British Medieval Drama

Liturgical Drama

In England, as on the Continent, theater in the classical sense virtually disappeared after the sixth century. With the decline of the study of Greek, classical tragedy lost its cultural currency and was almost entirely forgotten. Fortunately for later ages, some copies of Greek tragedies were preserved, notably in Irish monasteries. Roman comedy seems to have had at least a minimal existence, surviving in the histriones and ioculatores of medieval entertainment. The single example of classical comedy in the Middle Ages is found in the adaptations of Terence by the tenth century Benedictine nun Hroswitha of Gandersheim Her plays on the saints, however, seem to have been confined to her native Saxony and therefore did not affect the development of English drama.

It was through religious ceremonies that drama was reborn in Europe in the tenth century. The simplest form of such liturgical drama was the trope , an amplification of a passage in the Mass or Divine Office. The best-known writer of tropes was Tutilo of the Abbey of Saint Gall. Tropes were known in England, for a Winchester troper (a medieval book containing tropes) dates from the late tenth century. Tropes were often expanded into lengthy poems, sometimes in dialogue form, known as “sequences” or “prose,” which became universal in the Christian liturgy. Some of them, such as Saint Thomas Aquinas’s Lauda Sion (1265), are still in use today.

The first notable development of tropes into drama occurred in the famous Quem quaeritis, a dialogue between two sides of the choir, one side representing the women at the empty tomb of Christ on Easter Day, the other side representing the angel who tells them that Christ is risen. It was to become the most famous of all medieval liturgical plays, eventually developing into more elaborate Resurrection plays . These dialogues were at first exclusively in Latin and were performed within the Mass and, later, during the Divine Office, predominantly by clerics. The prototype of the Quem quaeritis again from the Abbey of Saint Gall, dates from about 950.

The Quem quaeritis was undoubtedly very popular in England. It is described in great detail in the manuscript Regularis Concordia, dating from about 970. The document was drawn up by bishops, abbots, and abbesses of England on the suggestion of King Edgar. It is now ascribed with relative certainty to Aethelwold, bishop of Winchester, as part of a book of customs relating to the Benedictine observances. It gives detailed directions for the dramatization of the Quem quaeritis and insists on the instructive aspect of the representation. The same manuscript also contains directions for a Depositio Crucis on Holy Thursday.

The development of liturgical drama in medieval Europe knew no national boundaries. The universal use of Latin and the numbers of clerici vagantes, or wandering clerics, made borrowings an ordinary occurrence. Thus, the growth of the Quem quaeritis play into a more elaborate Visitatio sepulchri, with more characters, many nonbiblical, followed a pattern that was evident throughout Europe. The incorporation of Peter and John, along with congregational participation, began in the twelfth century and continued well into the fourteenth. The only English manuscript of this type comes from the Church of Saint John the Evangelist in Dublin, a fifteenth century manuscript of a fourteenth century text.

Nativity plays,which were never quite as popular as the Easter cycle, began around the eleventh century and followed the same pattern of development as that of the Resurrection plays. Later Nativity plays centered on the shepherds (pastores) who were nearby at Jesus’s birth and the three kings (reges), or wisemen, who came from the East to pay tribute to him. Simple stage props and costumes were used in such productions.

That Christmas and Easter liturgical texts in Latin existed in England is evident primarily from secondary sources because many manuscripts were destroyed during the Reformation in the sixteenth century. With the exception of the Regularis Concordia, the Winchester troper, the Dublin Quem quaeritis of the fourteenth century, and a manuscript from the Nunnery of Barking, there are no extant texts of Latin Easter plays. The last-named manuscript probably dates from about 1363-1376 and is ascribed to Katherine of Sutton who may have been the adapter. The text contains several standard liturgical dramas: Quem quaeritis, a Visitatio Sepulchri Depositio Crucis, and an Elevatio Crucis.

There is no extant text of a Latin Christmas play, but such a representatio is referred to in a Salisbury inventory of 1222, and similar references occur in the York statutes of 1255. Both Christmas and Easter plays are mentioned in the thirteenth or fourteenth century statutes at Lichfield Cathedral, which provide for representations of Pastores, a Resurrectio, and a Peregrini (depicting the disciples on their way to Emmaus, traditionally performed on Easter Monday). There are references to Latin liturgical plays at Lincoln in 1317, and a fifteenth century Cornish manuscript, with a text dating from about 1300-1325, contains an Origo Mundi, a Passio Domini Nostri Jesu Christi, and a Resurrectio. Numerous manuscripts indicate that such Latin liturgical plays continued to be performed until well into the sixteenth century.

Vernacular Religious Drama

By the thirteenth century, drama began to move gradually into the vernacular, and plays were performed outside the church. At the beginning, both Latin and the vernacular were used side by side. The earliest English documents are the twelfth century Anglo-Norman Ordo representacionis Adae, with the prophecies in Latin and in Norman French, which were probably played to French audiences, and the so-called Shrewsbury Fragments a fifteenth century manuscript with a text dating from the late thirteenth to the early fifteenth century, with the role of one shepherd and the third Mary in English.

Although clerical objections are frequently given as an important reason for the development of the vernacular drama, critics such as Karl Young, E. K. Chambers, and A. P. Rossiter see such prohibitions as directed more toward secular drama. The most famous of these clerical prohibitions was made by Robert Grosseteste, chancellor of the University of Oxford and bishop of Lincoln, who in 1244 called on clerics to end participation in miracle plays and mystery plays (Mystery plays, or mysteries, dramatized biblical stories and apocryphal narratives featuring biblical figures; miracle plays, or miracles, as the name implies, centered on miraculous incidents, frequently presented as episodes in the lives of well-known saints or martyrs.) Grosseteste’s main thrust, however, seems to have been against May games and other forms of popular entertainment. A book titled Manuel des Pechiez (c. 1300), by William of Wadington, translated into English verse by Robert Mannyng and titled Handlyng Synne (1303), approved reverent religious drama and verse but condemned outdoor mysteries and miracles.

