Origin and Development of British Drama: Anglo-Saxon to Seventeenth Century

1. SEMESTER ICORE COURSE IIBRITISH PROSE AND DRAMA: ANGLO-SAXON TO SEVENTEENTH CENTURY Topic: Origin and Development of British Drama Shubhra Singh Sardar Assistant Professor Department of English B. B. College, Asansol

2. Medieval Drama • Liturgical Plays • Mystery and Miracle Plays • Morality Plays • Interludes

3. LITURGICAL pLAYS • Drama evolved due to religious predispositions • Liturgical plays were plays related to church • Performed inside the church • Bible was written in Latin so common people found it difficult to understand • The clergy tried to find new methods of expounding the teachings of the Bible • Liturgical plays were a medium where stories of Gospels were explained through living pictures or question-answer songs performed by monks on Easter

4. mystery plays • These were plays depicting life of Christ – His birth, death and resurrection • Performed on platforms called mansions. • Three mansions represented Heaven, Hell and the Sea of Galilee • Medieval craft guilds took over the presentation of drama • Pageant wagons – stages on wheels • Divided into two levels (upper = stage, lower = dressing area)

5. Difference between mystery and Miracle Plays • It has long been the fashion to call the Biblical plays “Mysteries” and those dealing with saints lives “Miracles”. • Miracle plays specifically re-enacted miraculous interventions by the saints, particularly St. Nicholas or St. Mary

6. CYCLES OF mystery plays • The York cycle – 49 plays • The Wakefield/Towneleye Cycle – 32 plays • The Chester Cycle – 25 plays • The N- Town Cycle – 42 plays

7. examples of Mystery Plays • During the14th and 15th century these plays were performed in the Corpus Christi festival • For such elaborate cycles presented out of doors only summer festivals were really suitable, as the feast of Corpus Christi • Eg.Noah ( Wakefield cycle), The Three Mariesetc.

8. Folk Drama – secular drama (non-religious) • Discouraged by the church • Took place around planting and harvest time and presented outdoors • Most pagan religions gave thanks to an earth goddess, hence celebration around planting and harvest. • Example: Robin Hood

9. morality plays • Morality plays were dramatized allegories of a representative Christian life. • Protagonists usually represented Mankind or Everyman • The other characters were personification of virtues, vices and death • Angels and Demons contest for the prize of the soul of Mankind

10. note • Allegory is a story where the characters and sometimes the settings are symbols for particular ideas about human life or some political scenario.

11. plot of a Morality play • Major theme - Quest for salvation • Crucial events are - Temptations - Sinning - The climatic confrontation with death

12. note on the character - Vice • A character known as the ‘Vice’ often played the role of tempter in a fashion both sinister and comic. • He is regarded by some literary historians as a precursor both of the cynical, ironical villain and of some of the comic figures in Elizabethan drama, including Shakespeare’s Falstaff.

13. interludes • These were short performances or plays that were placed between the acts of longer plays. • They often used religious and political issues as their topics. • But they were presented as secular farces and witty dialogues. • Performed in the late 15th and early 16th century by bands of professional actors

14. example – THE FOUR PP • One clear link between late medieval morality plays and 16th century theatre is the interlude The Four PP by John Heywood that dates from the early 1540s. • The four characters are – A palmer - A pardoner - A pothecary - A pedlar • These four characters engage in a lying contest

15. note • Farce isa kind of comedy that provokes simple hearty laughter among the audience – “belly loughs”. • This is done by using highly exaggerated and caricatured characters and putting them in improbable situations.

16. first English comedy • Ralph Roister Doister( about 1552) by Nicholas Udall • GammerGurton’s Needle ( acted at Cambridge in 1556) • Arranged in five acts like the classical ordering • But the material was native and original • Humour – was coarse and vulgar without any intellectual appeal • With this the drama was relieved from allegorical representation of middle English period to real life representation with natural characterization.

17. first English tragedy – form and style • Gorboduc (1561) by Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville • It was also the first play in blank verse composed of regular metrical lines of iambic pentameter which were unrhymed. • This brought the dialogues near to the natural rhythms of English speech • Later in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama blank verse became the standard form

18. first English tragedy – theme and plot • The subject matter was a political one about who would ascend the throne. • It reflected the contemporary uncertainty of the succession to the throne. • It introduced the genre of Senecan tragedy that was developed by the later playwright Thomas Kyd in The Spanish Tragedy. • It was a direct imitation of Seneca as it portrayed a series of slaughter, bloodshed and revenge.

19. important questions • Define the terms Miracle play and Morality play? Evaluate their contribution to the growth of English drama. How “interludes” are related to these plays? • Discuss in details the first English comedy and the first English tragedy and estimate their role in the development of British drama.

20. Thank you