Fifth
Century
The remnants of classical theater,
as performed in Rome, are suppressed on moral grounds by the late
roman emperors, who have been converted to Christianity. As a
result, there will be virtually no regular theatrical activity in
Europe throughout the early Middle Ages.
Tenth and Eleventh
Centuries
The first glimmerings of a rebirth
of the theater occur, within the context of the church itself.
Dramatic elements of the Christian liturgy, such as the sections
of the Mass narrating Christ's Last Supper, begin to be elaborated
by the use of dialogue like antiphonal chanting and dramatic
gestures. These brief dramatic scenes slowly grow into devotional
playlets, though they remain part of the liturgy.
Twelfth Century
By this time, some religious drama
has moved outside the confines of the liturgy. Christmas and
Passion plays, for example, are now performed outside the church
building and are no longer part of the Mass. The play Adam,
depicting the Creation and Fall of Man, is one of the best example
of the early drama; written in Anglo-Norman French, it may have
been performed in England and probably represents a forerunner of
the cycle plays of later centuries.
1311
Pope Clement V sets aside the
Thursday after Trinity Sunday as a holy day celebrating Christ's
institution of the Mass at the Last
Supper. Known as Corpus Christi Day, it is to include a
procession, out of which will later grow the processional
productions of the cycle plays. Corpus Christi Day usually falls
in June, when the weather is generally conductive to outdoor
performances.
1318
Date of the earliest recorded
Corpus Christi processions in England.
1378
By this date, the Corpus Christi
cycle plays are being performed in York and probably elsewhere in
England. The plays, produced by the various craft and merchant
guilds of a town under the auspices of the church, depict events
of Old and New Testament history from the Creation through the
life of Christ and down to the Second Coming and the Last
Judgment. In some towns, the plays are performed on wagons
that move in procession from place to place; members of the
audience could sit in one location and see all the plays in turn.
In other towns, the pageant wagons seem to be stationary, with the
audience moving from one location to the next. Texts of fur
English pageant cycles still exist:
the York cycle, containing forty-eight pageants; the Wakefield
cycle, thirty-two pageants; the so-called N Town cycle (sometimes
called the Ludus Conventriae), forty-three pageants; and the
Chester pageants from other cycles.
However, the best known of all the
extant pageants are the highly sophisticated plays from the
Wakfield cycle attributed to the anonymous author, probably a
cleric, known as the Wakefield Master. He was probably a highly
educated cleric stationed in the vicinity of Wakefield, perhaps a
friar of a nearby priory. The Second Shepherds' Play is one
of these.
1457
Recorded visit of Queen Margaret to
Conventry, where she sees the cycle plays performed in procession.
Within a few decades, however, local productions by guilds appear
to be on the decline in most English towns. It is possible that
professional or semiprofessional acting troupes may have begun
taking the plays on tour from town to town instead.
1567
Queen Elizabeth I sees four pageant
plays at Coventry; however, they are apparently performed at fixed
locations by this time, with the audience moving from stage to
stage for the different plays.
1576
The cycle plays have been in
decline for about a century. They are now dealt a deathblow by the
passage of laws forbidding the representation of Christ or God on
stage as idolatrous. (The reformed English church is behind this
repression.) As of this date, the Wakefield productions are
halted. Throughout England, the master copies of the pageants,
mostly in the possession of parish churches, are destroyed--hence
the small number of manuscripts of the plays surviving into the
twentieth century.
The Feast of Corpus Christi and Corpus Christi plays:
Corpus Christi is a religious
holiday--instigated in 1311--to celebrate the doctrine of
Transubstantiation, that is, the symbolism in the Mass of the Host
which is taken in communion as the body of Christ--'corpus
Christi'. The Corpus Christi Feast celebrates the
possibility of salvation through the sacrifice of Christ at the
Crucifixion made available to all through communion in the
Christian Mass.
Time:
The Feast is held on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday and can
thus fall on any date between 23 May and 24 June, the
period of early summer in England--long hours of daylight and the
festive mood. This period was already strongly associated with
folk celebration and festivals culminating in the pagan Midsummer
Festivals on June 23rd and 24th. The Church was thus able to
exploit the positive holiday mood of the season and to apply it to
a religious celebration, expressing the uplifting, joyous
possibility of Salvation after the darker mood of the Easter
celebrations. As dramatic representations had often been
associated with the folk festivals, expectations of some kind of
drama were already associated with the period.
