DRAMA, MEDIEVAL

The drama of the Middle Ages began as mimetic representations of religious history, in which clerics and subsequently laymen enacted the events of Holy Scripture, God's dealings with His people in the Old and New Testaments. Originally associated with the Church's annual festival of Easter Sunday, it was gradually expanded to include the events commemorated at other great feasts such as Christmas and the Epiphany, and even saints' days in some locales. From the 10th to the 13th centuries the plays were in Latin, the official language of the Roman liturgy, but in the 14th and 15th centuries a vernacular religious drama flourished in each of the western European countries, and in this stage of expansion was marked by the composition of cycles dramatizing the full range of scriptural events from Creation to the Last Judgment.

A second stage in the development of the medieval drama resulted in morality plays. These belong mainly to the 15th and 16th centuries and are distinguishable from the miracle plays by their extensive use of allegory and by the shift in subject matter, as the period advances, from religious truths to secular, and even political, indoctrination.

Finally, with the rise of the interludes as almost an inevitable corollary of the moralities, the medieval drama lost its original religious inspiration and concern. The allegorical element still continues in the interludes, but is progressively employed in the service of farce.

This survey traces the development of the early drama: the Latin liturgical drama, the vernacular mystery cycles, and dramatization of the saints' lives, or miracle plays (see morality plays).

The medieval religious drama was a creation of the Benedictine monks during the carolingian renais sance (see benedictines). It was a phase of the literary and artistic work that accompanied the renovations of liturgical service books under charlemagne's direction, and was preceded by many experiments of an essentially lyrical character that are known under the general name of tropes. Although many attempts have been made by historians to connect the liturgical drama with a secular theatrical tradition surviving from classical antiquity, there is little or no proof of such continuity. Evidence points to the collapse of the Roman theater even before the fall of the empire itself, and the seeds of its destruction were already present in its most flourishing days. The Roman citizen, even when he patronized the stage, looked with contempt upon the performers, most of whom were slaves and were barred from juridical and social privileges. The material of the performances was thoroughly obscene, evoking the disapproval even of a pagan emperor (marcus aurelius) and meriting the condemnation of many Christian leaders in the early days of the Church. During the barbarian invasions, when the Germanic peoples infiltrated or plundered the imperial territory, the newly arrived inhabitants ignored the decadent performances of the actors (histriones and mimi ) as utterly alien to their own tribal customs of bardic recitations at military festivals. Though some type of informal entertainment by vagabond actors may have long survived the Roman theatrical institution, it is nevertheless probable that even the conception of public stage performance was lost in Italy and Western Europe from about a.d. 600.

Liturgical drama. Quasi-dramatic ceremonies within the Church, such as Holy Week observances at Jerusalem or the celebration of Mass itself, have often tempted historians to interpret it as drama, but the liturgical drama

of the 10th century was a wholly new phenomenon. Dialogue and patterned movement do not constitute drama, without the presence of fictive impersonation, i.e., the assumption of roles by actors who pretend to be other than themselves. This was the fundamental thesis of Professor Karl Young (The Drama of the Medieval Church, passim ) in his monumental study of the liturgical plays, and it remains valid as the essential criterion of drama.

Troping. The process of troping was at first a lyrical and musical embellishment of an established liturgical text, e.g., the introit of the Mass. The trope was a commentary or explanation provided for the text and probably had greatest significance at the Introit, which strikes the theme for the Mass of a particular feast. Often an extract from the Old Testament Psalms, the Introit needed a New Testament counterpart to reveal its prefigurative or prophetic import. Even in the Gallican liturgy (see gal lican rites), used in Frankish territory before Charlemagne's time, a prose preface recited by the priest had served this function. In the Carolingian period and thereafter, a choral prelude to the Introit psalm was substituted for the preface and chanted by the monastic choir. Thus the Introit for Easter Sunday, from the 138th Psalm, began with the 18th verse, "Resurrexi et adhuc tecum sum" and was "troped" by prefixing the angelic dialogue with the three Marys at the tomb beginning: "Quem queritis in sepulchro, Christicole?" The transition between trope and Introit proper was arranged in some such manner as that used at Limoges: "Alleluia, ad sepulcrum residens angelus nunciat resurrexisse Christum. En ecce completum est illud quod olim ipse per prophetam dixerat ad Patrem, taliter inquiens: Resurrexi," etc. (Young, 1:209).

For a century (c. 850–950) the tropes were merely chanted by the choir, which was divided into semichoruses to simulate dialogue. Only when individual clergymen took the roles of the angel and the Marys and acted out the little scene at the sepulcher was drama present. The earliest surviving copy of such a play is that in the Regularis concordia, a rule drawn up in England about 975 to create unity in monastic practices, but the custom was older than this date in French religious houses. As soon as genuine drama was present the scene was removed from the Mass and placed at the end of matins, the hour in the Divine Office that precedes the dawn. It was an appropriate time for the Easter play, which may have been attracted to this place in the recitation of the Office by the custom, already established in connection with Easter Matins, of raising up a cross that bad been "buried" on Good Friday after its veneration, the entombed cross sometimes being accompanied by a Sacred Host. This ceremony was known as the Elevatio Crucis and would be followed quite naturally by a dramatic representation of the Marys' visit to the sepulcher.

