Between the fall of Rome and the western and the first
identifiable “medieval” drama lay about 500 years, a time which used to be
labeled the “dark” ages until scholars began to realize that many of the events
of this time (approximately 500-1000 AD) shed “light” on many later
events. So we more often refer to this period as the Early Middle Ages.
“Middle” in that it was the period before the classical era and the
NEO-classical era, the Italian Renaissance.
Everyone was tied to the land in those “middle” ages, and the
system of economics at this time has been called feudalism.
While the concept of feudalism has been criticized as it is a simplistic
theory of a complicated system and although feudalism is no longer thought to
be as static a system as former scholars made it out, there was at the time a
well-defined hierarchy from which it was difficult to break away. In the feudal system, peasants tilled
the soil and harvested crops for the lord of the manner. This lord had
absolute authority over his peasants, or serfs, and from what they farmed and
cultivated, he gave them barely enough to survive on. Of course the lord
of this manner had to give most of what he took from the serfs to HIS master,
some greater lord than he, becoming the greater lord’s vassal. That lord was
the vassal of some still greater lord...on and on till you get to the king, who
doesn’t have to give anybody anything, which is why, as Professor Mel Brooks
instructs us, “It’s very good to be the king!” Yes, but it’s not so hot
being a serf.
Brief
sidebar: if you want to understand feudalism in a matter of minutes and in
a very theatrical manner, check out the great song from Leonard Bernstein’s
musical Candide, “What’s the Use?” The
tune is terrific, the lyrics, by the fine poet and translator Richard Wilbur,
witty, sharp and dead on point. Mind you, you have to go back to the original
1956 Broadway production to hear this song, though it was reinserted in some of
its many revivals, so depending on the revival you might hear it. Alas, the
show was adapted to death, as all too often happens, particularly in the
history of recent theatre, according to Dr Jack. And this after all IS theatre
history according to Dr Jack!
While there are many levels of hierarchy in feudalism, very few
people at any level could write, in some cases not even the king. There’s
a story about the great early medieval emperor Charlemagne, who taught himself
painstakingly to read, but though it’s been said he practiced every night, he
never quite learned to write.
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| St Albans Cathedral (the town is a mere 40 minute train ride from London) an example of a Romanesque, in England Norman church - big, sturdy, seeminly weighted to the ground |
Who COULD write? The people of the Church could. This
institution was as powerful, more powerful arguably, than any king. In fact
throughout the middle ages there was a constant power struggle going on between
the leaders of the Church and the secular leaders. Who crowned Charlemagne
in 800 AD? The Pope did. And the Pope named him Holy Roman Emperor, pointing
wordlessly these that I’ll put in his mouth, “You tend the worldly
concerns of my flock while I see to its spiritual health.” Secular and
religious power were locked in struggle at that time...and in many places, in
our time as well. De nobis fabula
narratur. Their story is our story.
But how does all of this relate to theatre history? Stop for
a minute and think of what the Christian Church disliked. Lots of things,
right? The devil, hellfire, non-Christians, and so on. For our
purposes, on perhaps a lesser level of
nuisance than some things, the Church really didn’t like the theatre. The
Church had succeeded in pretty much wiping out any formal and regularized
performances, by the time of the late Roman Empire, but Bishops were constantly
making decrees against “mimi, histriones, ioculatores”
meaning “mimes, actors, jesters.” The edicts were written in Latin because that
was the official, written language of the age, and of course the language of
the Church. However in spite of all the
Church’s efforts, ordinary people seemed to keep wanting to watch these sinful
“mimi, histriones, ioculatores.”
To take hold of this thorny issue, let’s imagine an ordinary
person named OG. Yes, the family line seems to have made it through
(note: I owe a great debt for all of
this section – except for the name OG – to a wonderful, simple little book by
Eileen Power called Medieval People –
if you’re interested you can get it free as an e-book)
There they are. In spite of all the Church edicts against
these mimi,histriones,
iocolatores, these simple players endured – and a good thing for OG and
Ermentrude!
To counter the constant threat of minstrels who allowed peasants to have fun, however, the Church had to find a way to teach OG its doctrine. But he couldn’t read, right? So the Church concentrated on visuals. The Church
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| John Constable's beautiful painting of Salisbury Cathedral note the change between the Romanesque Saint Albans Cathedral pictured above with this and other Gothic cathedrals pictured below, lighter, airier, pointing to heaven |
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| My own photo of Salisbury Cathedral - not quite up to Constable, but still a pretty sight. Salisbury is about two hours west of London by train, not far from Stonehenge |
To counter the constant threat of minstrels who allowed peasants to have fun, however, the Church had to find a way to teach OG its doctrine. But he couldn’t read, right? So the Church concentrated on visuals. The Church
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This is a powerful message, but even this may be a bit abstract
for
OG – he might not “get” all the paintings and statues and gargoyles and
reliefs carved all over cathedral doors and walls of people getting gobbled by
devils and demons. So another even clearer method began to be used to
teach OG his faith. The great irony here is that the instrument of this
new education was – THEATRE! Theatre, which from the earliest days of the
Church had been despised and banned.
