Ecclesiastical and monastic literary drama.
Hrosvitha.
While the scattered and persecuted strollers thus kept alive something
of the popularity, if not of the loftier traditions, of their art,
neither, on the other hand, was there an utter absence of written
compositions to bridge the gap between ancient and modern dramatic
literature. In the midst of the condemnation with which the Christian
Church visited the stage, its professors and votaries, we find
individual ecclesiastics resorting in their writings to both the tragic
and the comic form of the ancient drama. These isolated productions,
which include the [Greek: Christos paschon] (_Passion of Christ_)
formerly attributed to St Gregory Nazianzen, and the _Querolus_, long
fathered upon Plautus himself, were doubtless mostly written for
educational purposes--whether Euripides and Lycophron, or Menander,
Plautus and Terence, served as the outward models. The same was probably
the design of the famous "comedies" of Hrosvitha, the Benedictine nun of
Gandersheim, in Eastphalian Saxony, which associate themselves in the
history of Christian literature with the spiritual revival of the 10th
century in the days of Otto the Great. While avowedly imitated in form
from the comedies of Terence, these religious exercises derive their
themes--martyrdoms,[1] and miraculous or otherwise startling
conversions[2]--from the legends of Christian saints. Thus, from perhaps
the 9th to the 12th centuries, Germany and France, and through the
latter, by means of the Norman Conquest, England, became acquainted with
what may be called the literary monastic drama. It was no doubt
occasionally performed by the children under the care of monks or nuns,
or by the religious themselves; an exhibition of the former kind was
that of the _Play of St Katharine_, acted at Dunstable about the year
1110 in "copes" by the scholars of the Norman Geoffrey, afterwards abbot
of St Albans. Nothing is known concerning it except the fact of its
performance, which was certainly not regarded as a novelty.
The joculatores, jongleurs, minstrels.
These efforts of the cloister came in time to blend themselves with more
popular forms of the early medieval drama. The natural agents in the
transmission of these popular forms were those _mimes_, whom, while the
representatives of more elaborate developments, the "pantomimes" in
particular, had inevitably succumbed, the Roman drama had left surviving
it, unextinguished and unextinguishable. Above all, it is necessary to
point out how in the long interval now in question--the "dark ages,"
which may, from the present point of view, be reckoned from about the
6th to the 11th century--the Latin and the Teutonic elements of what may
be broadly designated as medieval "minstrelsy," more or less
imperceptibly, coalesced. The traditions of the disestablished and
disendowed _mimus_ combined with the "occupation" of the Teutonic
_scop_, who as a professional personage does not occur in the earliest
Teutonic poetry, but on the other hand is very distinctly traceable
under this name or that of the "gleeman," in Anglo-Saxon literature,
before it fell under the control of the Christian Church. Her influence
and that of docile rulers, both in England and in the far wider area of
the Frank empire, gradually prevailed even over the inherited goodwill
which neither Alfred nor even Charles the Great had denied to the
composite growth in which _mimus_ and _scop_ alike had a share.
How far the _joculatores_--which in the early middle ages came to be the
name most widely given to these irresponsible transmitters of a great
artistic trust--kept alive the usage of entertainments more essentially
dramatic than the minor varieties of their performances, we cannot say.
In different countries these entertainers suited themselves to different
tastes, and with the rise of native literatures to different literary
tendencies. The literature of the _troubadours_ of Provence, which
communicated itself to Spain and Italy, came only into isolated contact
with the beginnings of the religious drama; in northern France the
_jongleurs_, as the _joculatores_ were now called, were confounded with
the _trouveres_, who, to the accompaniment of _vielle_ or harp, sang the
_chansons de geste_ commemorative of deeds of war. As appointed servants
of particular households they were here, and afterwards in England,
called _menestrels_ (from _ministeriales_) or _minstrels_. Such a
_histrio_ or _mimus_ (as he is called) was Taillefer, who rode first
into the fight at Hastings, singing his songs of Roland and Charlemagne,
and tossing his sword in the air and catching it again. In England such
accomplished minstrels easily outshone the less versatile gleemen of
pre-Norman times, and one or two of them appeared as landholders in
Domesday Book, and many enjoyed the favour of the Norman, Angevin and
Plantagenet kings. But here, as elsewhere, the humbler members of the
craft spent their lives in strolling from castle to convent, from
village-green to city-street, and there exhibiting their skill as
dancers, tumblers, jugglers proper, and as masquers and conductors of
bears and other dumb contributors to popular wonder and merriment. Their
only chance of survival finally came to lie in organization under the
protection of powerful nobles; but when, in the 15th century in England,
companies of players issued forth from towns and villages, the
profession, in so far as its members had not secured preference, saw
itself threatened with ruin.
Survivals and adaptations of pagan festive ceremonies and usages.
