1. SEMESTER I CORE COURSE II BRITISH PROSE AND DRAMA: ANGLO-SAXON TO SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
Topic: Origin and Development of British Drama
Shubhra Singh Sardar
Assistant Professor
Department of English
B. B. College, Asansol

2. Medieval Drama Liturgical Plays Mystery and Miracle Plays
Morality Plays
Interludes

3. LITURGICAL pLAYS Drama evolved due to religious predispositions
Liturgical plays were plays related to church
Performed inside the church
Bible was written in Latin so common people found it difficult to understand
The clergy tried to find new methods of expounding the teachings of the Bible
Liturgical plays were a medium where stories of Gospels were explained through living pictures or question-answer songs performed by monks on Easter

4. mystery plays
These were plays depicting life of Christ – His birth, death and resurrection
Performed on platforms called mansions.
Three mansions represented Heaven, Hell and the Sea of Galilee
Medieval craft guilds took over the presentation of drama
Pageant wagons – stages on wheels
Divided into two levels (upper = stage, lower = dressing area)

5. Difference between mystery and Miracle Plays
It has long been the fashion to call the Biblical plays “Mysteries” and those dealing with saints lives “Miracles”.
Miracle plays specifically re-enacted miraculous interventions by the saints, particularly St. Nicholas or St. Mary

6. CYCLES OF mystery plays
The York cycle – 49 plays
The Wakefield/Towneleye Cycle – 32 plays
The Chester Cycle – 25 plays
The N- Town Cycle – 42 plays

7. examples of Mystery Plays
During the14th and 15th century these plays were performed in the Corpus Christi festival
For such elaborate cycles presented out of doors only summer festivals were really suitable, as the feast of Corpus Christi
Eg. Noah ( Wakefield cycle), The Three Maries etc.

8. Folk Drama – secular drama (non-religious)
Discouraged by the church
Took place around planting and harvest time and presented outdoors
Most pagan religions gave thanks to an earth goddess, hence celebration around planting and harvest.
Example: Robin Hood

9. morality plays
Morality plays were dramatized allegories of a representative Christian life.
Protagonists usually represented Mankind or Everyman
The other characters were personification of virtues, vices and death
Angels and Demons contest for the prize of the soul of Mankind

10. note
Allegory is a story where the characters and sometimes the settings are symbols for particular ideas about human life or some political scenario.

11. plot of a Morality play Major theme - Quest for salvation
Crucial events are - Temptations
- Sinning
- The climatic confrontation with death

12. note on the character - Vice
A character known as the ‘Vice’ often played the role of tempter in a fashion both sinister and comic.
He is regarded by some literary historians as a precursor both of the cynical, ironical villain and of some of the comic figures in Elizabethan drama, including Shakespeare’s Falstaff.

13. interludes
These were short performances or plays that were placed between the acts of longer plays.
They often used religious and political issues as their topics.
But they were presented as secular farces and witty dialogues.
Performed in the late 15th and early 16th century by bands of professional actors

14. example – THE FOUR PP
One clear link between late medieval morality plays and 16th century theatre is the interlude The Four PP by John Heywood that dates from the early 1540s.
The four characters are – A palmer
- A pardoner
- A pothecary
- A pedlar
These four characters engage in a lying contest

15. note
Farce is a kind of comedy that provokes simple hearty laughter among the audience – “belly loughs”.
This is done by using highly exaggerated and caricatured characters and putting them in improbable situations.

16. first English comedy
Ralph Roister Doister ( about 1552) by Nicholas Udall
Gammer Gurton’s Needle ( acted at Cambridge in 1556)
Arranged in five acts like the classical ordering
But the material was native and original
Humour – was coarse and vulgar without any intellectual appeal
With this the drama was relieved from allegorical representation of middle English period to real life representation with natural characterization.

17. first English tragedy – form and style
Gorboduc (1561) by Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville
It was also the first play in blank verse composed of regular metrical lines of iambic pentameter which were unrhymed.
This brought the dialogues near to the natural rhythms of English speech
Later in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama blank verse became the standard form

18. first English tragedy – theme and plot
The subject matter was a political one about who would ascend the throne.
It reflected the contemporary uncertainty of the succession to the throne.
It introduced the genre of Senecan tragedy that was developed by the later playwright Thomas Kyd in The Spanish Tragedy.
It was a direct imitation of Seneca as it portrayed a series of slaughter, bloodshed and revenge.

19. important questions
Define the terms Miracle play and Morality play? Evaluate their contribution to the growth of English drama. How “interludes” are related to these plays?
Discuss in details the first English comedy and the first English tragedy and estimate their role in the development of British drama.

20. Thank you