By the thirteenth century, few of the faithful understood Latin, so that the transition to the vernacular was natural and appropriate. The elaborate ceremonies made an outdoor presentation more appropriate than an indoor one, and some roles were more suited to secular actors than clerical. The development of a truly vernacular English theater was hampered in its early stages by the fact that many educated people spoke French, whereas English dialects were the language of ordinary people. By the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century, however, a vernacular tradition had been firmly established.

The first English mystery play extant is a thirteenth century dialogue called The Harrowing of Hell inferior to similar contemporary French manuscripts, it is written in a rather primitive thirteenth century East Midland dialect. The play portrays a wily, bargaining Satan and ends with the overthrow of his power—a very popular theme in the liturgical drama of the Middle Ages. There are few records of English vernacular plays on the great Christmas and Easter cycles, but from the existing manuscripts one can infer that their development was similar to that of vernacular drama on the Continent. Records tell of an Easter play performed about 1220 outside a Beverley minster, in a churchyard, and even include details of a “miracle” strikingly similar to that described in Acts, chapter 20: A child who fell from a window while watching the play, it is alleged, was miraculously unhurt.

In the South of England, the Passion play was very popular in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, as it was in France. At Christmas in 1378, the minor clergy of Saint Paul’s presented The History of the Old Testament; in 1384, a mystery play at Skinner’s Well, lasting five days, told how “God created Heaven and Earth out of nothing, and how he created Adam and so on to the Day of Judgement.” It is not known whether these plays were associated with the Corpus Christi and with the performances of the trade guilds. Records indicate that London had its Corpus Christi procession and that the guilds marched in order of preference.

The institution of the Corpus Christi procession in the second quarter of the fourteenth century had a great impact on the mystery plays Another important factor was the so-called Northern Passion, a simple poem in Northern English, translated from French, that told the story of Christ’s public life, Passion, death, and burial. It seems to have been very popular, particularly influencing the York-Towneley cycle of plays. A poetic translation of the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus into Northern English was also very popular and influenced the various mystery plays. One of the best-known episodes is the Harrowing of Hell, present in almost every cycle and generally providing the occasion for the most dramatic creativity. In fact, such vernacular sources seem to have had greater influence on the English plays than did Latin documents.

The great English mystery plays were popular for about 250 years, from the beginning of the fourteenth until slightly after the middle of the sixteenth century. At first, the mysteries were little more than translations or paraphrases of the Latin liturgical dramas, written in simple meters or stanzas. Among the most popular verse forms were octosyllabic couplets and quatrains, not always regular in rhyme or in the number of metric feet to the line. Some plays, such as those in the Chester Cycle use the eight-line ballad stanza. As the mystery plays developed, they increasingly deviated from the Latin originals, adding apocryphal, legendary, and folk characters, much like the plays on the Continent, as well as humorous and popular elements.

The most famous English mystery plays center on the celebration of the feast of Corpus Christi. The Corpus Christi cyclemay have been established in Chester as early as 1327-1328, although according to Chambers and others, this date is questionable, because no further mention of the celebration occurs until about a century later. The pageants consisted of cycles of plays performed by the various guilds in competition with one another; each guild was assigned a play related to the craft or trade of its members, so that bakers performed the Last Supper at Beverley, Chester, and York; cooks performed the Harrowing of Hell (Beverley and Chester), supposedly because of their tolerance for fire; watermen reenacted the flood; and so on. Because this was an event that included the entire town, the plays were given outdoors, with the players and their scenes transported on wagons to a given station, in the street or the public square, where the audience assembled to view them.

Although the origin of such plays at the festival of Corpus Christi has provoked much controversy among scholars, it is generally acknowledged that they fit logically into this feast. As a celebration of the Eucharist, Corpus Christi points to the origin of liturgical drama in the ceremony of the Mass. Aside from symbolic considerations, late springtime was the logical season for such performances in England’s damp, cold climate; indeed, the Corpus Christi cycles seem to have been a phenomenon of northern Europe, while in southern Europe such pageants were more likely to take place during Holy Week, culminating in Christ’s Passion.

Although records of the Corpus Christi plays are plentiful, mainly from the documents and account books of the guilds, few cycles have been preserved completely. There are only four complete extant cycles: the Chester Cycle ; the York Cycle , first mentioned in 1387, and which may be the oldest if the Chester date of 1327-1328 is not accurate; the Wakefield Cycle , of about 1425-1450; and the N-town Cycle also known as the Ludus Coventriae), the origin of which has not been established. There are also fragments of cycles from Norwich, Newcastle upon Tyne, and Coventry. Independent plays, which have not been proved to be parts of the Corpus Christi cycle, include Abraham and Isaac, the Digby plays, a mid-fifteenth century Burial and Resurrection (preserved in Bodleian manuscript), and the fifteenth century Croxton Play of the Sacrament. From these plays, one can infer something of the scope and nature of religious drama in medieval England.

The city of Chester was independent and prosperous from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries. Its guilds showed pride in their successful business skills, yet they remained unspoiled by modernity. Accordingly, their plays remain among the simplest and the most religious of the period. The plays in the Chester Cycle were enacted in heavy vehicles that traveled from one station to another. There were twenty-four pageants in the series, and two sets of banns, or public announcements, of which only five are extant.