Easter Plays. The Easter drama in this simple form was known as the Visitatio Sepulchri. It was enlarged by two additional scenes, the approach of Peter and John to the tomb and the appearance of the risen Savior to Mary Magdalen. The first of these increments offered theatrical opportunities for dynamism as opposed to the nearly static effect of the original Visitatio. Peter and John raced to the sepulcher, John outrunning his companion, and, since no dialogue was provided by the scriptural accounts, the monastic chorus usually chanted a narrative commentary, the liturgical antiphon Currebant duo simul, and thus filled the silent interval with music. The angel was still present to point out the empty grave and to hold up the linen cloths that had bound the Sacred Body. In the Latin texts that survive from German monasteries, there is often a rubric directing the congregation to sing a vernacular Easter hymn at the close of this scene, its opening words being given as "Christ ist erstanden." The popular hymn might then be followed by the Te Deum laudamus, if no other scene was enacted. The directions for the plays with Peter and John as characters include some indication of costume and a growing realism in the representation. The Apostles were to be clothed in red vestments (dalmaticis rubeis ) and Peter was to limp visibly. The tomb might be a structure erected on the model of the sepulcher in the church of the Anastasis in Jerusalem, or the tomb of a wealthy donor who had provided in his will for the use of his monument within the church edifice for this theatrical purpose.

The last addition to the Easter play was the so-called Hortulanus scene, in which Christ appeared to Magdalen in the form of a gardener. It was probably not until the late 12th century that this climactic incident was introduced, and it seems to have been a French innovation. It provided for the first time a peripeteia within the acted play, a reversal of the emotional mood by a "recognition" or illumination, which is fundamental to dramatic structure conceived as a finished work of art. When the three scenes were integrated by this emotional reversal the lyric beauty of the three Marys' laments was balanced by the joy that followed the stunning revelation of Christ's identity. At times Mary Magdalen herself chanted the Improperia or reproaches from the Good Friday liturgy; or the well-known Easter sequence victimae paschali laudes was divided between Mary and the Apostles, whose "Dic nobis, Maria, quid vidisti in via?" served as a fitting denouement to the now fully elaborated Ludus paschalis. The risen Lord's appearance was carefully provided for in the stage directions: at Saint-Benoîtsur-Loire the famous Fleury playbook contains the rubric that the actor impersonating Him should be clothed in a white garment tinged as with blood and that he was to carry the Cross through the monastery choir before appearing to Mary; that at his return he should be holding the Resurrection banner in his hand.

Further elaboration of the Easter dramatic observances can be considered incidental and occasional. In German liturgical manuscripts there was sometimes a scene prefixed to the Visitatio Sepulchri, in which the Marys stopped on the way to the tomb for purchase of ointments. A spice-merchant or unguentarius was featured in such an episode, but within the Latin drama he remained a dignified and quiet character. Only in the vernacular of a later time did he become a comic persona, caviling over the price of his wares and delaying the sale. In some churches a play called the Peregrini was performed at Vespers within Easter week, dramatizing the confrontation of Christ with the disciples on the road to Emmaus. This scene was likely to be performed in the nave of the church, a structure having been erected to serve as the inn where the breaking of the bread and the recognition of the Savior occurred.

Christmas Plays. The very widespread distribution and the frequency of liturgical drama at Easter are attested by the several hundred manuscripts of this play that still survive. In comparison with this quantity the number of extant Christmas plays is so small as to be negligible. That the Christmas texts are later than the Easter ones cannot be doubted, for it is not until the 11th century that Christmas tropes are found, and these are nondramatic choral elaborations of the Introit. Genuine drama, associated with Christmas Matins, very probably grew up some time during the same century. The simple nucleus of the text is a close imitation of the Easter Visitatio Sepulchri. For "Quem queritis in sepulchro?" now appears "Quem queritis in presepe [manger], pastores, dicite." The question is addressed to the shepherds who have come to Bethlehem, and the speakers are to be identified as the apocryphal midwives represented in legend and art as attending Mary. When the shepherds reply that they are seeking Christ the Savior, they are told that He is present—"Adest hic"—instead of receiving the negative answer given at the tomb, "Non est hic." The close verbal parallelism reveals the origin of the Christmas text in the much older Easter pattern, but the lyrical embellishment of the simple dialogue proceeded on its independent course as the Christmas plays became more elaborate. (Young, 2:4.)

When the dramatist saw fit to include the appearance of the angelic messenger to the shepherds in the field, he used St. Luke's account of the incident, ending with the choral Gloria in excelsis Deo chanted by the several clerics representing the heavenly host. The shepherds on their way to Bethlehem chanted an antiphon or hymn as processional, e.g., the Pax in terris nunciatur in the well-known play from Rouen. After the dialogue with the attendants at the crib, they might chant the beautiful hymn (originally a Mass sequence), Salve, Virgo singularis, paying honor to the Virgin Mother as they approached to adore the Child. The Holy Family was usually represented not by living actors but by statues placed about a crib or manger. Since the dramatic records of these plays are so few and meager, we cannot be sure whether there was any connection between these constructions used as stage props and the stable scenes erected, especially under Franciscan auspices, in public squares and churches at Christmas time. (see crib, christmas.)

