FALL of ROMAN DRAMA

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I. ROMAN DRAMA

• Characteristics of ROMANTHEATER in general:
• festivals: to Ceres, to Bacchus (offering = 1st fruits on platter = called “satura”  jocular scenes = offerings = “satura”)
• Roman actors = “histriones” (Etruscan “dancer”)
• mime & pantomime: satiric interludes of Greek plays; Etruscan mimic dancing to flute, without verse (to ward off 364 BC plague in Rome) addition (by Roman youths) of raillery, rude doggerel verses to accompany & correspond to the music & dance Livius Andronicus’ slave recitation & his dancing, with dialogue, “told” a story (“Dramatic Satire”, “satura”)  no texts
• Roman drama borrowed from Greek drama
• BUT less serious, less philosophical
• more farcical, comedic, slapstick (circus-like), diversionary
• more spectacle: acrobatics, dancing, singing, slapstick, sea-battles, gladiators, boxing, animal fights, chariot races, other athletics

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• Lucius Annaeus Seneca (c. 4 B.C. – 65 A.D)
• tragedy
• adapted Euripides’ plays
• *WRITTEN TO BE READ (not necessarily performed, acted)

• Characteristics of Roman Tragedy (Senecan):
• none survive except Seneca’s
• five episodes (“acts” divided by choral odes)
• elaborate speeches
• interest in morality
• moralization: expressed in sententiae (short pithy generalizations about the human condition)
• violence and horror onstage (unlike Greek)
• characters dominated by a single passion – obsessive (such as revenge) – drives them to doom (see AC Bradley)
• technical devices:
• soliloquies, asides, confidants
• interest in supernatural and human connections

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• Characteristics of Roman Comedy:
• no Chorus (abandoned)
• no act or scene divisions
• songs (Plautus – average of three songs, 2/3 of the lines with music)
• music (Terence – no songs, but music with half of the dialog)
• domestic affairs (everyday life)
• action placed in the street

• Titus Plautus: (c. 254-184 B.C)
• comedy
• based on Greek plays (21 extant, c. 130)
• stichomythia, song, slapstick
• Roman allusions; Latin verse

• Terence: (c.185-159 B.C.)
• comedy
• freed slave (educated)
• 6 extant of 6 plays
• complex plots(sub or double plots)
• characterization
• contrasts in human behavior
• vs. Plautus: less boisterous, less episodic, more elegant language, less popular
• used Greek characters

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*RUSTIC FARCE:

• most popular
• southern Italy
• short
• "fabula Atellana":
• “Atellan play” (Atella = a Campanian town)
• Roman humor with Maccus the clown, Bucco (“Fat cheeks”) the simpleton/braggart, Pappus the foolish old man, Dossennus the hunched-backed drunk slave/swindler
• actors wore masks
• improvisational dialogue
• slapstick & buffoonery
• short farces with stock characters
• *predecessors of Italian commedia dell'arte characters

• Fescennine verses(fescennia locatio)
• bawdy, improvised exchanges
• sung by clowns (masked dancers)
• at local harvest & vintage festivals & marriage ceremonies
• early native Italian jocular dialogue in Latin verse
• literary imitations by Catullus (84–54 BC), in one of his epithalamiums
• Horace (65–8 BC) claimed that they became so abusive & perverse that they were forbidden by law

• saturate:
• medleys consisting of jest, slapstick, & song (from Etruria)
• with masked dancers & musicians
• perhaps combined with the Fescennine verses
• c.4thC BC

• phlyaxplays:
• 4thC BC(southern Italy and Sicily settled by the Greeks)
• the “Phlyakes” = literally “Gossip Players”
• improvised burlesques travesties of Greek mythology and daily life
• performed on a raised wooden stage with an upper gallery,
• actors wore grotesque costumes masks(similar to those of the Greek Old Comedy)
• acrobatics and farcical scenes= major part of these

