The Beginnings of English Drama

• English Drama has its roots in religious rituals.

• As early as the fifth century living tableaux were introduced into sacred
services. The plays originated as simple tropes, verbal embellishments of
liturgical texts, and slowly became more elaborate.
• The «Quem quaeritis?» is the best known early form of the dramas, a
dramatised liturgical dialogue between the angel at the tomb of Christ
and the women who are seeking his body. This liturgical play is in the form
of a dialogue between the women and the angel at the empty tomb of
the risen Christ. The «three Marys» come to Christ’s tomb on the third
day after his crucifixion in order to clean his wounds but they couldn’t find
his body. Upon this, an angel asks them and the dialogue goes on as in the
following.
 The Quem quaeritis Trope
Angel: "Whom seek ye in the sepulchre, O Christians? "
Women: "Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified, O angel."
Angel: "He is not here, He has arisen as He foretold:
Go, announce that He has arisen from the grave. "
• This was the whole text.
• At about the beginning of the 11th century it began to be acted out
during the service of the morning prayer. The brief scene was
gradually expanded with priests, nuns and choirboys taking part.
• These primitive forms were later elaborated with dialogue and dramatic action.
Eventually the dramas moved from church to the exterior – the churchyard and
to the city centers and the public marketplace. These early performances were
given in Latin, and were preceded by a vernacular prologue spoken by a herald
who gave a synopsis of the events. The writers and directors of the earliest plays
were probably monks.
There are three types of plays in medieval England. These are:
• 1. Mystery play
• 2. Miracle play
• 3. Morality play
• Mystery plays and miracle plays (they are distinguished as two different
forms although the terms are often used interchangeably) are among the
earliest formally developed plays in medieval Europe. Mystery plays were
not clearly distinguished from miracle plays in the Middle Ages, but later
the term ‘mystery’ was associated with biblical themes and the term
‘miracle’ with the lives of saints.
 Mystery Play
• Mystery play is a medieval drama based on scriptural incidents
such as the Creation, Adam and Eve, the murder of Abel, the Flood,
or the life, death, and resurrection of Christ and the Last Judgment.
• The mystery plays, usually representing biblical subjects, developed
from plays presented in Latin by churchmen on church premises
and depicted stories taken from the Old and New Testament.
• Mystery Plays originated in the Middle Ages, during the twelfth
century, from the lack of interest from the churchgoers in the
typical church services and their ignorance of the Latin language.
This problem prompted the elaboration of certain services.
• These plays became popular as a source of both religious
instruction and entertainment. They made the mysteries of God
and the history of Christianity feel more present and accessible.
• They are most commonly known as the ‘mystery plays’ for two reasons:
Firstly, they took the mysteries of God as their primary themes. Secondly,
these plays were organised, funded and produced by guilds, which were
also called ‘mysteries’ in the Middle Ages. In other words, at that time, the
word mystery meant “trade” or “craft”. As these plays were performed by
the trade guilds after they were banned in churches, they were named after
these guilds.
• During the thirteenth century Mystery plays gained less support from
religious figures due to their questionable religious values.
• In 1210, suspicious of the growing popularity of miracle plays, Pope
Innocent III issued a papal edict forbidding clergy from acting on a public
stage. Once this happened and the performances were free from the
church, the strong religious themes started to disappear. Besides, this had
the effect of transferring the organization of the dramas to town guilds,
after which several changes followed. Vernacular texts replaced Latin, and
non-Biblical passages were added along with comic scenes.
• Yet, these dramatizations were presented on the greater festivals of the
church: Christmas, Easter Pentecost and Corpus Christi.
• At first they were in Latin and perfomed by the clergy in the church.
• Later, vernacular language came to be increasingly used and lay folk also
performed in these dramatizations. Thus, religious drama began to be
gradually secularized.
• In time the presentations of these plays became the concern of the trade
guilds. Each of these guilds were responsible for a particular episode or
episodes. With an ever growing audience to please, the town-guilds
found that a perfect opportunity to showcase their crafts and works.
• The performances were grouped together and consisted of plays such as,
Noah and the Flood, and The Creation of the World and the Fall of Adam.
• A guild is an association of artisans and merchants who oversee the
practice of their craft/trade in a particular area. Guilds in the Middle
Ages were associations or groups of craftsmen or merchants, who were
in charge of regulating and teaching their trade; they were often wealthy
and wielded considerable power.
• Each guild focused on a specific trade such as the candlemaker's guild,
the draper’s guild or the tanner's guild.
• The mystery plays gave guilds the opportunity to advertise and show off
their wares. A play about Noah’s Ark and the Flood would be sponsored
by the Shipbuilders, who provided the ark itself, and the Goldsmiths
would be in charge of the play of the Magi, donating lavish gifts as props.
• According to a surviving public proclamation from York, the guilds
were also in charge of sourcing ‘good players, well arranged, and
openly speaking’.
• Significantly, these players weren’t usually professionals. They were
ordinary people with a taste for drama – so you might well see your
friend, neighbour or local butcher in the cast, as Herod, Noah or even
Jesus.
• Named after these guilds, the mystery plays evolved over time,
deepening character development and adding scenes not found in the
Bible. Eventually, these plays were moved from the Church to the
outdoors, where the tradesmen presented them on movable
platforms in the streets and town squares.
• Another detail which sets these plays apart from modern drama is their
mobility. The plays were usually performed on separate pageant wagons,
with wheels, so that they could be moved. Each play was mounted on a
wagon with a curtained scaffold. The lower part of the wagon was a
dressing room. After the play had been performed, the wagon moved on
to where another play had just been acted. Thus, in the course of a day
or days, the population of the city was able to see the complete cyle. The
wagons would proceed, one after another, and the players would
perform on them at various fixed stations around the town or city. The
audience could pay a bit more to have a seat at these various stations, or
they could stand – and this gave them more autonomy over their
experience. They could either stay at one station and watch every play,
or dip in and out, wandering between the different stations.
Actors portraying Adam and Eve expelled from paradise in a performance by the Players of St Peter
• Mystery plays 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.
• Mystery plays were performed in the cyles. These plays are sequences of
performances, sometimes referred to as ‘cycle plays’ because they make up a
cycle of 48 surviving short playlets. The mystery play developed, in some places,
into a series of plays, i. e. cycles, dealing with all the major events in the Christian
calendar, from the Creation to the Day of Judgment. 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.
• The principal English mystery cycles were those of York, Coventry, Wakefield (also
known as Towneley) and Chester.
• The York cycle has 48 pageants, the Towneley plays include 32 pageants,
the Chester cycle is the one with 24 pageants, and the Coventry cycle has 42
pageants.
• There are dozens of plays included in each cycle and they would have been
performed throughout the festivities. The stories told in the York Cycle:

• The Creation, Fall of Lucifer

• The Creation of the Fifth Day
• God creates Adam and Eve
• Man's disobedience and Fall
• Building the Ark
• Abraham's Sacrifice
• Woman taken into Adultery, Raising of Lazarus
• The Last Supper
• The Agony and Betrayal
• Harrowing of Hell
• Assumption and Coronation of the Virgin
• Some common mystery plays:
~ Birth of Jesus
~ The Wise Men
~ Flight into Egypt
~ The Second Shepherds’ Play
Some Important Qualities of Mystery Plays
Realism: In mystery plays, the action is put in up-to-date settings
although the stories are taken from the Bible. The players make
references to local landmarks, disputes and characters in order to root
the action not only in the contemporary moment, but in their particular
location.
Humour:There is certainly humour in mystery plays, albeit rough. For
instance, Noah is portrayed as a bit of a drunken fool, and his wife as a
shrewish nag. The York play of the Crucifixion, which concerns Jesus
being nailed to the Cross, sees the soldiers arguing and making the
• This might seem sacrilegious to a modern audience, but it was part
and parcel of medieval life and the attitude of medieval Christians to
their religion. The comic nature of Noah’s character in these plays did
not detract from the overall importance and significance of their
Christian message: it just amused and entertained the audience on
the journey to salvation. The black humour of the York play of the
Crucifixion did not risk dampening the awe and glory of Christ rising
from the dead, fighting back devils or allocating the saved to Heaven –
rather, it amplified his triumph. Despite secularization and humour,
mystery plays never lost their religious impulse.
• By the time of the end of the fifteenth century and the beginning of
the Reformation, in England, the Mystery plays started to die down
and were replaced in popularity by Morality plays. Morality plays
were the popular allegorical plays in the 15th and 16th centuries.
 The Second Shepherds' Play
• The Second Shepherds’ Play (also known as The Second Shepherds'
Pageant) is a famous extant medieval mystery play which is contained
in the manuscript of the Wakefield Cycle.
• It is a Nativity play. The subject matter of the play is Christ’s coming to
Earth to redeem the world from its sins.
• This play gained its name because in the manuscript it immediately
follows another Nativity play involving the shepherds. In fact, it has
been hypothesized that the second play is a revision of the first.
• Although the underlying tone of The Second Shepherds’ Play is
serious, many of the antics that occur among the shepherds are
extremely farcical in nature.
• It is the finest example in English of a medieval mystery play. The
word ‘mystery’ in this context refers to the spiritual mystery of
Christ’s redemption of mankind.
• The identity of the author of the play is not known but, because of
his achievement scholars refer to him as Wakefield Master.He was
probably a highly educated cleric stationed in the vicinity of
Wakefield. He appreciated the rough humour and rough piety of the
traditional plays but also he knew how to combine these two
elements; the humourous and the religious.
• In the Second Shepherds’ Play, by linking the comic subplot of Mak
and Gill with the solemn story of Christ’s nativity, the Wakefield
Master has produced the dramatic parable of what the Nativity
means in Christian history and in Christian hearts. No one will fail to
observe the parallelism between the stolen sheep, ludicrously
disguised as Mak’s latest heir, lying in the cradle, and the real Lamb of
God, born in the stable among beasts.
• The bleak beginning of the play with its series of individual complaints
is ultimately balanced by the optimistic ending, in which the three
shepherds appear once again singing together in harmony.
• Characterization in the play is rather slight as it is in other mystery
plays.
• The characters in The Second Shepherds’ Play are Coll, Gib, Daw, Mak,
Gill, Angel and Mary.