Miracle and morality
Morality: "a play enforcing a moral truth or lesson by means of the speech and action of characters which are personified abstractions
-- figures representing vices and virtues, qualities of the human mind, or abstract conceptions in general"
These two names are used to designate the religious drama which developed among Christian nations at the end of the Middle Ages.
It should be noted that the word "mystery" has often been applied to all Christian dramas prior to the sixteenth century,
whereas it should be confined to those of the fifteenth century, which represent the great dramatic effort anterior to the Renaissance.
Before this period dramatic pieces were called "plays" or "miracles".
The embryonic representations, at first given in the interior of the churches, have been designated as liturgical dramas.
LITURGICAL DRAMA
The origin of the medieval drama was in religion.
It is true that the Church forbade the faithful during the early centuries to attend the licentious representations of decadent paganism.
But once this immoral theatre had disappeared, the Church allowed and itself contributed to the gradual development of a new drama,
which was not only moral, but also edifying and pious. On certain solemn feasts, such as Easter and Christmas the Office was interrupted,
and the priests represented, in the presence of those assisting, the religious event which was being celebrated. At first the text of this liturgical drama was very brief,
and was taken solely from the Gospel or the Office of the day. It was in prose and in Latin. But by degrees versification crept in.
The earliest of such dramatic "tropes" (q.v.) of the Easter service are from England and date from the tenth century.
Soon verse pervaded the entire drama, prose became the exception, and the vernacular appeared beside Latin.
Thus, in the French drama of the "Wise Virgins" (first half of the twelfth century), which does little more than depict the Gospel parable of the wise and foolish virgins,
the chorus employs Latin while Christ and the virgins use both Latin and French, and the angel speaks only in French.
When the vernacular had completely supplanted the Latin, and individual inventiveness had at the same time asserted itself,
the drama left the precincts of the Church and ceased to be liturgical without, however, losing its religious character.
This evolution seems to have been accomplished in the twelfth century. With the appearance of the vernacular a development of the drama along national lines became possible.
Let us first trace this development in France.
The earliest English Morality of which we hear is a play of the "Lord's Prayer" of the latter half of the fourteenth century "in which all manner of vices and sins were held up to scorn
and the virtues held up to praise". This play is lost, but it must have been much thought of, for a Guild was formed in York (where it was played) with the special object of maintaining it.
Also lost is another early and highly interesting Morality of the "Creed". The earliest complete Moral play extant,
leaving out the still earlier fragment of the "Pride of Life" (ed. Waterhouse, see below), is the "Castell of Perseverance",
3650 lines long, and written perhaps in the early fifteenth century. This "traces (to quote Mr. Pollard's skillful summary) the spiritual history of Humanum Genus
[Mankind or the typical man] from the day of his birth to his appearance at the Judgment Seat of God, personifying the foes by whom his pathway is beset,
the Guardian Angel by whose help he resists them, and the ordinances of Confession and Penance by which he is strengthened in his conflict". Dramatic power is shown in this Morality;
the plot forms a unity, and is developed in logical sequence. It must have been a thrilling moment for the audience when Humanum Genus after hearing the persuasive arguments of his Good and his Bad Angels, hesitates which to follow:
"Whom to folowe, wetyn I ne may;
I stonde in stodye, and gynne to rave;
I wolde be ryche in gret aray,
And fayn I wolde my sowle save
As wynde in water I wave.
Thou (to Bad Angel) woldyst to the world I me toke;
And he wold that I it forsoke.
Now so God me helpe, and the holy boke
I not (know not) wyche I may have."
The end of the fifteenth century a new kind of Morality play appeared.
In the earlier Moralities of which we have been speaking, time was not an object,
nor was there need to limit the number of actors, but little by little,
as performances began to take place indoors, in the hall of a king or a noble,
and as they passed into the hands of professional actors,
compression began to be necessary both in time and in the number of personages introduced.
The aim of the play, also, became gradually more secular. The result was a modified and shortened Morality known as an Interlude.