• MIME plays:
• ancient, pre-language form of communication
• Greek: “actor” separated from Chorus to interpret (through dance & gesture) the action the Chorus sung or recited
• from fabulla Atellena
• costumes = grotesque
• comedy = exaggerated
• burlesque of gods
• some female performers
• acrobatics, dance, song, slapstick comedy
• popular from 2ndC BC onward
• pantomime:
• “pan” + “mime” = imitation of nature
• short, improvisational, burlesqued scenes
• between scenes or after written plays
• heroic, historical, mythological, comical stories
• grew out of the wreckage of tragedy
• a kind of burlesque ballet
• in which a chorus chanted the story to musical accompaniment (lute, pipe, cymbal)
• while solo actor mimed

• mimes:“mimis”
• Roman mimes = "histriones"
• solo actor used mime, gesture, and dance
• to portray the various characters in a succession of masks
• bawdy, erotic elements of the story
• realistic acts of violence & sex
• serious or comic
• 6 to 60 actor troupes
• descendants of ancient Greek "Phlyakes": (see above)
• precursors of Walpurgisnachtcharacters:
• (German folklore: April 30, May Day eve, when witches met at The Brocken, Harz Mountains’ highest peak)
• spirits that represented life without taboo, inhibition, satiric, typically lascivious & indecent in word, song, gesture
• St. Walpurga, 710 Wessex, (Abbess of Heidenheim near Eichstätt, a Catholic Saint, was known as the protectoress against witchcraft and sorcery)
• pagan spring customs (Spring’s victory over Winter)
• children play pranks, noisemaking, bonfires (ward off evil spirits)
• similar to Halloween
• “Walpurgisnacht scene” in Goethe's Faust, in which Mephistopheles takes Faust to the Brocken and has him revel with the witches

• topics:
• Hercules' labors
• Zeus' love escapades
• botched Greek tragedies

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II. FALL of ROMAN DRAMA

(1) barbarian invasions from the north
(2) dying art
(3) church condemnation

*BARBARIANS:

• attacks on Italy
• Fall of Rome 476 AD

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*DYING ART:

• despite elaborate theaters built in Italy, Spain, France, & North African colonies
• drama written to be READ
• theater became "little more than a vulgar form of popular entertainment" (31)
• distant from its religious origins & glorious past in ancient Greece
• diminishing festivals, spectacles
• bawdry
• obscene mimes
• farces that mainly dealt with drunkenness, greed, adultery, & horseplay
• acrobatics (lavish spectacles with scantily clad dancers)
• "water ballets" with scantily clad ("bikini") women & mock sea-battles ("naumachiae")
• by 5thC AD, all mimes = excommunicated
• *fall of actors
• in GREECE, actors were citizens of good repute
• in ROME (now), actors lost esteem
• Roman performers = slaves debased social status
• (Rocius = exception, raised to nobility)

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*church condemnation:

• conversion of Emperor Constantine (324-337 A.D)
• association with pagan gods (mythology & festivals)
• sinful behavior surrounding theaters (thievery, prostitution, fights)
• Christians = forbidden to participate in or attend theaters
• bawdy, obscene, licentious behavior (of participants, mimes)

• ridicule by mimes
• ***why MIMES = despised
• satirized, ridiculed religion (under Christian persecutions by)
• burlesqued sacramental rites (baptism with a drunk, turning into a dunking party)
• in Centunculus: a clown was baptized & grotesquely crucified

• 200 AD: Tertullian, Latin Church Father, in de Spectaculum, claimed Christians should ignore theater, would be rewarded on Judgment Day with satisfaction watching the torments of tragedians & comedians
• St. Augustine (354-430): while opposing much of theater as well, he discriminated between those high & poor in quality
• Constantine: “The theaters are falling almost everywhere, theaters, those sinks of uncleanness and public places of debauchery. And for what reason are they falling? They are falling because of the reformation of the age, because the lewd and sacrilegious practices for which they were built are out of fashion.” (400 AD) (Sylvan Barnet 10)
• most Romans denounced the coarse & depraved aspects of Roman theater
• Church condemnations, denunciations: (theater as the forge & armory of Satan)
• 325 AD: Council of Nicea: St. Athanasius' condemnation of another (Arius) for associating with the theater
• 829 AD: Council of Paris: denunciated theater's players & pomp
• Tertullian, Cyprian, Chrysostom, Augustine, Jerome, Pope Innocent III

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*THE END of THEATER:

• 400: many festivalssubsided, diminished
• 404: no gladiators
• 523: no ventiones (animal fights)
• 533: last record of theatrical performance
• 568 AD: Roman drama & "spectacula" (all public entertainment) = obliterated