The number of Christmas plays built around the Quem queritis in presepe? is fewer than ten, as far as surviving manuscripts are witness. Undoubtedly there were some others of which we have no remains, for parish records in England contain references to liturgical plays at this season. There was also, however, a type of Christmas play connected with the office of Lauds, in which choir-boys dressed as shepherds. Professor Young found only one instance of this practice, at Rouen, but Father Richard Donovan has discovered that the custom was widespread in France, and of special importance in Spain even into modern times. It may therefore more certainly be regarded as the typical Christmas play than the Quem queritis can be. Its kernel is the question and answer that make up one of the antiphons for Christmas Lauds (the second hour of the Divine Office). The following example is from Dax in France: "Pastores, dicite quidnam vidistis, et annunciate Christi nativitatem…. Infantem vidimus pannis involutum, et choros angelorum laudantes Salvatorem." (Donovan, 34). To this question chanted by the choir and answered by several boys dressed as shepherds there might be prefixed a journey to Bethlehem, so that the dialogue became a report upon this visit. The timing of the presentation seems to have varied in different localities, the most common practice being the chanting of Lauds (with the drama) immediately after the first Mass of Christmas.

Christmas-related Plays. Of much greater popularity than these Nativity plays were two other dramas closely related to the Christmas story, namely, the Procession of Prophets and the Offering of the Magi. The first of these has a curious development unique in the drama of the West, although there are historians who consider that the Byzantine liturgy (see byzantine rite) contained dramatic offices of this kind. Its origin is not a trope but a sermon, written in the 5th century, long associated erroneously with St. Augustine as author and incorporated into the office of Matins during the Christmas season as a homiletic reading. A leader summons various Prophets from the Old Testament to render their testimony to the Messiah, and each one is quoted in a few sentences, this Hebraic evidence being augmented by citation from a few Gentile figures like Vergil, Nabuchodonosor, and the Erythraean Sibyl. The basic speaker (Pseudo-Augustine) engages in a kind of imaginary dialogue with the Prophets and also with auditors who are indicated as the Jewish people refusing to accept Christ as Messiah. The dialogue and the monologues of each speaker form in their totality a recapitulation of Old Testament prevision of the Savior's coming and thus a summation of the Advent liturgy on the threshold of the great Christmas feast.

The obvious dramatic potentialities of this lectio were recognized and explored in a number of French monasteries from the 11th century, the oldest surviving text of a dramatized version coming to us from Saint-Martial at Limoges. Although originally no action occurred beyond the advance of each Prophet to the center of a platform or stage, the total effect of the solemn processional form and chanting appears to have been highly theatrical. The rubrics provide for costuming and makeup of considerable realism: Isaiah was to be bearded, Moses to wear a dalmatic and carry the Tables of the Law, Daniel to be dressed splendidly, Vergil to be crowned with ivy, and so on. Professor Martial Rose has recorded that modern performances of this play (in the vernacular versions) have an astonishing effect upon an audience, because the short homiletic pronouncements can become little fiery sermons of great eloquence and emotional power (Rose, 171). Some of the prophecies were delivered in the more elaborate Latin plays with accompanying action. Thus Nabuchodonosor consigned the three youths to a fiery "furnace" prepared in advance with cloth and oakum fiber ready to be ignited at the proper moment. Most popular of all such prophetic scenes was undoubtedly that of the Prophet Balaam, who rode in upon an ass, spurring it fiercely in the attempt to reach King Balak, but was prevented from completing his forbidden journey by an angel with drawn sword. This is the stuff of which theater is made, and a gradually perfected technique transformed the spectacles from homiletic to genuinely dramatic performance.

In addition to the Prophet play there was another drama associated with the Christmas season and destined to overshadow the popularity of the quiet Nativity scene. This was the Officium stellae celebrating the Epiphany to the Magi, which gave opportunity for splendid trappings in the royal garments, ceremonial, and gifts of the Oriental kings, and for the characterization of Herod as the ranting tyrant. Herod became the stellar role of liturgical drama, for his treachery and his rage transcended the conventional limits of stylized and hieratic speech and gesture. In one version he might express mere anxiety at the information that a Child had been born King of the Jews; in another he might threaten the Magi or cast them into prison; in several versions he would give vent to his fury and frustration by brandishing his sword on learning that the three Wise Men had eluded him after their visit to Bethlehem. All of this activity was a delight to the spectators even in the dignified performances within the church edifices, and it was to become a major comic attraction in the vernacular cycles when Herod could vent his spite and display his histrionic talents on a pageant wagon or in a public square.

From a literary point of view the Magi plays were among the most finished and artistic. The interview between Herod and the alien kings was sometimes cast into the form of Latin hexameters in the classical manner, closely imitating passages in Vergil's Aeneid in which the wandering Trojans are questioned concerning their home and their destination. The Magi offered their gifts to the Christ Child in solemn and decorous phrases, which in some texts have a patterned rhetoric that is genuinely lyrical. Herod himself was not confined to gesticulation and swordplay, but occasionally expressed his fear in an eloquent stanza, or his anger in a threatening tag line that has been identified as a quotation from Sallust: "Incendium meum ruina extinguam."

International Scope. Within the limits of strictly liturgical drama, then, the countries of Western Europe show an almost identical series of expansions and elaborations. Since the medieval Latin language of the plays was an international idiom, there was free and extensive borrowing of texts without adaptation to the circumstances of national locales. So similar are the liturgical sources and the ecclesiastical customs upon which the dramas rest that we can infer the nature of any Latin play that happens not to survive in one or the other country. If a locale does not possess the remains of a Hortulanus scene, for example, one can reconstruct the missing material confidently by study of a French manuscript for the same chronological period. The case of England is peculiarly illustrative of this fact. Virtually no Latin texts survive from the British Isles for the liturgical plays because the 16th-century reformers were thoroughly hostile to this drama and destroyed the whole surviving corpus of monastic and cathedral manuscripts containing it. It is quite easy, however, to reconstruct the tradition for England by a study of local parish records of performances and of corresponding Continental texts for each phase of the development. French, German, and Spanish libraries withstood the antagonism of the Reformation forces and have yielded abundant treasures of this genre. Spain (and its New World colonies) preserved into the 20th century even the actual performances of the medieval plays in some locales. Puerto Rico, for example, abolished the remnants of its popular dramatic customs only in the 1950s, at the official restoration of the easter vigil observances and the revision of the Holy Week liturgy made by Rome at that time.