Act and miracle
14Th century, york, England
"Abraham and Isaac"
the four great cycles still extant and known as the Towneley
Coventry plays
Woodkirk, near Wakefield
the decline of morality play
The Reformation
The usual term for the religious movement which made its appearance in Western Europe in the sixteenth century,
and which, while ostensibly aiming at an internal renewal of the Church, really led to a great revolt against it,
and an abandonment of the principal Christian beliefs.
Nicholas Barber, a young monk who has forsaken his calling and joined an itinerant troupe of players that gets caught up in the real-life drama
Basic Outline:
The narrator Is watching the player troupe perform. He is an older man but one of the players is actually himself as a younger person.
He doesn't recognize this because all the players are in disguise wearing costumes, and masks. The audience does not see much of the narrator
and his surroundings: They come to know the narrator only through the tone of his narration. Because the narrative is made up largely of blocks
of dialogue exchanged, there is not a great deal of characterizing interaction. in the later narrative , the narrator provides more action
more setting, and more interaction. The narrator plays with the borderline between waking and sleeping. He does not know which state he is in
until he realizes that that he is in fact watching himself perform as a younger man. He reveals himself to be socially inept - easily surprised, easily terrified,
easily confused. Experiencing a medieval reality as a modern thinker and living in a modern reality. The audience has a sense of a world beyond the action itself
a medieval crowd sits nearby watching the player troupe occasionally booing and hissing like it is a pantomime.
There is a strange silence in between the narrator's lines, as if things are happening in the his imagination, which he believes at first. He is always alone but is visited
occasionally by hope. The audience should be constantly aware of his personality, his out-look, his state of mind, from beginning to end. There is a sense of personifications when
the player troupe appears, they seem obviously as figments of the narrator's imagination, that they fade away as fictional characters.
The narrator speaks as if he will see himself again as a young man but cannot because of his own weakness. this concludes on a note of happiness and virtue
implicitly promises that all will come right in the end. Instead the narrator hears that two days later he is dead foreseeing his own destiny. Which ever path he
is lead, whether its as a member of the troupe of players , or in the real-life drama that is his own life.
He learns that the painful truth is that he will not learn the truth. His fate is a never-ending repetition of his error at the end. He refuses to become involved in the real moral
questions. caught fast in a social and a logical trap which will never set him free.
Morality: "a play enforcing a moral truth or lesson by means of the speech and action of characters which are personified abstractions
-- figures representing vices and virtues, qualities of the human mind, or abstract conceptions in general"
These two names are used to designate the religious drama which developed among Christian nations at the end of the Middle Ages.
It should be noted that the word "mystery" has often been applied to all Christian dramas prior to the sixteenth century,
whereas it should be confined to those of the fifteenth century, which represent the great dramatic effort anterior to the Renaissance.
Before this period dramatic pieces were called "plays" or "miracles".
The embryonic representations, at first given in the interior of the churches, have been designated as liturgical dramas.
LITURGICAL DRAMA
The origin of the medieval drama was in religion.
It is true that the Church forbade the faithful during the early centuries to attend the licentious representations of decadent paganism.
But once this immoral theatre had disappeared, the Church allowed and itself contributed to the gradual development of a new drama,
which was not only moral, but also edifying and pious. On certain solemn feasts, such as Easter and Christmas the Office was interrupted,
and the priests represented, in the presence of those assisting, the religious event which was being celebrated. At first the text of this liturgical drama was very brief,
and was taken solely from the Gospel or the Office of the day. It was in prose and in Latin. But by degrees versification crept in.
The earliest of such dramatic "tropes" (q.v.) of the Easter service are from England and date from the tenth century.
Soon verse pervaded the entire drama, prose became the exception, and the vernacular appeared beside Latin.
Thus, in the French drama of the "Wise Virgins" (first half of the twelfth century), which does little more than depict the Gospel parable of the wise and foolish virgins,
the chorus employs Latin while Christ and the virgins use both Latin and French, and the angel speaks only in French.
When the vernacular had completely supplanted the Latin, and individual inventiveness had at the same time asserted itself,
the drama left the precincts of the Church and ceased to be liturgical without, however, losing its religious character.
This evolution seems to have been accomplished in the twelfth century. With the appearance of the vernacular a development of the drama along national lines became possible.
Let us first trace this development in France.