In any attempt to explain the transmission of dramatic elements from
pagan to Christian times, and the influence exercised by this
transmission upon the beginnings of the medieval drama, account should
finally be taken of the pertinacious survival of popular festive rites
and ceremonies. From the days of Gregory the Great, i.e. from the end of
the 6th century onwards, the Western Church tolerated and even attracted
to her own festivals popular customs, significant of rejoicing, which
were in truth relics of heathen ritual. Such were the Mithraic feast of
the 25th of December, or the egg of Eostre-tide, and a multitude of
Celtic or Teutonic agricultural ceremonies. These rites, originally
symbolical of propitiation or of weather-magic, were of a semi-dramatic
nature--such as the dipping of the neck of corn in water, sprinkling
holy drops upon persons or animals, processions of beasts or men in
beast-masks, dressing trees with flowers, and the like, but above all
ceremonial dances, often in disguise. The sword-dance, recorded by
Tacitus, of which an important feature was the symbolic threat of death
to a victim, endured (though it is rarely mentioned) to the later middle
ages. By this time it had attracted to itself a variety of additional
features, and of characters familiar as pace-eggers, mummers,
morris-dancers (probably of distinct origin), who continually enlarged
the scope of their performances, especially as regarded their comic
element. The dramatic "expulsion of death," or winter, by the
destruction of a lay-figure--common through western Europe about the 8th
century--seems connected with a more elaborate rite, in which a
disguised performer (who perhaps originally represented summer) was
slain and afterwards revived (the _Pfingstl_, Jack in the Green, or
Green Knight). This representation, after acquiring a comic complexion,
was annexed by the character dancers, who about the 15th century took to
adding still livelier incidents from songs treating of popular heroes,
such as St George and Robin Hood; which latter found a place in the
festivities of May Day with their central figure, the May Queen. The
earliest ceremonial observances of this sort were clearly connected with
pastoral and agricultural life; but the inhabitants of the towns also
came to have a share in them; and so, as will be seen later, did the
clergy. They were in particular responsible for the buffooneries of the
feast of fools (or asses), which enjoyed the greatest popularity in
France (though protests against it are on record from the 11th century
onwards to the 17th), but was well known from London to Constantinople.
This riotous New Year's celebration was probably derived from the
ancient Kalend feasts, which may have bequeathed to it both the
hobby-horse and the lord, or bishop, of misrule. In the 16th century the
feast of fools was combined with the elaborate festivities of courts and
cities during the twelve Christmas feast-days--the season when
throughout the previous two centuries the "mummers" especially
flourished, who in their disguisings and "_viseres_" began as dancers
gesticulating in dumb-show, but ultimately developed into actors proper.
The liturgy the main source of the medieval religious drama.
Tropes.
Thus the literary and the professional element, as well as that of
popular festive usages, had survived to become tributaries to the main
stream of the early Christian drama, which had its direct source in the
liturgy of the Church itself. The service of the Mass contains in itself
dramatic elements, and combines with the reading out of portions of
Scripture by the priest--its "epical" part--a "lyrical" part in the
anthems and responses of the congregation. At a very early
period--certainly already in the 5th century--it was usual on special
occasions to increase the attractions of public worship by living
pictures, illustrating the Gospel narrative and accompanied by songs;
and thus a certain amount of action gradually introduced itself into the
service. The insertion, before or after sung portions of the service, of
tropes, originally one or more verses of texts, usually serving as
introits and in connexion with the gospel of the day, and recited by the
two halves of the choir, naturally led to dialogue chanting; and this
was frequently accompanied by illustrative fragments of action, such as
drawing down the veil from before the altar.
The liturgical mystery.
This practice of interpolations in the offices of the church, which is
attested by texts from the 9th century onwards (the so-called
"Winchester tropes" belong to the 10th and 11th), progressed, till on
the great festivals of the church the epical part of the liturgy was
systematically connected with spectacular and in some measure mimical
adjuncts, the lyrical accompaniment being of course retained. Thus the
_liturgical mystery_--the earliest form of the Christian drama--was
gradually called into existence. This had certainly been accomplished as
early as the 10th century, when on great ecclesiastical festivals it was
customary for the priests to perform in the churches these offices (as
they were called). The whole Easter story, from the burial to Emmaus,
was thus presented, the Maries and the angel adding their lyrical
_planctus_; while the surroundings of the Nativity--the Shepherds, the
Innocents, &c.--were linked with the Shepherds of Epiphany by a
recitation of "Prophets," including Vergil and the Sibyl. Before long,
from the 11th century onwards, _mysteries_, as they were called, were
produced in France on scriptural subjects unconnected with the great
Church festivals--such as the Wise and Foolish Virgins, Adam (with the
fall of Lucifer), Daniel, Lazarus, &c. Compositions on the last-named
two themes remain from the hand of one of the very earliest of medieval
play-writers, Hilarius, who may have been an Englishman, and who
certainly studied under Abelard. He also wrote a "miracle" of St
Nicholas, one of the most widely popular of medieval saints. Into the
pieces founded on the Scripture narrative outside characters and
incidents were occasionally introduced, by way of diverting the
audience.
The collective mystery.
These mysteries and miracles being as yet represented by the clergy
only, the language in which they were usually written is Latin--in many
varieties of verse with occasional prose; but already in the 11th
century the further step was taken of composing these texts in the
vernacular--the earliest example being the mystery of the Resurrection.
In time a whole series of mysteries was joined together; a process which
was at first roughly and then more elaborately pursued in France and
elsewhere, and finally resulted in the _collective mystery_--merely a
scholars' term of course, but one to which the principal examples of the
English mystery-drama correspond.