• by mid-6thC: dramatist as a profession = extinct
• plays = read, quoted, BUT not acted

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III. “DARK AGES of DRAMA”

GAP BETWEEN ROMAN and MEDIEVAL DRAMA

(1) NOMADIC ENTERTAINERS:

*YET: MIMES persisted

• once only incidental, subordinate part ("intermezzi") of Roman theater
• became sole survivors of Fall of Theater

• demonstrated by the on-going protests & prohibitions by the Church
• migratory tradition

*iterant actors (bridging the gap between Roman theater & Medieval theater)

• migratory entertainers:
• jongleurs, histriones, tellers of tales/storytellers,
• puppet-masters, musical instrumentalists
• written about by Isidore of Seville (7thC),
• written about by Thomas de Cabham (early 14thC):
• TC's moral classification of mimes:
• 1) licentious & indecent dance & gesture, performed in public houses
• 2) satirist & parodists, performed at courts & halls of great houses
• 3) respectable singers of saintly lives & heroic princes (*SCOP tradition, legacy*)
• a Bishop of Lindisfarne: through his protest of actors, demonstrated that monasteries used to be entertained by traveling players; he suggested that it'd be better to allow paupers in than players

*SCOP tradition:

• storytellers of heroic (martial or religious) deeds
• WHO: satirists, comedians, fools, clowns, dancers, jugglers, storytellers, instrumentalists
• trouveres (11th-14thC, France): of northern France (troubadours in southern France)
• goliard (12th, 13thC, England, France, Germany): late Latin poetry by “wandering scholars”; educated clerics (& students) who did not go into (or were kicked out of) the religious profession; verse on vagabond life (homelessness & unfrocked life), love, debauchery, wine & political and religious satire--on the corruption of the church; 14thC “jongleurs” or “minstrels”
• jongleur (13thC, France): musician, juggler, acrobat; story-teller of fabliaux, chansons de geste, lays, other metrical romances; performed in marketplaces on public holidays, in abbeys, in noble castles
• minstrel (12-14thC, France): replaced “jongleur” word by 14thC; musician (wind instrument); linked to SCOP and gleemen

• WHERE: trade & pilgrim routes, highways, crossroads, courts, castle halls, taverns
• mimes in monasteries: mimes, jongleurs, trouveres(11-14thC, northern France; troubadours in southern France) in monasteries, picked up the TROPE (= birth, death, rebirth) and took it (unconsciously) to the masses in Guilds

• HOW: jokes, gaiety, dances, songs, fabliaux, burlesque songs & stories & gestures; from the indecent dance & gesture to the tales of heroic, saintly deeds

**historical tradition of mimes, this "bridging of the gap," is merely CONJECTURE, the stringing together of pieces of historical evidence by scholars while groping through the "Dark Ages"

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(2) BYZANTIUM:

• Christianized pagan plays religious plays
• under Empress Theodora (500-548 AD)
• mime-player before she married Emperor Justinian
• religious instruction to illiterate audience

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(3) PAGAN RITES:

• Celtic and Teutonic peoples/rites
• seasonal rites:
• winter & spring
• death & rebirth of NATURE
• winter solstice, autumnal equinox
• spring (vernal) equinox (*Eostre, the Anglo-Saxon Goddess of fertility)
• celebrate the harvest,
• celebrate the return of nature & start of new crop season
• *Christianization of pagan cultures (6th century+):

