Sources for these notes include:

Beadle, Richard and Pamela King, eds. York Mystery Plays.
Chambers, E. K. The Medieval Stage. II Volumes.
Clarke, Sidney. The Miracle Play in England: An Account of the Early Religious Drama.

Drama traces its origins to religious observances both in Greek and European traditions. Indeed, most Greek plays celebrated some aspect of Greek religion and they were intended not as an amusement for the people but as an act of homage and reverence to whatever god was being worshipped. Thus, Sophocles' Oedipus trilogy is primarily concerned with the gods and their relationship with men, not with a single human character who becomes the focus of all the plays. Sophocles did not write for poetic or self­expression motives so much as an act of religious devotion.

However, under the late Roman empire, drama became debased and so obscene that is was an abomination. This occurred because drama was forced to compete with the gladitorial events of the amphitheatre and the excesses of the circuses. Once the influence of Christianity was felt in Rome, the theatre was essentially censored and closed. The appearance of the scop in O. E. literature may have obscure connections with the mimes, clowns, buffons, and actors of Roman theatre although while the latter were scandalized by the respectable citizens of Rome, the former was held in high esteem by the nobility of A­S society.

The wandering minstrel of the Middle Ages is probably a direct descendant of the A­S scop. However, unlike the scop, the minstrels were not thought to be respectable, at least after the reign of Charlemagne. The medieval Roman Catholic church in particular was anti­minstrel. Among the populace, on the other hand, they were very popular. Their good music, fine singing voices, wit, good humor, and quick minds served them well at fairs, market days, feast days, and in the service of the rich for an evenings entertainment.

Although most minstrels were wanderers, eventually stable groups formed around rich and powerful patrons who supported them financially. Soon even municipalities sponsored their own group of minstrels and dressed them in the town livery and crests. As these groups stablized in towns, they formed around guild or crafts societies (the equivalent of our trade unions today) and were regulated by law. Church policy often continued to hold these groups at arm's length, yet many clergy embraced them and thought how to use the many gifts of the minstrels in service to the church. The most obvious benefit to the church in the use of the minstrels was a teaching medium. The Bible, unaccessible to common folk who could not read, is filled with dramatic episodes. The clergy thus found it easy to adapt drama into the life of the church as a way of teaching basic Biblical truth and church doctrine.

Early plays in the church may have been no more than dumb shows with actors moving mutely in harmony with the sermon. For instance, on Easter a play focusing on the adoration of the cross may have been acted out before the altar; at Christmas, a play celebrating the Nativity; on other feast or holy days, some other event may have been celebrated. In class I will show an early example of this.

Eventually this kind of crude form was replaced by grander versions and laymen rather than priests became the actors. However, what is clear is that the cradle of English drama rests on the church altar.

Medieval religious drama existed primarily, then, to give religious instruction, establish faith, and encourage piety. There were two dramatic forms used by the church: mystery (miracle) plays and morality plays. Mystery plays derive their name from the French mystere or ministere because the ministerium, the clergy were the first actors. Mystery plays are primarily concerned with Scripture narrative with prominence given to the story of man's fall and redemption; miracle plays deal with the lives of the saints and martyrs. Actually, however, the terms are used interchangably.

Plays in the church were very popular on holy days (holidays) and fairs. Inevitably they became filled with humor and even buffonery as a way of capturing the audience's attention. The church reacted by throwing out all those kinds of actors and troops and instead produced full and complete performances themselves. The effect was electric­­the church building proper was too small to contain the crowds so plays moved from the altar to the porch to the church yard and eventually to public streets and open spaces. Every foot the plays moved from the church weakened the ability of the clergy to control the performances; as a result, more and more comedy and buffonery were introduced and the church eventually withdrew its support and backing for the plays. By 1210 a papel edict forbade the clergy to act in churches.

