BRIEF HISTORY OF BRITISH DRAMA

The origin of the drama is deep-rooted in the religious predispositions of mankind. Same is the
case not only with English drama, but with dramas of other nations as well. The ancient Greek
and Roman dramas were mostly concerned with religious ceremonials of people. It was the
religious elements that resulted in the development of drama. As most of the Bible was written
into Latin, common people could not understand its meanings. That’s why the clergy tried to find
out some new methods of teaching and expounding the teachings of Bible to the common people.
For this purpose, they developed a new method, where in the stories of the Gospel were
explained through the living pictures. The performers acted out the story in a dumb show.
In England, drama had a distinctly religious origin from the church as the part of services. Apart
from its origin, the Latin Church had condemned Roman theatre for many reasons. Thus, drama
could not develop until tenth century when the church began to use dramatic elements as part of
their services in the certain festival or ritual. The motives of the church began to use dramatics
elements seem unclear. But, it was certain that the purpose was didactic, that is, to give deep
understanding about the truth of their religion to the believer. The oldest existing church drama
was “Quem Quarritis” trope (whom are you seeking), when the three Marrys visited the empty
tomb of Christ and met angel. Their conversation with angel consists of four sentences in Latin
then adapted and performed by the clergy in very simple performance. This simple beginning
gradually grew more elaborate. This drama called liturgical drama, in which the story simply
taken from the scripture. The earlier play were given inside the church, the story were written by
the clergy and performed by the clergy using Latin language. However, drama were not
performed in all churches, only in certain cathedrals and monasteries where there were enough
clergy to perform the plays.
From the liturgical, drama evolved to Miracle and Mystery play. In France, Miracle used to
represent the life of the saints and Mystery used to represent any scene taken from the scripture.
Meanwhile in England, there was no distinction between this two. The term Miracle play was
used to represent any story taken from the scripture or the bible and the life of the saints.
The earliest recorded Miracle play in England was “Ludus Santa de Katherina”, which
performed in Dunstable around 11110. It was not known who wrote the original play, but the
first version was prepared by the French school teacher, Geoffrey from St. Albans. The plays
were given in Latin or French. The Miracle play attracted so many people and increased its
popularity. The plays were before given inside the church began to move to the porch then to the
churchyards. But when the plays began interfere the church services and had become too
elaborate, the scandalized priest forbade the play in the church. By the thirteenth century, the
Miracle play began move outside the church.
After the Miracle play move outside the church, the secular organization or town guilds began to
take responsibility in its production. Few changes were made during this period. By the
fourteenth and fifteenth century, the plays were given in vernacular pr local language. The actors
were no longer clergy but the amateur actors which trained and selected carefully. The plays
were given in the series of mansion in the town square. The plays were performed o moving
platform called pageants and the act area called pletea. The stage were divide into three parts;
hell, earth and heaven. Hell in the left side, earth in the centre and heaven in the right side.
Usually the stages were identified by certain props. For instance, the head of dragon with red
jaws or monstrous mouth with fire breathing represent hell where the devil characters will be
dragged to the hell. The idea of salvation and damnation which later adopted in Dr. Faustus was
inherited from this period. The costumes were distinguish in three realms; heaven, earth and hell.
The heavenly characters such as God, angels, saints or certain Biblical character wore the church
garments with certain accessories. The earthly characters wore the contemporary medieval
garment appropriate to their rank. Meanwhile, for devil character wore black garments with
wings, animals claws, beaks, horns or tails.
On 1311, the Council of Vienne revived the feat of Corpus Christi. This festival held in June
every year and last for three or four days, sometimes extend to six days. The Miracle plays were
presented in all large town city in England. It was arranged to exhibit the whole story from
creation to the Day of Judgment in a cycle. There were four famous cycle existed in England.
The York with 48 plays, the Chester with 25 plays, the Wakefield with 32 plays and the
Coventry with 42 plays. During this religious period drama were written according to the Bible
and no change was tolerated. This religious performances lasted till the sixteenth century. The
later development of drama was Morality play. it is a dramatization of personified abstraction
generally vice against virtue. In these plays, the character were allegorical personified such as
death, sin, good and bad angel, seven deadly sins, etc. The purpose of this drama was didactic, to
give moral lesson to the audience. The morality plays generally ended with the virtue win against
the evil. This play was marked by the introduction of personage called “vice”, who was
mischievous, comic and humorous character. Vice was the predecessor of the modern clown or
jester. The examples of morality plays are “Everyman” and “The Castle of Perseverance”. The
introduction of Morality play also introduce so called “interlude”. Interlude is the short version
of morality play. Generally interludes were given during break of the scene. It was a short stage
entertainment in a sense of humor and was considered as the forerunner of comedies. The
example of interlude was “The Four P’s” by John Heywood which performed around 1497.
The final stage of the evolution of English drama was the artistic period. In this period, the
purpose of the pay was not to point out a moral but to represent human life as it is. During this
period, English drama was influenced by classical drama. The first comedy was “Ralph Roister
Doister” written by Nicholas Udall on 1556. The play divided into acts and scenes and wrote in
rhyming couplets. This first comedy had become the model and predecessor of English
comedies. The first tragedy “Gorboduc” was written by Thomas Sackville and Thomas Northon
around 1562. It was written in blank verse and divided into acts and scenes. After this era, the
English drama developed gradually into regular form of drama which flourish during Elizabethan
reign and which known till today.

