Raffaella Mannori 2013-2014 The birth of drama
The Development of British Literature
Elizabethan Poetry and Drama
Elizabethan poetry found some of its finest expression in drama. Plays were mostlywritten in verse. The predominant metre was the unrhymed iambic pentameter or‘blank verse’, which sounded the closest to the rhythm of spoken English. First Marlowe and then Shakespeare turned this metre into a perfect instrument for the varied life of the stage.
.
Origins of Medieval Drama
The origins of British drama in the Middle Ages began to emerge from the rituals of the Church. Drama was used to give illiterate peasants a religious education in the mysteries of faith and the Bible. At first liturgical drama was used to involve the congregation in choral celebration of religious mysteries and to celebrate the festivals of Christmas and Easter.
Mystery Plays Religious performances moved out of the church when, in the early 14th century, a new religious festival was introduced in the month of June to celebrate Corpus Christi (= the body of Christ). On that day, the consecrated Host was carried out of the church in procession and around the village or town. In time, the processionsdeveloped into a new form of drama which took place outside the churches and consisted of a number of plays dealing with stories of the Old and New Testament. These were called ‘Mystery’ (or ‘Miracle’) plays. A similar kind of performance also developed in Europe, and in Italy it became known as ‘sacra rappresentazione’.
The Subjects The Mystery plays were single episodes strung together in a Mystery Cycle. The
subjects were either biblical stories, such as Noah and the flood, or events from the life of Christ, such as the Nativity and the Passion. They were written in the English spoken by local people and included episodes in which certain human types appeared who could be immediately recognised by the spectators: for example, Noah’s wife was an impudent English woman, the shepherds worshipping Christ at his birth were the poor English people of the time. Similarly, the setting was also not Egypt or Palestine, where the biblical story was set, but Yorkshire or some
other English county.
The Context
The Performance Each play was financed and performed by the trade or craft guilds of the town. A Mystery Cycle was staged outdoors; each play was performed on a movable stage wagon called ‘pageant’ in the central square or next to the town hall. Performances went on from early morning until late evening to take advantage of the long daylight hours in June, when the Corpus Christi feast was celebrated. All business and activities were suspended so that everybody could take part in the festivities. People would stop in front of a pageant and watch anepisode they wanted to see or move on to another one. Each pageant had its own audience.
The Manuscripts The manuscripts of various versions of the complete Mystery Cycle have been preserved; they are called the York, Chester, Wakefield, Coventry and Lincoln cycles from the name of the town where they were probably presented. Their authors are anonymous.
Morality Plays In the late Middle Ages, other forms of drama became popular. They were called Morality plays and were also anonymous. At first they were performed by travelling professional companies on a platform built in an open space. Later they moved indoors into the banquet halls of noblemen or into the common room of universities. These plays usually told an allegorical tale, not a biblical one, with the aim of improving common people’s religious and moral education. Their characters were allegorical personifications of abstractions from theology or symbols ofvarious aspects of the human condition.
Everyman The finest Morality play which has come down to us is Everyman (c. 1485). Its hero, who also giveshis name to the title of the play, is a character representing mankind. The story offers a moral lesson for the salvationof man’s soul; but the appeal of the play lies in the quality of its characters who express themselves with such vivid individuality that the audience forgets their allegorical significance.
The Importance of Medieval Drama
Medieval drama was important in the development of the genre because it added a human element to the religious themes of the Mysteries and created characters corresponding to English social types.In addition it appealed strongly to people of all social classes.
\\\\\\\\\
The End of Medieval Drama
Henry VIII’s schism from Rome in 1534 and the Reformation hastened the end of Medieval religious drama because of the king’s hostility to Roman Catholics. Mysteries continued to be performed on religious festivals almost until the end of the 16th century. They were then banned altogether in order to avoid occasions for conflict between Catholics and Protestants.
Drama of the English Renaissance
Drama flourished again over a period of about a century from 1558, when Elizabeth I ascended the throne, to 1642, the year when all theatres were closed down by the Puritans who controlled the City of London. During those years, drama became a major genre for English writers to express themselves in. The quality of the plays was indeed so exceptional that they became the major literary contribution to the English Renaissance. The most vital aspect of English drama was that it broke away from the religious roots of the Middle Ages to reflect the humanistic spirit of the new age, which exalted human nature in all its aspects and emphasized man’s life and destiny on earth and his position in the universe. Similarly, Elizabethan drama presented heroes and heroines larger than life as well as human types taken from contemporary English society. Its language expressed strong emotions and disruptive passions but also gave voice to the joyful, sometimes vulgar, humour of common people. Elizabethan drama also dealt with themes taken from English history in order to express pride in the nation’s achievements and tradition.