Comedy gradually became more and more a part of these plays as the various guilds sought larger audiences. Nevertheless, it must be underscored that within the mystery plays comedy was almost always incidental; it never overshadowed the dramatic story itself. The comic elements of these plays are worth noting, especially since many of them passed down into Elizabethan and Shakespearean drama:

1) The simplest and most primitive form of comedy is that of action­­sudden, incongruous, and laughter­moving (eg., Chevy Chase's falls, the old pie­in­the­face play, etc). The action is for the most part naively realistic, emphasizing a kind of rough and tumble, almost slapstick mode.


2) Action combined with the spoken word, in particular, dirty language. Indeed, many of the plays are filled with profanity, much of it having to do with oaths and inappropriate swearing. Language, like the action described above, tends to be simple and realistic. There is no attempt to play with the subtlties of the spoken word.


3) Social and political satire on commonplace topics: the miseries of married life with special reference to shrewish wives; oppression of the poor by the gentry; ill­treatment of servants by stingy masters.


4) A higher form of comedy appears when the playwright's art enables him to present amusing and laughable characters. Here we have the beginning of the clownish comic character, perhaps best typified by Mak from The Second Shepherd's play.

Once rejected by the church, the plays came under the care of the guild societies and were produced as a cycle on feast or holy days. For instance, the cycle of plays would begin early in the morning with a play about the fall of Lucifer or the creation of the world put on by a specific guild society and move through the day with plays concerning the chief events of the Biblical narrative (Abraham and Isaac, Noah's flood, the nativity, the harrowing of hell, the crucifixion, the resurrection, and so on) toward a final, climaxing play concerning the day of last judgment or doomsday. Such a cycle would illustate salvation history, the idea that history is a linear process with various specific stages, all indicating that God has a plan for humankind and that He makes various covenants with humankind along the way. In addition, the plays demonstrate a theological adherence to the ideas of Natural law, written law, and grace and mercy or the New law of the New Testament and especially the Pauline espistles. The four great cycles of plays are the York, Wakefield, Chester, and Coventry plays.

­date from 14th­16th century

­performed by members of guild societies

­sanctioned and supervised by city fathers

­48 to 57 plays (see transparency) with Northumbrian dialect

­tend to be reverent, full of dramatic life and energy, and indicate a realistic appraisal of life

­topics­­from creation through doomsday following the Biblical narrative with occasional forays into apocryphal legends

­the cycle was presented on the day of the feast of Corpus Christi, a "moveable" feast since the day occurred the first Thursday after Trinity Sunday and could fall on any date between May 23 and June 24; theologically, the feast celebrated the Real Presence of the Body of Christ in the Host at Mass; the cycle was thus intended to be seen as a coherent and unified work of art, a spiritual statement of communal belief in God's relationship to man; its spiritual purpose was to glorify God and its didactic purpose was to instruct the illiterate in the historical basis of the faith

­obviously for a city to take on such a task was formidable; for instance, the text of the cycle calls for over 300 speaking parts; however, the city willingly did this, not only or even primarily for spiritual reasons, but also because doing so reflected the wealth and the prestige of the city of York.

­also known as the Towneley, Widkirk, and Woodkirk plays

­date from early 15th century

­more rural in origin and dialect than York cycle

­more comedy and vulgarity than York cycle

­little reverence or feeling; emphasis on freedom from restraint and boisterous humor; for instance, the "Second Shepherd's Play" is nearly all slapstick and has been called to first real farce in the English language.

­contains 32 plays covering creation through doomsday (see transparency)

­more serious in tone than either York or Wakefield

­shows a real effort to serve the religious purposes for which the plays were designed

­23 plays dating from mid 13th century

­these plays were acted by clergy, not guilds, so they tended to be very serious with a higher and more religious tone than the others

­42 plays dating from mid 15th century; however, not all plays acted each year; 1­28 from creation to the betrayal of Christ would be acted one year and 29­42 through doomsday would be acted the next year.

Other cycles of less importance existed including some in Scotland and Ireland.