Mystery Plays: Crash Course Theater and Drama #10

Available at https://youtu.be/5VI3qcSuUlk or just youtube/google “Crash Course Theater and Drama 10”
1. Mystery plays and morality plays were the first European plays
to unite _______________ life and ________________ life in
more than a thousand years.

a. Liturgical drama expanded out from the altar and spread

all over the church, occupying small spaces usually known
as ________________, which were decorated to suggest
different scenes.

b. In 1210, Pope Innocent III issues an edict saying that the clergy ______________
_____________________________________.

c. What are cycle plays?

i. In England, the performing of cycles began sometime in the late 1300s and
continued until the late 1500s, when they were banned because of the
_________________________________.

ii. They were sometimes known as “mystery plays” because a “mystery” was
another word for a ______________.

iii. Cycle plays are also known as ___________________________ if the

particular cycle focuses on the passion of the ______________.

iv. A couple of Frenchmen signed their plays about the lives of saints, also
known as ___________________________.

v. What did you find most interesting about “The Second Shepherd’s Play”?
Explain why.

d. Secular plays were often based on ________________.

e. The most famous morality play is “_______________”.

i. Morality plays had a huge influence on the plays

of the __________________________________.
Theater and Drama Crash Course Answer Keys
Crash Course 10 – Get Outside and Have a (Mystery) Play
1. religious; secular
a. mansions
b. can’t perform plays in public
c. an ambitious genre of medieval drama that depicts the whole history of the Christian universe,
starting with the creation of the world, and ending with the death and resurrection of Christ, and
skimming most of the Old and New Testaments in between; some of them go all the way up to
the Last Judgment
i. English Reformation
ii. trade
iii. passion plays; Christ
iv. miracle plays
v. answers will vary
d. folklore
e. Everyman
i. English Renaissance