Related Research Articles
Mystery plays and miracle plays are among the earliest formally developed plays in medieval Europe. Medieval mystery plays focused on the representation of Bible stories in churches as tableaux with accompanying antiphonal song. They told of subjects such as the Creation, Adam and Eve, the murder of Abel, and the Last Judgment. Often they were performed together in cycles which could last for days. The name derives from mystery used in its sense of miracle, but an occasionally quoted derivation is from ministerium, meaning craft, and so the 'mysteries' or plays performed by the craft guilds.
The Somonyng of Everyman, usually referred to simply as Everyman, is a late 15th-century morality play by an anonymous English author, printed circa 1530. It is possibly a translation of the Dutch play Elckerlijc (Everyman).
The morality play is a genre of medieval and early Tudor drama. The term is used by scholars of literary and dramatic history to refer to a genre of play texts from the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries that feature personified concepts alongside angels and demons, who are engaged in a struggle to persuade a protagonist who represents a generic human character toward either good or evil. The common story arc of these plays follows "the temptation, fall and redemption of the protagonist".
The Massacreof the Innocents is a story recounted in the Nativity narrative of the Gospel of Matthew (2:16–18) in which Herod the Great, king of Judea, orders the execution of all male children who are two years old and under in the vicinity of Bethlehem. Modern scholarship finds no evidence that it happened outside the passages in Matthew, though it is congruous with Herod's character.
Drama was introduced to Britain from Europe by the Romans, and auditoriums were constructed across the country for this purpose.
The Chester Mystery Plays is a cycle of mystery plays originating in the city of Chester, England and dating back to at least the early part of the 15th century.
Liturgical drama refers to medieval forms of dramatic performance that use stories from the Bible or Christian hagiography.
Ordo Virtutum is an allegorical morality play, or sacred music drama, by Hildegard of Bingen, composed around 1151, during the construction and relocation of her Abbey at Rupertsberg. It is the earliest morality play by more than a century, and the only medieval musical drama to survive with an attribution for both text and music.
Medieval theatre encompasses theatrical in the period between the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century and the beginning of the Renaissance in approximately the 15th century. The category of "medieval theatre" is vast, covering dramatic performance in Europe over a thousand-year period. A broad spectrum of genres needs to be considered, including mystery plays, morality plays, farces and masques. The themes were almost always religious. The most famous examples are the English cycle dramas, the York Mystery Plays, the Chester Mystery Plays, the Wakefield Mystery Plays, and the N-Town Plays, as well as the morality play known as Everyman. One of the first surviving secular plays in English is The Interlude of the Student and the Girl.
The Wakefield or Towneley Mystery Plays are a series of thirty-two mystery plays based on the Bible most likely performed around the Feast of Corpus Christi probably in the town of Wakefield, England during the Late Middle Ages until 1576. It is one of only four surviving English mystery play cycles. Some scholars argue that the Wakefield cycle is not a cycle at all, but a mid-sixteenth-century compilation, formed by a scribe bringing together three separate groups of plays.
The York Mystery Plays, more properly the York Corpus Christi Plays, are a Middle English cycle of 48 mystery plays or pageants covering sacred history from the creation to the Last Judgment. They were traditionally presented on the feast day of Corpus Christi and were performed in the city of York, from the mid-fourteenth century until their suppression in 1569. The plays are one of four virtually complete surviving English mystery play cycles, along with the Chester Mystery Plays, the Towneley/Wakefield plays and the N-Town plays. Two long, composite, and late mystery pageants have survived from the Coventry cycle and there are records and fragments from other similar productions that took place elsewhere. A manuscript of the plays, probably dating from between 1463 and 1477, is still intact and stored at the British Library.
The Tragedy of Mariam, the Fair Queen of Jewry is a Jacobean-era drama written by Elizabeth Cary, Viscountess Falkland, and first published in 1613. There is some speculation that Cary may have written a play before The Tragedy of Mariam that has since been lost, but most scholars agree that The Tragedy of Mariam is the first extant original play written by a woman in English. It is also the first known English play to closely explore the history of King Herod's marriage to Mariamne.
PLS, or Poculi Ludique Societas, the Medieval & Renaissance Players of Toronto, sponsors productions of early plays, from the beginnings of medieval drama to as late as the middle of the seventeenth century.
Conceptualised by 20th century German director and theatre practitioner Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956), "The Modern Theatre Is the Epic Theatre" is a theoretical framework implemented by Brecht in the 1930s, which challenged and stretched dramaturgical norms in a postmodern style. This framework, written as a set of notes to accompany Brecht's satirical opera, ‘Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny’, explores the notion of "refunctioning" and the concept of the Separation of the Elements. This framework was most proficiently characterised by Brecht's nihilistic anti-bourgeois attitudes that “mirrored the profound societal and political turmoil of the Nazi uprising and post WW1 struggles”. Brecht's presentation of this theatrical structure adopts a style that is austere, utilitarian and remains instructional rather than systematically categorising itself as a form that is built towards a more entertaining and aesthetic lens. ‘The Modern Theatre Is the Epic Theatre’ incorporates early formulations of Brechtian conventions and techniques such as Gestus and the V-Effect. It employs an episodic arrangement rather than a traditional linear composition and encourages an audience to see the world as it is regardless of the context. The purpose of this new avant-garde outlook on theatrical performance aimed to “exhort the viewer to greater political vigilance, bringing the Marxist objective of a classless utopia closer to realisation”.
