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The Medieval Period
The Dark Ages “I was not; I was; I am not; I care not.”
800-1400 A.D.
The Medieval Church
Devils and Divisions
 The Devil was a symbol of the
powers of darkness and evil.
 The Church manipulated those
fears as it sought to convert the
pagan world.
 The Church played an
important stabilizing role.
 The Church confined learning
and philosophy to monasteries
to withhold intellectual activity
from the world
The Roman Papacy
 Determined that the world was
governed by two powers: the
sacred authority of the
priesthood and royal power.
 Pope Gregory I reestablished
the Roman Catholic Church
 He sponsored Saint Augustine
in his mission to convert
England in 597.
The Early Theatre
Scholars argue that theatre
ceased to exist in the Western
world for a period of several
hundred years.
 Two pieces of evidence exist
proving otherwise.


Wandering enterainers:
mimists, jugglers, bear baiters,
acrobats, wrestlers, and
storytellers.
A ruling occurred that forbid
clergy from viewing the
obscenities of the theatre or
actors.
The Beginnings of Liturgical
Drama
Liturgical drama began an an elaboration of the
Roman Catholic Mass.
Dramas were performed on ceremonial occasions--especially Easter.
Records at Winchester in southern England dating
from the later 10th century tell of dramas in which
priests acted out the discovery of Jesus’ empty
tomb.
So theatre, along with all the other arts, except
dance, was adopted by the church and became and
instrument of God in an age of faith and demons.
The Trope:
Earliest Church Drama
The earliest church
dramas, known as the
trope, was a simple
elaboration and
illustration of the
Mass.
Later, three distinct
styles emerged.
Mystery Plays:
Bible stories
Miracle Plays:
Lives of the Saints
Morality Plays:
Didactic Allegories

Which had characters
such as Lust, Pride,
Sloth, Gluttony, and
Hatred.
The Trope Continued
Tropes were performed in the
sanctuary, using niches around the
church as specific scenic
locations.
At first, only priests performed the
roles.
Later, laymen were allowed to act
in liturgical drama.
Female roles were usually played
by boys, but some evidence
suggests that women did
participate occasionally.
Picture: Notre Dame Cathedral
Paris, France
Popularity Grows:
The Use of Laymen
Evidence suggests that as laymen assumed a
greater role, certain, vulgarities were
introduced.
Comedy and comic characters appeared--even in the Easter tropes.
The first comic character was the merchant.
The most popular comic character was the
devil.
Staging Church Drama
The Mansion Stage - stationary stage decoration
of the church interior; so called because the
different areas represented “mansions” or houses
Hellmouth – the mouth of hell into which sinners
were cast; devils amid smoke and fire, pulling
sinners into the mouth of hell; jaws of dragon-like
monster
FYI: The most complicated hellmouth required 17
people to operate it. Hellmouths of the late
Middle Ages appeared more comic than fearsome.
Staging Continued
When the action of a play
moved away from a
specific mansion, the
visual representations
became conventional, just
as we saw in classical
Greek theatre.
The stage could represent
any place, as opposed to
representation of place
found in the mansion.
The text of the play told
the audience where the
action was supposed to
occur, and the audience
then imagined that locale.
The Pageant Wagon
When theatre moved outside of the
church, theatre was brought to the
audience on a succession of pageant
wagons.
Like floats of a modern parade.
Each wagon carried the set for a
specific part of the play cycle.
Many of these wagons were very
elaborate, two stories tall, and
curtained for entrances and exits like
a modern theatre.
In some cases, a flat wagon was
combined with an elaborate
background wagon to provide a
playing area.
The Pageant Wagon
Everyman: A Morality Play
One of the most enduring plays,
which is still performed today.
Everyman is an anonymous
morality play in which the hero
undertakes a journey to his
death.
He seeks the company of
earthly things: Fellowship,
Kindred, and Goods. He is
deserted by all except Good
Deeds.
Good Deeds alone accompanies
him to his fate.
Theatre: A static Art
Theatre is often a static art, far more
resistant to change than the other arts,
which tend to evolve around the vision of a
single artist.
Theatre, more a group expression, gets
caught in its own inertia.
Noh Theatre of Japan
Japan’s two great dramatic
forms, Noh and Kabuki, both
originated from religious rituals
dating to the late eight and ninth
century, when dramatic devices
were used as teaching tools by
Buddhist monks.
Noh drama grew out of two
sources: simple dramas based
on symbolic dances performed
to music at the imperial court,
and similar mimetic
performances popular with the
common people.
Noh drama is performed on a simple,
almost bare stage and, like Classical
Greek tragedy, uses only two actors.
Actors wear elaborate masks and
costumes and a chorus functions as a
narrator.
The tone tends to be serious—
appealing to the intellect. The plays
are usually short.
240 scripts come from the fourteenth
century.
Noh drama is classified into five
types: plays about the gods, warriors,
women, spirits or mad persons, and
demons. Performed in this order.