The earliest known plays in England were the Mystery
plays. Such plays consisted of biblical stories arranged in cycles around themes associated with major holy days. The first records of the plays
date from the early 14th century, a century after the first spoken
Mystery/Miracle plays are recorded in Germany and France.
The long development of such plays may have begun as early
as the 4th century with pageants presented in many major European
cities. These festival pageants included
what, in England, came to be called “dumb shows”. These followed the leaders of the city marching in procession, dressed in their public finery.
Variations of time and place apply.
During the 11th century, France and Germany
brought their dumb shows inside of churches and cathedrals to enact the
Stations of the Cross and related scriptures during Lent services. One or more of the priests would read an
explicatory text in Latin while the dumb show was being performed. The common members of the church — for whom
such shows surely were primarily intended — being unable to understand Latin,
the churches eventually convinced Rome to allow the texts to be read in the vulgar
languages.
Claims have been made that one Geoffrey (Gaufridus), a Norman
schoolmaster (Lector) at the school at Dunstable, England, actually wrote the
first Mystery play in the country in 1110.
This is due, it would seem, to a hurried reading by Thomas Warton, the
author of the famous History of English Poetry.[1] Geoffrey is recorded, in fact, as having made (“fecit”) an entertainment
(“ludus”) commonly called a “Miracle” (quem “Miracula” vulgariter appellamus).[2]
The players wore choir copes for costumes. After the Miracle, Geoffrey’s chambers caught
fire and the copes and his books went up in
flames. He joined the Order of
St. Alban’s, which ran the school, because he was unable to reimburse the Abbot
for the loss. Eventually, he himself became Abbot.
If Geoffrey was light-years ahead of most of his fellow
scholars, however, the “making” would only have amounted to writing the
exposition for a dumb show. If he was
only up with the latest trends (a thing rare in insular England), the “making”
would have amounted to writing staging
directions, descriptions of the physical acts to be performed and identifying
the marks to which the players were to proceed.
The first record of biblical pageants regularly being
performed in England date from 1318. The characters still
did not have spoken parts. They played their dumb shows on platforms pulled
from crowd to crowd by horses. These
were necessarily very small.[3]
Range of motion was strictly limited.
Soon text was being composed for the characters to
speak. The earliest known text would
seem to date from around 1340.[4] The texts make clear that the plays consisted
of set speeches and long passages intended to describe the action that could
not otherwise be portrayed. They were in
English.
English plays remained unchanged for nearly 200 years. The Italians chaffed at having to act their
plays on tiny platforms in churches, and, during the 15th century,
began building large outdoor wooden scaffolds — some three stories high — laid
out to resemble church interiors.[5] Free of holy spaces, they realized almost
immediately that they were also free of the holy texts. They were the first in Europe to perform
modern secular plays.
In the meantime, the tiny English stage continued to be drawn
by horses behind the authorities on festival days. It took Henry VIII breaking from the Catholic
church before secular plays began to be performed.
The new secular plays did not arise out of whole cloth,
though. At first the stages remained
small and the scenes were limited to a small number of actors (most generally
three). As at the beginning of a Mystery
play cycle, one dominant actor opened each play setting the scene for the
audience. Most scenes featured a main
speaker briefly punctuated by another (or two).
They spoke in variations of rhymed seven-stress and ballad lines precluding
natural speech.
The first step away from the Mystery plays was toward the ancient
classics. Still the stages were small —
in most places a platform in a modest room.
Seneca, a classical playwright who also had to work with small stages, in
his own day, became the next model for proceeding. The opening speakers in Seneca’s plays spoke still
longer monologues in order to set the scene.
The end of the monologue and appearance of a second speaker marked the
beginning of the second scene. All but
the choruses of Seneca’s plays were written in unrhymed hexameters and promised
much more natural speech once his model would become pervasive.
Even the 1566 play Gorboduc — generally considered the first modern English
play —, however, a brief and revolutionary first dialogue scene is followed by
a series of set speeches by King Gorboduc and his senior counselors in order to
set the scene. This even though the play
was acted at the Inns of Court which provided one of the few large stages of
the time. Still more, each act is dutifully
preceded by a dumb show. Centuries of
tradition were not going to be ended without a protracted struggle regardless
of improved logistics.
As I have pointed out in the appropriate appendix of my
variorum edition of Ulysses and Agamemnon, Ulysses’ famous long set
speech at the beginning of the play argues forcefully for 1584, the date it
appears in the records of the Court of Elizabeth I, rather than 1599, the date
its text was gathered into Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida. Actually, 1584 is a bit late for the
practice.
[1]
Warton, Thomas. The History of English Poetry Hazllit, ed. (1871)., II.216.
[2] Gesta abbatum monasterii Sancti
Albani A.D. 793-1290 (1867), 73. “Legit igitur apud Dunestapliam, expectans
scholam
Sancti Albani, sibi repromissam ; ubi quemdam ludum de Sancta Katerina,—quem “
Miracula “ vulgariter appellamus,—fecit. Ad quæ decoranda, petiit a Dunstaple. Sacrista Sancti Albani, ut sibi capæ
chorales accommodarentur, et obtinuit. Et fuit ludus ille de Sancta Katerina.”
[3] Davidson,
Charles. Studies in the English Mystery Plays (1892), 93. “It seems, then, that shortly after the
confirmation of Corpus Christi in 1318 pageants of the Biblical story were
introduced in conjunction with the banners of the crafts. These at first were
mute mysteries expressed by action. In a short time, however, spoken drama,
found also in isolated cases in France, became an established custom in England.”
[4] Ars
Quatuor Coronatorum, Vol. 14 (1901), 63.
“The earliest MS. play extant is found in the British Museum, Harleian
MSS. 2253, and dates from the early part of the reign of Edward III., circa
1340.” Earlier texts may since have been
found but I’ve yet to learn of them.
[5]
Davidson, 76. “This stationary platform, often of great size and sometimes of
three stories, with Hell beneath and Heaven above, and crowded with persons and
paraphernalia, was a distinctive feature of the continental play. To this the
English cycles presented a marked contrast. The gild plays of England changed
the station of the continental stage into a movable pageant, or platform, and
instead of calling the population of a city to the stage, rolled the platform
through the streets in orderly succession from audience to audience.”
Also at Virtual Grub Street:
- A Medieval Hodge-Podge. March 17, 2019. “The hogge pot had already existed for centuries, however. Many who fail to realize this have given spurious derivations to the name.”
- Henry VII’s Keeper of the Lions, John de Vere, 13th Earl of Oxford. May 5, 2019. “The Park, which would seem to have hosted the first porcupine ever to inhabit English soil, was completely enclosed by a wall.”
- Did Shake-speare Die of a Stroke? August 03, 2014. "In October of 1601 De Vere begins to complain of his health again in letters to his brother-in-law, Robert Cecil, who was representing him in certain legal matters at Court."
- Check out the Medieval Topics Article Index for many more articles about this fascinating time.
- Check out the English Renaissance Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time.
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