama but …

…they are still performed today in annual festivals across the world.

Everyman Everyman is informed by Death of his approaching

end. In despair and fearful, Everyman is deserted by

his false friends: his casual companions, his kin, and his wealth.

He falls back on his Good Deeds, his Strength, his Beauty, his Intelligence, and his Knowledge. These assist him in making his Book of Accounts,

At the end, when he must go to the grave, all desert him save his Good Deeds alone.

The play makes its grim point that we can take with us from this world nothing that we have received, only what we have given.