THE MEDIEVAL DRAMA
For the sake of clearness we have reserved for a separate chapter the
discussion of the drama of the whole medieval period, which, though it did
not reach a very high literary level, was one of the most characteristic
expressions of the age. It should be emphasized that to no other form does
what we have said of the similarity of medieval literature throughout
Western Europe apply more closely, so that what we find true of the drama
in England would for the most part hold good for the other countries as
well.
JUGGLERS, FOLK-PLAYS, PAGEANTS. At the fall of the Roman Empire, which
marks the beginning of the Middle Ages, the corrupt Roman drama, proscribed
by the Church, had come to an unhonored end, and the actors had been merged
into the great body of disreputable jugglers and inferior minstrels who
wandered over all Christendom. The performances of these social outcasts,
crude and immoral as they were, continued for centuries unsuppressed,
because they responded to the demand for dramatic spectacle which is one of
the deepest though not least troublesome instincts in human nature. The
same demand was partly satisfied also by the rude country folk-plays,
survivals of primitive heathen ceremonials, performed at such festival
occasions as the harvest season, which in all lands continue to flourish
among the country people long after their original meaning has been
forgotten. In England the folk-plays, throughout the Middle Ages and in
remote spots down almost to the present time, sometimes took the form of
energetic dances (Morris dances, they came to be called, through confusion
with Moorish performances of the same general nature). Others of them,
however, exhibited in the midst of much rough-and-tumble fighting and
buffoonery, a slight thread of dramatic action. Their characters gradually
came to be a conventional set, partly famous figures of popular tradition,
such as St. George, Robin Hood, Maid Marian, and the Green Dragon. Other
offshoots of the folk-play were the 'mummings' and 'disguisings,'
collective names for many forms of processions, shows, and other
entertainments, such as, among the upper classes, that precursor of the
Elizabethan Mask in which a group of persons in disguise, invited or
uninvited, attended a formal dancing party. In the later part of the Middle
Ages, also, there were the secular pageants, spectacular displays (rather
different from those of the twentieth century) given on such occasions as
when a king or other person of high rank made formal entry into a town.
They consisted of an elaborate scenic background set up near the city gate
or on the street, with figures from allegorical or traditional history who
engaged in some pantomime or declamation, but with very little dramatic
dialog, or none.
TROPES, LITURGICAL PLAYS, AND MYSTERY PLAYS. But all these forms, though
they were not altogether without later influence, were very minor affairs,
and the real drama of the Middle Ages grew up, without design and by the
mere nature of things, from the regular services of the Church.
We must try in the first place to realize clearly the conditions under
which the church service, the mass, was conducted during all the medieval
centuries. We should picture to ourselves congregations of persons for the
most part grossly ignorant, of unquestioning though very superficial faith,
and of emotions easily aroused to fever heat. Of the Latin words of the
service they understood nothing; and of the Bible story they had only a
very general impression. It was necessary, therefore, that the service
should be given a strongly spectacular and emotional character, and to this
end no effort was spared. The great cathedrals and churches were much the
finest buildings of the time, spacious with lofty pillars and shadowy
recesses, rich in sculptured stone and in painted windows that cast on the
walls and pavements soft and glowing patterns of many colors and shifting
forms. The service itself was in great part musical, the confident notes of
the full choir joining with the resonant organ-tones; and after all the
rest the richly robed priests and ministrants passed along the aisles in
stately processions enveloped in fragrant clouds of incense. That the eye
if not the ear of the spectator, also, might catch some definite knowledge,
the priests as they read the Bible stories sometimes displayed painted
rolls which vividly pictured the principal events of the day's lesson.
Still, however, a lack was strongly felt, and at last, accidentally and
slowly, began the process of dramatizing the services. First, inevitably,
to be so treated was the central incident of Christian faith, the story of
Christ's resurrection. The earliest steps were very simple. First, during
the ceremonies on Good Friday, the day when Christ was crucified, the cross
which stood all the year above the altar, bearing the Savior's figure, was
taken down and laid beneath the altar, a dramatic symbol of the Death and
Burial; and two days later, on 'the third day' of the Bible phraseology,
that is on Easter Sunday, as the story of the Resurrection was chanted by
the choir, the cross was uncovered and replaced, amid the rejoicings of the
congregation. Next, and before the Norman Conquest, the Gospel dialog
between the angel and the three Marys at the tomb of Christ came sometimes
to be chanted by the choir in those responses which are called 'tropes':
'Whom seek ye in the sepulcher, O Christians ?' 'Jesus of Nazareth the
crucified, O angel.' 'He is not here; he has arisen as he said. Go,
announce that he has risen from the sepulcher.' After this a little
dramatic action was introduced almost as a matter of course. One priest
dressed in white robes sat, to represent the angel, by one of the
square-built tombs near the junction of nave and transept, and three
others, personating the Marys, advanced slowly toward him while they
chanted their portion of the same dialog. As the last momentous words of
the angel died away a jubilant 'Te Deum' burst from, organ and choir, and
every member of the congregation exulted, often with sobs, in the great
triumph which brought salvation to every Christian soul.
