1. Medieval Theater

2. 3 types
Miracle plays
Mystery plays
Morality plays

3. Miracle plays
“A miracle play presents a real or fictitious account of the life, miracles, or martyrdom of a saint. By 1200’s, they had been divorced from church services and were performed at public festivals. Almost all surviving miracle plays concern either the Virgin Mary or St. Nicholas, the 4th-century bishop of Myra in Asia Minor.” (Encyclopedia Brittanica online)

4. more
“Both Mary and Nicholas had active cults during the Middle Ages, and belief in the healing powers of saintly relics was widespread.” Characters included “the devil, a woman falsely accused of murdering her own child, and a pregnant abbess.”
“ Typical of these is a play called St. John the Hairy. At the outset the title character seduces and murders a princess. Upon capture, he is proclaimed a saint by an infant. He confesses his crime, whereupon God and Mary appear and aid John in reviving the princess, which done, the murderer saint is made a bishop.” (Encyclopedia Britannica online)

5. Why people knew Bible stories: medieval theater
Nothing like we have
Connected to the church

6. Mystery Plays Put on by guilds (= “mysteries”)
On top of a wagon (which sometimes would be paraded into town)
Told Biblical stories to illiterate people
Very elaborate, involving hundreds of people
Still ongoing in places like York and Chester

7. Wagons
Sometimes quite simple

8. Wagon is brought in a parade

9. Evolved until it is more elaborate 2012 York Mystery Cycle
What does this
remind you of?

10. York mystery plays
Each guild puts on one part, such as Guild of Goldsmiths – Coming of the 3 Kings
Guild of Shipwrights – Building of the Ark
Guild of Butchers – Death of Christ

11. The “stars” God Jesus Martyred saints Eve being tempted by Satan
Fall of Adam
Noah and the Ark

12. Elaborate Ark

13. Noah and family

14. Shepherds

15. The Life of Christ

16. Crucifixion of Christ

17. Second Shepherd’s Play
Is also a mystery play
Written by the “Wakefield Master” – called a Master because his plays are so much better than any others written during that time. He used a poetic meter that was his alone and had his own rhyming style, too. He might have been a “minor cleric” (Jacobus 215).
Master also wrote Noah and the Ark, the First Shepherd’s Play, Herod the Great, and The Buffeting.

18. Wakefield Cycle
Always in late May to early June (Corpus Christi celebration) lasted all day long from sunrise to sunset
Actors were amateurs who did the play on a wagon.
Note that there are social issues mentioned, such as poverty, taxes, prices (Jacobus 216).

19. Morality Plays

20. First in Latin, then English
Characters:
Vices (Ignorance, Greed, Riot)
Virtues (Humility, Good Deeds)
The Devil

21. Battle between vices and virtues

22. Everyman A Morality play, around 1495
Author is anonymous but may have been a priest – what is the evidence?
Allegory! – Each character has a distinctive name, costume, and props: Knowledge, Strength, Beauty, Death, Kindred, Goods, and so on.
Lego movie of Everyman

23. Everyman may go to the devil
A Simple Everyman Play

24. Everyman’s descendents
Allegorical drama continues on:
Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus, an Everyman who confronts the devil, angels, Temptation, etc.
Shakespeare’s Falstaff, the Vice become real
Al Bryan Lagman under the direction of Mark Ryan Hernandez – Filipino version which plays annually
Superman and the comic heroes
Who else?

25. And some non-religious plays, too