The earliest English Morality of which we hear is a play of the "Lord's Prayer" of the latter half of the fourteenth century "in which all manner of vices and sins were held up to scorn
and the virtues held up to praise". This play is lost, but it must have been much thought of, for a Guild was formed in York (where it was played) with the special object of maintaining it.
Also lost is another early and highly interesting Morality of the "Creed". The earliest complete Moral play extant,
leaving out the still earlier fragment of the "Pride of Life" (ed. Waterhouse, see below), is the "Castell of Perseverance",
3650 lines long, and written perhaps in the early fifteenth century. This "traces (to quote Mr. Pollard's skillful summary) the spiritual history of Humanum Genus
[Mankind or the typical man] from the day of his birth to his appearance at the Judgment Seat of God, personifying the foes by whom his pathway is beset,
the Guardian Angel by whose help he resists them, and the ordinances of Confession and Penance by which he is strengthened in his conflict". Dramatic power is shown in this Morality;
the plot forms a unity, and is developed in logical sequence. It must have been a thrilling moment for the audience when Humanum Genus after hearing the persuasive arguments of his Good and his Bad Angels, hesitates which to follow:
"Whom to folowe, wetyn I ne may;
I stonde in stodye, and gynne to rave;
I wolde be ryche in gret aray,
And fayn I wolde my sowle save
As wynde in water I wave.
Thou (to Bad Angel) woldyst to the world I me toke;
And he wold that I it forsoke.
Now so God me helpe, and the holy boke
I not (know not) wyche I may have."
The end of the fifteenth century a new kind of Morality play appeared.
In the earlier Moralities of which we have been speaking, time was not an object,
nor was there need to limit the number of actors, but little by little,
as performances began to take place indoors, in the hall of a king or a noble,
and as they passed into the hands of professional actors,
compression began to be necessary both in time and in the number of personages introduced.
The aim of the play, also, became gradually more secular. The result was a modified and shortened Morality known as an Interlude.
Act and miracle
14Th century, york, England
"Abraham and Isaac"
the four great cycles still extant and known as the Towneley
Coventry plays
Woodkirk, near Wakefield
the decline of morality play
The Reformation
The usual term for the religious movement which made its appearance in Western Europe in the sixteenth century,
and which, while ostensibly aiming at an internal renewal of the Church, really led to a great revolt against it,
and an abandonment of the principal Christian beliefs.
Nicholas Barber, a young monk who has forsaken his calling and joined an itinerant troupe of players that gets caught up in the real-life drama
Basic Outline:
The narrator Is watching the player troupe perform. He is an older man but one of the players is actually himself as a younger person.
He doesn't recognize this because all the players are in disguise wearing costumes, and masks. The audience does not see much of the narrator
and his surroundings: They come to know the narrator only through the tone of his narration. Because the narrative is made up largely of blocks
of dialogue exchanged, there is not a great deal of characterizing interaction. in the later narrative , the narrator provides more action
more setting, and more interaction. The narrator plays with the borderline between waking and sleeping. He does not know which state he is in
until he realizes that that he is in fact watching himself perform as a younger man. He reveals himself to be socially inept - easily surprised, easily terrified,
easily confused. Experiencing a medieval reality as a modern thinker and living in a modern reality. The audience has a sense of a world beyond the action itself
a medieval crowd sits nearby watching the player troupe occasionally booing and hissing like it is a pantomime.
There is a strange silence in between the narrator's lines, as if things are happening in the his imagination, which he believes at first. He is always alone but is visited
occasionally by hope. The audience should be constantly aware of his personality, his out-look, his state of mind, from beginning to end. There is a sense of personifications when
the player troupe appears, they seem obviously as figments of the narrator's imagination, that they fade away as fictional characters.
The narrator speaks as if he will see himself again as a young man but cannot because of his own weakness. this concludes on a note of happiness and virtue
implicitly promises that all will come right in the end. Instead the narrator hears that two days later he is dead foreseeing his own destiny. Which ever path he
is lead, whether its as a member of the troupe of players , or in the real-life drama that is his own life.
He learns that the painful truth is that he will not learn the truth. His fate is a never-ending repetition of his error at the end. He refuses to become involved in the real moral
questions. caught fast in a social and a logical trap which will never set him free.
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