MedievalTheater History

By the early 5th century Christianity spread and became the prominent

religion of the Roman empire. First the festivals

and soon after the gladiators no longer exist.

The church regulated all morality and opposed theater because its association with pagan gods, its lawless and immoral subject matter, and finally because the mimes ridiculed the church’s holy sacraments and baptism.

The last record we have of a performance in the Roman Empire is from 533 AD. After this there is a long time with no theater.

People went to mass but this was held in Latin, which wasn’t understood by the majority of

the congregation. Most people couldn’t even read in their own

language and had no experience with Bible stories. In order for

the illiterate and pagan congregations to understand

what was being taught the church slowly began to

dramatize the Bible. Short dramatic readings turned into

performing Bible stories, which turned into full blown

performances outside the church.

Just as in Greek theater, medieval theater grew out of religious ritual. Around

925 AD the singing of hymns telling the story of Christ’s resurrection was

transformed into dialogue delivered by priests, one impersonating an angel

and others the three women visiting Christ’s

tomb.

There were three main types of theater performed during the medieval period. The mystery play, the miracle play, and the morality play.

Mystery playsare among the earliest formally developed plays in medieval Europe. Medieval mystery plays focused on the representation of Bible stories in churches song. They told of subjects such as the Creation, Adam and Eve, the murder of Abel, and the last judgment.

Miracle plays deal with real and imaginary lives of saints and martyrs. Performers re-enacted miraculous interventions by the saints, particularly St. Nicholas or St. Mary, into the lives of ordinary people, not biblical events.

Morality playsused allegorical figures in order to convey a religious or moral idea. These allegories dramatized a human characters journey through life, his temptations and sins, his encounter with death, and finally his pursuit of salvation. The main character symbolizes the entirety of the human race and usually has a name like Everyman or Mankind. The other characters that Everyman meets have names such as Pleasure, Good Deeds, or Beauty. These characters personify the features that they were named for. For instance: Beauty would be an attractive woman, who would carry a mirror and be engrossed in herself, and he by her prettiness. Yet ultimately Beauty would turn away when asked for help by Everyman on his journey.

Even though women were still not allowed to perform the first known playwright in Christian Europe was

Hrotsvitha, a tenth-century German nun. She lived from 932 until 1002 and wrote

eight narrative poems, six plays, and two historical pieces, all in Latin. She had

studied and enjoyed the comedies of the Roman playwright Terence, and she modeled her work on his, with one

important difference: she wrote to glorify her God and teach moral lessons. We

don’t know for certain whether Hrotsvitha’s plays were staged during her lifetime, or even if she intended for them to be. But since then, they have certainly

proved to be stage worthy and entertaining.

Hildegard von Bingen was another woman who came after Hrotsvitha. She lived from 1098 until 1179 and was a benedict nun in Germany. She wrote Ordo Virtutum, a musical play in which personified vituese and vices depicted the moral struggle of the soul. This is the oldest known morality play.