Mystery plays. The liturgical Latin drama must not be relegated to the centuries preceding the 13th, as though it were abandoned for a new interest in the vernacular and left to decay within monastic cloisters. The dramatized trope continued to be performed within the churches long after the great enterprise of mystery-play production had been undertaken by parish or civic guilds. The Latin plays had been the prerogative of monastic communities, on the one hand, and of the cathedral churches with their chapters of resident canons, on the other. In both cases the actors in the plays were clergymen who performed the dramatized liturgy in the very choirs of their churches as an extension of their regular duties in the choral chanting of the Divine Office. The vernacular mysteries were generically different in that they were the prerogative of laymen who supported, regulated, and acted them as parish activities. This guild enterprise should not be regarded as a competitive one, drawing the spectators out of the church and into the public squares, but rather as one supplementary to the church productions and associated with a different part of the liturgical year than either Christmas or Easter, namely with Corpus Christi.

The very term "secularization" of the drama, which occurs in so many histories of the 13th-century developments, is an unfortunate misnomer. It creates the impression of a growing irreverence and worldliness as the plays became more elaborate, as though they were no longer appropriate for association with church and clergy. On the contrary, the vernacular cycles were still the literary work of monks and cathedral canons, who were the only ones trained in the theological learning needed for these vast enterprises and usually the only ones who had the rhetorical and poetic skill for the actual composition. To the very end of the period in which the English, French, and German mystery cycles flourished they remained essentially a devotional exercise pervaded by the doctrines and the liturgical spirit of the Church, although increasing emphasis on spectacle, entertainment, and professional acting was the inevitable concomitant of experiment and experience. Comic incident and characterization, though often singled out for undue praise by modern critics, were the peripheral and accidental fringes of a cosmic narrative that related the history of God's people seriously and reverently.

Beginning of Mystery Cycles. Some of the liturgical plays at Christmas during the transition period (13th century) were already small cycles, including Prophets, Annunciation, Visitation, Nativity, Magi, and Herod elements. The Easter drama seems not to have reached a comparable degree of elaboration until the vernacular plays were written, and nothing but the most rudimentary beginnings of a Passion play belong to this Latin drama. France, which was the birthplace of so many experimental features of the drama from the 10th to the 12th centuries, provides virtually nothing in extant remains from the transition era. Germany possesses a manuscript that testifies to the existence of highly developed Christmas plays, the famous Benediktbeuern (see beuron, abbey of) text from Munich, embracing the whole narrative from the Prophets to the death of Herod. England's loss of all liturgical manuscripts, as mentioned above, presents a special problem in the assessment of its precyclic drama, but the state of its surviving vernacular cycles so clearly reveals the building of them in successive "layers" that one can infer the transitional Latin stage from the most primitive stratum of the English.

Corpus Christi Cycles. The attachment of plays to the post-Paschal season and especially to the feast of cor pus christi seems to have been a gradual achievement and not a uniform one. The earliest record of a complete cycle performed at this time of year is from Cividale in Italy, for Pentecost of the year 1298, and the record is duplicated there for the year 1303. The feast of Corpus Christi itself was extended to the universal Church early in the 14th century, and a procession seems to have been associated with it from the beginning as a solemn celebration. Most probably the plays were attracted to the grand festival because of the time of year, which was propitious for outdoor performances. They should not, however, be regarded as part of the procession, even though at times actors walked in it. The procession was a strictly religious observance, in which the Sacred Host was carried through the streets of a town accompanied by clergy and laity. The plays, which were much older, at least in their Latin form, than the Corpus Christi festival, became casually associated with this late spring holy day in northern England and in various places on the Continent. When this association occurred, the Latin plays of Christmas and Easter were translated into the vernacular and expanded by degrees into the entire story of salvation, from the scene in the Garden of Eden until the final Judgment.

The extant cycles of this kind in England are those of Chester, York, Wakefield, Coventry (a fragmentary text), and one conjecturally associated with the town of Lincoln. France has no really comparable texts but rather passion plays, the earliest of which is the Passion du Palatinus, of the 14th century, lacking Old Testament and Nativity material altogether. In Germany both Corpus Christi plays and the distinct genre of Passion play flourished; the former, called Frohnleichnamspiel, is the pattern of the early 14th-century Vienna play as well as that of the Erlau Magdalen play, and the Eger and the Künzelzau cycles. The genuine Passion play, often containing only the Fall of Man, the Passion, and the Resurrection, can be found in such texts as the Donaueschingen, Redentin, Frankfurt, and Alsfeld plays. There is a Cornish cycle, probably based on Continental Breton models, which is of the Corpus Christi type, but strangely lacks a Nativity drama.

One of the greatest problems in the study of the cycles is the origin of the Old Testament plays. Since there are amazingly few Latin dramas on any Old Testament narratives, the composition of such texts is attributed to the period of vernacular expansion in the 14th century, and it is possible that they are as late as the 15th. All speculation on this problem must take account of the theory advanced by the French historian Marius Sepet, in a book entitled Les Prophètes du Christ (1878). Briefly, his idea was that the Old Testament plays in the vernacular cycles were incidents originally developed within the Latin Prophet plays (discussed above), subsequently detached to stand as small independent dramas and finally reunited into a much larger framework than that of the Prophetae procession. This hypothesis is closely related to the already rather advanced cyclic status of Latin Christmas plays in the transitional 13th century, and Sepet regarded the Old Testament material as controlled by the terminus in the Nativity of Christ. If the theory is correct, these narratives of the great Jewish leaders like Abraham and Moses must have been present in at least the earliest stage of vernacular cycle-building and perhaps already in the Latin era.

Sepet's book was hailed as a monumental contribution to medieval dramatic studies in his day and was accepted by almost all European scholars. The challenge to it has been largely an American phenomenon; even today, after practically a full century, Sepet's theory is referred to by European historians as the standard explanation of cyclic development. The point of attack from American critics has been Sepet's emphasis upon prophecy in the Old Testament material, whereas the vernacular plays are usually based upon the Patriarchs Adam, Noah, Abraham, and Moses. This is not the place for a full account of the controversy, but one may say that a flexible conception of prophecy, such as Sepet possessed, can embrace the figures of the Patriarchs, who were precursors and prefigurative types of Christ. The inclusion of them in a procession of witnesses to the Messiah is simply an extension of the "prophetic principle" (W. W. Greg's term) from the Processus prophetarum to the entire Old Testament span.

When the elaborate Christmas plays (perhaps already linked with Old Testament expansions) were united to the Easter plays and translated into English, French, or German for use at the Corpus Christi festival, a rather lengthy series of plays was available for production, even before the insertion of incidents from Christ's ministry, suffering, and Crucifixion. These inserted incidents were to form a second layer of composition added perhaps a generation later than the primitive stratum and detectable by the large amount of apocryphal legendary material, which stands out in relief against the liturgical character of the earlier work. The plays continued to be subjected to revision, polishing, and expansion, and thus a third layer of stratification is visible in a number of cycles, made significant by professional literary art, such as the use of the alliterative poetic line in the Towneley and York cycles. This visible stratification characterizes the English plays rather than the French and German, for those in France are so highly developed that the more primitive layers have been completely obscured and those in Germany seem to have progressed very slowly and retained the style of the first cyclic expansions without easily discernible revisions.

English and French Cycles. The city of Chester in northwestern England has long enjoyed the distinction of possessing the oldest extant English cycle, which was considered, according to some ancient records, to date from 1328. It has been the work of Professor F. M. Salter to challenge that priority by showing that the records containing the early dating are themselves 16th-century reconstructions of the historical case and quite in error. Salter has revised the estimate of the Chester cycle's age by dating it in the time of Sir Henry Francis, a monk of St. Werburgh's Abbey, about 1375. If this decision is correct, Chester's plays were first produced about the same time as those of York (1378), Beverley (1377), and Coventry (1392). It is probable that the second stratum in each cycle was the work of revisers about 1400, and that the literary embellishments of the final stage were completed by 1425 or 1430.

When a cycle spanned the entire biblical narrative, it might include 30 or 40 plays and thus require several days for its enactment. The magnitude of the enterprise can scarcely be grasped today, when revivals of the plays almost inevitably mean cutting of the text (e.g., of all the Old Testament scenes except that of the Fall) or selection of an individual play for a Christmas or Easter production. The problem of temporal disposition is only one of several gigantic technical difficulties in the representation, for the provision of actors, costumes, and stage props in such a performance must have taxed the ingenuity and the financial resources of a whole city. The disposition of space for the rapidly changing locales of a cycle was solved in various ways, the Continental solution differing markedly from the English method.

Manner of Staging. In France the outdoor stages were but the spatial extension of the interior scenes that had characterized the liturgical drama. The earliest extant French vernacular play is Le Mystère d'Adam (c. 1175), containing elaborate rubrics that indicate its method of staging. Since it was a miniature Old Testament cycle it needed a Garden of Eden, Heaven, Hell, and a place for the Prophets who rendered their testimonies to the Messiah. The top step or porch of a church (perhaps a side entrance) was used for the terrestrial Paradise, Heaven itself was within the church, while the ground level at the foot of the steps became the refuge for the rejected Adam and Eve and the Limbo to which they were finally led away. As the plays were expanded later, a series of loca or sedes was arranged in linear juxtaposition within view of a spectator-throng and capable even of attracting an audience to move in succession from one sedes to the next for the progressing action. The individual locality might be a raised scaffold provided with curtains and some furniture, a series of these structures lining a public square or even built into a large composite stage such as that of the well-known miniature in the Valenciennes Passion manuscript. France knew also the pageant wagon drawn through a town from one locale to another, at each of which an audience was gathered in expectation of a performance. Records from a few places like Béthune and Lille make it certain that such movable stages were known, but the stationary type was the norm for French theater.

In England the pageant wagon was known at York and Chester at least, and probably elsewhere. It has long been the accepted theory that such stages on wagons drawn from place to place were the regular English device. The theory has been challenged by Professor Martial Rose, who has suggested that some towns, notably Wakefield and Lincoln, probably used a single playing space, an outdoor theater in the round, with stationary scaffolds arranged on the circumference of a large circle. Pageant wagons were probably drawn up with stage and equipment used only in a single play, (e.g., Noah's prefabricated ark) and then removed after their moment had passed. The stationary scaffolds would have been designated for locales of recurring importance, e.g., Heaven, Jerusalem, and Nazareth. The validity of this hypothesis rests partly upon stage directions in the manuscripts that could not have been implemented without a large playing space and several sedes; it rests also upon statements in the parish or guild records that seem to support the notion of a single place rather than a series of designated stopping points. British historians of the drama have taken the lead in this effort to demonstrate that both mystery and morality plays were frequently performed in outdoor theaters in which rows of seats were constructed on a tiered hillside built artificially around an open grassy "place," this "place" serving as a flexible locality for scenes not assigned to one of the scaffolds or wagons.

The use of such a playing area and theater in the round would have enabled a small group of actors to perform an entire cycle with unity and continuity. On the other hand, the use of many pageant wagons drawn through a town in succession would have required a different actor for each role in every individual pageant. Professor Rose has argued that Wakefield had so small a population throughout the 15th century that it could not have supplied enough actors to duplicate the roles again and again in a series of pageant-wagon performances. It becomes highly probable that such a village as Wakefield would have entrusted its cycle to a single religious guild rather than to the civic trade guilds, at least until the 16th century. In York, on the other hand, a large and flourishing city, the craftsmen's groups were numerous and of great membership, thus making the theatrical venture of the pageant wagons a feasible and successful undertaking.

Acting and Care of Text. Civic and parish records make it clear that high standards of performance were established and maintained in the Corpus Christi plays. Although it would be erroneous to designate the mystery cycles as professional theater, since its actors were carpenters, bakers, merchants, and so forth, the civic pride of a town was nevertheless great enough to regulate efficiently and strictly the actors and the productions. The records of royal visits to a place like Coventry for the purpose of attending the Corpus Christi plays indicate the respect in which the enterprises were held. The season of Lent was often used as a time for tryouts and selection of actors. Undoubtedly there were individuals who, like Bottom the Weaver, wished to play all the parts, but regulations like those at York imposed heavy fines on those attempting more roles than were consonant with excellent performance. An actor who forgot his lines or read them indistinctly was subject to fine, and the guild responsible for a play was required under financial penalty to furnish its pageant wagon well and maintain it in good condition. Late arrival of a pageant at its playing locale was also penalized. Even the spectators were under surveillance to prevent carrying of weapons into the crowd or public demeanor capable of initiating riot or disorder.

In addition to the care bestowed upon the theatrical production itself there was also constant supervision of the text and frequent remodeling of its literary character. In some towns the manuscript of the cycle was copied and preserved by the local community of monks; in others it was the property of the civic officials, who deputed clerks to keep it in legible condition. In England during the 16th century, the disturbances of the Reformation focused attention upon the medieval dramatic manuscript wherever it had survived, and the struggle to control its possession and revision became a major issue, especially in the Archdiocese of York. During the 15th century, before such troubles developed, the revision of the plays was a matter of gradual literary embellishment. As mentioned previously, most of the cycles show a third layer of "stratification," that is, a rewriting or an addition of new scenes (c. 1420–30), distinguished by more mature characterization and greater prosodic sophistication than had marked either the primitive layer of vernacular translation from the Latin or the second level of apocryphal and legendary expansion.

Names of individual authors have not survived in English literary embellishment of this kind, but modern scholarship has found ways of designating the style of this or that reviser. "The Wakefield Master" is the best-known 15th-century author, distinguished for his late work in the Towneley plays, recognizable by the peculiarly complex stanza form he employed and by a vigorous comic spirit touched with sardonic wit. "The York Realist" is another such appellation, applied to the author of the York Passion plays and certain other dramas in the cycle, perhaps most notable for the richness and complexity of their diction. We are more fortunate in the search for authorial identity in Continental cycles. The great Passion plays of France have specific names attached to them: Eustache Mercadé, to whom the Passion d'Arras (c. 1440) is attributed; Arnoul Greban, choirmaster at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris (c. 1450); and Jean Michel, who revised and expanded the work of his two predecessors (c. 1485).

Literary Quality and Popularity. Modern critics of the medieval plays have been slow to admit literary excellence in the vernacular compositions, even when they have accorded praise to the lyrical beauty and musical grandeur of the Latin liturgical drama. This area of study has been among the last to elicit the attention of stylistic analysts, who have retreated before the arduous tasks involved in the discrimination of dialect peculiarities, layers of incremental growth in the texts, and prosodic patterns of great freedom and complexity. Consistent and painstaking study is quite rewarding, however, and the extensive range of poetic expression in the monologues, dialogues, and choral chants reveals a variety of literary effects overlooked by social historians and students of merely "theatrical" possibilities in the plays.

As might well be expected, the lyrical cast of the Latin prototypes continues to mark the vernacular lines, so that many an Old Testament figure expresses his longing for the Messiah in melancholy, reflective laments reminiscent of the Advent liturgy. New Testament characters like the shepherds tending their flocks near Bethlehem transcend the limits of their peasant life and speech to pronounce "Hail lyrics" before the Holy Manger. Their lines are indebted to the sequences and hymns of the Mass and the Breviary, and complement the music of an angelic choir that has just rendered Gloria in excelsis Deo. Christ the Savior speaks from the Cross a reproach to His sinful and erring followers and one detects in His language and His cadences the poignant question of the Good Friday Improperia —"Popule meus, quid feci tibi?" A full realization of the total artistry in these plays demands a synthesis of visual, musical, and verbal techniques comparable to those of modern spectacular performances designated by the term "operatic," but shorn of the romantic extravagances of that form.