Among the surviving cycles, the Chester Cycle bears the greatest resemblance to the French mystery plays. Abraham and Melchisedek, though popular in the French plays, is found in England only in the Chester Cycle. Octavian and the Sybil also resembles the French plays. Other plays unique to the Chester Cycle are The Woman Taken in Adultery, The Healing of the Blind Man at Siloam, and Christ in the House of Simon the Leper. Although most of the plays show great fidelity to Scripture, the treatment of Lucifer in the first play of the cycle, like many other contemporary accounts, goes well beyond the biblical text. The fourth play of the cycle, Abraham and Isaac, is noteworthy for its dramatic development, while the seventh play, an Adoration of the Shepherds titled The Shepherds’ Offering, has a degree of complexity evident nowhere else in the cycles. The latter features a clownish figure, the shepherd Gartius, who, though introducing humor, does not interrupt the reverent atmosphere of the cycle. The plays on the ministry and the Passion of Christ are very different from the others in their simplicity and lack of adornment. The Chester plays persisted until after 1570 and are best preserved in a late sixteenth century manuscript.

The York and Wakefield Cycles are linked in various ways that suggest a special relationship not found between other cycles. They are both preserved in incomplete manuscripts, in the dialect of fifteenth century Yorkshire.

The manuscript of the York Cycle is clearer and gives a fuller picture of its place of origin. York was the center of the earliest British Christianity and the birthplace of Alcuin, who brought scholarship to Charlemagne’s empire through his palace school. By 1415, the period of the city’s greatest growth and expansion, York was large and rich, with numerous trading companies. The York manuscript contains forty-eight plays, all of them quite short, although there seem to have been fifty-one in the complete cycle, according to a list prepared and signed in 1415 by Roger Burton, city clerk of York; a later list includes fifty-seven plays. Documents from 1399 and 1417 refer to twelve playing places, although later there were sixteen; there are many records of the plays among the regulations of the municipality. The York Cycle enjoyed a long and celebrated history: As early as 1397, King Richard I visited York to witness the plays, and they had their last performance as late as 1584.

The York Cycle has led scholars to conjecture a precyclic state of the Old Testament plays, probably without the influence of a previous Passion play. Thirteen of the York plays—the group from the Conspiracy to the Burial—are written in alliterative verse. These are excellent works, probably composed by one author of great talent. As at Chester, there were significant revisions among the various plays during their long performance history; some of the York plays were borrowed directly by Wakefield.

The Wakefield plays are known through a single manuscript that fell into the possession of John Towneley by the early nineteenth century; hence, they are also called the Towneley plays The manuscript contains thirty-two plays that were performed by craft guilds at Wakefield, although no Wakefield records tell of such pageants. Critics hypothesize that the York plays were taken over by Wakefield at a given stage of development, after which the two cycles evolved independently of each other, because six of the plays that the cycles have in common are almost identical while thirteen of the plays that they have in common were revised at York but not at Wakefield. The York sponsors probably supplied the wagons to Wakefield after the merger of the plays. Four Wakefield plays—Isaac, Jacob, Prophetae, and Octavian—do not appear in the York Cycle. Several plays from the Wakefield Cycle, including those depicting Paradise, the events immediately following the Resurrection, Pentecost, and The Assumption and Coronation of the Virgin, have not survived.

The most significant aspect of the cycle is the work of the so-called Wakefield Master (c. 1420-c. 1450), unique in Middle English, with his clever, complicated style and wit. He uses many local allusions and colloquial idioms and adapts secular material for comic purposes. Along with the well-known Secunda Pastorum (commonly known as The Second Shepherds’ Play), this anonymous dramatist was the author of Mactacio Abel (commonly known as The Killing of Abel), Processus Noe cum Filiis (commonly known as Noah), Magnus Herodes (commonly known as Herod the Great), and Coliphizacio (commonly known as The Buffeting). The Wakefield Cycle is unique in its presentation of two shepherds’ plays, the second of which, as noted above, is one of the most popular of all medieval plays. The Second Shepherds’ Playcombines the liturgical Officium pastorum with a folktale of a pseudo-Nativity. Mak steals a sheep from three shepherds and hides it in the cradle prepared for the child that he and his wife are expecting. When the suspicious shepherds come to find their stolen sheep, Mak and his wife claim that their newborn child is in the cradle and refuse to allow the shepherds to enter. The play shifts from witty farce to serious drama as the angels announce the birth of Christ and the shepherds go to adore him. It is not known what guild performed this play, but Wakefield was the center of a prosperous wool industry in the fifteenth century, which probably accounts for the popularity of the shepherd theme.

The last complete cycle is preserved in what is known as the Hegge manuscript Cotton Vespasian D. VIII. Because the town to which it refers has not been identified (it had been erroneously ascribed to Coventry), the cycle is often referred to as N-town, taken from the banns (that is, the official proclamation listing the plays and their subjects) that accompany it. Many scholars believe that this cycle was performed by touring players because there is nothing to associate it with the guilds. The banns indicate thirty-nine plays, constituting a complete Corpus Christi cycle. The N-town Cycle is notable for its strong Marian orientation; for this reason, as well as because of its dialect, Hardin Craig, Chambers, and several other critics assign the cycle to Lincoln. Lincoln was a cathedral city—at the time, one of the largest in England—with a collegiate establishment and a center of ecclesiastical study. It was a center of Marian devotion, with special honor paid to Saint Anne, the mother of the Virgin Mary, as early as 1383. (Indeed, Craig associates the N-town plays with Saint Anne’s Day, July 26, rather than Corpus Christi.) Lincoln also seems to have been a center of ecclesiastical drama for many years; Robert Grosseteste was bishop of Lincoln when he denounced abuses in Church plays.

