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Medieval theatre

The theatre (500-900 C.E.) The theatre also began to revive during the early Middle Ages. Theatrical elements survived in at least four different kinds of activities: the remnants of the Roman mimes; Teutonic minstrelsy; popular festivals; and Christian ceremonies. After the Western Roman Empire crumbled and the state ceased to finance performances, the mime troupes had broken up. For the most part, they became storytellers, jesters, tumblers, jugglers, rope dancers, and exhibitors of trained animals. Such performers were most common in southern Europe, which had been most fully Romanized. They were denounced by the church, which branded them infamous. In northern Europe, where Roman influence had been slight, another type of performer-the scop- flourished from the fifth to the seventh or eight centuries. The scop was a singer and teller of tales about the deeds of Teutonic heroes. It is the principal preserver of the tribe’s history and chronology. His songs and stories were major feature of feasts and other great occasions. After the Teutonic tribes were converted to Christianity during the seventh and eight centuries, however, the scop was denounced by the church. There were also numerous festivals throughout Western Europe. Those were outgrowths of centuries-old pagan rites. The church made slow headway against such festivals. Many pagan rites persisted and some of their elements found their way in to Christian ceremonies. Some pagan rites were related to the mid-winter solstice and the spring fertility rites. Many of the ceremonies symbolized the struggle between life and death or summer and winter. The church, in seeking to convert Western Europe to Christianity, usurped many of the existing festivals. Existing festivals were permitted to continue but were reoriented. Some pagan rites survived and some eventually became entertainments. As time went by, the rites of the Christian church also became more elaborate, and liturgical drama was ultimately to emerge out of these elaborations during the tenth century.

The early Middle Ages (900-1050) In the early Middle Ages live was still relatively simple. Under the manoralism, the basic unit was the manor whose owner assumed absolute authority over the serfs of peasants who worked his land collectively. Under feudalism, the lords of manors were usually the vassals of some greater lord, and he in his turn was the vassal of a king or ruler of a state. Vassals were bound to supply their lords and the lords in return were bound to protect their vassals. This argument was the origin of the various ranks and titles of nobility. The church had two kinds of services: the Mass and the Hours. The Mass was divided into two parts: the introduction and the sacrament of bread and wine. The importance of the Mass discouraged innovations. The services of the Hours were far more significant in the revival drama and most church playlets eventually were performed at these services. The church calendar also provided an incentive toward dramatization because it commemorated particular biblical events on specific days of the year. Symbolic objects and actions constantly recalled the events which the Christian ritual celebrates. Certain emblems also come to be associated with specific biblical characters.

A type of dialogue existed in the church’s antiphonal songs, whose responses were divided between two groups or between an individual and a group.

The liturgical drama By the ninth century, the musical portion of church services had become extremely complex and had motivated the introduction of tropes. These extended melodies became so elaborate that words were added, one syllable for each note as an aid to memory. The origin of this practice is obscure. By the early tenth century tropes were being used in many choral passages. Liturgical drama has traditionally been traced to tropes inserted into the Easter service. It is unclear just where church music-drama first appeared. The earliest extant playlet, complete with the directions for its performance, is found in the Regularis Concordia compiled between 965 and 975 by Ethelwold, Bishop of Winchester, England.

The staging of liturgical drama They are compound by a small and a generalized acting area. The mansions served to locate the scene and housed any properties required. The earliest liturgical plays required only one mansion, but more complex plays used many mansions dispersed about the church. The individual mansions varied considerably in size and complexity. The choir loft was sometimes used to represent high places or Heaven, while the crypt often served for low places or Hell.

The high and late middle Ages Once the innovation was made, many productions became extremely elaborate, often extending over several days and drawing on the resources of the entire community. The flowering of drama in the late Middle Ages can be traced in part to economic and political changes that had occurred during the high Middle Ages. By the thirteenth century, many craftsmen had formed organizations to regulate working conditions, wages, the quality of products, and other matters affecting their well being. These guilds were organizes hierarchically. Each was governed by a council of masters. Under each master were one or more journeymen and below the journeymen were apprentices. The rise of guilds was paralleled by the growth of towns. Most of them became self-governing. Thereafter power resided primarily in the guilds. The growth of guilds and towns brought a corresponding decline in feudalism. Universities came into being during the twelfth century and soon replaced monasteries as the major seats of learning. By 1300 the church’s dominant role in the society was being challenged, and throughout the late Middle Ages it has increasingly to share its position of authority with other institutions. As groups other than the church gained in prominence, it was probably inevitable that they should come to participate in and eventually to dominate theatrical production. Nevertheless, throughout the late Middle Ages drama continued to be primarily religious.

Performances outside the church Performances of religious plays outside the church seem to have begun during the twelfth century. The vernacular drama came into existence trough a gradual process in which individual short liturgical plays, having first been moved out doors, were brought together to

form long plays which were then translated into the vernacular tongues and performed by laymen. The Corpus Cristi festival is a procession through the town with the consecrated Host. Corpus Cristi supplied the impetus for presenting cyclical dramas. A city might stage plays on the feast day of its patron saint. Another innovation was the abandonment of Latin in favour of the vernacular tongues.