Little by little, probably, as time passed, this Easter scene was further
enlarged, in part by additions from the closing incidents of the Savior's
life. A similar treatment, too, was being given to the Christmas scene,
still more humanly beautiful, of his birth in the manger, and occasionally
the two scenes might be taken from their regular places in the service,
combined, and presented at any season of the year. Other Biblical scenes,
as well, came to be enacted, and, further, there were added stories from
Christian tradition, such as that of Antichrist, and, on their particular
days, the lives of Christian saints. Thus far these compositions are called
Liturgical Plays, because they formed, in general, a part of the church
service (liturgy). But as some of them were united into extended groups and
as the interest of the congregation deepened, the churches began to seem
too small and inconvenient, the excited audiences forgot the proper
reverence, and the performances were transferred to the churchyard, and
then, when the gravestones proved troublesome, to the market place, the
village-green, or any convenient field. By this time the people had ceased
to be patient with the unintelligible Latin, and it was replaced at first,
perhaps, and in part, by French, but finally by English; though probably
verse was always retained as more appropriate than prose to the sacred
subjects. Then, the religious spirit yielding inevitably in part to that of
merrymaking, minstrels and mountebanks began to flock to the celebrations;
and regular fairs, even, grew up about them. Gradually, too, the priests
lost their hold even on the plays themselves; skilful actors from among the
laymen began to take many of the parts; and at last in some towns the
trade-guilds, or unions of the various handicrafts, which had secured
control of the town governments, assumed entire charge.
These changes, very slowly creeping in, one by one, had come about in most
places by the beginning of the fourteenth century. In 1311 a new impetus
was given to the whole ceremony by the establishment of the late spring
festival of Corpus Christi, a celebration of the doctrine of
transubstantiation. On this occasion, or sometimes on some other festival,
it became customary for the guilds to present an extended series of the
plays, a series which together contained the essential substance of the
Christian story, and therefore of the Christian faith. The Church generally
still encouraged attendance, and not only did all the townspeople join
wholeheartedly, but from all the country round the peasants flocked in. On
one occasion the Pope promised the remission of a thousand days of
purgatory to all persons who should be present at the Chester plays, and to
this exemption the bishop of Chester added sixty days more.
The list of plays thus presented commonly included: The Fall of Lucifer;
the Creation of the World and the Fall of Adam; Noah and the Flood; Abraham
and Isaac and the promise of Christ's coming; a Procession of the Prophets,
also foretelling Christ; the main events of the Gospel story, with some
additions from Christian tradition; and the Day of Judgment. The longest
cycle now known, that at York, contained, when fully developed, fifty
plays, or perhaps even more. Generally each play was presented by a single
guild (though sometimes two or three guilds or two or three plays might be
combined), and sometimes, though not always, there was a special fitness in
the assignment, as when the watermen gave the play of Noah's Ark or the
bakers that of the Last Supper. In this connected form the plays are called
the Mystery or Miracle Cycles. [Footnote: 'Miracle' was the medieval word
in England; 'Mystery' has been taken by recent scholars from the medieval
French usage. It is not connected with our usual word 'mystery,' but
possibly is derived from the Latin 'ministerium,' 'function,' which was the
name applied to the trade-guild as an organization and from which our title
'Mr.' also comes.] In many places, however, detached plays, or groups of
plays smaller than the full cycles, continued to be presented at one season
or another.
Each cycle as a whole, it will be seen, has a natural epic unity, centering
about the majestic theme of the spiritual history and the final judgment of
all Mankind. But unity both of material and of atmosphere suffers not only
from the diversity among the separate plays but also from the violent
intrusion of the comedy and the farce which the coarse taste of the
audience demanded. Sometimes, in the later period, altogether original and
very realistic scenes from actual English life were added, like the very
clever but very coarse parody on the Nativity play in the 'Towneley' cycle.