Mysteries, miracles, and morals distinguished.
The productions of the medieval religious drama it is usual technically
to divide into three classes. The _mysteries_ proper deal with
scriptural events only, their purpose being to set forth, with the aid
of the prophetic or preparatory history of the Old Testament, and more
especially of the fulfilling events of the New, the central mystery of
the Redemption of the world, as accomplished by the Nativity, the
Passion and the Resurrection. But in fact these were not kept
distinctly apart from the _miracle-plays_, or _miracles_, which are
strictly speaking concerned with the legends of the saints of the
church; and in England the name _mysteries_ was not in use. Of these
species the miracles must more especially have been fed from the
resources of the monastic literary drama. Thirdly, the _moralities_, or
_moral-plays_, teach and illustrate the same truths--not, however, by
direct representation of scriptural or legendary events and personages,
but allegorically, their characters being personified virtues or
qualities. Of the moralities the Norman _trouveres_ had been the
inventors; and doubtless this innovation connects itself with the
endeavour, which in France had almost proved victorious by the end of
the 13th century, to emancipate dramatic performances from the control
of the church.
The clergy and the religious drama.
The attitude of the clergy towards the dramatic performances which had
arisen out of the elaboration of the services of the church, but soon
admitted elements from other sources, was not, and could not be,
uniform. As the plays grew longer, their paraphernalia more extensive,
and their spectators more numerous, they began to be represented outside
as well as inside the churches, at first in the churchyards, and the use
of the vulgar tongue came to be gradually preferred. A Beverley
Resurrection play (1220 c.) and some others are bilingual. Miracles were
less dependent on this connexion with the church services than mysteries
proper; and lay associations, gilds, and schools in particular, soon
began to act plays in honour of their patron saints in or near their own
halls. Lastly, as scenes and characters of a more or less trivial
description were admitted even into the plays acted or superintended by
the clergy, as some of these characters came to be depended on by the
audiences for conventional extravagance or fun, every new Herod seeking
to out-Herod his predecessor, and the devils and their chief asserting
themselves as indispensable favourites, the comic element in the
religious drama increased; and that drama itself, even where it remained
associated with the church, grew more and more profane. The endeavour to
sanctify the popular tastes to religious uses, which connects itself
with the institution of the great festival of Corpus Christi (1264,
confirmed 1311), when the symbol of the mystery of the Incarnation was
borne in solemn procession, led to the closer union of the dramatic
exhibitions (hence often called _processus_) with this and other
religious feasts; but it neither limited their range nor controlled
their development.
Progress of the medieval drama in Europe.
It is impossible to condense into a few sentences the extremely varied
history of the processes of transformation undergone by the medieval
drama in Europe during the two centuries--from about 1200 to about
1400--in which it ran a course of its own, and during the succeeding
period, in which it was only partially affected by the influence of the
Renaissance. A few typical phenomena may, however, be noted in the case
of the drama of each of the several chief countries of the West; where
the vernacular successfully supplanted Latin as the ordinary medium of
dramatic speech, where song was effectually ousted by recitation and
dialogue, and where finally, though the emancipation was on this head
nowhere absolute, the religious drama gave place to the secular.
France.
In France, where dramatic performances had never fallen entirely into
the hands of the clergy, the progress was speediest and most decided
towards forms approaching those of the modern drama. The earliest play
in the French tongue, however, the 12th-century _Adam_, supposed to have
been written by a Norman in England (as is a fragmentary _Resurrection_
of much the same date), still reveals its connexion with the liturgical
drama. Jean Bodel of Arras' miracle-play of _St Nicolas_ (before 1205)
is already the production of a secular author, probably designed for the
edification of some civic confraternity to which he belonged, and has
some realistic features. On the other hand, the _Theophilus_ of Rutebeuf
(d. c. 1280) treats its Faust-like theme, with which we meet again in
Low-German dramatic literature two centuries later, in a rather lifeless
form but in a highly religious spirit, and belongs to the cycle of
miracles of the Virgin of which examples abound throughout this period.
Easter or Passion plays were fully established in popular acceptance in
Paris as well as in other towns of France by the end of the 14th
century; and in 1402 the _Confrerie de la Passion_, who at first devoted
themselves exclusively to the performance of this species, obtained a
royal privilege for the purpose. These series of religious plays were
both extensive and elaborate; perhaps the most notable series (c. 1450)
is that by Arnoul Greban, who died as a canon of Le Mans, his native
town. Its revision, by Jean Michel, containing much illustrative detail
(first performed at Angers in 1486), was very popular. Still more
elaborate is the Rouen Christmas mystery of 1474, and the celebrated
_Mystere du vieil testament_, produced at Abbeville in 1458, and
performed at Paris in 1500. Most of the Provencal Christmas and Passion
plays date from the 14th century, as well as a miracle of St Agnes. The
miracles of saints were popular in all parts of France, and the
diversity of local colouring naturally imparted to these productions
contributed materially to the growth of the early French drama. The
miracles of Ste Genevieve and St Denis came directly home to the
inhabitants of Paris, as that of St Martin to the citizens of Tours;
while the early victories of St Louis over the English might claim a
national significance for the dramatic celebration of his deeds. The
local saints of Provence were in their turn honoured by miracles dating
from the 15th and 16th centuries.