To illustrate, one day Brother Bodo (yes, OG’s son got religion (hey, it was
better than all that toil in the fields), at a religious service in which he is
feeling particularly inspired, adds an emphasis to a certain phrase, by singing
an extra “Alleluia.” When he sings the Alleluia, the congregation has to
sing it back – call and response. For example, at the end of the Catholic
mass the priest says “Ite, Missa est.” (Go, the mass is ended). And the
congregation responds, “Deo gratias.” (Thanks be to God). But in a mass at Easter, say, or Christmas, something special is called for, so the priest adds “Alleluia” to the phrase and the congregation sings it back to him.
This addition to emphasize something important is called a trope, a lyric and melody added for emphasis. Tropes became very popular and
gradually grew more complex, so that on an Easter Sunday around 925 (the year,
not the time of morning) a congregation might well have heard something like
this:
Angel: Quem Quaeritis in selpulchro, O
Christocolae?
(Whom
do you seek in the tomb, o Christian women?)
Maries: Jesum Nazarenum crucifixum, o caelicolae
(Jesus of Nazareth, the crucified, o heavenly one)
Angel: Non est hic, surrexit sicut praedixerat
(He
is not here; he is risen as he foretold)
Ite, nuntiate quia surrexit de sepulchro
(Go, and announce that he has risen from the
tomb)
(Allardyce Nicoll, Masks, Mimes and Miracles)
That’s the Quem Quaeritis (Whom do you seek?) trope.
In its earliest version it was probably chanted or sung antiphonally by two
portions of the choir. By 975, however, Ethelwold, Bishop of Winchester
in England, had compiled a monastic agreement called the Regularis Concordia to encourage uniform practice and order
throughout monasteries. In the document was this little play (for
that’s what it is) complete with stage directions!
The Quem Quaeritis trope
is as important a step as was Thespis’ step away from the chorus in Greek
theatre. It is the first instance of what we call liturgical drama -- drama performed in Latin as part of a sacred
service in a church. And what’s it about? A God-man who dies and is
resurrected. If that sounds familiar, just remember the Egyptian Horus, and the
Greek Dionysos.
From this relatively simple trope sprang a series of “visitatio” plays – variations on the visit
to the tomb and the discovery that Jesus has risen: in one, the disciples
Peter and John race to the
tomb to see if what they’ve heard is true; John gets
there first, but allows Peter entrance to the tomb before him. Two monks
might have run the length of a cathedral’s nave (the relatively long, thin area where the congregation stood – only long after the Medieval era did they sit), to enact this version.
Later a secular figure is added to the action: a merchant who sells ointments
to the three Maries (Mary Magdelene, Mary mother of James - a disciple - and Mary Salome) so they can anoint the body of Christ. In the earliest
versions the merchant is silent, but in later variations he haggles with the
women over the price!
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| The nave of Bath Abbey - in the Middle Ages there would have been no seats in it |
Gradually more complications are added, more plot is
offered: In one Pontius Pilate sends soldiers to guard the tomb, the
angel
strikes them with a thunderbolt (props!), the Maries enter, buy oils from
the merchant, then...”quem quaeritis?”
In the meantime the soldiers report to Pilate, Mary Magdelene laments, Christ
appears to her, Christ appears to the apostles, all the disciples gather at the
tomb, and all sing a final “Te Deum
Laudamus.”
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| This is a side aisle along the nave, but I like the heavenly light, don't you? |
Other celebrations as well as Easter begin to make use of
liturgical drama. At Christmas, for example, the shepherds are following
the star of Bethlehem to the stable, when an angel stops them and asks:
“Quem quaeritis in presepe, o pastores?”
(whom do you
seek in the manger, o shepherds?)
Try to imagine this liturgical drama in a cathedral. Where and how
do you perform it? Not under a proscenium arch, or even on a platform
stage. There are many conjectural answers to how these dramas were
staged, but all you really needed were two areas -- a mansion and a platea. If you understand these two terms
you’ll come to terms with all medieval staging practice, and of many later
forms of theatre as well, most notably the staging in Shakespeare’s
theatre. A mansion is a simple scenic element that represents the
location of a scene. For example, a chair can represent the throne of Pontius
Pilate, perhaps; or a bush can represent the Garden of Gethsemane; or a cross
can represent Golgotha. The platea is the space around the mansion that becomes
the playing area as actors move into the space and so define it.