Church ASSIMILATION

• MIME TRADITION:
• imitated & sanctified mimicry;
• transmuted miming to the service of the Christian Church;
• Christmas (12/25) = assimilation & coinciding of pagan sun festival;
• Easter coincided with pagan spring rites of fertility, rebirth-resurrection of Nature
• mimes in monasteries: mimes, jongleurs, trouveres(11-14thC, northern France; troubadours in southern France) in monasteries, picked up the TROPE (= birth, death, rebirth) and took it (unconsciously) to the masses in Guilds
• impersonation: impersonation ofmiming represents the 2nd purpose, to move beyond mere commemorative action
• FOLK RITES:
• winter-spring battles = death-rebirth battles = folk contests, games, races (MUMMER PLAYS)
• St. John's version of sepulcher scene = pagan fertility rite: set in a garden, Christ mistaken for gardener, primitive taboo of no-touching period of seclusion, costuming in white (light vs. dark)  ceremonial drama of light & life arising out of darkness & death
• Christianized pagan rites:
• precursors to Easter, Christmas celebrations
• Easter & Christmas = pagan seasonal festivals
• "Easter" = name of Teutonic goddess of spring
• characters = ritual archetypes: ritual opponents; in Mystery Plays, in Mummer Plays....“All are symbolic re-enactments (among other things) of winter-spring death and rebirth combats, a part of the endless cycle of ceremonies celebrating death and rebirth combats of the royal hero-god. The darkness of the Crucifixion and the triumphant Easter morning resurrection prefigure the emergence of the spring sun, scattering with light the demons of darkness, and renewing life” (27).

• pagan stories:
• (transcription of Anglo-Saxon oral literature)
• included Christian elements within Anglo-Saxon hero-stories
• refashioned Christian saints as A-S “heroes”
• retold Christian stories as hero-stories

• * “Death & Resurrection” TROPE:
• re-enact the death of vegetation (winter)
• & the rebirth of nature/vegetation (spring)
• rites = reduced to FOLK games:
• semi-literary & non-literary folk theater
• games
• morris dancing (May pole dancing)
• mummings 

MUMMINGS

• Robin Hood plays; St. George plays (below)
• sword dances:
• sword dances = represent animal sacrifice to a vegetation spirit (e.g. Attis, Thammuz)
• The Reyesby Sword Play (c. 1779)
• Thomas Hardy in Return of the Native
• A Christmas Mumming: The Play of St. George
• *predates 1,000 AD; transcribed c. 13thC
• Cast:
• St. George (Prince or King George)
• Dragon
• Turkish Knight
• Doctor
• Father Christmas (*Elizabethan “Prologue”, master-of-ceremonies)
• King of Egypt
• Sabra, princess, daughter of King of Egypt
• Plot:
• hero story (see Anglo-Saxon literature)
• death & resurrection (dragon, Turkish Knight, St. George)
• sword play
• singing, dancing, mumming
• Father Christmas:
• represents the move from Easter to Christmas;
• acts as master of ceremonies (Prologue), begs for money
• Dragon:
• represents the influence of the Crusades;
• fights with St. George twice; killed, resurrected, killed
• Turkish Knight:
• fights with St. George twice;
• wounded, helped, killed, resurrected
• Doctor:
• resurrects Dragon, Knight;
• given “girdy grout” as reward (course meal, *symbol of vegetation, “rebirth”)
• St. George:
• fights dragon 2x
• fights Turk 2x
• marries Sabra

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(4) CHRISTIAN TROPES:

• rebirth (renaissance) of literary drama
• 10th century
• unofficial, unauthorized, non-liturgical
• added to the Church liturgy, Easter Mass

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“DARK AGES of DRAMA”

• “Dark Ages” = not so dark

• seed & spirit of drama kept alive in various guises;
• while “literary” drama subsided, dramatic presentation & entertainment remained

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IV. REBIRTH of LITERARY DRAMA

1) Christian Literature:

• Hrotvitha: (c. 935-1001)

• a.k.a. “Hrotsvitha,” “Hrotswitha,” or “Roswitha”
• 10thC Benedictine nun from Saxony, Gandersheim monastery
• epic poems, 8 legends of saints lives, 6 plays on religious, saintly themes
• best known for her plays:

• didactic plays
• to be read, not acted
• Paphnutius, Dulcitius
• “the saint play” (France vogue, notEngland)

• *she represents a link between Classical drama & Medieval drama:
• religious (Christian) themes & sentiments (medieval)
• farcical elements from the vogue of mimes & jongleurs (medieval)
• wit, humor, theatricality (classical)
• Terence as model: (classical)
• characterization, humor, dramatic conflict
• her attempt to reverse the negative characterization of women in his comedies

2) Christian Tropes:

• unofficial literary addition to church liturgy
• semi-dramatic form
• wordless sequences in Easter Mass
• EASTER:
• earliest tropes
• Easter = holiest time of the year (more than Christmas in our time)

(1) antiphonal song:

• melodies sung to vowel sounds (medieval chant)
• wordless
• meaningless sounds, drawn out final vowels
• “neumes”: mnemonic device for musical notation (to remember melody learned by ear)
• perhaps developed in Eastern Roman Empire, Byzantine church music

(2) tropes:

• 1st composed in France
• adding words to the wordless sequences of antiphonal songs
• short sung dialogue (in LATIN)
• lyrical portion of the Easter Mass (like Greek dithyramb)
• priests = “actors”
• religious education to illiterate masses (BUT masses can’t understand LATIN?!)