1. Greek Drama
The word “drama” is derived from the Greek word “chan” means to do, to perform; a kin to
Greek “drainein” means to be ready, to do and technically it means deed, action on the stage. In
the religious celebrations of the god of wine and madness, Dionysus, costumed and
masked choruses (a group of singers) presented lyrics honouring him to the accompanying
music of an aulos (an instrument similar to modern day flute) or the lyre. These hymns or choral
lyrics we call dithyrambs. Though we have no written record, tradition has it that in 6th century
B.C. Thespis was the first writer who placed one separate actor in front of the chorus, and thus
created a dialogue on stage. Slowly the topics of the dithyrambs widened and included episodes
from myths of other gods, not only Dionysus, and of mythic heroes as well.

The heyday of Greek drama coincides with the glorious era of Greek democracy, that is 5th
century BC, when during a five-day spring festival the dramas were shown and awarded. Though
these plays were already much different from early dithyrambs, they still remained the
representative of a communal spirit, and to attend the festival was part of an Athenian’s civic and
religious duty.

The festivals opened with dithyrambs, followed by five comedies, and ended with the
performances of tragedy-trilogies and a satyr-play (a mythical story of burlesque nature often in
obscene language, performed by a chorus of satyrs). Tragedies had much developed since then
and became the most prestigious form of play-acting. Aeschylus (524-456 BC) selected a second
actor to converse with the chorus and the first actor, which resulted in more exciting plot
developments and more dialogue on stage, while Sophocles (496-406 BC) added the third actor,
and Euripides (480-406 BC) the prologue to precede the events. Actors wore masks and specific
costumes as well as cothurni (high soled shoes) to be easily seen by the audience. The chorus
did not only recite their lines in unison but also followed a strict choreography of movements and
dance.

Theatres were outdoors, holding an unusually large crowd, with theatrons (seating areas)

accommodating over 2,000 people. The stage, raised at the narrower end of the semicircle
theatron was backed by a painted façade, the skene. Actors appeared on the stage, while the
chorus was placed in the orchestra, the circular area in front of the stage. Stage machinery was
also used, e.g. in letting down the gods from above the stage.

For Greeks going to the theatre and watching a play signified belonging to a community and a
religion, and was not a simple recreational event. This characteristic of dramatic arts, that is
welding a society together, has remained long present in later ages as well.