As liturgical drama got more and more complex, more than one
mansion and platea began to be needed; in fact sometimes several would be used
in a single service. Just before Easter, Passion Plays were performed, in
which different events that led to the crucifixion, death and resurrection of
Christ were enacted. To do so, different mansions were set up throughout
the nave and the participants in the passion
plays moved from mansion to mansion to act out the different scenes. At
each move they set up a platea around the appropriate mansion and defined the
playing space. A very diluted form of this practice is still done in
Catholic Lenten services -- the stations of the cross. In present services the mansion and platea
have been reduced to fourteen small framed paintings or sculptures set on the
walls or pillars up and down the area in which the congregation sits, but it
all started back in the early Middle Ages.
In the same century (the tenth) that the quem quaeritis trope was transcribed, the first female playwright
that we can identify wrote six plays, all of which still exist. Hroswitha (a literal translation
is “the
white rose,” c 935 - 973 AD) was a canoness at a monastery in Gandesheim, in
northern Germany. A canoness was a woman who took some vows, but was not
a nun...like several other women of the era, she used the convent to study and
learn much more than it would have been possible for her to learn out in the
“real world.” To improve her Latin, she studied the writing of Roman
playwright Terence; and then she set out to imitate his style, but not his
subject matter! Instead of rakish young pagan Roman men hunting women; she
told, in Latin and in the style of Terence, tales of young Christian
women.
Most of her plays were serious and more than a tad didactic (in
other words they taught a good bit more than they delighted), but in one, titled
Dulcitius, she was able to inject
humor as well. It’s about the martyrdom of three young female saints
during the Roman era. If you think that doesn’t seem an appropriate subject for
humor, you’re right, but it contains a very funny scene in which the governor
Dulcitius, who wants to have his lecherous way with these women before he has
them killed, is led (by a miracle?) to the scullery instead of to the room
where they are being kept, and kisses the pots and pans in the kitchen,
thinking they are the women! When he comes out his face is all blackened
from the soot on the pots, and he looks like a fool. Of course the women
still get martyred, but their virginity remains intact!
Whether or not these plays were produced, read aloud in the
cloister on a lively winter evening, or just academic exercises, Hroswitha is
not only the first identifiable woman playwright, she’s also the first western
playwright of either gender that we can identify in the post-classical
era. It has been argued that her strong Christian women protagonists
become the first strain of feminism in the theatre. By the way, the
second identifiable playwright after the classical era is ALSO a woman. Hildegard
von Bingen (1098-1179) led a life similar to Hroswitha’s, wrote sacred music as
well as at least one play with music, on Christian themes, called Ordo Virtutum, or The Play of Virtues. That play and more of Hildegard's music is available on disc and productions of the play have been produced recently by early music societies.
Returning to liturgical drama, gradually, as towns and trading
guilds began to grow in Europe, the old feudal system began to break down. As
the Early Middle Ages gave way to the more open, somewhat more secular world of
the second part of the medieval era, called by some the High Middle Ages
(approximately 1050-1300), religious plays began to be performed outside the
church and in the vernacular, or the
everyday language of a given area, not in Latin. Liturgical drama
continued as well, but the new form had more freedom in that it didn’t have to
stick to the liturgy.
The first play of this kind that has come down to us is The
Play of Adam, (twelfth century) 2/3 of which is written in French, and
which was performed, so the stage directions strongly imply, on the steps in
front of the church. Here are some of them:
“Let Paradise be set up in a somewhat lofty place; let there be about
it curtains and silken hangings, at such an height that those persons who
shall be in Paradise can be seen from the shoulders upward -- let there be planted sweet-smelling
flowers and foliage; let divers trees be therein and fruits hanging on them, so
that it may seem a most delectable place.
Then let the Savior come, clothed in a dalmatic, and let Adam and Eve be set
before him. Let Adam be clothed in a red tunic; Eve, however, in a
woman’s garment of white, and a white silken wimple; and let them both stand
before the Figura (God); but let Adam a little nearer, with composed
countenance; Eve, however, with a countenance more subdued...whoever shall
speak the name of Paradise, let him look back at it and point it out with his
hand.
Then a serpent, cunningly put together, shall ascend along the trunk of the
forbidden tree, unto which Eve shall approach her ear, as if hearkening unto
its counsel:
Devil:
Adam I’ve seen -- a fool is he.
