IDE307 ENGLISH DRAMA

II
WEEK #2
AN OVERVIEW OF ENGLISH DRAMA
FROM THE BEGINNING TO THE 18th CENTURY
 When and how did drama appear in
England?
FOLK PLAYS SUCH AS MUMMINGS, DISGUISINGS AND MORRIS DANCES
EXISTED DURING THE MEDIEVAL AGES BUT THE REAL DRAMA OF THE
MIDDLE AGES GREW UP FROM THE REGULAR SERVICES OF THE
«CHURCH» HOLIDAYS.

BY THE END OF THE 10TH CENTURY, THE CHURCHES WERE SERVING AS

«THEATERS» DURING THE CHRISTMAS AND EASTER.
In fact, the Christian Church itself was quite dramatic (theatrical) celebrating the two great festivals of Christmas and Easter, and many other significant events in Christ’s life.
Short dramatizations of biblical events from Creation to Doomsday were performed as part of formal church services.

Simple but dramatic elaborations of parts of the liturgy such as the Gospel dialogue
between the angel and the three Marys at the tomb of Christ (Quem Quaeritis?) are
called the «tropes», and they represent the beginnings of medieval drama.
From this beginning developed the long tradition of liturgical drama, i.e. short
dramatizations of biblical events performed as part of formal church services,
centred upon the major feasts of the church year.

*Women's parts were presented by men and boys.

• As drama began to present the entire range of religious history, the «cycles» were
developed by extending the themes of liturgical drama both backward and forward,
to include the Creation, the Fall, early Old Testament stories, and Doomsday.
• The plays that were first enacted during Easter and Christmas liturgical
celebrations began to be organized out of the church and started evolving as
productions of the Cycle Plays of guilds replacing the language from Latin to the
vernacular. Trade or craft guilds took over sponsoring the plays, making them more
secular.
• It was not until the last days of the 15th cent. that semi-professional or professional
acting troupes came into existence. The first actors were the priests of course, but
when in the 14th Century control over the liturgical drama passed from the Church
to the craft guilds, the members of the guilds took over as performers.
• Liturgical drama thus gave way to plays in English, performed in the open and
seperated from the liturgy though still religious in subject matter. Such early plays
are generally known as miracle or mystery plays.
*Miracle plays are also known as the ‘Plays of the Saints’ based on the
life, miracles, or martyrdom of saints.
*Mystery plays also have a similar dramatic cycle beginning from the scene
on ‘The Creation of the World’ and ending with ‘The Last Judgement.’

Plays were generally given on wagons or pageant carts, which were moving
stages. Each pageant cart presented a different scene of the cycle and the
wagons followed each other, repeating their scenes at successive stations.