The vernacular religious drama By the late fourteenth century lengthy vernacular religious plays were coming into being. Between 1350 and 1550 the medieval theatre reached its peak. Vernacular religious drama was performed throughout Western Europe. In British Isles, plays were produces in 127 different towns at some time during the Middle Ages. Nevertheless, only a few texts survive. The earliest cycle dates about 1375. All were performed until the mid sixteenth century. The plays vary widely in dates of composition, as well as in quality. A much larger number f plays from France are extant. Most of plays end with the resurrection of Christ. In Italy, a type of devotional drama called laudi developed out a penitential and flagellant movement in the thirteenth century. Also, there were the sacre rappresentazioni, which resembled other European religious plays. Although religious drama was infrequently performed elsewhere than in England, France, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland, there is scarcely any European country in which it was unknown.

The stages The stages upon which the vernacular plays were performed might be fixed or movable. The traditional view has been that each play in a cycle was mounted on a wagon and on days of performance all were presented in succession at a number of different places in the town. Processional staging was used. Fixed stages may have been more used for some cycle plays staged elsewhere.

Scenery As in the church, the playing space was composed of two basic elements, the mansions and the platea, and as in liturgical drama, the locale of a scene was established by relating it to the mansion and then extending it to have as much space as was needed by the action. To spectators, a fixed stage was more impressive visually than the movable ones. Many of the plays were divided into parts separated by intermissions varying in length from one to twenty four hours. During these intervals, mansions were changed as needed; furthermore the identity of the mansion might be altered so it represented more than one location. Consequently, it is difficult to know how many mansions were actually used to depict the places named in a script. The scenic complexity of a production might vary daily. The director appeared at the beginning of each journee and indicated what each structure represented. The two places more often represented on the fixed stages were Heaven and Hell. Heaven was places at one end of the platform and Hell at the other. Of all mansions, Heaven is the most difficult to reconstruct from the available evidence. Heaven was usually raised above

the level of the other mansions. As a rule, it was supported structurally by an ‘’earthly paradise’’ or a room beneath it at the stage. Hell was made as terrifying as possible. Some portions of Hell were lower. Hell was frequently divided into four parts: the Limbo of biblical prophets; the Limbo of infants; Purgatory; and the pit of Hell. The entrance to Hell was represented by the head of a monster. The mansions representing earthly places were less elaborately depicted. Many were equipped with curtains that could be drawn to conceal or reveal interior scenes. Often they were furnished with beds, tables, benches, altars, or thrones. A number of persons were required to build and paint the settings. Sometimes master artists were imported for the occasion. Many other persons were required to operate the scenic effects during performances.

The morality plays The morality play is the secular form closest in tone to the cycle plays. These didactic dramas first appeared in the fourteenth century as religious plays, but were later secularized and became one of the principal links between the religious and the professional stages. Some influences are ‘’Pater Noster’’ prayers, which were divided into seven petitions, each relating to the seven cardinal virtues and seven deadly sins, has established a framework of continual struggle between good and evil to posses man’s soul. Second, the popular outdoor preachers, in applying biblical teachings to the problems of daily living, also adopted the concepts of the seven virtues and vices. The literature had popularized allegory; one of the most influential medieval works is Romance of the Rose. Christianity had become increasingly concerned with the death and afterlife. In the visual arts, Death’s heads, skeletons, and similar devices were prominent. The immediate dramatic ancestors of the moralities are probably the Pater Noster plays performed in England at York, Lincoln, Beverley and elsewhere. No Pater Noster plays have survived and consequently their precise relationship to the moralities cannot be determined. The morality play flourished between 1400 and 1550. The oldest extant morality play is a fragment of The Pride of life. In terms of staging, the most interesting morality is The Castle of Perseverance, which depicts Mankind’s progress from the birth to the death and shows the final judgement on his soul. The play is long. The manuscript provides some information about its performance. Another play, Mankind, of which only parts survived, may originally have been a completely serious work, but if so it was later altered to include comic interludes and a number of songs and dances. There are only seven roles and no scenery or complex properties. Mankind demonstrates how the morality play was adapted to the needs of professional players. In France, moralities seem to have remained closer to the vernacular religious cycles. Perhaps, the best known of all moralities is Everyman, seemingly an English translation of the Dutch Elkerlyc by Peter Dorlant. In the sixteenth century the morality play underwent many changes. In some instances, it was used to treat almost wholly secular subjects. In other instances, the morality play was adapted as a weapon in the religious controversies that swept Europe during the sixteenth century. Perhaps the best of these pays is John Bale’s King John. As religious controversy grew, doctrinal plays also began to be written in northern Europe. The first great stimulus to this movement came in 1501 with the tenth century German canoness. These works exerted considerable influence throughout the sixteenth century.