Suppression and Survival. The medieval cycles continued to draw the interest, attendance, and participation of European Catholics well into the Renaissance and Reformation periods. They survived into virtually modern times in many places on the Continent; even in England, where the hostility of reforming clergy and government to the plays was especially strong, they were still important in the late 16th century. Several methods of eradicating them (see H. C. Gardiner, Mysteries' End ) were undertaken wherever official anti-Catholic attitudes prevailed. One method was the recall of the playbook by an ecclesiastic, for instance, by Archbishop Grindal of York, for revision and "correction." At times the manuscript was retained in custody and denied to the players, or offensive passages were canceled before return of the copy. A stronger method was the actual prohibition of the performances, and this method often provoked determined opposition to the Crown policies by the local mayor and town council. The city of Chester was involved in serious conflict of this type in 1575. Finally, a very successful way of supplanting the traditional festive enactments of the Corpus Christi plays was the composition of short biblical dramas, independent of the cycles, by writers of Protestant persuasion, often schoolmasters who substituted classroom milieu and Terentian style for the public square and the liturgical language.

This last-mentioned practice was of immense importance on the Continent, where a movement of Biblical drama flourished especially in German-speaking areas, led by playwrights such as Sixt Birck, George Macropedius, and Thomas Kirchmayer. England's John Bale, who had been a Carmelite friar before entering the Reformation controversy about 1535, wrote under the patronage of Thomas cromwell a series of religious plays imitative of medieval models but informed with a bitter anti-Catholic sentiment.

There was an authentic survival of the mystery plays in the Jesuit school drama of the 17th and 18th centuries. Our own times have seen sporadic revival of the religious medieval plays in many places. Gustave Cohen, the leading French historian of this dramatic form, has been responsible for performances by his students in Paris and its vicinity for many years. In England the interest generated by the York Festival in 1951, when a shortened version of the York cycle was produced, has supported further attempts of this kind, in revivals of the Towneley and Chester pageants. American academic groups made a few efforts in the 1950s, among them the production of the Beauvais Latin Play of Daniel in New York, which has been recorded by the Pro Musica singers. In Germany the best-known performance continues to be the world-famous Oberammergau Passion play, given every ten years.

Miracle plays. A distinct genre of medieval religious drama is the miracle play, which differs from the mysteries both in nature and in origin. It is a dramatization of a saint's life, with special emphasis upon the miraculous works performed by him and his sufferings leading to martyrdom. The materials of the life were drawn from the legendary accounts of popular saints, literature of a romantic and extravagant cast, with highly imaginative elements involved. Consequently, plays based upon these legends were markedly different in many ways from the strictly liturgical performances of narratives drawn from Holy Scripture. Indeed, plays dealing with the acts of New Testament saints, such as Paul or Mary Magdalen, should ordinarily be excluded from the category of "miracle," because of the sobriety and restraint imposed upon them by their biblical source. The saint's legend in dramatic form, on the other hand, seems to have come into existence rather late in the history of Latin religious drama, probably not before the 12th century, when the Christmas and Easter plays were well established; the new genre flourished with a freedom produced by the semi-fictional nature of the material and by a more casual association with the liturgy than the earlier plays had possessed. France was its true home, and it prospered there.

Miracle Plays in Latin. The only Latin texts of such miracles now surviving are those of St. Nicholas. The cult of this saint flourished in central France in the late 11th and 12th centuries, resulting in dramatization of several different legends about his marvelous deeds in behalf of scholars, travelers, and the destitute. The best known of the legends to receive dramatic form is that of the three daughters whose poverty-stricken father cannot provide dowries for them. At a proposal of prostitution for the sake of the family's fortunes, made by the eldest daughter, a purse of gold is cast through the window by the saint, forestalling the threatened calamity. This play became known as the Tres filiae, of which one text survives from the German town of Hildesheim and one from the French Benedictine monastery of Fleury. The Latin verse of these plays is so highly lyrical as to suggest a basis in hymnody, perhaps from the Office of the saint's day. The Te Deum closing the Hildesheim play confirms the association with liturgical Matins, and the Fleury text ends with the antiphon O Christi pietas, which was ordinarily used in Lauds and Vespers of the feast. (see nicholas of myra, st.)

Hildesheim and Fleury possessed also a play on the three students (Tres clerici ) murdered by their landlord but restored to life by St. Nicholas. Still another legendary play of this type is the Iconia Sancti Nicolai, dramatized by the wandering scholar known to us under the name of Hilarius. (A similar text appears in the Fleury playbook.) In this legend a nonbeliever who has acquired an image of St. Nicholas commits his accumulated treasures to its protection, with a superstitious trust in what he regards as magic power. While he is away on a journey, thieves enter his house and steal the treasure. On his return he berates the saint and even scourges the image, but Nicholas himself forces the robbers to return the treasure. The chastened pagan hears him refer the miraculous achievement to God and, thus instructed, undergoes conversion to Christianity. Plays such as these had considerable potential for theatrical effect in costume, bizarre setting, and pantomime. The Iconia is of special importance because of the elaborate French play on the same story, written by Jean Bodel in the late 12th century, and distinguished as the earliest surviving miracle play in a vernacular language.

French Miracle Plays. The French dramatizations of the saintly narratives developed very naturally into more imaginative and highly exciting creations. Their connection with liturgical origins was even more tenuous than had been the association of Latin miracles, and the isolation of them from the great mystery cycles encouraged an exotic growth and exuberant spirit. Bodel's Jeu de S. Nicolas, mentioned above, contained a pagan king instead of the Latin Barbarus, a Crusade instead of a nondescript journey, and a series of tavern scenes for the drinking and gambling thieves, replacing the silent, furtive robbery of the legend. Indeed, the dimension of "low life" has much of the fabliau comic spirit and contends vigorously with the elevated religious scenes. Bodel's work is the product of a cultivated and flourishing artistic life in his native city of Arras, a milieu in which the long tradition of simple, liturgical drama could be joined with a vigorous school of sophisticated vernacular poetry.

