Medieval English Drama

Dr. Oana-Alis Zaharia

 
Three major genres (names given later by 19th century French medievalists):

• FOLK PLAYS (reprocessed pagan rituals): Robin Hood plays, Maygames (maypole
dance), Sword dance, St George and the Dragon
– the fool= centre of vitality - interludes (cheerful, largely secular plays of no particular
length)
• MORALITIES: non-biblical topics, abstractions, allegorical psychodramas, moral
message, the Vice figure.
• CYCLES/MYSTERIES/MIRACLES: Biblical subject matter - the biblical and saints’ plays
- descended from liturgical drama.

Mystery - blend of two words, mysterium, ‘hidden thing’, and ministerium, ‘service’.
“…often called Mystery Plays, partly because they deal with religious mysteries (making
known the ways of God – and the central principles of the Christian faith – to their
audiences), and also because .. they were put on by the craft guilds: the organizations
(part trade-regulating body, part religious confraternity) responsible for administering the
crafts or ‘mysteries’ that dominated the urban economy.” (Walker 2000: 3)
 1311 - the establishment of the late spring festival of Corpus Christi, a celebration
of the doctrine of transubstantiation.
 The mystery play or Corpus Christi play was in expression the same as the
miracle play – different plots & characters .
 miracle plays - built their plot around the lives and the works of the saints. They
were usually performed on the saint's feast day. Some of the scripts were biblical,
others were not.
 mystery plays - the major form of Medieval drama; the plot and characters -
drawn from the books of the Bible .
 Topics: the life of Christ (Christ’s Birth and the Magi, Christ’s Passions), the Genesis (Adam
and Eve, the Flood and Noah the 2nd Judgment)
- The best examples are the cycle plays of England.
• Cycles - identified by the region they were performed in e.g. The York Cycle (14th century)
contained forty-eight short plays and took approximately 14 hours to perform.
*Reformation banned them for idolatry- last performance of the Coventry cycle – 1581

• Pageant - processional wagon-drama - a dramatic performance made up of different,

usually historical scenes, often performed during a procession.
• pageant wagons moved through the streets while the audience stayed in one place – like
parade floats.
• The term "pageant" is used to refer to the stage, the play itself, and the spectacle.
• Plays performed in sequence – each play was performed several times.
• The Latin equivalent and source of the term is pagina (‘page’). The base meaning is
probably something like ‘section’.
- Theatre as ‘Game’
- General medieval terms used for theatrical genres: ludus in Latin – play or game in English.
The people who performed them were players (the word actor was not used in this context
until 1581).
- festive: entertainment as opposed to hard work.
- Religious plays take place on holidays.
- Because they are festive and celebratory, they are all ultimately upbeat (optimistic
&happy). The Corpus Christi Play is a divine comedy.
- The moral plays show the hero – Mankind- ultimately being saved, even though The
Castle of Perseverance gives us an eleventh-hour cliff-hanger.
- theatre is not ‘serious’.
- plays are not and are not meant to be real life. They are make-believe. This must
have been reinforced by the circumstances of playing.
-The plays took over and transformed everyday space: in processional religious
drama, the city streets; in liturgical drama, the churches; in the moral and other
interludes, the great halls of households, educational establishments or civic
guilds; in other drama, churchyards, inn-yards, market-places.
Theatre as Literature

- did medieval people see theatre as a game with a story-line, or conversely as the game
version of a story?
- was the difference between literature and theatre merely the method of delivery?
- The famous description of plays as ‘quick [living] books’ seems to support this idea (Walker
2000: 198; see Twycross 1988).
- MIXTURE of comedy and high seriousness.
- The Corpus Christi Play covers the entire chronology of the human race.
- ‘performative’ features:
- the use of direct address - the first-person authorial voice turns up embodied in a
metatheatrical character called the Expositor, or Doctor (Twycross 1983: 82–8).
- At the other end of the spectrum, the literature of popular religious meditation invited the
reader to imagine the figure of Christ or the Blessed Virgin speaking directly to him or her
(Twycross 1983: 76–7).
- The Corpus Christi plays - three main functions: to show and tell the Christian narrative;
to explicate it; and to move their audience emotionally.
- Theatre was ideally suited to stir up an emotional relationship with the figure of Christ
the Man, to arouse compassion and thus love and emulation.
- Medieval piety familiarly focuses on the suffering of Christ and his saints, hoping to
provoke tears.
 MORALITY PLAYS