More often comic treatment was given to the Bible scenes and characters
themselves. Noah's wife, for example, came regularly to be presented as a
shrew, who would not enter the ark until she had been beaten into
submission; and Herod always appears as a blustering tyrant, whose fame
still survives in a proverb of Shakspere's coinage--'to out-Herod Herod.'
The manner of presentation of the cycles varied much in different towns.
Sometimes the entire cycle was still given, like the detached plays, at a
single spot, the market-place or some other central square; but often, to
accommodate the great crowds, there were several 'stations' at convenient
intervals. In the latter case each play might remain all day at a
particular station and be continuously repeated as the crowd moved slowly
by; but more often it was the, spectators who remained, and the plays,
mounted on movable stages, the 'pageant'-wagons, were drawn in turn by the
guild-apprentices from one station to another. When the audience was
stationary, the common people stood in the square on all sides of the
stage, while persons of higher rank or greater means were seated on
temporary wooden scaffolds or looked down from the windows of the adjacent
houses. In the construction of the 'pageant' all the little that was
possible was done to meet the needs of the presentation. Below the main
floor, or stage, was the curtained dressing-room of the actors; and when
the play required, on one side was attached 'Hell-Mouth,' a great and
horrible human head, whence issued flames and fiendish cries, often the
fiends themselves, and into which lost sinners were violently hurled. On
the stage the scenery was necessarily very simple. A small raised platform
or pyramid might represent Heaven, where God the Father was seated, and
from which as the action required the angels came down; a single tree might
indicate the Garden of Eden; and a doorway an entire house. In partial
compensation the costumes were often elaborate, with all the finery of the
church wardrobe and much of those of the wealthy citizens. The expense
accounts of the guilds, sometimes luckily preserved, furnish many
picturesque and amusing items, such as these: 'Four pair of angels' wings,
2 shillings and 8 pence.' 'For mending of hell head, 6 pence.' 'Item, link
for setting the world on fire.' Apparently women never acted; men and boys
took the women's parts. All the plays of the cycle were commonly performed
in a single day, beginning, at the first station, perhaps as early as five
o'clock in the morning; but sometimes three days or even more were
employed. To the guilds the giving of the plays was a very serious matter.
Often each guild had a 'pageant-house' where it stored its 'properties,'
and a pageant-master who trained the actors and imposed substantial fines
on members remiss in coöperation.
We have said that the plays were always composed in verse. The stanza forms
employed differ widely even within the same cycle, since the single plays
were very diverse in both authorship and dates. The quality of the verse,
generally mediocre at the outset, has often suffered much in transmission
from generation to generation. In other respects also there are great
contrasts; sometimes the feeling and power of a scene are admirable,
revealing an author of real ability, sometimes there is only crude and
wooden amateurishness. The medieval lack of historic sense gives to all the
plays the setting of the authors' own times; Roman officers appear as
feudal knights; and all the heathens (including the Jews) are Saracens,
worshippers of 'Mahound' and 'Termagaunt'; while the good characters,
however long they may really have lived before the Christian era, swear
stoutly by St. John and St. Paul and the other medieval Christian
divinities. The frank coarseness of the plays is often merely disgusting,
and suggests how superficial, in most cases, was the medieval religious
sense. With no thought of incongruity, too, these writers brought God the
Father onto the stage in bodily form, and then, attempting in all sincerity
to show him reverence, gilded his face and put into his mouth long speeches
of exceedingly tedious declamation. The whole emphasis, as generally in the
religion of the times, was on the fear of hell rather than on the love of
righteousness. Yet in spite of everything grotesque and inconsistent, the
plays no doubt largely fulfilled their religious purpose and exercised on
the whole an elevating influence. The humble submission of the boy Isaac to
the will of God and of his earthly father, the yearning devotion of Mary
the mother of Jesus, and the infinite love and pity of the tortured Christ
himself, must have struck into even callous hearts for at least a little
time some genuine consciousness of the beauty and power of the finer and
higher life. A literary form which supplied much of the religious and
artistic nourishment of half a continent for half a thousand years cannot
be lightly regarded or dismissed.
THE MORALITY PLAYS. The Mystery Plays seem to have reached their greatest
popularity in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In the dawning light
of the Renaissance and the modern spirit they gradually waned, though in
exceptional places and in special revivals they did not altogether cease to
be given until the seventeenth century. On the Continent of Europe, indeed,
they still survive, after a fashion, in a single somewhat modernized form,
the celebrated Passion Play of Oberammergau. In England by the end of the
fifteenth century they had been for the most part replaced by a kindred
species which had long been growing up beside them, namely the Morality
Plays.