Perhaps the most popular type of French miracle play was that which displayed the intercessory powers of the Blessed Virgin—les miracles de Notre Dame. About 40 of these are preserved in the Cangé manuscripts surviving from the early 15th century. Apparently written for performance by a guild (puy ) dedicated to the Mother of God, these plays dealt with the lives of great sinners who obtained the grace of repentance and conversion through her intercession. The plots are often of sensational or erotic in character because of the sinful lives preceding the conversions, and must have exercised considerable fascination upon the spectators for this reason. Modern taste is sometimes shocked by the lurid contents of these narratives, or by the apparent ease with which the sinners secure forgiveness, but the plays are essentially religious and devout. The Anglo-Saxon reader needs, perhaps, to make allowance for a Gallic spirit that he often fails to understand.

The arts of poetry and of music figure prominently in these miracles. A regular feature of them is the singing of rondeaux in honor of the Blessed Virgin as she appears on the stage, the singing usually done by the Archangels Gabriel and Michael, who accompany her. The style and structure of these musical pieces are often quite elegant and vividly reminiscent of troubadour lyric verse and music. The manuscripts contain, in addition to these interpolated songs, a series of poems in honor of Mary, copied into the spaces between the plays. Known as serventoys, these pieces seem to have been produced in poetical contests sponsored by the puy and are usually the winning entries chosen for their excellence. The competitive nature of the phenomenon is indicated by the terms couronnés and estrivés appearing as designations for the ones copied into the little volumes. It is a curious fact that most of them have as subject the Annunciation rather than any other event of Mary's life, thus pointing to the one feast as the ordinary occasion for the miracle play and the literary contest.

Miracle Plays in England and Scotland. England is almost wholly destitute of saints' plays, with miracles de Notre Dame among its surviving medieval manuscripts, but records of performances clearly indicate that the genre was known and loved in that area. Moreover, saints' lives and Marian "miracles" are to be found extant in nondramatic form, e.g., in the work of John Lydgate and his early 15th-century contemporaries. The earliest record of a saint's play in England is that staged by the Anglo-Norman schoolmaster Geoffrey in honor of St. Katherine. The charming story of his ill-fated venture in borrowing vestments from St. Alban's Abbey for costumes and losing them in a fire is told by a contemporary historian, who notes that Geoffrey made restitution by becoming a monk of St. Alban's. The city of London, in which the vernacular mystery cycles seem not to have flourished, was known already in the 12th century for the production of miracle plays. Scattered records of performances from various other places tell us of dramas on St. Mary Magdalen in Norfolk, St. Thomas Becket at King's Lynn, St. Christiana in Kent, etc. Scotland, even more than England, was devoted to this genre, and its records are abundant—for St. Andrew, St. George, and, among others, St. Nicholas. The name of St. George must give us pause when it appears, for we cannot be certain whether dramatic records about his life refer to genuine miracle plays. Very probably many of them do, but account must be taken of St. George's appearance as a swashbuckling hero in the crude folk plays that are not Christian in origin, but are degenerate remains of pagan vegetation rituals. The mumming and sword plays are wholly independent of Christian drama, but it is likely that St. George was drawn into the folk dramas late in the Middle Ages by his association with a dragon-slaying and by his rescue of the Egyptian princess. He thus became one of a group including Captain Slasher, Giant Blunderbore, and the Turkish Champion, who figure prominently in these folk festival celebrations. Plays of this kind are an anomaly in a Christian society, and their crudity in language and technique indicates that they are distinct in origin and development from the "miracles," which had ecclesiastical and academic backgrounds.

See Also: autos sacramentales.

Bibliography: General. e. k. chambers, The Medieval Stage, 2 v. (Oxford 1903; reprint 1948); English Literature at the Close of the Middle Ages (Oxford 1945). c. j. stratman, Bibliography of Medieval Drama (Berkeley 1954). a. williams, The Drama of Medieval England (East Lansing, Mich. 1961). k. young, The Drama of the Medieval Church, 2 v. (Oxford 1933). Special. h. craig, English Religious Drama of the Middle Ages (Oxford 1955). r. b. donovan, The Liturgical Drama in Medieval Spain (Toronto 1958). g. frank, The Medieval French Drama (Oxford 1954). h.c. gardiner, Mysteries' End (Yale Studies in English 103; New Haven 1946). a. nicoll, Masks, Mimes and Miracles (New York 1931). m. rose, ed., The Wakefield Mystery Plays (Garden City, N.Y. 1962). f. m. salter, Medieval Drama in Chester (Toronto 1955). r. southern, The Medieval Theatre in the Round (New York 1958). g. cohen, Histoire de la mise en scène dans le théâtre religieux français du moyen âge (new ed. rev. Paris 1951); Le Théâtre en France au moyen âge (rev. ed. Paris 1948). w. m. a. creizenach, Geschichte des neueren Dramas, 5 v. (Halle 1893–1916) v. 1–2. e. prosser, Drama and Religion in the English Mystery Plays: A Re-Evaluation (Stanford Studies in Language and Literature 23; Stanford 1962). a. valbuena prat, Historia de la literatura española, 3 v. (4th ed. Barcelona 1953).

[e. c. dunn]