- Dramatized sermons – moral lessons- plays which deal, prescriptively, with

human behaviour.
- Allegorical plays on the Life of Man - they can plot the whole life of Man from
the cradle to the grave and beyond, or concentrate on a particular crisis point,
such as the coming of death.
- CHARACTERS– no longer Biblical figures , but ABSTRACTIONS:
MANKIND/EVERYMAN, THE WORLD, GLUTTONY , COVETOUSNESS (greed+envy),
• Moralities were not judged to be idolatrous and escaped the Reformation ban.
( Tudor moralities extended into the 17th cent-> professional theatres
- good on the mid-life crisis. Allegory is used as a tool for psychological analysis.
- PSYCHOMACHIA ( The Battle for the Soul of Man) -> stage = man’s soul,
tournament, war.
- THEOLOGICAL SCHEME – temptation – fall –redemption;
MORALITIES ON STAGE:

Difference : indoors or outdoors

Outdoors: carts or scaffolds-> pageants; courtyards
Symbolic vertical structure.
Indoors : undefined space in a hall, >>>> dubbing, quick change of costumes, scarcity of
properties.
Close audience - actors communication –audience all around, actors mingle with them
=> topical issues intermingled with the general (biblical/abstract) subject matter,
costumes: not-historical but symbolic
Acting style – presentational, not mimetic, strict conventions (high vs. low characters)
- The use of prologues and epilogues.
 EVERYMAN

- preparation for death >> denial of worldly pleasures - turning away from the enticing World
 “contemptus mundi” [“scorn of the world”] - separation from Riches, Kindred, Friends- 5
Wits.
- DEATH - a journey with no partner => solitude and Angst
- the Dance of Death (Danse Macabre),  medieval allegorical concept of the all-conquering
and equalizing power of death, expressed in the drama, poetry, music and the visual arts of
western Europe mainly in the late Middle Ages.
- no matter one's station in life, the Danse Macabre unites all -  the inevitability and the
impartiality of death - the dead or a personification of death summon representatives from
all walks of life to dance along to the grave – a form of memento mori - meant to remind
people of the fragility of their lives and the glories of earthly life.
 EVERYMAN
 PEDAGOGY OF FEAR (see Jean Delumeau)
Dies irae - the wrath of God incurred if one does not follow God but the World, Man’s obedience to God and
his Laws .
Memento mori - the Dance of Death, the brevity of life versus everlasting death/life, the vanity of all worldly
pursuits (power, riches, beauty, love).
Ars moriendi - fear of unexpected death=> the need for a timely preparation for death (Knowledge, Good
Deeds, Rituals),

 The Summoning of Everyman – morality play - late 15th century (c. 1510)

- allegorical characters : Death, Good Deeds, Knowledge etc.

- Everyman - an ordinary, flawed human being representing all mankind. He struggles to achieve Christian
salvation on his journey towards death.
- fear of the final reckoning- God’s overwhelming presence/God- the supreme judge and ruler – not Christ
the man.
- man’s awareness of finitude and of his helplessness in front of the angry God (major message – see
PROLOGUE)
- God like a feudal Lord who demands strict obedience (cf the Romanian “robul lui D-zeu”) –
- Everyman = a subject/vassal, a fool (stupidus) BUT ALSO an initiand.
- DEATH = God’s captain BUT ALSO the one who starts the initiation process for Everyman.
BIBLIOGRAPHY AND FURTHER STUDY

1. Jean Delumeau. Sin and Fear: The Emergence of the Western Guilt Culture, 13Th-18th
Centuries, Palgrave, 1990. (Păcatul și frica. Culpabilitatea in Occident)
2. https://www.britannica.com/art/dance-of-death-art-motif
3. https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/everyman-a-morality-play