The Morality Play probably arose in part from the desire of religious
writers to teach the principles of Christian living in a more direct and
compact fashion than was possible through the Bible stories of the
Mysteries. In its strict form the Morality Play was a dramatized moral
allegory. It was in part an offshoot from the Mysteries, in some of which
there had appeared among the actors abstract allegorical figures, either
good or bad, such as The Seven Deadly Sins, Contemplation, and
Raise-Slander. In the Moralities the majority of the characters are of this
sort--though not to the exclusion of supernatural persons such as God and
the Devil--and the hero is generally a type-figure standing for all
Mankind. For the control of the hero the two definitely opposing groups of
Virtues and Vices contend; the commonest type of Morality presents in brief
glimpses the entire story of the hero's life, that is of the life of every
man. It shows how he yields to temptation and lives for the most part in
reckless sin, but at last in spite of all his flippancy and folly is saved
by Perseverance and Repentance, pardoned through God's mercy, and assured
of salvation. As compared with the usual type of Mystery plays the
Moralities had for the writers this advantage, that they allowed some
independence in the invention of the story; and how powerful they might be
made in the hands of a really gifted author has been finely demonstrated in
our own time by the stage-revival of the best of them, 'Everyman' (which is
probably a translation from a Dutch original). In most cases, however, the
spirit of medieval allegory proved fatal, the genuinely abstract characters
are mostly shadowy and unreal, and the speeches of the Virtues are extreme
examples of intolerable sanctimonious declamation. Against this tendency,
on the other hand, the persistent instinct for realism provided a partial
antidote; the Vices are often very lifelike rascals, abstract only in name.
In these cases the whole plays become vivid studies in contemporary low
life, largely human and interesting except for their prolixity and the
coarseness which they inherited from the Mysteries and multiplied on their
own account. During the Reformation period, in the early sixteenth century,
the character of the Moralities, more strictly so called, underwent
something of a change, and they were--sometimes made the vehicle for
religious argument, especially by Protestants.
THE INTERLUDES. Early in the sixteenth century, the Morality in its turn
was largely superseded by another sort of play called the Interlude. But
just as in the case of the Mystery and the Morality, the Interlude
developed out of the Morality, and the two cannot always be distinguished,
some single plays being distinctly described by the authors as 'Moral
Interludes.' In the Interludes the realism of the Moralities became still
more pronounced, so that the typical Interlude is nothing more than a
coarse farce, with no pretense at religious or ethical meaning. The name
Interlude denotes literally 'a play between,' but the meaning intended
(between whom or what) is uncertain. The plays were given sometimes in the
halls of nobles and gentlemen, either when banquets were in progress or on
other festival occasions; sometimes before less select audiences in the
town halls or on village greens. The actors were sometimes strolling
companies of players, who might be minstrels 'or rustics, and were
sometimes also retainers of the great nobles, allowed to practice their
dramatic ability on tours about the country when they were not needed for
their masters' entertainment. In the Interlude-Moralities and Interludes
first appears _The_ Vice, a rogue who sums up in himself all the Vices
of the older Moralities and serves as the buffoon. One of his most popular
exploits was to belabor the Devil about the stage with a wooden dagger, a
habit which took a great hold on the popular imagination, as numerous
references in later literature testify. Transformed by time, the Vice
appears in the Elizabethan drama, and thereafter, as the clown.
THE LATER INFLUENCE OF THE MEDIEVAL DRAMA. The various dramatic forms from
the tenth century to the middle of the sixteenth at which we have thus
hastily glanced--folk-plays, mummings and disguisings, secular pageants,
Mystery plays, Moralities, and Interludes--have little but a historical
importance. But besides demonstrating the persistence of the popular demand
for drama, they exerted a permanent influence in that they formed certain
stage traditions which were to modify or largely control the great drama of
the Elizabethan period and to some extent of later times. Among these
traditions were the disregard for unity, partly of action, but especially
of time and place; the mingling of comedy with even the intensest scenes of
tragedy; the nearly complete lack of stage scenery, with a resultant
willingness in the audience to make the largest possible imaginative
assumptions; the presence of certain stock figures, such as the clown; and
the presentation of women's parts by men and boys. The plays, therefore,
must be reckoned with in dramatic history.