Because the banns do not agree with the existing plays, it is supposed that considerable revision occurred. At the heart of the cycle are quatrains of four feet, although some plays use the ballad-type stanza, characteristic of the Chester plays. The plays with a Marian orientation include The Barrenness of Anna, The Presentation of Mary in the Temple, The Betrothal of Mary, The Salutation and Conception, and Mary’s Visit to Elizabeth. There is also a complete Passion cycle in two parts—introduced, as in the Marian cycle, by a special prologue called Contemplacio. The most conspicuous play of the N-town Cycle is a very elaborate one on the Assumption, full of great learning and theology and based in part on the popular Legenda Aurea (Golden Legend). On the whole, the plays of this cycle differ from those of the York and Chester Cycles in their unity, in their learned quality, and in their greater use of liturgical Latin.

Other towns had elaborate Corpus Christi plays, which were known mainly from records rather than the plays, for with the exception of the four cycles discussed above, only fragments remain. The most important are the Coventry plays they were so popular that the term “Coventry play” became synonymous with a Corpus Christi play. The number of participating guilds at Coventry seems to have been smaller than elsewhere. There is no evidence of Old Testament subjects, although Craig insists that they must have existed. There are only two surviving plays: the Shearmen and Taylors’ play and the Weavers’ play. The first shows the tendency of the Coventry plays to combine many topics into one play, for it comprises a prologue by Isaiah, an Annunciation, a Doubt of Joseph, a Journey to Bethlehem, a Nativity, a Visit of the Shepherds, a Herod and the Magi, a Visit of the Magi, and a Slaughter of the Innocents. Craig connects this play with the shearers because their guild seal shows Jesus in the arms of Mary receiving the gifts of the Magi. The Weavers’ Pageant is the scene of Christ’s Disputation with the Doctors and contains elements linking it to plays in the other cycles. In general, the Coventry plays are very simple, close to the Latin originals, and free from comedy. They maintain the reverent tone of the liturgical dramas, yet they constitute the least learned of the cycles. They exhibit little clerical influence, revealing the simplicity and naïve religious faith of the people.

A very important fragment comes from the Digby manuscripts which are of uncertain origin and authorship. This fragment contains four plays: Conversio Beati Pauli (The Conversion of Saint Paul, 1976), a Mary Magdalen play, a Slaughter of the Innocents and Purification, and a morality play known as Mind, Will, and Understanding. They seem never to have been parts of a Corpus Christi cycle, but rather of smaller cycles, belonging perhaps to the East Midlands. The Conversion of Saint Paul, probably destined for an outdoor performance in a small town, is rather verbose and pompous. The Mary Magdalen play is the most ambitious of all surviving English mystery plays; it was probably enacted on a circular stationary stage, with spectators viewing it from all sides. It also has a sensational and widely extended course of action, which calls for a great many scenes and seems to suggest a very extravagant performance. The play borrows allegorical figures from the morality and Paternoster plays—namely, the Seven Deadly Sins—and thus may have been a transitional work.

Although the importance of mystery plays in medieval English drama is well documented, the place of miracle plays is less certain. Some scholars argue that miracle plays in England were related to folk plays centering on Saint George, which belong more properly to the comic theater. There are more records of miracle plays in Scotland than in England, particularly on obscure saints and topics. Because so few plays have survived, there is no conclusive study of miracle plays in English, and critical theories concerning the genre must rely on conjecture.

One of the earliest recorded miracle plays is a life of Saint Catherine. It was written by 1119 by a Frenchman, Geoffrey de Gorham, who, before becoming abbot of Saint Albans, settled at Dunstable, where he composed the play. Unfortunately, the manuscript was lost in a fire. English scholars include the dramas of Hilarius, an Englishman, in their history of the miracle play because he wrote the semiliturgical plays Suscitatio Lazari (The Raising of Lazarus, 1975), Danielis Ludi (The Play of Daniel, 1959), and Iconia Sancti Nicolai (c. 1120-1130; The Image of Saint Nicholas, 1976). These works are in Latin and French and were probably performed for French audiences. From the life of Saint Thomas à Beckett, it is clear that miracles based on the lives of confessors (that is, believers who gave heroic evidence of their faith but were not obliged to suffer martyrdom) were performed in London in the twelfth century. References to lost mid-fifteenth century miracles include a Saint Laurence and a Saint Susannah, both of Lincoln; a Saint Dionysius from York; a Saint Clara at Lincoln; and a Saint George at Kent. In the early sixteenth century, plays of Saint Swithin, Saint Andrew, and Saint Eustace were acted in Braintree, Essex. Nothing, however, is known concerning the content of these works.

The only surviving example in English of a full-fledged miracle play is the Croxton Play of the Sacrament, found in Trinity College, Dublin, in the latter half of the fifteenth century, although it seems to have originated in Suffolk. The play resembles a French miracle, La Sainte Hostie; indeed, its anti-Semitic treatment of the central character, a Jewish merchant, had its counterparts in medieval drama throughout Western Europe. Dux Moraud (c. 1300-1325) is a fragment that contains the part of one actor only; it tells the story of an incestuous daughter who kills her mother and her child, born of her union with her father, and then tries to kill the father, who miraculously repents on his deathbed. On the whole it is similar to the French miracles of the Virgin, although she is not mentioned here.

One of the most important forms of medieval English drama was the morality play(or morality), a kind of dramatic allegory in which personified vices (such as Sloth and Envy) contend with personified virtues (such as Perseverance and Mercy) for man’s soul. In addition to the vices and virtues, other personified abstractions (most notably, Death) enter the fray. The recurring theme of the English morality plays is the certainty of death and the desire of human beings to justify themselves before God. Moralities have a serious tone and were often performed in church, in the manner of liturgical plays, with appropriate costumes. The character representing Death was robed as a skeleton, and there was usually a dramatic spectacle in which the Dance of Death was played. There was a door or sepulcher into which the victims of Death disappeared, and a pulpit from which the priest admonished the congregation.

