1. Medieval Drama and Theatre

2. Rite and Theatre Rite Repetitive
(to make past events or myths present)
Collective experience
(everyone’s active participation)
Sacred place and time

3. Rite and Theatre Rite Theatre Repetitive
(to make past events or myths present)
Collective experience
(everyone’s active participation)
Sacred place and time
Theatre
Independent from the chronological watersheds of a community
Audience – Actors
Stage: the space of playing
Acting - Impersonation

4. The Dramatic Core of Christian Liturgy
Matins of Easter Sunday
The „Quem queritis” trope
Trope
Melisma
Sequence

6. The „Quem queritis” trope
„Quem queritis?” = „Whom are you looking for?” (Mk 16)
Angel: “Quem queritis in sepulchro, O Christicolae?”
Marys: “Ihesum Nazarenum.”
Angel: “Non est hic. Surrexit sicut praedixerat. Ite, nuntiate quia surrexit a mortuis.”
Everyone: “Alleluia. Resurrexit Dominus.”
Angel: “Venite et videte locum.”

7. Whom are you seeking…?
Angel: “Whom are you seeking in the sepulchre, O Christians?”
Marys: “Jesus of Nazareth.”
Angel: “He is not here. He rose as he predicted. Go, announce that He has arisen from the dead.”
Everyone: “Alleluia. The Lord has risen.”
Angel: “Come and see the place.”

9. The Regularis Concordia
10th-century Benedictine reform
Winchester Trope

10. From Rite to Theatre Early outdoor liturgical plays
Drive in the Church to make religion and faith visible:
1215: Lateran IV
Mendicant orders
1265: Institution of the Feast of Corpus Christi

11. Liturgical Plays Liturgy-bound (fix part of the liturgy) Latin
Bound to dialogical tropes that appear in the text of the liturgy
Sung
Gestures dominate over words
Monastic origin
Mostly indoor plays
Remains in practice all throughout the Middle Ages

12. Giotto di Bondone: Crib at Greccio

13. Stage Performances Not bound to liturgy Mainly vernacular
Theme: Salvation history
Performed
Rhetorical and theatrical effects
Initially ecclesiastical control
Outdoor performances
From the 13th to the 16th century

14. Survey of stage plays What kind of plays? (Genre)
Where and how? (Staging and performance)
Who played? (Actors)
Who watched? (Audience)
Who composed? (Playwrights)
Who interprets? (Reception and the modern reader)

15. Genres 1 Ludus / play Interludium Rapraesentatio / representation
Processio / procession
Royal entry – tableaux vivants
Pageant

18. Genres 2 - Morality plays (Psychomachia) - Miracle plays Mystery plays
Cycles (York, Wakefield / Towneley, Chester, N-Town /East Anglia/)
Fragments or solitary plays
- Miracle plays
- Morality plays (Psychomachia)

20. Staging
Stationary:
Round theatre
Single scaffold

21. The Martyrdom of St Apollonia

22. Staging 2: The Pageants

23. Pageant Wagons

25. Staging 3: Indoor Performances
- Aristocratic households
The Moral Play of Wisdom (?)
Colleges: Student performances
Priories and monasteries
Commissions by the royal court

26. Actors and Players No professional players Clergy and guilds Minstrels
Dancers and musicians

27. Audience: Entertainment and Devotion

28. Playwrights Almost all anonymous The York Realist The Wakefield Master
John Lydgate

29. Mysteries’ End

30. Peak and Ban of the Plays
Paradox: Peak of mysteries coincides with the spread of private devotion
Mysteries continue into the 16th c.
From dogma to civic pride
Reformation: Ban on the plays

31. Medieval Theatre Websites