MEDIEVAL THEATRE

• early Catholic Church - rejection of the Antiquity and its achievements in the field of theatre (the Antiquity - perceived as the time of degeneration, theatre of the Antiquity was improper for good Christians);

• the only performance in the Middle Ages were masses - usually conducted in Latin, without any departures from the original text, (intrusions in English - explanations for common, ordinary people); rituals in the church; they were becoming more and more elaborated [ritual is colourful, emotionally impressive and essentially dramatic].

DEVELOPMENT OF THE MEDIEVAL DRAMA

• two liturgical occasions which contributed to elaboration of the liturgy were : Christmas and Easter - they offered possibilities of interpretation e.g. paraphrase of the dialogue between the angel and the three Marys;

• the purpose of these in-church performances was to instruct common people on the Christian doctrine, thus they operated with language common for those people;

• 1264 - establishing of the feast of Corpus Christi (based upon the vision of Juliana of Cornillon - Christ ascending to heaven); in 1311 Corpus Christi was observed as a holy day for the first time [it doesn't celebrate any event, but the concept of Christianity];

• Corpus Christi performances - the feast of Corpus Christi involves procession and performance during which the whole cycle from the day of Creation to the Day of Judgement was presented.

MIRACLE/ MYSTERY PLAYS

• the plays which were staged during the C.C. day are usually referred to as miracle/ mystery plays [some scholars: mystery - plays dealing with a Gospel Event; miracle - plays dealing with the legends of saints]; = the plays of scriptural genesis;

• the cycle plays were written and performed with the aim of teaching and illustrating the Bible; they had narrative structure (from the Act of Creation to the Day of Judgement); they presented dramatised versions of Biblical stories - the dramas of Fall and Redemption of man - cast as historical narratives, whose main historical source was the Bible;

• the cycles are named after towns with which they are connected:

• CHESTER PLAYS (25, before 1377); WAKEFIELD ... (also known as: Townley Plays - after the name of the owner of the manuscript - (32, before 1410); YORK ... (49, before 1376); COVENTRY ... - Ludus Coventrie (42, before 1392);

• all surviving mystery plays are anonymous;

• in mystery plays the actors were representatives of guilds (to fulfil their religious duty, to present their skills; to advertise their guild) - actors were males only (clerical banishment of female speech); the preparation and enactment of the performances were community activities, performed by particular guilds [e.g. the grocers' guild > Adam & Eve in the Garden];

• plays were presented at pageants or on big carts, which constituted the stage for one particular play; (the term `pageant' described both the vehicle and the spectacle) - pageants were movable and therefore the theatre could be taken from place to place;

• at first, the actors were not dressed up - but later as new elements were introduced, such performances became more and more sophisticated and the actors started using costumes;

• Humour and comedy in the miracle plays - the medieval drama - little in common with the ancient drama (it also did not preserve the division into tragedy and comedy); here: drama operated with comic elements comedy was based on the low type of verbal humour; although the theatre was didactic and moral, it also contained a great deal of entertainment in presenting the characters, and in robust of language.

MORALITY PLAYS

• responded to the late medieval necessity to educate the lay audience in the nature of sin; they provided norms for social behaviour;

• they were based on the opposition of vice and virtue (psychomachia pattern) - and on life as pilgrimage structure {Prudentius Psychomachia - a poem in which there is a struggle between vices and virtues for the human soul - allegorical);

• the plays presented allegorical stories as prescriptions for good living - for common people/ sinners, employing allegorical figures, personifications of vices and virtues; through recognisable theatrical illusion they dramatised the everlasting fight between good and evil in the human soul; in the context of man's three enemies: the World, the Devil, the Flesh; they presented a universal human being as vulnerable and weak - subjected to temptation, who had to be constantly admonished and instructed in order to achieve salvation;

• model moralities (from the Macro Manuscript): The Castle of Perseverance; Wisdom; Mankind;

• Everyman - the most noted and most often translated morality play (printed 1510-1516); theme of Death summoning Everyman (popular in Late MA); recalls the theme of memento mori - tragic consciousness of death; reminds of the constant need for repentance; - idea of Death as the Leveller (in the eye of whom everybody is equal);

• dance macabre - idea of Death who invites everybody to dance with him - dance of the dead; appears to have first taken place in France, as a mimed sermon in which figures typical for various orders of society were seized and haled away each by its own corps; later they were haled by the personifications of death;

• What was the task of moralities - to assert the articles of faith, highlight Christian feelings and show the audience the right way of behaviour (early morality plays were anonymous - in later ones the authorship is asserted).

INTERLUDES

• Latin interludium - a short play in-between the courses of a banquet; it retains the basic structure, themes and allegorical personalities of the moralities - therefore, they are sometimes referred to as moral interludes/ plays; as opposed to the moralities `proper' later moral interludes are shorter and have more comic and farcical elements; [performers were active for many years before the first recorded reference to Players of the King's Interludes in 1493];

• The World and the Child; Youth (virtue and vice in the pattern of sin and redemption); Hickscorner (acute social consciousness, demonstrates the departure of virtues from England and the coming of the vices).

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