2. Roman Drama
Greek drama did not completely diminish with the end of the Greek Empire since drama in the
Roman Empire was influenced by Greek drama. Like Greek Drama the origin of Roman drama
is also centred on a ritualistic festival.“For it is reliably reported that it was in 240 B. C. that the
ediles commissioned for the first time in Rome’s history the translation from the Greek of a
tragedy and of a comedy for the festival of Ludi Romani. The writer selected for this task was
Livius Andronicus, a Greek, it is said, and who was taken a prisoner at the capture of Tarentum,
and, brought to Rome.
The Roman dramatists, mainly Plautus (254-184 BC.), and Terence (185-159 BC.), were
influenced by classical Greek drama. Another Roman dramatist named Seneca (4 BC. - 65 AD.),
who was also influenced by Greek drama, had nine tragedies to his name which survived,
known as the ‘Oratorical tragedies of Seneca.’ The dramatic heritage of the other cultures was
influenced by both the Greek and Roman drama. “Like the other arts drama possessed a
distinguished past in Greek and Roman plays, theatres and works of criticism. The Greeks had
carried this heritage east and south into Asia Minor, the Middle East, Alexandria and North
Africa: the Romans had extended its influence northwards and westwards into Germany, France
and Britain. As a result, by the late tenth century we come across a Benedictine nun named
Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim in Germany who was influenced by the dramas of Terence.
Hrotsvitha, had taken Terence as her model for half a dozen plays in Latin prose, designed to
glorify chastity and to celebrate the constancy of the martyrs. The dramaturgy of Hrostvitha
appears to have been an isolated experiment and the merest literary exercise. Her plays abound in
delicate situations, and are not likely to have been intended even for cloister representation.” But
in the Roman Empire both Greek and Roman classical dramas were not popular among the
common people as they inclined more towards a crude form of dramatic entertainment called the
“Oscum ludicrum or fabula Atellana,” the spectacula comedian drama. While most of the
Romans were not interested in classical Greek and Roman dramatic heritage they gathered
around the purely entertainment dramas connected with Ludi Romani festivals. “It was not the
tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides or even the comedies of Aristophanes,
Menander, Plautus and Terence which figured on the playbills known to them; for dramatic
entertainment had by then degenerated into sequences of amusements that were both crude and
rude. Mimes, pantomimes, dancers, musicians and keepers of performing animals mingled with
tumblers, wrestlers, charioteers and gladiators to provide that strange mixture of mimetic and
athletic ludi. The Romans used the dramatic talent of Livius Andronicus to promote the Ludi
Romani festivals. The play of Livius also became very popular and it was performed during the
festivals of Ludi Romani. “About 240 B.C. the Greek Livius Andronicus introduced tragedy and
comedy. The play now became a regular element in the spectacular of the Roman festivals.
Permanent theatres were built in the closing years of the Republic by Pompey and others, and the
number of days annually devoted to ludi scenici was constantly on the increase.”

3. Medieval Drama
The mystery plays and morality plays of the 15th and 16th centuries were very different from
modern drama. They were performed in public spaces by ordinary people, and organised and
funded by guilds of craftsmen and merchants. Hetta Howes takes us back in time to show how
these plays portrayed scenes from the Bible, conveyed religious doctrine and encouraged their
audiences to lead Christian lives.
- The mystery plays
The mystery plays are sequences of performances, sometimes referred to as ‘cycle plays’
because they make up a cycle of 48 surviving short playlets. Throughout the 15th and into the
16th century, around 300 years before the building of the London playhouses, these cycles were
the most popular and enduring form of theatre in Britain, performed annually in the biggest
towns and cities of the country. They are most commonly known as the ‘mystery plays’ for two
reasons. Firstly, they took the mysteries of God as their primary theme. They aimed to show, in
the course of a day, the whole history of the universe from the creation of Heaven and Earth to
the Last Judgement – the end of the world, when everyone on earth will be judged by God and
divided between Heaven and Hell, salvation and damnation. Secondly, these plays were
organised, funded and produced by guilds, which were also called ‘mysteries’ in the Middle
Ages. Guilds were associations of craftsmen or merchants, who were in charge of regulating and
teaching their trade; they were often wealthy and wielded considerable power.
- Morality plays
Mystery plays may have been the most popular form of theatre in the Middle Ages, but they
weren’t the only one. Mumming, revels, interludes and pageants were all part of medieval
theatrical life, and a number of critics have even drawn attention to the performative nature of
church rituals, such as the Liturgy and the Eucharist. Another popular genre was the morality
play, which endured into the Tudor period. Morality plays are allegorical (i.e. the characters and
events have symbolic meaning) and provide their audience with Christian moral guidance. In this
kind of religious drama we follow a primary character (representing mankind) as they encounter
a cast of personified vices and virtues, before ultimately turning to righteousness and salvation.
Such serious themes are counterpointed by moments of farcical comedy, primarily provided by
the vice characters. The plays were usually quite short and were performed by semi-professionals
who relied on public support. One such play is Everyman, which was printed in 1510. In this
play, the titular character discovers that he is about to die. He must provide God with a book of
accounts, detailing the good deeds he has done, in order to save his soul and gain access to
Heaven. In despair, Everyman realises that he has misspent his life and his account book is
almost empty. The play follows him on a spiritual journey, where allegorical characters such as
Friendship and Beauty desert him but others, for example Good Deeds and Confession, instruct
and advise him, helping him to turn his life around before his death. The play not only teaches
the audience some complex Christian doctrine, but more importantly it encourages them to look
to their own lives and souls, before it’s too late.