Travelling Companies of Actors
The popularity of drama spread thanks to travelling companies of actors, who held the status of servants of a Lord and called their companies after him: e.g., the Earl of Leicester’s Men, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, the Lord Admiral’s Men, etc. There were no women in these companies because acting was considered immoral and, therefore, inappropriate for a woman. Young boys, therefore, played women’s roles in the plays. Performances took place on movable platforms in innyards or in town squares or in the manor houses of nobles until playhouses were built, especially in London. When James I came to the throne in 1603 he became the patron of the main company of actors in London, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, which were called the King’s Men from then on.
Renaissance Playwrights
Whatever their literary ambitions may have been, Elizabethan playwrights wrote plays to provide entertainment and make money. Once written, plays were sold to a company of players and became the property of that company. If aprinted copy was made, the name of the company and not of the playwright was usually written on the frontispiece of the text. The group of playwrights who founded the English drama of the Renaissance, from the 1570s to the 1590s, were called the ‘University Wits’ because they were all men of university education, either from Cambridge (like Marlowe, Greene, Nashe) or from Oxford (like Lyly,Peele, Lodge). Christopher Marlowe (1564-93) was the most talented of the University Wits. Unfortunately, he died young in mysterious circumstances. By the time of his early death, Marlowe had proved his talent as a dramatist in four tragedies, Tamburlaine, Edward II, Doctor Faustus and The Jew of Malta, which had a great influence on Shakespeare’s work. Marlowe’s characters are titanic, larger-than-life figures and prepared the way forShakespeare’s tragic heroes, like Macbeth and King Lear. Another of Marlowe’s great achievements is to have introduced blank verse to British drama, showing what a flexible tool it could be for the English language.
Shakespeare was the most extraordinary and prolific playwright of the Renaissance. He was able to write comedy and tragedy, history and farce, showing outstanding control of organisation around a central theme, technical command of dramatic conventions and great skill in the use of rhyme, blank verse, and poetic imagery. He created an unequalled range of characters, portraying the whole range of human passions with a strength and conviction that explain the continuing appeal of his work to all kinds of people throughout the ages and all over the world. In his plays, he used a vocabulary of some 30,000 words (the average vocabulary of an educated person today is about 15,000 words). He coined a great amount of new words and phrases which have entered the language and are still in use today.The Greek and Latin writers who were most influential on Elizabethan and Jacobean playwrights were Plutarch and Seneca. Plutarch’s Parallel Lives, translated by Sir Thomas North in 1579, was a source-book for some ofShakespeare’s plays, while Seneca was much admired and imitated for his tragedies written in a highly rhetorical style and characterised by the frequent inclusion of blood-thirsty details, ghosts and magic.
Influence of the Classics on Drama
Jacobean drama derived its name from King James I, though it is sometimes also loosely used to include plays written under his successor Charles I, which should properly be called ‘Caroline’. Jacobean tragedies show an extreme a taste for horror and sensationalism which hadbeen a more controlled feature in Elizabethan plays. They are full of shockingdetails, images of blood, torture and violent deaths. Italy was often chosen inEnglish plays of this time as a background for violent crimes or cunning behaviour.
One reason for this negative view of Italy was the influence of Machiavelli’s politicaltreatise The Prince (1513) from which popular imagination derived the impressionthat Italian city-states were places dominated by political assassination andintrigue. Another reason was the hostility between the Protestant Church,established in England after the Reformation and the Catholic Church of Romewhich was seen by Protestants as a nest of corruption.
Public and Private Playhouses
Under the Stuart kings, especially under Charles I, a distinction was increasingly drawn between public playhouses and private playhouses. The former werefrequented by the common people, the latter by the aristocracy. The types of playsperformed in them also differed increasingly, reflecting the different tastes of the two audiences, one more popular and the other more refined. When the Civil War between Charles I and his parliament broke out in 1642, the Puritans, who by then controlled the capital, closed down all the public playhouses in London and forbade all public performances.
QUESTIONS
- What is “ blank verse”?
- Complete the following table about MYSTERY PLAYS:
- they took place
- they consisted of
- the subjects
- they were written
- the setting
- the characters
- Mystery cycles include
- They were financed by
- The plays were staged
- they were performed on
- Performances were held from………
- What is the difference between MYSTERY PLAYS & MORALITY PLAYS ?
- Why was medieval drama important in the development of drama?
- When did medieval religious drama end?
- What was the period in which Renaissance drama flourish?
- What were the main characteristics of drama of the English Renaissance?
- What were the characteristics of the companies of actors?
- Who were the University Wits?
- What was Marlowe important?
- Who were the most influential Latin writers on Renaissance drama?Why?
- What is the difference between public and private playhouses?