English Literature VI

4th Year. June 2020

Name: Dennis Espinosa Bernardo.

2) Middle English Section

Choose ONE of the following topics and write an essay about it.

OPTION C: MEDIEVAL DRAMA

Medieval drama has its origins in the Roman Church. Every play that was to be performed had
to be approved by the Church, even though they were not played in the Church itself. This was
a technique used by the Church with the aim of teaching alliterative parishioners this way
(although before that, they did it so as to rule ancient theatre out of the minds of people);
therefore, it is known that the plays were going to address religious themes.

Within the extended world of drama, in Middle Ages there are different types of it in the way
of playing one thing and another.
Liturgical drama is a type of play that was performed in the Church or near of it and it has to do
with rituals. This type of plays were stories about the Bible, they were based on religious
rituals. A point to take into account is the use of music within them, because they were sung
and rarely spoken. Besides, they were all written in Latin (Church language).
The first short plays performed were called tropes and they were played by the clergy during
the mass.
There was a type of liturgical ceremony known as “Quem quæritis?” (“Whom do you seek?”)
and they formed part of medieval Easter liturgy. This was a question followed by an answer,
and then, a command telling by Angels.

Among liturgical drama and the first plays performed, we can emphasize:

- Officium Pastorum: liturgical dramas about Christmas where the birth of Christ is
exposed.
- Officium Stellae: it includes scenes of adoration of Magi.
- Ordo Prophetarum: here the Old Testament prophecies about the birth of Christ are
addressed.
- Depositio: dramatization of Jesus Christ´s burial.

At that time, the vernacular language was English, so the clergy started to translate liturgical
plays into the vernacular language (English) in order to be understood by everyone.
As time passes, plays became more and more developed and they changed their performance
place from the altar of the Church to the Church yard.
The plays started to be full of different roles, so commoners took the initiative of using
amateur actors instead of only members of the aristocracy.
There are several types within the religious vernacular drama: mystery plays, miracle plays and
morality plays.

- Mystery plays:
They were biblical stories. It belongs to the Latin term “ministerium”. Mystery is a term
that empires that the stories are taken from the Bible and miracles are taken from
saints and martyrs. Most of the plays here have something to do with seasons.
 The special part of this type of plays was that they were produced in cycles, hence the
name: Cycle Plays. They were a series of plays which talk about the Bible, from the
Creation to the Last judgement.
Cycle Plays were performed in spring or early summer, when the religious festival of
Corpus Christi took place.
Although the plays were written by the clergy and supervised by Church, the true
representatives of these works were the guilds of each town (amateur actors among
them). In this way, each guild received a play that was well-complemented with him.
In addition, mystery plays have several characteristics. For example, there was a clear
combination of high seriousness (the Biblical stories of the Old Testament and Jesus’
life and mission) and low comedy (the plays incorporate almost slapstick sketches of
contemporary medieval daily life).

- Miracle plays:
It can be seen how this kind of plays have something in common with the previous one
when it comes to dealing dramatic techniques.
They are also called Saint´s Plays. These plays explain that a person had to make three
miracles in order to convert himself in a Saint.
Miracle plays had several themes, among the most important were St. George, St.
Nicholas and Virgin Mary.

- Morality plays:
This is a drama in which the characters are allegorical, symbolical or abstract. The main
purpose of morality is didactic. The morality of the time was more or less a sermon.
There are three cycles of places that are divided according to the name of the places
where these plays were acted: York, Chester, Wakefield.
The subjects of Miracle Plays are various: the disobedience of Adam and Eve; Noah and
the Great flood; Abraham and Isaac; events in the life of Christ; and so on.
One of the best-known 15th century moralities is Everyman, which was translated from
the Dutch. It is the story of the end of Everyman´s life, when death calls him away from
the world.