The cycle
consisted of a series of plays on Christian history, beginning
with the Creation of the World, moving through episodes from the
Old Testament prefiguring Christ to the Birth, Ministry and
Passion of Christ, the Resurrection, Harrowing of Hell and Day of
Judgment.
The
pageant wagons
were wooden flat-topped carts, usually with four wheels, that were
most probably pushed and pulled from station to station by men
rather than horses. Guild records often refer to payments for beer
for the wagon bearers. The playing area consisted of the
floor of the wagon, the ground in front of it and often an upper
story constructed on the wagon itself which was used to represent
Heaven and to provide a playing space for God and Angels.
(backdrop and inner space) The wagon is used to represent the ark
in the Towneley-Wakefield Noah Play.
Scenery
on the wagons was probably minimal and the playing space was
purely representational. Characters refer to the space as a stable
or a throne room to identify it rather than relying on the scenery
and props to produce a realistic image of such places (except when
the scenery/props were essential to the stated action of the play:
the Cross, sword, the cradle¡K)
Costumes:
elaborate; guild records reveal that money was spent to replace or
repair them. (gloves, hose.....). Costumes were contemporary and
distinctions of rank, class or profession were emonstrated.
The actors
were mostly members of the guild which produced the particular
play. A statute of 1476 declares that no actors is allowed to
perform in more than two plays on Corpus Christi Day and a very
heavy fine awaited anyone who was found to have done so. Women did
not perform in the plays although they were admitted to the
guilds. Their contributions remained the typically domestic ones
of washing the costumes and providing food, women's parts in the
plays being taken by men or youths.
The
audience
for the Corpus Christi plays was involved in the plays in ways
which have perhaps
never been matched in dramatic performances since. The purpose of
the plays was directed entirely towards the audience and the theme
of the drama was intended to affect their lives and behavior.
Though the plays functioned very well as books for the unlettered
they were also watched enthusiastically by the rich, powerful and
educated.
The Mystery Cycles had three basic threads of motivation and
function:
1. They were didactic drama
intended to express a moral message that would ultimately save the
souls of audience and actors.
2. They were occasions for popular entertainment to
provide a pleasant means of passing a day free from work.
3. They were occasions for the expressionof civic display,
craft honor and local unity.
Typology
was a means of comprehending the unity and purpose of Christian
history and of showing that all events formed part of God's plan
for the universe. Though many of the events of the Old Testament
could be seen to have a cause and logic in their own historical
circumstances, nonetheless they also contained a relevance to the
life of Christ and the establishment of the Christian religion
which only becomes apparent long after the events themselves.
On the typological level, Cain and Abel gains its place in the
cycle as it had already gained its place in exegesis, sermon and
the visual arts because Abel can be seen as a type of Christ. Like
Christ, Abel is an innocent victim who is killed by the fallen
world, here represented by Cain, as at the Crucifixion the
unbelieving Jews represent the fallen world. Abel is also killed
by his brother and Christ, who had chosen to appear in the world
in the form of a man, born of a woman, is also brother to those
who kill Him. The typological analogy can be taken further in that
Abel is the son of Eve, the woman responsible for the Fall, and
Christ was the son of Mary, the woman responsible for the
Salvation of the world. The Eve-Mary parallel was a favorite
contrast in medieval theology which saw Scriptural approval for
the balance in the words of the salutation of Mary at the
Annunciation when Gabriel addressed her 'Ave Maria, gratia plena'
(Hail Mary, full of grace). 'Ave' is 'Eva' backwards and thus Mary
was considered to be, even on linguistic grounds, the inversion of
Eve, she who would save the world rather than she who had lost the
world. [Abel-Noah-Isaac as a type of Christ] During the
medieval period typological interpretation of the Bible was a
conventional organizing principle and was apparent in many spheres
of religious life, not merely at an abstract level of intellectual
sophistry. Sermons frequently presented such interpretations and
stained glass and sculpture in churches grouped such figures or
events together.
Narration of
performance,
or deictic comment, is a frequent technique of
medieval drama and in addition recalls the folk drama. The
champions and challengers of the Hero Combat play of the Mummers'
Play tradition almost always describe their actions in the fight.
Action and words are fused to give a more profound and
incontrovertible meaning to the events. Medieval plays do not
pretend to offer a slice of life or to allow the audience a
privileged and unacknowledged witnessing of supposedly real
events. |