The Castle of Perseverance(c. 1440) is one of the earliest extant moralities, as well as one of the most extensive and learned. It follows Mankind (Humanum Genus) from infancy to old age. The World, the Flesh, and the Devil proclaim their intention to destroy him, and in his youth they tempt him, along with the Seven Deadly Sins. At the age of forty, he takes refuge in the Castle of Perseverance, but, after a raging battle, he is overcome by Covetousness. His old age is given to ill-humor and hoarding, and by the time Death claims him, Mankind has been deserted by all of his friends. In Heaven, Justice and Truth debate his fate with Peace and Mercy. God awards the judgment to the latter, and Mankind is admitted to Heaven.

The two most inspiring moralities on the theme of death are Everyman and The Pride of Life The latter was found in a Dublin manuscript copied in the fifteenth century but thought to be much earlier in origin. It is the story of the King of Life, who defies Death and calls in both Health and Strength to aid him in the combat. Death wins, but the intervention of the Virgin saves the King of Life from eternal destruction. The play ends with a debate between the Body and the Soul. Although the play contains some references to the idea of personal sin, it recalls the motif of the Dance of Death in its portrayal of Death as the impersonal victor over all.

The best known of all medieval moralities is Everyman Although it is dated from the early sixteenth century, it may have appeared much earlier. It closely resembles the Flemish Elckerlijk, first printed in 1495, and it is debatable which is the earlier; one may be a translation of the other. The play is remarkable for its classical simplicity and the concreteness of its allegorical characters. It begins with God, weary of human offenses, summoning Death to bring him the soul of Everyman. Everyman is surprised by Death’s arrival and asks for time to find a companion for the journey. He first addresses Fellowship, who is interested in the adventure but turns back when he discovers the nature of the trip; Kindred does the same. Good Deeds wants to come along but cannot stand, weighed down by the heaviness of Everyman’s sins. Knowledge then leads Everyman to Confession and Repentance, after which Good Deeds is able to accompany him. Beauty, Strength, Discretion, and Five Wits accompany him to the grave, where they all bid him farewell, and he commends his soul to God as Good Deeds promises to speak for him.

After 1500, very few new moralities appeared. The best known of these are Mundus et Infans, or The World and the Child (c. 1508-1522), a compressed life-cycle play dealing with the Seven Ages of Man; Hickscorner, or Hick Scorner (c. 1513), important because it was the first morality to use a comic figure for its principal character; and Youth (c. 1513), resembling Hickscorner but limited to the problems of youth. After this, most moralities passed into the genre known as the interlude.

Although most English plays seem to have had their origin on the Continent, especially in France, it appears that the English morality was unique in introducing the theme of death. Moralities developed into many other dramatic forms, such as the sottie in France, and in England exerted great influence on the Tudor drama.

Closely related to moralities are the Paternoster plays The earliest reference to this genre dates from the third quarter of the fourteenth century: John Wycliffe speaks of Paternoster plays at York and elsewhere. In 1399, the Paternoster Guild of York performed a Ludum Accidie, or play on Sloth. From the records at Beverley, it is evident that all seven sins were presented in eight pageants, which were given at stations in the city. The Paternoster plays at York spanned two centuries, from the late fourteenth century to 1572, while there are records of eight performances at Lincoln during the period from 1397-1398 to 1521-1522. Unfortunately, all of these texts are lost, and conjecture concerning the genre must rely on contemporary descriptions of the plays and on the extant Mary Magdalen play (mentioned above), dating from the last half of the fifteenth century, in which there are elements of the Paternoster plays. Related to the Paternoster plays is the Creed play, which was performed at York every ten years around August 1, from about 1446, and perhaps persisting into the sixteenth century. The text of this play, unfortunately, is also lost.

Comedy

Although the development of liturgical drama can be traced in some detail, the origin of comedy in medieval Europe is much more difficult to document with any certainty. Comedy as popular in the ancient world, and although there is no record of dramatic performances in the early Middle Ages, the institutions of minstrels, ioculatores, and histriones kept the comic spirit alive. That the comic tradition survived is evident from the many clerical pronouncements against it. As early as 679 c.e., the English clergy was admonished by the Council of Rome that the practice of maintaining musicians and of countenancing iocos vel ludos should be discontinued. In the ninth century, King Edgar chided the monks for taking part in mimes and dancing in the streets.

Among the folk customs associated with comedy is the Feast of Fools , which was celebrated around January 1. This feast was especially popular in France toward the end of the twelfth century, where a Missel des Fous, in Sens, dates from the thirteenth century and contains the well-known parody Prose of the Ass. The Feast of Fools provoked clerical interdictions throughout the Continent; in England, where this feast was least prevalent, it seems to have been strongest in Lincoln and Beverley. It was condemned by Robert Grosseteste in 1236 and, much later, by William of Courtney archbishop of Canterbury, who found the custom still alive in Lincoln in 1390. The custom of naming an archiepiscopus puerorum, or Boy Bishop, observed around the feast of the Holy Innocents, December 28, was extremely popular in England. The first mention of the custom is in an inventory of a church in Salisbury, in 1222, which calls for a ring for the Boy Bishop. Surviving accounts indicate that the ceremony was quite elaborate: The arrival of the Boy Bishop at court was accompanied by carols, New Year’s gifts, jousts, tournaments, and, in the fourteenth century, by ludi or larvae, for which the common name was mummings.

Mummings were first mentioned in 1377, in a Stowe manuscript. Mummings, which were played at Christmas time and involved much gaiety and pageantry, were originally “dumb” shows in which players, disguised as emperor, pope, knight, and so on, arrived on horseback, invited notables to a game of dice, and, at the end of the game (which the notables always won), accepted refreshments and performed dances. The first author known to employ dramatic effects in mummings was John Lydgate a monk of the cultural center of Bury St. Edmunds: His Mumming at Hertford (1427-1430) involved the king himself in the action and included dialogue.

Other folk festivals that may have given rise to comedy include May Day, associated with Robin Hood plays and Plough Monday, the Monday after Twelfth Night, which gave rise to the Saint George plays. Robin Hood is mentioned in William Langland’s The Vision of William, Concerning Piers the Plowman (1362). The first extant ballad on this theme, A Lytell Geste of Robyn Hoode, dates from 1500, and the earliest Robin Hood play dates from 1475. Titled Robin Hood and the Sheriff of Nottingham, it may be the play referred to in Sir John Paston’s letter of 1473, in which he speaks of an unruly servant whom he kept with him to play Robin Hood and Saint George.

The Saint George plays were performed throughout England, Wales, Ireland, and Scotland, sometimes with another saint or hero but always with the same basic story. The first act is a prologue; the second act features a fight, in which George (Saint or Prince) is killed; and in the third and final act, the slain hero is revived by a doctor. The play’s central action is the fight and resurrection, and the doctor is a comic figure. Ridings (or processions) were also added to the celebration. The fullest account of these plays comes from the Norwich riding, established by 1408. In 1537, the character of Saint Margaret was added to the story. The Saint George Guild survived the Reformation, and dumb shows, ridings, and pageants on the Saint George theme continued to be performed long afterward.

The earliest piece of English comedy is known as the Cambridge prologue, dated not later than 1300. A fragment, it consists of twenty-two lines of French followed by twenty-two lines of English, presenting a request for silence made by the herald of a pagan emperor who swears by “Mahum” (Mahomet). The Rickinghall fragment, from the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century, tells of a boastful king who summons his nobles into his presence; it consists of two stanzas of French followed by nine lines of English. A farcial dialogue of the fabliau type, Interludium de Clerico et Puella, dating from the end of the thirteenth century, features a procuress named Eloise, suggesting an Anglo-Norman origin. Dame Sirith, also of the thirteenth century, is the only surviving Middle English fabliau outside of Geoffrey Chaucer’s work. It tells how a reluctant girl, Margeri, is persuaded to accept the advances of the clerk Wilicken through a coarse folk motif known as the “weeping bitch.” The use of English so early suggests a popular audience.

The farceas such is not a form indigenous to English comedy; like many other forms in English literature, the farce developed from French models. La Farce de maître Pierre Pathelin (wr. c. 1469; The Farce of Master Pierre Pathelin, 1905) was well known in England by 1535, and French actors had visited England in 1494 and 1495. Six “Minstrels of France” came to England in 1509, and it is supposed that they produced some of their farces in England.

The first English playwright who made extensive use of the element of farce was John Heywood, who believed that drama was intended to entertain and not to teach. He did not have a highly developed dramatic technique, but he excelled at farce. His The Play of the Weather (pb. 1533), though cast in the style of a morality in the character of Merry Report, a humorous vice, is actually a pleasing comedy. Jupiter sends Merry Report to several people to learn their preferences about the weather. They all differ, so he decides that things shall remain as they are, and all will have their turns. Heywood’s most important comedy is Johan Johan the Husband, Tyb His Wife, and Sir Johan the Priest pb. 1533; commonly known as Johan Johan), which has no connection with any religious play. The French original for this farce, Farce nouvelle et fort joyeuse du pasté, was discovered only in 1949. The story concerns a jealous husband, Johan, who intends to beat his wife, Tyb, because she is visiting Sir John too long and too often. Tyb dupes her husband into inviting the priest, and when Sir John arrives, Tyb sends her husband to fetch water in a pail with a hole in it. When he finally returns, he interrupts their lovemaking, only to be sent away to mend the pail. At the end of his patience, he finally pursues the fleeing priest and Tyb. Other plays by Heywood include The Pardoner and the Friar (pb. 1533), The Four P.P. (pb. 1541-1547), and Witty and Witless (pb. 1846, abridged; pb. 1909).

The study of the Latin classics during the Renaissance introduced Plautus and Terence into the curriculum beginning about 1510. Original Latin and French plays were often performed in schools and universities, beginning with Miles Gloriosus (The Braggart Warrior, 1767) in 1522. Schoolmasters frequently wrote imitations and adaptations for their students. One of the best of these was done by Nicholas Udall, when he was headmaster at Eaton. Udall’s Ralph Roister Doister (pr. c. 1522), the first of the Roman-type comedies, tells with considerable wit the classic story of the braggart and the parasite. Gammer Gurton’s Needle pr. c. 1562), by “W. S.” (William Stevenson?), is also among the best of the plays written for the schools and universities; it is distinguished by a perfect accommodation of the academic to the popular.

Like the serious theater, comedy was indebted to Italian sources. George Gascoigne’s Supposes a well-shaped comedy of intrigue, is the best example of this type. Primarily a translation from Ludovico Ariosto’s I suppositi (pr. 1509; The Pretenders, 1566), it was first performed at Gray’s Inn in 1566. Romantic comedy was popular in the decade from 1570 to 1580. The subjects were taken mostly from chivalry and Arthurian romances. Unfortunately, few of these plays have survived, though their loss is to be regretted more by the literary historians than by theatergoers. It seems that the children’s companies preferred to enact plays from classical history and legend, whereas the romantic comedies were usually played by adult troupes.

Comic elements are present in many serious dramas of the sixteenth century, and the distinction between genres is frequently blurred. The influence of the morality continued to dominate, and even Heywood’s farces, except Johan Johan and The Pardoner and the Friar, end with a lesson. It is therefore difficult to isolate a comic genre at this time. Even in the Middle Ages, religious drama had its comic elements, as in Secunda Pastorum (fifteenth century; commonly known as The Second Shepherds’ Play) by the Wakefield Master. By the end of the sixteenth century, elements of the medieval farce, though not absent, were subordinated to classical characteristics, if not themes, and the stage was set for the Elizabethan drama.

Interludes and the Tudor Drama

As the thirteenth century witnessed the development of the vernacular theater from the liturgical Latin plays, so the sixteenth witnessed a similar change. Plays moved outdoors in the thirteenth century to accommodate broader spectacle and secular actors. At the end of the fifteenth century, and particularly during the sixteenth, English plays moved back indoors—to the Court, to the Great Hall of Palaces, to the Inns of Court, and to schools and universities. Acting became a specialized profession, with companies of men, usually four in number, and boys, generally from ten to twelve in a troupe, performing plays expressly written for their company. Because the companies were relatively small, parts were often doubled. The most famous early company of adult actors was the Court Interluders, which existed from 1493 to 1559. Among the prominent boys’ groups were Paul’s Boys, from the choir school of St. Paul’s Cathedral, and the Children of Windsor. The division between professional and amateur and between men’s and boy’s companies was not absolute because a given troupe sometimes included both.

Plays performed in this context—indoors, to cultivated audiences, often by professional actors—were known as interludes These plays, generally short and featuring only a few characters, may have begun as short pieces between the acts of religious dramas, but by the sixteenth century they had developed into an independent genre with its own distinctive conventions. Thus, the interludes provided a transition between the religious drama of the Middle Ages and the full flowering of secular drama in the Elizabethan theater.

The development of interludes was influenced by mummings and similar genres and by the elaborate pageants for the Tudor ourt. The first mention of a proto-interlude comes from Thomas de Cabham, who died in 1313. Other early forms of the interlude include John Lydgate’s Mumming at Hertford, performed as part of the Christmas entertainment for the king, and Benedict Burgh’s A Christmas Game (late fifteenth century), a solemn work comprising twelve stanzas addressed by a presenter to the Apostles.

The first important writer of interludes was Henry Medwall, whose Nature dates from about 1500. Medwall was chaplain to John Morton, cardinal archbishop of Canterbury, and was of the household of Sir Thomas More. Medwall’s sister, Elizabeth, married John Rastell, a lawyer, printer, and playwright. Their daughter, Medwall’s niece, Elizabeth Rastell, married John Heywood, whose plays were printed by William Rastell, Elizabeth’s brother. Finally, Heywood’s daughter married the poet John Donne. This illustrious family was to play a leading role in English dramatic history in the sixteenth century. Medwall’s Nature, despite its lofty morality theme of sensuality as unreason, contains much comedy, seasoned with tavern talk and allusions to contemporary London. It is for Fulgens and Lucres(pr. c. 1497) that Medwall is best known. This interlude had the distinction of being the first purely secular drama in English; in the style of a débat, it deals with the question of nobility of lineage versus nobility of soul.

Medwall’s brother-in-law, John Rastell, is also noted for a nature interlude, The Nature of the Four Elements pr. c. 1517), the only play ascribed with certainty to him. Not unlike Medwall’s play, this one depicts humanity as struggling between Studious Desire and Sensual Appetite. Rastell also has his hero listening to lectures on astronomy and geography; these lectures are given by Experience, a great traveler who speaks of newfound lands. The Nature of the Four Elements was the first English work to name America and the earliest printed attempt to teach astronomy in the vernacular. Calisto and Meliboea (pr. c. 1527) is often ascribed to Rastell, and certainly was printed by him. Called “a new comedy in English in the manner of an interlude,” it was the first English work to call itself a comedy. Calisto and Meliboea is based on the Spanish novel La Celestina (c. 1502) and concludes a seduction story with the heroine’s repentance, including the lustful details preceding it.

John Heywood’s interludes, especially Johan Johan, belong more properly to farce and the comic theater. John Redford’s interlude Wit and Science (pr. c. 1530), written for the acting company Paul’s Boys, is an allegory of the undergraduate life. Wyt woos Miss Science, the daughter of Dr. Reason and his wife, Experience, yet falls into many errors before he finally achieves his goal. This play, one of the purest allegories among the interludes, is also among the wittiest; it has very good speakable parts and is still performed today. The same theme is repeated in the anonymous The Marriage of Wit and Science (pr. c. 1568), although with less brilliance.

One of the most notable interludes of this period is John Skelton’s Magnyfycence (pb. 1516), a morality with the familiar Renaissance theme of moderation. Potter sees the originality of this play in the way that Skelton uses linguistic devices, such as alliteration, repetition, and long lists of names, to illustrate lack of measure. The play is said to have addressed the lack of measure in contemporary events, especially the growing power of Cardinal Wolsey and the extravagance of King Henry VIII.

One of the most important factors in the changing character of sixteenth century drama was the Reformation. Writers began to use the theater as a tool for propaganda purposes, to which the morality and the interlude were well suited. At the same time, the government worked to eliminate religious drama—especially the miracle plays, because of their association with the Roman Catholic Church. Moralities survived better than mysteries. The first steps in this direction were taken under Henry VIII in 1543, although some of the mystery cycles had ceased to be performed even before this time. In 1547, Edward VI repealed Henry’s statute and allowed moralities to be performed, but Corpus Christi was suppressed as a feast of the English Church in 1548, thus dealing a death blow to the famous mystery cycles. Elizabeth made no effort to root out the plays, but local authorities did. Although there are records of mysteries in extreme northwestern counties as late as 1612, by the end of the third quarter of the sixteenth century, the Corpus Christi play was no longer the center of theatrical activities.

Moral interludes at first took up the Protestant cause. The most zealous Reformation writer was John Bale . In the 1530’s he wrote a cycle of plays based on the life of Christ, anti-Catholic moralities, and anti-Catholic history plays. Only five of his twenty-odd plays have survived. Three Laws is the first Protestant morality, as well as the first play divided into five acts. The plays on the life of Christ are devoid of all imagination in an attempt to follow Scripture exactly, and thus they lack the charm that made the mystery plays so attractive. Bale’s best play is the historical drama King Johan(pr. c. 1539). Johan (John) becomes an idealized Christian hero, the noble champion of an England widowed of her husband, God, by false religions. King Johan is original in the choice of a historical theme for political morality.

Among other Protestant moralities and interludes, less vehement than Bale’s, one of the most notable is David Lindsayrsquo;s A Pleasant Satire of the Three Estates (pr. 1540), an excellent example of Scottish drama. The character of John o’ the Commonweal approaches the memorable creations of Elizabethan and Jacobean comedy. Richard Wever’s Lusty Juventus (wr. 1550) treats the popular prodigal son theme, which is also found in Thomas Ingelund’s The Disobedient Child (wr. 1560) and Gascoigne’s The Glasse of Government (pb. 1575). This theme probably came from German sources; in the Protestant moralities, indoctrination rather than education of youth becomes uppermost. The only extant Catholic morality is the anonymous Respublica (wr. 1553). Because the counterattack is less vehement than the anti-Catholicism that prompted it, Respublica is superior to most plays in the genre, with widely differentiated characters in contemporary society and witty comic elements.

Although the discovery of Plautus and Terence marked the interlude with a comic thrust, the Renaissance interest in Seneca turned serious drama away from the religious themes to secular and even tragic ones. In 1559, 1560, and 1561, Seneca’s tragedies appeared in Jasper Heywood’s translations, and the first notable product of the Senecan influence was also the only example of strict classical tragedy in Tudor England: Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville rsquo;s Gorboduc (pr. 1561; also as The Tragedy of Ferrex and Porrex, pb. 1570). The play is divided into five acts and into scenes within the acts. There is absolutely no comedy, and all the principal protagonists are killed. Following the morality tradition, the play becomes an apology for the divine right of kings. This type of drama, however, did not prevail in England; more influential was a mixture of tragedy and comedy.

The first play in the tragicomic vein was Richard Edwards rsquo;s Damon and Pithias (pr. 1564), performed at Elizabeth’s court by the boys of the Chapel Royal. Edwards’s prologue is the first statement of dramatic principles in English. The play has classical sources both in comedy and in tragedy; at the same time, it includes references to its contemporary audience. Not totally emancipated from the morality tradition, court tragicomedies maintained a Vice character. They also regularly featured king and counselor scenes and episodes of conflict and violence. Another typical play of this type is John Pickering’s A New Interlude of Vice, Containing the History of Horestes (pb. 1567), wherein the Vice character is Revenge disguised as Courage.

The court tragicomedy was generally characterized by lengthy scenes and melodrama. Thomas Preston rsquo;s Cambises, played at court during the Christmas season of 1560-1561, is a typical example. Based on Herodotus, with many accretions along the way, it features a Vice character, Ambidexter, who is both a double-dealer and a slapstick clown. “R. B.” (probably Richard Bower), the author of Apius and Virginia (pr. 1567), presented an idealized melodrama of a seduction scene and a father who kills his daughter to save her honor. The Italian influence, along with the classical, was strong in such plays, as in Robert Wilmot’s Gismond of Salerne (pr. 1565), based on Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron, a fine play that is able to be staged even in modern times.

Although none of these plays is great, they represent certain important tendencies. One is the allegorical legacy of the moralities, which profoundly influenced William Shakespeare. Another is the fusion of genres, tragedy and comedy, which was to characterize mature English drama, in contrast to the strict separation of comedy and tragedy in the French theater. Finally, these plays point to the almost complete secularization of drama, which made possible a fully developed national theater.

Bibliography

Alford, John A., ed. From Page to Performance: Essays in Early English Drama. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1995. Twelve essays explore the role of performance in English drama from the twelfth to the seventeenth centuries. Focuses on moralities, university drama, and interludes.

Davidson, Clifford, et al., eds. The Drama of the Middle Ages: Comparative and Critical Essays. New York: AMS Press, 1982. Provides a general overview and interpretive criticism of medieval drama.

Gassner, John. Medieval and Tudor Drama: Twenty-four Plays. New York: Applause Theater Book Publishers, 1990. Offers several mystery and miracle plays from the medieval era, including Everyman, Tudor interludes and comedies, and some useful source materials.

Kastan, David, and John D. Cox, eds. A New History of Early English Drama. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997. Rather than an emphasis on individual playwrights and play titles, the twenty-six original essays of this work focus on the socioeconomic and historical contexts that gave rise to early English drama and the contextual effects on performance and physical space. Bibliography and index.

Kipling, Gordon. Enter the King: Theatre, Liturgy, and Ritual in the Medieval Civic Triumph. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Traces the importance of rites and ceremonies in medieval civilization and their translation into theatrical performances.

Moore, E. Hamilton. English Miracle Plays and Moralities. 1907. Reprint. New York: AMS Press, 1969. Provides history and criticism of early Christian dramas in England.

Tydeman, William, Louise M. Haywood, Michael J. Anderson, et al., eds. Medieval European Stage, 500-1500. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2001. The editors bring together a comprehensive selection of documents and analyses to elucidate the survival of classical tradition and development of the liturgical drama, the growth of popular religious drama in the vernacular, and the pastimes and customs of the people.