**RELIGION & DRAMA **

• Greek drama developed from the worship of Dionysus
• Post-Roman drama extinguished in part by EarlyChurch
• Medieval drama reborn in Christian liturgy

• A. “QUEM QUAERITIS” trope
• 10th century
• St. Gall (Benedictine abbey in Switzerland)
• “plot”:
• Angel + 3 Marys
• at Christ’s grave, for the ceremonial preparation of the body
• enacting the visitation to the sepulcher by the 3 Marys on Easter morning
• *not impersonation*
• merely sung dialogue in question-answer format
• sung during Easter Mass
• sung by the 2 halves of the choir
• Interrogatio (questioner who introduces the angels)
• Responsio (the 3 Marys)
• Angeli(the angels)
• question (“Whom do you seek?”), response, directive
• one priest represented the Angel, another (or 3 others) the Marys

• B. “INTROIT TROPE”
• 10th century
• *expansion on QQ trope
• part of the Introit of the Easter Mass
• chanted dialogue between Angel(s) and Marys
• *at the beginning of the Easter service (“Introit” = entrance, beginning)

• C. “MATINS Trope”
• *detached from Mass
• separate scene performed at Matins
• Matins = prayers that precede daybreak
• *now tropes = free to develop “dramatically” (like a small opera)
• *Ethelwold (c. 965-75)
• Ethelwold (10thC Bishop of Winchester) (c. 954-963)
• “stage directions” instructions on how to perform this liturgical “play”
• St. Ethelwold's Regularis Concordia,
• longer version of QQ with "Stage directions"
• hints at a Good Friday trope to which the Quem Quaeritis is a sequel of sorts;
• *didactic purpose of tropes was to strengthen the faith "in the unlettered vulgar and in neophytes" (4).
• performed before matins (early morning prayers)
• after trope  priest & choirboys sung joyful Easter hymn

• **IMPERSONATION**
• now the performers are trying to impersonate the Angels and Marys
• look like, act like (action)
• costume & gesture (white robe for “angel”)
• perhaps MIME influence

(3) DEVELOPMENT:

• added characters (Christ, Peter, John, soldiers)
• added lines
• still in LATIN
• added pantomimes (13thC, The Orleans Sepulcher)
• from the choir to/through the nave:
• *whole church utilized
• multiple scenes, temporary structures built
• altar (with crucifix) = central point
• congregation’sleft = heaven (priest’s “right hand”)
• congregation’sright = hell
• pulpit: prophets spoke
• nave: (multiple settings—“mansions,” “houses,” “booths”): Herod’s palace, Golgotha, Bethlehem, Temple, Gethsemane, Mount of Olives, Pilate’s palace, Tomb, Caiaphas’ house
• space in between = “platea”, all-purpose space
• move to Christmas 

(4) Christmas:

• OFFICIUM PASTORUM
• (“Office of the Shepherds”)
• sepulcher  manger
• 3 Marys (with crucified Christ)  3 Shepherds (born Christ)
• angles  midwives
• *set precedent for other theatrical productions:
• “12th Day” celebrations:
• OFFICIUM STELLAE
• “Office of the Star”
• 3 Magi, kings
• led by a star
• ORDO RACHELIS
• Slaughter of the Innocents
• ordered by Herod, King of Judea
• lament of Rachel, represents grieving mothers of slain children
• *OT character telling a NT story
• ORDO PROPHETARUM
• prophets of Israel
• testified to the coming Christ
• Christ cycle: OT prophets foretelling Jesus, Nativity, Trial of Jesus, Crucifixion, Resurrection & Second Coming
• *OT characters telling a NT story

(5) Other episodes from Biblical HISTORY: