Download Medieval Drama and Theatre

Medieval
Drama and
Theatre
Rite and Theatre
Rite
Repetitive
(to make past events
or myths present)
Collective experience
(everyone’s active
participation)
Sacred place and time
Rite and Theatre
Rite
Theatre
Repetitive
(to make past events or
myths present)
Independent from the
chronological watersheds
of a community
Collective experience
(everyone’s active
participation)
Sacred place and time
Audience – Actors
Stage: the space of
playing
Acting - Impersonation
The Dramatic Core
of Christian Liturgy
- Matins of Easter Sunday
- The „Quem queritis” trope
- Trope
- Melisma
- Sequence
The „Quem queritis” trope
„Quem queritis?” = „Whom are you looking for?” (Mk 16)
Angel: “Quem queritis in sepulchro, O Christicolae?”
Marys: “Ihesum Nazarenum.”
Angel: “Non est hic. Surrexit sicut praedixerat. Ite,
nuntiate quia surrexit a mortuis.”
Everyone: “Alleluia. Resurrexit Dominus.”
Angel: “Venite et videte locum.”
Whom are you seeking…?
Angel: “Whom are you seeking in the
sepulchre, O Christians?”
Marys: “Jesus of Nazareth.”
Angel: “He is not here. He rose as he
predicted. Go, announce that He has
arisen from the dead.”
Everyone: “Alleluia. The Lord has risen.”
Angel: “Come and see the place.”
The Regularis Concordia
- 10th-century
Benedictine
reform
- Winchester
Trope
From Rite to Theatre
- Early outdoor liturgical plays
- Drive in the Church to make
religion and faith visible:
- 1215: Lateran IV
- Mendicant orders
- 1265: Institution of the Feast of
Corpus Christi
Liturgical Plays
- Liturgy-bound (fix part of the liturgy)
- Latin
- Bound to dialogical tropes that appear in
the text of the liturgy
- Sung
- Gestures dominate over words
- Monastic origin
- Mostly indoor plays
- Remains in practice all throughout the
Middle Ages
Giotto di
Bondone:
Crib at
Greccio
Stage Performances
-
Not bound to liturgy
Mainly vernacular
Theme: Salvation history
Performed
Rhetorical and theatrical effects
Initially ecclesiastical control
Outdoor performances
From the 13th to the 16th century
Survey of stage plays
1. What kind of plays? (Genre)
2. Where and how? (Staging and
performance)
3. Who played? (Actors)
4. Who watched? (Audience)
5. Who composed? (Playwrights)
6. Who interprets? (Reception and the
modern reader)
Genres 1
-
Ludus / play
Interludium
Rapraesentatio / representation
Processio / procession
Royal entry – tableaux vivants
Pageant
Genres 2
- Mystery plays
- Cycles (York, Wakefield / Towneley,
Chester, N-Town /East Anglia/)
- Fragments or solitary plays
- Miracle plays
- Morality plays (Psychomachia)
Stationary:
- Round theatre
- Single scaffold
Staging
The
Martyrdom
of St
Apollonia
Staging 2: The Pageants
Pageant Wagons
Staging 3: Indoor Performances
- Aristocratic households
- The Moral Play of Wisdom (?)
- Colleges: Student performances
- Priories and monasteries
- Commissions by the royal court
Actors and Players
- No
professional
players
- Clergy and
guilds
- Minstrels
- Dancers and
musicians
Audience: Entertainment and
Devotion
Playwrights
- Almost all
anonymous
- The York
Realist
- The Wakefield
Master
- John Lydgate
Mysteries’ End
Peak and Ban of the Plays
- Paradox: Peak of mysteries
coincides with the spread of
private devotion
- Mysteries continue into the 16th c.
- From dogma to civic pride
- Reformation: Ban on the plays
Medieval Theatre Websites
• http://www.umm.maine.edu/faculty/necastr
o/drama
• http://www.yorkmysteryplays.org/index_hig
hres.htm