A Nativity play or Christmas pageant is a play which recounts the story of the Nativity of Jesus. It is usually performed at Christmas, the feast of the Nativity. For the Christian celebration of Christmas, the viewing of the Nativity play is one of the oldest Christmastime traditions, with the first reenactment of the Nativity of Jesus taking place in A.D. 1223 in the Italian town of Greccio.
This page lists cultural depictions of Herod the Great, grouped by order and arranged by date.
The Coventry Mystery Plays, or Coventry Corpus Christi Pageants, are a cycle of medieval mystery plays from Coventry, West Midlands, England, and are perhaps best known as the source of the "Coventry Carol". Two plays from the original cycle are extant having been copied from the now lost original manuscript in the early 19th century. Another, separate manuscript was initially titled the Ludus Coventriae by a 17th-century librarian who erroneously assumed it was copy of the Coventry mystery plays. The collection within this manuscript are now more commonly known as the N-Town Plays and are thought to have originated in East Anglia.
Arthur Clare Cawley was Professor of English Language and Medieval English Literature at the University of Leeds.
The Brome play of Abraham and Isaac is a fifteenth-century play of unknown authorship, written in an East Anglian dialect of Middle English, which dramatises the story of the Akedah, the binding of Isaac.
The Second Shepherds' Play is a famous medieval mystery play which is contained in the manuscript HM1, the unique manuscript of the Wakefield Cycle. These plays are also referred to as the Towneley Plays, on account of the manuscript residing at Towneley Hall. The plays within the manuscript roughly follow the chronology of the Bible and so were believed to be a cycle, which is now considered not to be the case. This play gained its name because in the manuscript it immediately follows another nativity play involving the shepherds. In fact, it has been hypothesized that the second play is a revision of the first. It appears that the two shepherd plays were not intended to be performed together since many of the themes and ideas of the first play carry over to the second one. In both plays it becomes clear that Christ is coming to Earth to redeem the world from its sins. Although the underlying tone of The Second Shepherd's Play is serious, many of the antics that occur among the shepherds are extremely farcical in nature.
References
- ↑ Garrett P. J. Epp, 'The Towneley Plays: Introduction', in The Towneley Plays, ed. by Garrett P. J. Epp (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2018).
- ↑ Everyman and Medieval Miracle Plays, ed. by A. C. Cawley (London: Dent, 1974) [first publ. 1956], p. 105.
- ↑ Peter Ramey, 'The Audience-Interactive Games of the Middle English Religious Drama', Comparative Drama, 47.1 (Spring 2013), 55-83 doi : 10.1353/cdr.2013.000 (p. 59).
- ↑ Katharine Goodland, '"Veniance, Lord, apon thaym fall": Maternal Mourning, Divine Justice, and Tragedy in theCorpus Christi Plays', Medieval & Renaissance Drama in England, 18 (2005), 166-92 (p. 181).
- ↑ David Staines, 'To Out-Herod Herod: The Development of a Dramatic Character', Comparative Drama, 10.1 (spring 1976), 29-53, doi : 10.1353/cdr.1976.0015 (pp. 45-48).
- ↑ Peter Ramey, 'The Audience-Interactive Games of the Middle English Religious Drama', Comparative Drama, 47.1 (Spring 2013), 55-83 doi : 10.1353/cdr.2013.000 (p. 61).
- ↑ Jean E. E. Smith, 'The Characters of Herod the Great and of Herod Antipas in Medieval Drama of Western Europe' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Aberdeen, 1976), pp. 255-62.
- ↑ David Staines, 'To Out-Herod Herod: The Development of a Dramatic Character', Comparative Drama, 10.1 (spring 1976), 29-53, doi : 10.1353/cdr.1976.0015 (pp. 45-48).
- ↑ Bob Godfrey, 'Herod’s Reputation and the Killing of the Children: Some Theatrical Consequences', in Staging Scripture: Biblical Drama, 1350-1600, ed. by Peter Happé and Wim Hüsken, Ludus, 14 (Leiden: Brill, 2016), pp. 253–78 doi : 10.1163/9789004313958_013.
- ↑ Katharine Goodland, '"Veniance, Lord, apon thaym fall": Maternal Mourning, Divine Justice, and Tragedy in theCorpus Christi Plays', Medieval & Renaissance Drama in England, 18 (2005), 166-92.
- ↑ Estella Ciobanu, Representations of the Body in Middle English Biblical Drama (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018) ISBN 978-3-319-90918-9.