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Medieval Drama

Medieval Drama. Medieval Drama. Death of theatre after fall of Roman Empire Seeds of theatre kept alive only by street players, jugglers, acrobats, storytellers and animal trainers who wandered across Europe

phillip-whitfield
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Medieval Drama

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  1. Medieval Drama

  2. Medieval Drama • Death of theatre after fall of Roman Empire • Seeds of theatre kept alive only by street players, jugglers, acrobats, storytellers and animal trainers who wandered across Europe • Christians forbidden from attending theatres so it’s ironic that Medieval Drama developed from Christian Liturgy (esp. Easter)

  3. Medieval Churches • Slowly it developed as an act of faith in a ritual setting and developed into a full scale pageant on the life of Christ • Church needed to establish itself in the community • Began using drama to tell stories about religious holidays to a largely illiterate audience (Church still used Latin)

  4. Liturgical Drama • Rebirth of drama came through brief plays acted by priests as part of the liturgy (worship service) • The Resurrection of Christ was first event dramatised • Church became theatre with the altar / crucifix as the central focus and scenes in the play were sited along the nave.

  5. These sites (Bethlehem, Nazareth, Herod’s Palace etc) were called mansions, houses or booths and between them was the playing area. Heaven was on the Right, Hell on the Left.

  6. VALENCIENNES PASSIONPLAY1547

  7. In time these moved outdoors (overcrowding? links with the church?) • Pageant wagon became the setting • Wagons drawn through city to various places stopping to perform their play. • The booths / mansions were set out in a variety of ways … theatre in the round was invented!

  8. Hrotsvita (10th c.), German nun, wrote plays about Christian martyrs using structure based on Terence’s Roman comedies • Liturgical drama • Mystery plays: Biblical stories • Miracle plays: Saints’ lives • Morality plays: Allegories

  9. MysteryPlays • Written in verse and taught Christian doctrine • Presented Biblical characters as if they lived in medieval times

  10. Miracle Plays • Based on lives of saints rather than scripture • Became secular after short period of time

  11. Morality Plays • Religious performed “speeches” • Taught meanings of Biblical passages other than literal ones • Dramatised the moral struggle Christianity imagines universal in every individual • Changed into plays called interludes • Interludes were created strictly for entertainment

  12. Triumph of Isabella 1615

  13. TradeGuilds Around the 14th and 15th century, trade guilds took responsibility for individual plays Shipwrights stages Noah’s Art Carpenters staged the Tower of Babel Fishmongers stages Jonah and the Whale

  14. Cycles • York– 48 episodes • Coventry – 42 episodes • Wakefield – 32 episodes • Chester– 25 episodes The entire cycle from creation to the last judgement would be shown …

  15. Comedy • Plays still liturgical but retained comic elements • These comic scenes led to use of the vernacular (native language of locality) Comic scenes were embellishments of the original story

  16. Plays grew in complexity – props, working machinery (trap doors for Hell, cranes for heaven, floods, fire, earthquakes, elaborate costume, jewels, animals music … a spectacle! • In 1501 17 men were needed to work the Hell Mouth which opened and closed and belched smoke.

  17. Over several centuries (c.925 to 1575 A.D. - some six hundred years) medieval religious theatre developed, flourished, and finally declined. It has never died out. • Nativity plays are performed all over the world at Christmas time, the Passion Play at Oberammergau survives, and the play of Everyman is frequently produced.

  18. The legacy • The Cycles covered a gamut of emotions and audiences were conditioned to accept anything and everything in Drama. • The Reformation (and the fall of Constantinople) brought about the end of this type of Drama but … • …they are still performed today in annual festivals across the world.

  19. Everyman • Everyman is informed by Death of his approaching end. • In despair and fearful, Everyman is deserted by his false friends: his casual companions, his kin, and his wealth. • He falls back on his Good Deeds, his Strength, his Beauty, his Intelligence, and his Knowledge. These assist him in making his Book of Accounts, • At the end, when he must go to the grave, all desert him save his Good Deeds alone. • The play makes its grim point that we can take with us from this world nothing that we have received, only what we have given.

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