The Miracles and Mysteries seem to have reached their greatest popularity
in the 14th and 15th centuries. For a couple of hundred years they were a
celebrated way of telling the story of Christianity.
The final development of religious drama which appeared about the middle of
the 14th Century was the «Morality Play».
The Morality Play was a dramatized moral allegory. Simply, the plays deal with
man’s sinful salvation by making use of the characters allegorically to teach moral
lessons.
In moralities characters are stereotyped like the Seven Deadly Sins; wrath, greed,
sloth, pride, lust, envy and gluttony.
The earliest complete extant morality play is The Castle of Perseverance, which
was written circa 1425, but perhaps the best known morality play is Everyman
(ca. 1500).
Morality plays hold several elements in common such as the hero representing
Mankind or Everyman, allegorical characters who are the personifications of
virtues, vices and Death, as well as angels and demons who fight for the
possession of the soul of man.
Towards the end of the 15th century, out of the Moralities there developed a
type of play known as «the interlude», which mark the transition from
medieval religious drama to Tudor secular drama.
The interludes are short simple plays with no need of stage that entertain the
nobles of the period.
The plays were given sometimes in the halls of nobles and gentlemen, during
banquets or on other festival occasions; sometimes in the town halls or on
village greens.
Rather than staging a certain event within a thematic unity, they include a
witty and humorous conversation among a few characters about a certain
topic or a central subject of debate.
For instance, John Heywood’s interludes such as The Play of the Weather
(1533) and The Four P’s (c.1522) are written as part of the evening's
entertainment at a nobleman's house and their emphasis is more on
amusement than instruction.
1500-1660 The Renaissance (or Early Modern) Period
1558-1603 Elizabethan Age (the reign of Queen Elizabeth I)
1603-1625 Jacobean Age (the reign of King James I)
1625-1649 Caroline Age (the reign of King Charles I)
1649-1660 Commonwealth Period (or Puritan Interregnum)
(the Cromwells)
1660-1785 The Neoclassical Period
1660-1700 The Restoration (begins with the restoration of
Charles II to the English throne, and is followed by James II,
William and Mary, and Anne)
 New themes and new structures were developing along with the classical
influence on English Drama that began in the 1540’s, and which was first felt in
comedy and then later in tragedy.
By 1550 the force of religious drama had been spent. This was the beginning of
the literary drama in England; shortly thereafter, the first tragedies and comedies,
composed in imitation of ancient classical works, made their appearance and laid the
groundwork for the masterpieces of the Elizabethan Age.
The first regular theater was built in 1576 and as drama became more abundant
and more varied, professionalism developed both among authors and actors in the
second half of the 16th cent. Theatre companies appeared who were either
independently roaming around or under the protection of wealthy noblemen.
• Gammer Gurton’s Needle (1575), usually attributed to John Still or William
Stevenson, is one of the two or three earliest comedies in English language.
• The plot is very simple, but it shows an interesting picture of sixteenth-century
village life full of farcical elements. It is regarded a domestic comedy full of
farcical elements, yet its plot reveals the classical influence on the playwright.
• Like Nicholas Udall’s Ralph Roister Doister (1566) in form and structure, it is
modelled on Roman comedy, but the matter and characterization are native.
• Udall’s play, modeled on Terence and Plautus, includes an archetype, the
braggart soldier-hero. The play blends the stock plot-elements and stock
characters of the ancient Greek and Roman theatre with those of chivalric
literature and the English medieval theatre.
• There were no tragedies among the cycles.
• The first regular tragedy, and the earliest English tragic play in blank verse,
The Tragedie of Gorboduc (1561), was written in direct imitation of the
Roman playwright Seneca.
• Seneca’s works were translated into English in the mid-16th cent, and they
greatly influenced the direction of drama on the English stage.
• Many revenge tragedies were produced during the Elizabethan and Jacobean
Ages such as The Spanish Tragedy, Hamlet, The Duchess of Malfi, The
Revenger’s Tragedy, Antonio’s Revenge, etc.
• Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy (1587) is one of the most well-known
examples of Senecan tragedy based on revenge as the main theme.
• Most revenge tragedies share some basic elements: a play within a play,
madness, violance, murderers and their victims whose revenges are to
seeked by their sons, fathers, or beloved ones (the revenger), a vengeful
ghost, five acts, and blood and corpses covering the stage at the end of the
play.
Christopher Marlowe – Dr. Faustus (1604)
Marlowe’s play The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus is an
Elizabethan tragedy which follows the tradition of the Medieval morality plays, and
focuses on the greedy and the power-hungry humanbeings of the Elizabethan and
Jacobean period.

Ben Jonson – Volpone (1606)

Jonson’s play, like Dr. Faustus, focuses on human greed, selfishness, and avarice of
the Jacobean Age.
Volpone is classified as a comedy of humours, a type of comedy that is associated
with Ben Jonson.
 Restoration Drama

During the Interregnum Period, theatres were kept closed. Because such types
of entertainment were considered evil by the Puritans.
With the onset of the Restoration, drama and the arts began to flourish again.
Over the next forty years, English drama took on a voice peculiar to the age.
The period’s major contributions were the comedy of manners and the heroic
tragedy, both of which emerged rather quickly and endured throughout the
era.
This period also includes the emergence of professional female actresses for
the first time in the history of the theater in England.
 Comedy of Manners

i.e., William Congreve’s The Way of the World (1700)

Restoration playwrights most often satisfied their cultivated and witty
patrons with a long succession of satirical comedies of manners. This new
genre made use of gossip, witty conversation, repartee, intrigues,
scandals, and stock characters such as rich widows, beaux and belles,
fops and rakes. Comedies of manners especially focused on the problems
of London high society.
Although these plays gained a great popularity among the courtly society,
public interest in the comedy of manners was not that high.