During the sixteenth century these north European dramatists were divided between those who supported Protestantism and those committed to Catholicism. Among the Protestant dramatists, perhaps the most influential was Gnapheus. Other changes in the morality play can be attributed to the introduction of classical subjects when interest in Greece and Rome and in learning for its own sake revived. By the early sixteenth century, then, the morality play had become extremely diversified. As professionalism increased, the number of actors and scenic elements declined. The dress of allegorical figures was often very imaginative. In the plays of religious controversy, each side drew on allegorical conventions and dressed its adherents. As dramas, the moralities mark a movement away from biblical characters and events to ordinary humans in their everyday surroundings.

Interludes Interlude is normally used to designate the plays first presented indoors as a part of the entertainments of rulers, nobles, rich merchants and schools. The interlude might be of any type: religious, moral, farcical, historical. Often there was singing and dancing as well. Since they were often given in crowded banquet halls, the interludes used little scenery and few characters. From the eleventh century onward, most professional entertainers were grouped under the general heading of ‘’minstrels’’ and various accounts speak of their popularity among the nobility and clergy throughout Europe. By 1350 many nobles were retaining their own companies of performers. The late fifteenth century did acting begin to be recognized as a distinct activity separate from minstrelsy, a term which thereafter came to be associated almost entirely with musical performances. Many troupes became servants to kings or great lords. They proliferated rapidly during the sixteenth century as more and more nobles acquired their own companies. Most troupes were permitted to tour under the names of their patrons when their services were not required at home. Professional players remained secondary to amateur performers until religious drama declined during the last half of the sixteenth century. A total of about seventy interludes survive, most from the sixteenth century. The typical place for performing interludes was the ‘’great hall’’ of nobleman’s residence, a university, a guild, or other organizations. In staging the interludes, elaborate mansions were sometimes built for court performances, but more typically no scenery was used. Most plays seem to have been staged in the midst of the audience, where the acting space was small. Variations in the size of hall must have influenced acoustics and other performance conditions. Most interludes were written for small troupes.

Tournaments, mummings and disguisings Alongside the interdudes, other entertainments grew up around tournaments, mummings , and disguisings. Tournaments began in the tenth century as a means of training knights in warfare Soon, instead of merely seeking to unseat each other, knights were fighting to capture mansions representing such allegorical conceits as te Castle of Love inhabited by suitably costumed ladies and attendants. At the most elaborate of the tournaments , spectators were carefully segregated according to sex and rank in galleries that surrounded the field of combat.

Tournaments used the same visual symbolism found in the religious plays but often gave it a secular turn. Tournaments were essentially noble and royal entertainments. In addition to the combats, there were elaborate processions. Many of these indoor celebrations were also closely related to mumming and disuising. By 1500 mumming and disguisings were principally court entertainments , they may have had their origins in such pagan ceremonies as sword and Morris dances. Usually in these plays at least one character was killed in combat, after which a doctor arrived and brought the dead back to life through some grotesque device. Characters : a clown , a fool, a hobby horse, a man dressed as Maid Marian, St george , and a dragon . Although the oldest surviving text of a mummer’s play dates from the eighteenth century, there are many references during the late Middle Ages to such plays. There were many types of disguisings. Some went from house to house presenting plays , songs, and dances. Such diguisings came to be used as a cover for criminal behavior , they were suppressed in England ( except at court ) in the fourteenths and fifteenth centuries.In theatre , however, the most important offshoots of mummings and disguisings were such courtly entertainments as English masques, Italian intermezzi , and French ballets of cour. The disguisings given at court might be arranged for any special occasion. They were performed at banquets following tournaments, for visits of royalty , at weddings, and on a variety of other occasions. Characteristically, the entertainments concluded in a dance. In England, beginning in 1513 the dancers chose partners from among the spectators. Profuctions after this time were called „masques after the manner of Italy „ Sincee they required elaborate scenery and costumes, masques were far more costly to produce than were interludes. Such court entertainments reached thheir peak in Italy and France during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and in England between 1603 and 1640.

Royal entries and street pageants Theatrical productions also came to be incorporated into the street pageants given by municipalities in honor of coronations, royal weddings, military victories, or visiting rulers. These celebrations followed a basic pattern : Civic officials and representatives of the clergy and trade guilds met the person to be honored at the prearranged place ooutside the city,; then they escorted the visitor along a carefully planned route through the town to the cathedral for a religious service, after which the visitor was taken to a place of residence. At first there were was merely a procession, but gradually plays were added. Gradally such celebrations spread troughout Europe. Plays were added to the entries at about the same time that religious dramas were first performed putdoors, and in the early years the subjects were almost identical with those at religious festivals. The plays might resemble any of the major types of medieval drama. Despite these similarities, there was one major diference : Most of these plays were pantomimic . Cnsequently , thew are often called tableaux vivants . In the beginning only a single tableau was mounted of an entry, but by the mid fifteenth ccentury there were often as many as six or more. Each play was mounted on its own separate stage . The primary audience for the plays was the visitor and his party. Throughout Europe the planning and financing of these pageants were undertaken jointly by the city concil and trade guilds.

The end of medieval drama In the 600 years during which it existed, the medieval theatre became increasingly complex and diverse. During the sixteenth century the religious theatre disapeard. The church had ...