It is less easy to trace the origins of the comic medieval drama in
France, connected as they are with an extraordinary variety of
associations for professional, pious and pleasurable purposes. The _ludi
inhonesti_ in which the students of a Paris college (Navarre) were in
1315 debarred from engaging cannot be proved to have been dramatic
performances; the earliest known secular plays presented by university
students in France were moralities, performed in 1426 and 1431. These
plays, depicting conflicts between opposing influences--and at bottom
the struggle between good and evil in the human soul--become more
frequent from about this time onwards. Now it is (at Rennes in 1439) the
contention between _Bien-avise_ and _Mal-avise_ (who at the close find
themselves respectively in charge of _Bonne-fin_ and _Male-fin_); now,
one between _l'homme juste_ and _l'homme mondain_; now, the contrasted
story of _Les Enfants de Maintenant_, who, however, is no abstraction,
but an honest baker with a wife called Mignotte. Political and social
problems are likewise treated; and the _Mystere du Concile de Bale_--an
historical morality--dates back to 1432. But thought is taken even more
largely of the sufferings of the people than of the controversies of the
Church; and in 1507 we even meet with a hygienic or abstinence morality
(by N. de la Chesnaye) in which "Banquet" enters into a conspiracy with
"Apoplexy," "Epilepsy" and the whole regiment of diseases.
Long before this development of an artificial species had been
consummated--from the beginning of the 14th century onwards--the famous
fraternity or professional union of the Basoche (clerks of the Parlement
and the Chatelet) had been entrusted with the conduct of popular
festivals at Paris, in which, as of right, they took a prominent
personal share; and from a date unknown they had performed plays. But
after the _Confrerie de la Passion_ had been allowed to monopolize the
religious drama, the _basochiens_ had confined themselves to the
presentment of moralities and of farces (from Italian _farsa_, Latin
_farcita_), in which political satire had as a matter of course when
possible found a place. A third association, calling themselves the
_Enfans sans souci_, had, apparently also early in the 15th century,
acquired celebrity by their performances of short comic plays called
soties--in which, as it would seem, at first allegorical figures
ironically "played the fool," but which were probably before long not
very carefully kept distinct from the farces of the Basoche, and were
like these on occasion made to serve the purposes of State or of Church.
Other confraternities and associations readily took a leaf out of the
book of these devil-may-care good-fellows, and interwove their religious
and moral plays with comic scenes and characters from actual life, thus
becoming more and more free and secular in their dramatic methods, and
unconsciously preparing the transition to the regular drama.
The earliest example of a serious secular play known to have been
written in the French tongue is the _Estoire de Griseldis_ (1393); which
is in the style of the miracles of the Virgin, but is largely indebted
to Petrarch. The _Mystere du siege d'Orleans_, on the other hand,
written about half a century later, in the epic tediousness of its
manner comes near to a chronicle history, and interests us chiefly as
the earliest of many efforts to bring Joan of Arc on the stage. Jacques
Milet's celebrated mystery of the _Destruction de Troye la grant_ (1452)
seems to have been addressed to readers and not to hearers only. The
beginnings of the French regular comic drama are again more difficult to
extract from the copious literature of farces and soties, which, after
mingling actual types with abstract and allegorical figures, gradually
came to exclude all but the concrete personages; moreover, the large
majority of these productions in their extant form belong to a later
period than that now under consideration. But there is ample evidence
that the most famous of all medieval farces, the immortal _Maistre
Pierre Pathelin_ (otherwise _L'Avocat Pathelin_), was written before
1470 and acted by the _basochiens_; and we may conclude that this
delightful story of the biter bit, and the profession outwitted,
typifies a multitude of similar comic episodes of real life, dramatized
for the delectation of clerks, lawyers and students, and of all lovers
of laughter.
The Netherlands.
In the neighbouring Netherlands many Easter and Christmas mysteries are
noted from the middle of the 15th century, attesting the enduring
popularity of these religious plays; and with them the celebrated series
of the Seven Joys of Maria--of which the first is the Annunciation and
the seventh the Ascension. To about the same date belongs the small
group of the so-called _abele spelen_ (as who should say plays easily
managed), chiefly on chivalrous themes. Though allegorical figures are
already to be found in the Netherlands miracles of Mary, the species of
the moralities was specially cultivated during the great Burgundian
period of this century by the chambers or lodges of the _Rederijkers_
(rhetoricians)--the well-known civic associations which devoted
themselves to the cultivation of learned poetry and took an active share
in the festivals that formed one of the most characteristic features of
the life of the Low Countries. Among these moralities was that of
_Elckerlijk_ (printed 1495 and presumably by Peter Dorlandus), which
there is good reason for regarding as the original of one of the finest
of English moralities, _Everyman_.
Italy.
In Italy the liturgical drama must have run its course as elsewhere; but
the traces of it are few, and confined to the north-east. The collective
mystery, so common in other Western countries, is in Italian literature
represented by a single example only--a _Passione di Gesu Cristo_,
performed at Revello in Saluzzo in the 15th century; though there are
some traces of other cyclic dramas of the kind. The Italian religious
plays, called _figure_ when on Old, _vangeli_ when on New, Testament
subjects, and differing from those of northern Europe chiefly by the
less degree of coarseness in their comic characters, seem largely to
have sprung out of the development of the processional element in the
festivals of the Church. Besides such processions as that of the Three
Kings at Epiphany in Milan, there were the penitential processions and
songs (_laude_), which at Assisi, Perugia and elsewhere already
contained a dramatic element; and at Siena, Florence and other centres
these again developed into the so-called (_sacre_) _rappresentazioni_,
which became the most usual name for this kind of entertainment. Such a
piece was the _San Giovanni e San Paolo_ (1489), by Lorenzo the
Magnificent--the prince who afterwards sought to reform the Italian
stage by paganizing it; another was the _Santa Teodora_, by Luigi Pulci
(d. 1487); _San Giovanni Gualberto_ (of Florence) treats the religious
experience of a latter-day saint; _Rosana e Ulimento_ is a love-story
with a Christian moral. Passion plays were performed at Rome in the
Coliseum by the _Compagnia del Gonfalone_; but there is no evidence on
this head before the end of the 15th century. In general, the
spectacular magnificence of Italian theatrical displays accorded with
the growing pomp of the processions both ecclesiastical and lay--called
_trionfi_ already in the days of Dante; while the religious drama
gradually acquired an artificial character and elaboration of form
assimilating it to the classical attempts, to be noted below, which gave
rise to the regular Italian drama. The poetry of the Troubadours, which
had come from Provence into Italy, here frequently took a dramatic form,
and may have suggested some of his earlier poetic experiments to
Petrarch.
It was a matter of course that remnants of the ancient popular dramatic
entertainments should have survived in particular abundance on Italian
soil. They were to be recognized in the improvised farces performed at
the courts, in the churches (_farse spirituali_), and among the people;
the Roman carnival had preserved its wagon-plays, and various links
remained to connect the modern comic drama of the Italians with the
_Atellanes_ and _mimes_ of their ancestors. But the more notable later
comic developments, which belong to the 16th century, will be more
appropriately noticed below. Moralities proper had not flourished in
Italy, where the love of the concrete has always been dominant in
popular taste; more numerous are examples of scenes, largely
mythological, in which the influence of the Renaissance is already
perceptible, of eclogues, and of allegorical festival-plays of various
sorts.
Spain.
In Spain hardly a monument of the medieval religious drama has been
preserved. There is manuscript evidence of the 11th century attesting
the early addition of dramatic elements to the Easter office; and a
Spanish fragment of the Three Kings Epiphany play, dating from the 12th
century, is, like the French _Adam_, one of the very earliest examples
of the medieval drama in the vernacular. But that religious plays were
performed in Spain is clear from the permission granted by Alphonso X.
of Castile (d. 1284) to the clergy to represent them, while prohibiting
the performance by them of _juegos de escarnio_ (mocking plays). The
earliest Spanish plays which we possess belong to the end of the 15th or
beginning of the 16th century, and already show humanistic influence. In
1472 the couplets of _Mingo Revulgo_ (i.e. Domingo Vulgus, the common
people), and about the same time another dialogue by the same author,
offer examples of a sort resembling the Italian _contrasti_ (see below).
Germany.
The German religious plays in the vernacular, the earliest of which date
from the 14th and 15th centuries, and were produced at Trier,
Wolfenbuttel, Innsbruck, Vienna, Berlin, &c., were of a simple kind; but
in some of them, though they were written by clerks, there are traces of
the minstrels' hands. The earliest complete Christmas play in German,
contained in a 14th-century St Gallen MS., has nothing in it to suggest
a Latin original. On the other hand, the play of _The Wise and the
Foolish Virgins_, in a Thuringian MS. thought to be as early as 1328, a
piece of remarkable dignity, was evidently based on a Latin play. Other
festivals besides Christmas were celebrated by plays; but down to the
Reformation Easter enjoyed a preference. In the same century
miracle-plays began to be performed, in honour of St Catherine, St
Dorothea and other saints. But all these productions seem to belong to a
period when the drama was still under ecclesiastical control. Gradually,
as the liturgical drama returned to the simpler forms from which it had
so surprisingly expanded, and ultimately died out, the religious plays
performed outside the churches expanded more freely; and the type of
mystery associated with the name of the Frankfort canon Baldemar von
Peterweil communicated itself, with other examples, to the receptive
region of the south-west. The Corpus Christi plays, or (as they were here
called) _Frohnleichnamsspiele_, are notable, since that of Innsbruck
(1391) is probably the earliest extant example of its class. The number
of non-scriptural religious plays in Germany was much smaller than that
in France; but it may be noted that (in accordance with a long-enduring
popular notion) the theme of the last judgment was common in Germany in
the latter part of the middle ages. Of this theme _Antichrist_ may be
regarded as an episode, though in 1469 an _Antichrist_ appears to have
occupied at Frankfort four days in its performance. The earlier (12th
century) _Antichrist_ is a production quite unique of its kind; this
political protest breathes the Ghibelline spirit of the reign (Frederick
Barbarossa's) in which it was composed.
Though many of the early German plays contain an element of the
moralities, there were few representative German examples of the
species. The academical instinct, or some other influence, kept the more
elaborate productions on the whole apart from the drolleries of the
professional strollers (_fahrende Leute_), whose Shrove-Tuesday plays
(_Fastnachtsspiele_) and cognate productions reproduced the practical
fun of common life. Occasionally, no doubt, as in the Lubeck
_Fastnachtsspiel_ of the Five Virtues, the two species may have more or
less closely approached to one another. When, in the course of the 15th
century, Hans Rosenplut, called Schnepperer--or Hans Schnepperer, called
Rosenplut--the predecessor of Hans Sachs, first gave a more enduring
form to the popular Shrove-Tuesday plays, a connexion was already
establishing itself between the dramatic amusements of the people and
the literary efforts of the "master-singers" of the towns. But, while
the main productivity of the writers of moralities and cognate
productions--a species particularly suited to German latitudes--falls
into the periods of Renaissance and Reformation, the religious drama
proper survived far beyond either in Catholic Germany, and, in fact, was
not suppressed in Bavaria and Tirol till the end of the 18th century.[3]
Sweden, Carpathian lands, &c.
It may be added that the performance of miracle-plays is traceable in
Sweden in the latter half of the 14th century; and that the German
clerks and laymen who immigrated into the Carpathian lands, and into
Galicia in particular, in the later middle ages, brought with them their
religious plays together with other elements of culture. This fact is
the more striking, inasmuch as, though Czech Easter plays were performed
about the end of the 14th century, we hear of none among the Magyars, or
among their neighbours of the Eastern empire.
Religious drama in England.
Cornish miracle-plays.
Coming now to the English religious drama, we find that from its extant
literature a fair general idea may be derived of the character of these
medieval productions. The _miracle-plays_, _miracles_ or _plays_ (these
being the terms used in England) of which we hear in London in the 12th
century were probably written in Latin and acted by ecclesiastics; but
already in the following century mention is made--in the way of
prohibition--of plays acted by professional players. (Isolated
moralities of the 12th century are not to be regarded as popular
productions.) In England as elsewhere, the clergy either sought to
retain their control over the religious plays, which continued to be
occasionally acted in churches even after the Reformation, or else
reprobated them with or without qualifications. In Cornwall miracles in
the native Cymric dialect were performed at an early date; but those
which have been preserved are apparently copies of English (with the
occasional use of French) originals; they were represented, unlike the
English plays, in the open country, in extensive amphitheatres
constructed for the purpose--one of which, at St Just near Penzance, has
recently been restored.
Localities of the performance of miracle-plays.
The York, Towneley, Chester and Coventry plays.
The flourishing period of English miracle-plays begins with the practice
of their performance by trading-companies in the towns, though these
bodies were by no means possessed of any special privileges for the
purpose. Of this practice Chester is said to have set the example
(1268-1276); it was followed in the course of the 13th and 14th
centuries by many other towns, while in yet others traces of such
performances are not to be found till the 15th, or even the 16th. These
towns with their neighbourhoods include, starting from East Anglia,
where the religious drama was particularly at home, Wymondham, Norwich,
Sleaford, Lincoln, Leeds, Wakefield, Beverley, York, Newcastle-on-Tyne,
with a deviation across the border to Edinburgh and Aberdeen. In the
north-west they are found at Kendal, Lancaster, Preston, Chester;
whence they may be supposed to have migrated to Dublin. In the west they
are noticeable at Shrewsbury, Worcester and Tewkesbury; in the Midlands
at Coventry and Leicester; in the east at Cambridge and Bassingbourne,
Heybridge and Manningtree; to which places have to be added Reading,
Winchester, Canterbury, Bethesda and London, in which last the
performers were the parish-clerks. Four collections, in addition to some
single examples of such plays, have come down to us, the _York_ plays,
the so-called _Towneley_ plays, which were probably acted at the fairs
of Widkirk, near Wakefield, and those bearing the names of _Chester_ and
of _Coventry_. Their dates, in the forms in which they have come down to
us, are more or less uncertain; that of the _York_ may on the whole be
concluded to be earlier than that of the _Towneley_, which were probably
put together about the middle of the 14th century; the _Chester_ may be
ascribed to the close of the 14th or the earlier part of the 15th; the
body of the _Coventry_ probably belongs to the 15th or 16th. Many of the
individual plays in these collections were doubtless founded on French
originals; others are taken direct from Scripture, from the apocryphal
gospels, or from the legends of the saints. Their characteristic feature
is the combination of a whole series of plays into one _collective_
whole, exhibiting the entire course of Bible history from the creation
to the day of judgment. For this combination it is unnecessary to
suppose that they were generally indebted to foreign examples, though
there are several remarkable coincidences between the Chester plays and
the French _Mystere du vieil testament_. Indeed, the oldest of the
series--the _York_ plays--exhibits a fairly close parallel to the scheme
of the _Cursor mundi_, an epic poem of Northumbrian origin, which early
in the 14th century had set an example of treatment that unmistakably
influenced the collective mysteries as a whole. Among the isolated plays
of the same type which have come down to us may be mentioned _The
Harrowing of Hell_ (the Saviour's descent into hell), an East-Midland
production which professes to tell of "a strif of Jesu and of Satan" and
is probably the earliest dramatic, or all but dramatic, work in English
that has been preserved; and several belonging to a series known as the
_Digby Mysteries_, including _Parfre's Candlemas Day_ (the massacre of
the Innocents), and the very interesting miracle of _Mary Magdalene_. Of
the so-called "Paternoster" and "Creed" plays (which exhibit the
miraculous powers of portions of the Church service) no example remains,
though of some we have an account; the Croxton _Play of the Sacrament_,
the MS. of which is preserved at Dublin, and which seems to date from
the latter half of the 15th century, exhibits the triumph of the holy
wafer over wicked Jewish wiles.
English collective mysteries.
To return to the collective mysteries, as they present themselves to us
in the chief extant series. "The manner of these plays," we read in a
description of those at Chester, dating from the close of the 16th
century, "were:--Every company had his pageant, which pageants were a
high scaffold with two rooms, a higher and a lower, upon four wheels. In
the lower they apparelled themselves, and in the higher room they
played, being all open at the top, that all beholders might hear and see
them. The places where they played them was in every street. They began
first at the abbey gates, and when the first pageant was played, it was
wheeled to the high cross before the mayor, and so to every street, and
so every street had a pageant playing before them at one time till all
the pageants appointed for the day were played; and when one pageant was
near ended, word was brought from street to street, that so they might
come in place thereof, exceedingly orderly, and all the streets have
their pageants afore them all at one time playing together; to see which
plays was great resort, and also scaffolds and stages made in the
streets in those places where they determined to play their pageants."
Each play, then, was performed by the representative of a particular
trade or company, after whom it was called the fishers', glovers', &c.,
_pageant_; while a general prologue was spoken by a herald. As a rule
the movable stage sufficed for the action, though we find horsemen
riding up to the scaffold, and Herod instructed to "rage in the pagond
and in the strete also." There is no probability that the stage was, as
in France, divided into three platforms with a dark cavern at the side
of the lowest, appropriated respectively to the Heavenly Father and his
angels, to saints and glorified men, to mere men, and to souls in hell.
But the last-named locality was frequently displayed in the English
miracles, with or without fire in its mouth. The costumes were in part
conventional,--divine and saintly personages being distinguished by gilt
hair and beards, Herod being clad as a Saracen, the demons wearing
hideous heads, the souls black and white coats according to their kind,
and the angels gold skins and wings.
Character of the Plays.
Doubtless these performances abounded in what seem to us ludicrous
features; and, though their main purpose was serious, they were not in
England at least intended to be devoid of fun. But many of the features
in question are in truth only homely and _naif_, and the simplicity of
feeling which they exhibit is at times pathetic rather than laughable.
The occasional grossness is due to an absence of refinement of taste
rather than to an obliquity of moral sentiment. These features the four
series have more or less in common, still there are certain obvious
distinctions between them. The _York_ plays (48), which were performed
at Corpus Christi, are comparatively free from the tendency to
jocularity and vulgarity observable in the _Towneley_; several of the
plays concerned with the New Testament and early Christian story are,
however, in substance common to both series. The _Towneley Plays_ or
_Wakefield Mysteries_ (32) were undoubtedly composed by the friars of
Widkirk or Nostel; but they are of a popular character; and, while
somewhat over-free in tone, are superior in vivacity and humour to both
the later collections. The _Chester Plays_ (25) were undoubtedly
indebted both to the _Mystere du vieil testament_ and to earlier French
mysteries; they are less popular in character than the earlier two
cycles, and on the whole undistinguished by original power of pathos or
humour. There is, on the other hand, a notable inner completeness in
this series, which includes a play of _Antichrist_, devoid of course of
any modern application. While these plays were performed at Whitsuntide,
the _Coventry Plays_ (42) were Corpus Christi performances. Though there
is no proof that the extant series were composed by the Grey Friars,
they reveal a considerable knowledge of ecclesiastical literature. For
the rest, they are far more effectively written than the _Chester
Plays_, and occasionally rise to real dramatic force. In the _Coventry_
series there is already to be observed an element of abstract figures,
which connects them with a different species of the medieval drama.
Moralities.
The Devil and the Vice.
The _moralities_ corresponded to the love for allegory which manifests
itself in so many periods of English literature, and which, while
dominating the whole field of medieval literature, was nowhere more
assiduously and effectively cultivated than in England. It is necessary
to bear this in mind, in order to understand what to us seems so
strange, the popularity of the moral-plays, which indeed never equalled
that of the miracles, but sufficed to maintain the former species till
it received a fresh impulse from the connexion established between it
and the "new learning," together with the new political and religious
ideas and questions, of the Reformation age. Moreover, a specially
popular element was supplied to these plays, which in manner of
representation differed in no essential point from the miracles, in a
character borrowed from the latter, and, in the moralities, usually
provided with a companion whose task it was to lighten the weight of
such abstractions as Sapience and Justice. These were the Devil and his
attendant the _Vice_, of whom the latter seems to have been of native
origin, and, as he was usually dressed in a fool's habit, was probably
suggested by the familiar custom of keeping an attendant fool at court
or in great houses. The Vice had many _aliases_ (_Shift_, _Ambidexter_,
_Sin_, _Fraud_, _Iniquity_, &c.), but his usual duty is to torment and
tease the Devil his master for the edification and diversion of the
audience. He was gradually blended with the domestic fool, who survived
in the regular drama. There are other concrete elements in the
moralities; for typical figures are often fitted with concrete names,
and thus all but converted into concrete human personages.
Groups of English moralities.
The earlier English moralities[4]--from the reign of Henry VI. to that
of Henry VII.--usually allegorize the conflict between good and evil in
the mind and life of man, without any side-intention of theological
controversy. Such also is still essentially the purpose of the extant
morality by Henry VIII.'s poet, the witty Skelton.[5] _Everyman_ (pr. c.
1529), perhaps the most perfect example of its class, with which the
present generation has fortunately become familiar, contains passages
certainly designed to enforce the specific teaching of Rome. But its
Dutch original was written at least a generation earlier, and could have
no controversial intention. On the other hand, R. Wever's _Lusty
Juventus_ breathes the spirit of the dogmatic reformation of the reign
of Edward VI. Theological controversy largely occupies the moralities of
the earlier part of Elizabeth's reign,[6] and connects itself with
political feeling in a famous morality, Sir David Lyndsay's _Satire of
the Three Estaitis_, written and acted (at Cupar, in 1539) on the other
side of the border, where such efforts as the religious drama proper had
made had been extinguished by the Reformation. Only a single English
political morality proper remains to us, which belongs to the beginning
of the reign of Elizabeth.[7] Another series connects itself with the
ideas of the Renaissance rather than the Reformation, treating of
intellectual progress rather than of moral conduct;[8] this extends from
the reign of Henry VIII. to that of his younger daughter. Besides these,
there remain some Elizabethan moralities which have no special
theological or scientific purpose, and which are none the less lively in
consequence.[9]
Transition from the morality to the regular drama.
Heywood's interludes.
The transition from the morality to the regular drama in England was
effected, on the one hand, by the intermixture of historical personages
with abstractions--as in Bishop Bale's _Kyng Johan_ (c. 1548)--which
easily led over to the _chronicle history_; on the other, by the
introduction of types of real life by the side of abstract figures. This
latter tendency, of which instances occur in earlier plays, is
observable in several of the 16th-century moralities;[10] but before
most of these were written, a further step in advance had been taken by
a man of genius, John Heywood (b. c. 1500, d. between 1577 and 1587),
whose "interludes"[11] were short farces in the French manner. The term
"interludes" was by no means new, but had been applied by friend and foe
to religious plays, and plays (including moralities) in general, already
in the 14th century. But it conveniently serves to designate a species
which marks a distinct stage in the history of the modern drama.
Heywood's interludes dealt entirely with real--very real--men and women.
Orthodox and conservative, he had at the same time a keen eye for the
vices as well as the follies of his age, and not the least for those of
the clerical profession. Other writers, such as T. Ingeland,[12] took
the same direction; and the allegory of abstractions was thus undermined
on the stage, very much as in didactic literature the ground had been
cut from under its feet by the _Ship of Fooles_. Thus the interludes
facilitated the advent of comedy, without having superseded the earlier
form. Both moralities and miracle-plays survived into the Elizabethan
age after the regular drama had already begun its course.
Pageants.
Such, in barest outline, was the progress of dramatic entertainments in
the principal countries of Europe, before the revival of classical
studies brought about a return to the examples of the classical drama,
or before this return had distinctly asserted itself. It must not,
however, be forgotten that from an early period in England as elsewhere
had flourished a species of entertainments, not properly speaking
dramatic, but largely contributing to form and foster a taste for
dramatic spectacles. The _pageants_--as they were called in
England--were the successors of those _ridings_ from which, when they
gladdened "Chepe," Chaucer's idle apprentice would not keep away; but
they had advanced in splendour and ingenuity of device under the
influence of Flemish and other foreign examples. Costumed figures
represented before gaping citizens the heroes of mythology and history,
and the abstractions of moral, patriotic, or municipal allegory; and the
city of London clung with special fervour to these exhibitions, which
the Elizabethan drama was neither able nor--as represented by most of
its poets who composed devices and short texts for these and similar
shows--willing to oust from popular favour. Some of the greatest and
some of the least of English dramatists were the ministers of pageantry;
and perhaps it would have been an advantage for the future of the
theatre if the legitimate drama and the _Triumphs of Old Drapery_ had
been more jealously kept apart. With the reign of Henry VIII. there also
set in a varied succession of entertainments at court and in the houses
of the great nobles, which may be said to have lasted through the Tudor
and early Stuart periods; but it would be an endless task to attempt to
discriminate the dramatic elements contained in these productions. The
"mask," stated to have been introduced from Italy into England as a new
diversion in 1512-1513, at first merely added a fresh element of
"disguising" to those already in use; as a quasi-dramatic species
("mask" or "masque") capable of a great literary development it hardly
asserted itself till quite the end of the 16th century.