The Afterlife of Medieval Theater

Circumscribing the Theater: Enclosure, Regulation, and Censorship.

In 1598, John Stowe (1525–1605) published his Survey of London, a record of the city's rich history, changing geography, and rapidly disappearing theatrical traditions. Among other things, he noted with regret the loss of traditional recreations, "which open pastimes in my youth, being now suppressed, worser practices within doors are to be feared." Citing William FitzStephen's description of London, written four centuries earlier, Stowe devoted page after page to a description of the Christmas revels, Carnival celebrations, city festivals, athletic contests, religious processions, and plays which had been the focus of community life in the days before the Reformation. In one section in particular, he focuses on May games, describing first the pleasures of the "sweet meadows and green woods" and other pleasures of the season, and then providing detail about the nature of the celebrations themselves:

I find also, that in the month of May, the citizens of London of all estates, lightly in every parish, or sometimes two or three parishes joining together, had their several mayings, and did fetch in Maypoles, with divers warlike shows, with good archers, morris dancers, and other devices, for pastime all day long; and toward the evening they had stage plays, and bonfires in the streets.

Some of those plays featured the exploits of Robin Hood and his men, who would entertain the company with "other pageants and pastimes." These, despite the potential they afforded for stringent social commentary, continued to be popular in England. But other types of entertainment, particularly those plays associated with religious holidays like Corpus Christi, would be increasingly suppressed during the Reformation, when the Roman Catholic Church, with its emphasis on feast days, was being displaced by the new Church of England. By the end of the sixteenth century, the rulers of most Protestant countries were actively engaged in rooting out and destroying the theatrical traditions of the Middle Ages, which had become associated with "popish idolatry" and superstition. In Catholic countries, the Counter Reformation, a movement to suppress Protestant ideas, produced ironically similar results, as religious and secular authorities attempted to control and regulate plays that might potentially preach unsound doctrine or carry unsavory political messages. The advent of the printing press after 1450 also made it easier to control the reproduction and dissemination of texts; for although print made more and more plays available to a wider public, this new technology also made effective censorship of these plays more efficient and more complete. These circumscriptions of medieval drama were matched by another new trend: the enclosure of theater itself, as plays were now confined to purpose-built structures that required the payment of admission. Not only was access to theater now limited to those who could pay, and performance of plays increasingly the province of a specialized acting profession, but the plays themselves had to be vetted and licensed by the authorities. Finally, the teachings of Renaissance humanism advocated a return to classical dramatic forms and the Aristotelian conventions of comedy and tragedy, which were now considered superior to the dramatic genres invented during the Middle Ages. Together, these modern innovations posed a threat to the continued survival of medieval theater.

Reception and Revival.

Yet varieties of medieval theater persisted, despite these strictures. Renaissance dramatists continued to use themes, characters, and devices borrowed from the plays they had grown up watching. William Shakespeare could well have witnessed the performance of a Corpus Christi cycle, possibly at Coventry, and would certainly have seen miracle and morality plays performed by troupes of traveling players. One such professional troupe performs "The Mousetrap" or play-within-the-play devised by Hamlet; a very different group of amateur performers stages "The most lamentable comedy and most cruel death of Pyramus and Thisbe" after Bottom the weaver recovers his senses (and loses his ass's head) in A Midsummer Night's Dream.

The comedies of Molière, which still form the cornerstone of the repertoire of the Comédie Française, are essentially reworkings of medieval French farces. In Spain,

THE CENSORSHIP OF A MEDIEVAL PLAY

introduction: In 1567, the mayor and Council of York decided to seek expert advice. With the accession of Queen Elizabeth I in 1558, and the re-establishment of the Protestant faith in England, it was becoming increasingly dangerous to perform plays that might be construed as sympathetic to the Catholic Church. The most controversial of the Corpus Christi pageants was the "Creed Play," and it was this pageant, in particular, that caused the men of York a great deal of anxiety. Therefore, they approached the dean of York Minster (cathedral), Matthew Hutton, and asked for his opinion as a theologian. He responded to them in a letter, excerpted below. Perhaps the best proof that the "Creed Play" was ultimately deemed too dangerous for public performance is the fact that it no longer survives: it appears that all extant copies were destroyed sometime after the receipt of this letter.

To the right honourable my Lord Mayor of York, and the Right worshipful his Brethren.

I have perused the books that your Lordship with your Brethren sent me, and as I find many things that I much like because of their antiquity, so see I many things that I can not allow, because they are Disagreeing from the sincerity of the Gospel, the which things, if they should be altogether cancelled or altered into other matter, the whole drift of the play should be altered, and therefore I dare not put my pen to it, because I want both skill and leisure to amend it, though in goodwill I assure you, if I were worthy to give your Lordship and your Right worshipful Brethren council, surely my advice should be that it should not be played. For though it was plausible forty years ago, and would now also of the ignorant sort be well liked, yet now in this happy time of the Gospel I know the learned will dislike it, and how the State will bear with it, I know not.

source: Matthew Hutton, Letter to the Mayor and Council of York, 1567, in Medieval Drama: An Anthology. Ed. Greg Walker (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 2000): 206. Text adapted from Early Modern English by Carol Symes.

MEDIEVAL THEATER IN THE NEW WORLD

introduction:

[This text has been suppressed due to author restrictions]

source:

the Assumption play of Elche continues to be performed every year on 15 August. In the German village of Oberammergau, the entire population is required to perform the Passion Play staged every ten years since 1634. At York and Chester in England, and at Toronto in Canada, groups of performers drawn from local community theaters and universities regularly organize Corpus Christi pageants; in London, the National Theater of Great Britain has twice produced The Mysteries, a cycle of plays presented over the course of an entire day. Early music ensembles, beginning in 1958 with a landmark production of The Play of Daniel by New York Pro Musica, have found audiences increasingly receptive to medieval liturgical dramas; the works of Hildegard of Bingen have become perennial favorites, and her Ordo virtutum has been staged at the Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris and at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., among other venues. But medieval dramatic forms also influence modern theatrical genres, indirectly and directly. Mel Gibson's 2004 film The Passion of the Christ is one of the most obvious modern-day examples, but the "rock opera" Jesus Christ, Superstar by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice is more closely based on medieval models. This is to say nothing of the ways that the humor, pageantry, cruelty, and humanity of medieval drama have contributed to the development of everything from television sit-coms to grand opera. In the end, medieval theater proved too elusive, too multi-dimensional, and too powerful to be eradicated by the more limited theatricality of the modern world.

sources

John Block Friedman, "The Performance of Some Wakefield Plays on the University of Illinois Campus," in From Page to Performance: Essays on Early English Drama. Ed. by John A. Alford (East Lansing. Mich.: Michigan State University Press, 1995): 99–108.