Medieval Drama

Beckwith, Sarah. “Drama,” The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Literature 1100-1500 ed. Larry Scanlon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. 83-94.

I thought this was an interesting article in light of the fact that we began reading the N-Town plays this week. It provides a good background about Middle English drama, particularly the cycles of mystery plays that we talked a little bit about in class. It gives a summary about each of the four different cycles and states the key differences between them. It also talks a little bit about other types of drama besides the mystery plays. One thing the article specifically points out is that the N-Town plays are just as interested in the life of Mary as they are in the life of Jesus. Since we are reading the Mary plays for class tomorrow, this will be interesting to think about, as I think it would have had a pretty profound effect on how people reacted and responded to the plays - it would have given them an element that they, as regular people, could really connect with.

Here are the article's main points:

-“Middle English Drama” is considered to be the category referring to the textual remnants of a vast, expansive, very imaginative performative culture that was largely non-textual.

-Many texts we consider traditionally to be ‘dramatic’ have no authors and no special, separate spaces in which they are produced.

-We must consider it as a part of the material organization of public life

-Two scenes within this: the first can stand for the medieval theatre’s interest in the actor’s body as a primary medium of contemplation/interaction/the creation of community while the second stands for the uses of theatrical pop as icon/index/symbol/figure

            -York Corpus Christi cycle as an example of this

-The mystery plays are the most extensive and elaborate collective theatrical enterprise in English theatre history – four cycles of texts: York, Towneley, Chester and N-Town

-They are a form of theater that explores theology through the logic of performance

-The York plays can be indubitably linked to the Feast of Corpus Christi

-The Townley/Wakefield cycles are closer to the world of Piers Plowman than any of the other cycles. The cycle features some extraordinary pageants unified by their distinctive use of language. They are extraordinarily interested in the power of language to name and to deceive

-The N-Town Plays is a group of plays extraordinarily interested in the genealogy of the Christ child and are as interested in the life of Mary as they are of Jesus. They are unusual because they supplied an extraordinary number of stage directions.

-The texts of the Chester cycle bear the mark of the lateness in the self-consciousness with which they approach the entire tradition of Corpus Christi in a Reformation climate. Also unique in the cucle tradition, the Chester plays feature an Antichrist play

-Four canon morality plays – Mankind, Everyman, Castle of Perseverance and Wisdom… these plays share a common theme of their exploration of what it means to be human as any putative shared “morality” and are deeply interested in the habits of the mind, thought and action that lead to the denaturing of humankind’s soul as the image of God.

-Saints’ plays blurs the genres of hagiography and romance with the plays Digby Mary Magdalen and The Conversion of St. Paul.