4. Movement Origin
Some of the most important playwrights come from the Elizabethan era, including William
Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and Christopher Marlowe. These playwrights wrote plays that were
patterned on numerous previous sources, including Greek tragedy, Seneca's plays, Attic drama,
English miracle plays, morality plays, and interludes. Elizabethan tragedy dealt with heroic
themes, usually centering on a great personality who is destroyed by his own passion and
ambition. The comedies often satirized the fops and gallants of society.
- Christopher Marlowe
Christopher Marlowe (1564-93) was an English playwright and poet, who through his
establishment of blank verse as a medium for drama did much to free the Elizabethan theatre
from the constraints of the medieval and Tudor dramatic tradition. His first play Tamburlaine the
Great, was performed that same year, probably by the Admiral's Men with Edward Alleyn in the
lead. With its swaggering power-hungry title character and gorgeous verse the play proved to be
enormously popular; Marlowe quickly wrote a second part, which may have been produced later
that year.
Marlowe's most famous play, The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, based on the medieval
German legend of the scholar who sold his soul to the devil, was probably written and produced
by 1590, although it was not published until 1604. Historically the play is important for utilizing
the soliloquy as an aid to character analysis and development. The Jew of Malta (c. 1590) has
another unscrupulous aspiring character at its centre in the Machiavellian Barabas. Edward
II (c. 1592), which may have influenced Shakespeare's Richard II, was highly innovatory in its
treatment of a historical character and formed an important break with the more simplistic
chronicle plays that had preceded it. Marlowe also wrote two lesser plays, Dido, Queen of
Carthage (date unknown) and The Massacre at Paris (1593), based on contemporary events in
France. Marlowe was killed in a London tavern in May 1593. Although Marlowe's writing career
lasted for only six years, his four major plays make him easily the most important predecessor of
Shakespeare.
- William Shakespeare
Perhaps the most famous playwright in the world, William Shakespeare from Stratford-upon-
Avon, wrote plays that are still performed in theatres across the world to this day. He was
himself an actor and deeply involved in the running of the theatre company that performed his
plays. There were various categories or types of play, predominantly the histories, the comedies,
and the tragedies. Most playwrights tended to specialise in one or another of these, but
Shakespeare is remarkable in that he produced all three types. His 38 plays include tragedies
such as Hamlet (1603), Othello (1604), and King Lear (1605); comedies such as A Midsummer
Night's Dream (1594—96) and Twelfth Night (1602); and history plays such as Henry IV, part 1
—2. Some have hypothesized that the English Renaissance paved the way for the sudden
dominance of drama in English society, arguing that the questioning mode popular during this
time was best served by the competing characters in the plays of the Elizabethan dramatists.

- Ben Jonson
Ben Jonson (1572-1637) was an English dramatist and poet, whose reputation amongst
playwrights of the period is only second only to Shakespeare's. Although Jonson found little
success as an actor, his reputation as a dramatist was firmly established in 1598 with Every Man
in his Humour. This sucess was followed by Every Man out of his Humour and the classically
influenced satire Cynthia's Revels. Jonson wrote all of the major comedies upon which his
reputation is now based during the period 1605 to 1614.