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A Thousand Years of British Theatre History (Part 1)From 1000 to 1500ADDateline: 9th January, 2000 Theatre as we know it, of course, did not exist when the first millennium dawned, but that does not mean that there was no drama. In fact, the bards of the Dark Ages who celebrated their patrons' lineage and bravery, and who told legends such as Beowulf, were undoubtedly actors, performing rather than simply singing. But we also know of liturgical drama (that is, drama used as part of church services) as early as the tenth century. The Regularis Concordia of around 965-75 gives many examples of liturgical dramas centred around Easter, all of which were performed by monks, using simple dramatic devices. As we progess into the second millennium, we learn of a variety of plays which were performed in churches - the Magi and the Annunciation being favourite subjects - but as to whether they were in the vernacular or in Latin, whether sung or spoken, or even exactly who performed them, we do not know. There was, for instance, a resurrection play at Beverley, performed in a churchyard by masked actors, around 1220, and we also know of two twelfth century Anglo-Norman plays - Adam and La Seinte Resurreccion - but as to whether they were Norman imports or native to England, again we do not know. We have more detail about an Easter ceremony at Barking in Essex, created by the abbess of the nunnery there, Katherine de Sutton. It was aimed at both nuns and people, and was therefore probably in the vernacular, and included a Harrowing of Hell, which was performed by the nuns and the priests who served the nunnery. So-called "Saints Plays" were also popular. The earliest we know of was performed at Dunstable in Bedfordshire in the twelfth century and was about St Katherine, but, of all these plays, only two have survived, both from East Anglia and dating from the late fifteenth/early sixteenth centuries: Mary Magdalen and The Conversion of St Paul. The Mystery Cycles Best known of all medieval dramas, of course, are the Mystery Cycles. Of these, four survive - York, Chester, Towneley and N.town - and we have fragments of three others, from Coventry, Newcastle and Norwich. The earliest is York, which is mentioned as being performed as early as 1376, although the text we have dates from around 1463-77. Contrary to popular belief, the Cycles were not all the same. The York plays, for instance, consisted of 48 pageants which were performed on a single day, Corpus Christi (the first Thursday after Trinity Sunday), whereas the 24 pageants of the Chester Cycle were performed over three days, the Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of Whitsun week. The Towneley Cycle is associated with Wakefield, but there is no firm evidence that that was the case, and the N.town Cycle was almost certainly not, like York and Chester, a civic affair, internal evidence suggesting that it was performed on a Sunday by a group of towns and villages, each being responsible for one or more pageants. The earliest surviving Mystery play manuscript comes from Cornwall and, apart from this one MS - Ordinalia - we know little about what seems to have been a strong Celtic tradition. The last performances of the Cycles were 1569 (York), 1575 (Chester) and 1579 (Coventry). The Mystery Plays, of course, were an attempt to tell the story of the Bible (or, at least, selected parts of the Bible), beginning with the Creation and ending with the Harrowing of Hell and the Last Judgement. In most cases the individual plays or pageants were performed by trade guilds (although that is almost certainly not the case with the N.town Cycle) on wagons (or carriages, as they were called at Chester). However, there is evidence that some of the Cycles (possibly N.town) may have been performed on scaffolding stages. They were verse plays, using a variety of forms, including the old Anglo-Saxon alliterative verse: All might and majesty are magnified in me, Like a considerable amount of Shakespeare, they are full of anachronisms: Herod, for instance, swears by "Mahood, my god, who is great in might", and, when tempting Christ in the wilderness, Satan tells him: Into the north look over the plain: The Morality Plays The Morality Plays are a natural development from the Mysteries, and with them we approach more closely to our modern understanding of the word theatre. Whilst we have no firm evidence of the authorship of the Mysteries, it seems most likely that they, like the great folk epic poems such as the Welsh Mabinogi, the Epic of Gilgamesh, or even the Iliad and Odyssey, grew over a long period of time, with bits added by various hands throughout their history. The Moralities, however, are usually the work of one man, for instance Henry Medwall who wrote Nature sometime in the late fifteenth century. The earliest of the Morality plays was The Castle of Perseverance (fifteenth century), athough the best known is Everyman which was first printed around 1510 but is undoubtedly earlier than that. The plays are allegories, like The Pilgrim's Progress (a novel of a much later date), which are intended to show the people how they should live their lives and not succumb to temptation and the devil. Interludes and Other Plays Interludes were short plays which were definitely secular and may have been associated with minstrels. We are nor even sure if they were preformed indoors or out, or even who by. The earliest we know about was Interludium de Clerico et Puella - the Interlude of the Clerk (usually meaning someone in holy orders) and the girl - a very suggestive title, which dates from the early fourteenth century but which has associations with Dame Sirth, a thirteenth century monologue which was in some ways like a farce and, for the period, quite explicit. As we move into the sixteenth century, we hear more about Robin Hood plays and plays of St George, which seem to have close links with mummers' plays, which were truly secular, comic and even quite crude. Some mummers' plays still exist, and, although they are very simple, we see in them the pattern of theatre as we know it today. Links Part 2 - The Sixteenth Century
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