Eve:
(considering) A little hard...
Devil:
He’ll softer be;
But harder now than iron is;
Eve:
A noble man!
Devil:
A churl! I wis.
Thought for himself he will not take;
Let him have care, e’en for thy sake.
For thou art a delicate, tender thing,
Thou’rt fresher than the rose in spring;
Thou’rt whiter than the crystal pale,
Than snow that falls in the icy vale.
An
ill-matched pair did God create!
Too tender thou, too hard thy mate.
Thereafter, Eve shall take the apple and offer it unto Adam... Then shall Adam eat a part of the apple; and having eaten it, he shall straightaway take knowledge of his sin; and he shall bow himself down so that he cannot be seen of by the people, and shall put off his goodly garments, and shall put on poor garments of fig-leaves sewn together; and manifesting exceeding great sorrow, he shall begin his lamentation. And when this is done the Figura shall go back unto the Church.
Then shall the devil come, and three or four other devils
(Allardyce
Nicoll, World Drama)
George Bernard Shaw would love those stage directions, as they are
nearly as long and complicated as his own! For those of you who got bored and
skipped through them, tsk, tsk, but a few important points: very specific set
pieces, props and costumes;
attempts via stage directions, to contrast Adam and
Eve’s attitudes; a short rather sensuous poem of seduction spoken to Eve by the
Serpent/Devil; and the very important words “when this is done the Figura shall
go back unto the Church.” We’re definitely outside of a church, not in it, for
the first time in Medieval drama. Note also that after God goes back the devils
come on and have a field day, even moving towards participatory drama, breaking
out of the platea and running around the square, in my mind to frighten the
audience. The unique Play of Adam marks
another major change for medieval drama, in that it moves outside the church
and is played mostly in the vernacular, but, alas it is unique, an isolated
example of religious drama between the years 1150 and 1170.
Two hundred years later, however, in the mid-fourteenth century, the
beginning of what some scholars refer to as the Late Middle Ages, we begin to
see many religious plays enacted in towns throughout Europe, written in the
vernacular and performed outside the church, usually in and around the town
square. These plays, called cycle
plays, were probably begun and expanded because of a new Church holiday
called Corpus Christi (body of Christ). The idea for this
holiday was conceived by Pope Urban IV in 1264; it was given official sanction in
1311, and was being celebrated almost everywhere in Europe by1350. It was
a moveable feast, but it always occurred between late May and early June --
good weather for outside processions and drama!
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| Oberammergau, in Southern Bavaria, stages its passion play once every ten years |
The pope instituted Corpus
Christi to emphasize the redemptive power of the consecrated bread and wine
-- which for Catholics becomes the body and blood of Christ. One way to
create this emphasis was to enact the events that led up to Christ’s death
and resurrection (passion plays) at the holiday of Corpus Christi. Gradually other events in Christ’s life were
added, then events that took place BEFORE Christ’s life and AFTER his death, so
that in
the late middle ages at least some of these pageants included events
which ranged from the creation of the world to the last day...judgment
day. Thus there grew up around Corpus
Christi, in towns throughout Europe and England, festivals of religious
plays which people of all ranks watched and took part in, plays written in the
vernacular, plays written about the great cycle from the beginning of the world
to its end, or cycles within that ultimate cycle, which might have included
only the beginnings: Eden, the fall of Adam and Eve, Noah’s flood; or
only the life of Christ or only PART of the life of Christ, most usually his
death and resurrection.
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| York, in the north of England performs parts of its cycle plays every four years - I saw it in summer of 2006 |
These cycle plays began, in the 14th and 15th centuries, to be
played during days other than Corpus
Christi. Plays might be delivered on the feast day of a city’s patron
saint, or in thanks after an era had been freed from the plague.
In Britain at least 125 towns produced cycle plays, and we have
texts for all or many of the plays that were performed in four different towns:
York (48 plays); Chester (24); Wakefield, sometimes called the Towneley plays (23); and the plays of the N-Town cycle,
which location scholars have not been able to discover.
In France many more texts are still available. While the
French cycles did not always cover the vast amount of time and material that
the British did (many focused solely on the Passion), they were usually more
elaborate and took up to 25 days to perform. In many other European cities and
villages cycle plays were regularly performed. In fact these plays were the
most performed theatre in the middle ages.
Next time, how cycle plays were staged, and the secular drama of the era.
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| Sarah Ruhl's Passion Play was an interesting take on passion plays - Yale Rep produced it in 2008 Their story is our story? |
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| and the Irondale Center performed it in 2010 |
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