The beginnings
of the drama in England are obscure. There is evidence that when the Romans
were in England they established vast amphitheatres for the production of
plays, but when the Romans departed their theatre departed with them.
The earliest records of acting in the Middle Ages are concerned not with
plays but with individual players, jesters,
clowns, tumblers, and minstrels. Of these the most important is the "minstrel",
who is a link between the Anglo‑Saxon scop , who
sang the long poems of heroes, and the later theatre. Throughout the Middle
Ages, in his multi‑coloured coat, the minstrel must have been a familiar
and welcome figure. He could be found at the King's court, in castles, at
tournaments and weddings, or in the market‑places, gathering a crowd, and
speaking or singing his stories. It is recorded that in the army of William
the Conqueror, the minstrel Taillefer
died reciting the lay of Roncesvalles.
On occasion the minstrel could grow rich under wealthy patronage, and lands
and valuable presents were assigned to him. Yet the life of the humbler minstrel
was at best a hard one, tramping the roads, exposed to the weather, and relying
upon the generosity of such audiences as he could find. Officially, the hand
of the Church was against him, and there was little hope that his soul would
be saved from damnation.
At the same time the Church must have seen that the stories of the minstrels
encouraged pilgrims in the more weary stages of their journeys. Some clerics
even imitated the methods of the minstrels, and stood in public places mingling
words of religious guidance with secular stories. Monks, too, were human
after all, and enjoyed the minstrel's stories, and sometimes an unfrocked
cleric would himself turn minstrel.
If the Church
did not look kindly upon the minstrels, and their less reputable companions,
it was the Church itself that brought back the drama into England. The Church
had condemned the theatre of the Roman Empire, and its spectacles and themes
gave every reason for such an attack. Yet the ritual of the Church had itself
something dramatic within it, and by the tenth century that ritual extended
into the rudiments of a play. During the Easter celebrations, such a biblical
incident as the visit of the three
women to the Empty Tomb was simply presented by priests, with
accompanying words, chanted in Latin. One group of priests, or choir‑boys,
would represent the Angels guarding the Tomb. Three other priests would
approach them. The first group chanted in Latin:
Whom are you looking for in the sepulchre, ye
women who follow Christ?
The others would
chant in reply:
Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified, 0 Heavenly
beings.
Then the first
group replied again:
He is not here: He has arisen as he said he
would do.
Go! Announce it, since he has arisen from the
sepulchre.
A similar set
of words and actions was devised to present the visit of the shepherds to
the infant Christ. How the Church came to countenance these dramatic representations
is unknown. They seem a natural development of Church services, and possibly
it was hoped that they would counteract the village celebrations of May
Day and Harvest time. Though their origin is uncertain, it is clear that
these liturgical dramas developed in a way which the church could not have
anticipated.
At first, the
liturgical play was merely a part of the Church service, but by the thirteenth
century it had grown until every part of the Church was used in an action
which converted the whole edifice into one stage, with the audience present
amid the actors. Such a liturgical play on the birth of Christ is recorded
at Rouen. The three kings enter at the east, north, and south of the Church
and proceed until they meet at the altar. They chant words descriptive of
their actions and then sing an anthem. A procession forms and moves towards
the nave while the choir chants. A star is lit over the altar, and the kings
approach it. A dialogue follows, and then the kings sleep, to be awakened
by an angel telling them to proceed home another way. The procession re‑forms,
and the Mass follows. It is difficult to visualize exactly the whole action,
but no modem stage, except possibly in Soviet Russia, has made the theatre,
the stage, and the audience so intimately one. The producer of today may
well return to this early drama to gain a conception of what a new form of
drama might be.
Such a spectacle
was witnessed by many for the sake of the spectacle alone, and there were
signs that the higher ecclesiastical authorities were disquieted. The Church,
which had reintroduced the drama, was discovering that the dramatic element
was growing stronger than its religious purpose. What happened cannot be
traced in an orderly fashion, though the results are clear enough. Between
the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the drama became secularized. The
ecclesiastical authorities, when they found that the drama which they had
created was an embarrassment, removed it from the church itself to the precincts.
There, by a number of changes, it became elaborated and secularized. The
words themselves were no longer spoken in Latin, but in English, and instead
of the brief liturgical speeches, a longer dramatic script was invented around
the biblical narratives. The actors were no longer the clergy, but members
of the medieval guilds, with each guild usually responsible for one
play. The guilds, as a cooperative effort, prepared for certain Feast Days,
notably for the festival of Corpus Christi, a series of biblical plays to be performed
at various "stations" in a town. Each play would be mounted on a platform,
fitted with wheels, and so could be drawn from one "station" to another.
(...)
Records show
that this dramatic activity was widespread. The number of plays which has
survived is limited, though probably representative. Four main cycles have
been preserved, those of Chester, York, "Towneley" or Wakefield, and Coventry.
(...)
They have a frequent
intrusion of homely and comic characters, as in the treatment of Noah's
wife as a shrew. One writer of these religious or "Miracle"
plays stood out from all the rest, and he was responsible for five plays
in the "Towneley" or Wakefeld cycle. In one of his plays, the Secunda Pastorum,
depicting the visit of the shepherds to the infant Christ, he shows his independence
of the biblical narrative by introducing a sheep‑thief named Mak, and his
wife, and by giving some realistic discussion on the shepherd's life and
its hardships. (...)
Later than these
religious dramas were the "Morality"
plays, in which the characters were abstract vices and virtues. At first
sight these seem less lively entertainments than a play of Noah's wife, or
a sheep‑thieving Mak. Some of the authors of the "Morality" plays were, however,
able to make real and contemporary characters of the vices and virtues.
So in a play entitled Mankynd, the hero is attacked by three rascals, Nought,
New‑gyse, and Nowadays, and, though this assault has its moral purport,
it is presented on the stage as a comic and realistic attack by a trio of
gangsters.
The possibilities of the "Morality" play are best proved in England by the
effectiveness and the long‑continued success of the late fifteenth‑century
play of Everyman. Death summons Everyman to God; his worldly companions gradually
forsake him, until Good Deeds alone is left to accompany him on his last
ordeal. Though the characters are abstractions, they have relationships
which are human, and though the whole action is controlled by the lesson
which is to be taught, the play has a natural development, often a genuine
realism, with a pathos direct and sincere. (...)
How the change
from the rudimentary drama to the great achievement that ended in Shakespeare
came about has naturally been a matter for speculation. While nothing can
explain the genius of Marlowe, or Shakespeare, the changes in the form of
the drama can be in part explained by the revival of interest in classical
drama. This influence has sometimes been discussed as if it were wholly
beneficial, but this is far from true. The Renaissance imposed a learned
tradition, not always fully assimilated or understood, upon a nascent national
drama. Whatever was gained, the resulting drama was less genuinely a popular
social activity than the "Miracle" plays. Yet the classical example gave
dramatists a boldness and elevation of purpose, which the native drama had
nowhere achieved. In Kyd, and Marlowe, and Shakespeare, this sense of the
high potentiality of the drama contrived to reunite itself with much that
was valuable in the older native tradition.
The classical
drama gave examples both for comedy and tragedy, and as far as England is
concerned these models were, with negligible exceptions, Latin. (...) English
comedy might well have developed without any Latin intrusion, and what is
best in it remains native to the end. Tragedy, on the other hand, could
not well have grown out of the '"Miracle" plays and the '"Moralities", and
here a new start is made in the sixteenth century with the help of Latin
models.